'a rising tide lifts all boats'

horsemouth dreamt about a party. the 2 metre rule (if there is one) was not being  observed. people seemed to have been returned to a younger age. (gosh it was fun). horsemouth was given permission. he said thank you. 

horsemouth is awake late (it's 9am) that shows how good the dream was. there were toasts (in some undefined spirit). possibly to keep our boy asleep. 

it's the 50th anniversary of the publication of ways of seeing (there's a bbc appreciation on all this week) and it's the 20th anniversary of the physical institution of the euro as the currency of the eurozone. 

in fact countries have continued joining even after the eurozone crisis (aka. the greek sovereign debt crisis) revealed the problems with it and some have even adopted it as a currency unilaterally (kosovo, montenegro, the four european microstates, with partial use in various states in financial or otherwise difficulty,  cuba, syria and zimbabwe for example). 

of course the problem for poor areas (of the eurozone, but this is a problem with all currencies in general) is that their prices become linked to the prices in the rich areas, areas with different strength economies become tied together and lose their flexibility to vary how much the currency can actually buy to meet local conditions. people from the rich areas of the eurozone can always show up and purchase things with their wealth that the poorer people living on the edges of it cannot, prices are driven up and the poor of the regions become unable to afford things like housing. to keep the whole project on track the centre must distribute aid to the regions (and when times are not so good for the populace in the centre this is not very popular). 

the theory is that 'a rising tide lifts all boats'  but this requires careful management.

of course this problem exists for any two disparate regions linked together not just the first world and teh third world, but germany and greece,  london and the north east of england, or even west london and east london. 

the euro requires other changes as well, changes in the language. it is one euro, two euro (except in britain where it is one euro,  two euros etc.). the cents of it are differently said across europe.

of course horsemouth is no particular fan of nations but neither is he a fan of supra-national bodies. except that he is, he views them as a necessary stepping stone to world government (which he regards as a transitional stage to world communism - but he digresses). 

in fact it is less world government that interests him but rather proletarian internationalism - that the workers of the world see that they have no country (erm. except that they do, rather a lot of them). 

horsemouth watched a giallo (the crimes of the black cat 1972) heavily indebted to argento's animals trilogy but also to bava's fashion house set blood and black lace. it has moments of great style (and moments of tacky sadism and gore). he found it having heard it discussed on the podcast fragments of fear. 

yesterday a zoom call from john in far off porto. he had been reading adolfo bioy casares' the invention of morel (kind of a recycle time drama) after he realised that he didn't know any argentinian writers. (horsemouth can only name you two - casares and borges).  horsemouth was watching a fan video for robbie basho's bardo blues when he realised he was watching an excerpt from a film of it (this enabled him to track down the film).

yesterday also an email from sean.