Life on the Line

Posted on February 8, 2020 by leslie

Liverpool, Lime Street Railway Station, then

Life on the Line

 by Bill Hartley

Railways are back in the news with the HS2 project under fresh scrutiny, due to the cost estimate having risen to an eye watering level. The latest figure is about three times what Britain spends annually on defence. But Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham is warning of dire political consequences should the project be curtailed at Birmingham.

Whilst moving from north to south in Britain isn’t too bad, the real area of neglect lies east to west. On a journey along the Trans Pennine route, say from Leeds to Liverpool, crumbling Victoriana carry state of the art rolling stock. How the two have merged and survived is remarkable. How much longer it can continue without substantial investment is questionable.

The line is used in some unusual ways. Outside peak periods a new kind of traveller took to the tracks. The story began many years ago at Stalybridge in Greater Manchester. The station has an independently run buffet bar free from the corporate awfulness of the standard railway franchise and they sell proper beer. Word got round and students crossing the Pennines began to stop off for a ‘quick drink’. Continue reading →

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In a Royal Line

Posted on February 6, 2020 by leslie

Ermonela Jaho, photo by Russell Duncan (c)

In a Royal Line

‘An Evening with Rosina Storchio’, recital of songs and operatic arias sung by Ermonela Jaho, accompanied by Steven Maughan at the piano, Sunday 2nd February 2020, Wigmore Hall, London, reviewed by Leslie Jones

This was soprano Ermonela Jaho’s Wigmore Hall debut, on the 50th anniversary of Opera Rara, for whom she undertook the title role in Leoncavallo’s Zazà in 2015 and the part of Anna, in Puccini’s first opera Le Willis, in 2018. A CD containing the repertoire featured in this recital, entitled Homage to Rosina Storchio, will be released later this year.

Opera has its own rich history, enhanced by the availability on the web of classic performances by its luminaries. Musicologist Ditlev Rindom reminds us in the official programme that Puccini and Toscanini were passionate admirers of Rosina Storchio, whose stellar career lasted from 1892 to 1923. She also appeared in the world premieres of Leoncavallo’s La bohème, Mascagni’s Lodoletta and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (the latter in Milan, in 1904). How appropriate, then, that Ms. Jaho’s encore was ‘Un bel di vedremo’. Continue reading →

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Getting the Canadian Right

Posted on February 2, 2020 by leslie

Carle Hessay, Abstract No. 25

Getting the Canadian Right

by Mark Wegierski

There are currently three main groups in Canada that do not understand the Canadian Right — the media, the other parties, and conservatives themselves. In the last few decades, Canadian conservatism has been hurt by its too-ready association with the U.S. Republican Party, and a lack of knowledge of its own roots and history. Actually, the bivalent term “Red Tory” can represent some of the best tendencies of Canadian conservatism (such as those articulated by Canadian traditionalist philosopher George Parkin Grant), as well as a less-salubrious, opportunistic embrace of left-liberalism. The so-called “right-wing” of the Conservative Party has been marked by an infatuation with “free market philosophy” and the reduction of all policy to tax-cuts and budget-cuts. Yet free-market fundamentalism has not traditionally been a hall-mark of conservatism in Canada.

At the same time, social conservatives who care about social and cultural issues have become bogged down in the now-fruitless debate over abortion rights and same-sex marriage. Like it or not, the latter have become an indelible part of the Canadian political landscape. Nevertheless, it is still possible to promote pro-family policies (especially through the tax-system) that can win broad acceptance in Canadian society today. For example, the tax-penalty on households with one main breadwinner in the marriage should be ended. Continue reading →

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Democracy Dies in Diversity

Posted on February 2, 2020 by leslie

Robert Delaunay, Windows Open Simultaneously

Democracy Dies in Diversity

by Ilana Mercer 

“Dissatisfaction with democracy within developed countries is at its highest level in almost 25 years,” say researchers at the University of Cambridge. “The UK and the United States had particularly high levels of discontent.” No wonder. Certainly, America is a severely divided country. “Severely divided societies are short on community,” and “community is a prerequisite for majority rule,” argues Donald L. Horowitz, a scholar of democracy at Duke University.

Having studied “constitutional engineering” in divided societies like South Africa, Horowitz has concluded that, “In societies severely divided by ethnicity, race, religion, language, or any other form of ascriptive affiliation, ethnic divisions make democracy difficult, because they tend to produce ethnic parties and ethnic voting. An ethnic party with a majority of votes and seats can dominate minority groups, seemingly in perpetuity.” (Journal of Democracy, April 2014.)

The Democratic Party has morphed into such a political organ. It’s responding to the fact that minorities in the U.S. will soon form a majority. This rising majority, as polling trends indicate, will speak in one political voice, for most immigrants to the United States are not from Europe and Canada, but from Latin America and Asia, south and east. And this cohort of immigrants is reliably progressive: it votes Democratic. Likewise, the poor and the un,1–more–>skilled are well-represented among our country’s immigrant intake. It’s the way we roll. Poor immigrants favor the rearranging of the income curve in their new home. Continue reading →

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Gone AWOL

Posted on January 27, 2020 by leslie

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex

Gone AWOL 

Ilana Mercer on Megxit

His wife, a hero of sorts only in the TV series “Suits,” had hightailed it to Canada, leaving Harry Windsor, formerly known as Prince Harry, to deliver a concession speech. Make no mistake—no matter the moola they rake in, Harry and Meghan Markle have been sorely defeated and deflated.

Earlier in January 2020, the stumblebum Sussexes had smugly announced to the public that they “planned to carve out a progressive new role within this institution.” The unavoidable implication of that sleight-of-hand was that “this institution” (the monarchy) was just not woke enough for the two’s exquisitely honed sensibilities. Gallantly has Harry tried, since, to make his subjects believe that it is he, not Meghan Markle—his meddlesome American wife—who had attempted, and failed miserably, to outsmart Queen Elizabeth II. But the crass and callous rollout production, lacking in etiquette and contemptuous of royal protocol, fell flat. Continue reading →

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Boy’s Zone

Posted on January 23, 2020 by leslie

A scene from La Bohème by Puccini, Royal Opera 
©Tristram Kenton, 01/20

Boy’s Zone

La Bohème, opera in four acts, music by Giacomo Puccini, libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, Orchestra of the Royal Opera House conducted by Emmanuel Villaume, director Richard Jones, third revival of the 2017 production, Royal Opera House, Monday 20th January 2020, reviewed by Leslie Jones

La Bohème contains two contrasting views of life. One view, tinged with pessimism, is articulated by the painter Marcello, who is cynical and at times misanthropic. Referring to his on-off partner, he speaks bitterly of “…that enormous glacier, Musetta’s heart”. Musetta is avowedly attention seeking, an incorrigible flirt. Marcello contends that “Her favourite food is the heart…”. The other take on life is that embodied by the poet Rodolfo, an idealist and unrepentant romantic. He confides that “…in my happy poverty I squander like a prince my poems and songs of love”. He discerns in Mimi a kindred spirit and “…the dream I’d dream forever!”  Oh, sweet age of utopias!”, Marcello opines, “You hope and believe and all seems beautiful”. Continue reading →

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Punishing Agenda of the Anti-Punishment Movement

Posted on January 20, 2020 by leslie

Jean-Michel Basquiat, untitled, 1884

Punishing Agenda of the Anti-Punishment Movement

by Ilana Mercer

On November 29, 2019, a man now called the London Bridge terrorist slaughtered British student Jack Merritt. While the perpetrator has been named after a famous London landmark, his victim has been all but forgotten. The killer’s family was quick to condemn the London Bridge terrorist’s actions. The family of his victim—not so much. David Merritt, the late lad’s dad, criticized those who would like to see that killer and his ilk spend their lives in a prison cell. On December 2, Merritt the elder was already penning op-eds about clemency and leniency for criminals like the man who murdered his son. Such forgiveness would have been Jack’s wish, asserted Merritt senior, rather presumptuously—for how can the living speak for the dead?

David Merritt then proceeded to minimize what was murder with malice aforethought, by dismissing what his son’s killer did as a “tragic incident.” An insight into the progressive mindset can be gleaned from what Mr. Merritt wrote:

“If Jack could comment on his death – and the tragic incident on Friday 29 November – he would be livid. We would see him ticking it over in his mind before a word was uttered between us. Jack would understand the political timing with visceral clarity.
He would be seething at his death, and his life, being used to perpetuate an agenda of hate that he gave his everything fighting against. … What Jack would want from this is for all of us to walk through the door he has booted down, in his black Doc Martens.
That door opens up a world where we do not lock up and throw away the key. Where we do not give indeterminate sentences … Where we do not slash prison budgets, and where we focus on rehabilitation not revenge.” [Emphasis added.] Continue reading →

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Psychopathia Criminalis

Posted on January 18, 2020 by leslie

In the Bleak Mid Winter, Grateley

Psychopathia Criminalis

Richard Lynn, Race Differences in Psychopathic Personality: An Evolutionary Analysis, Augusta, GA: Washington Summit Publishers (In Press), Pp 368., US $ 29.95., reviewed by Evelyn Quinn

Professor Richard Lynn, the doyen of differential psychology, is well known for his work on national and racial differences in intelligence. In his latest book, he breaks new ground, proposing that there are also race differences in psychopathic personality. He was inspired here by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve (1994). It showed that in the United States, blacks have the lowest intelligence and whites the highest, while Hispanics are intermediate. These intelligence differences supposedly explain why a number of social pathologies, notably crime, poverty, welfare dependency and single motherhood, are unevenly distributed across divergent populations.

Concerning black-white difference in crime rates, Herrnstein and Murray state that when IQ is taken into account, “…we are still left with a non-trivial black-white difference”. For instance, with crime rates set at 1.0 for whites, blacks had a rate of 6.5. When blacks and whites were matched for intelligence, the rates were reduced to a black-white ratio of 5:1. Thus, blacks with the same IQ as whites still had a higher crime rate. Herrnstein and  Murray conclude that some other factor must account for part of these race differences in crime. Lynn argues that this other factor is racial differences in psychopathic personality.

Continue reading →

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The U.S. as Judge, Jury, Executioner

Posted on January 13, 2020 by leslie

Qasem Soleimani

The U.S. as Judge, Jury, Executioner

Ilana Mercer on the assassination of Soleimani

Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian major general, was assassinated by a U.S. drone air strike, at the Baghdad International Airport (BIAP). The Iraqi-born Soleimani was traveling with one Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. Like Soleimani, al-Muhandis was an Iraqi, born and bred. He was even elected to the Iraqi Parliament, in 2005, until the U.S. intervened. (Yes, we intervene in other nations’ elections.)

Iraq’s caretaker prime minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, was furious, denouncing “What happened [as] a political assassination.” Unanimously, Iraqi lawmakers “responded to the Soleimani assassination by passing a nonbinding resolution calling on the government to end foreign-troop presence in Iraq.” Yes, it’s a complicated region. And America, sad to say, still doesn’t know Shia from Shinola.

The consensus in our country is that “Soleimani deserved to die.” That’s the party-line on Fox News—and beyond. It’s how assorted commentators on all networks prefaced their “positions” on the Jan. 3 killing of this Iraqi-born, Iranian general. Even Tucker Carlson—the only mainstream hope for Old Right, anti-war, America-First columns like this one—framed the taking out of Soleimani as the killing of a bad guy by good guys:

“There are an awful lot of bad people in this world. We can’t kill them all, it’s not our job.”

Continue reading →

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ENDNOTES, January 2020

Posted on January 11, 2020 by leslie

An oversized bust of Beethoven on the rear of the former piano shop and warehouse

Endnotes, January 2020

In this edition; Biss plays Beethoven and the BBC Philharmonic performs British tone poems, reviewed by Stuart Millson

This year marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven. Already, orchestras and ensembles across the world are planning commemorations – and here at home, BBC Radio 3 is devoting dozens of hours of broadcasting time to Germany’s great composer. How fitting, therefore, that we begin 2020 with an appreciation of a recently-issued CD, on the Orchid Classics label, of Beethoven piano sonatas, performed by the world-renowned soloist, teacher and academic, Jonathan Biss. Recorded at the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York, Biss plays three sonatas: No. 7 in D major, Op. 10; No. 18 in E flat major, Op. 31; and Beethoven’s last foray into this particular genre, the Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111 – dating from 1822.

With so many interpreters of the highest calibre scaling the heights of the Beethoven sonata repertoire (Barenboim, Brendel, Bavouzet et al) it is perhaps hard to make a case for yet another cycle. Yet somehow, Jonathan Biss brings a liquid, lyrical, lightness to the concert platform – especially in the truly delightful scherzo and menuetto movements of Sonata No. 18. The menuetto (with the additional markings, moderato e grazioso) typifies Beethoven’s ability to combine the pathos of a gentle little monologue, with a seriousness and nobility – ensuring that his music always rises above simple, pleasing emotion or tone-painting for the sake of effect. The opening movement of the sonata, too – an allegro – surprises the listener for its un-allegro-like feel. This movement’s animation comes in the form, not of a rush (as in the last part of the ‘Moonlight’ sonata, for example – Beethoven’s most famous solo piano work) but as lightly-flowing as a bubbling brook – the sort of happy, “awakening”, country spirit which infuses the Sixth Symphony, the infinitely cool and beautiful ‘Pastoral’.
Continue reading →

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