Wheels falling off

With the Black Lives Matter campaign gathering momentum, I wondered how long it would be before Swing Low Sweet Chariot, one of the anthems of the England rugby team, came into the spotlight. I did know it was a spiritual slavery song, which seems to have first been associated with Martin Offiah, the England winger, when he played in the Middlesex Sevens in the 1970's.

Analysing pop music and its heritage, together with lyrics, is going to be a massive task if we really think that is the point at which we have arrived. Rugby is a multi-cultural game, sides are multi-racial and up until now nobody has complained about the song. That of course is not to say it is right to sing it but is it the tip of the ice-berg?

Scotland singing 'Flower of Scotland' with it's anti-English undertones never seemed to have worried us, and indeed I have sung it many times in Edinburgh after a game. Will I have to stop singing 'Bloody Great Fishes are Wales' to the tune of their national anthem, and what else will the Welsh be able to ask us to stick up our behind, if chariots are not available? We are in very strange times at the moment, and have to be very careful how sanitised we become.

Dominic Rabb was called out today  for making a personal comment about the 'take a knee' ritual and I have said before that it seems strange that the image of Black Lives Matter is a parody of the very action which caused the stirring of anger and frustration which we are experiencing at the moment. We cannot re-write history, oh that we could sometimes, so we need to ensure the changes we make are for the better, and not just knee jerk reactions (ouch!)

And they're off

Probably the title which should have been used in March, but this week saw me play my first round of golf with my fellow Liverpool Captains year group. We were hosted at Haydock Park, the golf club not the race course, and by socially distancingg we were able to enjoy a round of golf and a bit of a chat. It was chucking down when we finished so the fact we were outside meant the umbrella's could keep us 2 metres apart!!

Clearly the group have not done anything they were hoping to. All the dinners have been cancelled as have various AGM and overseas tour events. I will become Captain in a few weeks when we have a virtual AGM via Zoom, how times change. I wonder what the Captains of 120 years ago would have made of it?

As the clubhouse refit continues uninterrupted by members activities we should have a very pleasant facility available once we are able to open the bar and provide food. The terrace is now twice the size and there are wall to ceiling windows looking out over the course.

Competitions start on 4th July, suspect the pheasants will be getting nervous

Brown bread

Interesting times just took a new turn with the Black Lives Matter demonstrations. While the officer who was 'taking a knee' in the States was clearly in the wrong, and is paying the penalty, the two officers who looked on without offering any mitigation to the situation should be facing the same charges. They really should have stepped in.

The repercussions are rippling though our Country at the same rate as Coronavirus. The statue of Edward Colston tossed into the Avon,and  the removal of other statues from parts of London is almost like ethnic cleansing. History is history and it is important to have it around to learn from. What's right and what's wrong? What do we owe to the people who worked for the Royal African Company or slaving traffickers of the time? What part did they play in building our Country?

I went to the Sir John Cass College in London,  his is one such statue to be suggested for removal. I live in a house in Birkenhead populated by merchants of the time. Were they involved in the slave trade? Did the land owner, the  Earl of  Shrewsbury make money from the slave trade? In my family tree, Alexander Jemmett was a colonialist in Antigua. he was born in 1896 and married his cousin Phoebe. his father Francis and Uncle George could quite easily have been involved too.

Now, predominantly Labour councils are exploring ways of sanitising their cities by removing more statues and renaming roads. In Liverpool today there are moves afoot to rename Rodney Street and Penny Lane, the latter more associated with the Beatles than with the slave trade.

Whether or not  Keir Starmer will realise his knees shot in the papers this morning is not the  cleverest PR shot he will ever feature in remains to be seen. Pubs should be open next month when alcohol fuelled debate can once more help put the World to rights. I hope they have sufficient beer!!

Ooh! Aah! Cantona!

Goodness me, another month goes by and I hope all my readers are in good health as is their inner sanctum. The good weaher and some easing of lockdown should help us all in the next few weeks.

We have been continuing with routine tasks, and some not so routine. I had a big ash tree pollarded last week but SWMBO has indicated it went too far so i had to buy some gap fillers yesterday. I think i should have chopped it down ten years ago as the increased daylight and sunshine is just amazing. We do, however, have homeless people rehoused in the hotel over the road who are in residence full time, unlike normal hotel users so SWMBO is nervous about them overlooking us. Hopefully the new screen of trees will sort her concerns out while still allowing her sun tan time.

I am not sure how long they will stay there, some have already been removed due to antisocial behaviour, but the majority are fine. The girls in particular have those magpie type Liverpool screeching accents and probably don't need phones to talk to people several streets away but the lads seem happy tending the garden and doing other maintenance jobs around the place. Hopefully it will give some of them a sense of purpose and the ability to integrate more into society when the time comes for them to fend for themselves again.

They have a variety of deliveries arrive from Wirral council each day including their evening meal, bu the most humorous arrival is a car which draws up a little away from the hotel and always with its radio blasting out. The lady driver then dispenses 'essential medication' before going on her way. The neighbours have come to refer to it as the ice cream van!

Two of our grandchildren start back at school next week although they have been attending as key worker children for a couple of weeks anyway so they should be fine. Golf continues with four people able to play together, and the weather has been scorching so shorts have been the order of the day. Plans to open the terrace for food and drink service continues to be in the hands of the Government so we will see wat Boris has to say on the matter nearer the end of the month.

I have always been keen on Boris, but I have to confess that the Dominic Cummings saga has seen me less able to defend him as I have in the past. I compare it very much to Alex Ferguson defending |Eric Cantona when he judo kicked a Crystal Palace fan in the crowd. Ferguson was always a manager who defended his players in public but gave them the true story behind closed doors, The Cantona incident. however, was a case of defending the indefensible and I believe the Cummings affair was Boris's Cantona moment.

'How can I sack my advisor when he advises me not too!' is the story doing the rounds, but it is interesting that Cummings actions were supported by over 30% of the population who said they would have done the same thing if their child was in a similar position. Clearly a high proportion of people think he broke the lockdown and should have been sacked but he wasn't so we have to move on and see what the next major obstacle the government will need to overcome.

I am still waiting for constructive help and advise from people with either strong Labour allegiances, or Remoaners who still can't accept that that battle is lost albeit the war still rages on for a few more months. We need more positives to balance the 'got that wrong' storylines. Starmer and Burnham must be some pleased they don't have to make any decisions, but must be quite nervous of ever getting into government as the Conservatives have spent all the money a traditional Labour ruling party would have allocated. After new Labour we now have new Conservative.

So roll on the longest day in a few weeks time after which we will see if the virus is prone to escalate as a threat in colder weather. Let's hope  Pfizer are right when they say they might have a vaccine by October. After the Pfizer riser we could have the Corona Pkiller

Hope so!

The Malthusian Theory

With new cases of Coronavirus springing up in Wohan, conspiracy theories once more abound. One such is The Malthusian Theory of Population, a theory of exponential population growth and arithmetic food supply growth. Thomas Robert Malthus, an English cleric and scholar, published this theory in his 1798 writings, An Essay on the Principle of Population.
Malthus believed that through preventative checks and positive checks, the population would be controlled to balance the food supply with the population level. These checks would lead to the Malthusian catastrophe.

So, as the population grows at a faster rate than the food chain can sustain it, nature takes a hand mand every 100 or so years it provides some sort of challenge for civilisation to redress itself. We can think of Spanish flu as such an intervention, but given two major World Wars in the 1900's reduced the population somewhat, no other intervention was required until now. Interestingly the Coronavirus outbreak has been triggered by events in China, the most populous country in the World. So, is there value in such a theory or is it just co-incidental?

His catastrophe is linked to improved food production processes which mean the population thrives and by doing so needs more and more land to build on, so restricting the food supply chain on whose land the housing is built. Result, famine and disease. So there is food for thought, read his article, and the many comments which disprove it.

Golf starts up again tomorrow I must remember when my partner is teeing off, to stay alert!!!   Fore!

Damn United

Today Corid-19, the virus, has managed to achieve something that no referenda have been able to and that is to create four separate State's in the United Kingdom. I have much sympathy with the Northern Ireland assembly as they struggle with two neighbouring Countries each with a different approach. They are fortunate that they can focus on their common border colleagues while taking a 'watch and wait' approach to events across the Irish Sea.

I fail to have the same sympathy for The Crankie who is First Minister in Scotland. She spouts parrot fashion how she will not politicise the coronavirus challenge, and then does all she can to undermine the Prime Minister. If she is an intelligent person, then she should get the 'Be Alert' instruction, particularly as it is linked to a terror related status indication system too. If she is playing to the minority social networking trolls who have nothing but negative comments about everything, then she is succeeding. As I see it, her  no change strategy allows her to stand back and see how things go in England.  If it works as planned she can relax lockdown in Scotland and say she was just being cautious, if it goes pear shaped in England she can use the 'told you so' card. She is in a win-win situation and as she and Boris clearly do not get on, maybe even to the extent that they dislike each other with a passion, she can only come out of this smelling of roses, and without having to make any decisions herself.

The Welsh are dragged along in her slipstream somewhat although do seem to be prepared to take some individual decisions in isolation. The leader of the opposition, Kier Stammer just disagrees with most of what the government is doing without offering any alternatives, and must be pleased as punch that Labour lost the election.

The situation regarding children returning to school has also woken up the trade union movement who like nothing better than having a poke at a Conservative government. Press reports at the weekend indicated they were advising teachers not to provide lessons for absent pupil, not to do Zoom type lessons or talk one-to-one which them as it may expose them to pressure inconsistant with that normally experienced in the classroom. What a load of tosh!! They are now campaigning for the correct PPE for teahers when schools do re-conveen, which is right and proper, but there seems little in the way of help and assistance being offered as to how to make the classroom equally a safe and happy place to return to.

Boris has long been an admirer of Sir Winston Churchill. Churchill must be thinking how lucky he was to only be confronted by the Nazi's and Lord Haw Haw during the Second World War. He had no social media criticising his every move, he had no television and had total censorship of the press. Boris has none of that. He has a population of  Remainers he has upset  together with Labour, Lib Dem and other opposition party members who are happy to wade in while having no  responsibility for anything important themselves. He has the Press putting their spin on things and a gullible proportion of the population soaking it up as true.

It's a tough time for all of us, but nobody would want to be in Boris's shoe's at the moment, that's for sure. We can all be alert and start to allow the Country to open up a small amount, step too far though and we will all be back where we started and none of us want that.

The wrong trousers

Six weeks gone and still maintaining my sanity, although the last week has been a bit tense. SWMBO caught a bug, whether COVID-19 or something else is hard to say. She could not get out of bed for three days yet had no fever or cough. Three days in bed is almost unheard of, even on our honeymoon!! Ironically she has hardly been out of the house as I do the shopping. we have maybe had four walks round the local area, so to be on the safe side we booked a test for her

We were sent to Haydock Park race course, a 45 minute trip from The Wirral and on arrival we were instructed by q cards where to go and what to do, all very efficient. SWMBO had to self administer the swab and now three days later the test has come back clear. We still have no idea what she had as I suspect the test was taken too long into the process to have confirmed COVID-19, but she is now back cleaning, ironing and dusting so must be much better. She is also back in the pool. Clearly it is worrying when one so close could be at risk but fortunately admissions and deaths on the Wirral are falling along with the rest of the regions figures. I do note, however, that the North West is now the highest ranked in the hospitalisation table even ahead of London.

I read at the weekend that historians are encouraging people to keep a diary to document our activities during these almost unique times. I know you can't really say almost unique, but it fitted the flow......

To aid these historians and those in later years this is what I got up to yesterday.

I have  a strict clothing process in operation at home. My good clothes stay good until they degrade in quality. They are then moved to the golfing cupboard where  trousers in particular  are utilised on the links. After further degradation they are consigned to the gardening and decorating  box after which they get thrown out. Polo shirts tend to follow the same route or occasionally get sold on e-bay or at car boot sales. The time was right, I thought, for a clear out.

Gosh, I wish I hadn't done it!! This is my inventory of  'good' clothes:

• 16 pairs of trousers, 6 of which are NWT
• 19 jumpers
• 23 shirts
• 22 ties (why?)
• 32 polo shirts
• 3 blazers
• 7 jackets
• 2 suits
• 1 dinner suite with extra trousers
• 4 dress shirts
• 7 weatherproof tops
• 8 base layers
• 4 waterproof trousers and 
• 3 pairs of golf trousers

Oh yes, I also have a three-quarter length red coat which I have never worn!!

I have managed to identify four polo shirts and two weatherproof tops which can go on e-bay. One pair of golf trousers and a couple of polo shirts are destined for the gardening box and I have thrown away  some threadbare jumpers and a few old shirts. I still seem to have a few too many jackets and trousers but just can't bear to part with some old favourites, like black moleskin trousers, a pair of Levi's and a very comfortable denim jacket which I hardly wear but just might in the future!!

There is no car boot sale schedule this Summer so I guess we will see what I wear once the golf season kicks back in, and I can have another clear out after that. I am sure I don't need half what I have got, but as with toilet paper, you never know when hoarding may come in handy!!