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Details: Written by: Kamran Mofid; Published: 26 October 2019; Hits: 1159

Great Canal Journeys: a Narrowboat Love Affair

One of the greatest love stories on TV ... Tim and Pru in Great Canal Journeys. Photograph: Channel 4 Television-Photo:Channel 4 Television

Great Canal Journeys: how a bittersweet boating show captured viewers' hearts*

‘The swansong of Timothy West and Prunella Scales’s narrowboat adventures aired this week, having elevated the humble travelogue to a touching saga of love and loss.’

‘This was the swansong, and in the loveliest of many lovely moments, Fairport Convention came on board at Cropredy to perform the exquisitely appropriate: “Who knows how my love grows? And who knows where the time goes?” Oh, for a little more time. But what times we’ve had.’

N.B. My wife, Annie, and I have been watching this beautiful and moving series of journeys, or as I would like to call-Love and Life Stories- over the last few years. We have been touched by them. They have encouraged us to think about our own lives, our own stories and journeys. We, too, growing older together are wondering and pondering on our own swansong: Who knows how my love grows? And who knows where the time goes?” Oh, for a little more time. But what times we’ve had.’

In short, we have been travelling with them, sharing their nostalgic reflections. Recalling and remembering the places that we had been to, the places and moments that are so important to our lives also.

One of the first ever journeys featured on ‘Great Canal Journeys’ was a trip on an Anglo Welsh narrowboat along the Oxford canal, starting in the romantic city of Oxford, where they began their courtship many years ago. Annie and I too, started our courtship many years ago, in the early 1970s in Oxford.

The other memorable of their canal journeys is when they went back to Llangollen, Denbighshire, North Wales, where they spent their honeymoon. Reminiscing over how their relationship has survived and thrived over the past 50 years. The journey took us all to the picturesque sights of the Vale of Llangollen and the Montgomery Canal, before travelling on a horse-drawn barge up the Horseshoe Falls.

Wow! What a nostalgic journey for us too. Llangollen is very special to us, where we have been holidaying and touring for the last twenty years or so. We have got to know the region very well and it is our dream to retire there.

Thank you Timothy West and Prunella Scales for letting us into your Swansong...

Great Canal Journeys: how a bittersweet boating show captured viewers' hearts*

‘My name’s Timothy West, and this is my wife, Prunella Scales.” Much of the tender magic of Great Canal Journeys is in that proud, robustly jolly, semi-formal introduction, habitually included in the narration as one venerated actor refers to his beloved other. The Channel 4 show – the probable last episode of which was broadcast last night – is one of many travel series that amount to watching celebrities go on holiday, but it’s one of the few that truly feels as if it’s inviting us to come along too.

West and Scales have no need to feign canal enthusiasm for the cameras. In their show’s best episodes, they revisit their own, real narrowboating holidays, re-enacting scenes from a romance that’s endured for more than half a century. A simple thing that sets them apart is that they’re a lot older than almost anyone else on British television. What has made this series such a gift is their willingness to share the emotion of navigating that last phase of life together, a bittersweetness made all the more powerful by Scales’s Alzheimer’s disease. West is the boat’s skipper, cajoling and comforting and forever worrying about the welfare of his mate.

The success of the series has demanded that Tim and Pru venture overseas, as near as France and as far as India. Their foreign jaunts were fine, but this new trip put them back where they look most comfortable, in the veins of green England. Going up the familiar Oxford Canal from Banbury in Oxfordshire to Braunston in Northamptonshire offered a chance to relax, enjoy choice excerpts from previous seasons, and update us on the topic discussed whenever we and they reconvene: how Pru’s doing. The news was not good.

Since the first instalment in 2014, the series has charted the long, slow goodbye that is living with dementia, cherishing every moment of precious normality and celebrating how an immersion in nature is the surest way to bring the old Pru back. But that task of loving a person whose powers are fading only ever gets harder. Now we heard not only that Pru’s mental decline was accelerating, but that deafness was also encroaching.

The show’s editors have been masters of holding the shot for an extra second after Tim has finished speaking, long enough for us to discern pain clouding the full-hearted, wrinkly eyed smile that takes over his face when he talks about how happy Pru makes him. As Tim explained that Pru’s hearing loss was denying him the pleasure of ordinary conversation – the quick exchange of ideas and feelings with his best friend, treasured every day since 1963 – we saw more sadness than smile.

This episode was broadcast on West’s 85th birthday and possessed an air of soft valediction throughout. In the ancient St Peter’s Church at Wormleighton, Warwickshire, the vicar boldly asked for clarification of what the rest of the programme was only hinting at: was this the couple’s last ever Great Canal Journey? Tim looked at Pru and thought about the bustling community of hobbyists and holidaymakers on Britain’s manmade waterways. “They can carry on without us. I just wonder if we can carry on without them.”

So a saga that has been – quietly, let’s not make a fuss about it – one of the greatest love stories on TV seems to be over. There’s another new episode next week, but it’s even more heavily based on old clips, with the linking scenes showing Tim taking care of Pru at home rather than judging tight turns and ratcheting locks.

This was the swansong, and in the loveliest of many lovely moments, Fairport Convention came on board at Cropredy to perform the exquisitely appropriate Who Knows Where the Time Goes? “Who knows how my love grows? And who knows where the time goes?” Oh, for a little more time. But what times we’ve had.’

* This article by Jack Seale was originally published in the Guardian on Monday 21 October 2019.

Watch some of the journeys here

Details: Written by: Kamran Mofid; Published: 24 October 2019; Hits: 1199

Photo:theworldbreakingnews.com

‘England has been named the world’s second best tourist destination in 2020 due to its “timeless treasures” by the guide book firm, Lonely Planet, behind Bhutan.

The list, featured in the Best in Travel 2020 book, was compiled based on “topicality, unique experiences and wow factor”.

The entry for England states: “Brexit uncertainties have dominated the headlines in recent years but one constant amid all the confusion has been the timeless treasures that England is famous for: the historic castles and cathedrals, quaint villages and rolling countryside, and of course, the seaside.

“Taking a bracing walk on a windswept pier, eating delicious fish and chips, searching for marine life in rock pools, finding fossils in ancient cliffs, building sandcastles and dolphin-spotting on picturesque beaches are just some of the activities offered by the English seaside.”...Continue to read

Yes, I agree. It is true. This Green and Pleasant Land, is truly Beautiful. It is a blessed land.

Green and Pleasant Land-Lake District, Borrowdale on a Summer’s afternoon, no better place for a stroll. Photo: Dave Massey Photography

But, what a tragedy, what a great pity, that this Green and Pleasant Land is led by donkeys!

Led By Donkeys: ‘There is a political power in laughing at these people’

Photo: See The ‘Independence Day’, Not Long to Go!

Photo:theguardianbookshop

Led by Donkeys: Photo Gallery

'On billboards, beaches, buildings, and Twitter, four activist friends have wittily exposed the hypocrisies of Brexit politics. As they publish a book about their campaign, they reflect on their rollercoaster year'

‘The campaigning group Led By Donkeys is always on the lookout for what it calls “thermonuclear hypocrisy” in politics, and specifically on Brexit. So when, in August, its founders belatedly came across an article that Michael Gove had written for the Daily Mail in March 2019, they felt they had hit the jackpot. In it, Gove, who is now chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster – or more prosaically, the man charged with making Brexit happen, deal or no deal – had noted: “We didn’t vote to leave without a deal. That wasn’t the message of the campaign I helped lead.”

“It was like, ‘Hang on a second: that should be the iceberg to the government’s no-deal Titanic,’” exclaims 45-year-old Ben Stewart, one of the four founders of Led By Donkeys. “The leader of the campaign, the person charged with no-deal planning has said there is no mandate for this. And now they are claiming a mandate for it. So I felt and we all felt: we need to make that quote famous.”

Led By Donkeys, which came into existence only in January, had already had considerable success, and a lot of fun, reminding politicians of words they have said, written or tweeted, and probably wished they hadn’t. The project started with blowing up tweets – from the likes of David Cameron and Leave tub-thumpers Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nigel Farage – and slapping them on billboards in the dead of night. But the group quickly became more ambitious and its work has appeared everywhere from a 40m x 20m banner at the People’s Vote demonstration in London in March to projections on the cliffs of Dover. Their targets are overwhelmingly on the right of the political spectrum, though Jeremy Corbyn was mocked with a billboard that had his Twitter handle but was otherwise left blank, so that people could write on to it what they would like the Labour leader to say on the issue.

Its work has been, to some camps, the Remain campaign that never was: impassioned, humorous, compelling. Through more than 50 poster designs, photographs of which have had more than 200m views on social media, Led By Donkeys has taken the fight to the flip-flopping Brexiters. They have also taken potshots at Donald Trump and what they consider the dangers of post-truth politics. When the US president visited the UK in June, they projected his approval ratings (and those of Barack Obama) on to the Tower of London, and a video in which Boris Johnson called Trump out for “quite stupefying ignorance” was superimposed on to Big Ben. In the US, these stunts were picked up by Stephen Colbert on The Late Show and Rachel Maddow on MSNBC. Just last week, Led By Donkeys launched posters satirising the government’s Get Ready for Brexit campaign, designed by members of the public, and, as this article went to press, were finalising plans for Saturday’s People’s Vote march…’-Continue to read

Led By Donkeys: How Four Friends With a Ladder Took on Brexit is published by Atlantic (£10). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com

Read an extract from Led By Donkeys’ book here
Read a related and complementary article here:

‘Why Are Our Politicians So Crap?’ The rise and fall of Britain’s political class

Details: Written by: Kamran Mofid; Published: 21 October 2019; Hits: 891

Photo:theguardian.com

Nota bene

It seems that, whilst we have been obsessed and confused, out of touch with reality, messed about by the unnecessary, useless going ons with Brexit, as well as the daily nonsensical and profoundly meaningless Trump’s tweets, and more, we have somehow lost noticing the coming of a further catastrophe, namely, that another financial crisis is just around the corner.

The world economy is sleepwalking into a new financial crisis, warns Mervyn King*

Past crashes spawned new thinking and reform but nothing has changed since the 2008 banking meltdown, says former Bank of England boss

‘Resistance to new thinking meant a repeat of the financial chaos of the 2008-09 period was looming.’- Lord King. Photo:newshub.co.nz

‘The world is sleepwalking towards a fresh economic and financial crisis that will have devastating consequences for the democratic market system, according to the former Bank of England governor Mervyn King.

Lord King, who was in charge at Threadneedle Street during the near-death of the global banking system and deep economic slump a decade ago, said the resistance to new thinking meant a repeat of the chaos of the 2008-09 period was looming.

Giving a lecture in Washington at the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund, King said there had been no fundamental questioning of the ideas that led to the crisis of a decade ago.

“Another economic and financial crisis would be devastating to the legitimacy of a democratic market system,” he said. “By sticking to the new orthodoxy of monetary policy and pretending that we have made the banking system safe, we are sleepwalking towards that crisis.”

He added that the US would suffer a “financial armageddon” if its central bank – the Federal Reserve – lacked the necessary firepower to combat another episode similar to the sub-prime mortgage sell-off.

King, Mark Carney’s predecessor as Bank of England governor, said that following the Great Depression of the 1930s there had been new thinking and intellectual change.

“No one can doubt that we are once more living through a period of political turmoil. But there has been no comparable questioning of the basic ideas underpinning economic policy. That needs to change.”

The former Bank governor said the economic and political climate had rarely been so fraught, citing the US-China trade war, riots in Hong Kong, problems in key emerging countries such as Argentina and Turkey, the growing tensions between France and Germany over the future direction of the euro, and the increasingly bitter political conflict in the US at a time when the willingness of the US to act as the world’s policeman was disappearing.

“Ripples on the surface of our politics have become breaking waves as the winds of change have gained force,” he said.

King said the world economy was stuck in a low growth trap and that the recovery from the slump of 2008-09 was weaker than that after the Great Depression.

“Following the Great Inflation, the Great Stability and the Great Recession, we have entered the Great Stagnation.” King said that in 2013 the former US Treasury secretary Larry Summers had reintroduced the concept of secular stagnation, a permanent period of low growth in which ultra-low interest rates are ineffective: “It is surely now time to admit that we are experiencing it.”

Standard models were unhelpful in two important areas of economic policy – getting the world economy out of its low growth trap, and preparing for the next financial crisis.

“Conventional wisdom attributes the stagnation largely to supply factors as the underlying growth rate of productivity appears to have fallen. But data can be interpreted only within a theory or model. And it is surprising that there has been so much resistance to the hypothesis that, not just the United States, but the world as a whole is suffering from demand-led secular stagnation.”

King said the world entered and departed from the global financial crisis with a distorted pattern of demand and output. To escape permanently from a low growth trap involved a reallocation of resources from one component of demand to another, from one sector to another, and from one firm to another.

“There has been excess investment in some parts of the economy – the export sector in China and Germany and commercial property in other advanced economies, for example – and insufficient in others – infrastructure investment in many western countries. To bring about such a shift of resources – both capital and labour – will require a much broader set of policies than simply monetary stimulus.”

He added: “It is the failure to face up to the need for action on many policy fronts that has led to the demand stagnation of the past decade. And without action to deal with the structural weaknesses of the global economy, there is a risk of another financial crisis, emanating this time not from the US banking system but from weak financial systems elsewhere.”

King said it was time for the Federal Reserve and other central banks to begin talks behind closed doors with politicians to make legislators aware of how vulnerable they would be in the event of another crisis.

He said: “Congress would be confronted with a choice between financial Armageddon and a suspension of some of the rules that were introduced after the last crisis to limit the ability of the Fed to lend.”

*This article by Larry Elliott was first published in the Guardian on Sunday 20 October 2019. Read the original article here

At the lecture in Washington at the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund, 'King said there had been no fundamental questioning of the ideas that led to the crisis of a decade ago.’

I am delighted to note that we, the GCGI Community, have not been asleep, we have been fully awake, discussing, debating, reflecting, trying to understand the 2008 Financial Crisis. Moreover, we have been at the forefront of ‘fundamental questioning’ of the reasons for the crisis, their continuing and deepening nature and our assumed inability to solve them.

Furthermore, perhaps our greatest accomplishment has been our ability not to shy away from the big and challenging questions, and collectively be guided by values-led education, thoughts and ideas, taking action for the common good, making recommendations to build a better, fairer and more harmonious world.

'Explaining the Current Financial and Economic Crisis'

A Perspective from the GCGI