Bradley Hardacre R.I.P.

 No wargaming at all going on here for various reasons, and I'm off to the Smoke for a few days tomorrow. In the meantime let's pay tribute to (Bradford born) Timothy West.

Do yourself a favour and watch not just the whole episode, but the rest of the two seasons they made as well.

Bob Kerslake

 I was very sorry to hear today of the death of Lord Kerslake, who was the former head of the civil service amongst many other things. I knew him forty years ago, and found him a very pleasant chap, although I'm not sure I'd have believed anyone who told me then that he was going to go on to have the career he did. 

I'm also not entirely sure that I believe that he was only a year older than me. Yet another indication of one's own mortality.

PotCXXIpouri - another slight return

 Still catching up with what you all missed while my broadband wasn't working. I attended the Bradford Literature Festival's inevitable, and welcome, J.B. Priestley event, which this year addressed 'English Journey'. Commissioned by the prominent left-wing publisher Victor Gollancz this is an account of the great man's travels around England at the height of the depression. A precursor to, and an inspiration for, Orwell's 'Road to Wigan Pier' it shares that book's unwillingness to look away from the effect of poverty on society and, in particular, on children. Not so, of course, the members of the governing party in the U.K. Against the background of a report showing that the cohort of children born during the period of austerity brought in by Cameron and Osborne are shorter both than their predecessors and than children of the equivalent age elsewhere in Europe, these two smug poshos turned up at the Covid enquiry to deny that the same austerity had anything to do with the country's unpreparedness for the pandemic. 

A more recent example of self inflicted economic and social damage has also been in the news concerning the seventh anniversary of the referendum on leaving the EU, a referendum that, by no coincidence, took place whilst the same two deadbeats were in charge. I gave my views here at the time - and indeed here at the time as well - and haven't changed them at all. Professor John Curtice (for the benefit of overseas readers let me point out that when it comes to psephology in the UK the Prof is 'the man') says that the reason the polls currently show a majority thinking that leaving the UK was a mistake isn't so much that people have changed their minds as that a significant number of those who voted Leave have subsequently died. Good.

PotCXXIpouri - slight return

 Just continuing with the catch up from my absence I have a couple of things to get off my chest:

Firstly, I had assumed that the minimal coverage, and lack of humanity in that coverage, of refugee deaths in the Mediterranean was down to the innate racism of the British press. However, given the pages and pages of reporting on the plight of a few hubristic billionaires paying the price for their ghoulishness even though, shock horror, they weren't all white, I have changed my mind. Clearly the issue is class: the lives of poor people simply don't matter as much as those of rich people.

Secondly there has been a furore about a new film alleging that Jeremy Corbyn was ousted as leader of the Labour Party as the result of a conspiracy. Now, I haven't seen this film, doubt very much that I will bother, and have a very sceptical view of conspiracy theories in general. Indeed if you want my opinion - and believe me you're going to get it even if you don't - JC's biggest problem was the self-inflicted and all-to-common one for politicians of out-staying his welcome. The hoo-hah regarding the film is centred on it apparently implying that some of those involved in this so-called conspiracy were Jewish. If there is any conspiracy going on it's the one that increasingly says that neither Jewish people nor Israel can ever be criticised regardless of what they do, without fingers being pointed and hyperbolic accusations of anti-Semitism made.

Let's finish on a lighter note. I have been to Barnsley for what I believe is the first time ever. Slightly to my surprise I found it to be a very pleasant place. I intend to revisit it soon to check out an upcoming exhibition at the municipal art gallery. In the meantime here is a statue of one of the town's most famous sons:

Some election musings

 

Well, I lost again, but am going to claim a moral victory after having seen my vote increase by over 50% from four years ago. As you may have guessed my candidature was more in the way of showing the flag (or this case the rose) than in expectation of winning. However, elsewhere we doubled our representation on the council, so only another eight years and we'll be in charge.

I was standing for Otley Town Council, which is too insignificant to form part of the various running totals of councils and councillors which have been published over the last couple of days. A sort-of relative of mine (*) was elected on Thursday to Ribble Valley council as an independent. Now, Ribble Valley is a proper council and he was therefore included in all the analyses. I don't have sufficient forbearance to refrain from pointing out that I actually got more votes than he did. The raw figures being banded about by the media need fairly careful interpretation before any conclusions are drawn.

* He and I used to be married to two sisters, but now we're not.

Three Strong Women

 "A strong woman is a woman determined to do something others are determined not be done" 

- Marge Piercy

Yesterday's post ended with a reference to Catherine of Aragon and - is it planned? is it coincidence? - it was that queen, as portrayed by Bea Segura, who stole the show in 'Henry VIII' at the Globe a couple of weeks ago. In fact the Spanish actress was the only good thing about it, it being all too clear why no one ever puts on this collaboration between Shakespeare and John Fletcher. I'd certainly never seen it before and couldn't have told you anything about it beyond the fact that it was an accident with a cannon on the opening night that led to the burning down of the original Globe. This production gave a co-writing credit to Hannah Khalil who had been tasked with making it focussed more on the female characters. She did this by importing lines from other plays and poetry by Shakespeare and giving them to Catherine, Princess Mary and Ann Bullen (sic). I'm not entirely sure it worked, because hearing Mary speak lines which one knew really belonged to Lear just made me wish I was watching that play instead. Anyway, Segura was great as a woman determined not to be pushed aside for the convenience of others and it was good to be back in the Globe again after it had been forced to close by the plague.

Much better was 'The Corn Is Green' at the National Theatre, although as it cost literally a dozen times as much to watch then so it should have been. This semi-autobiographical piece by Emlyn Williams about a poor child from a Welsh-speaking mining community being mentored by an inspirational teacher and eventually winning a scholarship to Oxford, was heart-warming without being sickly sweet. Even a stage full of miners, faces blacked with coal dust and singing hymns, seemed to work in context. Nicola Walker as Miss Moffat, overcoming the class and gender prejudices ranged against her, was excellent. The evening also provided something I'd never seen before when the backstage machinery to bring the set on for the second half malfunctioned, and so the actors simply performed with a third of the stage bare. The show must go on. 

The third really good performance of a strong woman that I have seen recently was that of Bettrys Jones, as Ellen Wilkinson, in Caroline Bird's 'Red Ellen'. Wilkinson was the only female Labour MP elected in the October 1924 election, served in the wartime coalition government and was the second ever female cabinet member as Minister for Education under Attlee, before her untimely death in 1947. There's a lot to fit in, from the Jarrow March to the Spanish Civil War, and the staging if pacey, with lots of set and costume changes occurring before our eyes. A host of supporting characters are played by the small cast - including Einstein, Hemingway, Churchill and Herbert Morrison - but the focus is always on Ellen herself, who is never offstage. 

As the programme says: forever on the right side of history, forever on the wrong side of life.

I shall say this only once...for now

"Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats." - Voltaire 

I feel obliged to mention the election result, albeit only briefly and in passing. Firstly, our Labour and Co-operative MP here in Leeds North West doubled his majority; just saying.

That's Otley in the background

Secondly, people may have wondered why I have spent the last twenty five years telling anyone who would listen that Caroline Flint is a brain-dead poisonous witch (for example here); well, it's because she is.

Pot87pouri

Before anyone else points it out, there have indeed been two Pot85pouris. The house rule is friendly ties and so this becomes number 87.

There's lots of stuff happening in Otley at the moment. This weekend for example is the Folk Festival, which means the streets are full of people who look like this:

I believe that the next lot are meant to be crows although why that means they have to whack each other with sticks I don't know.

This bunch are dancing with swords, although my photograph doesn't really show it very well; nice waistcoats though.

And then there were these ladies, who took it all very seriously indeed, but in fairness had a really slick entrance and exit routine.

Anyway, that's enough pot/kettle mockery of other people's strange hobbies so let's turn instead to the recent Vintage Transport show. There weren't many traction engines this year, which is a great shame, but there were a few military vehicles including this one which gave rise to a question in my mind.

In the film 'A Bridge Too Far' (and I am specifically talking about the film rather than reality) Sean Connery complains at one point that something hasn't arrived and is consoled in traditional British fashion with a cup of tea. The question I am asking myself is whether the thing that has gone missing was a jeep itself or a specially designed airborne motorbike such as is strapped to the front of this one. It's bugging me more than it should and I may have to watch the film again. Inevitably it will be a hugely disappointing experience and another fond memory of my youth will be spoiled.

Finally, I expect that you are all waiting eagerly for my insider's view on the latest shenanigans within the Labour Party. In particular you want to know what prompted the aborted attempt to abolish the position of Deputy Leader, an attempt which seemed to come from nowhere and catch everyone, especially the incumbent Deputy Leader himself, by surprise. My view is that we should interpret it to mean that Jezza is intending to stand down fairly soon and the manoeuvre was driven by the wish for Tom Watson not to be in interim charge while a new leader is elected. You will recall that the pair have very different views on the big issue of the day. You heard it here first.

Alastair Campbell

"A man must be excessively stupid, as well as uncharitable, who believes there is no virtue but on his own side." - Joseph Addison


I know how much you all like posts about the internal politics of the Labour party, so here's another one. I need to write this now because it will only be pertinent whilst Alastair Campbell remains expelled, and I confidently expect that decision to be overturned quite quickly.

I don't have much time for Campbell, author of the 'dodgy dossier' and key player in the takeover of the party twenty five years ago by the carpetbaggers of Blairism. However, the decision to expel him is hypocritical, biased and completely self-defeating. His decision to vote Lib Dem in the recent European elections was entirely sensible; indeed I did the same myself.

Regardless of what it should nominally have been about that election clearly boiled down to a straight binary choice. The Labour Party's policy was (and is) such a complete bag of shit that it amounted to a wasted vote whatever one's views. If one wished to support remain one had to vote for one of the parties which unambiguously supported it. Clearly I was never going to vote for Chris Leslie and the splitters and I chose LibDem rather than Green because I judged that they would be the closest challengers to the Faragistes.

It was the first time I had ever voted for anyone other than Labour in my life, I do not regret it, I shall not keep it a secret, and I would have done either if it had resulted in my own expulsion, which of course it won't.

The people have spoken, the bastards

"All political careers end in failure" - Enoch Powell

My own political career started in failure and has stayed there. I have lost again. I have never won in any election from standing for the Student Union Executive at university in 1975 until today. Well until yesterday, but you know what I mean. To be honest I never had any hope of winning on this occasion, but democracy involves offering the people a choice and so I did. It wasn't a choice they wanted, but I offered it to them regardless.

It did have its interesting moments though. One of my opponents mentioned in conversation that the actor John Rhys-Davies (known best perhaps as Gimli) had been on 'Question Time' last week where he discussed Kenneth Arrow and his Impossibility Theorem. Perhaps the son of Gloin is a reader of the blog - many well-known actors have of course been wargamers - although given his unpleasant political views I sincerely hope not. In any event, you heard about it - Kenneth Arrow that is - here first.

Our Luxembourg correspondent may by now be thinking to himself "But weren't you on Union Council? Didn't you have to get elected to that?". My reply is to claim that I was elected unopposed and challenge anyone to prove otherwise given the intervening forty five years or so. One of my fellow representatives on Council from the Board of Studies in Physical Sciences was rather more successful than me yesterday and was elected as an independent to East Staffordshire Council. I'm slightly tempted to view it either as a pity vote because he put his full middle name on the ballot paper or perhaps a plea not to pull any more stunts like his 'running every street in the ward' from last year's by-election. (As an aside that by-election was caused when the chap elected in the first place as a Conservative immediately resigned because to his surprise none of his friends would talk to him any more.) Anyway, congratulations to Graham 'H' Lamb for winning a seat in a safe Tory ward despite his politics being anything but, and best wishes for the next four years.

Splitters

"The only people we hate more than the Romans are the fucking Judean People's Front." - Reg

If you ask me - and I completely accept that you didn't - the decision of seven MPs to leave the Labour Party owes far more to thwarted ambition than it does to principle. The only one of them that I have ever met is Chris Leslie, who at one point, when he was MP for Shipley, I knew quite well. He was among the youngest of those elected in the Labour landslide of 1997, and when I first came across him was very humble and overtly conscious of how much he had to learn. However, just a few years later at the time of the Second Iraq War he was to be found holding forth on the geo-political issues of the day as if he was Winston Churchill reincarnated. You will recall that it was self-evident at the time (and indeed has been subsequently proven) that Bush and Blair were lying through their teeth and so Leslie's support for them could only be interpreted in one of two ways: either he was an idiot unable to understand what was happening, or he was happy to go along with the invasion because he thought it would be better for his career. As I knew him and you didn't, please take it from me that it was the latter. With hindsight it is no surprise that there was a spontaneous, completely disorganised, but not insignificant attempt to deselect him in which your bloggist played a prominent role. 

The other noteworthy thing about him - and I ought to say that he is actually an extremely personable and pleasant chap - was that he always described himself as a Social Democrat. Now this is a subject of such an arcane nature that even I don't really give a toss. If pushed I would probably describe myself as a Democratic Socialist, but I'm not so bothered. The thing is that notwithstanding anything that the MPs said this morning, the Labour manifesto at the last election wasn't particularly left wing. Both it and Jeremy Corbyn are pretty much in the mainstream of Western European social democracy. I touched on this subject recently, but it's worth pointing out that it is actually Leslie and his fellow conspirators who hold a Leninist view of the role of political parties. According to them, we the members should bow our heads, touch our forelocks and agree with whatever our leaders tell us. I have never taken that view, and now nor does the wider Labour Party. There is no way back to power for top-down, control freak apparatchiks like Leslie, and that is why they have left.

The grass roots, right or wrong?

Marc asks whether Rosa Luxemburg considered that 'the people' might be right wing. Let's leave aside the likelihood that she did while some of them were murdering her and look back to Marx. Luxemburg was one of a large number trying to work out, or simply claim that they knew, what Marx had meant; after all the old chap was not always terribly consistent in what he wrote. Some of them came to the conclusion that, while he may have been driven by good intentions they still didn't really want to be associated with him, thank you very much. Others, Lenin for example, decided that they would very much like to claim to be his followers, but that wouldn't stop them striking off in completely different directions if it suited them; not much 'withering away of the state' in the Soviet Union, with 'dictatorship of the proletariat' meaning dictatorship on behalf of the proletariat because the party knew what was best for the people.

Now Marx was clearly right about a number of things: his critique of the problems of capitalism has stood up pretty well and a number of aspects of it were proved entirely correct a decade ago; his insight of the powerful negative impact on individuals and through them on society as a whole of the alienation of man from the work he performs is as valid in today's call centre as it was in the cotton mills of his time; and above all Marx pointed out that if we don't like the way history is going we can actually seize power from those who currently have it, a lesson taken to heart by many around the world with a consequent huge historical impact.

Where Marx is most definitely found wanting, is in his rather naive assumption that just because the exploiters were bad people, that the exploited must therefore be good. We can pontificate all we like about 'false consciousness' and about a lot of people being 'useful idiots' to those in power (both entirely valid concepts), but as can be seen around me as I write, and no doubt around you as you read, the chances of expressions of grass roots feeling being of a right wing nature is pretty high. Perhaps Lenin was right and Luxemburg wrong after all.

Don't ask me

Readers may be wondering why your bloggist hasn't commented on the latest carryings on by the UK government, or perhaps it would be better to say what passes for a government. Tempted as I am, I shall just quote W.B. Yeats:

"I think it better that in times like these

A poet keep his mouth shut, for in truth  We have no gift to set a statesman right"

Interestingly the US government is just as big a shambles. How hard it must be for young people today to believe that the two democracies had stood together to save the world as recently as the mid-twentieth century and had then subsequently seen off the challenge of the other tyranny with which they had expediently allied to do it. Now of course the heir of the Soviet Union would seem to be having the last laugh. It will not have escaped your notice that yesterday's post was to mark the centenary of the murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. Luxemberg didn't have much time for Lenin, and one assumes that she would have had even less for Stalin had she lived that long. She was also not so keen on Bernsteinian revisionism (*), which is essentially the form of socialism as preached and occasionally practised by all mainstream Western European parties of the left, including, now that Jeremy Corbyn has recaptured it from the neo-liberalism of the Blair years, the Labour Party. What Luxemburg did believe in was grassroots activism, whereby society was controlled from below rather from above; she took the view, which I think we can agree was borne out by events, that otherwise the new boss would be as bad as the old boss. In these dark and challenging times it doesn't do any harm to reflect on what she wrote in her critique of the Russian revolution: "Freiheit ist immer die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" "Freedom is always freedom for the one who thinks differently" * Eduard Bernstein was a friend and associate of Engels, but nevertheless spent all of his long life campaigning for the achievement of socialism by peaceful means through incremental legislative reform in democratic societies. I have no idea how he found the time to write 'West Side Story' as well.

Das Berliner Requiem

Pot71pouri

Your bloggist spent an hour and a half in the dentist's chair yesterday and is feeling pretty bashed about this morning, so I shall be brief.

I am also feeling pretty bashed about in a wargaming sense. The first game of the year saw me in command of a small Prussian army taking on a larger combined Russian and Austrian force. I was promised that the discrepancy in force size was offset by the superior quality of mine, but I have to say that I haven't seen any sign of it yet. The real problem is that having deployed everything I then abandoned my original plan within the first ten minutes, and spent the rest of the evening repositioning my forces so that next week I can try something different. The exercise did at least lend some support to Peter's assertion that Piquet allows a fighting withdrawal to be conducted in a manner that U go-I go rules don't. I sank into existential despair about the game's outcome even earlier than I usually do, but possibly that was just the anaesthetic wearing off.

In other news, the mainstream media has been strangely silent about the recent meeting between on the one hand a dangerous Marxist and republican, who holds much of British society in complete contempt, and on the other hand the Rt Hon Jeremy Corbyn MP. Fortunately a photographer was around to record it for posterity.

Oh No, It's Selwyn Froggitt!

It has been drawn to my attention that the performer whose act at Batley Varieties was interrupted in 1969 by the late arrival of the pies was in fact Bill Maynard rather than Stan Boardman. 

I feel it is important to make this correction because whereas Boardman is best known for making racist jokes about Germans, Maynard was a film actor of some distinction, featuring in movies of the calibre of 'Carry on at Your Convenience'.  Among other Carry On films in which Maynard appeared was 'Carry on Henry VIII' which I mentioned here, and in which Maynard played a somewhat out of time Guy Fawkes. Maynard, who believe it or not was in contention to sing the UK's entry in the inaugural Eurovision Song Contest in 1957, stood as an independent Labour candidate against Tony Benn in the Chesterfield by election of 1984, in my view a bigger black mark against him even than his appearing in 'Confessions of a Window Cleaner' (although obviously there is a political connection there as well, in that the actor playing his son-in-law in that film later had a real life son-in-law who became prime minister). I mentioned a while ago that 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes' was partly shot in my home town. Less impressively, so were the Confessions films.

Speaking of films, I find that I have seen some and not bothered to write about them yet:

• Logan Lucky: I went thinking it was about motor racing, in the opening five minutes it seems as if it's going to be a searing indictment of the lack of universal health provision in the US and then it turns into an amusing enough caper movie, with a good joke about Game of Thrones which is understandable even to those like me who have never seen the show. Overall it's probably most notable for Daniel Craig's accent.
• The Big Sick: A fairly average romantic comedy which is nevertheless better than its name suggests. The unanswered question is why there is apparently only one comedy club in the whole of Chicago.
• Wind River: It's a cowboy film pretending to be a present day murder mystery. It passes the time nicely; just don't think too hard about the plot or the unresolved loose ends.

The Judean People's Front

"To rely upon conviction, devotion, and other excellent spiritual qualities; that is not to be taken seriously in politics." - Lenin

One of the minor, incidental pleasures of going to the theatre is watching the contrast as separate audiences for shows in different performance spaces converge and mingle; indeed I have written about it before here. It was with some amusement therefore that I watched the young man trying to sell copies of the Socialist Worker (a) to bemused parties of ladies arriving to see 'Thoroughly Modern Millie' at The Grand in Leeds whilst at the same time shouting (him, not them) "May must go, Corbyn must stay" (b). The reason for this was not some unexpected political message to be found in the musical (although like most love stories it is really about money and the power that goes with it - if you don't believe me then go and watch it again), but because Tariq Ali was speaking on Lenin in the Howard Assembly Rooms, which are attached to the Grand. It was naturally to the latter that I was headed.

The rooms are owned and managed by Opera North and there was a Steinway on stage. I did wonder idly whether the Russian revolution was going to be explained by means of comic song in the style of Richard Stilgoe or, even better, Victoria Wood. However the truth was equally unexpected and just as pleasurable. A pianist appeared and played the first movement from Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata as a sort of warm up, an approach to public speaking of which I heartily approve. Ali was introduced as a public intellectual (no definition of this term was provided) and much of his talk seemed to me to be spent justifying the importance of the intelligentsia in early twentieth century Russia and, by extension, to the modern world as a whole, so perhaps there was an element of theatricality in all this; convincing the audience that we were in the elite because we had listened to a bit of classical music. It worked for me.

Ali's talk was interesting and very wide ranging; indeed it wandered off the advertised subject for long periods. There was a substantial section on Operation Barbarossa for example, with the confident claim made that had Tukhachevsky not been purged by Stalin in 1937 that the German invasion would have been defeated quite quickly. I have no idea on whether that hypothesis has any substance, but I do know that it has bugger all to do with Lenin. Nonetheless, as I say, it was all rather stimulating and thought provoking.

The question and answer session afterwards was, however, a whole different thing. There was a sizeable audience, perhaps a couple of hundred people, many of whom seemed still to be living in the 1970s. The chap who put out the water for the speaker and interlocutor was even wearing a beret in what appeared to be a Wolfie Smith homage. I can't believe that those who spoke from the floor had not seen the famous satire on British Trotskyism in the 'Life of Brian', but they certainly hadn't learned from it. As far as I could make out, in their opinion, all of the world's current problems were caused by Ali's joining the International Marxist Group in 1968, only to be made worse by him leaving the IMG some years later, or possibly it was the other way round. Only two things were clear: I was the only one there who had not come with an agenda to slag off the speaker, and that everything - and I mean everything - was his fault. It was all truly bizarre, although I must say that it was also somewhat nostalgic for anyone with first hand experience of how far left groups carried on back in the day .

Wolfie was of course prone to shouting 'power to the the people' at inappropriate times. John Lennon's 1971 song of the same name was inspired by a meeting with Tariq Ali. Everything is connected.

(a) It has been a long, long time since a photograph of your bloggist last featured in the pages of the Socialist Worker. For those suffering withdrawal symptoms I can be found in the current spring edition of the One Traveller newsletter, New Horizons; less hair is involved on this occasion.

(b) With a bit more imagination he could have made that slogan rhyme.

Forever Forwards

And so to the theatre. I have been to see 'Dare Devil Rides to Jarama', a play which speaks not just to my love of theatre, but also to my interest in military history, socialism, walking and speedway. I accept that the last of those might not have featured too much in this blog to date. Indeed it is an interest that might accurately be described as dormant, but nevertheless it's there. Despite (or perhaps because of) mon vrai nom it's the only motor sport that I've ever had any time for and I used to go to watch the Wembley Lions during their brief reappearance in the early 1970s.

The play was put on by Townsend Productions whose 'Ragged Trousered Philanthropists' and 'We Will Be Free!' - the latter about the Tolpuddle Martyrs - I had both seen and enjoyed. With only a cast of two they recreated everything from dirt track racing, the wall of death and the mass trespass on Kinder Scout through to Franco's advance on Madrid, with the audience providing appropriate sound effects when required through the use of those rattles that one sees in old film of football matches. The one point where the audience participation fell a little flat was when we were invited to jeer at the leader of the blackshirts; I obviously can't have been the only one to find the portrayal more Spode than Mosley.

The story is that of Clem Beckett, champion rider, union organiser, rambler, and anti-fascist who, as member of the British Battalion of the International Brigades, was killed on the first day of the Battle of Jarama. Sadly the telling of it matches up neither to its inspirational subject matter nor the theatrical verve and skill with which it is presented. The play just isn't particularly well-written and despite the acting and the design - both very good - it fails to engage the emotions. Beckett himself came across as rather selfish, which for a man who gave his life for someone else's cause is a real own goal by the author.

However, I'm glad that I went and look forward to their next production, which will be about Grunwicks, something I saw at first hand.

Farewell Fidel

"A revolution is not a bed of roses. A revolution is a struggle to death between the past and the future" - Fidel Castro

Thought-provoking words at a time when we wait to see what sort of revolutions are about to be imposed on us all. 

The subject of Cuba always brings to my mind another subject very relevant to today's world: the lies that politicians tell. It's one thing to suspect that what one is being told is not completely accurate, it's a big step to knowing incontrovertibly that lies are being told based on one's own direct experience. For me that step came with the US invasion of Grenada, when I knew for certain that pretty much everything that Reagan said on the subject was an outright untruth. I've already wittered on about this enough in the past so I won't repeat myself (check out the posts labelled Grenada if you're really interested), and anyway you will all be familiar with the same story behind the more recent and more disastrous invasion of Iraq. But, in a world where truth seems less and less accessible it never does any harm to remind oneself.

The other source of misinformation is of course the media and it will be interesting to see how they report Castro's life and legacy. I've already read one lazily compiled report this morning saying that the US embargo has left the streets of Havana full of 1950s American cars. As anyone who has been there can tell you, the roads in Cuba are full of Toyotas exactly the same as everywhere else in the world. It's always referred to as the US embargo for good reason; nobody else took any notice.

Not the review of 2016

I inadvertently published a post yesterday entitled 'Review of 2016' prompting one keen reader - that would be you Mr Freitag - to tell me that I had left out the real highlight of my year. Maybe I did, or maybe I am optimistic that the best day of the year is yet to come. Currently I'm forecasting Friday October 21st to be very good; who knows, there could be others. In any event that post - an aide memoire for when I do post my eagerly anticipated review of the full year - has been reverted to draft.

As such it has been added to with yet more stuff. I have been to the cinema a couple of times, both films having a Latin American tinge. Firstly I went to see 'Que Horas Ela Volta?', a Brazilian film from last year, which was both funny and a microcosm of class conflict as described by Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto. Secondly I went to see 'Havana Moon', the film of the Rolling Stones concert in Cuba earlier this year. There wasn't much socialist theory going on there, despite Jagger referring to Richards as his compadre. There was, however, a huge amount of energy on display from four people who are even older than your bloggist, and have lived - how can I put this? - full lives. Anyway, if you like the Rolling Stones (and I do) then this contains some very impressive performances of songs such as 'Midnight Rambler', 'Paint It Black' and all the well known stuff. Jagger has to look ridiculous at some point in proceedings, presumably it's contractual, and here it is on 'Sympathy for the Devil' where he dons an ill-advised coat that reminded me less of the devil than of Giant Haystacks, the wrestler.