A new day has dawned, has it not?

SWANSEA U3A GROUPS

BLOG ALERTS
Many members reply to these using them as a convenient pre-addressed way to contact me. Fine, but please first change the subject from Brian's Blog Alert to indicate the nature of your correspondence.

SCRABBLE
This group with an average turn out of 7 or 8 in a bid to increase membership have just decided to move away from being home- based. They now meet at the Sketty Community Centre at from 10am to 12am on the 2nd and 4th Mondays of each month. Anyone interested should just turn up as there is virtually unlimited space.


DINGHY SAILING
Eddie Ramsden, a member who helps organise our UK Olympic Team on behalf of the RYA (Royal Yachting Association) is offering to organise a taster day for our members this summer at Llangorse lake near Brecon.

They would use Comet Trio boats (which he described to me as being like the better known very stable Wayfarer training boat. Three members would sail together in a boat with a trained instructor on board. Eddie would arrange the event to suit, probably a midweek day from 10am in July or August, with the probability of being able to change date given an unsuitable weather forecast. He tells me there is a basic clubhouse for changing but that picnic lunches would be the order of the day - hard to think of a nicer place without walking into the mountains. Presumably buoyancy/life jackets would be available but you would be expected to bring a change of clothing.

Anyone interested should reply to the blog alert but please change the subject of the email to Sailing so that I can easily sort through the replies.

Eddie and I go back a long way since we were both keen dinghy racers at Mumbles Yacht Club for longer than I care to remember. He was the best GP14 helm in the club, whereas I never got past being second best, first in a home built Mirror Dinghy (the best £84 I ever spent) and later in a Laser Dinghy. We both spent years as Fleet Captains and members of the committee. Incidentally if any ones interested I still have my Laser which has been cluttering up my garage for 15 years now, sail number 100,000 plus a bit, available at knock down price.


GEOLOGY of the Llandovery area led by Dr Robert Owen
This Monday 17 May at 10.30am
Meet for car parking at grid ref map OS sheet160, SN76342 
These photographs were taken by Joan Corbett working on my behalf.

Geology Group Lunching on Caldey Island

Tenby Harbour

JIVE
All the photographs in this section were taken by JORGE LIZALDE, who on this occasions was acting as the photographer for the National Theatre Wales

Rita Reed-Jones and John Day

Tess Atherton and Brian, Mike Lewis and Angela Blewett

Nicky Brown and Des Finlay

  

Rosalie Kidd and Mike Lewis

Val Day left and Tutor Pam Williams 

Brian and Val Day

Those of us who assisted the newly formed National Theatre Wales with a dance demonstration to kick off their first attempt at contact with Swansea public opinion (via their ASSEMBLY held in the Monkey Cafe) were offered a reward of two free tickets to their first all-professional production of The Devil Inside Him, apparently John Osborne's first long lost play, at the New Theatre Cardiff.

Joan and I took up this offer on Sunday afternoon, thoroughly enjoyed it and were most impressed with the quality of the acting. It was not until reaching home that I began to look in detail at the program and realised that Jamie Ballard had played Hamlet in the outstanding production directed by Dr Jonathan Miller at the Bristol Tobacco Factory in 2008. That is not to single Jamie out for the cast was uniformly strong, with many having acted with the National Theatre in London, the Royal Shakespeare Company and TV.


Since I missed Jive this week I do not know if others took up the offer which applied to the pre-production run on Friday, Saturday or Sunday last week. The final performance is tomorrow 15 May for which there may still be tickets on sale.


WEDNESDAY LECTURE
Helgi Opik's sister Tiiu-Imbi Miller educated us all whilst promoting the small charity of which she is an enthusiastic member, The Rainforest Saver Foundation, and whilst it was not an appeal for funds I was pleasantly surprised by the number of members who handed her donations at the end of the lecture. Clearly it is a topic close to the heart of many members.


The idea was to introduce modern thinking to improve on the way inhabitants of the rainforest cultivate, an essential part of their survival. For centuries if not millennia they have used a technique called Slash and Burn, whereby they cut down trees and burn them
to provide immediately a fertile bed for cultivation. Unfortunately due above all to erosion in heavy rainfall that fertility does not last more than say three years, hence more slash and burn. The technique she was advocating was to plant hedges of the fast growing Inga trees which quickly forms a canopies over the 5 to 6 metre wide strips cultivation between them. The strips are made fertile in three years by pruning the Inga trees and using the cuttings and leaves as a compost, the canopy shades from direct sunlight and also acts to inhibit weed growth as in the forests. Hence the title of her lecture Inga Alley Cropping, a technique developed by a university in Honduras.

The alleys can be used to grow food like beans (Inga like beans is a nitrogen fixing legume) and pineapple, or cash crops like vanilla.

I have travelled in many areas of rainforest in both Latin America and Asia, but the most dramatic by far was on the island of Borneo which fifteen years ago still had a large primary rain forest, which is to say dense forest composed of the biggest and tallest trees we have ever seen, with a leaf canopy almost out of sight. My impression was that, though 'slash and burn' was still used by the long house dwellers, by far the bigger threat was from logging. There are no roads to speak of so huge rivers are the highways along which one speeds in so called torpedo boats (think huge coaches). These rivers were full of huge tree trunks, most in large neat 'carpets' being guided downstream by lumberjacks walking the logs, others almost submerged had broken free to become waterlogged and a serious threat to water traffic. Frighteningly large muddy brown areas in the otherwise unbroken green carpet of primary rain forest were a testament to the scale of logging and clearly visible on our flight inland to the beautiful protected area of Mulu.
 

OUTINGS
There are 4 current proposals

Llanerchaeron House, Aberaeron 28 May contact Rob James, 8824508

Hay on Wye, 8 am Saturday 29 May contact Cecily Hughes 363875

Stratford on Avon, 7 July contact Barbara Garnham 0781 1728 184

Fonmon Castle, 27 July contact Barbara Brimfield

CALL for NOMINATIONS for Officers and Committee by 16 June
Forms to post to Michael Edmonds, Business Secretary with your invitation papers
AGM at 2.30pm on Wednesday 23 June
All members invited so please attend if only to learn more about how this organisation is run.


GORDON BROWN
Many readers will no doubt associate with his unpopularity and be glad he has departed the political arena - but not me, because, as I will explain later, so much that he did vastly improved the lives of persons in my own family circle as well as millions beyond.

Yes on becoming PM he made some bad judgements, to churlishly turn up a day late to the signing of the Lisbon Treaty, to agree overnight to almost match the Tories intention to slash Inheritance Tax when he intended to rush into an early election and feared he was being wrong footed, and more recently to withdraw his own 10% rate of income tax - the later two being over hasty and at odds with what I judge as his true political instinct.

Then of course there were the personal failings, chiefly in my view his refusal to simply accept his poor judgement over the 10% rate of tax so when under pressure from his own side instead of just reversing it he attempted to correct it by less satisfactory complex means. Denial of any responsibility for continuation of the policy of light financial regulation started in the Thatcher era, to the point where Prudence of his early years had clearly gone out of the window. Then his initial dogmatic rejection of nationalisation as the solution to the financial crisis. He finally went for part nationalisation which has left us with insufficient control over the reform of banking purpose and structure, and curtailment of its excesses - and all because he with Tony Blair had taken Clause Four out of the Labour constitution (which had advocated nationalisation of the means of production) to produce New Labour and could not accept there were extreme situations in which nationalisation still made sense.

He has been unmercifully, unceasingly, pilloried by the press for two years. To describe what he correctly described in his resignation speech as the global financial meltdown (which has affected all parts of the globe) as Brown's Recession was disingenuous and cruel. True he allowed the UK economy to become far too reliant on banking, but again the term de-industrialisation goes back to the Thatcher era.
Yet he won international recognition as the statesman with an unrivalled grasp of the financial system. Our finest expert will now but watch others grapple with the problems, and, like me, hope they do not upset his exceptional social achievements.


So why is my overall verdict so favourable. Firstly the New Deal which gave so many the chance of employment. Swansea was one of the initial trial areas and being poorly prepared tried it out on an age group far older than the target, and one of our sons who had been largely unemployed for a decade got a new start - only a recession can take that away.

Secondly the Minimum Wage which brought so many, including him, within touching distance of a living wage. This benefited Care Assistants in private nursing homes, where Joan was working (as Nursing Sister) having their income almost doubled overnight, a rise she thought would put such homes out of business - but as I argued at the time the homes were an essential service and would reach a new equilibrium, so people and the government now have to pay a fairer rate for having ageing people looked after by others.


Thirdly Sure Start meant disadvantaged infants got a better start in life and also gave new employment for some who had first hand knowledge of the hardships of family life.

Fourthly Child Tax Credits for Working Mothers which gave them an incentive to find employment and in return offered fairer net wages.


Finally Working Tax Credits which benefited so many men in low paid employment, including many on minimum wage, who got closer to a fair wage.

Each of these five measures benefited someone within my own family sphere and put new hope and dignity into wasting lives.

For me the second big downside of the New Labour years (the first being the invasion of Iraq) was that in spite of all this help the range in UK earnings was allowed to reach obscene proportions, mainly through the greed of those at the top (not restricted to bankers) who still believed there was no such thing as society. The state turned a blind eye to unsocial behaviour and the winner takes all mentality in the higher reaches of society, no wonder it became a problem with the disadvantaged. We and New Labour saw one side but not the other.

My lasting memory will be of Jeremy Paxman wreathed in wry smiles at the end of his half hour interview with Gordon Brown just before voting day. Rarely I suggest under briefed so I concluded on this occasion he knew he been out debated.


COALITION GOVERNMENT
People who advocate a fairer, more proportional, electoral system have now seen the down of a hung parliament at a particularly testing time, or have we? Any of the other voting systems (AV, AV+, STV, or proportional) would on this occasion have given the Liberals more seats at the expense of the main parties and in so doing would have allowed a Labour/Liberal alliance to have a simple majority of seats, sufficient though not as great as the Tory/Liberal coalition we now have. Clegg made his intention clear in interview with Andrew Marr, to side with the Tories. But given a fairer voting system but at least the alternative Lib-Lab linking would have been mathematically feasible.


Now begins the issue of real information, concealed in the TV debates by all three parties. To paraphrase what Matthew Parris said recently on radio Democracy and Deception inevitably go hand in hand at election time. It is as well that two parties are locked together for five years to share the pain. I doubt if even Labour, clearly set against cuts this year for fear of bringing on a recession, would in practice have been able to avoid early cuts in view of the even worse debt problems of other European countries. So we have to grin and bear it whilst the Millionaires and Hedge Funds make a fortune betting and driving the next twist to volatile stock markets.
Labour have the chance to regroup away from the flak, let's just hope they don't just re-invent Tragic New Labour. The big gain for Cameron will be able to modernise and centralise the Conservative Party whilst portraying it as in the interests of the country to work constructively with the Liberals. As for the Liberals whether they have a future depends on getting a fairer voting system, without it expect Clegg and Laws at least to show their true colours and do a Kinzett.


COMPULSORY VOTING
One member comments on this blog of its merits whenever I write of politics, and there is little doubt that low turnouts are another problem. I would hope that turnouts in seats with huge majorities would improve given a system nearing Proportional Representation which would make all votes for smaller parties relevant.
I have the liberals dislike of making things compulsory, as opposed to giving encouragement, a voice which will be heard and thus eliminating tactical voting such as I was recently advocating.


I also worry if the unwilling would vote in good faith, but that view admittedly has some of the echoes of the battle for Universal Suffrage, whether the outsiders could be trusted to vote knowledgeably.