Come To Hebden Bridge

This evening I watched, on BBC 2, Evan Davis's second programme about the divide between London and everywhere else in Britain.  It was a useful guide to some of the problems faced by this country.  So much is now concentrated in the south east — and, in particular, in London — that it is having a seriously detrimental effect on the rest of us.  I have argued previously that the problems have been generated not so much by forces of immigration, globalisation and wealth concentration as by the in-competences of various governments.  Back in the days of Margaret Thatcher we had an economic guru in the shape of Sir Keith Joseph who believed totally that everything needed to be privatised because such businesses are so much more efficient — even though there was never the slightest bit of evidence to support such a proposition. On top of this there was a belief that we did not need to have any manufacturing — we could leave that to countries with cheap labour.  The consequence has been an abandonment of almost all manufacturing industry and an increasing migration of people and business to the south east.  Now it is being realised that to have a balanced economy we have to have both services and manufacturing.

Evan Davis was arguing that for any system to work there has to be substantial centres of business activity.  London succeeds because it has these centres and they draw in more people with expertise in specific areas and that encourages more companies to move in. This makes sense.  It was true in Victorian times when Lancashire was the workshop of the world.  The county had coal mines — an essential raw material — a major port that connected us to the Atlantic and America — Liverpool — and railways and canals that connected us to all other parts of the country.  We sometimes forget the magnitude of the achievement of the Stephensons in building a railway between Liverpool and Manchester that could carry goods and people between the two major cities in one hour.  It was an engineering achievement that not only led to the transformation of Britain, but of the world.  Evan Davis visited Liverpool, Manchester and Wigan — among other places and showed us the left-overs from the achievements of bygone ages — empty buildings in a Liverpool that has lost half its population and most of its factories . And a local council in Liverpool that tries to get to grips with old housing — probably no longer needed — and grand buildings — like St George's Hall, grade I listed yet devoid of a purpose and the empty palaces along the waterfront.  These are impressive structures by any standards and it is tragic that we do not make full use of them.  What we need is a big second city much bigger than these places like Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, etc to provide a hub away from London that could pull in people and businesses.  Of those cities I have listed, Manchester offers the best hope and was already pulling media companies and their satellites into the Salford Quays area as a result of the BBC moving there.

He visited also the small town of Hebden Bridge in the Pennines because a new and vibrant town was growing at the centre of a collection of undersize cities that had Hebden Bridge at the approximate centre and offered an attractive environment for people to live, while commuting to and from Manchester, Leeds, Bradford, Preston and other towns in the area.  There is much that can be done but it needs a major culture change in government — among London based politicians and bureaucrats.  Local people can do much to build their communities but more and more central government has not trusted them to do the right things while still being ignorant themselves. 

I look forward to England's second city being centred on Hebden Bridge.  If it is such a good idea, perhaps we should just get on with it — without ten years of public enquiries, etc.

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Immigration

Last Sunday, in The Observer, Will Hutton was arguing about the pros and cons of immigration.  As we would expect he is very much in favour of immigration but he was arguing for a scheme to charge the super rich up to £2½ million for each of 100 fast track visas issued every year — the revenue to be used for improving infra-structure and for good causes.  He was very critical of Nigel Farage, the UKIP leader, for being a tub-thumping anti-immigration, anti-EU, right-wing politician anxious to exploit a root unease about the levels of immigration.  Last year net immigration into Britain was about 220,000.  This is a staggering figure almost enough for another city the size of Bradford [290,000].  Where do we put them?  If they live in a fairly normal housing environment of four per dwelling, then we need another 55,000 houses or apartments just to get them in.  And then we need the back-up services of water, gas, electricity, etc for them to live normal lives.  At present we are building new homes at the rate of about 120,000 per year; so half are needed for the new immigrants.  House prices nationally are rising again, even though they are already too expensive — especially in the south-east.  The government needs to double the rate of building — at least.  In the 1950s, when Harold Macmillan was Housing Minister, he achieved house building rates up to 500,000 per year.  Sure, conditions today are very different but the present rate of house building is rather pathetic.  House building is a good creator of new jobs — they can't export jobs to China.  House building boosts the economy in many ways because it creates so many demands for products manufactured in the UK — from bricks, concrete, drain pipes and roofing tiles to plasterboard, wallpaper, paint and fitted kitchens.  It will tend to lower property prices until the government starts charging the correct interest rates and makes mortgages easier to obtain.  It should be possible to buy a first house for less than 4x the average wage — that is completely impossible in many parts of the country.

A fundamental problem and a cause of much unease about immigration is population density.  England , particularly, is one of the most densely populated places on Earth.  We have 1054 people/square mile; Poland is 319 people/square mile; Belarus is 120 people/square mile and Kazakhstan — a place almost as big as Western Europe [excluding Scandinavia] — is down at 15.39 people/square mile.  It is not surprising that we have problems.  We cannot carry on with net immigration levels that will add 1 million people to our population every five years. 

This country has many problems caused not only by immigration and globalisation but more than anything by incompetent governments.  Labour government of the 60s and 70s ignored the chaos caused by union militancy and out-dated industries.  Tory governments of the 80s and 90s became obsessed by privatisation and persuaded themselves that we did not need to manufacture anything — we could leave that to countries where labour was cheap.  And, worse still, we allowed the financial services sector to run riot, allowing them to pay themselves obscene salaries and bonuses.  The governments of Blair and Brown allowed this to continue until, in the traditions of 1929, the whole edifice collapsed and we, the taxpayers of the western world had to bail them out.  Yet, even now as our government struggles to balance its books and the debt gets bigger and bigger, the financial institutions pay themselves the same obscene salaries and bonuses as before while being fined for various forms of misrepresentation, corruption and incompetence.

The bowing of our leaders to finance and speculation while neglecting our ability to make things has moved the concentration of population and jobs towards the south east, has made property impossibly expensive and left vast tracts of the UK semi-abandoned.  With proper support and directing of investment, this country is capable of competing with any country in the world.  We built the railways that transformed civilisation in the 19th century yet now we are almost incapable of making railways, ships and large civil engineering structures.  We can make cars — with proper investment as at Jaguar and Nissan — and we do reasonably well in supplying the aviation business but there is so much more that we could do. 

British attitude the EU is ambivalent at best and increasing numbers would like us to get out.  This may not be the right thing to do but the Eu does little to persuade us that setting ourselves free would be detrimental.  The EU needs to either [a] form a proper economic union — unlikely or [b] abandon the euro — also unlikely.  Will Hutton tells us that net immigration into Britain from the original 15 member states was about 30,000 but the net influx including all the new members for Eastern Europe is very much higher.  Nevertheless, the likelihood is that over the years immigrants form the EU will often return to their home countries.  Consequently, net EU immigration is not likely to be a problem in the long term.  It is net immigration from non-EU countries that will be a continuing problem and I will address that issue in a separate posting.

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Chartwell

At present I am reading one of Michael Dobbs' novels set around the life of Winston Churchill before and during World War II.  These are impressive books that really do, as the late Anthony Howard said in The Times, "bring historical happenings so vitally back to life."  The author describes Churchill's home at Chartwell with some affection.  It is a place I visited many times. when I lived in Sussex.  There was nothing I enjoyed more than to go down to Chartwell on a sunny summer day and spend many hours walking around the house and gardens and visiting the gallery in the garden where the great man's paintings were displayed.  Mrs Churchill never really liked Chartwell but the couple lived there from 1922 until Winston died in 1965.  Winston Churchill was never a very rich man and relied for the most part on his writings to make a living.  After his defeat in the General Election of 1945 it rapidly became clear that they could not afford the upkeep on this far from cheap to run rambling mansion..  Although they still owned the property they did so only because newspaper magnate, Viscount Camrose — owner of the Daily Telegraph — and nine other wealthy well-wishers gave Churchill £5,000 [equivalent to about £160,000 today] each, to help pay for the upkeep of the building, on the understanding that they paid a nominal rent and after they were both dead the house would be handed to the National Trust. In fact after the funeral of Sir Winston Churchill in 1965, Clementine Churchill handed the house to the National Trust, immediately.

But problems with debt and the cost of running the house were not new.  Back in 1938, when Churchill had been out of office for nearly a decade and living on his MP's salary and his journalism, he was pressed to put Chartwell up for sale.  It was said in the agent's description that Chartwell had 5 reception rooms, 19 bed rooms — with dressing rooms — 8 bathrooms, had three cottages set in an estate of 80 acres and included a swimming pool.  Sir Henry Strakosch bailed out Churchill by taking over his share portfolio for three years and paid off heavy debts so the house did not need to be sold.

Clemintine's objections to the house were mainly practical ones; it was big and rambling, prone to being drafty and cost a small fortune to keep warm — no double glazing, loft insulation or cavity wall insulation here.  But Winston Churchill's love for the house was that of a romantic.  Its location affords panoramic views across the Weald of Kent and Churchill was prone to waxing lyrical about the countryside that "we are fighting for."  Its location is truly splendid; to stand on the terrace and look out across Kent to the English Channel always sent shivers down my spine and made me proud to be an Englishman.

The house exudes Churchill in every room; all of which have been restored to the condition they would have been in during the years when Churchill lived there.  Being able to see his library, his work-room, the stand-up desk where he worked and the dining room with its seating for about ten people, it is easy to imagine Churchill leaning over your shoulder, pointing out many of the small mementos of his many visitors from Charlie Chaplin to President Eisenhower.

The gardens complete with Winston's brick walls are charming and relaxing and it was always a pleasure to look at his collection of paintings.  He was a competent artist rather than a great one but I suspect the he was a better artist than Claude Monet would have been a statesman. 

Now that I am living in the North of England, I don't suppose I will ever visit Chartwell again but I will always retain fond memories of this wonderful and very historic house.

Today, Churchill is remembered as a giant of British politics and a great man.  He was.  Although not always consistent, his politics came from the heart and he stood up for what he believed in and above all he believed in Great Britain.  In comparison, most of today's British politicians are mere pygmies wandering aimlessly, without ideas or principles, around the corridors of power.

But Chartweel, go there if ever you have the chance.

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What Is Anything Worth?

How do you measure the value of anything?  It is an easy question but one with a far from easy answer.  Do we measure value on the basis of price?  Very often, we do.  Some years ago, the City of Liverpool offered some land for sale for redevelopment [housing] in the city centre for £33,000 per acre.  Nobody showed the slightest interest so they opened the sale to offers.  A local builder offered £1.00 per acre.  Ridiculous said the city bureaucrats; it is worth £33,000 per acre.  But how can it be worth that if no-one will buy it?  The value [price] that something commands is what someone will pay.  Oscar Wilde, famously, defined a cynic as someone who knew the price of everything but the value of nothing — and there's the clue.  Small contributions to a variety of charities can create funds sufficient to achieve great things — the cost is small but the value is high.  

And then there is football.  Yesterday, it was announced that Wayne Rooney had agreed a new five year contract to play football at Manchester United on pay of £300,000 per week.  This makes him the highest paid player in the Premier League and raises the bar for future pay demands of footballers and new levels of obscenity.  Wayne Rooney has had his ups and downs with David Moyes [the manager] when they were both at Everton but now, it seems, Wayne and David are bosom buddies.  Hmmm, it is surprising what a few hundred thousand pounds per week can do to a relationship!.  What is the value of Wayne Rooney as a footballer.  Manchester United plainly feel he is worth this absurd sum and who am I to criticise Wayne Rooney for getting such pay if someone is prepared to hand it out.  But it is still absurd.  Wayne Rooney is a good footballer but not a great one — in my view.  To be great you have to have that something special like Pele, Best, Matthews, Finney and of today's players Messi and possibly Ronaldo.  I have already written about Finney — and he had to get by on £20 per week.  But if Finney wasn't playing football, he could d a bit of plumbing.  Even allowing for inflation, is Rooney 15,000 times better?  I think not!  

Rooney style pay deals are possible only as long as TV channels are prepared to pay for the exclusive rights to broadcast the matches live.  They then sell the rights to watch these matches via quite expensive cable and satellite TV deals to ordinary punters on ordinary wages.  I have never had the slightest interest in signing up to Sky or other channels in order to buy these packages.  I pay my £145.50 for the annual TV licence to finance the BBC — which, with all its faults, is still one of the best broadcasters in the world and provides lots of services for this money.  They do not have the possibility of bidding at the highest levels to buy the rights to live broadcasting of Premier League football — the licence fee is always a source of arguments when it comes up for re-negotiation.  But if I want to watch live football I need the full package at something like £50 per month — difficult to be specific; there are too many packages including phones and broadband.  It is 4 x the BBC cost and mainly to watch football.  

These highly paid footballers derive most of their incomes — directly or indirectly — from ordinary workers on modest wages; not from investment bankers who can afford it.  Watching football matches live is also expensive with Arsenal charging over £100 for some seats at some games.  Drive to a Premier League ground with your two sons, park the car, watch the match and have a half-time snack and expect to be £150 worse off.  

I have lost all interest in the Premier League because, in general there are half-a-dozen team who sit up at the top of the league, have lots of expensive players, while most other clubs struggle to find the money to pay even half-decent players and fight each other for the right to be relegated.  Once relegated, the team has parachute money for a year but after that they have to fend for themselves.  With smaller crowds, much less TV money they cannot pay the expensive players they acquired in the Premier League and either go bust or cut their costs and sink further down the drainage system that is the Football League.

At this moment, Saturday, 22nd February 2014, Chelsea are in No 1 spot in Premier League with 57 points. Newcastle are 9th with 37 points.  Swansea are 10th with 28 points.  Fulham are bottom, in 20th spot with 20 points.  Any club in the bottom half of the table is in with a chance of relegation.  Many of these clubs, strapped for cash, have small squads of players and it only needs a couple of red cards and a few injuries for the clubs to be struggling  It is not a level playing field.

In order to illustrate this blog, I searched for images of Wayne Rooney actually playing football.  They are few and far between.  The ones that seem to exist are not up to much.  Have they all been collected and filed away in some deep bank vault?  There are thousands of pictures of the man clapping his hands, smiling, scowling, grimacing,. laughing, signing his latest contract, showing off his replanted hair, celebrating goals [by whom, I know not], getting hugs from Alec Ferguson, hugging his baby, having a laugh with Steven Gerrard, having his physique compared with Christiano Ronaldo — Wayne lost — and so on,  But few of him actually playing.  So I have used a picture from The Guardian of Wayne with his hew best friend, David.

Makes you think!

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Tom Finney Dies Aged 91

I don't enjoy watching football as much these days as I did in the past.  Often I avoid watching Premier League games altogether, with their hordes of over-paid players, some of whom are not of the highest standard, their tantrums, their cheating [diving] and all their off-filed antics.  All too many of them are concerned most about their pay-cheques and the next Ferrari than giving their best for their team.  It is hardly surprising when many of them are playing a long way from home and have little local loyalty.  

These days we hear many stories of people in the public eye declaring their loyal support for this, that or the other football team.  Almost always they are premier league clubs and the alleged supporter is merely trying to garner support for themselves and to burnish their own image in the eyes of Joe Public.  I think it was Danny Baker who said that you did not choose the football team that you would support; you were born together.  I have always supported Bolton Wanderers — through thick and thin — and there has been lots of thin in recent years — they have been my team.  I would no more think of supporting Arsenal or Tottenham Hotspur than I would Barcelona of Bayern Munich.  The arts guru, writer and TV man of the South Bank Show, Melyn Bragg, told us once that he supported one of the London clubs — I forget which one — when, having been born in or near Cockermouth, his team should have been Carlisle United; a considerably less glamorous team, currently languishing in the bottom half of League One.  There have been times when Carlisle has been on the edge of falling from the football league and it's then that they need their supporters cheering them on — not migrating to some remote club in London.  But what is the great difference between a rich London club and Carlisle United?  The answer is money.  If a Russian oligarch or an Arab sheik were to buy Carlisle United and chuck money at the ground and the buying of a manager and players, they could become a Premier League side but they would lose their heart.

It didn't used to be like this.  Money has polluted the game on a massive scale.  Many great players from the past earned sod-all money and often played as part-timers.  That was an under-estimate of the true value of the players but now £¼ million per week??  That is nonsense.  I stopped going to football grounds many years ago when the behaviour of crowds deteriorated to the point where attending matches could be a threat to life and limb.  And I didn't want to listen loud-mouthed. mindless thugs screaming obscenities non-stop throughout the game. Before that crowds of home and away supporters could mix with no risk of fights breaking out.

It was in that era that Tom Finney — who died yesterday, aged 91 — thrived.  Tom Finney signed on at Preston North End as a teenager and never played for any other club.  Many others did the same.  Nat Lofthouse only ever played for Bolton Wanderers.  Even Stanley Matthews — who probably had the longest playing career of any player in the UK — only played for two clubs — Stoke City and Blackpool — apart from a short time at Port Vale when he was near fifty years old.  Great player that Stanley Matthews was, I think that Tom Finney had the edge.   He was probably the greatest footballer that I ever saw play in the flesh.  I am by no means the only person who thought so highly of his abilities as a player.  Bill Shankly — and who would argue with him — once said that "Tom Finney would have been great in any team, in any match, in any age .... even if he had been wearing an overcoat."  Praise indeed.  And Stanley Matthews said of him "To dictate the pace and course of a game a player has to be blessed with awesome qualities.  Those who have accomplished it on a regular basis can be counted on the fingers of one hand — Pele, Best, di Stefano and Tom Finney." 

Tom Finney played in an era that has become known as the golden era for British football.  A time for players like Matthews, Lofthouse, Billy Wright, Len Shackleton, et al.  At Bolton I remember Malcolm "Matt" Barrass who played there for 12 years from 1944 to 1956 — he died in August 2013, making Tom Finney the oldest surviving former England player; Willie Moir, who also played at Bolton for ten years — he was captain of the ill-fated team that lost to Blackpool at Wembley in the 1953 FA Cup Final, giving Stanley Matthews his only cup winners medal.  Stan Hanson was Bolton's goalkeeper on that occasion; he never played for any other club but Bolton and he carried on until he was 40, when he became a coach and manager of a post office near Burnden Park.  Tom Finney's Preston North End was never quite good enough to take the top prizes and in his era they never won either the league cup of teh FA Cup.  They were runners up more than once.  Throughout his playing career Tom Finney never gave up his trade as a plumber and he carried on the business after his football career ended.  

For a time, one of Tom Finney's team mates at Preston was Tommy Docherty.  He told a story on a chat show of what used to happen to players during the summer months when no-one played football — in those days.  Clubs would pay players that they wished to retain for the next season, a retainer, and it was up to each player to negotiate this payment with the manager at the end of every season.  On one occasion Tom Finney went in to see the manager and when he came out, he was asked by Docherty what sum he had negotiated.  "£15 per week," he was told.  When it came for Docherty to see the manager, he went into the boss's office and was offered £12 10s [£12.50] per week.  "But you offered Finney £15 per week," he protested.  "Ah," said the manager, "Finney is a better player than you."  "Not in the summer he's not," retorted Docherty.  But he still only got £12 10s.

Tom Finney was a great player, a lovely man; a gentleman who was liked by friend and foe alike.  He became President of Preston in 1976 and supported them to the end.  He could, of course, have transferred his support to some more glamorous club.  But Tom Finney was too good for that.  He was one of the all-time greats.

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A Wild Coast

I like reading travel books.  Not travel books that are little more than guide books but rather books about journeys that present a challenge in some form or other.  I have been to many countries around the world but now, in retirement, I feel no great urge to travel any more.  More than anything I am put off by the hassle at airports — even in the best of conditions — but also I like home comforts.  So I read travel books.  I read most about bizarre journeys by motor-bike or on foot into unknown territories; places off the beaten track that rarely appear on the radar of international affairs.  Recently I have started reading a book by John Gimlette,a much travelled writer who practices as a barrister in London. The book Wild Coast — Travels on South America's Untamed Edge — takes us to Guyana — formerly British Guiana — a country about which I knew next to nothing.  It is the only British Commonwealth member in South America and the only country in South America in which the official language is English.  This seems an immensely practical decision by a post-colonial country.  The locals actually speak a Guyanese Creole, an English based creole language with an added flavour of Dutch, West African, Arawakan and Caribbean influences; not a language that could be used easily for communicating with the outside world.  Guyana is quite a large country although still one of the smallest in South America.  It has an area of 83,000 square miles — which on the international scale of measurements, makes it ten times the area of Wales.  But no one lives there.  The population is only 770,000 and one third of these live in the capital, Georgetown.  Of the remainder 90% live along the coastal strip which accounts for about 10% of the country's total land area.   This leaves the rest of the country seriously under-populated.  And with good reason.  There is nowhere in South America quite like Guyana says John Gimlette.  Something like 900 miles of muddy coastline give way to swamps, thick forest and then — deep inland — ancient flat-topped peaks. The forest covers over 80% of the area of Guyana and even now there is no way through it.  Without an aeroplane it takes 4 weeks to get into the interior and then things get difficult.

The unspoilt and often unexplored interior has resulted in the defining of a wide variety of bio-diverese regions — coastal, marine, littoral, estuarine palustrine, mangrove, riverine, lacustrine, swamp, savanna, white sand forest, brown sand forest, montane, cloud forest, moist lowland and dry evergreen scrub forests All this means that much of Guyana is mainly impenetrable jungle..  The country is bordered by Venezuela to the north and west, Suriname to the east and Brazil to the south. There are many on-going border disputes, many of which date from colonial days when the various European powers occupied Guiana and its neighbours on and off for centuries.

The social life of Guyana is odd.  Almost the whole population has been imported over several centuries.  I say imported because most were brought in forcibly.  In its days as a sugar producing British colony, its agriculture depended on slavery.  With the abolition of slavery, the ex-slaves walked out of the fields and refused ever again to work growing sugar cane.  The British brought in Indians to take the place of the Africans.  They were not slaves but they were treated almost as badly.  They worked hard and regarded the Africans as lazy.  The antagonism exists to this day and there is little contact between the ex-African and the ex-Indians.  The two communities dream of returning to their homelands in India and Africa — places which none of their ancestors have seen in 200 years.  Gimlette says that most of the population don't want to be there.  The government is parochial and corrupt and now almost bankrupt.

Gimlette's book is a good read and I recommend it to all.

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A Surfeit of Tenors

Since my early teenage years I have always loved opera.  I have no great love for opera houses and their often uninterested, self-indulgent audiences who uncritically applaud famous names and often seem to be there only because they believe it to be the thing to do.  But I listened to opera for the most part on gramophone records and CDs.  My oldest memory is of playing old 78 rpm records on a small record player and then a radiogram.  My teenage years coincided with the introduction of the vinyl LP and then the stereophonic vinyl LP.  I recollect that I received a 45 rpm EP record that had excerpts for Puccini's La Boheme as a present on my 15th birthday.  I still have that disc, nearly sixty years later and still I enjoy the singing of Guiseppe di Stefano in Che gelida manina and in the duet at the start of Act 4 which he sings with Robert Merrill.  I got to know many operas at a time when we were blessed with some wonderful operatic performers — but especially, tenors.

Today there are few great tenors.  Pavarotti is dead and Placido Domingo — at the end of his career — although a great singer is a baritone/tenor, who cannot reach the highest notes.  But between 1950 and 1970 we had many great tenors and with the benefit of high quality recordings, we can still hear them today. 

The 1950s saw the end of the career of Benjamino Gigli — the finest Italian tenor of the 1930s — but his place was taken by a clutch of great singers.  The picture above shows five of them.  From the left : Richard Tucker, Jussi Bjoerling, Franco Corelli, Guiseppe di Stefano, and Mario del Monaco.  Jussi Bjoerling died in 1960, still not 50 years old and what a voice we lost then.  The aria Nessun Dorma has become a tenor test piece now but Jussi Bjoerling set the standard with his recording in 1944.  His finest performance on record is probably his La Boheme with Victoria de Los Angeles in the performance made in New York off the cuff with Sir Thomas Beecham conducting.  As a recording of this opera, it has never been bettered.

Mario del Monaco was one of the great voices of the 20th century.  An immense voice that could fill any concert venue; a huge voice that was never soft — the instruction pp had no place in his arsenal — but he had a vast range from the lowest of low notes to top "C" s that sounded as no more than the middle of his range.  No tenor had a voice that sounded so secure.  Guiseppe di Stefano, however, had a voce that ultimately proved fragile and only allowed him a short career,  But compare his Che gelida manina with that of Mario del Monaco.  Guiseppe di Stefano sings a love duet while the vast sound of del Monaco — every note audible in the back row of the gods — sounds as if it will blast Mimi off the stage — it is almost as though he were about to invade some neighbouring country or something equally dramatic.  But del Monaco as Othello is unequaled.

Franco Corelli at his best was incomparable but on occasions he could go so OTT that the song or aria was ruined.  But in Verdi and Puccini he was superb. Richard Tucker, the American tenor at the Metropolitan Opera for many years was a very Italian tenor capable of some splendid singing and a joy to listen to.

I have not mentioned others like Carlo Bergonzi, Nicolai Gedda, Fritz Wunderlich and a number of others.

One tenor of whom I have particular recollections is Luigi Infantino.  Like Guiseppe di Stefano, he was born in Sicily and exactly contemporaneously.  I had bought a ticket for a recital by Di Stefano in the Free Trade Hall in Manchester in 1957 or 1958 but the great tenor was indisposed and his place was taken by Luigi Infantino.  At the time, I had never heard of him.  But he was beautiful tenor with a voice like Gigli who gave a memorable concert with 8 or 10 encores.  He died in 1991 and has now been almost forgotten.  Few of his recordings are still available — perhaps because he was a good tenor that sang during a period when the world had many great tenors.  I have just been listening to Luigi Infantino again on You Tube as I type this — and still with great pleasure.

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Putting Books on Shelves

Putting books on shelves; seems simple enough but which shelf — aye, there's the rub.  I was reading Gaby Hinsliff's — former Political Editor of The Observer — occasional column in The Times on Friday.  In this she tells us of the problem of books.  One thing handed down by her father and father-in-law to she [her?] and her husband is a voracious love of reading, which, she says, "Is lovely."  but shelving the ever growing collection is becoming a nightmare.  I understand completely, although, I suspect that the couple have rather more books than I have.  What is a good sized collection of books in a domestic environment?  I have no idea.  I have about 3000/4000 books and I have filled a lot of shelves.  I have them housed in bedroom No2 , which serves as my primary library — with an over-spill into the lounge and bedroom No.4, serving as my office.  But, is my arrangement a library?  I see libraries as [a] public buildings housing thousands of books which are lent to local citizens and are collections that strive to navigate through the waters of popular fiction, classic fiction, contemporary literature as well as provide an extensive collection of non-fiction and reference books.  They are institutions regulated by public service within the limits of available cash.  Then there are [b] libraries that exist in stately homes and are filled with lots of leather bound books of considerable age that no-one actually reads.  I am not sure of the purpose of such rooms except as a means of preserving old books.  Some old books are valuable for all kinds of reasons but surely not just as investments.

Gaby Hinsliff tells us that "obviously, all our books are organised by genre in their new house."  But sub-dividing inside each genre — "aye, there's the rub."  Is it?  Again, I need to know how many books they are trying to store.  My limited book collection is set out on shelves with little in the way of order.  Some books by a single author have managed to be put together on the same shelf and most of my books on history — particularly social history — are together.  But for the most part the layout is random.  On one very short piece of shelf next to my desk and the computer on which I type this blog, are eleven books and they are as follows : The Wrong Kind of Snow — a day by day examination of the weather over the centuries; Misadventure in the Middle East by Henry Hemming — a lovely book about the author and artists discovering the Middle East; Pies and Prejudice by Stuart Maconie —a tour of the North of England by a Wiganer; Death on a Galician Shore by Domingo Villar — crime novel set in NW Spain; Anthony Burgess by Roger Lewis — a fascinating biography of the famous novelist, who, I believe is best remembered for his use of language and his autobiography rather than his novels; The Devil's Acre by Matthew Plampin — a fictitious crime story linked to the short-lived factory [1853 - 1857] established by Samuel Colt to manufacture his guns in London; Nathaniel's Nutmeg by Giles Milton —a popular history of nutmeg and the spice trade; The Adventure of English by Melvyn Bragg — a history of the English language and a good read; We Danced All Night by Martin Pugh — a social history of Britain between two world wars; two volumes of Chris Mullin's Diaries — a diary that demonstrates the futility of MPs attempting to achieve anything at all as a minister.  

This set of books may not be a complete cross-section of my reading but it is a reasonable representation of what I like to read.  I read few modern novels — apart from crime fiction — but I do like to read. Get a book on the short list for the Booker Prize and, for me, it is the kiss of death.  I just know that it is highly likely that each will be a pseudo-intellectual road to boredom.  Books fascinate me and I can never resist buying more.  I have no great urge to read on-line but I do have access to a dozen or so books that I read occasionally  

Gaby Hinsliff finally admits that her filing of books is little better than random and that by the time that she has finished, no-one but her will be able to find anything.  That's my system.  I have to remember where I put every book.  It is a system that can work most of the time but — I have to admit — it's not foolproof.

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The Last Post

I love newspapers.  Their popularity has been falling for years and no newspaper can claim the giant circulations of yesteryear.  But still, I love 'em.  Most days I buy two national newspapers and I will probably continue to do so as long as newspapers are published.  All around the world, newspapers are slowly losing out to electronic publications, on-line news and so on.  But I like them.  As I have travelled the world; I have read newspapers in many countries and always they give an immediate flavour of the place — explaining in some depth the daily events of our planet.  Some that I have read have been very good some not so good.  But the loss of any newspaper is always sad.  Another one dies to day.  The Liverpool Post, one of the oldest newspapers in Britain will today print its last edition.

The newspaper was the first penny newspaper in Britain and was launched in 1855 by Michael Whitty operating from a small printing shop in Lord Street, Liverpool and in its first addition reported on the conflict at Sebastopol in the Crimean War.  The Post was there to report the onslaught of the Blitz in Liverpool during the early years of WW II and the 'paper has had a proud record of defending the ordinary citizen against the forces of wealth, politics and bureaucracy.  The newspaper can no longer fight against the forces of neglect.  Young people rarely read newspapers.  For them news is obtained instantly via mobile phones and tablets; their's is a world of black and white of simplified news.  There is no interest in discovering the details of the what and why of daily events.  With declining sales local newspapers have relied increasingly on local advertising to cover the cost of production.  But that also is going on-line; it's cheaper.  The decline has seen the Liverpool Post shrink from a daily newspaper to a weekly in 2012 but that was only the prelude to closure.  The newspaper is no longer viable.

I have read the Liverpool Post only rarely but I still lament its demise.  Some of the journalists will carry on working but now for the on-line Liverpool Echo.  This publications is thriving and I can only wish everyone well for the future. 

Goodbye Liverpool Post

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Great Yarmouth

Peter O'Toole died at the weekend. The old boozer had managed to outlive all his drinking companions by a good few years.  At his best he was a great actor.  But often his performances were compromised by the booze.  He made his reputation in Lawrence of Arabia in 1962 But for me, his great performance was in Becket — the 1964 film based on Jean Anouilh's play.  In this he played King Henry II opposite Richard Burton's Becket.  The producers of this film hesitated in bringing two heroic drinkers together in one film while expecting to finish making it.  It seems that there were some spectacular drinking sessions in local pubs near the studios where the film was made, but it was made and on budget.  The film sticks in my mind because of when and where I saw it.  It was my "where were you when Kennedy died" moment.

It was February 1965 or 1966, in the days when I worked for The APV Company and I went up to Great Yarmouth with one of the sales guys to discuss a project with Birds Eye Foods.  Do they still have a factory there?  In those days, before the M25 getting up into East Anglia was quite a performance.  The first Dartford Tunnel had opened but getting to it was a struggle.  The normal journey took drivers via the Blackwall Tunnel — still a single bore with bends under the river that caused constant traffic jams as lorries struggled into the middle of the road to avoid hitting the tunnel walls.  Then it was onto the A13 into Essex and north to Great Yarmouth. It was a slow journey and we went up the day before our meeting to ensure we could arrive on-time.  The weather was terrible.  It was raining and a cold wind blasted the East Coast.  Have you ever been to Great Yarmouth in February?  It is a hellish, desolate, Godforsaken place.  We booked into a typical holiday hotel on the promenade, a place memorable for the quantity rather than the quality of its rooms.  How many people it would cater for in summer, I have no idea. In winter the number of guests was in single figures.  We had some tea and buns in the guest lounge — a large room sparsely decorated but full of a mixed collection of rather uncomfortable armchairs.  What shall we do this evening, we wondered?  The hotel bar was empty and depressing.  Nearby, a cinema was showing Becket with Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton.  So we decided we would have a meal — in a Chinese restaurant — and then go to watch the film.  It was a large cinema but on this mid-week night, there were few patrons.  We sat in the middle of the stalls in a sea of emptiness.  Did no one want to see this film?  Was the entrance fee — about 2/6d — too much?  Was the weather to awful for people to turn out to a cinema in mid-week?  I have no idea.  But the cinema audience was never a distraction; it was virtually invisible.  But it was a magnificent film and, in spite of the miserly heating and feeling chilly, I enjoyed every minute.  I still believe it to be one of the great films that I have seen.  

The film is not historically accurate — blame that on Anouilh — and the relationship between the two principals is theatre rather than history.  But the acting is generally superb and convincing.

The memories of this film do nothing in my mind for the image of Great Yarmouth.  I have never been there since and my memory is of a ghost town, one that epitomizes desolation, tragedy and a place never to be visited voluntarily.  I am sure this image is misleading — but, at times I am not completely sure.

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