The car bug

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Cars are rum things aren’t they? Years ago cars had a significant hold on the young masculine imagination but times change. Is anyone interested in the sleek products of robot factories? Technically they are far better than the old cars, but in becoming better they have lost something.

As I drive around I tend to see three types of car, small, medium and large. They seem to come in three colours these days too – black, white and grey. So that makes nine general types. In spite of being overloaded with gadgets all are pretty efficient at doing what cars do and really there is little point in customers making much of a distinction between them. 

BMW and Mercedes just about manage to keep hold of a faintly upmarket image even though both brands are mass-produced, common and unremarkable. There are also a few eccentricities and a few genuinely upmarket brands but the great mass of cars are an undistinguished stream of black, white and grey boxes. Even the so-called MINI has evolved into an uninspired lump of a car.

Yet considering the money spent on them, one would think manufacturers would make their wares more distinctive even if only superficially. I suppose the exigencies of robot manufacture, and the physics of aerodynamic design make for an inevitable sameness. Who can tell one SUV from another without a quick peek at the brand name? And who cares?

The Scorcher

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Although it would have been difficult for Pringle to look other than a gentleman, with his slim athletic figure clothed in the sweater, the cycling suit, and the cap and badge (especially the badge), he presented a fair likeness of the average Sunday scorcher. The manners of the tribe he fortunately saw no necessity to assume. 

To perfect the resemblance, the scorcher being comparable to a man who shall select a racehorse for a day's ride over country roads, it was necessary to "strip" his machine, so, removing the mudguards and brake, and robbing the chain of its decent gear-case, he substituted the "ram's-horn" for his handlebar.

R Austin Freeman and John Pitcairn – The Adventures of Romney Pringle (1902)

The scorchers are still with us but I'm not so sure about the gentleman cyclists who looked down on them with such disdain over a century ago. 

Squirt

I see Commons Speaker John Bercow has created a stir with his insistence that Donald Trump will not be allowed to address Parliament. Something to do with the US President not measuring up to a politically correct standard Bercow just invented I suppose.

From the BBC

Commons Speaker John Bercow has been criticised for voicing his opposition to US President Donald Trump addressing Parliament during a state visit.

Senior Tories told the BBC his comments had caused a lot of anger, with one saying it was "utterly outrageous" and others saying he should be impartial.

Mr Bercow said "opposition to racism and sexism" were "hugely important considerations" for the Commons.

The trouble with Bercow is that as soon as he sticks his head over the political parapet one is reminded of puppets and the possibility that his ghastly wife put him up to it. She whose "occupation" Wikipedia gives as Political activist and media personality. 

From there it is but a short and unsavoury step to wonder what she may have offered in return. Once dignity is gone it is gone. It becomes a nice to have. Bercow doesn’t have it.

Bug

I've been laid low by an unpleasant bug so no posts until I can at least think straight. Not that thinking straight is strictly necessary but I'm in the mood to flatter myself.

Low Tech Crime

Not exactly A J Raffles, but these days crims have no style. I blame Brexit and Trump for inducing a sense of despair in hard-working people with sticks.

Police are hunting two men who robbed a shop in Derbyshire and whacked a shop worker with a wooden stick before taking off with cash and beer.

Officers said the men approached the 49-year-old shop worker at the Aldercar Express, in Langley Mill, at the counter and one of them hit him with what police say was "some sort of wooden stick".

They then took cash from the till and even helped themselves to a beer from the shelf. The hooded pair left the scene in Upper Dunstead Road - leaving the shopkeeper bruised - but now police need help from the public to track them down.

Obama begat Trump

People turn so quickly from weakness or the shadow of it. To get away from failure—even the mere suspicion of it— that seems to be a subconscious feeling with the average man and woman; we all avoid non-success as though we fear that it may prove contagious.

Theodore Dreiser – Jennie Gerhardt (1911)

Amid the outraged howling over Donald Trump’s presidential victory, it is worth reminding ourselves that Obama’s tenure led to Trump’s. If Trump is politically deplorable then this is how a large number of American voters have reacted to eight years of Obama. To explain Trump we first have to explain the divisive reign of Obama.

From this side of the Atlantic it is not easy to identify with political passions obviously stirred up by both men, but it is worth remembering that Obama began the stirring. He was there first, setting the agenda, crafting the narratives and the tone of his presidency which clearly riled so many Americans. He was the catalyst for Trump. He created the political vacuum which Trump spotted and exploited.

In which case, Obama must have been disliked and admired by the American electorate in approximately equal measure. In other words he was divisive. Trump is divisive too, but his election and his political tactics suggest he inherited a divisive political reality from Obama. He didn't create it because it was already there. Millions of words have been written about the election and no doubt they will be followed by millions more, but to my mind the core issue is as much Obama as Trump.

From this side of the pond Obama seemed weak, sequacious and too fond of virtue-signalling. He look down on half of the electorate and made his disdain far too obvious. Not from a position of strength, but from a somewhat messianic and politically correct pedestal he did nothing to earn from a host of absurdly uncritical followers.

Hillary Clinton gave the game away with her reference to ‘deplorables’ because she was speaking from the same bubble as Obama. Many educated middle class people in the developed world appear to see a world of deplorables beyond the narrow reach of their politically correct comfort zones. They look down on people who do not share their views. They also seem to fear them - the political atmosphere reeks of it.

If you do not share a politically correct outlook then you are an outsider, no better and no more welcome that barbarians at the gate. It isn’t a new situation - it arises from weakness and Obama was weak in ways Trump seems to understand. No doubt we’ll find out if he knows how to exploit his insights in the real world beyond the rhetoric. 

Now the deplorables have a leader who in spite of his reported deficiencies seems to understand well enough why he was elected. He was elected to be stronger than the poseur he replaces. Perhaps that is where the fear comes from - from a whiff of testosterone. How deplorable.

Mass petulance

As we all know, over a million people have signed a petition urging the government to call off Donald Trump's state visit to the UK. A petition is a healthy way to thrash out political differences but this one reeks of petulance, that most unattractive of human responses.

Public petulance is not good and mass petulance even worse. It is there for the whole world to see. Even MPs will recognise it and draw their own conclusions.