Lost bomber

We were walking in the vicinity of Ecclesbourne Valley today, well-known locally for its heritage railway. The area is mostly rolling farmland rather than the limestone hills we prefer, but pleasant walking on a lovely sunny day.

Not far from the path on Bullhurst Hill is a memorial to the crew of a Whitley Mk V twin-engined bomber which crashed there in 1944. It's a sombre sight set in a large field with no obvious reason why the aircraft might have crashed. A reminder of just how young the airmen were too. From Peak District Air Accident Research

The crew had flown a night cross country navigation flight and were returning to their home base at Ashbourne when the aircraft dived into the ground only a few miles short.

Following the crash three of the crew could not be accounted for and were assumed by No.42 OTU to have "disappeared with the aircraft which went fifteen feet into the ground". On the 1st August the vicar of St Saviour church in Ashbourne, Canon Farrow, took the memorial service for those who had died after which he held a committal service at the crash site.

Sgt William Smith was buried at Ashbourne cemetery only a few miles from the crash site and Sgt Maurice Lyon was buried at St Helens Cemetery in Lancashire.

Victorian poverty

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From the BBC we hear that teachers are concerned about Victorian poverty in our inner cities.

Teachers say they are seeing "Victorian conditions" with pupils arriving at school hungry and not wearing the right clothes needed for the weather.

"Children in 2015 should not be hungry and coming to school with no socks on and no coats - some children are living in Victorian conditions - in the inner cities," said one unnamed teacher.

It is not easy to be sceptical about hardship even when we know how often it is used to press home a political agenda, even when the story emerges within weeks of a general election. As a society we have largely expunged the unemotional in favour of the emotional - hence the exaggeration. 

So here is a description of genuine Victorian poverty from a writer who actually knew.

Starving boys and girls lurked among the costermongers' barrows, and begged piteously on pretence of selling cigar-lights and comic songs. Furious women stood at the doors of public-houses, and railed on their drunken husbands for spending the house-money in gin. A thicker crowd, towards the middle of the street, poured in and out at the door of a cookshop. Here the people presented a less terrible spectacle—they were even touching to see.

These were the patient poor, who bought hot morsels of sheep's heart and liver at a penny an ounce, with lamentable little mouthfuls of peas-pudding, greens, and potatoes at a halfpenny each. Pale children in corners supped on penny basins of soup, and looked with hungry admiration at their enviable neighbours who could afford to buy stewed eels for twopence.

Wilkie Collins – The Fallen Leaves (1879)

A strange, subterranean battle

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Every now and them something bright, clean and optimistic seems to show itself through the shifting fogs of repressive nonsense. Sometimes the ugly honking of professional liars dies down. For a while real life takes over. As it should of course.

It has become so easy to ignore the liars and find things out for ourselves. Or at least identify those many areas of uncertainty which the liars claim to be certain. Isn’t it easy to find worthwhile comment on virtually any issue? Isn’t it noticeable how rarely many of us go to the mainstream media for worthwhile comment?

So what does it all mean?

I don’t know.

Then what is the point of this post?

Simple – you can go elsewhere can’t you? Click. I am not a guru and neither are you. We don’t need them do we - you and I?

That’s the point – we are breeding vast numbers of savvy people, far more than we ever had before. Folk who don’t always have the facts and the arguments at their fingertips, but in one sense they know far more than most people knew only twenty years ago. Not only that, but they know how to flesh out anything of interest with a click or two.

This quiet upheaval seems to have upset the old paternalistic way of doing things, the assumptions about managing people, about politics, democracy, who tells and who listens. Who tells these days? Who listens?

Old style class rule with its unidirectional media cannot deal with it. Millions of savvy people are now collectively smarter than the elites because they are connected, interested, experienced and capable. The elites don’t have time to be interested or capable. They only have time to suck the teat of their sponsors. They think savvy can be dealt with by opinion surveys.

They muddle through by listening to a host of special advisers who do have the time to become passably savvy, but there are only a few of them while there are vast numbers of savvy folk out there – a host of virtual polymaths unrestricted by national boundaries.

Out there on the web are millions of years of personal experience. Think about that for a moment – millions of years of personal experience all available for sharing.

The old ways are creaking and the elites and their sponsors are furiously attempting to wind back the clock with a plethora of prohibitions, narratives, entertainments and controlling policies. Anything to keep the virtual polymaths at bay. It’s a strange, subterranean battle.

Favouring shadows

There is sometimes in the social order a favouring shadow thrown over iniquitous trades, in which they thrive.

Victor Hugo - L'Homme qui rit (1869)

Once one sets out to identify modern iniquitous trades and their favouring shadows, the sheer number of them becomes a little daunting. It isn't merely trade either. All professions cast their favouring shadows as a matter of policy, often sheltering charlatans and bunglers as a matter of policy too.

One might begin with banking, many national charities, professional sport, the IOC, climatologists, wind turbine subsidy-seekers and so on, but the list soon becomes overwhelming and ethically complex. The trade in health nostrums from pharmaceuticals to herbal remedies for example.

When I first envisaged this post, I thought a modern list might short. It isn’t.

An utterly unstable line of conduct

In the past, and in no very distant past, the action of governments and the influence of a few writers and a very small number of newspapers constituted the real reflectors of public opinion. To-day the writers have lost all influence, and the newspapers only reflect opinion. As for statesmen, far from directing opinion, their only endeavour is to follow it. They have a dread of opinion, which amounts at times to terror, and causes them to adopt an utterly unstable line of conduct.

Gustave Le Bon - The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895)

An utterly unstable line of conduct eh? That's encouraging isn't it?

UFO

We've whizzed off for a short break where WiFi may or may not be usable, so blogging may or may not be light for a few days.

Tories to give away free building plots

David Cameron has pledged a free building plot for all first time buyers if he wins the general election. Each plot will have unrestricted planning permission too, a radical departure from UK planning regulations.

As Mr Cameron said to cheering supporters at a party rally in Sheringham. 

We are the party of home ownership. Make no doubt about it, this new offer applies to all first time buyers. It is our way of giving you your place on the property ladder.

Situated on Mars, each plot will include a Certificate of Authenticity with deckled edges. A small annual holding fee will be payable to Political Pledges LLP in the Cayman Islands.