at the grand re-opening of pontrilas railway station

sad news.

it's a NO.

there will be no grand re-opening of pontrilas railway station

this is a pity because it would certainly be very useful to horsemouth (instead of getting out at abergavenny or at hereford and having to get the bus, or get someone to come and collect him in the car, he could get out at pontrilas (and probably walk, or get someone to come a short distance to collect him). and it would certainly have a big impact on the area (though as horsemouth tends to argue with these sorts of projects it would not improve things for everybody)

'coun(cillor) price replied he had concluded that the project “offers poor value for money as, should it be built, it is likely that the scheme will not create additional capacity but will simply transfer journeys from other stations or the bus network”.' 

yes. but surely that applies to any new stop on an existing line. it's not exactly 'build it and they will come' is it?

it's ok. horsemouth had no great faith in them making it happen. he doesn't see the scale of the economic benefit (sticking hay on a railway line on the other hand...). 

instead there seem to be plans afoot to open a hereford parkway out by the hereford skylon park enterprise zone and to have a service to and  from birmingham there. but even there they can't make the sums add up. 

once again the money seems to have run out for infrastructure outside london. 

so why the sudden change of heart? 

even down here in herefordshire people are capable of learning the lessons of rishi sunak's dallying over HS2. everything was fine at the fat controller's meeting until the cheque came (with a fortune cookie) and now the tension, apprehension and dissension have begun. this seems to be a hill sunak is prepared to die upon (that and potholes in your roads to misquote de la soul).

sunak's mandate has become a bone of contention once again. his mandate (by historical accident) does not  derive from being elected by the electorate at an election. but, in any event, prime ministers are not elected by the electorate as a whole, the MPs of their parties are elected). nor does it derive  from adherence to the manifesto that whichever PM last elected was elected on (as if it were some kind of enforceable contract). rather his mandate derives  directly from the unwillingness of tory MPs to call a leadership election or vote against their own party in a vote of confidence. 

where is sunak now? 

he looks strong if he stops HS2 and weak if he doesn't.  (maybe he is only doing this so he can look sensible). the way it's going they'll probably depose him and re-instate liz truss. they have thrown so many u-turns they don't know which way is up anymore. they've become overtired. time for bed says zebidee. 

-----------------------------------------

and so to horsemouth's readings.

norman douglas's old calabria continues to go well. he certainly knows his calabrian historians. here we find, that successor to barrius, the historian, humanist and priest girolamo marafioti. unfortunately the critic soria (at least according to norman douglas) is not impressed by his referencing (or at least not for the right reasons).

'to make his shop appear more rich in foreign merchandise, he did not scruple to adorn it with books and authors apocryphal, imaginary, and unknown to the whole human race.'

here horsemouth shows you one of the last d n'b tunes horsemouth was really keen on, together by logistics. grooverider would often open with it at grace.

today horsemouth is involved in some bollocks with the car. there doesn't seem to be a proper plan. who knows maybe they will end up getting the bus.

'new york drowns while we hold hands'

sang jimi hendrix (on voodoo child). horsemouth does hope his remaining friends in new york are ok. (as far as he can remember nobody has a basement flat -  jacques did for while but he's no longer there).

a state of emergency has been declared. 

it seems to be rainwater  run off to horsemouth - not storm surge or high tides, that's the next phase.  the answer to rainwater runoff problems is to make the area greener (the soil will soak up more water wheras the concrete and asphalt will encourage it to run off and flood further downhill), to introduce more trees and to improve the drainage system). 

improving drainage systems is an expensive business. making places flood resistant less so. basement flats may have had their day. 

of course the flooding is all up through long island and new jersey also. 

horsemouth supposes red hook was the warning. it's on the floodplain. but then again most cities have grown up by rivers and lakes and the sea (for ease of trade) and spread out onto the floodplains. land values encourage increases in density (horsemouth is usually in favour of increasing density in cities so that transport costs can be lower, so that public transport can work more effectively). 

the neighbours basement flat two doors up from horsemouth's flooded out a few years ago but then again it is about 5ft lower than his (and 5ft further downhill).  

elsewhere horsemouth was reading some statistics on the UK (from the ONS - the office of national statistics/ the office of north and south) - he is now staying  in the place with the  second lowest productivity in the UK - herefordshire, the place where he mainly stays in london (hackney) is the 19th most income-deprived in the country (and this is despite all the rich people wandering round). 

so how will the 'levelling up' of south and north go? is it dead already? was it only ever snake oil? 

of course the problem with productivity improving (and income statistics improving) is that it doesn't necessarily put money in the pockets of the people who are there already, in fact it can make things more expensive and drive them out to be replaced by the people who get the benefit of the government investment. there is a construction boom in manchester but that doesn't mean people in oldham and rochdale are doing any better - in fact they may be doing worse as the increased money circulating locally  drives up prices. 

outside a grey morning. horsemouth contemplates a wander at some stage. he has already been out to water the tomato plants in the green house (last crop he thinks). his mum has just been out to feed and let out the chickens. horsemouth's mum's place is distinctly on a hill (so  while there is plenty of rain it is pretty safe from flooding). in recent years the roads have sometimes flooded for a day or so. there have been floods in hereford itself. 

books, gigs films, events september 2023

books

 - aubrey beardsley (stephen calloway biography and arthur symons appreciation)

- intimate journals (baudelaire). essay/ translation by w.h.auden 

- - j.m. coetzee, waiting for the barbarians

- old calabria (normal douglas). century traveller series.

- john turner obituary (guardian)

- jeanette winterson's ghosts (DT)

- the WIRE special on don (and moki) cherry

- LRB blog on vegetarianism

films 

- 'raw documents': uk hip hop documentary

- the lady from shanghai (orson welles)

- ed michel interview (10 minute record review guy)

- downfall. laura K. in three parts

- the garden of stones (clip)

- LRB on 'woke capital'

- thrift a life/ book pilled, outlaw bookseller, hawkbinge on 80ies hawkwind, novara media, spain speaks 

- 'a roof of my own'  (john turner 1964, UN films)

- three heads of cerebrus doc. on global warming (radio 4)

- DJ krush at daichuji

- john grey interviewed on net zero

- oil city confidential (dr. feelgood etc.)

- - a visual celebration of pharoah sanders

- parco lambro festival (near milan)

- life of philip k. dick 

- how power really works (novara media interview)

-  david runciman making sense of joan didion

- naima karlsson interviewed on NTS (and an americana raga show)

- hal foster looks back at 'the anti-aesthetic: essays on postmodern culture' interview on artforum

gigs none

events 

exhibition 'at home in hackney: a community photographed 1970s-today', john visits (go up to look at the frank brangwyn exhibit at the william morris),  death of the bid.  visit back to hackney, walks enza, TG, andrew minty, hanging around up the park (lise, paul, shona, lisa, siobhan, lethal, everybody), harvest time (pharoah sanders) re-released

somewhat apocalyptic (longterm decisions for a brighter future)

Tuli Tuli Tuli - 1001 ways to be joyfully revolted (short teaser) from David Liver on Vimeo.

horsemouth missed the centennial but hail tuli kupferberg! 

last night horsemouth was mostly thinking about art critic hal foster (following an interview on artforum). 

'we were young, somewhat apocalyptic... we drank that kool-aid.' 

foster is repeating an argument he has made before, now that he comes to look back on his book the anti-aesthetic his book  from the early days of post-modernism he desires to see continuities not breaks, the end of... is no longer the crucial thing. where once he embraced an anti-humanism (not putting 'man' at the centre of things) now he wants to examine what was at stake in the various humanisms. 

horsemouth continues to enjoy norman douglas's old calabria - there is a map so you can trace his journeyings round the south of italy. he examines the succession of hermits by monks - the replacement of caves by monasteries. 

the harvest moon was lost behind clouds. the spirit animals horsemouth has seen are wrens, crows, rabbits and grey squirrels. a blue tit magically appeared inside the house and knocked itself out trying to fly out of a closed window.  horsemouth opened the window and gave it time to recover itself. 

spirit plants - the humble potato, the carrot, and the sunflower - the last one that horsemouth brought back from the village hall plant sale seems to be blooming.

the tory party go to their conference with the slogan on the lectern 

longterm decisions for a brighter future

but this is not where they are now. they have retreated into a short-termist anti-ecological position hoping that there is mileage in the car-driving, anti-recycling vote. it was one thing to push alok sharma out on stage at glasgow COP 26 with a net zero 2050 commitment from the UK government in his hand it is another thing to actually have to deliver it. 

even boris johnson (the belated statesman) can see the sense in not fucking this one up (or so he says). 

last night a beer with his mum and an episode of some scandi-noir kind of thing. 

today zoom beers with howard (maybe). yesterday horsemouth walked into ewyas harold to post off the WIRE magazine with the moki and don cherry articles in it to him - only about a mile there and back but uphill and downdale. 

'na - immer schleppen' (harvest moon)

morning! morning! horsemouth bounds out to greet you like a dog. (we know we said he was a mule).

horsemouth is up and the sun has not yet made it over the hill opposite. 

the visit to TESCOs yesterday went well. the plan is to stock up more and thus reduce the number of visits. similarly the plan is to buy more in TESCOs where it is cheap and (regretably) buy less at the local shops where it is more expensive. horsemouth would (of course) drag his mum over to ALDIs in search of even better bargains but it is the other side of town wheras TESCOs is this side of town  out near the ring road (or would be if hereford had a ring road).  

horsemouth did some researches on the heating oil situation. he believes he has found a company who supplied his parents before (so - he assumes - they will have a lot of useful information). he needs to know what sized tanker they can get up the drive, how big the family tank is (2000L horsemouth estimates and his mum seems to remember) he has got an initial quote and will follow it up with a phonecall today. 

at the moment horsemouth's plan is just to stealth it through the winter.  he plans to get enough to survive the winter and then refuel again in summer when it is cheaper (if it is cheaper).

ok the sun is cresting the hill opposite we are going into full golden glow. horsemouth will  nip downstairs for a second round of coffee (he has it).

horsemouth has gone all german on you because a) triple negative have a test copy of matthew's book (and anya is german) and b) he started reading peter paul fuchs book on the music theatre of walter felsenstein (which is east berlin set). 'na - immer schleppen' is sort of 'heavy load there!'.  it is harvest moon tonight - horsemouth is tempted to play you the blue oyster cult song about it (he probably will tomorrow now).

elsewhere horsemouth read a guardian interview where over 50ies report favourably on retiring early/ going part time. 

horsemouth versus first past the post

“A ROOF OF MY OWN” (1964) - Uncensored Version copy from Nick Wates on Vimeo.

you find horsemouth with few thoughts in his head. 

ah good he has found his thoughts on first past the post (the candidate with the most votes wins) these will do. 

now first past the post has lots of problems - the main one is that as there are more than 2 parties in the election you can get 'third party effects' that mean (for example) more people in a constituency can have voted 'not tory' rather than tory and the tory party will still get in - the 'not tory' votes are not counted elsewhere so the relationship between votes cast for a party (nationally) and how many seats they receive in the parliament is not proportional. 

the gallagher index is a good measure of how unrepresentative this is. with the UK 16th in the world in terms of how unrepresentative in terms of the votes of the people its elections are (between panama and liberia)

arguably the factor that does even more to distort elections in the UK is low voter registration with it is now thought 8 million people not registered to vote or incorrectly registered, out of an electorate already depleted by the removal of the right to vote in UK elections of 5 million EU citizens with settled status.

instead of addressing these the government has chosen to address the uneven size of of constituencies and voter fraud both of which have a negligible effect upon representation. though arguably addressing them effectively constitutes gerrymandering and voter suppression in all but name.

horsemouth is a grumpy old mule. he complains long and often about politics and when the opportunity is afforded him he votes. 

if some form of proportional representation were used horsemouth would vote green or some variety of ultra-left party that would at least make the argument for the destruction of capitalism. (once upon a time, when he had just moved to london he voted SWP, at  a time when the SWP ran candidates, not that he had any great faith in them you understand).  

under first past the post system horsemouth would tend to vote labour (as the party the farthest to the left (!!!?) with a decent chance of getting in) or perhaps tactical vote elsewhere for whomsoever will keep the tories out. 

here we can see that first pat the post objectively skews and supresses political opinions not at the alleged 'centre' of the debate. votes for leftwing (and rightwing) parties are effectively suppressed and reframed as useless and wasted protest votes.

of course many of the political levers of power are not accessible from the house of commons but nonetheless parliamentary majorities can be used to leverage improved conditions for the working class or at least the defence of their interests. it can provide a perception of increased working class autonomy and confidence that feeds back to produce increased working class autonomy and self-confidence. 

securing political representation for the working class is however not a substitute for generating actual class power for the working class but it can be a useful adjunct (see the peruvian bariadas as mentioned above). 

today a visit to TESCOs (the monthly shop). 

'a carpet of flowers... concealed the abyss beneath'

anniversaries 

RIP joe bussard

RIP langdon jones.

 

the three heads of cerebrus - spain, italy, greece. a heatwave. the beauty. the fear that their spring will dry up and the land will dry up. the lavender dies (the bees don't come). the wine grapes they have to harvest early (a success story - the vintage is saved). the sheep and the dogs suffer in the heat. one of the farmers quotes the  comte de ségur. 

'without regret for the past,

without anxiety for the future,

we walked gaily across a carpet of flowers

which concealed the abyss beneath'

- louis philippe, comte de ségur.

'a single eucalyptus will ruin the fairest landscape'  opines norman douglas in his old calabria. (don't google him).  horsemouth knows many who agree. the eucalyptus burns at a high temperature, it is an oily wood and spits out burning gouts of oil. it is a major wildfire hazard. horsemouth heard a story that it was general franco who imported it en masse to spain. 

yesterday horsemouth finished moving the wood into the shed (he started the day before) and finished moving things out of the woodshed to permit the wood to fit in. there is something very satisfying in stacking wood (it is kind of like dry stone walling).  of course this wood is destined to be burnt in his parents' wood-burning stove (thus contributing lots of particulates to the air in the living room and lots of carbon into the atmosphere). 

the fact that wood is a renewable source of energy no longer counts for anything. we are now on a mission to get carbon emissions down.

the house's other source of heating is an oil-burning aga (even more unfashionable). 

last night's diner - potatoes and beetroot out of the garden, sweetcorn and quiche. 

there is a moon in the sky behind the trees (on the night before the day you will read this). soon harvest moon.  today rain (according to bbc weather).