Time of resurrection as the blossom blooms

It’s that time of year again. A glorious moment, far too short, but all the more wonderful for producing such a quick-burning blaze of colour.

Ornamental cherry on a Luton street

Yes, It’s cherry blossom time. The Japanese formally celebrate it, with millions pouring out into the parks to picnic under the cherry trees as the blossom falls on their heads which must be marvellous and, no doubt, into their rice balls and sake, which must be less so. 

Japanese cherries in bloom in Washington DC

Of course, the Japanese particularly admire their own cherry with its deep pink blossom. And they have every reason: it’s a beautiful tree. I

t does them credit that they’ve had the generosity to share it with the rest of us. They apparently made a formal gift of the tree to Washington DC, the US capital, but the rest of us get to enjoy it too.

Japanese cherry on a Luton street corner

Luton, where I live, also has a few spectacular examples out there, doing their bit to enliven the seediest of streets.

Cherry in my office car park

Even the car park at my office, hardly the most romantic or picturesque of locations, changes into a place of wonder and beauty at this time of year. Not with Japanese cherries but the ordinary variety is pretty spectacular too.

It’s a miracle repeated yearly, as the trees bloom all over the northern hemisphere. No surprise that it’s a season full of festivals and celebrations even outside Japan. Whether it’s the feast of Babylonian Ishtar, goddess of sex and fertility, or her Semitic counterpart Astarte, the feasts in earliest days of western civilisation were around now. As, today, are modern Jewish Pesach and Christian Easter.

There are many who argue that this coincidence of festivals proves how false they are. All that Christianity has done, they argue, is arrogate to itself a pre-existing feast. After all, the Christians have taken over the eggs and bunnies too, associated with the older festivals, but completely unconnected with the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ.

All of which makes perfect sense to me. After all, we even call the feast Easter, a name clearly derived from the Anglo-Saxon Eostre, worthy descendant of Ishtar and our very own fertility goddess.

On the other hand, all I have to do is look around that blaze of blossom, yearly produced again despite its death the year before, to feel that it’s hard to imagine a better time of year to feast a Resurrection. What could possibly symbolise it better?

So believe in the Christian story or not, worshipping a fertility goddess of one cult or another, or following no faith at all – have a great Easter.

And enjoy the blossom.

More Luton Japanese cherries

Immigration: resisting the hordes. Over and over again.

David Cameron is terribly upset. The British Office for National Statistics has had to revise information about immigration. Upwards. Of course.

“What the latest ONS statistics underline is the point at which, in the 2000s, immigration was out of control,” he’s quoted as saying in today’s Guardian. 

Labour was in power in the 2000s, so that’s what passes as a subtle political dig in Cameronspeak.

Getting immigration under control. It really matters. To some people, at least. Those who can’t have these hordes of ravening foreigners flooding into the country and submerging our glorious culture. Trouble is, it’s easier said than done. Here, for example, is what the Guardian had to say about Sir Joseph Leese, a Member of Parliament who opposed a new law on immigration. It seems he attacked one of his opponents who:

“...had stated that a bill to exclude the ‘scum of Europe’ had been defeated by the tactics of the Opposition. Nothing, said Sir Joseph, could be further from the actual fact. The bill was an ill-conceived, badly drawn, and almost impossible measure.”

It seems that Sir Joseph had worked with his colleagues to try to turn the bill into one that had a believable chance to “exclude the real scum of Europe.” But then, he raised a key issue:

“Did what [his opponent] called the ‘scum of Europe’ include hard-working, frugal, decent foreign workmen and political refugees?”

Yep. That’s the million-dollar question. We have immigrants pouring into this country, and they are certainly taking lots of jobs. But they’re jobs that need filling. Hotels, restaurants, shops would flounder without immigrant labour from Central Europe. The NHS depends on Central European, Asian and African nurses and doctors to keep ticking over.

So who do we need to keep out? Well, some of the immigrants commit crimes. The Guardian reports that Sir Joseph suggested he wanted legislation that would:

“...exclude all foreign criminals if [authorities] were able to ascertain that they were criminals before they arrived, and if after arrival they were convicted send them back to their own country as a consequence of their sentence.”

Sounds sensible.

Of course there are also those who come here to claim benefit. The Guardian report shows that Sir Joseph addressed that problem too. Two years before he spoke, only 0.75% of the alien population were dependent on public benefits. 2.4% of the native population lived on assistance.

Does that figure for people on benefit sound low? Well, the Guardian report I have been quoting appeared on 27 January 1905. This was the beginning of the debate on the Aliens Act which came into law in the summer of that year.

It was primarily directed against the Jews, but they came anyway. In the twenties and thirties, it was the Irish, and the British reacted with consternation to that “flood” too. After the Second World War, it was immigrants from the Indian Sub-Continent, the West Indies and Africa. Today it’s Central and Eastern Europe.

22 June 1948: 492 passengers from Jamaica land in Britain
The start of the great post-WW2 wave of immigration

With each wave, the cries of protest have been the same. These are lazy, indolent people coming here to take our jobs or, even worse, to steal our benefits (anyone who believes our benefit levels are an enticement to move to this country hasn’t been following the news). And yet, just as when Sir Joseph was speaking, a far smaller proportion of immigrants than of the native population draw benefits.
Just as a higher proportion of native Brits commit criminal offences.

Every attempt at stemming the flow has failed. Even between 1951 and 2010, the percentage of the population that’s foreign-born grew from 4.2% to 11.9%. That’s what happens in a globalised world with convenient and relatively cheap travel. Legislation, and there’s been plenty since that Act of 1905, can’t stop it.

Fortunately the many apocalyptic forecasts for the consequences of uncontrolled (and uncontrollable) immigration haven’t been fulfilled. Somehow, Britain has muddled through, and is still recognisably Britain. It’s changed, of course, but that may have at least as much to do with two world wars, a sexual revolution and the loss of Empire.

Still, immigrants have caused change. They’re the reason we eat curries rather than fish and chips. In London, Leicester and Luton, the White British are a minority.

Change is never comfortable. When it happens, it’s nice to have someone to make a scapegoat for it. And what’s better than a minority that can’t hit back?

So don’t expect any let-up in the anti-immigrant rhetoric any time soon. It won’t have any effect, because it can’t. And, given the contribution they make, shouldn’t. 

Though it will if it turns nasty.

In which case, God help us all. Immigrant or native.

Russia, Ukraine, Germany, Czechoslovakia: an exciting historico-geographical-political quiz. With a lot riding on it.

A first! A quiz for my readers! Is that thrilling, or what?

Below are two extracts from major British dailies. One is from yesterday’s Independent, the other from the Guardian of 30 July 1938. I’ve disguised both to make it a little less obvious what circumstances each article is talking about.

One of them is an account of the way the Russians of 2014 or the Germans of 1938 are preparing to use military force to come to the aid of their “compatriots”, i.e. speakers of the same language, across the border in Czechoslovakia – or do I mean Ukraine? 

Yep, that’s how gripping this gets...

The other extract quotes a speech from a nationalist leader, of the ethnic Russians of Eastern Ukraine in 2014, or possibly of the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia in 1938.

Moving against Ukrainian troops still nominally in control, 
Russian troops deploy in Crimea
with strong civilian support

And here’s question 1: which is the 1938 piece, which the one from 2014?

Extract 1

And yet, the latest protests in [the Sudetenland/Eastern Ukraine] show far more organisation and determination compared with those of just a few weeks ago. They sing the same verses from the hymn sheet in [the main cities]; they call for a [referendum/plebiscite] and a plea for [Russian/German] “peacekeepers” to defend them. This strikes a chord with the repeated demands from [Berlin/Moscow] that [Ukraine/Czechoslovakia] should give a voice to the [regions/minorities] and adopt a federal structure and pledges that ethnic [Germans/Russians] will not be abandoned: the [Kiev/Prague] government does not need reminding that [President Putin/Chancellor Hitler] [has been authorised] to deploy troops not just for [Austria/Crimea], but [Ukraine/Czechoslovakia].

Extract 2

“On behalf of the largest group of [German/Russian] people ... outside [Russia/Germany], also in the name of all other [Russians/Germans] living abroad, I declare that we are all inseparable parts of the great [German race/Russian nation]. Efforts to make national boundaries and spiritual boundaries between members of one people have collapsed.

“[Germans/Russians] living abroad render unto the nation what is the nation’s, and to the people what is the people’s. As true [Russians/Germans] we are accustomed to fulfil the duties we have shouldered. So we take seriously our duties towards the country to which we belong, but as members of different nations we remain members of the [German/Russian] people.”

German troops move into the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia
with strong civilian support

Question 2, on the other hand, is “does it matter which text is which? aren’t they pretty much interchangeable?”

Which leads to Question 3: ”given that the 1938 problems led to Hitler occupying the Sudeten areas of Czechoslovakia in one of the major steps towards World War 2, isn’t it time we got a little more worked up about what’s happening in Ukraine?”

Housework's never done. Not when I'm doing it, anyway

Domestic chores aren’t quite the trivial tasks one might think.

That’s hardly a new discovery for me – after all, the bathroom is already my territory, my thing, to clean with pride. To say nothing of the kitchen sink, also mine, and the standard metaphor for ‘everything else.’

Well, everything else is what I had to deal with this weekend, poor Danielle being under the weather. And that’s where the non-triviality of the task was once more brought home to me.

First of all, there was a carpet that had been – not sure how to put this – perhaps the right term’s ‘doggified’. I set about cleaning it with gusto, though I quickly hit a setback when the carpet shampoo ran out.

Not a problem. Another job was to do some shopping, in particular for the dinner that I was going to prepare. For reasons that I can’t explain, I’d decided that I wanted a pasta dish with peas. Why pasta? Well, why not? Pasta doesn’t need justifying. But peas? No idea. I like peas, I suppose, and hadn’t had any for a while. Anyway, why should pregnant women be the only ones allowed to indulge unexplained dietary whims?

So I went to the supermarket. I’d chosen my time well, if only by accident, since most people were heading home to watch that classic horse race, the Grand National. There were loads of spaces in the car park, the aisles were empty, the tills had no queues. I breezed around, pleased at my good luck.

Horses cleared the streets on Saturday

Back at home, I emptied two canisters of carpet shampoo on the carpet and wiped it down with a wet cloth. I felt a little cheated by the emptiness of the canisters after the process – barely enough for half a carpet each? extraordinary – but at least the job was done.

Then I set out to prepare the pasta. And discovered that I was missing the tomato paste. The parsley. The parmesan. The shallots (which, it turns out, aren’t long and green and thin – chives – or long and green and fat – spring onions).

No problem. Nothing to stop me heading out again. I could get some more carpet shampoo at the same time, after all. Out I went.

Alas, sporting events can empty the streets, but they can also fill them. Luton Town had just won another football match at home. The traffic was horrendous and, where it wasn’t cars holding me up, I was blocked by pedestrians wandering aimlessly in front of me. Cheerful, relaxed, amusing but oh, so slow.

Luton Town: good for local pride (this year),
bad for local streets

I picked up all the things I needed, bar the carpet shampoo, and several more things I didn’t need and went home. By then, my parking space had been taken, so I had to squeeze into what was only technically a spot, across the road. 


Making dinner could now start properly. Sadly, the onions and carrots had had their eight minutes cooking long before the water for the pasta was boiling. And there hadn’t been time to defrost the peas completely, so when I added them to the sauce, it became practically frosty. But in the end, the meal was ready and I served it up.

Danielle, still unwell, didn’t feel hungry, but she had a little. I had the peas dish I wanted so I enjoyed myself for her as much as for me. And then we sat down on the sofa and admired the beautifully clean carpet in front of us. Because clean it certainly was. Pristine, even.

But Lord, did it smell of carpet shampoo.

It doesn’t any more. But that’s after hoovering it extensively (or perhaps I mean intensively. Or possibly both) and then wiping it all down, again, more than once, with a wet cloth. And airing the room for two days.

As for the meal, thinking about it afterwards, all I can really say is that it was OK. Plenty of peas, which was good. But would I go out of my way for the dish again? Naah. I don’t think so.

Meanwhile, it’s time to clean the bathroom again. And the dog’s been walking wet blossom petals into the carpet. And I’ve still got half a packet of defrosted peas to eat.

That’s alongside the packet that was already in the freezer. Like the packet of carrots in the fridge, now joined by the packet I bought. Or indeed the shallots Danielle had intelligently stored alongside the onions, but which I hadn’t noticed before I bought some.

Of course, I wouldn’t have recognised them even if I had seen them. I thought they were long and green. Not small and hard and onion-like.

Nothing like chives or spring onions.
How unfair is that?

He may not know much about art, but he knows what he likes

“Reuniting two urns of ashes with the families who had lost them was particularly heart-warming,” Julie Haley of Transport for London Lost Property department told ‘Metro’, “it was very emotional for all of us.”

Transport operators find extraordinary things left behind on trains. Glasses. Mobile phones. False teeth. And, as we’ve just seen, even urns of ashes.

Lost Property staff do go to great lengths to return mislaid items to their owners. But sometimes they just can’t find them, in which case after a decent passage of time, they put them up for sale. This happened in 1975 when the Italian railways auctioned off, among other items, two paintings that had been left on board a train from France in 1970.

The event gave rise to the news story that most tickled my fancy this week. I thought it worth sharing with you, just in case you missed it.

A factory worker from Fiat  turned up for the auction and decided he liked the paintings. He bought them for 45,000 lira, or in today’s prices, a little over €400. Not an inconsiderable sum for a factory worker but, hey, everyone likes a good picture to brighten up the place.

And brighten it up the paintings did. Even after his retirement, when he moved from Turin to Sicily, where they adorned the walls of his kitchen. Nearly forty years of pleasure he had from them, so I suppose you’d have to say he had his money’s worth.

But he had a son, whose knowledge of art was perhaps superior to his father’s, even though his taste could not have been. The son happened to be glancing through a book on the subject and was struck by the similarity of style between a Gauguin painting and one of those hanging in his dad’s kitchen. He called in the authorities.

It turns out that what the father had on his wall were Paul Gauguin’s Fruits sur une table ou nature au petit chien and Pierre Bonnard’s Femme aux deux fauteuils. Estimated now to be worth €30 million and €650,000 respectively.

A reasonable return on a €400 investment.

Two painting that brought light into the life of Fiat car worker

Not that he’ll be able to keep it, I imagine. Turns out that the paintings had been stolen from the London house of Mathilda Marks, daughter of one of the founders of Marks and Spencer (I’ll leave it to you to guess which one). Presumably the thieves had panicked while travelling into Italy and abandoned the paintings. 

Unless like the owner of the urns of ashes, they just forgot them, proving you earn nothing from carelessness, and that hopes can quickly turn to ashes.

What of the ex-Fiat worker? He’d like the paintings back. I sympathise: there must be an unsightly pair of patches on his kitchen wall now, and the view will be much less appealing.

But he frankly has no one to blame but himself. He should have brought up his son to be less talkative.

Who said freedom was free?

Two lines in West Side Story have to be among the best in any musical:

Everything free in America
For a small fee in America

Smart insights, not just memorable songs

So acute, so witty. Though perhaps not entirely accurate: there’s nothing small about the fee. In fact, yesterday a Supreme Court judgement ensured that US freedom commanded an impressive price. Citizens can now enjoy the best freedom money can buy.

Not all citizens, of course. Only the ones who can afford it but, hey, that’s the way things are. Porsche and Dior aren’t available to just anyone, but I’m sure that the knowledge that some people can buy them has to be a comfort to everyone else. When you’re sleeping rough and scrabbling through restaurant bins, it must give you a little joy to know that some people at least can stay at the Hilton and dine out in the best places.

It’s the same with freedom. Ordinary citizens who can’t afford it for themselves should at least take pleasure in the fact that the upstanding individuals who can, are now entitled to buy as much as they want.

The Supreme Court decision means that, while the amount payable to any one candidate by any one individual remains limited, the aggregate amount they can contribute in any two-year election cycle has now been lifted. The man who brought the case, Shaun McCutcheon, is already close to the old limit, $123,200, small change to the people who want to buy themselves some essential freedom.

After all, it’s not a lot more than twice the median income in the US. Investing only the equivalent of two average people’s livelihood for a year might be regarded as small change in truly free circles. Practically the behaviour of a cheapskate.

But fortunately the fetters have been burst. From now on, men like McCutcheon can buy as much freedom as they want, or at least can afford. And will he take advantage of the opportunity?

“Oh, absolutely,” Huffington Post quoted him saying, “yeah, I'm well on the way to meeting [the old limits] already, so certainly I will now. Absolutely.”

A blow for freedom. People must be entitled to spend their money as they wish. And in a nation where lobbies and the super-wealthy had nothing like the influence on the political process that they would like, a great step forward has been taken in realising their ambitions.

The US Supreme Court that struck the blow for freedom.
Though only 5-4.
Against, back row: Sonia Sotomayor (left);
Stephen Bryer (second from left);Elena Kagan, (right)
Front row: Ruth Bader Ginsburg (right)
All the women were against

Quinquiremes and Coasters, Accountants and Officials, Riches and Horrors

There’s something haunting about John Masefield’s poem Cargoes.

Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amethysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rails, pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.

A galley, like the quinquireme: elegant, graceful
Just don't think about the slaves who drove the oars

The contrast between the grubby coaster and the graceful quinquireme and galleon is particularly keen, because the coaster was involved in a trade worth many hundreds, or thousands, of times more than either of the other two. And that trade even brought comfort into the homes of modest people, for whom a cheap tin tray would have been a great deal more useful, and affordable, than amethysts or ivory (God knows what they’d have done with apes or peacocks.) 

Spanish Galleon
Stately, majestic, and temptingly full of treasure

But there’s something else in the poem: its movement. 

The quinquireme is carrying sweet-smelling woods, wine, ivory. Precious things.

The galleon is carrying goods of colossal worth. Treasure.

And the coaster is carrying goods that earn a lot. Commodities.

Dirty British Coaster
A romance of its own despite its grubbiness

In 1494, something rather crucial happened in the Italian city of Florence. Luca Pacioli wrote a manual for double-entry bookkeeping. The system had been around a while, but his book is still regarded by many as the true starting point of modern accounting. 

What’s special about double entry?

It reduces commerce, one of the main areas of human endeavour, to nothing more than numbers. Indeed, and this is the special genius of double entry, it reduces it to a single number: zero. If the books have been correctly kept (or alternatively, skilfully cooked), all the sums come to zero: all the credits cancel all the debits, leaving nothing.

In other words, double-entry pierces the magic of commerce – apes and ivory – or even its mysterious riches – topazes and amethysts – and makes it a simple matter of balancing income against expenditure – cheap tin trays.

This evolution took place in parallel with another summed up by the history of the state of Prussia. It has been described as a “state of raw reason”. Why?

Because it had none of the things that your basic patriot seems to feel are crucial for building a nation: no single language, though German dominated; no single religion, with Lutherans and Calvinists alongside Catholics and a good sprinkling of Jews; not even territorial integrity, with bits of land added in scattered, separated places, depending on who the ruler married or inherited from.

What could hold such an artificial nation together?

The two things in which Prussia had mastery: a powerful army and a huge, underpaid, utterly incorruptible and highly effective civil service. They, through pure reason, bound the unseen sinews and bones of the state together and turned it into one of the most powerful in Europe.

Eventually it built, and took the leading role in, the Empire of Germany. And just to underline the weirdness of that event, the Empire wasn’t proclaimed in Germany, as anyone would expect, but in France – in humiliated, defeated France. Not just anywhere in France, either: it was in the Hall of Mirrors at the former Royal Palace at Versailles.

William I of Prussia proclaimed Emperor of Germany at Versailles
With the help of the Prussian Army and the government of Bismarck

A competent and painfully honest civil service has to be a huge advantage for a nation. But it has its downside too. It’s impersonal. It’s cold. It’s passionless. 

It also has no moral judgement. Set it to do a job, and it does it without asking what the job is for. It turns out, ultimately, men like Adolf Eichmann. During World War 2, he was the SS functionary who was responsible for organising the trains to take Jews to the extermination camps.

Adolf Eichmann,the thorough civil servant
At his trial in Israel; inset, in his SS uniform

He did the job with complete dedication. And it wasn’t easy: organising train transport in wartime for up to 12 million people? No simple matter.

What he didn’t do, and this came out at his trial in Tel Aviv, was think about what he was doing. He didn’t ask himself “is it right to send all these people to their deaths?” He did the job, in an entirely dispassionate and efficient way, without wondering about the consequences.

Which is rather like double-entry book-keeping. Brilliant. Simple. Effective.

Soulless.

We have built machines that have turned magic into mechanics, and Masefield’s poem charts that progress. We’ve reaped the benefits. But we’ve also suffered the devastation.

Fascinating ideas, aren’t they? I wish I’d had them. I’ve just embroidered on some thoughts of Max Weber’s, built on with characteristic genius by Hannah Arendt.

See? I’ve stood on the shoulders of giants, like Newton, proving that even ordinary people can do it and not just extraordinary men like him. And it still helps you see a lot further.