Greek Poets Against Austerity

Athens News reports

UK Budget 2012 and the British Economy

Here for convenience (pdf file)

Nina-Maria on the British Economy, for Deutsche Welle

Bagehot (The Economist) on the "Granny Tax"

As discussed on the Andrew Marr show (25 March), if the government had made some real cuts in public expenditure, it wouldn't have needed to put a tax on hot cakes and pies, on grannies or nannies, for that matter.

Rock 'n' Roll and Racism: the first rock 'n' roll concert

BBC report on the first rock 'n' roll concert in the USA.

If you want more of the truth about the early history of rock 'n' roll (and racism), listen to my "rapping"  interview with Big Jay McNeely, which covers some of these topics, and much more.

See also my earlier posting on the legendary Big Jay.

Greece: Benefits Fraud- and Greek Despair

Kathimerini reports

Snap! Almost simultaneous posting by Keep Talking Greece

Richard Pine in The Irish Times, on the mood of despair he observes in Greece

Kathimerini, on the 2009 deficit figures, and more details

The Law and "Assisted Suicide" - and the Safety of Grannies

I haven't thought about this matter deeply enough to know how one might draw up a foolproof law on this controversial issue, but I did take note of Anne Widdecombe's soundbite:

"If assisted suicide was put into law no granny would be safe"

and of this February 2002 interview, when she said more or less the same thing:

Do you think that there will ever be a law allowing euthanasia in the United Kingdom?

"I think there is a serious danger. I very much hope we will not do that because our consistent experience of laws is they grow legs and they walk and run away.... I think if you introduce the euthanasia law in this country, however tightly you drew it, however good your intentions might be, in 10 years time no granny would be safe."

I'm not a fan of most of her views, and nor is this blogger

"Meanwhile Ann Widdecombe, whose views on assisted suicide are well known, had a headlined comment " If assisted suicide was put into law no granny would be safe" [Financial Times Magazine 10/11 March]. This reaches a new low in emotive distortion of the truth. She does not have a shred of evidence for that assertion. On the contrary all the evidence from countries, where the law is more sensible and compassionate than Widdecombe would allow, shows that her scaremongering is the opposite of the reality. The time is long overdue for the Law to recognise the consequences of advances in medicine over the last 50yrs and come up with a realistic mechanism giving freedom of choice to all."

I don't actually know what to think, but my instinct tells me that it's not just some grannies who might not feel safe. Update, see shocking video of care home assault case, BBC.

I've been re-reading George Orwell's "The Road to Wigan Pier" (1937) and, in particular, his description of the appalling lodging house run by a couple called the Brookers, and of their two elderly permanent lodgers.

"The Brookers had insured the lives of both old-age pensioners with one of the tanner-a-week companies. It was said that they were overheard anxiously asking the insurance-tout "how long people lived when they'd got  cancer."

"The thing that really tormented them was the thought of the two old-age pensioners living in the house, usurping floor-space, devouring food and paying only ten shillings a week...in their eyes the two old men were a kind of dreadful parasite who had fastened on them and were living on their charity...they really hated the bedridden one, Hooker by name...What tales I heard about old Hooker...his endless ingratitude and, above all, the selfish obstinacy with which he refused to die! The Brookers were quite openly pining for him to die. When that happened they could at least draw the insurance money."

Is there a moral here? It couldn't happen nowadays, could it?

With what one reads every day about the treatment meted out to elderly people in some UK "care homes", or even in their own homes, one should perhaps take time to reflect on Anne Widdecombe's 'emotive' warning.

What control does anyone have when overworked nursing or medical staff can decide whether or when it's "appropriate" to try to prolong the life of - let alone resuscitate- elderly hospital patients?

I don't think that elderly people are treated like this in Greece, or on Corfu, in spite of the country's economic problems.

Hooker, Death Valley Blues

The Frustrations of Family History

Having a sporadic but far from obsessive interest in family history (a casual interest acquired during my time in Australia, where many people want to trace their roots), I have had a couple of sessions on Ancestry.com at the local history centre.

I also have quite a comprehensive  archive of old family photographs, certificates and papers, but sadly I never took the opportunity to ask questions when it was still possible to do so. At the time I simply wasn't very interested or curious.

My mother and her grandfather, mid 1920s

As more and more information becomes available online, such as the 1911 Census, there are many more tools available than in the period when E.M.Forster published "Two Cheers for Democracy" (1951).

In an essay or article written in 1939, Forster asks:

"Can you give the names of your eight great grandparents?"

"The betting is at least eight to one against...We can often get six or seven, seldom the whole eight. And the human mind is so dishonest and so snobby, that we instinctively reject the eighth as not mattering, and as playing no part in our biological make-up. As each of us looks back into his or her past, doors open upon darkness. Two doors at first- the father and the mother- through each of these two more, then the eight great-grandparents, the sixteen great-greats, then thirty-two ancestors...sixty-four...one hundred and twenty-eight...until the researcher reels."

Forster predicted that "in a couple of hundred years millions will belong to Old Families", but he also points out that much of the past is unknown and unknowable: "It depends upon who went to bed with whom in the year 1400...and what historian will ever discover that?"

The age of the internet and genealogical web-sites has changed all that, perhaps. I'm not even sure if I have the names of all my eight great grandparents. I'd better get out the files and check.

Forster was really concerned with attacking the pernicious racist policies of  dictators and Fascist/Totalitarian governments. The essay was called "Racial Exercise". "Europe is mongrel for ever, and so is America", he writes, with a sense of relief.