Ageing is merely a belief system says Bill

According to the Mirror Coronation Street actor Bill Roache sees ageing as a belief system.

Fit and healthy Coronation Street star Bill Roache, 86, is often asked the secret to his seemingly eternal youth. In the final extract from his new book Life and Soul, Corrie’s Ken explains how he could live to 120.

Before we look at the practical steps to wellbeing, we need to look at beliefs.

Take ageing, for example. Ageing is a belief system within the collective consciousness of humanity. It’s what we’ve collectively decided about age and what it means for our body and our lifestyle.

We don’t have to age and die at a certain time. We can extend our lifespan by pushing the parameters of the belief that we’ll only live to 70, 80 or 90 years.

I can't say it feels like that to me but perhaps I'm not a natural believer.

Stalin himself couldn’t believe it

Source

While following up this story about our shiny new F-35 fighter jets, a meandering browse ended up with this story from the dim and distant.

The Korean conflict was less than six months old on the morning of November 30, 1950, when a U.S. Air Force B-29 Superfortress, attacking an air base in North Korea, was lightly damaged by a fighter that overtook the bomber too fast for the attacker to be identified, much less for the Superfort’s gunner to fix it in the sights of his gun’s tracking system. Straight-wing Lockheed F-80 jets escorting the bomber made a token pursuit, but the accelerating fighter rapidly shrank to a dot, then disappeared...

The first jet to fly from the Mikoyan-Gurevich (MiG) Design Bureau in Moscow was a straight-wing fighter, the MiG-9. The -9’s rudimentary engines—twin BMW jet engines captured in Germany—fell short of the design bureau’s specs for the MiG-15, yet Moscow hardly possessed the expertise to build better ones. The first operational MiG-15s would instead be powered by Rolls-Royce Nene engines—marvelously innovated and cluelessly supplied by the British.

Keen to thaw Anglo-Soviet relations, British Prime Minister Clement Attlee invited Soviet scientists and engineers to the Rolls-Royce jet facility to learn how the superior British engines were made. Attlee further offered to license production to the USSR—after exacting a solemn promise that the engines would be utilized only for non-military purposes. The offer stunned the Americans, who protested loudly. And the Soviets? Russian aviation historian and Ukrainian native Ilya Grinberg says, “Stalin himself couldn’t believe it. He said, ‘Who in their right mind would sell anything like this to us?’ ”

If you are not familiar with it, the whole piece is worth reading.

Perhaps it is a reminder of how important it is to identify enemies and how reluctant our political classes are when it comes to this particular crunch point. As if they find it gauche and contrary to their cosmopolitan credentials. Defence of the realm indeed - it even sounds old fashioned. 

Arise Dame Emma

It is weird how the honours system always manages to rope in people who discredit the whole business. Perhaps it has become so profoundly discredited that nobody notices. To my mind the latest unworthy recipient is Emma Thompson, possibly the most vacuous voice in public affairs...

...hmm - on second thoughts vacuous voices make up a viciously contested field. One of the most vacuous voices in public affairs will have to do - the field is too crowded for further refinement.

A few years ago Jim Broadbent had this to say about honours.

“I’m not that comfortable with actors receiving honours, partly because I think they ought to go to those who really help others,” he says. “Besides, I like the idea of actors not being part of the Establishment. We’re vagabonds and rogues, and we’re not a part of the authorities and Establishment, really. If you mix the two together, things get blurry.”

But of course Emma Thompson is neither vagabond nor rogue. She is a part of the authorities and Establishment, really. That's the point of the honour.

Goldie on men

Sky News has an interview with Goldie Hawn in which she relates this experience - 

Hollywood actress Goldie Hawn has said she felt "very objectified" during her early career working as a go-go dancer, but will always "love and adore men".

Speaking to Sky News' Kay Burley, the Private Benjamin star, 72, reflected on the #MeToo campaign against sexual harassment in the entertainment business.

If we must use terms such as objectify or objectified then Goldie Hawn should know that men may objectify women but women also objectify themselves and always have. It is a chicken and egg dynamic where there is no point singling out men or women as the primary cause. From curls and a lace collar to high heels and skin-tight jeans, many young women objectify themselves. They know how and they know why.

It is a huge irony that the entertainment business frequently employs attractive young actresses because they are prepared to objectify themselves in pursuit of their chosen career. This is obvious to anyone who has ever watched Hollywood films. 

Who started it? Nobody started it - this is how things are. Who perpetuates it? Take a walk around the town centre on a Friday night.

Crumbling families

Mercatornet has an interesting piece on the demise of the nuclear family.

People used to lament the advent of the nuclear family because it heralded the death of the extended family. Now, according to Britain’s top family court judge, we should applaud the death of the married mum, dad and kids family norm as it dies of neglect before our eyes.

Sir James Munby, president of the High Court’s family division, is very familiar with what he calls the “complexity” of family life these days. To simplify things, he told a university audience last week, we should forget about things like marital status or who exactly a child’s parents are, and welcome the new “reality” of people living together, married or unmarried, of opposite sexes or the same, monogamous or not.

It is easy enough to see social hazards in this trend and the whole piece is well worth reading, but this comment highlights an important problem too.

Steven Meyer •

Whenever I see one of these "Ain't if awful" pieces the question that comes to my mind is "What do you suggest we do about it?"

For good or ill, norms of behviour are changing. So what should be done?

I do not see how there is any choice but to accommodate to the changes.

Indeed - what can one do other than adapt? To my mind the trend is deplorable for a number of reasons and there are sinister political aspects too, but apart from saying how deplorable it is, what is the most pragmatic response? What else can we do apart from what Mr Meyer suggests - accommodate to the changes.

Social change is a powerful beast but is anyone riding the beast? I don't think so. As intelligent beings we should be in the saddle but we are not. Nobody is. 

Laptop news, iPad news

While on holiday I tend to scan the news on our iPad rather than fire up the laptop. The iPad gives a somewhat different perspective because unlike the laptop browser, Safari on our iPad has no ad blocker.

This leads me to avoid certain news sources because they are so choked with ads that the iPad has trouble loading pages. It hammers home a message that mainstream news is mostly clickbait and for many news outlets that is all it ever is. Obvious enough but a struggling iPad certainly rubs it in.

It can be a rum business coming back home after a holiday too. Home habits reassert themselves, one of which is keeping tabs on the news after all that clickbait avoidance. Yet interest in the news is slipping away as the internet steadily widens the gap between the clamour of mainstream pap and worthwhile comment.

We seem to be in an intermediate place where powerful forces try to control our attention. It’s really rather heartening because I don’t think they know how.

Wonder Drug