Scotland oil refinery shutdown: gristly interesting.

Watching how this pans out should be a giggle. The staff of this refinery are going on strike for 48 hours. It is one of nine plants in the UK that refines crude oil, which it supplies to Scotland and the north of England.

You can’t just flick a switch and put a refinery on standby, shutdown is a length process so people who know estimate that fuel supplies may be interrupted for a month, fuel shortages may ensue. There have already been warnings not to panic-buy. Watching how this affects us maygive some clues (and to the dimwits in Government) and lessons to how we’d cope should something like a human flu pandemic strike. (Which is not a question of if, it’s when.) If queues develop at petrol stations, supermarkets find themselves short of food, scuffles break out over loaves of bread (I saw that happen in the last fuel strikes: Tesco, Bedford) then it’s an early warning flag that society as she currently is wrote is not resilient enough to withstand a shock that disrupts supply chains. I suspect our society is a lot more fragile than we would like to believe, and its real vulnerability is fuel supply. If a two-day strike disrupts production for a month, what happens if H5N1 (or one of its as yet unknown cousins) does a 1918 and puts 25% of the population in their beds and 5% in their graves. We are nation of media-driven hysterics now, how many will turn out to keep the home refineries burning in a pandemic?

We depend on oil a shitload for our just in time delivery lifestyles, and for the basics. This next month is going to be an interesting little study. I hope politicians with some vision are in the classroom.

Humanism to be taught in British schools.

As part of a GCSE (examined at 16)…wait for it….religion course, reports The Times.

OK, good that teens will be taught that there is a secular philosophical alternative to religion of any kidney.  But as part of a religion course?  Maybe partly in a religion course but developed more in a course that teaches kids to think critically about the world around them.

Maddie and Laura’s flowershop

The entrepreneurial spirit of Britain has not yet completely been snuffed out by the shysters in Government assembled if this is anything to go by. Walking back from my lunchtime naturalizing on the beach I was hustled very hard by a pair of young saleswomen: all of 4 and 2 (ish). They had a collection of shells, pebbles, a piece of fishing line (’that’s valuable! You can tie things with it!) and some flowers displayed on the wall of grandad’s cottage.

I emptied my pockets to prove I had no money to exchange for a piece of rosemary, but promised to provide some fossils for when the shop reopens when next they visit from London. I had a very pleasant chat with these two, and in more innocent times I might have be able to photograph the shop staff, too. Not these days, not even in a small Yorkshire village. As I left, the senior partner told me that I could always come back with the money - they were staying until after dinner - with all the joy of one for whom a 3 mile walk, doing a quarter mile one in four hill twice on that round trip means nothing. If in 20 years time you’re approached for venture capital by Laura and Maddie, I’d invest. Mustard.

Hinderwell Parish Council: today’s news from the beach.

Dogshit: none. Dogfights: none. Children being savaged by dogs: none. (The Parish Council are contemplating banning letting free range dogs on the beach). People with dogs enjoying themselves: plenty. Dogs enjoying themselves: plenty. Fishing line collected from the beach in 40 minutes: have a look. The book is there for comparison purposes, in case you - the Council - are having a thicker than average day. The beach was just strewn with crap: so instead of persecuting dog walkers, why not organize a monthly beach clean up? Call for volunteers, provide gloves and sacks, 90 minutes picking up crap, beer and barbie afterwards.
I’m not tagging this ‘municipal dickheads’ yet, because you have the chance to redeem yourselves and back down.

Pharyngula’d again.

That’s twice in a month, lately here about this piece, about a resurrected Charles Darwin seeing the replica HMS Beagle.

Come literary agents, ask what I have to offer (actually I sent one of you a chapter a while ago, three chapters and a synopsis being finished for the next) if I can resurrect Charles Darwin a la Baron Frankenstein just think what twisted fictional delights lie in wait for your lists. 25 million people have visited Pharyngula, how’s that for healthy eyeballage?

The Northern Chamber Orchestra

came to Whitby last night. To play, you understand, not for fish and chips. And superb they were too. We get orchestras about three times a year (usually the Northern Sinfonia or the Manchester Camerata) but the NCO were a new act. And after hearing them play Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme, a piece by Lars Eric Larssen and Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony they can come back anytime. The programme opened with three pieces played by Scarborough Area Schools Youth Orchestra which has improved immeasurably since I committed crimes against music in their ranks.

Then came the pros: their chosen cellist for the Tchaikovsky had fallen ill, but the replacement was astonishingly good. I’d forgotten how lovely Tchaikovsky could be, despite having to study him (to no good point) for my music ‘o’ level. But the main course was Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony in B flat. As director Nicholas Ward said in his intro, this one is often overshadowed by Beethoven’s great odd-number symphonies - 3 (the Eroica), 5, 7 and 9 the Choral. It’s our loss because the 4th is no less of a masterpiece.

A performance of a symphony is one of the things that sets us apart from the beasts. Sometimes I listen to a Beethoven symphony and follow the score for fun. Simply composing such a thing is a work of genius: listening to a dozen violins playing one of Beethoven’s frantic passages and each hitting the notes dead on pitch and true to a tenth, a twentieth of a second is an astonishing feat. The first bassoonist was as cool as polar bear shit. I’m glad they made the trip across the Pennines, and hope we’ll see them again.

However, I’d like to apologize to them for the venue: Whitby Pavillion is a disgrace. It should be dynamited and the rubble dumped miles out to sea along with the mangled remains of the people on Scarborough Council who thought this stretch of wonderful coast would be improved by shoving a B&Q style shed on a derelict ugly old building. The hall acoustics are awful. Panels are missing from the ceiling, the lighting is harsh, the air conditions adds a sotto voce roar to the quiet passages of music. The decor is tatty, stray wires dangle, there are no dressing rooms, merely a screened-off area where performers huddle. For some reason a large film screen, useless to the orchestra, dominated the hall. In the foyer, staff crash around and talk during the performance, denizens of the 1940’s weekend make more noise. It has less atmosphere than the moon. It’s a dump. It has the most magnificent views over the sea, the beach and piers, it should be an ornament to the coast, it should have wonderful acoustics and be a place alive with atmosphere where you can’t wait to come back. I’ve been in toilets in communist East Germany with more charm.

The interval tea, for which someone had the gall to charge, was an offence before God and man. Disgusting. There is no excuse for bad tea except buying cheap ingredients and employing staff who don’t give a shit about customer service. And that’s not an excuse, it’s some providing poor service on our council tax and someone needs doing for treating the public who pay their wages with such indifference. Whitby Pavilion is an example of Scarborough Borough Council at its very worst.

But apart from that, I hope the Northern Chamber Orchestra comes back soon. Go browse their recordings and support this fine northern orchestra here.Director Nicholas Ward (right) and some of the NCO after the performance of Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony.

Hurrah to the South African dockers

refusing to unload Chinese arms destined for Zimbabwe. If only their idiot of a dictator-appeasing President Thabo Mbeki would grow a backbone and tell Mugabe to shove off.

Mbeki’s arseholing to Mugabe is a bit of a disappointment to those of us who spent a lot on glue* in the 80s, campaiging against Apartheid.

*Barclay’s autobanks.

Gordon Brown,

you’re no JFK.

I can only assume that in writing this the BBC Political Editor had been caught in possession of amounts of irony illegal in the USA, and was ordered to export some back to the UK without delay.

Snobby BBC Today today.

Talking about ‘belly pork and mackerel’, cheaper ingredients appearing on restaurant menus because the economy is slowing down. Cheeky metropolitan landbound gobshites. Mackerel is the finest fish there is: fresh from the sea, biffed on the head, gutted (sorry, but food does not come dead and plastic-wrapped in real life) and slapped straight on the barbecue on beach or boat there is nothing finer in the world. Halibut, monkfish, seabass, tuna, swordfish with any jus, garnish, herb crust or veloute (whatever the hell one of those is) you can imagine are poor john in comparison to a fresh, barbecued mackerel.

A hooked mackerel fights hard, too and often shakes the hook and gets away. I always release more than I keep, and delight in seeing their metallic green and black bodies pelt into the depths to rejoin the shoal. Taking a boat out and catching and cooking your own mackerel lunch is one of the many great joys of living by the sea.

Someone else will have to defend the virtues of belly pork. A guest blog by Osama bin Laden on the subject would be a knockout.

Volkswagen: sponsors of the Beijing olympics.

So they’re not getting any more of our money. I don’t like businesses that suck up to genocidal regimes for commercial gain. Our family’s first car I can remember was a VW Beetle (light blue) LNA 106G. Then there was the Golf. The Polo. The Passat. The Minibus. The next Polo. Now my disabled foster sister needs a new car. The local VW dealership has been fine in the past and VWs have been perfectly acceptable vehicles (if a little dour inside) and we liked the look of a VW. But we don’t support businesses which support murderous Tibet occupying human rights abusing freedom of speech denying totalitarian regimes. Like China.

So, VW from a lifelong VW buyer and driver: fuck off. Not another car, not another penny. And your latest Golf advert irritates the hairy tits off me. So fuck a bit further off.