I am amazed by how much time has passed since I wrote the last posting in this series which carried the title of Christmas Turkey. In Swansea we had our summer week way back in March - remember - but it is beginning to start to feel like spring.
U3A WALKING GROUP
To start with I'm fulfilling a long standing promise to Eileen Jones and David Michael who both thanked me for the blogs. David sent me the series photograph of Berian James with the comment 'I don't know how he keeps his hat on'. Eileen wrote:-
Dear Brian
Berian The Leap
This is him making out he is still 21 and making an excellent job of it. It was taken on the Overton Mere Walk.
Ever since he has to be restrained from tackling obstacles in his way in a similar manner. Fortunately we have U3A insurance cover!
Eileen Jones
Well my understanding is that the U3A insurance does not cover personal injury but it would defend organisers like David and Eileen if Berian decides to sue them for negligence in failing to keep him safe.
U3A RAMBLING GROUP
Whilst on the subject of walking it is good to see that Harry Lewis's Rambling Group is going strong. It was one of the last flurry of the groups formed during my term as Groups Coordinator. They seem to have gelled around a pattern of moderately hard 6 to 8 mile rambles in a wide variety of locations. He tells me they usually number around ten walkers but he would welcome a few more, if interested phone him on 484297 or contact him via the website.
WEATHER FORECASTING
We had our French family over for a week who rather nervously brought four newcomers to Swansea fearing the worst from the weather forecasts. I always say I don't believe anything more than about 12 hours in advance and that the weather could be better though knowing Swansea it is usually worse. They had a more than passable break and we were delighted to learn that they had avoided a nasty period in France. Since they all live south of the La Loire, the crossing of which in my family camping day's I always regarded as the entry to France proper. Incidentally did you know there is also a relatively insignificant Le Loire in the same region?
COMMENT
Thinking of Springs and France it's nice to see a socialist government emerge under Francois Hollande, someone powerful with a fresh approach to the economic crisis. However such is the predicament of Greece, and perhaps even Spain that I feel it may prove too late to save Europe from a real crisis. I have always argued in these postings that Britain's austerity drive might have succeeded given an enhanced opportunity to export by the unannounced devaluation of the pound, had our neighbours not followed the same austere path so reducing the capability of their population to spend at the same time as Britain. The strategy has clearly been a failure in Greece, too much was asked of them too quickly and looks to have resulted in a country without democratic government. So far we are happy out of it and our currency is seen as a safe haven. Luckily the winner in the last local elections was a main stream political party, but for how much longer can we escape the deluge?
Whilst away on holiday I missed the discussion led by Mo Ellard in the U3A Politics and Citizen Group on The Future of Democracy. A very timely theme not only because of what is happening in Europe, where Greece and Italy have leaders imposed by Eurozone bureaucrats to supervise their economic policies. But also because of the rot which is being exposed daily in our own political process.
So much is talked of the importance of 'growth' when all that is needed is simply a return to the employment level of three years ago, even though necessarily accompanied by a reduced standard of living for the population at large. It looks as I predicted a several years ago, that the major brunt would again be borne by the young, a repeat of the 'lost generation' thirty years ago. People earning a wage almost all pay taxes, some millionaires got rich by avoiding them, but without adequate tax returns there is no way out of Sovereign Debt crisis (money owed by a country). Even the spend on 'benefits' is recycled and so helps keep up aggregate demand in our shops, they can't afford not to spend it, but in many cases they will no longer have it to spend.
I repeat my definition of £1,000,000 (a million pounds), 'the amount an average person earns in a lifetime if he remains healthy and stays in full-time employment'.
BOOKS
For many years, well before my involvement in committee work, my only U3A activities were attendance at the Wednesday Lectures and one Activity Group. That was Mo's Reading Group1. I hoped in this way to develop a love for novels and speed reading. In both respects it was a failure, but since leaving I have read even less.
Nevertheless, armed with a couple of down loads to my newly presented Kindle, I thoroughly enjoyed two seemingly diverse books, to the extent of not wanting to put them down. The first 'Casino Capitalism' being a study, by Hans Werner Sinn a German economics expert from the University of Munich, into the roots of the world economic crisis of 2008 - not every body's idea of holiday reading! The second, which Jill Govier described in my reading group as the greatest (American?) novel of the twentieth century, 'The Grapes of Wrath' by John Steinbeck, which I first read over 50 years previously, whilst a young man living in Canada, without any of the impact it has for me today.
And the connection between the books, the dysfunctional but widely different economic conditions. In America in the 30's it describes vividly the way the 'dust bowl' caused by drought and wind resulted in the impoverishment of the subsistence farming community and their mass emigration with their last possessions across the States to California, who didn't exactly welcome the immigrants! Industrial farmers from the north bought their land at rock bottom prices. I found it a harrowing, haunting, sympathetic insight into their tragic lives.
As for the crisis caused by Casino Banking (gambling) the blame was rooted by the author firmly in the principle of Limited Liability, which stemmed from a much earlier year to support the massive risks inevitably involved in financing trading by long voyages in the sail era, and then to encourage of the development of the huge industrial enterprises of the Victorian era.
But limited liability was equally as effective in stripping the risk from today's high volume financial trading by allowing them to operate almost entirely on borrowed money with typically only 2.5% equity component covering their risk. If the firm collapsed the remaining 97.5% borrowed money was ultimately backed by the state, ie the tax payer. This allowed ever riskier financial gambling aimed at making returns typically of 25% per year for the lenders. The huge interest payments were salted away in much safer investments. So far so good, but the music stopped, panic mushroomed and they were all on the point of failing together. Only this week was it reported that JP Morgan in the States had lost 2 billion, by my reckoning the third major disaster since Nick Leeson brought down our oldest investment bank Baring's fifteen years ago. J P Morgan will be damaged like Society General but both survive to gamble again. Activities which Lord Turner of the FSA described as being of no benefit to society.
The writer Hans Werner identifies sub prime mortgages in the US market as the root of the problem. Followed by the design of toxic financial packages designed as a cleverer way to sell on mortgages, by mixing (slicing) good and bad, to provide the finance to grow the risky mortgage market. Prominent amongst those were the CDOs (collateral debt obligations) which caused so much of the trouble, which were thought to be solely packages of mortgages but also included debt of other forms, for instance credit card debts. Our own early example of a mortgage operation intent on growing ever more rapidly by selling mortgages on was the collapse of Northern Rock.
He never appears to take sides and records how the German Deutche Bank were the biggest buyer in Europe of CDOs but were sensible enough to hedge the risk by buying insurance from AIG (the giant US insurer). AIG would have collapsed had it not been deemed to be too big to fail by the US government - so that particular bill went back to the US tax payer. Nice to know that the infallible Germans bankers were lucky.
I learnt the huge difference between the US mortgage market and the European model, including ours, was the absence of risk on the part of the house buyer. American buyers on being unable to keep up with loan repayments had only to return the keys to escape all obligation. Whereas in this country a punter would remain liable for the debt remaining after the mortgage company had recovered as much as it could from sale/rent of the property. He emphasised that Presidents, including Clinton, thought that everyone should be able to take part in the house owning bonanza, regardless of means to repay a long term debt, and encouraged their inclusion.
Only in recent days have I become aware that the Spanish Banks were forbidden to buy CDOs. So, just as in the USA, Spanish banks created a sub prime mortgage industry of their own, accelerating mortgage sales regardless of the risk of there being no recoverable value in the property being built.
PERFORMING ARTS
After exposure to London, New York, Stratford Ontario Canada, even Montreal & Toronto and most surprisingly Stoke -on Trent where there was a thriving small professional theatre in the round (including Alan Ayckbourn as a young actor). On arrival in 1967 we found Swansea sadly lacking in this area. Even the Music Festival failed to attract an audience if they ventured off the popular well known classical track, one years emphasis on Mahler I recall as a flop. It has long been my hope to see Swansea competing in this area of the arts with the likes of Bristol and Bath.
To quote from the brochure produced by The Tobacco Factory 'Over the coming year public subsidy of the arts is falling fast and many arts organisations around the country are worried about their future. Bristol however is booming.'
In fact they have opened a second theatre across the road, The Brewery, and both run performances seven days a week. My especial interest is the two month long festival of Shakespeare, which is performed 'in the round' and runs eight times a week, two matinees, to full houses of just over 200 people. The standard of acting and directing are outstanding for which they get rave reviews yearly. This year the first month was King Lear and the second, departing from Shakespeare for once was Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard. However on Sundays in this period and daily for the rest of the year there is 'less highbrow' fare to rival Edinburgh but on a year round basis. Check them out on the web.
What is true of theatre in Bristol is also true of music including jazz.
Jazz is the one area where Swansea Jazzland in Saint James Crescent, Uplands, can rival their quality though only once weekly, on Wednesday evenings at 8pm.
We were amazed to find a packed enthusiastic audience at the Taliesin last week to hear Three Greats of European Swing who mixed their own compositions with those of Django Rheinhart. Perhaps 30years ago Fapy Lapertin was a yearly favourite at Swansea Jazz Club in a similarly constructed four piece (Belgian?) band called WASO consisting of Fapy and one other lead guitar plus rhythm by bass guitar and frequently one more melodic input, often on accordion or squeeze box. At last week's concert there were five, Lollo Meier on the other front line guitar and Tcha Limberger on violin plus rhythm guitar and string bass. I would there was similar audience for jazz clubs to rival that demonstrated by an almost entirely different audience for Gypsy Jazz.
I wonder for instance how many would not have enjoyed the wonderful evening with Gilad Atzmon's superb quartet at Swansea Jazzland the night before. The excellent string bass of Yaron Stavi and piano of Ross Stanley (coming back to Jazzland one Friday soon) and a young American drummer with a compelling original style making his very first appearance with the band. The best of Gilad's many performances in Swansea in my opinion.
After being part of the dismal single figure attendance in Dylan Thomas Centre a year ago for his day-long insights into Shakespeare plays, viewed from his lifetime as a director of plays, it is pleasing to record the increasingly thriving following of Peter Richards, Director of Fluellen Theatre. We had already seen, in The Arts Wing of the Grand Theatre, excellent, well attended productions in the round of Hamlet and Cymbeline. Their most recent offering was Kindertransport by Diane Samuels, in a play first performed by Soho Theatre Company in 1993 and seldom since. It was a thoroughly absorbing account from the child's eye of this process of 'saving' Jewish children from the Nazis only to endure a lifelong guilt of survival. The ending was particularly poignant as the mother of the child in question, who had survived a concentration camp, was now living in America and had at last traced her child. She came to England hoping to reclaim her now grown up daughter only to face rejection.
Whilst thinking of Shakespeare I will pass on a tip, always spend a little time researching the plot and the themes on the Internet - I find 'sparknotes' particularly helpful. A couple of days after we returned from holiday in Sri Lanka we went to the last performance of As You Like It by Clywd Theatr in the main auditorium of the Grand. We didn't take the opportunity to refresh our knowledge of the play and both struggled to follow the first act because of misidentification of the opening characters. When we arrived home we independently read through the script to sort out our problems. Act 2 was superbly funny and easy to follow. However the audience on Saturday was only about 50 people and that I gather was the best night, considerably less than Fluellen get in the Arts Wing.
It was particularly touching for me as a similarly placed girl Lisa came to our house as babysitter when I was perhaps seven and she but a few years older. My memory is of someone who would recount marvellous stories to me in bed. My younger sister also remembers her and met her recently through the Christadelphian Church, who were very active in welcoming such Jewish children and had presumably found her a home. Margaret was surprised to find her now a fully immersed baptised Christian member of that church, who in so doing had effectively renounced her birth, exactly the path of the character in the play.
Peter has been running a monthly series of lunchtime theatre at the Dylan Thomas Centre featuring and discussing a different playwright each time. The 45 minute presentations, script in hand, are made by just a few actors, usually Peter and his wife Claire plus a couple of younger actors. The next one is on Alan Bennett this Saturday 19 May at 1 pm, then Anton Chekhov and The Bear on 6 June. The sessions last an hour and cost just £5.
INDEPENDENT TRAVEL
Joan and I spent just over 30 days in Sri Lanka Feb/March. Joan and I always keep separate diaries on our travels and in the past 4 or 5 years I have done this by creating blog postings.
Since John Oats, a long standing personal friend, is to talk to the Armchair Travel Group on their visit to the same country I had been holding its release for a month or so but since the group meeting was recently postponed several weeks I am giving the link below. There are around 100 photographs which should help make up for the paucity in this posting.
http://lanka2012sri.blogspot.co.uk/
John's talk is now to take place on Friday the 22 June 2pm downstairs at Hazel Court. See you there?
U3A WALKING GROUP
To start with I'm fulfilling a long standing promise to Eileen Jones and David Michael who both thanked me for the blogs. David sent me the series photograph of Berian James with the comment 'I don't know how he keeps his hat on'. Eileen wrote:-
Dear Brian
Berian The Leap
This is him making out he is still 21 and making an excellent job of it. It was taken on the Overton Mere Walk.
Ever since he has to be restrained from tackling obstacles in his way in a similar manner. Fortunately we have U3A insurance cover!
Eileen Jones
Well my understanding is that the U3A insurance does not cover personal injury but it would defend organisers like David and Eileen if Berian decides to sue them for negligence in failing to keep him safe.
 | ||
| Berian's Leap |
Whilst on the subject of walking it is good to see that Harry Lewis's Rambling Group is going strong. It was one of the last flurry of the groups formed during my term as Groups Coordinator. They seem to have gelled around a pattern of moderately hard 6 to 8 mile rambles in a wide variety of locations. He tells me they usually number around ten walkers but he would welcome a few more, if interested phone him on 484297 or contact him via the website.
WEATHER FORECASTING
We had our French family over for a week who rather nervously brought four newcomers to Swansea fearing the worst from the weather forecasts. I always say I don't believe anything more than about 12 hours in advance and that the weather could be better though knowing Swansea it is usually worse. They had a more than passable break and we were delighted to learn that they had avoided a nasty period in France. Since they all live south of the La Loire, the crossing of which in my family camping day's I always regarded as the entry to France proper. Incidentally did you know there is also a relatively insignificant Le Loire in the same region?
COMMENT
Thinking of Springs and France it's nice to see a socialist government emerge under Francois Hollande, someone powerful with a fresh approach to the economic crisis. However such is the predicament of Greece, and perhaps even Spain that I feel it may prove too late to save Europe from a real crisis. I have always argued in these postings that Britain's austerity drive might have succeeded given an enhanced opportunity to export by the unannounced devaluation of the pound, had our neighbours not followed the same austere path so reducing the capability of their population to spend at the same time as Britain. The strategy has clearly been a failure in Greece, too much was asked of them too quickly and looks to have resulted in a country without democratic government. So far we are happy out of it and our currency is seen as a safe haven. Luckily the winner in the last local elections was a main stream political party, but for how much longer can we escape the deluge?
Whilst away on holiday I missed the discussion led by Mo Ellard in the U3A Politics and Citizen Group on The Future of Democracy. A very timely theme not only because of what is happening in Europe, where Greece and Italy have leaders imposed by Eurozone bureaucrats to supervise their economic policies. But also because of the rot which is being exposed daily in our own political process.
So much is talked of the importance of 'growth' when all that is needed is simply a return to the employment level of three years ago, even though necessarily accompanied by a reduced standard of living for the population at large. It looks as I predicted a several years ago, that the major brunt would again be borne by the young, a repeat of the 'lost generation' thirty years ago. People earning a wage almost all pay taxes, some millionaires got rich by avoiding them, but without adequate tax returns there is no way out of Sovereign Debt crisis (money owed by a country). Even the spend on 'benefits' is recycled and so helps keep up aggregate demand in our shops, they can't afford not to spend it, but in many cases they will no longer have it to spend.
I repeat my definition of £1,000,000 (a million pounds), 'the amount an average person earns in a lifetime if he remains healthy and stays in full-time employment'.
BOOKS
For many years, well before my involvement in committee work, my only U3A activities were attendance at the Wednesday Lectures and one Activity Group. That was Mo's Reading Group1. I hoped in this way to develop a love for novels and speed reading. In both respects it was a failure, but since leaving I have read even less.
Nevertheless, armed with a couple of down loads to my newly presented Kindle, I thoroughly enjoyed two seemingly diverse books, to the extent of not wanting to put them down. The first 'Casino Capitalism' being a study, by Hans Werner Sinn a German economics expert from the University of Munich, into the roots of the world economic crisis of 2008 - not every body's idea of holiday reading! The second, which Jill Govier described in my reading group as the greatest (American?) novel of the twentieth century, 'The Grapes of Wrath' by John Steinbeck, which I first read over 50 years previously, whilst a young man living in Canada, without any of the impact it has for me today.
And the connection between the books, the dysfunctional but widely different economic conditions. In America in the 30's it describes vividly the way the 'dust bowl' caused by drought and wind resulted in the impoverishment of the subsistence farming community and their mass emigration with their last possessions across the States to California, who didn't exactly welcome the immigrants! Industrial farmers from the north bought their land at rock bottom prices. I found it a harrowing, haunting, sympathetic insight into their tragic lives.
As for the crisis caused by Casino Banking (gambling) the blame was rooted by the author firmly in the principle of Limited Liability, which stemmed from a much earlier year to support the massive risks inevitably involved in financing trading by long voyages in the sail era, and then to encourage of the development of the huge industrial enterprises of the Victorian era.
But limited liability was equally as effective in stripping the risk from today's high volume financial trading by allowing them to operate almost entirely on borrowed money with typically only 2.5% equity component covering their risk. If the firm collapsed the remaining 97.5% borrowed money was ultimately backed by the state, ie the tax payer. This allowed ever riskier financial gambling aimed at making returns typically of 25% per year for the lenders. The huge interest payments were salted away in much safer investments. So far so good, but the music stopped, panic mushroomed and they were all on the point of failing together. Only this week was it reported that JP Morgan in the States had lost 2 billion, by my reckoning the third major disaster since Nick Leeson brought down our oldest investment bank Baring's fifteen years ago. J P Morgan will be damaged like Society General but both survive to gamble again. Activities which Lord Turner of the FSA described as being of no benefit to society.
The writer Hans Werner identifies sub prime mortgages in the US market as the root of the problem. Followed by the design of toxic financial packages designed as a cleverer way to sell on mortgages, by mixing (slicing) good and bad, to provide the finance to grow the risky mortgage market. Prominent amongst those were the CDOs (collateral debt obligations) which caused so much of the trouble, which were thought to be solely packages of mortgages but also included debt of other forms, for instance credit card debts. Our own early example of a mortgage operation intent on growing ever more rapidly by selling mortgages on was the collapse of Northern Rock.
He never appears to take sides and records how the German Deutche Bank were the biggest buyer in Europe of CDOs but were sensible enough to hedge the risk by buying insurance from AIG (the giant US insurer). AIG would have collapsed had it not been deemed to be too big to fail by the US government - so that particular bill went back to the US tax payer. Nice to know that the infallible Germans bankers were lucky.
I learnt the huge difference between the US mortgage market and the European model, including ours, was the absence of risk on the part of the house buyer. American buyers on being unable to keep up with loan repayments had only to return the keys to escape all obligation. Whereas in this country a punter would remain liable for the debt remaining after the mortgage company had recovered as much as it could from sale/rent of the property. He emphasised that Presidents, including Clinton, thought that everyone should be able to take part in the house owning bonanza, regardless of means to repay a long term debt, and encouraged their inclusion.
Only in recent days have I become aware that the Spanish Banks were forbidden to buy CDOs. So, just as in the USA, Spanish banks created a sub prime mortgage industry of their own, accelerating mortgage sales regardless of the risk of there being no recoverable value in the property being built.
PERFORMING ARTS
After exposure to London, New York, Stratford Ontario Canada, even Montreal & Toronto and most surprisingly Stoke -on Trent where there was a thriving small professional theatre in the round (including Alan Ayckbourn as a young actor). On arrival in 1967 we found Swansea sadly lacking in this area. Even the Music Festival failed to attract an audience if they ventured off the popular well known classical track, one years emphasis on Mahler I recall as a flop. It has long been my hope to see Swansea competing in this area of the arts with the likes of Bristol and Bath.
To quote from the brochure produced by The Tobacco Factory 'Over the coming year public subsidy of the arts is falling fast and many arts organisations around the country are worried about their future. Bristol however is booming.'
In fact they have opened a second theatre across the road, The Brewery, and both run performances seven days a week. My especial interest is the two month long festival of Shakespeare, which is performed 'in the round' and runs eight times a week, two matinees, to full houses of just over 200 people. The standard of acting and directing are outstanding for which they get rave reviews yearly. This year the first month was King Lear and the second, departing from Shakespeare for once was Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard. However on Sundays in this period and daily for the rest of the year there is 'less highbrow' fare to rival Edinburgh but on a year round basis. Check them out on the web.
What is true of theatre in Bristol is also true of music including jazz.
Jazz is the one area where Swansea Jazzland in Saint James Crescent, Uplands, can rival their quality though only once weekly, on Wednesday evenings at 8pm.
We were amazed to find a packed enthusiastic audience at the Taliesin last week to hear Three Greats of European Swing who mixed their own compositions with those of Django Rheinhart. Perhaps 30years ago Fapy Lapertin was a yearly favourite at Swansea Jazz Club in a similarly constructed four piece (Belgian?) band called WASO consisting of Fapy and one other lead guitar plus rhythm by bass guitar and frequently one more melodic input, often on accordion or squeeze box. At last week's concert there were five, Lollo Meier on the other front line guitar and Tcha Limberger on violin plus rhythm guitar and string bass. I would there was similar audience for jazz clubs to rival that demonstrated by an almost entirely different audience for Gypsy Jazz.
I wonder for instance how many would not have enjoyed the wonderful evening with Gilad Atzmon's superb quartet at Swansea Jazzland the night before. The excellent string bass of Yaron Stavi and piano of Ross Stanley (coming back to Jazzland one Friday soon) and a young American drummer with a compelling original style making his very first appearance with the band. The best of Gilad's many performances in Swansea in my opinion.
After being part of the dismal single figure attendance in Dylan Thomas Centre a year ago for his day-long insights into Shakespeare plays, viewed from his lifetime as a director of plays, it is pleasing to record the increasingly thriving following of Peter Richards, Director of Fluellen Theatre. We had already seen, in The Arts Wing of the Grand Theatre, excellent, well attended productions in the round of Hamlet and Cymbeline. Their most recent offering was Kindertransport by Diane Samuels, in a play first performed by Soho Theatre Company in 1993 and seldom since. It was a thoroughly absorbing account from the child's eye of this process of 'saving' Jewish children from the Nazis only to endure a lifelong guilt of survival. The ending was particularly poignant as the mother of the child in question, who had survived a concentration camp, was now living in America and had at last traced her child. She came to England hoping to reclaim her now grown up daughter only to face rejection.
Whilst thinking of Shakespeare I will pass on a tip, always spend a little time researching the plot and the themes on the Internet - I find 'sparknotes' particularly helpful. A couple of days after we returned from holiday in Sri Lanka we went to the last performance of As You Like It by Clywd Theatr in the main auditorium of the Grand. We didn't take the opportunity to refresh our knowledge of the play and both struggled to follow the first act because of misidentification of the opening characters. When we arrived home we independently read through the script to sort out our problems. Act 2 was superbly funny and easy to follow. However the audience on Saturday was only about 50 people and that I gather was the best night, considerably less than Fluellen get in the Arts Wing.
It was particularly touching for me as a similarly placed girl Lisa came to our house as babysitter when I was perhaps seven and she but a few years older. My memory is of someone who would recount marvellous stories to me in bed. My younger sister also remembers her and met her recently through the Christadelphian Church, who were very active in welcoming such Jewish children and had presumably found her a home. Margaret was surprised to find her now a fully immersed baptised Christian member of that church, who in so doing had effectively renounced her birth, exactly the path of the character in the play.
Peter has been running a monthly series of lunchtime theatre at the Dylan Thomas Centre featuring and discussing a different playwright each time. The 45 minute presentations, script in hand, are made by just a few actors, usually Peter and his wife Claire plus a couple of younger actors. The next one is on Alan Bennett this Saturday 19 May at 1 pm, then Anton Chekhov and The Bear on 6 June. The sessions last an hour and cost just £5.
INDEPENDENT TRAVEL
Joan and I spent just over 30 days in Sri Lanka Feb/March. Joan and I always keep separate diaries on our travels and in the past 4 or 5 years I have done this by creating blog postings.
Since John Oats, a long standing personal friend, is to talk to the Armchair Travel Group on their visit to the same country I had been holding its release for a month or so but since the group meeting was recently postponed several weeks I am giving the link below. There are around 100 photographs which should help make up for the paucity in this posting.
http://lanka2012sri.blogspot.co.uk/
John's talk is now to take place on Friday the 22 June 2pm downstairs at Hazel Court. See you there?
