Amor Fati

I like it when I can agree whole heartedly with this wayside pulpit on the Baptist Church, Cottingham Road. Usually they are just plain old fashion bunkum along the lines of "If God is your co-pilot change seats" that kind of religious twaddle. But here the message is clear and true, some things have to be believed to be seen, further, everything has to be believed to be seen. Even Science believes in the validity of sense data and the regularity of nature before it starts with its experimenting. But this is just Philosophy 101.

Some things, however, once seen are quite unbelievable. 

Take for example, the Vaccine ... soon to be rolled out and pushed into the welcoming arms of the nation. I have seen the claims made for it, I do not for one minute believe a word. Oh the company has legal immunity should it start killing, maiming or doing what rushed and untested medicines do.

Or the Virus, I have read loads of evidence, studied the procedures, looked at the "cases", the "deaths" and still I do not believe.

Or Face Nappies ...

Or Lock downs ...

Or Social Distancing ...

Or Track and Trace ... this evil device rings you up and tells you your phone has come close to another phone with the lurgy (Turn off Bluetooth! ) and so you must isolate for a fortnight, so you cancel all appointments that have taken months to arrange due the Stupidity, close your business, prepare for hard times ... only two days later Track and Trace ring to say it was all a mistake ... this is a true story. Un-f*******-believable!

Or protecting the NHS ... let me tell a harrowing tale I heard yesterday from a friend of a friend whose mother-in-law died of undiagnosed cancer week or so ago. Undiagnosed because face-to-face GP visits only happen after telephone triage and this old lady somehow failed to get through the system. Her breast cancer spread up to her shoulder and neck ... anybody out there who has read Cancer Ward by Solzhenitsyn (it's not for the faint hearted) will  know what I talking about ... Just last week I had to go through several impassible hoops to see the GP mano a mano, first I ring up, no chance of even a phone triage appointment this week, hmmph so I lay on the agony and say the magic words "official complaint" and they go off to see what they can do, meanwhile I ring the NHS Healthline (I think there were ten binary choices mostly C-19 related before I spoke to a person) and they listened and say I should see a Doc ASAP (Hah! they, however, can email the surgery with this advice) ... a while later I get a call, the Doc will call me , he does, he listens, he fixes an appointment for that very evening and the process of getting a diagnosis was started ... we all know the long term prognosis, it's just a matter of time (Tic-Toc). You can see how frail old ladies who do not know how to push and  lever the system, indeed have never needed to, will just simply die by the wayside. They probably are thinking they can just turn up at the surgery and wait as in the bad old days ... Meanwhile, I do not know anyone who has died of or with, alongside or even in the same room as Covid-19 and only know of one person who has managed to test positive with the False RT-PCR test. (His verdict is that he thought it was a bad cold and was not at all bothered about it, so why get tested? but see below about People ). This huge leap backward is going on all across the country. Unbelievable in this day and age ... but at least the NHS is being protected, Gawd bless it!

Or anything any politician says ... weasel words we expect, a year of mendacity and manipulation, illegal, illiberal seizures of our liberties deserve the attentions of a "national razor". So today (December 2) we leave a notional national lockdown (honestly has anybody paid it any attention?) to go into a Tiers system, (cue cries of "it will all end in tiers" and so on). They just changed the locks on the prison doors. We are to be in the top tier 3 based on Hull and Hereabouts having the highest "case" rate in the country (somebody has to) back in the middle of November. It matters not that now the "rate" has fallen by 40%, no that "fall" will count as the "tiers" working ... 

Ah! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira
les aristocrates à la lanterne!
Ah! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira
les aristocrates on les pendra!
 

Now where was I? Oh yes, people ...

Or people in general ... they are unbelievably gullible (I was going to say thick, yeah OK, thick will do it, stupid ...)  and victims of their own gullibility. They have the Faith, they believe in the Virus, they believe in the Test. They cry out for the Vaccine (so we are told), they believe all the precautions are vital, they demand all this and beg for more... and they will not be shaken from it.  Folk ("Wackos") like me are a threat to them somehow, we anger them because we do not share their fear. Never trust the People.

Or the Police ... no-one with an ounce of self-preservation would ever believe anything the police say. They  are too busy with fads to police the Law, allowing some demos not others, arbitrarily arresting people, illegally detaining people on their way to a demo (this seemed to shock youngsters but they would not recall the Miners' Strike back in the 80s when this was common practice) the usual garbage we come to expect from the boys in blue, at least they do not have guns or they'd shoot themselves.  Indeed, many do not even know what the Law is at present (indeed, who does?).

But now I'm rambling on and becoming like a silly old man shaking his fist at the sky ... but I've been away a while and I ain't coming back anytime soon, so ...

Or Global Warming ... 

Or Net Zero ...

Or the EU ...

Or China on the UNHRC ...(satire is long dead)

Or Biden won cleanly, fairly and legally ... it seems the wheel's still in spin on this one. I likes me a nice dirty, corrupt election, so I do. It shows where the powers really lie and clearly it's not with the electorate. But this is not my problem, so I don't care, no, really.

Or BLM ... yeah, right.

Or Antifa lalalala ... likewise.

Or Transphobia ... "people who menstruate", I mean really, come on?

Or MSM (Defund the BBC!) ...

Or adverts for coffee ... or any adverts, of course, but coffee adverts are the pits.

Or ridiculous blogs like this ... enough, let's have done with it, why keep dragging on with rubbish?

 

But fairies at the bottom of the garden are quite cute ...

A Movable Feast

The Christian festival of Easter was cancelled this year; that quasi-pagan celebration of Christ's victory over Death was put to one side because ... well no real good reason at all; Government fear of collapse of health services (that didn't happen) led to panic, scaremongering, a return to medieval thinking, mass hysteria, media bullshit reporting, misuse and abuse of statistics, you name it  and it happened this crazy year and to get out of the grave dug for us by stupid, vain politicians (who seem at least to have stopped digging) we linger in this not free transition with illiberal regulations for anti-social spacing, reservations for the pub (for Chrissake!) ... and (useless) face mask virtue signalling social tyranny. It's the control freaks' wet dream ... 

PS the church sign has been removed after so many weeks and there's talk of the place reopening with every soul isolated lest they should spread this 'germ' ... I won't ask who made this 'germ' since, well, we don't want to go down the rabbit hole of theodicy on a  cold, damp Thursday in July.

A cooling dollop of scepticism

But I'm near the end and I just ain't got the time

And I'm wasted and I can't find my way home ...

Long, long ago when that was but little tiny lad I started a course in biochemistry, at Liverpool University if you're interested which I'm sure you're not, anyhow the course involved much practical work in laboratories doing protein assays, carbohydrate assays, lipid assays, mineral assays. Measuring stuff, in short, answering that perennial question how much of what you claim to be there is actually there. Common to all these assays was preparing a calibration curve using purified protein or glucose, vitamin C, starch, NADH or whatever was on the mind of the lecturer that week. We always started with a bottle of known and measured our sample of unknown against that. It became ingrained, dinned into us: start with what you know and compare that against what you have in your hot little hand.
I relate this because it seems to me that a lot of so-called science, as reported today, skips that part of dealing with what is real and known and reaches for the computer model of how it is supposed to be, dogma has replaced experiment. This might not have been so important, reality will eventually catch up and bite these dreamers, except they have immunised themselves against reality by a wall of self-righteous indignation that reaches all the way up to and including the top levels of political and business power. The model is now emperor of all he surveys (not actually surveys since that would entail taking measurements and stuff, facts and data only get in the way)  and his clothes are a glorious array of flim-flammery and untested theory.
So with so-called man made climate change (seemingly now a way of browbeating folk into accepting expensive, windy, sunny, watery, willowy woody power generating schemes when nuclear is clearly the way to go and there's centuries' worth of nice coal under our feet) and so, more to the point with coronavirus testing.
When I read the protocol for this test back in March first thing I asked myself was where is the metaphorical bottle of purified virus that they are using for comparison, well it didn't exist then and, you know, it still doesn't these months and several million tests later. You might think that something as important as this test would at least have a so-called gold standard behind it. You'd be wrong. It has less behind it than the Wizard of Oz, it's basically an act of faith, believe in the dogma behind all this, believe in the method, in short believe in the very existence of Sars-Cov-2 or what? What is there left to believe in? It simply has to be true. This is the 'truth', the only possible 'truth' and nothing but the 'truth'.
Belief is, of course, basic to science but it has to be based on evidence, on repeatable demonstrable experience that can be refuted by experiment. In short it is based on a "bottle of known stuff" not on fanciful dogmatic delusion as seems to be the style these days.
So if you see me wandering around, too close for comfort, breaking that anti-social distancing claptrap, not wearing a silly face-nappy and laughing at poor saps who worry that their world is being ruined by alleged nanoscopic pieces of lipo-protein wrapped RNA ("that come all the way from China") that may or may not exist well now you know why. Three years of scientific training and three more years of postgraduate research (or paid fun as I recall) and years of watching that old handcart roll on down the path to who knows where have left me deeply scarred with what are now old man's doubts. 

Post hoc ergo propter hoc

"It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled."     

                                                                                                      Mark Twain

We are told that the Fat Controller will be making an announcement on Sunday that might be the beginning of the end (or as he will no doubt phrase it the end of the beginning) of the house arrest phase of the great economic crash of 2020. The narrative all along has been to lock folk up to protect the NHS (and save lives as well it's just that that didn't work out so well, nor could it as we'll see). You can see how proud some folk are, nay not just proud but utterly convinced that their weeks of home confinement have somehow saved the NHS. But as any first grader could tell them this is delusion. There is no evidence to prove this nor can there be. There is no evidence that weeks of watching Netflix or whatever has saved a single life. No evidence for that but plenty that the whole thing has been a colossal wrecking job on the economy and the health and wealth of millions. The figures show that deaths linked to Covid-19 peaked on April 8 which means given accepted incubation periods that infections peaked before the lockdown came into force. Other evidence has demonstrated that the infection rate, the infamous R₀ had fallen below 1 before the lockdown. It appears that the campaign of hand washing and mild social distancing had done the job of killing off whatever was causing the infections but I couldn't say that for sure since I'm not going to ascribe effects to causes; that's not my job. 
No that silly mistake will be left to ministers, politicians, and the media who all should know better, and the vast majority of people who can know no better. They will claim that their sacrifice has paid off, that though thousands have died the totals were nowhere near those of the model produced by the now utterly discredited lockdown lothario Professor Ferguson of Imperial College, London. (I've read that other models elsewhere were equally stupid and subject to constant revision as the figures failed to rise but the Imperial College model was the one used here and it has been found to be a school boy joke riddled with amateur errors and produces utter rubbish, garbage.). They will gloss over the rise in excess deaths that cannot be ascribed to Covid-19 even with directives from Government to be as widespread and liberal as possible in ascribing cause of death to Covid-19. People are dying with Covid-19 who have never been tested, any old person dying with pneumonia has Covid-19 tacked onto the death certificate nolens volens. Which of course means the figures are unreliable and exaggerated.
As to the actual test, what can anyone say, that is anyone with a modicum of scientific knowledge of how things should be done. In the absence of any purified virus to compare assays against a huge leap of faith has been made that the results obtained after complicated manipulation of the sample of snot obtained by ramming a cotton bud up the patients nose (RNA extraction and reverse transcriptase, and multiple though variable amounts of DNA multiplication treatments) actually represent a link to the alleged culprit virus Covid-19. Though thousands of tests have been carried out no-one can say for sure they have measured anything real at all. It's all as I say reliant on believing the method to be infallible despite numerous reports of 80% false positives and almost as many false negatives. A reasonable person, never mind one with a PhD in Biotechnology (OK that's me, you can call me Dr Bill from now on ...), might be led to say the test was not fit for purpose.
So dear reader the shore is in sight... we will be told that all our suffering was worth it but we must not let down our guard (against what? The wizard of Oz? surely not Covid-19 which has peaked, is very uninfectious and has a mortality roughly that of flu, which we annually ignore though thousands die with it), that the Government's actions have been effective (post hoc ergo propter hoc gets 'em every time), that the Fat Controller walks on water (but keeps his distance). We will in short be lied to again and do you know what the lie will be swallowed (yum, yum it's just what they long to hear) and folk will go out tonight and applaud themselves like performing seals but there's more than a faint aroma of foul treachery in the air.

Family Fun

On my way back from the shops I stopped to take a picture of the setting sun and the trees on Cottingham Road and this family of cyclists came from out of nowhere and were gone before I could thank them for making the scene just a little bit more interesting.

I've posted from roughly this spot before; it's five minutes from home.

... to look at things in bloom

On this fine April Saturday, whilst the dead Christ is allegedly off on the harrowing of Hull, I thought some cheery blossom would be apt. Nobody has ever put cherry blossom and Easter together before, have they?

Oh very well then, if you must ...

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

Is hung with bloom along the bough,

And stands about the woodland ride

Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,

Twenty will not come again,

And take from seventy springs a score,

It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom

Fifty springs are little room,

About the woodlands I will go

To see the cherry hung with snow.

                                    

                                  A. E Houseman  A Shropshire Lad

A Darkness at Noon

A storm in February used to pass by unnoticed, it was the kind of thing you expect, happened every year, through out autumn and winter we'd have storm after storm. A few dustbins would get blown over, maybe a tree or two, a power outage ( to use the American term) was not unknown. But it was winter, you expected it and got on with stuff. Nowadays everything has to have some malign anthropogenic cause and we'd better beat ourselves with birches until we come to our senses and/or die and leave the planet to all those cuddly animals and nice trees and flowers and grasses ... The chiliastic numpties gather in their covens and murmur misanthropic millennial doom and say we must expect these "extreme weather events" even more frequently now that there's so many people on the earth all making nasty carbon dioxide. They are, as I've said before, quite mad and completely wrong: we have fewer storms these days ... but mere facts never faze a craze.

Also crazy is giving these passing Atlantic depressions names: today's puny effort has the name Ciara which means "dark haired"; apt given that it was getting quite pitchy at just gone noon when I took my photo coming back from Tesco.

My bin blew over (almost!) , we must expect more events like this ... We shall rebuild! I don't know if the trauma will ever  leave me.

Uniform Rip Off

A strange thing today on the local TV news; a Labour MP calling for more competition and openness in business: the business, that is, of selling school uniforms. A fine scam this; where a school is legally allowed to demand its pupils wear the school uniform (I'm not happy about even this but there's more...) and then demand that the uniform is bought from a particular shop or supplier. The school having a deal with said shop is, of course, profiting from its own regulations... Naturally such a practice, enforced monopoly, acts to no-one's benefit but the school and the shop. Many poor parents are finding uniforms prohibitively expensive (for each child between £255 for primary school and £340 for secondary school; that's per year ...I'm sure you'll agree this is  absolutely ridiculous! ) and this restricts their children attending the appropriate school. Simply buying a cheap uniform and stitching the school badge (as my mother did for me way back when I went to school) is not good enough for the money grubbing school who now require the school logo on socks! on blazers, on trousers! probably on the underpants ...

By way of a reaction to these scandalous practices and high prices a system of recycling uniforms (called Re: Uniform) has sprung up centred here at the Methodist Church on Cottingham Road/Newland Avenue. 

So a bill is being presented today in Parliament, the Education (Guidance about Costs of School Uniforms) Bill, I think every parent in the land will be wishing it to pass ...

Bonsoir old thing, cheerio! chin chin!

Two score and seven years ago our fathers dragged us into a Continent, conceived in Error, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created European...

Three years and seven months after a majority voted to leave the EU the UK is now, at 11 pm January 31st 2020,  leaving that damned institution. There will be muted celebrations I expect, this is the way things are done here not with a bang but a whimper. Still, a Brexit Party house just a few doors down is putting out the flags in a show of Union rags to put the Mall in London to shame. Now I wouldn't want you to confuse me with those sentiments. I wouldn't have that Butcher's Apron on my property. I wanted to leave the EU but I'm no mad British Bulldog patriot, je ne suis pas un rosbif! I do not feel particularly British or English (I've never, ever felt European, I don't know what it means to feel such a thing, it's an invented identity that has no history or meaning) I'm just a Hartlepool lad a long way from home ... but I digress, anyway I had no choice in the matter, ma and pa just left me here to sing my song. No. I just want this country to be responsible for its own mistakes and its own successes like any other independent state. Make our own laws, pay our own taxes, spend our taxes as we see fit, trade freely with whoever will trade with us, kick out the bastards in our Parliament every now and then and make our government humble and sore afraid of the people. Not too much to ask, I think, just some basic independence.

It might be thought appropriate here to say that I wish the EU well without us ... well no, sod 'em, if you'll pardon my French... They and their vocal friends in this country have done their best to delay, thwart and obstruct the will of the majority. They are dangerously antidemocratic. This is absolutely unforgivable and will be their downfall. They still think they have some right not to have their noses rubbed in their defeat. I sincerely hope the sensitive souls are suffering. I look to the rise of other successful Leave parties across the states that remain trapped in the humourless and historic absurdity that is the European Union. This will no doubt happen but vita summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam ... 

“The lips of the tyrants are trembling and pale, 

In dismay they are dreading the shock, 

Of the millions who, bold in the truth of their cause, 

Are as strong as the adamant rock!”

The weekend in black and white is here.

A foggy day ...

... makes a nice change from a rainy day.

Leaf Fall

A little seasonal colour here on Cottingham Road, near the University.

King George's Field

"To promote and to assist in the establishment throughout the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland of playing fields for the use and enjoyment of the people."

When George V died in 1936 some folk wanted to have a memorial that was a bit more useful than yet another statue and came up with the fine idea of recreation fields. The entrance to each field (and there are 471 of them dotted around the UK ) has to have these "heraldic panels or other appropriate tablet medallion or inscription commemorative of His Late Majesty". I read they were supposed to be in carved stone or cast in metal but these seem to be shall we say concrete castings and a little the worse for wear. Never mind, we struggle on. (Something else I discovered in reading about this is that in Scotland they too have a lion and a unicorn but the unicorn, which after all  represents Scotland in this heraldic nonsense, is on the left post and has a crown. I find this differentiation somehow quite petty and pleasing at the same time.)

This particular field is between Cottingham Road and Inglemire Lane close by the University and I have, over the past thirty odd years, walked by thousands of times without entering. That is until yesterday when we went to have a little look see. It is down a neat tree lined lane and is just a big playing field with a few swings and things. But plenty of folk were using it either walking the dog, mucking about or kicking a ball and that's the main thing I guess. I just wonder if anybody remembers poor old Georgey.

Red Light District

Picture by Margot K Juby

September's theme day for City Daily Photo is here.

The Old Grey Mare

What can I say about this pub that's right outside the entrance to the university? Well first off, when I came to Hull it was not a pub at all but a hotel, the Newland Park Hotel, indeed I spent one night there before being interviewed for a job at the Uni. There was bar then, the size of a small front parlour with three or four armchairs, all very cosy. Margot informs me that members of staff at the Uni would go there to hide from students ... Now the bar or bars extend across the whole ground floor.

Anyway I got the job and worked there (if that is the word) for a few months. One morning on my way in I witnessed a nasty accident on Cottingham Road close by this spot, a young woman was hit by a speeding van ... all very nasty. 

So then some years later I read a really badly written book by Peter James, I think it was called Possession or some such, about well, ghostly possession if you will. Thankfully I've forgotten most of the ridiculous plot, what there was of it, except the part where someone gets run over right outside this building by a speeding lorry if I'm not being too fanciful. 

So nowadays, I'm always very careful when crossing Cottingham Road ...

Here's a quite gratuitous photo of Cottingham Road, looks kind of innocuous don't it?

Meet the neighbours

I don't know about you but I often watch adverts and wonder what mind altering substance was involved in their creation. So it is with this beguiling invitation for a student accommodation business near the University. What were they taking? And can I have some?

Margot took this delightful photo.

Get out and give it a push

Oh the modern car is a wondrous thing with its  fuel economy engines, air bags, sat navs, and all the latest technology gizmos. But when it breaks down it's just two tons of scrap blocking the road.

Old Chestnuts

It's that time of year when the Horse Chestnut trees send forth their floral delights. These contrasting specimens are on the corner of Newland Avenue and Cottingham Road but you can find them spread all over town. Only the white ones produce conkers of any usable size. For some unfathomable reason these are sometimes known as Buckeyes in America ... there's even a fetid buckeye which sounds truly delightful.

Margot took this.

One of ten

I was on my way to the doctors surgery (nothing serious, just some paper work) yesterday when I spotted this new addition to the University. Naturally I didn't have a camera but Margot had fortunately brought along the old Fuji. Then I remembered reading about some ten statues being added to the campus all by Icelandic sculptor Steinunn Thorarinsdottir she of the leaning figure Voyage down by the river (1 2 3 4 and 5). So I made a mental note to pop back and seek out the others at a later date. If you can't wait the local rag has kindly made a short film (with obligatory irritating music) about them here if nothing else it shows you the University campus in all its glory ...

Pick a colour, any colour

What it's got to do with culture I don't know but if you fancy picking the world's favourite colour then head on over to this site and waste a few minutes of your precious time choosing a suitable shade. I believe there's a prize for the winner although I've always been a bit hazy on the concept of winning so I can't be sure. It's actually a cunning piece of market research by a paper manufacturer (who just happens to be a sponsor of the City of Culture) but who cares these days?
This tosh is at the same place as the vacuous nonsense I posted earlier this year and is clearly reaching the exacting standards of culture demanded in this town. I expect there'll be more delights.

Five minutes

Walking along Cottingham Road when I get to this point I know it's just five minutes to go and then I'm home to put my feet up and have a nice cup of tea.