Miners

In the understandable joy at the safe rescue of the 33 men in the Chilean mine, let us not forget why they were trapped in the first place. Almost 90 years since the local disaster commemorated above, mine-owners are still doing what they're best at: putting profits before people.

"Inadequate Ranters"

Thus, according to today's Graun, Andrew Marr on bloggers, and he doesn't mean we are pale imitations of Abiezer Coppe, either. Some of his criticism makes a very palpable hit--'spewings and rantings of very drunk people late at night', for example. Been there and done that, I'm sorry to say. But how many of Fleet Street's Lunchtime O'Boozes can escape whipping for similar offences? Most of his tirade is, however, sweeping and offensive generalisation: 'socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed young men sitting in their mother's basements and ranting.' I mean, what? The very spittle-flecked nature of his invective suggests someone outraged by 'little people' daring to muscle in on his patch. The ruling class [Loretto and Cambridge] putting down the uppity lower orders. We've been here before with Lord Salisbury's comment on the Daily Mail when it first appeared: 'By office boys for office boys.'

A Grand Day Out

The speck in the bottom of this shot is one of a pair of buzzards circling quite low over the canal as I walked along the towpath this afternoon. Yes, I need a better camera.
All of the bridges on the canal are elegantly numbered [it's a Georgian construction] as this one is.
The grooves in the side of the bridge are made by the tow-ropes of the horse-drawn barges cutting into the masonry.
Lots of nice vistas present themselves as one walks along. This is just one.
Finally, not as dramatic an avian shot as the buzzard, a mallard floating amid the lusher greenery of the banks in the village itself.
This walk marked a quiet moment of achievement for me: it is exactly a year since I entered the world of C diff infection that led to a hospital stay and many, many months of severe debility and exhaustion. This is the first proper two hour walk I've managed since then. And I'm pleased.

Another Petition

....was the one I signed to keep the name 'C L R James Library' on the facility in Hackney where the council were all for putting it in the memory-hole. In my mailbox [what does a Yorkshireman say when he sees letters on his mat? 'Ee, mail!' of course] this morning was an email telling me that the petition had done the job. Good.

Tawdry...And Potently So

Re-visited The Sweet Smell of Success last night on DVD, part of a Tony Curtis season via my PC. It is a great movie, powerfully depicting a shabby, tawdry, amoral world, Curtis and Lancaster both in fine performances. So effectively did it immerse the viewer in its tawdry world that this one at any rate felt like having a shower after watching it.

Too Twee

Being in Edinburgh yesterday I visited the 'Impressionist Gardens' exhibition but was very disappointed in it. Perhaps it was the mood I was in [not happy] but it all struck me, with very few exceptions, as a display of almost relentless prettiness. The main exceptions were the works by Pissarro, an underrated painter. I came out desperate for a dose of Kandinsky.

Solidarity Call

A letter in today's Graun draws attention to a petition to call for protection of adult education [available here]. In the few years I spent as a paid tutor in the field, and still now as a volunteer tutor, the enormous value of adult education was obvious to me, particularly in changing the lives of those who had been given a bum deal by the standard education system as children. While I hope that the petition, which I signed, will be heeded I am not, sadly, holding my breath. Increasingly I'm of the view that what any movement needs is, in the words of the Friends of Durruti Group, 'a programme, and rifles.'