Name that Party

 Earlier this year Jeremy Corbyn, one time leader of the Labour Party but an independent since 2024, announced the formation of a new party, called Your Party. The cunning plan seems to be to propel himself and some like minded people back into power.

The Corbyn crowd are currently having a conference. However, the usual stuff of such get togethers - rousing speech by the leader, voting for composite motions and desperate scrums for the canapes at fringe meetings - have been entirely overshadowed by a huge row between Corbyn and co-leader Zarah Sultana about who can be a member. Such disputes are endemic to ultra left parties.

An even more fascinating question is what the party is to call itself: the monicker Your Party being something dreamed up in a hurry, apparently, and not necessarily intended to be the permanent name.

They have canvassed ideas and there is a short-list to be voted on. Whether the result will immediately trigger a split, a walkout or a furious media row is not yet clear. Up for grabs are "Your Party", "Our Party", "The Popular Alliance" and "For the Many". Rejected names include "It's My Party (and I'll Vote if I Want to)", "The Very Popular Party, Honest", "It's Party Time" and "The English People's Popular Front". The latter came under fierce attack from those favouring "The Popular Front for the English People", and a splinter group representing "The Peoples' Popular Front (England)" walked out in protest. Meanwhile, those favouring "The Party of the First Part shall be known as the Party of the First Part" attempted to walk in, but were barred for being too Marxist.

Questioned about his relationship with Sultana, Corbyn said he would be happy if she was co-leader but really he would be the main leader because, frankly, she was rubbish. Sultana said she greatly admired and respected Corbyn but if he thought she was playing second fiddle then he had even more screws loose than everybody thought. Corbyn announced an emergency motion that the Party owed a huge debt to Sultana and would she now kindly sod off. Sultana moved a composite motion to promote Corbyn to Honorary President and therefore to bar him from being leader. The debate continues.

Poor old George

 The following popped up on my tablet whilst I was browsing Facebook to see if any more people I had never heard of, and who had nothing whatsoever in common with me, wished to become "friends",  and as it seems to be important, I paid it a little attention.

 It is an advert but I have to confess that I don't know what it is advertising¹. The name is Penhaligon certainly, we've established that from the masthead, from the collection of boxes and packages being admired (in a rather creepy and smug way) by the smooth-faced young man and from the display of the same name embroidered on his sweater. But Messrs Penhaligon seem to be featuring the large bottle with the unfeasibly large, possibly quite dangerous, stopper which is named The Tragedy of Lord George.

The young man seems to be reclining on some sort of carriage in the outdoors, in a mountainous and snowy place. Perhaps it is the one-horse open sleigh we hear so much about at this time of the year.  

We are informed that the stuff in the bottle has "notes of warm rum, tonka beans and shaving soap". I think we can fill in the rest of the picture from here.

Scene: A raging blizzard engulfs Penhaligon Hall, time-honoured seat of the Penhaligons in deepest Cornwall. Enter young Lord George brandishing a bottle and old Tregorran, the family brewer

George: I've done it, Tregorran! They said I was mad, but I've perfected the formula. For years we Penhaligons have brewed whisky from the traditional ingredients of pasty juice and the runoff from tin mines. But now we have something to make everyone sit up and take notice.

Tregorran: Nay, young sir, you do be being headstrong. Tain't safe to meddle with the ancient formula. Handed down from father to son that be, and there's always been a Tregorran to make sure that naught was changed. I beg 'ee, sir, think again. Think of your father.

George: My father has always held me back, Tregorran. Laughed at my ideas. Scorned me in front of my friends. Well no more! This ends now. I'm taking this bottle to the brewery on Bodmin Moor and nothing's going to stop me!

Tregorran: Oh sir, there do be a raging blizzard a-blowing. The roads will be blocked. You'll be beset by enormous hounds, I shouldn't wonder, and they do say the Revenue Men be abroad on the A37. 

George: But I don't need the A37! I shall take the one-horse open sleigh. I shall skim across the fields and into the high hills, fortified by tots of warm rum, tonka beans and all the shaving soap I can stomach! Ha ha!  

He dashes off into the night leaving the faithful retainer aghast

Tregorran: Tis the curse of the Penhaligons! Alack that I should see this day. We'll be hearing no more about Lord George, that's for sure. Hmm, I wonder if I could turn his mixture into an Eau de Cologne or something similar. Could retail it for £245 to the fine folks up in London, I shouldn't wonder. Let's see, warm rum, tonka beans and shaving soap. Yes, just need to find a name for it...

-%-%-%-%-%- 

Note:

1. I looked it up just to be sure. Yes, it is a cologne sold to the fine folk of London all right. 

 

A Load of Old Rope

source: Stephan Friedman Gallery

 There was considerable media interest in the announcement this week that an exhibit of rope was on sale, under the guise of being an artwork, for £1 million (plus VAT). The artist, David Shrigley, said during an interview on the BBCR4 Today programme that he thought it suitable for the entrance at a bank's headquarters.

The piece was made to illustrate the old saying "money for old rope". There can be no gainsaying the concept - should anything at all be paid for it, then it will indeed be thus. 

The gallery exhibiting the pile makes the point that collecting, cleaning, preserving and arranging this load of tat took many months. 

I have to admit to being somewhat baffled as to how to approach this story. I analysed the meaning of "art" many years ago . Since then I have refined my views a little. I hold that anything that is made to stimulate the senses is art. But good art - Art, if you will - goes much further. It should transcend the medium (explained here) by which it is made, it should be original and it should fill one's head with ideas. Otherwise it is merely an exhibit.

This approach helps in thinking about a load of rope piled up on the floor. It does not transcend the medium - it is just a pile of rope, no matter how cleaned up and nicely coiled. Piles of old rope can be found (or used to be) in any fishing harbour or naval dockyard, not to mention the backyard of Arbuthnot Arkwright & Nephew, Ropemakers to the Gentry, Bootle.  Is piling it up original? No, because it is normal for rope to be coiled up in this way. Does it fill your head with ideas? Not really, except one might ponder having a nice spaghetti for lunch. Failing any one of my tests would disqualify something from being Art. This exhibit fails all three.

It is therefore not surprising that the artist hopes to find a bank as a buyer. They would have the cash, and the space, to spare and could treat it as an investment. Also they could reclaim the VAT. Probably their PR people would find elegant ways to use it in marketing - "We won't tie you up in knots with our executive mortgage" or "There's nothing ropey about our loans" or "Our accounts have no strings attached" perhaps. It is telling that all these cunning slogans are negatives - it is hard to find a way to make a positive statement that connects rope to banking. If you can think of something, do send it in to us at the usual address and, should we succeed in pitching it as the basis of a costly new ad campaign, there'll be a couple of sheep-shanks in 40mm Manila in it for you.

 

A Galactic Visitation

 

There has been intense speculation for weeks about the intruder into our solar system, the "comet" called 3i/Atlas. It has zoomed around the sun and is now on its way to who knows where. Many have speculated that it might be an alien spacecraft, on the totally reasonable grounds that everything we cannot fully explain must be of alien origin. 

Now the silence has been broken. A radio signal has come through, streaking across the ether, from this mysterious visitor.  Fortunately for science, the receivers here at Ramblings Towers picked it up loud and clear and we can reveal, exclusively on this channel, the contents of the broadcast. 

Signal begins .....

static.....And after the news, the Grabrlxfggs. Sz40 wants a word with Jorbajax and there's trouble brewing at the Dog and Snarklbeast. pip pip This is the 3iAtlas Radio news and William XXarble45 reading it. bing There have still been no signs of intelligent life on the third planet from the star we are currently approaching. Professor ZumbRk7r says that certain radio signals have been picked up but is unable to decode anything other than the meaningless words "Antiques" and "Roadshow" bing The evacuation of residents of the Cxlarbian sector is intensifying as it continues to evaporate into space bing Sports - the third test between 3iAtlas and Shoemaker-Levy has been abandoned as it seems that the visitors no longer exist....static

"It look like you are running a business. Need help with that?"

 I've frequently had goes at Microsoft. There is something so intriguingly gauche, possibly even jejeune, about their advertising. They make highly sophisticated products but somehow the marketing people either do not grasp how they work or they just dumb everything down because they think their customers are dumb. The title of this piece recalls the horrible helper "Clippy" that at one time popped up whilst using Microsoft software.

In 2014 I analysed their ludicrous claims about helping F1 drivers to win races. A few years previously it was fun to demolish their email offering, or at least the anti-spam feature. And I have moaned about Windows often enough. 

But this is 2025. AI is the big thing. Everyone is doing AI. AI is going to solve all our problems. Although, for Microsoft, finding cures for diseases, improving food production, making stronger and lighter materials do not seem to be priorities. Assisting gormless business people making presentations and showing them how simple documents work, yes, that has been the key element of the ads that pop up on my screens. Here is a nice example of what I mean.  

 Microsoft's AI offering is called Copilot. In the example above, we see a casually dressed, youngish, man staring at his phone while apparently requesting Copilot to explain something to him. What, my friends, can we deduce from this picture? You know my methods - I shall now apply them.

The man in the picture is, it seems, studying an Excel spreadsheet cunning entitled "data". Yes, that's going to a be big help when trying to find it in a few months time. Those of us who have actually designed  finance related spreadsheets  would name this something like "Mfg Division, 2025 Q3 Projection" so it tells us what it is. But this is to nitpick a bit. The fascination this image holds is that our bearded friend cannot work out the structure or formulas from which the calculations of profit (or "profit driver" in MS speak) are made.

He cannot see them or get into the details of the formulas behind them because, although this must be a fairly complex document (or he would not need help with it), he is trying to make sense of it whilst standing up and using a tiny phone. No financial analyst does this. They work on a big screen, the bigger the better and they will do so sitting a desk where they can consult documents, make notes, perhaps work simulaneously on other computer applications. You cannot do this on a phone, however smart, because either they only display one thing at at time or your big sausage fingers make typing a nightmare. 

So it is no wonder that to him it is just a needle in a haystack job (and why he keeps a small haystack on his desk, where it is in danger of spilling over into his coffee mug, is surely a question for HR). He is like a mechanic who, trying to undo a bolt, selects a small screwdriver and jabs it randomly at the offending fixings. 

I hold that, if this guy cannot see where the profits are being made, then he should not be doing this job. There is a job he could do instead - sweep up that bloody haystack.