V. for Varoufakis.

Well this is kicking off again, isn’t it? Like the Lehman Brothers in 2008, though I wasn’t observing that at first hand, being preoccupied instead, in Fuzhou. Default on 1 billion, 2 billion, 300 billion? Pretty soon it starts to sound like Dr Evil money. ‘Nemesis’ or ‘Euphoria’ (Greek words I believe. Will just bold them from here on in; so many of them!)

In the inimitable English headline-style of The Daily Mail. ‘on your bike Varoufakis!’

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3149848/Greek-army-riot-police-braced-street-battles-millions-polls-country-s-bailout-referendum-result-close-call.html

Not that the Greeks will be euphoric even if they get off the hook.

How long’s a crisis before it’s not a crisis? 5 years and counting when’s it Greece.

Headmistress of Baker Mackenzie (world’s biggest law firm) and Head of the I.M.F., doesn’t think so.”the key emergency in my view is to restore the dialogue with adults in the room,”

Or someone more intellectually disabled than an adult? According to the German newspapers, “Is he a psychopath“? “Is he an economist“?

Yes to the second question, not in a position to diagnose the first! I shouldn’t laugh. But Varoufakis was a lecturer in the Department of Economics at the University of Sydney. About the time I was there.

I do feel for Greece. UK, South Korea. The U.K economy with pound sterling as its currency, under I.M.F. pressure in the 1960s/70s could always sell more Jaguar cars, Who albums, even Great Danes!

South Korea paid its loan back in record time. And depressed the world gold exchange in the process, in 1997. Mystified the Goldfinger 🙂 traders until it was traced back to Korean housewives selling their gold rings and jewellery. National Emergency, “all hands to the pump”, Korean response. Not sure a similar call would work with Greece.

What can Greece export? Olive oil, Islands Tourism, Shipping? The third won’t work because the shipping magnates don’t pay tax. The second won’t because Turkey is cheaper as a holiday destination. Olives? Good luck.

Varoufakis may well be.. “the most intense and deep intellectual figure I’ve met in my generation.”…”that he knows as much about this subject as anyone on the planet,” and that “he will be thinking more than a few steps ahead.”

Pity he didn’t drop by the Government Department at U.Syd. in the Wentworth Building (the same campus building as Economics) and talk to any undergraduate. Could have filled him in on the Curtin Dilemma.

Not well known outside Australian political science (well it’s as much a science as economics!). Though the formula is applicable outside Australia.

Prime Minister John Curtin’s dilemma. 1942. If American conscripted soldiers, from the New York and Wisconsin National Guard have been sent to fight in defence of Australia, then, despite opposition, shouldn’t Australian soldiers in the militia also be sent overseas?

Even more difficult for Curtin in that he had been jailed in 1917, as a trade union leader, for resisting conscription in WW1 for overseas service for Australians.

The phantasm, chimera. Were Greek hairdressers retiring at 50 on full pensions? http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/greece-to-call-time-on-cushy-pension-deals-for-unhealthy-jobs-1978789.html

How did the Greeks think this wouldn’t be noticed? When Germans don’t get full aged pensions till age 67?

At least Australia saw there was a problem of perception with the American draftees.

Front Great Quad University of Sydney.

Why didn’t the deepest intellectual figure in his generation on the planet thinking more than a few steps ahead of everyone pause to send a warning, 10 years ago (after the Athens Olympics, which were good!), 5 years ago, or even 3 or 2?

Doesn’t matter now. Sacked by his Prime Minister who has somehow managed to get a worse deal for Greece than what V. for University of Sydney Economics Lecturer was first proposing.

 

Cui Bono кто кого

Cui Bono. Latin. “To whose benefit”? Cicero quoting a former Consul, Cassius Longinus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cui_bono кто кого (kto kogo). [cyrillic and latin alphabet] translation. ‘who, whom?” attributed to Vladimir Ulyanov a.k.a. Lenin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who,_whom The problem of the who has obviously been of central concern to political philosophy since the time of the Romans but I also think it is one for the newer subject of Business Studies.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, a nice rock and roll band from Shepherds Bush, London, The Oo.” (Stage Announcer, The Isle of Wight Festival, 1970.). The first minute is all you need to watch.

Currently on Australian television there’s a Tom Hanks’ produced documentary, ‘The Sixties’. The episode on pop music of that decade had one music-industry fellow saying on ‘The Who’.

“You could not tell who was supposed to be leading the band on stage, it could be Daltrey the singer, or Moon the drummer, Townshend, the guitarist, or even Entwistle the bass player.”

“We really have absolutely nothing in common apart from music”. (Keith Moon).

Well is this not a problem for the finest scholars of the Harvard MBA faculty? How can there be an effective team when a team leader cannot be identified? And why did The Who sound as a unit when they are all playing individually and trying to take the lead? I’m sorry, but the maxims of management theory (cliches more likely), “There’s no ‘I’ in ‘team’.” “A champion team will always beat a team of champions.” need re-thinking. Have billions of dollars been wasted over the past thirty years paying management consultants (with MBAs) through all the advanced economies to little or no avail trying to create team-bonding? Should do a Case Study on this!  Photo Keith Moon Copyright Barrie Wentzel.

Shepherd’s Bush/Acton/West London. The Academy would say it’s unknowable. Or worse, ludicrous linguistics. I don’t think so. Americans speculate on what possible English accent George Washington may have spoken.

http://dialectblog.com/2012/07/04/how-george-washington-spoke-brief-thoughts/

Somerset bordering on Cornwall or possibly even Black Country/Birmingham (I don’t think George Washington would have sounded like Ozzy Osbourne/Tony Iommi/Geezer Butler/Bill Ward of Black Sabbath but let it pass!). Only 80 years (or less) on from Washington, Ealing a suburb in West London. And then in 1970, Pete Townshend announcing to the concert goers on The Isle of Wight, “Stand up, Sit down, Sit down, Stand up, we like our audience fit.” I can think of someone who may have shouted something like this. “Stand up, Sit down, Sit down, Stand up, in Foochow I like my Fukienese street mobs cowed.”

It would only be 125 years on from Fuzhou to the Isle of Wight! Who’s to say that Dr Alcock and Pete Townshend didn’t sound similar?! You can hear the “Stand up” audience greeting on the YouTube audio-visual above but the sound quality is not the best. The DVD of the concert is much clearer; other excerpts of Townshend’s speech are on the Isle of Wight concert YouTube.

600 000 people on the Isle of Wight in 1970? I suppose it’s just about feasible for three days with that number of visitors to accomodate in tents with their washing, feeding, ablutions etc. For all the energy of ‘The Who’, on stage in August 1970. Townshend in his white suit jumping around and Keith Moon in his tee-shirt flailing at the drums, it wasn’t ‘The Who’, I would argue, were the most influential men in white clothes in the culture of England at that point in time. Instead millions more would be following/listening on the radio/watching on television the M.C.C. who were to fly out on their tour of Australia and New Zealand (1970-71) and which commenced in Port Pirie, South Australia, in late October 1970. Sussex fast bowler, John Snow, was expending as much artistic energy with off-cutters and short-pitched deliveries at Australian batsmen as Townshend or Moon. More scary for being in black and white.

Nor to The Who did the biggest chart-topping hit album of the last months of 1970 belong. In the USA that was, “Come on Get Happy”. By the Partridge Family!

For me, the most interesting member of ‘The Who’ is not Roger Daltrey twirling his mike around his platinum afro while pursuing a 1970s movie career, nor the sadly self-destructive ‘Moon the Loon’. Townshend with his devotion to Zoroastrian Persian mystic, God in human form (and schoolboy cricketer!) Meher Baba did show some complexity it must be admitted…

No. The most interesting is…The Ox! John Entwistle. The only man with musical training in The Who. The only man who held a job before the band. And what a job too…one with which I am familiar! From his Wiki…

Entwistle’s mansion in Stow-on-the-Wold in the Cotswolds and a number of his personal effects were later sold off to meet the demands of the Inland Revenue; ironically, John Entwistle worked for the agency in 1962–63 as a Tax Officer before being demoted to filing clerk, prior to joining The Who.

Nor do I think his personal theology lacked anything by comparison with Townshend’s eastern exoticism.

One aspect of John Entwistle’s life emerged after his death that came as a surprise even to those closest to him, including the members of The Who. “It wasn’t until the day of his funeral that I discovered that he’d spent most of his life as a freemason”, said Pete Townshend.

Ringo Starr (may he long be with us) turns out to be a member of the Scottish Lodge…wouldn’t surprise me!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Lodge_of_Scotland

The Ox’s haircut, though? One could just about imagine a ‘Swinging Sixties’ London hairdresser remembering high school textbooks with pictorial reproductions and thinking…”Wouldn’t this be cool, the most violent men in English history, The Wars of the Roses, looked like this.” “I’ll give The Ox this haircut.” Who, though, among Seoul hairdressers in the early years of the last decade (I would guess Seoul, the style would have later arrived in the Jeolla region of Korea) decided that the haircut of The Ox would be suitable for Korean schoolgirls? Who indeed!

Notes. MCC Tour of Australia and New Zealand 1970-71. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MCC_tour_of_Australia_in_1970%E2%80%9371 Townshend’s Avatar, Meher Baba, may well have thought of ‘Who, Whom?”, drawing on Zoroastrian/Sufi beliefs in the early decades of the 20th Century, before Lenin arrived at his improvement (if it could be called that) to Karl Marx’s theories. Interestingly, Townshend regards himself as a communist. More interesting is a Meher Baba retreat for worldwide followers…just north of Brisbane! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar%27s_Abode And most interesting of all is this photo. Photoshopped? Looking at it either Townshend was astral travelling with that leap (no record of Meher Baba being into such levitation) or he should have been on tour with MCC in 1970. Higher delivery stride than John Snow or even, in all modesty, myself! Tom Hanks’ tv series, “The Sixties.” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3268200/

Juvenile Political Satire.

Antonia (mixed doubles tennis partner in Sydney): Doug you have a schoolboy sense of humour.
Me: Not even undergraduate?
Antonia: NO!

I accept that but I would dispute whether a schoolboy sense of humour is necessarily less sophisticated. And the reason why is…
Neville Wran.

Neville Wran. Order of Australia, Queens Counsel (QC). 1926-2014.

Consider this question and following utterances. “Are you from the ABC?” “Wran’s Our Man.” “Never Wrong.” “Balmain Boys don’t cry.” Meaningless in and of themselves.

But now put them in context. From the age of 13 they started to be said at my Sydney school. In class. During morning, lunch, and afternoon breaks. And at sports practice after school.

“Wragg’s Our Man.” [A jocular punning reference to a classmate with a surname similar to that of the NSW Premier].

The other phrases and questions, “Are you from..?” “Never Wrong.” “BBDC” cannot in good faith be attributed solely to schoolboy observation and banter.

About this time, Mike Carlton, on Sydney radio station 2GB started doing a send-up of the week’s news with voice impersonations called “Friday News Review”. It was on every Friday morning and that same evening Channel 7 tv station used puppets as a segment of satire (like the contemporaneous British tv political parody Spitting Image) in the last 5 minutes of their current affairs show, ‘A Current Affair’, with Carlton’s morning voiceover in sync.

But as schoolboys were we adapting the soundbites of Wran?

“Are you from the ABC?” [annoyed tone if a school personage, a junior or prefect, said something you didn’t like]. Premier Wran didn’t like the national broadcaster (the ABC) asking uncomfortable questions at street level interviews.

“(I’m)” Never Wrong.”!! [boasted if you or a classmate had solved or answered a difficult question posed by the teacher in the classroom or in the textbook.] Carlton’s voice identitfying of Neville Wran was…”Never Wrong.”

“Balmain Boys don’t cry.” Nifty Nev’s (The Premier’s nickname among adults) maudlin celebration of Balmain, the dockside Sydney Harbour suburb, in which he grew up. Winded by a rugby tackle or hit in the lower groin by a cricket ball, we’d bravado this utterance of toughness to the opponent or team mate even though none of us lived anywhere near the suburb of Balmain.

Remembering Neville Wran and our schoolboy satirical adaptations of his sayings, I was reading John Dower’s Embracing Defeat a history of Japan in the Occupation Period 1945-1953. He writes about Japanese children of a younger age than us Sydney schoolboys. And of play not speech. It seems he raises a similar force at work though.

“Children’s games can provide a barometer of their times. With consumerism of any sort still in the distant future, youngsters were thrown back on their imaginations, and their play became a lively measure of the obsessions of adult society.”
Dower then describes how in the war years Japanese children played at being soldiers/sailers/airmen.

“In defeat, there was no such clear indoctrination behind children’s games. Essentially, they played at doing what they saw grownups do. It was a sobering sight.”

The Japanese school children played at being black-marketeers, recreating political demonstrations, and a ‘train game’ in classrooms where pushing off the dais mimicked the crowded Japanese trains.

Today’s childhood educationalists/educational psychologists/childhood psychologists will no doubt throw up their hands and cite academic papers completely dismissing the following.

I’m going to ask a sobering question though, a la Dower: “Do the schoolchildren of 2014 satirise their political elders in games or speech?”

From personal acquaintance of modern adolescents therefore I wonder whether niece Lisi and her schoolfriends satirise the Premier of Queensland, Campbell Newman, as did we Sydney schoolboys with Neville Wran.

A first step would be to ask, of course! They may say, “No. Campbell Newman is old and boring and doesn’t say anything cool.” Which may be true, I don’t pay much attention to Queensland state politics. Premier Newman, for all I know, is not as entertaining or memorable in speech as compared to Neville Wran.

But is it really the comedy potential of the politician’s words that’s decisive in juvenile satire of this sort, or the political forces observed by the teenager, as Dower asserts a with his Japanese post-war schoolchildren? Sure, Mike Carlton and his puppets may have accelerated our pre-existing tendencies to Wran-satire. However, it was the position of Wran, (“He’s the Big Man.”) plus our teenage political calculations that most of our parents (I would put the figure at 95%) would have voted AGAINST him and the Australian Labor Party NSW State Government that helped bring this about. Laugh at the Big Man, while adopting his Big Man sayings, all the while the parents can’t stand him. Two targets (Wran and parents) hit for the price of one…well, less than one, really. We were kids!

Is such juvenile political satire possible now with I-phones? Or whatever niece Lisi uses to keep up with current events instead of radio/television re Wran. Or observation and maybe newspapers/writing re Japanese post-war schoolchildren.

I doubt it. The Kardashians (or Justin Bieber) (or latest pop group du jour) must necessarily overwhelm Premier Newman or Prime Minister Abbott since there is now the technology for them to do so when it wasn’t available before.

Neville Wran meets Margaret Thatcher.

And Queen Elizabeth.

And dancing with Princess Diana.