A Curious Restraint

Last night's TV debate began with a preposterous claim from Gordon Brown. "I may not be popular, but I have 13 years experience: I know how to govern, I know how to manage the economy."


This from the man who pumped up the boom, so creating a catastrophic bust.
This from the man who signed the Lisbon Treaty without the referendum his party had promised.
This from the man who has committed British soldiers with inadequate equipment to an unwinnable and unnecessary war.
This from the man whose covert policy of mass immigration is causing unprecedented population growth, and dangerous fractures in our society.
And the list of failings goes on.


To a lifelong democratic socialist the grotesque excesses and betrayals of 'New Labour' are painful and embarrassing in the extreme. It is beyond belief that Gordon Brown should crawl from the wreck and claim he is a good steward and a safe driver.


So I am puzzled that David Cameron argued with such restraint.
Is he just too much of a gentleman to kick a man when he's down?
Does he believe Brown's claims are so obviously preposterous that they are beneath his dignity to refute?
Maybe his election managers advised he should stress his own agenda, and be wary of increasing public sympathy for the underdog.
He must know that an instinct for the jugular is essential in a prime minister.


Whatever the reason, Cameron had an open goal, but would not kick the ball in. Why?


Maybe his strategy is longer term.
He read the newspapers yesterday. He heard the warning of the governor of the Bank of England: the austerities needed to manage the economic crisis are so severe the next government will be hated for a generation.
His first task as Conservative leader was to break the popular image of the nasty party. He succeeded, but an election win now would destroy years of work, maybe label the Conservatives as nasty for ever.


The winner of this match will lift a poisoned chalice; Gordon Brown has seen to that. In justice he should drink it.
For Cameron the best strategic result may be a hung parliament, with an unstable labour-liberal coalition floundering and failing in government. Let them take the hate and ignominy of managing the austerity, or the disgrace of failing in economic meltdown needing IMF intervention. A second election could not be long delayed, and the Conservative's might inherit a country at the nadir, on the rebound.
A cynical strategy, but that's politics.


I suspect Cameron's prayer is 'Lord make me Prime Minister, but please, Lord, not this time'. 

Loveliest of Trees

Housman famously praised the cherry in bloom as ‘Loveliest of trees’, but he was mistaken.

There is no blossom more beautiful than the apple. Most delicately flushed and perfumed, it’s transience intensifies the pleasure of its appearance, signifying spring is really here, after the long cold damp winter.

And no-one hymned an English apple orchard better than William Barnes, in his Dorset dialect. 

>>

'Ithin the woodlands, flow'ry gleaded, 

By the woak tree's mossy moot, 

The sheenen grass bleades, timber-sheaded, 

Now do quiver under voot; 

An' birds do whissle auver head, 

An' water's bubblen in its bed, 

An' ther vor me the apple tree

Do lean down low in Linden Lea.

When leaves that leately wer a-springen

Now do feade 'ithin the copse, 

An' painted birds do hush ther zingen

Up upon the timber's tops; 

An' brown-leav'd fruit's a-turnen red, 

In cloudless zunsheen, auver head, 

Wi' fruit vor me the apple tree

Do lean down low in Linden Lea.

Let other vo'k meake money vaster

In the air o' dark-room'd towns, 

I don't dread a peevish measter; 

Though noo man do heed my frowns, 

I be free to goo abrode, 

Or teake agean my hwomeward road

To where vor me the apple tree

Do lean down low in Linden Lea.

<<

Home is where the orchard is. I like that.

The blossom in the picture is on my Arthur Turner apple tree now. This variety is noted for the colour and perfume of its flowers.

Thought for Today

This is by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in relaxed and unbuttoned mood.

Ob der Koran von Ewigkeit sei?
Darnach frag ich nicht!
Ob der Koran geschaffen sei?
Das weiß ich nicht!
Daß er das Buch der Bücher sei,
Glaub ich aus Mosleminenpflicht.

Daß aber der Wein von Ewigkeit sei,
Daran zweifl' ich nicht;
Oder daß er vor den Engeln geschaffen sei,
Ist vielleicht auch kein Gedicht.
Der Trinkende, wie es auch immer sei,
Blickt Gott frischer ins Angesicht.

It might be translated thus.

Comes the Koran from the Eternal?
That I do not ask!
Was the Koran composed?
That I do not know!
That it is the Book of Books,
I believe as Muslim duty.
 
But that wine comes from Eternity,
That I do not doubt;
Or that it was created for the angels
Perhaps is no myth.
The drinker, as it always may be,
Looks God afresh in the face.

A nice conceit!
More likely drink reveals the realities of the drinker, as maybe God sees them.
In vino veritas.

Airspace Realities

Europe's airways are open again, with a few exceptions. The volcano is still erupting, the weather pattern has not changed: what has changed is the definition of 'safe to fly'. The realities have forced a hard cold look at the regulations, and their urgent revision.
The airlines forced this revision. The people most experienced in safe airline operations were able eventually to influence those who have the power of decision.


The computer model used by the regulators is called NAME - Nuclear Accident Model. NAME was developed after the Chernobyl disaster. It is designed to model the spread of radioactivity after a release into the atmosphere. I understand it performed well, where it was possible to check predictions against measurements, but the information needed when assessing air safety around a volcano differs from that after a nuclear accident.


Critical parameters for an aircraft flying into dust include the mass of dust per unit air volume, the average size of the dust particles, and the speed of the aircraft and its engines.
I understand the smallest ducts in a jet engine are in the turbine blades, passing cooling air. These are sized around 1 millimetre, so may be blocked by particles of that size.


From the Icelandic volcano central England lies approximately 1000 miles south-east. So volcanic dust in a 50 mph wind from the north-west will take 20 hours to get here. In practice the dust followed a longer path, in the clockwise circulation round high pressure west of Ireland.
So what size of volcanic dust grain will still be airborne more than 20 hours after eruption?
I don't know, but it must be very small, micrometric at the most, I would guess.


Really we should talk about 'smoke', not 'ash' or 'dust'. An aircraft or engine susceptible to damage by smoke should not be flying at all.


Obviously no aircraft should fly through the erupting plume. The urgent need is to develop means to plot contours of maximum particle size and concentration around the eruption, and to determine the safe limits for aircraft. The danger zone round a volcano is likely to be much smaller than that round a nuclear release - radioactive smoke might well be more dangerous that radioactive dust.


It is now imperative to measure and model, so future airways management is evidence based. And I would restore to airlines the responsibility to decide when it is safe to operate, tasking the meteorological services to provide reliable information.

Smaug Stirring

Eyja is the Icelandic word for island; fjall means mountain; jökull means ice-cap or glacier.


Eyjafjall is the Island Mountain; Eyjafjallajökull is the Island Mountain Glacier. It is an outlier of the larger Myrdalsjökull to the east.


[In Iceland ll is aspirated, as in Welsh llan. So the spoken name should sound something like eiya-fyatla-jerkutl.]


Eyjafjall: might that translate as Lonely Mountain? Remember, this is the country that inspired so much in Tolkien.
And who had occupied the deep spaces of the Lonely Mountain? It was that most dreaded of disasters, that most catastrophic of calamities, the Great Worm from the northern wastelands, Smaug the Magnificent, the giant dragon.
And Smaug was violently possessive and jealous of his treasure, to the last tiny jewel. Bilbo stole a goblet, arousing Smaug to fury, and to wreak fire and havoc on Esgaroth.


Now Britain and other European countries are demanding treasure from Iceland, reparations for their losses in the collapse of the icelandic banks. Maybe Smaug is aware, stirring, giving warning when his treasure is threatened. His closure of our airspace is just a starter, telling us to back off or else he'll erupt from his lair to unleash an Armageddon of flame and fury on London.


Does he still have a scale missing on the left breast? Can we hope that in a showdown a grim, heroic Bard will hear a thrush report Smaug's weakness? Will he have one last black arrow, forged by elven-smiths, to snatch victory from the jaws of hell?


Do our leaders know all this? Is there a conspiracy of silence, 'in the national interest'?


Put no trust in officials; check your fire extinguisher. That is the doctor's advice for today.

Dust and Aircraft

Arabia is very dusty. Any wind tends to sir up dust; strong winds cause sand-storms.
Muscat has dusty days as Leamington has fogs.
But aircraft operate normally on dusty days there, as they do on foggy days here.


This is a picture of the Burj Roundabout and Rusail shopping centre on a dusty day, taken from a Fokker Friendship about 2 miles from touchdown at Muscat-Seeb Airport. Such conditions were common - often the dust haze was much worse, and extended up several thousand feet. Temperatures were rarely much below 30 degrees C., and humidities usually 80% or more.
The dust is presumably mostly from sand, so it is silica, very abrasive. 

I can't help wondering if our current shut-down is an over-reaction. We are told the dust isn't enough to impair visibility.

Thanks, Eyjafjall

It's a lovely morning here in the English Midlands: a clear blue zenith, with a rosy sunrise. It is hard to believe there is significant volcanic dust and sulphur dioxide up there, but probing flights show there is.

Sunset yesterday was similarly clear, with a sky of darkening blue and a pink sunset.

I recall the spectacular sunsets and sunrises I witnessed in 1991 in Al 'Ain, in Abu Dhabi Emirate. Mount Pinatubo had erupted a few days before, in the Philippines, half a world away. That eruption injected cubic kilometres of volcanic solids and gases into the atmosphere, enough to spread around the globe.

In Al 'Ain the sun rose and set beneath great curtains of red and purple, reaching up to the zenith. This went on for several days. Our present displays are trivial in comparison.

No airspace was closed in Arabia during this event: flying continued as normal, if I remember correctly.

Today we have a rare opportunity to enjoy a spring morning unspoiled by aircraft: quiet, and no contrails. It demonstrates the degree of pollution inflicted by aircraft, to which we have become accustomed.

On a flight to Spain last year I saw the extent of the pollution at the contrail level, and how some contrails at least have a brownish tint when seen from the side.

Contrails are visible pollution: outside the contrail level the pollution is the same, but invisible. And much of it is stratospheric, slow to circulate to ground level, where most natural clean-up occurs.

Reduction of air transport and travel must be a priority if we want a cleaner atmosphere.

So, this morning I say: Eyjafjall, þakk yður fyrir.

You have reminded us about the mess we are creating, and the natural beauty we are destroying.

Woddis, Thou Shouldst Be Living At This hour ..

The late great Roger Woddis wrote this poem, after some scandal had been given a whitewash after an investigation.
It keeps going round in my head, especially as the electioneering gets under way. It seems to summarise so much about our 'low, dishonest decade', ending in banking, economic, social and political crisis.


Nobody put their hand out,
Nobody took a bribe,
Nobody was compromised
By acts you could describe.


Nobody got away with it,
Nobody thought they could,
And all of them were honest men,
And all of them were good.


Nobody bought a cabinet,
Whatever you may hear,
And all of them were honest men,
And all were in the clear.


Nobody did a secret deal,
Nobody was for sale,
Nobody bent the rules at all,

And nobody went to jail.


And all of them were honest men,
As white as driven snow,

And all lived on a higher plane,
And spat on those below.


There is uncertainty about the second letter of the second word in the last line.

Simple Arithmetic

A general election has been called. A few simple calculations show the magnitude of the problems the next government will inherit. Forget politics, no government will have any choice; economics will dictate.

This year our national debt will exceed 800 billion pounds. Over the next 2 to 3 years it will pass the 1 trillion pound mark, that is 1 thousand thousand million pounds.

These are the official figures, the real total of government debt is much more. The true figure should include off balance-sheet, stealth debt such as the Private Finance Initiative, and commitments for under-funded public sector pensions.

Total British debt is the sum of state and private borrowing. Private debt is currently estimated at 1.4 trillion pounds.

Total British debt must be more than 2 trillion pounds, and increasing.

This is an unprecedented, catastrophic total. Interest payments alone must exceed 100 billion pounds annually. It will be a massive burden on Britain, its children and its grandchildren.

To get some idea of the magnitude of these figures, try the simple experiment suggested by the BBC.

Imagine we started to repay debt at the rate of 1 pound per second: how long to repay 1 trillion pounds?

Well, there are 60x60x24 = 86,400 seconds in a day;

so a million seconds is  11.5741 days;

and a billion seconds is 11,574.1 days, or 31.688 years [assuming 365.25 days / year];

and 1 trillion seconds is 31,688 years.

Therefore, at 1 pound per second it will be 31,700 years before our debts are repaid;

if we increase repayment to 100 pounds per second we need 317 years;

and that takes no account of interest.

At 1 pound per second we pay 31.56 million pounds annually. That is 0.000032% of 1 trillion pounds. To pay 3% interest on 1 trillion pounds requires 30 billion pounds annually, 82.2 million pounds per day, 951 pounds per second.

These sums - interest and repayment of capital - are impossible to achieve. Can a country go bankrupt? I guess the International Monetary Fund would be the receiver, and dictate socially devastating economic strictures: a recipe for revolution.

Governments have an option denied to private borrowers. Governments can print money, undo the link between money and value, create inflation, and destroy the debt. The Bank of England printed 200 billion pounds during the past year, to buy government debt.

This is a sophisticated, dishonest means of default. 

Inflation renders a currency worthless. It breeds poverty, lawlessness, ugly politics and violence.

Inflation created by insupportable reparation debt destroyed the Reichsmark, with disastrous consequences for Germany, Europe and indeed the world.

But the resolution of an inflation crisis must be the creation of a new currency, a fresh start built on a ruined country and a devastated reputation.

So I would advise Brown and Cameron secretly to pray to lose this election. The next prime minister has a task impossible to fulfil; he can expect only criticism, ignominy and grief. Better to be in opposition and watch the storm destroy the governing party; this crisis must come to a head before an election 5 years from now.

A Hymn to April

The chill and desolation of Edith Sitwell's poem is appropriate for Good Friday. Now on Easter Sunday I turn to Swinburne, that pre-Raphaelite word-smith noted for his distinctive verse forms and rhythms, and his sumptuous, luxuriant, Victorian images and language.
As with many Victorian poets, Swinburne may sound to modern ears at times mannered, even pretentious.
He is also well educated in the Greek classics, so some of his allusions are unfamiliar to readers 1-1/2 centuries later. The tragic legend of Itylus is summarised here.


This is Swinburne's great hymn to April, and Spring in England. It is an early chorus from 'Atalanta in Calydon', an early literary success, a drama in classical form. The 'Maiden most perfect' is Artemis. 




WHEN the hounds of spring are on winter's traces,
  The mother of months in meadow or plain
Fills the shadows and windy places 
  With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;
And the brown bright nightingale amorous
Is half assuaged for Itylus,
For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces,
  The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.


Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers,
  Maiden most perfect, lady of light,
With a noise of winds and many rivers,
  With a clamour of waters, and with might;
Bind on thy sandals, O thou most fleet,
Over the splendour and speed of thy feet; 
For the faint east quickens, the wan west shivers,
  Round the feet of the day and the feet of the night.


Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her,
  Fold our hands round her knees, and cling?
O that man's heart were as fire and could spring to her,
  Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring!
For the stars and the winds are unto her 
As raiment, as songs of the harp-player;
For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her, 
  And the southwest-wind and the west-wind sing.


For winter's rains and ruins are over,
  And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
  The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remember'd is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
  Blossom by blossom the spring begins.


The full streams feed on flower of rushes,
  Ripe grasses trammel a travelling foot,
The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes
  From leaf to flower and flower to fruit;
And fruit and leaf are as gold and fire,
And the oat is heard above the lyre,
And the hoofèd heel of a satyr crushes
  The chestnut-husk at the chestnut-root.


And Pan by noon and Bacchus by night,
  Fleeter of foot than the fleet-foot kid,
Follows with dancing and fills with delight
  The Mænad and the Bassarid;
And soft as lips that laugh and hide
The laughing leaves of the trees divide,
And screen from seeing and leave in sight
  The god pursuing, the maiden hid.


The ivy falls with the Bacchanal's hair
  Over her eyebrows hiding her eyes;
The wild vine slipping down leaves bare
  Her bright breast shortening into sighs;
The wild vine slips with the weight of its leaves,
But the berried ivy catches and cleaves
To the limbs that glitter, the feet that scare
  The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies.

Still Falls the Rain

Easter Saturday; a broadcast of Easter music and readings from the chapel of King's College, Cambridge, which included this poem, read powerfully by a woman undergraduate. It is by Edith Sitwell, who wrote it during the bombing of London in 1940.


Still Falls The Rain


Still falls the Rain
Dark as the world of man, black as our loss -
Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails
Upon the Cross.


Still falls the Rain
With a sound like the pulse of the heart that is changed to the hammer-beat
In the Potter's Field, and the sound of the impious feet
On the Tomb.


Still falls the Rain
In the Field of Blood where the small hopes breed and the human brain
Nurtures its greed, that worm with the brow of Cain.


Still falls the Rain
At the feet of the starved man hung upon the Cross.
Christ that each day, each night, nails there, have mercy on us,
On Dives and on Lazarus:
Under the Rain the sore and the gold are as one.


Still falls the Rain
Still falls the blood from the starved man's wounded side:
He bears in His Heart all wounds, those of the light that died,
The last faint spark
In the self-murdered heart; the wounds of the sad uncomprehending dark,
The wounds of the baited bear,
The blind and weeping bear whom the keepers beat
On his helpless flesh, the tears of the hunted hare.


Still falls the Rain
Then - 'O Ile leape up to my God: who pulles me doune?'
See, see where Christ's blood streames in the firmament:
It flows from the brow we nailed upon the tree
Deep to the dying, to the thirsting heart
That holds the fires of the world, dark-smirched with pain
As Caesar's laurel crown.


Then sounds the voice of One who like the heart of man
Was once a child who among beasts has lain:
"Still do I love, still shed my innocent light, my blood, for thee.


{ The quotation in the penultimate stanza is from Marlowe's play. In the final act Doctor Faustus is waiting terrified for Mephistopheles, coming to claim his due from the Faustian pact. ]

Chocolate and Y-Chromosome Deficiency

Just over 45 years ago it was my great good fortune to marry. My wife, like me a newly-qualified medical student, was widely acknowledged to be among the most able of our year, and a beauty too. She has a robust Scottish Presbyterian philosophy of life, tempered by a fundamental saintliness, which has increased with the passing years.
It all makes me a most fortunate man. Saints are sometimes difficult to live with, but they have an infuriating tendency to be proven right in the end.


But she has a secret addiction, of which I  became aware only in the past few years. Chocolate is a necessity for her, not an optional treat. I discovered her cache of chocolate bars in the pantry, and the reality was made clear.


An unexpected consequence is that Lent is a problem. Her austere presbyterian instinct is to give up something special during the fast, and this means chocolate. It means that as chocolate deprivation increases, so she complains of fatigue, and takes to shutting herself away with detective stories or romantic comedies on DVD. A benefit for me is that she tends to wake earlier than usual, so she makes the morning tea.
I have learnt to look forward to Easter Sunday morning, when the chocolate Easter egg brings relief, rejoicing and revitalisation.


Discrete enquiries lead me to believe chocolate addiction is prevalent, at least among the wives and daughters of friends and colleagues. I hear tales of chocolate hidden in wardrobes, under beds, in cars, and in kitchens. A craving for chocolate may be nearly universal in women. It is obvious in my little grand-daughters.


Of course men enjoy chocolate too, but for men it is an option. This need for chocolate does seem to be distinctive of the XX genetic endowment.
Which raises the immediate question: does the Y chromosome induce production of something important in brain metabolism, something which chocolate contains and provides for the Y chromosome deficiency state?


Does chocolate give women some of the qualities which men take for granted? For example, does it make them feel well, increase vigour, increase self-confidence? It's time women told us about it.


And a further thought. Chocolate has become relatively cheaper and much more available in the past half-century, with big increases in consumption, especially, no doubt, consumption per woman. And in this time feminism has flourished. Women increasingly want to dress like men, look like men, behave like men. They aspire to be bishops, generals, prime ministers, transplant surgeons, captains of industry.
Measures of women's chocolate consumption and feminism have both increased, and no doubt are correlated. Can we conclude this is cause and effect?
Can men counter feminist militancy by rationing chocolate?


Maybe - but it's not an experiment I would dare in my household.


Happy Easter!