D Kendall

I’m trying to read fewer books that I agree with as I think it’s healthier for the intellect to have to struggle to understand alien arguments than to be lulled by the apparently reasonable. However, I had to make an exception for Phillip McCann’s recent work “The UK Regional-National Economic Problem. Geography, globalization and governance” (Routledge/Regional Studies Association). It expresses succinctly many of the ideas that I’ve dimly perceived and confirms my feeling that the lack of ability to explain what was actually happening in the UK was an important ingredient in the successful defrauding of the periphery by the Brexiteers. It’s a bit of a struggle as it’s quite dense and I only have an electronic copy on my mobile (the hardback is four times as expensive) but I am plodding through it.

A few quotes from the introductory summary to provide a taste of the work

“The  UK economy is internally not only diverging but it is now disconnecting, decoupling and dislocating into two or possibly three quite separate economies….While London and its hinterland regions perform strongly, almost half of the UK population live in regions and cities whose productivity is similar to, or even below, that of the poorer regions of the former East Germany and weaker than many regions even in the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia….At the same time, the overly centralised UK government system has not only failed to respond to this dislocating and decoupling for many years but in some ways has acted so as to exacerbate this”.

“The weak long run productivity performance of the UK is largely a result of the fact that productivity benefits do not spread across the country but remain largely localized in the south generating large interregional inequalities.”

“…large sections of the UK media and political circles appear to be largely unaware of where the UK as a whole actually sits in international rankings in terms of economic prosperity…much of the reason for this is that the UK media and political circles are dominated by the day to day experience of London and its hinterland, and, as such, the media and political circles frame discussions of these issues entirely with a London-specific backdrop, one which is not even approximately reflective of the UK as a whole.”

… “At the same time, the rest of the UK is relatively much more dependent on trade with Europe than is London, which is rather more global in its economic orientation”.

It’s well worth reading (I suspect there will be a cheaper paperback in the course of time). It feels as if one should have been reading much more about Britain much earlier in one’s life. Perhaps a case of Minerva’s owl flying out at dusk – flapping around a bit in front of her nest anyway..

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Speedwell/Veronica

The name “speedwell” has appealed to me from our first acquaintance but I haven’t known much about it before. I now know that the attractive blue and yellow flower on Kungshatt lawn is Speedwell, also known as Veronica (one of a multitude from Veronica abyssinica to zygantha).

The name Speedwell reputedly derives from the flower rapidly losing its petals once plucked (not so beautiful…). Scrophulariaceae, the species Veronica was traditionally attributed to, is ugly (now changed as the attribution was found to be grossly polyphyletic, in lay language appearing similar but not having a common ancestor). Nor is it easy to be thrilled by its rhizomatous reproduction (sprouts from the root) or that it is Draadereprijs in the Netherlands and Faden-Ehrenpris in Germany. But I still like the name and flower and my passage across the lawn will be a tad closer to the divine.

Veronica has more of a history, extending back to the woman who mopped the fallen Christ’s face on the road to Golgotha, she being named in the apocryphal gospel of Nicolaus, single source of not a few biblical names (Berenike in Greek). The naming is disputed as Veronica could be interpreted as Vero ikon – the true icon. Apocryphal or not, the cloth with the image of Christ is claimed as one of the Vatican’s most treasured possessions. A popular story, there are Catholic churches dedicated to Veronica (in the US, among other places) although I haven’t come across any Protestant churches so named. There is also a St Veronica of Milan in the 1400s. I haven’t found out how the name became entwined with the flower, although it does bear the nickname “Angel’s eyes”.

The symbol of St Veronica (the biblical, also patron saint of photographers and laundry workers) is the veil bearing the face of Christ and the crown of thorns. There are references to her feast day being 12 July and her being venerated on Shrove Tuesday (movable date). I need to check the difference between a Saint’s feast day and the day of veneration.

Odd bits of information which I’m glad to have

The names of large wine bottles are amusing. Up to Nebuchadnezzar, the terminology seems stabilised. I’m uncertain about the status of the terms for 24 litres and upwards. There is a reference to these names in early nineteenth century dictionaries but no clarity about the origin of the names or why biblical kings were chosen.

To toast someone using the larger bottles, you’d need a fork-lift truck! Perhaps not so strange that the terminology got a bit hazy if the choice of terminology took place while imbibing the contents….

Name of bottle

Magnum (1.5 L, 2 standard bottles)

Double magnum (3.0 L, 4 sb)

Jeroboam (sparkling wine) (3.0 L, 4 sb)

Jeroboam (still wine) (4.5 L,  6 sb)

Rehoboam (champagne) (4.5 L, 6 sb)

Imperial (6.0 L, 8 sb)

Methuselah  (sparkling wine) (6.0 L, 8 sb)

Salmanazar (9.0 L, 12 sb)

Balthazar (12.0 L, 16 sb)

Nebuchadnezzar (15.0 L, 20 sb)

———————————

Melchior   (24 sb)

Solomon  (28 sb)

Primat  (36 sb)

Melchizedeh  (40 sb)

”weird” is a wonderful word. According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, it’s derived from the Old English “wyrd”, meaning “destiny”, “fate” or in the plural “the fates”.

Wondering about the name of the storm “Urd” brought me to the Norns, Urd (according to Wikipedia) representing the past and controlling the destinies of people together with the other two norns, Skuld and Verdandi. “Urd” is glossed with “wyrd”.

“wyrd” had become obsolete in English but survived in Scotland. Shakespeare used it for the “weird sisters” (witches) in Macbeth and it later obtained the sense of very strange, supernatural, uncanny in English. My Scots-English dictionary still lists “weird” as also having the meaning of “destiny” or “fate”. The same word is relating to the verb “werden” in German.  I like the word a lot now that I know it better.

The whole area of obsolete words and, in particular, why words become obsolete interests me. I would like to find an academic study which attempts to categorise different ways to obsolescence. Sometimes, for instance, reality changes and a phenomenon no longer exists or exists only as a narrow use technical term (for instance, a lot of vocabulary relating to various kinds of horse-drawn vehicles). Or political and cultural changes occur, an example being the wealth of words from India, which made their way into (and in many cases out of) English, so that “thug” is well established (aided and abetted by sub-variants of our national character unfortunately) but “tiffin” and “memsahib” are becoming rather rare not to mention “burra-beebee” (an Anglo Indian lady claiming precedence at a party, which became sufficiently well established in English in days of yore for Viscountess Falkland to refer to “burra-bibiship”).

Another interesting topical word is “merry”. In my youth, it was widely used as a synonym for “tipsy” (perhaps slightly tipsy) but I can’t hear myself or younger generation(s) using it in this sense.

There’s “merry-go-round” but my feeling is that the US “carousel” is taking over in the UK too. And it survives too in “playing merry hell”. And Robin Hood’s merry men perhaps. But there’s something Dickensian, red faced whiskered and jolly about a social gathering being merry.

The word’s survival is powerfully aided, of course, by “Merry Christmas”, which we write as it seems a bit monotonous to say “Happy Christmas” and a “Happy New Year” so Merry survives in the combination but my impression is that “Happy Christmas” is increasingly the normal greeting when used by itself.

“Merry” is an old word also going back to Anglo-Saxon and older variants of German. It has also given us the related “mirth”. But somehow being merry is not very chic, neither in the form of ordinary nor alcohol-induced happiness. The word has rather gone out of fashion, which is another interesting category.

Words tell us a lot about a culture, what you can say, what people felt they needed to say. The Anglo-Saxons, for instance, had “leodbygen” (sale of one’s compatriots), which has rather dropped out of use (temporarily?). Words are weird and wonderful. I love them.

My earliest memories of India are being given a blank map of the world and instructed to colour the countries of the Commonwealth red. It was really Burma that was the problem, giving me the experience of knowing I was being dishonest but wielding my crayon anyway.

And then there was Kipling, stories of life in India and various words in the language of Indian origin.

The early 1950s saw bold talk of New Elizabethans. I remember patriotic Christmas presents relating to the coronation of Elizabeth II with pictures of various exotic types waving to the crowd and beaming with gratitude for the bounty of Britannia.

I wasn’t encouraged to think about why this small island off the coast of Europe should control such vast areas or what we had done or were doing and to whom or whether this was right.

I have a memory from the age of six of sitting on our living room floor in front of the gas fire trying to decide whether I was sad or not because of the death of George VI. I am rather proud of this but a few more years were to elapse before I started to think critically about our role in the world.

There was an ex-Army man in my Somerset village whose house was full of things Indian. And then University and the 1960s and stories of travels to India via Istanbul and Afghanistan for incredibly small amounts of money. I tried this in July 1972 with my then girlfriend from Ecuador – we got as far as Teheran before our even smaller amount of money made a return to Europe advisable. Knowing what I now know about the Indian climate, this was fortunate….

Over a quarter of a century was to pass before I actually got there for a month. It was like discovering a new room or rather floor of one’s house, a fascinating combination of the familiar and exotic. Unexpectedly accessible because of the widespread use of English. And so much of interest to learn about the languages (including Indian English), Hinduism (to understand quasi-polytheistic Christian culture better in the light of an avowedly polytheist religion), literature and history.  I read intensively but slowed down after a few months as other projects demanded attention but have now started again, stimulated by our coming visit to Kolkota.

I’ve just finished a very interesting work by Jon Wilson, a lecturer at King’s College, London, “Britain’s Raj and the Chaos of Empire. India Conquered”.  He is critical of those who try to present the Raj as smooth running and well ordered: “In practice the British imperial regime in India was ruled by doubt and anxiety from beginning to end…Most of the time, the actions of British imperial administrators were driven by irrational passions rather than by calculated plans. Force was rarely efficient. The assertion of violent power usually exceeded the demands of any particular commercial or political interest.”

It makes fascinating reading from the early days of small subsequently fortified trading posts on the coast, to the takeover of more and more areas, the rise of the East India Company, strange amalgam of economic group with semblance of state power, the effects of industrialisation in the UK and the barriers placed in the way of the growth of Indian industry, the breakdown of the old society and economy tending to lead to famine rather than the growth of industry. The inability of the English, few in number, to develop a stable basis of support among the Indian population as in Australia or Canada. Increasing panic leading to atrocities such as the massacre at Amritsar (Jallianwala Bagh) and machine gunning of crowds from the air at Gujranwala. And, as Wilson describes, the final scuttling away in the face of collapse after the second world war.

Jon Wilson provides an impressive range of material to support his thesis about the nature of the imperial regime. My knowledge of Indian history is not sufficient to see the weak spots or any stretched arguments in his fluent and well supported case. But the image in my mind is of a few British ants sitting on the back of the Indian elephant and wondering how to steer the beast. India was simply too huge and diverse and the English too few.

He provides a wealth of sources with a lot of interesting books that I would like to read and his book can be recommended to all those with an interest in that period of the UK and India’s history.

I’ve just finished reading Nicholas Comfort’s “Surrender. How British Industry gave up the ghost 1952-2012”.  It conveys a gloomy picture of the process of collapse in the latter half of the twentieth and early twenty-first century; when trying to make a list of the names of firms I knew well in my childhood, it reads like a roll call of the dead, with a few wraith-like survivors as part of other groups.

This process continued regardless of the party in power. The emphasis changed from well-meaning enthusiasm (Signpost for the Sixties and the white heat of technological revolution a la Wilson) to disinterest in the Thatcher years (very visible industrial wreckage after the invisible hand of the market had worked its wonders).

The author has worked as a journalist and in government and provides a fluent account of developments in various industries, the lack of coherence on the part of Government, lack of modernisation, weak management and the part played (in his opinion) by craft trade union structures.

The UK share of world manufactured trade decreased from 25.4 per cent in 1950 to 2.9 per cent in 2009. These are percentage figures, which should be viewed with caution (the total volume of trade was obviously much greater in 2009 so that the absolute figures may be rather less dramatic but probably still striking).

Comfort’s book is, however, not an academic text. There are no footnotes and not even a bibliography. Some of his statistics are hard to understand. In the above example of the UK share of world manufactured trade, I wonder what the UK share means – UK-owned or UK-located industry? This may be obvious to a professional economist but it’s not clear to me.

Despite these flaws, it is a book well worth reading, which made me aware of the gaps in my knowledge. For me it raises questions such as:

Where did capital go – was there a destruction of capital when large sections of manufacturing industry went under or had the smart money already moved elsewhere as in the case of Saab in Sweden where the old conglomerate Saab-Scania was demerged into the lorry firm Scania, and the defence industry sector, while carmaker Saab was sold to General Motors before its sorry conclusion.

What proportion of shares in manufacturing industry is UK owned (and how does this vary between companies of different size)? What are the proportions and historical development of the various categories of UK ownership, institutional, individual etc. on the UK stock exchange? What are the trends among institutional investors (movement from insurance company ownership to hedge fund ownership, for instance). What foreign assets do UK shareholders own?

These questions become particularly acute against the background of Brexit.

The view from the bottom is clearer – the sections of the population that viewed immigration as a threat, those that preferred the view in the rear view mirror and longed for an earlier Britain.

But trying to decipher the contours of the top, the “overdogs”, is more difficult. The fact that much of UK large industry is foreign owned presumably weakened the manufacturing sector’s ability to assert its interests. But what did the financial sector want? On the one hand, passporting rights, the ability for banks etc. to operate within the EU as on their domestic markets, must have been important. But were there other trends with world-wide interests, which wanted to be free of the various EU directives that controlled capital adequacy, insurance etc. etc? And were they at work supporting Brexit?

It’s hard to believe that Brexit was simply a spontaneous mass upsurge of protest while powerful financial interests looked on passively at the play of democratic forces.

I’m curious as to why I have not devoted more attention to this area before as it seems pretty central for understanding the UK. Part of the explanation is probably living abroad but spending much of my time in the UK in London and the relatively prosperous south is a factor too. Wandering around Barnsley and Rotherham and gazing at the mile after mile of industrial scrap between Sheffield and Rotherham has not left me unmoved.

It whets my appetite to read more and next on my list is a tip from a rather unlikely source, former PM Gordon Brown (a recommendation from a newspaper article I hasten to add not as a result of a Brown-Kendall tete-a-tete): “The UK Regional-National Economic Problem: Geography, globalisation and governance”, Phillip McCann.

With one sky-turned eye for falling ice daggers, the other scanning the ground for slippery patches and ankle-twisting ruts, my usual Botticelli angel-like features are being transformed into Picasso eyes swivelled at unlikely angles. Despite the weather, I have kept up my programme of 10,000 steps a day so that spring will hopefully still see Kendall emerge a lean and beautiful butterfly rather than a chubby caterpillar. The last few days have been more Stakhanovite than pleasure, plodding through the
slush to achieve my plan target and, instead of looking up to savour some architectural detail, vertigo-wracked little me shudders at snow shovellers
perilously perched on the roof. The forces of nature at least take one’s mind off the coming assault of T-rex on poor America (and us) and there is still November’s brightest light, the Stockholm Film Festival.

In the last half hour, I have learnt that terms of venery refers to words for groups of animals , many of which are listed in the Book of St Albans (1486), which is also called the Book of Hawking, Hunting and Blasing of Arms. A group of crows is referred to as a “murder of crows”. There are many more weird and amusing terms at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_terms_of_venery,_by_animal, although some of them like “a crash of rhinoceroses” have a post-1486 flavour to my mind.

I have also learnt that “venery” has two more meanings – first as a historical term for hunting game (or the hunted animal itself). An alternative and unrelated meaning is “the practice or pursuit of sexual pleasure”….(source Wikipedia).

Despite great enjoyment at travelling around and experiencing England, it has felt more and more like visiting a favourite theatre, emphasizing my not belonging rather than bridging my cultures and overcoming feelings of being split. I decided to choose one or a number of projects to develop a more active relationship to the culture (better structure my gawping), the first being Dorset architecture, in particular the county’s churches, my aim being not to produce anything for publication but to find the limits of my own knowledge and go beyond them.

On my first visit to Dorset for this project, I’ve visited four churches – Studland (for its consistent Norman architecture), Winterbourne Steepleton (Anglo-Saxon sculpture), Bere Regis (Turberville/Thomas Hardy associations) and Cattistock (fine Victorian additions including stained glass, which are both fields very much worthy of further study).