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by Dr. M. Nicholson   A reader from overseas asked me to write something about the war in Africa. ‘ Which war?’ I asked. Although there is trouble in the francophone countries of West Africa, I presume he meant one of the two wars in central Africa. One is the appalling civil war in Sudan and the other, in my opinion potentially much more serious, is the equally appalling war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (known as the DRC, and not to be confused with the Republic of Congo, formerly the French Congo). The latter is much the smaller of the two and lies on the north side of the Congo river to the north-west of the DRC (in blue in the map above).   A while back, someone complained to the BBC suggesting that racism was the reason that European and American networks so rarely mentioned the civil war in Sudan. I think that is unfair. Sudan is an Islamic desert state, sadly little visited by tourists even before the conflict; so it is hard for anyone far from Africa to relate to it. Besides, the two conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have global implications and are probably enough wars for anybody.   Sudan is a civil war caused by two equally ambitious warlords. The suffering seems endless but apart from the refugees and displaced persons crossing over to Chad, Ethiopia and South Sudan, it is not an international conflict. I doubt I can handle two wars in 1500 words, so let me concentrate on the trouble in the DRC.   Where does one start? With General Gordon in 1884 and the annexation of Equatoria by Emin Pasha? The Berlin Conference of 1885? The grabbing of the Congo Free State by Leopold II for his private fiefdom? Prior to European colonization, Africa was without national borders. Societies were what mattered, based on clans, tribes and local monarchies, not the cast-iron borders created by cartographers and politicians in Europe that could stretch 2500 km in a straight line cutting rough-shod through age-old commercial and linguistic routes.   Or was it the horror of Rwanda in 1994? The answer is that all four are equally to blame but the chaos of the last 35 years was certainly aggravated by the genocide. In the opinion of Gerard Prunier [1]  the genocide was the catalyst behind the first African multinational conflict (known as the First and Second Congo wars, 1996-2006) that killed at least four million people and sucked in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Angola etc. What is deplorable is that few Westerners are even aware of these wars while the ‘International Community’ did almost nothing to stop them.   The DRC has always been ungovernable and is likely to continue to be so for decades to come. It is just too vast [2] . With over 250 tribes and 200 languages, the central government in Kinshasa has no control over what happens in Goma, a sixty-hour drive on poor roads, 2700km to the east. At least 100 rebel groups cause mayhem in every part of the country. Most of DRC is a rainforest of three million square kilometers, which extends over at least five countries. Every time I have flown over it, I have been mesmerized by its vastness: hour after hour of nothing but the “ greenish gloom”  of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.  But dig below the earth and there is a cornucopia of riches: gold, diamonds, copper, cobalt, columbite-tantalum (‘coltan’), tin, tungsten, to mention a few. There lies the problem: the modern world is desperate to lay its hands on these resources for the electronics industry. During Mobutu’s time as president of what he called Zaire (1971-1997), the USA turned a blind eye to his kleptocratic ways. They took the minerals while Mobutu amassed his fortune, which in today’s money would be worth more than $10 billion.   A South African pilot friend used to work in Zaire. He flew a small plane once a week to a remote mining camp carrying $5m in cash, which was exchanged for a small consignment of diamonds. A ‘bodyguard’ always accompanied him to ensure cash and diamonds arrived intact at both ends. On arrival back in Kinshasa, the diamonds were transferred straight onto a Sabena flight and were in Antwerp a day later.   With so much money at stake, everyone wants a share, from the armed rebel groups, the freebooters and entrepreneurs of dubious repute, the weak central government, to the giants of the mining world like Anglo-American and de Beers.    Eastern Congo in blue, still the worst trouble spot So now little Rwanda also wants its share of the spoils, a country one hundred times smaller than the DRC. In 1994 the genocide shocked the world, at least those who had heard of Rwanda. The surviving Tutsis fled to the Congo, regrouped and returned, set on revenge, led by General (and now the current autocratic President) Kagame. They drove out the Hutu militia into the DRC, who then formed the Force Democratiques de Liberation du Rwanda (FDLR) in eastern DRC. In Rwanda itself all talk of ethnic origins these days is taboo but everyone knows that the FDLR wishes to return and get rid of the Tutsi oligarchy and minority [3] . Meanwhile the Tutsis in Congo have ganged up with the Mars 23 (M23) rebel group. M23 has two apparent aims viz , to destroy the FDLR and secondly, to take control of much of Eastern Congo around Goma so they can supply the Rwandan government with minerals. M23 took control of Goma at the north end of Lake Kivu at the end of January after 2000 people were slaughtered. Their initial intention was to move south to Bukavu and take over the whole western part of the lake (North and South Kivu) but that plan is on hold for now. They even threaten to march west and take Kinshasa. Lake Kivu (DRC to the west, Rwanda to the east)   One cannot help thinking of Rudyard Kipling’s Dane-Geld : It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation,  To call upon a neighbour and to say:- We invaded you last night-we are quite prepared to fight, Unless you pay us cash to go away . Rwanda is the armed and agile nation with a well-armed, disciplined and battle-hardened army of 30,000. I also liken Rwanda’s situation to that of David confronting Goliath, a little country taking on a nation one hundred times its size. I like Rwanda and admire the country. It is clean, well run and more or less free of corruption. Not everyone likes President Kagame. He is intelligent, cunning and ruthless and you cross him at your peril. Africa is full of autocrats but Kagame is one who puts his people and his country above lining his pockets.    On the other side, the DRC President Tshisekedi appears weak in contrast. His army of over 100,000 is disorganized and comprises a motley collection of tribes.  Tshisekedi relies on his Foreign Minister, Terese Kayikwamba Wagner, is the fiery daughter of a defrocked German Roman Catholic priest and his Congolese wife. Mme. Wagner berates and vilifies Rwanda for supporting M23 and “invading ” the DRC while her president is reluctant to tackle Kagame head on. So why do I fear for the future? Because I think Rwanda has designs on Eastern Congo in North and South Kivu, first as a buffer against the Hutu militia and secondly, in order to take control of its resources. Inevitably, that would draw in other nations and could lead to a Third Congo war.   It is sad in every way. Rwandans of both ethnicities and the Congolese are delightful people; as always, they are being used as pawns. I have a personal interest in Lake Kivu because a friend runs the fastest growing company in Rwanda on Lake Kivu, a fish farming project where I am involved in ecological restoration. I have a special and secret campsite on the western shore of the lovely lake where I wish to retreat with a tent and some beer for a week of swimming and contemplation. The idea is somewhat incompatible with the atrocities currently being carried out nearby by all combatants against the innocent.  [1]   Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the making of a continental catastrophe . Gerard Prunier. Oxford University Press. [2]  Exactly ten times the size of the United Kingdom [3]  Hutus make up 85% of the population. The taller, and ethnically and physiognomically different, Tutsis comprise 14%  of the population

by Eric Boa   Eucalypts in the Democratic Republic of Congo (photo: Eric Boa) There are two sharply opposing views on eucalypts, a genus of over 700 species native mainly to Australia, and mostly trees. A small number of species are grown extensively around the world, well suited to tropical and warmer temperate climates. A neighbour’s eucalyptus here in London grew to over 15 metres tall and around a metre in diameter at the base. It took two days to remove it.   In Europe, eucalypts commonly occur as ornamental and amenity trees. They line the roads in the southern part of Italy. There are plantations in Spain and Portugal which produce pulp for paper. Pulp production is important in South Africa, where fast-growing eucalypt plantations are highly productive. The trees are cut back after six years to encourage new shoot development. Eucalypts grown for poles take much longer to reach a useful size.   Eucalyptus and pines are the two main groups of trees used globally in plantations. Brazil is the second largest grower of eucalypts after India, also for pulp production but predominantly for producing charcoal. Brazilians are keen churrasquerios and churrasquerias , or barbecue enthusiasts. Never have I been presented with so much meat to eat for a single meal. Yet the overwhelming bulk of charcoal is destined for giant furnaces used in steel making.   The Brazilians have cleverly designed ways to maximize the yield from eucalyptus plantations through genetic improvement and mass production of seedlings. Without eucalyptus Brazil would have to import coal to fuel the steel furnaces. Elsewhere, other uses for eucalyptus range from poles for construction and scaffolding to small-scale use as firewood. It’s a common sight to see mature eucalypts with hacked off branches in Ethiopia. Where else can households readily find a cheap source of fuel? Fence-making in Ethiopia (photo: Eric Boa)  Let’s pause for a breath. On the plus side we have a tree which is fast-growing, versatile, easy to propagate and suited to a wide range of growing conditions. What’s not to like about eucalypts? Why is it a Marmite Tree, loved by some, hated by others? (For those unfamiliar with Marmite, it’s a yeast extract, often spread on bread, whose taste and smell sharply divides opinion. I dislike it. Intensely*.) The arguments against eucalyptus go roughly like this: it has a high need for water, burns like billy-oh and is a threat where fire risks are high, spreads rapidly to new areas and suppresses local biodiversity. Ouch.   These are powerful claims which suggest that eucalypts do more harm than good. The simple response is to ask what would replace eucalyptus. Are there other trees which use less water, burn less rapidly, are not invasive and support local biodiversity? There’s more to consider. Are these replacement trees as fast growing, versatile and suited to different growing conditions as eucalyptus?   Finding a tree or trees which meet all these requirements is never going to be easy. Eucalyptus is a successful plantation tree and industries have adapted to its characteristics. I did a short study of a pine disease in Spain not so long ago and raised the opportunity to grow species less susceptible than Monterey pine, the most popular pine favoured by timber mills. Industry people balked at the cost of having to retool and the effort convincing customers that a replacement species fully met their needs.   I’ve heard the criticism of eucalypts from many sources with a shared concern for environmental impacts. Resolving their antipathy with those in favour, or indeed those highly reliant on eucalypts, is never going to be easy. A more constructive approach is to look back to the late 1970s and 1980s, when the first major criticisms of eucalyptus began to emerge. Until then eucalypts had been successfully grown and accepted in many countries for decades previously. Eucalypts were introduced in the late 19th century in India.   When I worked in Bangladesh from 1981 to 1987 I was joined for a short period by an Australian forester called John Davidson. He lived and breathed eucalyptus and was a notable advocate for what he saw as its many sterling qualities. I knew little then about a growing anti-eucalyptus sentiment in neighbouring India. John wrote a pamphlet which I suspect few know about today: Setting aside the notion that eucalypts are always bad . John was worried that increasing calls to stop planting eucalypts, expressed forcibly in the 1980s by non-governmental organisations (NGOs), would cause irreparable damage to a useful tree.   The NGOs had picked up on a spreading dislike of eucalypts among farmers in India. It’s worth noting that in 1993, some years after the anti-eucalyptus campaign started, and had gained considerable support, that India still had nearly five million hectares of eucalypts. This masks a steep decline in popularity. The farmers reaction against growing eucalypts began with a clash of expectations. The National Social Forestry Campaign began in the late 1970s with support from the national government and donors. Farmers were encouraged to grow trees for subsistence needs: charcoal, firewood, small poles for fencing, construction and so on. On-farm production reduced pressure on native forests and, so the argument went, put farmers in charge of their own needs.   The tree most favoured by farmers was eucalyptus. It had a small crown, so that more trees could be planted in a given area. It did not attract birds (which pillaged nearby crops) and wasn’t eaten by roaming livestock. Moreover, eucalypts grew straight, perhaps their biggest attraction. Farmers were motivated not by subsistence needs but the opportunity to sell poles to an expanding market. From 1981 to 1988 farmers planted 1.7 million hectares of eucalyptus. The expected income never materialised; market demand was less than expected. More crucially, eucalypt yields were disappointing.   Did the National Social Forestry Campaign not understand that project expectations were different from those of farmers? Were farmers unrealistic? Whatever the reason, the dramatic collapse in popularity of eucalypts also led to a wider consideration of possible failings. Attention focused on low yields. The quality of seeds sold to farmers was poor and management of trees was neglected. It’s difficult to say who or what was ultimately responsible for the poor outcomes and it doesn’t really matter. Eucalypts gained a bad reputation for many which continues to this day.   There’s no denying that eucalypts are thirsty, or that they suppress the growth of plants nearby. But then again so do many other trees. There is no such thing as an ecological free lunch. There’s a price to pay for fast-growing trees that, under the right management, are highly productive and versatile.   As I’ve argued before (see a previous article: Is Planting Native Trees Preferable? ), there’s never a simple answer to ecological dilemmas. Farmers in India were let down. They also had unrealistic expectations. NGOs stood up for the farmers but also helped to unfairly damn a highly useful tree. Native trees are wonderful and do all sorts of good yet fall short of meeting all the needs of people. I’ve also learnt a lesson. Maybe I should learn to love Marmite. Especially if it’s the only food available on my desert island. *Whereas the editor adores it.

by Stoker   To escape the dullness of January and the deep despair of the anti-Trumpers – “He moved the whole thing inside so nobody could see how small a crowd there was”; “Melania pulled off a great stroke with that hat, he couldn’t get near her”  - Stoker has been watching a lot of films, mostly, let it be said, Westerns.  Nothing like proper baddies, arid landscapes, and relentless sun beating down on grim January nights.  But let’s keep real cinema alive; your correspondent ventured out to see Conclave , a magnificent study in political manoeuvrings for that other most powerful job in the world.   Conclave  is based, pretty closely it is said, on the book of the same name published in 2016 by Robert Harris.  (The lead character in the film is English but Italian in the book; presumably to allow Ralph Fiennes to take the lead role.)  Harris, or at least his books, were described to your correspondent as books that nobody ever admitting to reading, but which sold remarkably well at airports.  Rather in the way that very few people admit to voting for D Trump, but he still won a robust victory.  To be fair to Harris, Act of Oblivion  (which ought to be filmed), his Cicero  trilogy, and Ghost , not very loosely based on characters who just might be Tony and Cherie Blair, are well-written and well-researched books; and Ghost  was a brave book for a close friend of Blair to write (or a cheap shot).  But Conclave  is not one of his best. It was published in 2016, before the Presidential victory of The Donald that year.  We will come back to this point.   But, whilst not such a great book, it has become a great movie.  Some of that is superb casting but a lot more is to do with that old Agatha Christie device of securing all your characters in a tightly controlled space and letting them rip on each other.  Here we are in the Vatican.  The popular old Pope has just died and now the Cardinals must come together to elect a new leader of the worldwide Roman Catholic church.  When the electoral conclave begins, the electorate - 108 of them - are locked into the Sistine Chapel and into their lodgings (and transferred each morning and night by luxury coach between the two).  No contact with the outside world is allowed; no conversations, no briefings, no tipping off to the press.  And until they reach a two-thirds majority for the new guy, that is how they must stay.  Imagine that, Donald and Kamala; no leaks, no smooching financial backers, and a two-thirds majority.   Ralph Fiennes is Cardinal Thomas Lawrence, the Dean of the College of Cardinals, who is responsible for the running of the conclave. He alone is able to communicate with the outside world, and as Trollope explains in “ The Warden ” about another slightly odd plot device, this has to be true because if it wasn’t, the plot would not work.  This is after all, a thriller, a political thriller, and the twists and turns do require a little bit of outside intervention.  Much of this is through Sister Agnes, magnificently played by Isabella Rossellini, who is responsible for the accommodation and comforts for the sequestered cardinals, and is Lawrence’s channel to the outside and to certain information which comes to hand.  Stanley Tucci is the Democrat candidate, and Sergio Castellitto plays the MVGA (Make Vatican Great Again) chancer. Just joking.  There are in fact six candidates, representing different strands of Catholicism but also some familiar political orientations, and providing goodies and baddies of various goodness and villainies. No women, of course, because, well… obviously.  Time perhaps that there were, you might think, but this is a slow-moving institution with two thousand years of the eternal verities behind it.  The deceased Pope may have wanted to speed things up. He has left a series of little hints and tricks that trip up poor Dean Lawrence, a man struggling with some aspects of his own faith.   This all may sound a bit patronising, but Conclav e is a seriously good movie, sort of mostly believable – though one keeps asking oneself: “do senior religious figures really behave like this”  And answering oneself: “well, they are frail humans after all, and men at that.”   But what really makes the film is the quality of the acting; Fiennes can only be described as tremendous.  The camera lingers in extraordinary close-up on the ageing and agonised face of a man struggling with faith, reluctant to do the things he must do, borne down by the burden of high office and the extreme necessity that the right decision must come out of the conclave, for the Church and Humanity.  No goodie or baddie here; a real man, a man of God, who, whatever his doubts, believes that he will be guided by God to the right courses of action.   Great acting too by Tucci and Rossellini, and indeed by the rest of the cast, though Castellitto has the tricky task of playing a boorish, loud, vulgarian who speaks before he thinks.  Nobody we know then. Though he might bring unexpected change and reform to this great institution, given the chance.   Which brings us to the possible grounds for complaint about this otherwise great movie.  The characters are mostly highly believable and well-played, the atmosphere brilliantly evoked, the cinematography very impressive.  But intermingled with the plausible strands of Christian Catholic beliefs is a political overlay which does not quite meld successfully with a group of holy men having to guide the future of their church.  It was written before the 2016 Presidential election and filmed before the 2024 fight. Robert Harris’s political and social views of life we can probably surmise (former Blair supporter; left Labour Party when Corbyn became leader).  Edward Berger, the film’s director, is Austro-Swiss but lives mostly in Germany and has kindly shared that he supports the German national football team even when they play Austria or Switzerland. That tells us nothing. But the film, intentionally or not, ironically or not, appears to be more Bidenist leaning than Trumpist leaning; certainly more Pope Francis leaning than Pope Benedict leaning.  Benedict good; Kamala good.  Trump: my God, you even ask? Such are the mores of our times.   It is a good enough film that it will certainly still be watched in twenty years’ time, if only for the superb acting of Fiennes, who ought to win the Best Actor Oscar for this painful and moving portrayal.  He probably won’t, up against Adrian Brody for The Brutalist  and Bob Dylan, or at least Timothee Chalamet being better at playing Dylan than Dylan himself ever could be.  Rossellini might just win Best Actress.  But I suspect in twenty years’ time the political overtones of Conclave  will be regarded as a little eccentric.  No matter; it is a proper thriller, wonderfully played, and an insight for an increasingly secular world into the mysteries of religion and faith.

by Richard Despard Six of the seventeen Rare Earths Clockwise from top centre: praseodymium, cerium, lanthanum, neodymium, samarium, and gadolinium. Photo by Peggy Greb, US Department of Agriculture Last month I wrote to Only Connect’s editor, Richard Pooley, asking: ‘Where was the leadership and strategy plan that the EU’s Brussels administration should have put in place decades ago? The Chinese strategy [to control those raw materials essential for future industrial development]  was ‘Writ large’!!’  With a deft backhand, he flipped it back to me and asked for an article.   My exposure to China extends a bit beyond excellent Dim Sum  lunches in London’s West-End. In the 1980’s I was introduced to Fergus Liu, who had just invented the turbo gas cooker. Today almost every UK Chinese and Japanese restaurant has one. Fergus had a successful kitchen equipment import business that frequently took him to China. On a visit he was taken to Anshan and shown a field of boxes that had been bought by the Red Flag Tractor Company. Together they constituted a steel rolling mill. They had been sitting there for five years and the commissioning contracts had expired. “What to do?”  Fergus was asked. On his return he asked me. Together we arranged for a Chinese delegation, and the Swiss company, Georg Fischer, and the German firm, Knight Wendling, to come to England. For a week we sat in a room with fifteen Chinese Government, City and company representatives. Very polite circular discussions. Agreement was reached when the Europeans got bored. It was clear from the beginning that the contracts would be renewed; failure to renew would result in little further work or business in China. Both European companies have subsequently developed successful local operations in China. Fergus’ status rose, and I introduced him to the Rolls Royce Industrial Power Group, for which he set up joint venture companies in Fushun (Liaoning) and Baoding (Hebei) in between 1990 to 1998. This exposure to China has kept my eyes open to their industrial progress.   You might remember people waving Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book  on high. It became a best seller, but was beaten by Sun Tzu’s Art of War . Chairman Mao’s Great Leap Forward strategy of 1958-62 included the elimination of the sparrow population. But they ate the bugs that ate the crops. The crops failed, famine resulted and millions died. A failed strategy. Mao died in 1976 and after two chaotic years Deng Xiaoping took control. With military experience and extensive Communist Party connections, he was well positioned to effect change. The changes were many, and included opening China up to foreign investment and technology, and making its vast labour force available to foreign businesses. Reforms also included facilitating elements of market capitalism in the Chinese economy by designating Special Economic Zones (SEZ). Shenzhen, a small fishing village of 30,000, was designated as one of the first SEZs in 1980. Ranked as a top ten global finance centre in 2024, it is considered to be “China’s Silicon Valley” .  The World Economic Forum estimates that 90% of the world's electronics are made in Shenzhen, including mobile phones, televisions, air conditioning units, and drones.  Deng was a strategist – and his strategies worked. Since then, countless foreign companies have set up local China-based operations or have entered into joint ventures. Volkswagen commenced operations there in 1984, and now has three joint-ventures that produce more than four million vehicles. Siemens   entered a cooperation agreement in 1985 with the Chinese government. It is one of the largest producers of energy-efficient and resource-saving technologies, a leading supplier of efficient power generation and power transmission solutions, and a pioneer in infrastructure solutions as well as automation, drive and software solutions for industry. It has its Cyber Security Operation Centre  service based in Suzhou, monitoring customers’ digital factories and production lines, identifying cyber threats facing customers.   Apple   has around 95% of all its products produced in China. One facility alone is reported to be assembling half a million iPhones per day. It is so integrated into the local manufacturing structure, including suppliers, manufacturers, logistics and a trained workforce, that moving everything to another country, would be immensely difficult.   Each of these huge companies, two European and one American, have China-based operations that are strategic to their business. They all draw on the local infrastructure and conditions that are hard to recreate elsewhere. Rare Earth Elements (REE) are a Critical Raw Material (CRM) required by each of these companies to succeed.   What are these “ must have”  Rare Earth Elements? They consist of a group of seventeen metals that are crucial to the development of modern technology and strategic industries, including defence, aerospace, electronics and electric vehicles. REE are key ingredients for glass, lights, magnets, batteries, and catalytic converters, and used in everything from smart phones to cars, digital cameras, computer hard disks, fluorescent and light-emitting-diode (LED) lights, flat screen televisions, computer monitors, and electronic displays.   For example a magnet for one wind turbine needs about 300 kilograms of neodymium and significant amounts of dysprosium, praseodymium, samarium, cobalt, and rhenium. Neodymium-iron-boron magnets are the strongest magnets known, and are used in computer hard disks and CD–ROM and DVD disk drives. Nickel-metal hydride batteries are built with lanthanum-based alloys as anodes. These battery types, when used in hybrid electric cars, contain significant amounts of lanthanum, requiring as much as 10 to 15 kilograms per electric vehicle.   A significant number of products in use today have been manufactured using REE. Without access to them industrial and commercial operations will be at risk, but so too will be our communication and defence infrastructure. So, who are we relying on to supply REE?   China (PRC).   Well not totally, but still significantly. China recognised very early, the benefit of having control of REE production, its processing, and its integration into strategically important industries. It developed its REE strategy, and created a complete toolbox to deliver it.   This includes using State capabilities combined with private sector entrepreneurship. At home, local and Central government bodies provided many incentives for foreign enterprises to set up local enterprises, especially joint-ventures. Grants and a cheap (initially) labour force, fully integrated logistics, and access to raw materials including REE, (and a massive consumer market) encouraged companies including those above to set up there. While China has large REE deposits, it recognised that for long-term supply security, and to exclude the competition, it needed to acquire or have influence over the mines and their products that were located elsewhere. This strategy has been successful, principally in Australia, South America and Africa. In order to acquire or establish joint-ventures, Chinese companies were able to offer the mining skills and equipment, the (scarce) processing technology and skills, and end-user contracts, representing a package that was hard to beat. This package in many instances came with large Chinese Government loans to each country, for mainly infrastructure development.   The result:   This summarises ownership rates by investor origin for five selected metals.   China’s leading position is especially notable in the extraction of rare earths (REE), cobalt and, to a lesser extent, lithium. While Australia accounts for half of the world’s lithium production, two of its biggest lithium mines are owned by Chinese companies. Chinese investors also have significant stakes in nickel and cobalt companies, and these minerals are predominantly mined in Indonesia for nickel, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for cobalt. Chinese mining and battery companies have invested $4.5 billion in lithium mines in the past two years and are behind much of Africa’s lithium projects in countries like Namibia, Zimbabwe and Mali. By contrast, European investors hold limited stakes in Critical Raw Material (CRM) mining companies. The EU’s relatively high stake in the nickel sector partly reflects investments located in Cyprus, representing significant Russian interests. So, China and Russia – again! Under Xi Jinping, China has changed and become more centralized, authoritarian and assertive abroad, and its goals are often in contradiction with European interests and values. Back in 2019, the EU Commission acknowledged this shift by introducing a tripartite definition of China, as a partner for cooperation and negotiation, an   economic competitor, and a systemic rival . Many fear that China will pursue increasingly coercive measures to leverage its supply chain advantage in pursuit of broader geopolitical objectives. Reference my experience with Anshan - agree or be excluded. This presents a strategic challenge for the United States, Europe and their allies, who are increasingly dependent on China’s production of mineral resources. In 2022 the United States was 100-percent net-import-reliant on its supply of at least 13 of 33 critical minerals and it is more than 50-percent net-import-reliant for at least an additional 13 of these critical minerals. China supplies the EU with 97% of the Magnesium and 100% of the REE it requires whilst Turkey supplies 98% of its Borate needs. My question to Richard was:   Where was the leadership and strategy? A good question, but it turns out that I should have added ‘ execution and outcome’ . Most studies indicate that there was no leadership or strategy, until about 2021. Since then, both the EU and the US have accelerated the pace of engaging in multilateral and bilateral CRM partnerships. The EU’s Global Gateway , and the US-led Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment , are aiming at offering an alternative to China’s position of dominant control of CRM . Yet, to be truly effective, such initiatives must reach both speed and scale and deliver concrete positive benefits on the ground.  The absence of a true EU industrial policy is Europe’s dilemma. Currently, any EU industrial policy aimed at achieving strategic autonomy may require measures that deviate from the core principles of the single market. This deviation can potentially exacerbate disparities among member states, both in terms of their industrial capabilities and, ultimately, their economic development. Hence, getting twenty-seven member states to agree on a commitment of financial and other supports, with trade or other controls, is very difficult. However, concern over national security, strategic autonomy, improving the governance and sustainability of CRM supplies are the main driving forces for some action that has been taken. Some member states, like France, raised the importance of the subject some years ago, but Europe has been very slow to react. The EU seriously started to address these issues through legislation in 2023 via the Critical Raw Materials Act . The United States under President Trump made the first steps in 2017 through the Executive Order 13817, followed by the release of a list of 35 critical minerals in 2018, and the Biden administration has stepped up US action on CRM supply diversification. Japan was a pioneer in 2010. Europe’s response, while slow to emerge, has been a ‘De-Risking’ strategy: to reinvest in its own mineral extraction, refining and recycling capacities; to review current defensive instruments, along with establishing new protections, including new investment screening; and to diversify global supply chains by expanding its strategic partnerships. C onsidering the scale and nature of China’s support for its own CRM operations, in order to be successful, the EU will also need to provide much greater financial support to better align European private sector interests with the bloc’s stated energy security and de-risking objectives. The  EU has signed strategic partnerships with several politically friendly countries around the world, including in Africa. The EU will only realise its de-risking ambitions if the European private sector invests in CRM supply chains. Yet the incentives for European companies to enter mining and processing operations in these markets are too weak. In Namibia the EU’s strategic partnership has borne little fruit; and may even be benefitting Chinese firms at European expense. To address this, the EU must enhance support to European companies to invest in securing access to CRM. This should include new financial incentives and measures to protect against China manipulating prices on international markets. All the above is drawn from too many sources to list. Most reports indicate that the EU has moved from no agreed strategy, to a recognition of the need for action on some deliverable key objectives. ‘Deliverable’ is the key word. While France, Italy and Germany have put in place their metals investment funds, getting the agreement of all EU states to centrally deploy the resources (financial and other) remains very uncertain. So, I was right to ask where the leadership and strategy was. We are now seeing both but they would seem to be inadequately empowered to deliver the immediate results needed to secure long-term access to CRM (including REE) together with the technologies necessary for processing and use. Last words: Professor Yan Xuetong, China’s most revered political scientist on 20 December, 2024 : “The United States’ competition with China is not over ideology—but over technology. In the digital age, security and prosperity depend hugely on technological progress. China and the United States will battle over innovation in fields such as artificial intelligence, and wrestle over markets and high-technology supply chains.”   Forbes magazine – “'Made in China', whether directly or indirectly, is the sobering reality that we face.” After I finished writing this article, President-elect Trump said that he wants to buy Greenland. This was Sky News’ explanation for this apparently bizarre proposal: “Greenland holds rich deposits of various natural resources. Locked inside the island are valuable rare earth minerals needed for telecommunications, as well as uranium, billions of untapped barrels of oil and a vast supply of natural gas that used to be inaccessible but is becoming less so. Many of the same minerals are currently mostly supplied by China, so other countries such as the US are interested in tapping into available resources closer to home.”

by Lynda Goetz Photo: Maxim Hopman   As we enter 2025, it is getting increasingly hard to feel optimistic about my country. The gulf between those in government and the governed seems to yawn ever wider. The divide between the idealogues and those who wish just to be allowed to do the best for themselves and their families seems to increase daily.   Fourteen years of a Tory government did nothing to deal with the issues of a bloated and seemingly barely cooperative Civil Service, a stagnant economy, a population seemingly more and more addicted and entitled to welfare, a health service in crisis, and an immigration problem which, due to an entrenched but unfounded belief in the need for an external workforce to produce growth, continued (deliberately) unabated even after we had left the EU. The hypocrisy and arrogance of Boris Johnson’s cabinet and advisers, which during Covid had imposed an authoritarian regime almost previously unknown in modern peacetime but then proceeded to flout its own rules and regulations, brought down his government.  Preceded by David Cameron and then Theresa May, both disastrous in their own ways, he was succeeded for just forty days  by Liz Truss and then by Rishi Sunak.  By the time Sunak made the mistake of calling an early election last summer, the membership of the Conservative party had fallen quite dramatically and even those who , whilst not members, were natural conservative voters , saw nothing conservative about the party which had been in power fourteen years and had done nothing to change the direction in which Tony Blair had set the country during his years in power.   Almost the entire country had had enough. People were weary of politics and particularly weary of untrustworthy politicians. They wanted change. Many felt it was time to give the ‘other party’, namely Labour, a turn. Some saw the Liberal Democrats as a hope and in the West Country where I live they gained a fair number of seats from the Tories. They ran a well-focused and clever campaign which saw them gain 72 seats with a vote share of 12%. This was an increase of 61 seats.  Their skill lay in focusing only on what they saw as winnable seats. The Labour party actually only gained 33% of the national vote but came out with 411 seats and a simple majority of 172 (now slightly reduced owing to intervening events). The Reform party got 14.3% of the vote, but it was too widely spread, and they ended up with just 5 seats. Many people felt too disillusioned to vote.  There was only a 60% turnout.   Why, I hear you ask, are you repeating all this? This is history, recent history and we are all only too well aware of it. The reason is the growing awareness that even those who voted for Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party had no real idea what they were voting for. They were desperate for change. “Change”  was the buzzword Starmer hooked onto. The Change proposed seems to be either more of the same or moves to pander to the Civil Service and the trades unions whilst tying the hands of the private sector behind their backs and telling them to increase productivity and growth.    It is increasingly apparent that this is a Socialist party driven by ideology and dogma and with little idea at all of how to “promote growth”,  even though it has been one of Chancellor Reeves most oft-repeated mantras. For a Chancellor to be asking regulators for their ideas and suggestions as to how this can be achieved, after a Budget which, unsurprisingly, even to the economically illiterate, has caused the exact opposite, is tragic irony. A party which has had fourteen years in opposition to prepare for government seems to be devoid of ideas apart from fixations on ‘ levelling down’  and ‘net zero’ . Destroying private education is not going to improve the state sector. Destroying academies by removing their freedoms (to decide their own remuneration packages and their curriculums etc) is likewise going to cause more damage than benefit. Tearing up the Rwanda agreement with no other deterrent in place has not stopped the flow of illegal migrants across the Channel. Legal immigration remains an issue, in spite of serious public unease, not to say unrest.  In December, Starmer refused to rule out bringing in a blasphemy law when asked by Tahir Ali, MP for Birmingham Hall Green and Mosely, to "commit to introducing measures to prohibit the desecration of all religious texts and the prophets of the Abrahamic religions".  Later, Seema Malhotra, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Equalities, did give a simple “ yes”  when asked if she would rule out creating new blasphemy laws “which have no place in modern British society” although this has not been confirmed by higher authorities.   Ed Miliband’s zealous pursuit of the ‘net zero’ targets first passed into legislation by the May government may appeal to the purists, but experts are warning that this is adding hundreds of pounds a year to the bills of consumers already hard pushed by the cost of living increases and inflation of the last few years. Even if we succeed in these aims, which will come at such a cost to the UK population, we are responsible for a mere 1% of global emissions.  We live in a country where a regular supply of sunshine (or even wind) are not givens. The infrastructure is not in place. A much slower and more pragmatic approach to the transition would not leave us at risk of frequent power cuts, nor would it pose the threat to the economy that this full-throated charge is already presenting.   Pensioners have had the annual winter fuel allowance removed. This may perhaps have had some merit had it been thought through.  Like so much else, it was not. Clearly there were plenty of pensioners for whom a £200 bonus before Christmas was a nice addition to the Christmas spending pot. For many, many others it was a vital help in the face of rising costs. The amount saved by the Treasury was expected to be £1.4 billion.  In the event, it may actually end up costing the Treasury more, as more claim Pension Credit and are then able to claim other so-called ‘ passported benefits’ . It has seriously further eroded trust after all the pre-election promises.   The other attacks on pensioners by this government are also unwelcome. They appear to be seen as part of Labour’s enemies. The definition of ‘working people’ has never been clearly or satisfactorily explained by Starmer or his ministers, but it would appear that pensioners come under the definition of ‘non-workers’, which of course they are at this point in their lives. That denies their previous earlier status as contributors to the economy. The various moves on pensions, inheritance tax, and taxes on small business and farmers all point to a disregard for those who have worked, are self-employed or are self-sufficient by dint of their own hard work. This government appears to be preparing for a world in which everyone either works for or is beholden to the State.   As for free speech, it almost seems to have become a dirty phrase. We have police forces whose record on solving crime seems pathetic and who seem to spend far too much of their time focusing on supposed ‘keyboard warriors’ (e.g a grandmother in her 70s still in prison for an online comment posted in anger during the Southport riots last summer) and non-crime hate incidents of the sort highlighted by the journalist Allison Pearson last autumn. We appear to have a two-tier system of justice as pointed out by an American who does not need to fear our increasingly authoritarian government. Not only does that government seem to think it is fine if they accept gifts from their backers but seek to ensure that other parties are legislated against if they were to accept large donations from a person of whom they disapprove, but to crown their hypocrisy they have just succeeded in refusing a call for an inquiry into what are euphemistically called “grooming gangs”.     These largely Pakistani rape gangs, for that is what they are, have damaged and abused thousands of largely vulnerable white girls. It is even claimed that some have died , including one girl, and her family, whose house was set on fire by her abuser.  A number of the perpetrators who were supposed to have been deported are still here. Those in positions of authority who chose to turn a blind eye and cover up behaviour going on under their noses, because they were worried about being considered racist, have never faced justice. Labour, who have been setting up inquiries and quangos at a rate of knots since they took over in the summer, could so easily have responded to public anger and initiated a national inquiry. Instead, tone deaf, or with something to cover up, they chose to ignore the demands (as indeed had the Tories, although they could perhaps claim that the extent of the abuse in many different locations was not fully apparent when they were in power).  In yet another stunningly hypocritical move, Starmer and his deputy Angela Rayner, having imposed a three-line whip against the Opposition’s calls for an enquiry (using a technicality, which would also have had the effect of bringing down the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill  on its second reading), both contrived to abstain from voting at all themselves. The Lib Dems also all abstained.   Perhaps it is of more significance than generally realised that Reeves has dashed off to China in the hopes of promoting trade and creating growth. Sunak had increasingly turned away from China having seen the reality of a government which his predecessor as PM and subsequently his Foreign Minister,  Lord Cameron, had seen fit to engage with and encourage. Are closer ties with this authoritarian regime really what this country needs?   Disillusion with this government voted in only last summer, is high. Starmer may have a large majority in Parliament.  He does not have that support in the country. His ability to read the electorate seems close to net zero, but the question is, does he care? Unless he and his Chancellor manage to do something to completely lose the support of his MPs, the damage they have already wreaked will seem small in comparison to that which they will succeed in creating in the next four and a half years. Short of civil war, which in spite of Elon Musk’s predictions last summer, we are nowhere near at this point, it is hard to see how we can avoid that damage. Should the economy get better (although that does seem unlikely as things stand), they might even recover their fortunes to the point of getting a second term in 2029. All we can hope for now is that the freedoms we have come to take for granted are not removed before that point.   Welcome to 2025! As for the rest of the world’s fortunes for the forthcoming year, I daren’t even go there. No doubt they will be fought out on X whilst the rest of us keep our heads down and hope - or pray, and pay.

by Mark Nicholson   The internet tells us that the five most crime-ridden countries in the world are Haiti, Afghanistan, Papua New Guinea, Venezuela and South Africa. The first three are unspeakably poor and/or chaotic . The latter two are less obvious but probably mainly due to the inequality between rich and poor. Anywhere in the world where there is big gap between the haves and have nots, crime is bound to be worse. The Gini coefficient is used as a measure of inequality in income and wealth. South Africa has the highest Gini coefficient. By contrast, the Nordic countries have the lowest Gini coefficients, along with Slovakia, and the lowest crime rates.   Anyone who has spent a long time in Africa is bound at some time to have been the victim of crime, major or minor. I have been at the wrong end of automatic pistols and AK-47s but lucky enough to have got away with it. Other friends have not been so lucky. A recent incident of minor crime at my home in Kenya has developed into an interesting story.   It started with a game of table tennis on 27th November. My wife and I tend to play five games every evening when alone. The fact that she frequently thrashes me is hardly relevant to the story but I have to admit my annoyance; I was quite a handy player in my youth. The table is downstairs. Otherwise, we live on the upper floors. On walking up the stairs, I happened to glance at a few family heirlooms on the wall and suddenly noticed that some medals in a glass frame were missing. I showed my wife and sure enough, where there had been six, there were only three. On taking the frame off the wall, we first thought it must have fallen onto the floor, but the glass was unbroken. It was clear that the back of the frame had been forced open. My wife placed the tampered frame on a nearby table and that was that. The next day we went out to lunch with friends. The following morning, my wife shouted “What have you done with the frame?” . “Nothing” , I replied. “You must have done, because it isn’t here!”,  she riposted.  She then started hunting for it, opened the draw in the table and there was the frame, this time with all the medals gone. We then went downstairs and found that two other boxes containing my father’s and my other grandfather’s medals were also empty.   It didn’t require Sherlock Holmes to work out who the culprit was. Our cook and gardener have been with us for over 20 years but we recently hired a bright under-gardener from the tea camp below in the valley. When our cook goes shopping, she hides the key not very securely in an unlocked cupboard outside. The following morning the young suspect sent me an SMS message asking for his salary.  I invited him to accompany another worker and me and join us in the car for an errand. Instead I headed straight to the police station nearby.  I told the Inspector there that we had had a robbery and that the culprit was sitting in the car. The young man declared his innocence and said he knew nothing about it. His phone and house keys were handed over and he was put inside a cell with other inmates. A police cell in Africa is very different proposition to a cell in Europe… 20 in a tiny room with no chair, bed and just one bucket.   I then suggested to the Inspector that as the thief's keys were in our possession that we should take him to his house and see if we could find the medals. So off we all went, found his room and had a look around. There we found some items of mine of whose absence I was unaware. These included an unopened bottle of Glenfiddich (“ I bought it ” , he claims… interesting when I found the empty container upstairs - left), binoculars. a new pair of boots given to me by a pal from Texas (“ a gift ”…yes, from Mark Nicholson), my spare swimming pool pump, some coins (George V & VI Crowns etc.) but no medals.   A gentle bit of persuasion back at the Police station elicited a confession. Yes, he had taken the medals but most of them had “gone”.  Where? “ To Montenegro” . ‘Where ??’, we all exclaimed. Most of us had never heard of the place unless we had seen Casino Royale. Eventually it came out that he had stolen the medals in three tranches. He had then advertised them on Facebook and was contacted by a collector in Podgorica who asked about their provenance? ‘ My boss has died and left them to me ’. The Montenegran did not know the thief so he was told to hand them over to a middleman (let’s call him MM) in Nairobi. Fifteen medals were handed over and cash ($200-300, amounts differ) exchanged hands*.   So on a hot Friday morning, we all set off on a seven and a half hour jaunt round Nairobi. The Inspector in the front, the thief in handcuffs behind with two cops, one armed, whom we had collected from a second police station and me, the driver. First stop in Nairobi was a high-end gated community owned by a wealthy developer I knew, who by coincidence is also a medal collector. At the barrier, a gardener saw the cops, pulled out his phone and tried calling a friend. The Inspector nabbed him amid much shrieking and was done for “Obstructing a Police officer”.  A second pair of handcuffs appeared.  We then found MM, who was also cuffed. Now we had two handcuffed suspects in the boot and one behind me. “Where are the three medals?”  MM was asked.   “In my house?” says MM. “Where?””Gachie” .  Gachie is a particularly insalubrious satellite of Nairobi peopled by all sorts of mostly illegal immigrants from Nubia, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and Somalia. Near MM’s compound we had such unpleasant stares from hangers on that the Inspector demanded we go to a third police station to get armed back up. Back to MM’s house by which time we had eight in my car and two semi-automatics rifles.  The three medals appeared, ribbons now torn off. “Now where?”,  I demand. To DHL, to find out where the other medals were.   When we got to DHL we discovered that the medals were in Montenegro but had not been collected. Back to the diplomatic Police station to get a letter confirming the consignment was stolen property. We then WhatsApp-ed Mr. Montenegro who assured us he was a bona fide  collector while I averred that I was not yet dead. He of course wanted his money back. “That’s your problem, mate” , I reassured him.   We succeeded in stopping the medals being collected but I had to pay 80 € Montenegro duty. Then I paid DHL to send them back ($86). It took eight days for them to re-appear via Rome, Brussels and Berlin. Back in Kenya, import tax please (about $67).     MM then forwarded all the thief’s photos of my house which included other curious items like antlers (maybe he thought they were ivory), hippo tusks, and pictures of another very heavy frame containing WWI bits and pieces including a Death Man’s Penny and an award signed by Winston Churchill, as Secretary of State for War. Dead Man's or Widow’s Penny. This was a plaque, in fact bigger than a penny coin, which was given to all British Empire service personnel who died in the First World War. This one was for my grandfather, Captain Eric Newzam Nicholson, 1886-1917. The good thing is that I have learnt something. I had never actually looked at the medals before, had no idea that they had any value and had no idea that there was a difference between campaign medals (very little value) and medals for being a Good Egg (two Military Crosses with names engraved on them). The two unusual medals were the Delhi Durbar medal and one with Haile Selassie’s head (right).   Mr Thief has repeatedly been calling me since, begging for forgiveness.  Of course, I can forgive him but he should receive some punishment. Bail was set at Ksh. 200,000 and his family would be stretched to find a hundredth of that.  The hearing was set for 11th January, and the main trial, to which my wife, our cook and I have been summoned, will be in February.   The Inspector glibly says he faces several years in the nick and here’s the rub. A desperately poor young man faces imprisonment for trying his luck, with the help of social media, to improve his lot by carrying out a crime, which in the UK would scarcely be worth investigating. Meanwhile our poor President, William Ruto, was unfairly pushed into second place in a recent poll looking for the worlds’ most corrupt leader of 2024. The winner was ousted Bashir Al Assad only because he has recently been in the news. The vote was run by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and our President received over 40,000 votes more than Assad. He does not enjoy being No. 2 and an investigation into an obvious case of vote rigging needs to be opened. Ruto actually started out in very similar circumstances selling peanuts on the streets and he is now worth well over $800 million.  But, as always, there seems to be one rule for the rich and one for the poor.  Who is more deserving of punishment and who will receive it?    *I had to get an official valuation from a friend in the UK and the valuation was ten or twenty times that value

by Stoker Courtesy of Library of Congress Ms Harris having, somewhat disappointingly, failed to lead a march of angry Bidenites (Joeists?) to storm the Capitol, it looks as though the inauguration of President Trump Two, the 47th President of the United States, will be comfortingly normal. To digress – where is Kamala? Anybody seen her since those extraordinary days of early November?  Let’s face it, she is still in remunerated employment until 20th January, when she must pass over to JD Vance the keys to the Vice-Presidential office, the executive washroom, and the private family rooms, all in Number One Observatory Circle.  (The Veep does not, as many Americans think, have a little apartment in the White House. Since 1974 they have been entitled to reside at Number One, and most have done so, and their office and those of their support staff are mostly there or close by).   Anyway, Harris is history, Trump is triumphant, and Biden is back to Delaware. Joe has marked up a little record all of his own in recent presidential history by pardoning, commuting, or forgiving over eight thousand convicted prisoners.  This comes close to a record for Presidential clemency and even exceeds Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Abraham Lincoln, and forgave amongst many thousands, three conspirators who intended to assassinate Lincoln, had not John Wilkes Booth done the job first.  Biden though did forgive his own son, Hunter Biden, of gun and tax offences, having on several occasions said that he would not do so as “nobody is above the law” .  Circumstances alter cases, we guess.  And it establishes a useful precedent for President Trump to forgive himself, should such a contingency become necessary, however unlikely that might seem.  The record holder in forgiveness though is the recently deceased Jimmy Carter, who forgave over two hundred thousand Vietnam draft dodgers.  Refusing to fight for your country seems to be a form of saintliness in Georgia, though a bit rough on those who did join up and were injured or died in service of their country.    So, in a few days it is back to the future for Mr Trump, who has changed a little.  Not just his hair, which has gone from orange to a rather fetching grey/blond, but in his rhetoric, which has calmed considerably since his electoral victory.  The Donald almost seems moderate in many recent utterances, especially on immigration and unity of purpose.    Our revered editor pointed out to us scribblers that he, Mr Trump we mean, not our editor who has no territorial aspirations, had made various inflammatory remarks about Greenland, which he has offered to buy from Denmark, about Canada, to which he has offered full American statehood (Her late Majesty Elizabeth II would have had something to say about that), and about Panama, from whom he wishes  to buy back the Panama Canal – sold to the Republic of Panama for the remarkable sum of US$1 (yes, one dollar) by none other than Jimmy Carter.  This is maybe mostly Trumpian mischief- making, especially with the stepping down of Prime Minister Trudeau early last week, and Panama’s attempts to force up transit fees in the canal, which is suffering increasing costs and falling revenues with intense competition from cross-continental American railroads.  Greenland is a slightly different case; there is a growing movement to achieve independence from Denmark, with which she forms a “commonwealth”,  as do the Faroe Isles.  However Greenland is unlikely to be able to stand economically alone, and American politicians, not just Mr T, are nervous about possible friendly overtures from China and Russia.    The other strange feature of these transitory January days is the remarkable misunderstanding that has come to light over the political leanings of the social media industry.  Most remarkable is Mr Musk, but we will come back to him.  Also active with the fancy footwork is the senior management of what you probably think of as Facebook, but actually is really Mr Zuckerberg’s empire, Meta.  Not only Facebook, only used by the over-sixties now, but also Instagram, where you display your sweetest photographs, and WhatsApp, where you express your most secret stratagems and private prognostications (heavily coded and inaccessible to all agencies of government; though, have you ever considered, perhaps not to Mr Zuckerberg himself?).   Be that as it may, Mr Z has suddenly realised that some commentators think that Meta has been left-leaning in its sympathies, and rather keen to push Democrat and anti-populist causes.  Not at all, says Mark.  Out as head of anti-nastiness and Far Right subjection has gone Nick Clegg, a wet leftie liberal, and in comes Joel Kaplan, a rather tough Republican semi-grandee.  That will sort out the balance issues; rest assured that there will be no political bias anywhere in the Meta group.  Photos of Melania Trump hugging kittens gratefully received.   No doubt Mark Zuckerberg was watching the remarkable political transformation of Elon Musk, electric car maker extraordinaire, owner of “X”, and space entrepreneur.  Mr Musk was until recently allegedly a registered and enthusiastic Democrat supporter, but again we seem to have been misinformed.  In truth, he was all the time hoping for a Republican revival and the return of The Donald.  Now his wish has been granted, and he has been gratefully taking the credit for Donald’s great victory; though it is not clear that Donald is giving him that much credit, or that “X” was that significant in swaying voter intentions.  He will soon be starting work to reduce the size of America’s vast and enormously expensive governmental bureaucracy and in his evenings and weekends picking fights with the British, French, German, and Canadian governments, and indeed Nigel Farage, leader of the UK's Reform Party (we are not complaining, we just wonder how he finds the time).  Reducing Federal spend should be the easy bit, at least to start with, though as Donald carries through on his pledge to “drill, baby, drill”  and the American petrol-engined car industry rapidly revives, Mr Musk may need to spend a lot more time on his Tesla car business, already seeing a rapid fall in sales.   It's going to be a busy and exciting year!

by Denis Lyons John Bull World War I Recruiting Poster Published by the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, 1915   Sensational headlines about the rising toxic tide of Americanisms inundating our defenceless language produce predictable, periodic paroxysms of pearl-clutching among the proper-parlance set. For example, with admirable clarity, one recent article was headlined “Americanisms are poisoning our language”.     Americanisms are now so numerous that it is impossible to avoid hearing or reading them, even if you do not actually use them. There are too many to repeat them all here, but how would some in this country now manage without words and phrases like you guys, heads up, have a nice day, my bad, touch base, you’re welcome, where we’re at, going forward, winningest, so fun, reach out for, ballpark figure, I’m good, 24/7, gotten, way, shape or form, ideate, and schedule with a ‘k’?   The ‘repel Americanisms’ argument is based partly on the belief that, because we have perfectly serviceable English words and expressions, it is unnecessary to replace them with foreign imports which will gradually smother our distinctive national language. Margot Asquith undoubtedly had this in mind when she observed, archly, “What a pity, when Christopher Columbus discovered America, that he ever mentioned it.”   England is not the only country which is defensive about its language. It might come as a shock to some that, in several countries, it is English which is viewed as the unwanted invader and is charged with linguistic imperialism. Since 1635, the redoubtable Académie Française,  has been attempting, with qualified success, to stem the immigration of foreign, particularly English, words. French linguist Claude Hagège estimated that France had established over 200 different bodies to help defend its mother tongue, according to a report in 2008.   French success can be gauged by clues in a study by one such body, the Académie’s Commission d’étude sur la communication institutionnelle en langue française . Their report is not happy about, for example, some rather surprising English language travel and tourist slogans, used within France itself, like “I Love Nice”, “My Loire Valley”, “Annecy Mountains”  and “Air France, France is in the air”.   Another state guardian of linguistic purity - the Commission d’enrichissement de la langue française – creates officially approved French neologisms to replace unwanted English imports. For example, with a straight face and a delicious soupçon of French satire, it suggests “infox”  (with the final 'x' pronounced) instead of, as it describes it, “the Anglo-Saxon phrase ‘fake news’’’.   In 2019, alarmed by the “suffocation”  of their language, 100 signatories from 25 countries urged French President Emmanuel Macron to "protect the French language from Anglo-American colonialism.”   Germany also has a long, if slightly less robust, history of defending its language.  In 1617 the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft  (The Fruitbearing Society) was formed to repel foreign word imports. Today, the Verein Deutsche Sprache  (German Language Society, the VDS), founded in 1997, conducts similar work.   The VDS’s main goal is to “preserve and promote the German language as an independent cultural language” , and to prevent it from being "pushed to the margins"  by the increasing domination of Anglo-American language and culture. With this in mind, the 356-page VDS Anglicism Index suggests new German alternatives for English imports so that, for example, pop-up becomes Aufspringwerbung and brainstorming becomes Geistesblitzsammelung.   Noble as their intentions might be, the only problem with these efforts at linguistic purity is that, quite simply, they do not work. One of our greatest lexicographers, Dr Samuel Johnson, arrived somewhat painfully at the same conclusion as he toiled for nine years to complete his monumental work - A Dictionary of the English Language  - in 1755.    Like other language purists, Johnson set out with the idea that he could “fix our language”  which had become “ resigned to the tyranny of time and fashion, and exposed to the corruptions of ignorance, and caprices of innovation.” Later he concluded that “neither reason nor experience can justify”  the idea that he could “embalm his language”.  Trying to impose artificial constraints on a living language would be like trying, in Johnson’s words, “to lash the wind.”   A Dictionary of the English Language- Dr Samuel Johnson London: W. Strahan, 1755. First edition. Reproduced by kind permission of Whitmore Rare Books, Inc., Pasadena, California   Interest in genealogy is booming and well over 30 million people have now researched their family trees through over 100 genealogy websites. Using a specialised DNA test, the major platforms like Ancestry.com and MyHeritage provide information ranging from the identity of DNA relatives, to estimates of an individual’s ancestral ethnicity.   Many have welcomed this dramatic expansion of information about their family histories. Others, however, have been bewildered and perhaps even dismayed to discover that their impeccable pedigrees are slightly more mongrel than they would ever want to admit. “The test shows that some of my ancestors come from Northern Ostrobothnia and Outer Mongolia? But how can that be? My family has always lived in Pimlico?!”   This is similar to the belief that our English language is pure, thoroughbred and largely carved in stone. Yes, of course, just to show willing and demonstrate our legendary English tolerance, we can accept the odd je ne sais quoi or kindergarten  – but not too many, thank you very much. Noblesse oblige , by all means but, goodness me, there are limits.   Reality is rather different and if Ancestry.com looked at the English language it would find a family orchard, rather than just a tree. For three centuries, John Bull has been the personification of all that is British, but a stroll with him through the many versions of the language which he has spoken might surprise the purists.   If the original John Bull had been born 2,500 years ago in the southern part of what later became known as England, he would probably have spoken a Celtic language now known as Common Brittonic. When the Romans arrived in force in 43 AD, John Bull saw immediately that the writing on the wall was mostly Latin. A good-natured fellow, John might also have appreciated the playful comment, a few centuries later, by W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman in 1066 and All That , “ The Roman Conquest was, however, a Good Thing, since the Britons were only natives at that time”.   As an ambitious young man, eager to make a name for himself, he quickly became fluent in Latin so that he could work with the ruling classes, but he kept up the Celtic language skills essential elsewhere. This meant that when John met Julius Caesar and, later, Claudius, he could converse easily with them in Latin, but he could also share a joke with Boadicea, even though her Brittonic dialect - from what is now Norfolk - was probably slightly different from John’s which came from the area later known as London.   By 500 AD the Roman Empire was declining and so too was the use of colloquial Latin which diverged into regional dialects. Then, influenced by Germanic languages in the West and Slavic languages in the East, Latin evolved into today’s Romance languages – notably French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian.   Unlike many others in the Roman Empire, John Bull was spared the fate of a Romance language by the arrival of Germanic tribes, the Angles (who gave their name to England), Saxons and Jutes, in around 450 AD.  The languages of these Anglo-Saxons began to replace Brittonic and Latin, and evolved into Old English which, over the next few centuries, John Bull spoke fluently. So when John met King Alfred in 900 AD he understood Alfred’s West Saxon dialect of Old English quite easily.   John’s spoken Latin became increasingly rusty because colloquial Latin had all but died out by around 700 AD, although it survived among the religious, legal, academic and diplomatic communities until the 1700s.   By 900 AD John had picked up some Old Norse from the Vikings who had conquered large chunks of eastern and northern England, roughly from the Tees to the Thames. In 1016 the Danish Prince Canute became King of England and by 1028 he had formed his North Sea Empire by also becoming King of Denmark and Norway. When John Bull met Canute in London over a goblet of mead, John’s norsified Old English was probably enough to help them understand each other quite well.   Until 1000 AD John Bull and his fluent Old English continued to flourish and he was probably aware, but little concerned, that Celtic languages were still being spoken in faraway places like Scotland, Wales, Cumbria, Cornwall and Ireland. His reading list at the time included the popular epic poem Beowolf written in a variety of dialects, but mainly in the West Saxon version.   In 1066 John might have wondered which way the linguistic winds would blow when one Viking descendant, the Duke of Normandy, William the Conqueror(who spoke Norman French), defeated another Viking descendant, King Harold II (who spoke Old English), at the Battle of Hastings. But John probably did not anticipate that when William was crowned King of England, it would be over 300 years before another King of England (Henry IV) would speak English, rather than French, as his mother tongue.    John spoke to William the Conqueror and the new French aristocracy in Norman French which developed into Anglo-Norman, the very first version of Franglais. At the same time, John continued speaking to most of his fellow countrymen in Old English which merged gradually with Anglo-Norman to form Middle English. Meanwhile, John remembered enough Latin to be able to read academic and official documents such as the Magna Carta in 1215.   By the time John met Geoffrey Chaucer in 1395 for a pint at The Tabard Inn in London, they were chatting about Geoff’s latest manuscript, The Canterbury Tales , in the London dialect of Middle English which included French, Norse and Latin words.   In 1485 John returned to The Tabard Inn where he complimented William Caxton on the first printed English blockbuster, Le Morte d’Arthur . John told Caxton that he was particularly delighted with the new publication because, in addition to blending the various regional dialects of Late Middle English, it also incorporated a large amount of John’s London dialect, as Chaucer had done.   John was now becoming familiar with Chancery English which the Court of Chancery clerks had started developing in the 1430s. Based significantly on the Central Midlands dialect, Chancery English also contained elements of the London and East Midlands dialects, and it gradually replaced French and Latin in legal and official records. Chancery English was one of many influential linguistic tributaries which flowed into Early Modern or Elizabethan English, and this was in full swing when John met William Shakespeare in 1611 at one of his local pubs, The George Inn, not far from The Globe Theatre. Will had just finished writing The Tempest , and the King James Bible  came out the same year. Frontispiece to the King James Bible First Edition, 1611   During the following centuries John Bull strode manfully through the increasingly mighty British Empire. A pukka fellow if ever there was one, did he turn his nose up at new Indian imports like chutney, Blighty, veranda, pyjamas, khaki, guru? Apparently not.   And then of course, in the Late Modern English era, came those early Americanisms which John viewed warily at first before embracing them with gusto. There were new words like telegram, an American import in the 1850s, caucus in the 1870s, platform -  in the sense of a political position or manifesto – around 1900, and others like big hitter. In 1921, the American writer H.L. Mencken noted the rapid influx of Americanisms in England – for example, walk-out, lengthy, dead-beat, frazzle, to stump, to belittle, to graft, to pan out, to swear off, to boom, to bust.   Since then, John Bull has continued to assimilate the trickle of Americanisms which has developed into a flood. Alistair Cooke, the British-American journalist noted the phenomenon in a 1950s edition of his famous weekly Letter from America,  broadcast on what was then called the wireless. He commented that the little black book, in which he recorded the occasional Americanism in the late 1930s when he moved to the US, needed to be replaced by a much bigger tome.   Demands for linguistic purity and the expulsion of foreign imports have thrived for centuries. Jonathan Swift vehemently opposed linguistic innovations in the early 1700s and even proposed an academy to regulate the English language. In the 1920s the composer Percy Grainger was advocating a form of Nordic or “Blue-Eyed English”  which purged the language of French, Latin and Greek. In 1946 George Orwell wrote that “there is no real need for any of the hundreds of foreign phrases now current in the English language.”   In a speech to the British Council in 1995 the then Prince Charles observed that American English was “very corrupting”,  and complained that “people tend to invent all sorts of nouns and verbs, and make words that shouldn’t be”.     Ironically, few of either the official or the self-appointed English language stormtroopers have had as much success as Nancy Mitford, one of our very own “bright young things”  who, in the 1950s wittily popularised the terms "U" (upper class) and "non-U"  language, coined by the British linguist Professor Alan Ross. The use of words like perfume, mantelpiece, mirror and notepaper were deemed to be completely non-U. In an epidemic of mass social insecurity, those who wished to retain their U credentials quickly dropped the offending words in favour of scent, chimneypiece, looking-glass, and writing-paper. To this day any inadvertent use of the word “toilet” in polite society is guaranteed to trigger disdain, derision and, most likely, permanent exclusion from the salons of Mayfair.   Nicky Haslam, the celebrity English interior designer, author, artist, man about town and occasional cabaret performer, follows in the Nancy Mitford tradition. An old Etonian, Nicky waggishly spring-cleans polite English language each year by highlighting words and phrases which he deems to be “common”  and, in particular, those which betray irritating pretensions. For example, in his amusingly waspish way, he has targeted Farrow & Ball (gasp!), hedge funds, signet rings, coloured wellingtons (“should actually be ‘gumboots’” , Nicky writes), wine collecting, bottled water, baby showers, See it, Say it, Sort it, cushions on beds, bucket list, and destination weddings. This year, Selfridges has helpfully printed Nicky’s pet hates on £50 cotton tea towels - “itself a term common as muck, should be ‘drying-up clawth’” , he observes.   These tongue-in-cheek language monitors with their quivering social status antennae provide great entertainment, not to mention the occasional bout of insecurity, self-doubt and dyspepsia among those foolish enough to have allowed their interior designers to use Farrow & Ball in their country house.   Title page of Dr Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English language. London: W. Strahan, 1755. First edition. Reproduced by kind permission of Whitmore Rare Books, Inc., Pasadena, California   In reality, however, it is the English language’s absorption of so many different languages over so many centuries which (or, “that” , if our American readers prefer) has made it such a powerful instrument. Some sources indicate that nearly 60% of English words are derived from Latin, French and other Romance languages, with another 26% from Germanic languages. This muscular pedigree means that English is arguably unmatched in its ability to express fine shades of meaning so precisely, to convey diplomatic nuances with such elegant ambiguity, and to communicate any sort of message – from the scientific, dramatic, romantic or martial, to the commonplace – with equal eloquence and efficiency.   While US political and economic dominance have already consolidated English as the international language of business, science and diplomacy, the global internet and social media are accelerating the spread of English still more.   English is the modern lingua franca: about 400 million people now speak it as their main language, over 1 billion speak it as a second language, and 57 sovereign and 28 non-sovereign states recognise English as the official or co-official language. After Mandarin and Spanish, English is the third most spoken native language and is spoken by more people overall than any other language.   Throughout its complex evolution, English has remained a superb vehicle for clear, succinct communication – one of the key attributes commended by so many writers. George Orwell, for example, in his 1946 essay Politics and the English Language , explains brilliantly the need for simple, direct language in order to combat linguistic slovenliness, “doublespeak”  and clichés.    Clearly, among the US imports there will always be some notable cringe-makers like advancements, prior to, 24/7, it is what it is, parenting, advocating for and impacting on. But if enough people cringe, the words and phrases will simply disappear like the Ford Edsel, New Coke – or toilet.   King Canute did not place his throne on the beach to show that he could stem the inevitable tide, but rather that he could not.  The English language has survived and prospered not by resisting cultural tides, but rather by adapting to them.   The fact that we “invented”  English here will prompt some to ask “ whose language is it anyway?”  With about 15% of the world’s native English speakers in the UK, compared with about 60% in the US alone, this is now something of a moot point.   Alright, Uncle Sam, listen up. The bottom line, and the key takeaway from this deep dive, is that John Bull’s English language has totally knocked it out of the park, hit a home run, scored a touchdown and nailed it 100%. But this success didn't come from out of left field. The English language stepped up to the plate, swung for the fences, and became a worldwide MVP by toughing it out for centuries and learning to roll with the punches. Even better, going forward, the vibes are still strong. So that's where we're at, we’ve got this, we're locked and loaded, we’re good to go. That's a wrap, and once I've 86'd that fancy pants Farrow & Ball paint order, we're done here. High five!   Uncle Sam World War I United States Army Recruitment Poster Illustration by James Montgomery Flagg, 1917 Available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs Division

by Dr. Mark Nicholson Kakamega Forest, western Kenya So you think it’s easy? Just stick in a few seeds and seedlings and wait a couple of decades. Well, it ain’t. We have been creating a small indigenous forest in the Kenyan uplands for the last 25 years and now, thanks to the generosity of friends in the UK, I am starting another restoration project and it is much more complicated. First, it is a rainforest, the only one in Kenya and the most eastern extension of the vast Congo forest. It rains a lot, at least 250-300 days a year, and the rainfall is increasing as the temperature rises. Actually, it pours, usually about 2 pm, which finishes the working day. Secondly, most of the original forest has gone. There are three parts, of which the lower area, Kakamega Forest National Reserve, covers about 22,500 ha. (55,000 acres). To protect the forest former President Moi ordered tea to be planted around much of the forest, which resulted in more than 1000 ha. of primary forest being cut down.     A tea protection zone around the forest One hundred years ago Kakamega rainforest covered 250,000 ha. (635,000 acres). Two other adjacent forest blocks at higher altitude have lower rainfall. The three blocks today cover about 60,000 ha. Only about 15,000 ha. of Kakamega Forest is original forest. The big megafauna (buffalo, leopard etc.) have all gone but there are seven species of primates and other small mammals, including unusual species like pottos and flying squirrels. The nocturnal Potto When you stand on the top of a hill in the forest one can see trees in all directions. Apart from a few glades, the canopy cover is nearly 100%. So what is there to restore? The answer is that much of the forest comprises either plantations of exotic species like cypress and eucalyptus or, even worse, introduced invasive species like the guava ( Psidium guajava ) from tropical America or a tall tree known as bishop wood ( Bischofia javanica ) from Java. These two species are dissimilar. Guava is a small tree (4m) with delicious fruit and extremely hard wood. Bishop wood is a very tall, fast-growing straight tree (>40m) with low quality soft wood. Many of the trees in the forest are so tall that they can be very difficult to identify but one can sometimes name them based on the bark alone. You can see the forest, but much harder to see the trees clearly. The block we have been assigned comprises 80% guava, 15% bishop wood and eucalyptus and 5% native vegetation.  Our aim is to remove these non-native species and replace them with indigenous vegetation. The replacements will come from four sources -  natural regrowth, tree nurseries, cypress plantations (where indigenous ‘wildings’ can be dug up and replanted) or direct seeding (fruiting time is late February/ March). We have already planted more than 2000 seedlings of over 300 species of local trees and shrubs. In addition to invasive plant species (the roads are lined with at least a dozen plant species from every continent), the forest is under threat from two other sources. First, the human population pressure is immense. Kakamega county is one of the most densely populated rural counties in Kenya with over 620 persons per square km.  Electricity is uncommon in surrounding villages so the population relies on collecting ‘dead’ wood from the forest for cooking. Every day hundreds of women carry heavy loads (up to 30kg) of firewood on their heads. They walk from the forests for several hours to nearby villages. The problem is that it is easy to ring-bark a tree: in a year or so, surprise, surprise, the trees are prematurely dead. The second challenge is uncontrolled livestock grazing in the forest. Cattle and goats wander about in the forest trampling on and eating tree seedlings. The Kenya Forest Service does not allow wire fences so we have constructed post-and-rail fencing using guava wood to keep out the cattle. The next problem is teaching our team how to identify and distinguish young plants, which might be ‘weeds’, invasive seedlings or rare trees. The local language is ki-Luhya, which comprises at least 13 dialects that are often so distant as to be mutually incomprehensible. Common trees have names in the local ki-Luhya dialect, which might be very different from the names used by other sub-tribes. The rare trees often do not have local names, or names in English or Swahili, so we have to rely on scientific names. These can be difficult for everyone: imagine trying to get a local who left school at 12 to remember that the tree name they have just learnt is called Bequaertiodendron oblanceolatum . Taxonomists have very recently changed it to Englerophytum oblanceolatum . So much easier. In a few years, they will probably drop the names of 19th Century colonial botanists [1]  from scientific nomenclature, and they will have to learn new names. The staff not only have to distinguish indigenous seedlings from exotic or invasive seedlings but they also need to get in their heads the names of hundreds of local plant species. This goes against the trend in Africa (and probably the rest of the world) where loss of indigenous knowledge leads to loss of indigenous biodiversity. The good news is that there is increasing interest in developing ways of awarding biodiversity credits for maintaining or restoring the diversity of native species, especially rare and endemic ones. Great Blue Turaco The biodiversity in a rainforest is high and of course, it includes more than just trees. It covers mammals, birds, fungi, ferns, reptiles and many other forms of life. The next antibiotic or anti-Alzheimers drug may well come from some fungus or snake venom, which is an added reason for conserving biodiversity. Kakamega forest has over 360 species of birds and nearly 500 species of butterflies, which much prefer the natural forest. It is also home to 33 species of snakes, only half of which are venomous. Locals, like most humans, tend to fear snakes and therefore kill them whenever they see them. Our team spends a great deal of time and effort getting locals to respect them, once we have convinced our own staff not to kill them. We have had three close encounters in the last month or two with less ‘popular’ snakes, two of which are the most beautiful snakes in Africa. A Gaboon viper was hiding in a pile of cut guava wood and slithered away at great speed (by adder standards) into the forest. They tend to be territorial so it is likely to return. My co-collector then walked into a black mamba as it was sloughing its skin. After a loud and grumpy hiss, it fled (so did the collector). Two weeks ago, a Jameson’s mamba was sunbathing in a tree two metres above our heads while we were looking for seeds and it also shot away in the trees like greased lightning. They hear (or feel) us far sooner than we see them. Snakes are shy, shun human contact and are only aggressive when trapped e.g. in houses. Vipers are ambush predators, relying on camouflage and they tend not to move. But like most of us they do not appreciate being trodden on. We spend a lot of time deep in the forest where there are no paths but the ordinary visitor is highly unlikely ever to encounter a snake. I have never heard of anyone in Kenya being bitten by the placid Gaboon viper [2]  but unusually we had one fatality last year from a Rhinoceros viper. Gaboon viper                                                                           Rhinoceros viper Our project has only just started but it promises to be an exciting one. If we can attract more funding, the area we could restore would be far greater. Trees grow faster here than anywhere else in East Africa. We have already found two tree species new to science and a further three that have hardly (or never) been recorded before in Kenya. The biggest problem on site is how to prevent guava regrowth. Guava seedlings pop up at a density of about 100 per sq.m. and even small ones are nearly impossible to pull out by hand. That is a million seedlings per hectare. We are not allowed to use glyphosate or other noxious (but effective) herbicides so some ingenious ideas are needed.  It is sad that the tourists from overseas rarely visit highly populated Western Kenya. They want to see the big game of the savannah regions. A few are birders but forests are low priority when in fact they are fascinating and intriguing for the real naturalist. [1] The tree in question was originally named in the Congo by a Belgian (Joseph Bequaert) and then renamed after the German (Heinrich Engler) who probably found it elsewhere a bit earlier. [2]  They are the largest vipers in the world and can grow to 1.8m (6ft) and have the longest fangs of any venomous snake. The highly complex venom is not treatable by normal polyvalent antivenene.

by Eric Boa Busker in Johannesburg, South Africa Photo: Eric Boa The first pop songs I remember are Mark Wynter singing Venus in Blue Jeans on Top of the Pops, a UK television show featuring the latest hits, and Frank Ifield singing I Remember You . It was 1962, the programme was in black and white and I was in short trousers. It wasn’t Mark’s quiff or gyrations that made me take notice, or Frank’s yodel, or even the melodies, strange though this must sound, but the chord changes. Those combinations of notes played together that mark out the melody. It was the beginning of my journey to play by ear.   Venus in Blue Jeans has, like Ira Gershwin’s British Museum*, lost its charm. The chord changes, once intriguing, now sound prosaic. I Remember You  remains a classy song and it still fascinated me when I heard it in a jazz club last week. The tune is by Victor Schertzinger and lyrics by the great Johnny Mercer, a prolific contributor to the Great American Songbook ( Moon River , Hooray for Hollywood ). Mercer had a sharp wit. He famously decried a decline in quality of show tunes in the 1960s:“ I could eat alphabet soup and shit better lyrics .”   I appreciate the craft of writing lyrics, but rarely am I enthralled. Chord changes and harmonies are my thing and what make my neurons all fire at the same time. Ever since those first pop sounds I’ve wanted to know the chords of a tune so I could play it on the piano and ‘sound like the record’. So I started to listen carefully and work out how tunes were constructed. I Remember You   was particularly challenging because half way through, at the point that the lyric goes ‘… distant bells’, it changes key. Lots of tunes do this. The Beatles’ – or rather, Paul McCartney’s –   Here, There and Everywhere  changes key at “ I want her everywhere ”. Then, magically, both tunes return to the original key. How did this happen? I wanted to know.   I learnt early on how to read music, unlike many popular musicians. It has certainly helped in my chord quests, yet it’s how you listen that is critical to playing off the cuff, or by ear. My first step was to note when chord changes occurred and find a suitable chord. It helped that pop tunes use a limited range of chords and repeat the same sequences over and over again. It’s this familiarity that makes them popular. Repetition aids recognition and so I learnt common chord sequences. I could distinguish minor (sad) and major (happy) keys and chords, as in House of the Rising Sun  (minor) and If I Had a Hammer  (major). Try singing the latter in a minor key and the mood becomes darker, and even threatening. If only I’d stuck with 12 bar blues or Country and Western songs. Predictable chords and chord changes and few of them. The thought of constantly “ waking up each morning ” or hearing countless protestations of love, thwarted or fulfilled, were unappealing. I wanted more chords and more complexity. Once you’re drawn into harmony, there’s no way out. Let’s move on a few years. It’s now 1968 and I’m in long trousers. I hear Lady Madonna , another McCartney tune, and I’m in its harmonic clutches. I want to play it on the piano and add some of my own flourishes. The thought arises that this might impress girls, though this turns out to be much harder than working out chord changes.   I make slow progress with Lady Madonna . After bar four I’m lost. Help is at hand. My mother buys me the sheet music and now I see not only the missing chords but how to play the piano part and almost ‘ sound like the record’ . I store the new chord changes in my ‘listening by ear’ memory. They will come in handy in the future. But why bother? Why not simply buy more sheet music? Unfortunately, few transcriptions of pop tunes turn out to be useful, or even interesting. The quality and detail are uneven. The transcribers miss out musical information when they transfer the melodies and harmonies on to paper.   Rick Wakeman (classically trained) contributes a rich piano introduction to Life on Mars ?, yet I would almost certainly have been unable to find it written out in 1973, when David Bowie’s song was first performed. Bowie understood harmony, but wasn’t formally trained, unlike Wakeman. The only solution to playing the intro would have been to listen carefully to the record and work out the chord changes. Larry Knetchel did a similar job for Paul Simon on Bridge over Troubled Water;  he wrote a piano intro based on Paul Simon’s melody chords. Fortunately someone did a great job on the transcription and I was, briefly, able to “ sound like the record ” on the piano – before all the other weighty musical paraphernalia was added by Simon and his producer.   I continued to progress in my knowledge of harmony and chords but I was getting frustrated. How much more was there to learn before I was 20? I borrowed a book of Gershwin piano transcriptions from Cambridge Central Library and my eyes and ears opened wide. Welcome to the world of diminished, half diminished and altered chords! It was harmonic overload as I played Nice Work If You Can Get It  on the upright Bechstein at home. I was dazzled and also bewildered. So many new opportunities for improvising. There’s a lot going in as I try to absorb all the tricks and invention that Gershwin used.   Further afield I found compilations of other musical greats, such as Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern and Jimmy Van Heusen. It almost became overwhelming, especially when in my postgraduate years (still long trousers, but plus droopy moustache) I had another harmonic revelation when I discovered Brazilian harmonies. Leeds University had a sale of jazz LPs in the Students’ Union. From this I discovered The LA Four and their samba version of Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante défunte   and the wonder of Corcovado  by Jobim.  It's a chord...but which one? And yet, and yet. My journey into ever more complex chord changes meant that I began to lose sight of the melodies, and the performance of a tune. I was in danger of dismissing great tunes because they had few chord changes. Big Yellow Taxi  by Joni Mitchell and Cecilia  by Paul Simon only have three chords. They are still fabulous songs. The wealth of chords and sequences at my fingertips beguiled me and allowed me to noodle at the piano. It’s a sort of musical scribbling. Lots of nice phrases and snatches of melodies but never a full tune.. My father summed up years of listening to me noodle when he gently remarked that “ now and then you threaten to play something I know” . Ouch.   Another downside to my obsession with chords and harmonies is that I’m forever analysing tunes. It’s particularly annoying when I experience what my father called ‘ Music to go up and down lifts by ”. I can’t avoid banal and tedious music played in restaurants, waiting rooms or even dentists’ surgeries. My dentist asked me recently what I was thinking about, as he completed yet another filling. His noble aim was to distract me from the job at hand. Was I looking forward to anything interesting at the weekend? Any trips planned?   Once the filling was over and I was back on dry land, I told him that I had been working out the chords of the dreary music throbbing in the background. The intended soothing was having the opposite effect as the same tedious chord sequences were repeated. Sometimes no music is best of all. That includes me noodling.   * from A Foggy Day (in London Town) : “I viewed the morning with alarm The British Museum had lost its charm"

by Richard Pooley   Photo: Stéphane Bernard When my wife and I moved to France in 2013, we spent the first seven months in a rented house on the southern edge of Brive-la-Gaillarde, a town of some 50,000 people in the south-west. One of our immediate neighbours was André, then in his mid-eighties. Although he had spent most of his working life as a postman, starting out as a teenager in newly-liberated Paris in late 1944, he had been born and brought up in the Dordogne countryside. Wipe away any image of bucolic bliss. The land he and his family lived off was misérable. During the war years they had survived,  just, on chestnut flour and not much else. Seventy years later, he and his wife, Simone, a retired teacher, would spend most weekends at his inherited portion of this hardscrabble terrain. Back in Brive he tended a superbly productive vegetable garden while Simone ensured their roses were the envy of my green-fingered wife.   André and I had many a banter across the garden fence. He had been a Communist all his life, as are many older inhabitants of rural France. As soon as André discovered I had run a small British company, he began greeting me in a mocking tone: “P.D.G.” (C.E.O.) or “Le Patron”. I soon gave up trying to convince him that I was not a rapacious capitalist. I also failed to persuade him that I was not a townie and had lived all but three of my first thirteen years in rural Hampshire. The fact that I had spent fifteen years in London and six more in Tokyo and Caracas proved that I knew nothing of the countryside. He was genuinely astonished when I managed to successfully grow tomatoes in the short time we were his neighbours.  Mais, bien sûr, this was because he’d taught me how to plant them in a nettle-filled trench when the moon was new. Only a true countryman knows that’s the way to grow ‘em.   More often than not, André would follow his finger-wag greeting with “Fais attention!” The first time it was to warn me that “ serpents” lay in the undergrowth I was hacking away. Nearly always it was to tell me, in the kindest yet most mournful of tones, that whatever I was doing in the garden was either dangerous or wrong. When I told André in the summer of 2013 that we were moving to a village 30 minutes drive south of Brive, his instant response was typically lugubrious: “Les cloches! les cloches! Sonnent trop fort, trop tôt pour toi!”   The bells of our village church in France, did indeed ring loud and early (at 07.04 every morning, but also at 12.04 and 19.04).  They could be heard in the furthest part of the commune, in a hamlet tucked under cliffs four kilometres away on the other side of the Dordogne river. When the early morning bell tolled in olden times, the Catholic faithful, already at work out in the fields, knew that it was time to pause and say the Angelus prayer. Nowadays such tolling is the signal in rural France to get up, have lunch, stop work. As I told André when he first came to Sunday lunch, the bells never bother us, even though our house is only about eighty metres from the church.  He didn’t believe me.   Tolerance of country sounds and smells by townies is not the norm in France. Some 10% of French people have second homes in the countryside*. Often these are the old family homes from which the children left to live and work in the city. But an increasing number are  houses bought by city-born folk, flush with pension money, who can afford to buy a large pad in the countryside. In addition are those who sell their town property and make a house in the country their only home. Both groups of people dream of retiring to the assumed peace and quiet of the French countryside. And when they find their dream turning to a nightmare of bells tolling, cocks crowing, frogs croaking, cicadas sawing, and cattle shitting, they assume it is the country folk who must change their centuries-old habits and not they, the incomers.   In the village of Saint-Chartres (Vienne) a new arrival grumbled about the church bells and took the matter to court in February 2017.  “[They ring] at 7 o’clock in the morning, when [I’m] with children and grandchildren, sending everybody to action stations as if war had been declared.” . In another case in Calvados a couple twice cut the cables which enabled the church bells to be rung.   French tourists also complain. Those staying in a presbytery in the Lozère demanded that the village mayor have the bells ring later in the morning so that they could sleep in. Tourists in the Var asked a village mayor in the summer of 2018 to do something about the incessant noise of the cicadas: “Haven’t you got insecticide you can put on the trees?”   Over 120,000 people signed a petition against a group of second-home owners in Biot (Haute-Savoie) who insisted that the mayor stop the local cattle from wearing cowbells. He refused but moved the cows’ drinking trough further away from the village.   An eight-year legal row over the noise of bullfrogs only finally ended in December 2019. Neighbours complained about the mating calls of the occupants of a large, century-old pond on land owned by a couple in the village of Grignols, south-west of Périgueux. The first court told the couple to drain the pond and pay 150€ a day if they did not do so, despite the fact that the water contained a protected species of frog. The final appeal court decided that the pond must be filled in even though the protected frog had been removed. The judge, a townie surely, did not want the sleep of later human incomers to be broken by any amphibian returnees.   The most famous battles involved a cockerel, that symbol of France found atop many a war memorial. The most recent concluded on 7 December 2020 with the murderer of Marcel the Cockerel in the tiny village of Vinzieux (Ardèche) being given a five-month suspended sentence, fined 300€ and banned from carrying a gun for three years. Infuriated by Marcel’s early morning crowing, a neighbour had shot and impaled him on an iron bar in May 2020. Marcel’s owner,  Sébastien Verney, declared in his petition addressed to the Minister of Agriculture that: “Our rural activities, our animals have the right to exist and to live in peace … So, who will be the next victim: the call of the turtle doves**, the wheat harvest, our growing tomatoes, the braying of a donkey, the sound of our bells, the grazing of our cows?” Monsieur Verney told reporters: “The countryside is a way of life, not a museum.” His petition was signed by over 98,000 people. This followed on from the case of Maurice the Cockerel in Saint-Pierre-d’Oléron (Charente-Maritime). His owner, Corinne Fesseau, was taken to court in 2017 by new arrivals moaning about his crowing next to their second home. At first they won and Madame Fesseau  was given a fortnight to remove or silence him. But she won on appeal in September 2018 and the neighbours had to pay 1000€ in damages. Maurice’s story and his (natural) death, aged six, in 2020 even reached the pages of the New York Times.   But not all cockerels end up victorious. The owner of Coco, in L’Oise department, was forced to pay 600€ to his new neighbour, an air hostess who worked unusual hours and who said Coco’s crowing prevented her from sleeping. Coco was exiled to avoid his owner paying a further 50€ a day. The owner said: “It’s like people going to the beach and complaining about the gulls. If you don’t like Nature, don’t come and live in the country.”   Smells are a problem too. Nicolas Bardy, a cattle farmer in Lacapelle-Viescamp in Cantal, was ordered to pay 5000€ in damages to a retired couple from the industrial city of Saint-Etienne. They had bought a house across the road from his farm in 2001. Their complaints – about the smell of M. Bardy’s cows, their manure and his fermenting hay - started in 2006.  M. Bardy even invested 120,000€ in a new cowshed designed to limit smells, but to no avail. “Smells are part and parcel of the countryside,”  he was reported saying.  He raised 13,000€ through an online crowdfunding platform to cover his legal costs of 10,000€.   The inhabitants of Saint-Andre-de-Valborgne in the Gard put up a sign at the entrance to their village: “Attention: French village. You come in at your own risk... Here we have bells which sound regularly, cockerels which sing very early, herds of animals which live nearby, some of whom have bells round their necks, farmers who work to give you food. If you can’t put up with this, you are not in the right place.” A village in northern France – Muhlbach-sur-Munster – followed suit in October 2020 with a longer (and ruder) sign.   Stories of legal battles between second-home owners and their new neighbours became commonplace in the French media during the six years we lived in France.  To such an extent that in 2021 a law was passed to “protect the French countryside’s sensory heritage.”  The new law reflected what many French courts had already decided: living in the countryside requires you to accept its typical noises and smells.   But this was not enough to curb annoyed French cityfolk newly-arrived in La France Profonde . In 2023 BFM TV reported that nearly five hundred farmers were facing lawsuits from neighbours upset by the noise and stench coming from their farms. So, another bill was passed in December last year to give greater protection to farmers from such lawsuits.   What explains this behaviour of French immigrants to the countryside? I’ve come across similar attitudes in Britain but not to the same extent. I expect André would have said it was because French city-dwellers are selfish individualists. He viewed the country people of his birthplace to be more communitarian than the city folk whose post he had delivered for decades. They still, he would tell me over the garden fence, look out for each other, share tools, pay for services in kind, donate or barter surplus produce. And give helpful advice to incomers like me. My own experience backed this up.    André died three years ago. Simone died in 2019 and he had moved to a retirement home a few kilometres upriver from our village. The Covid pandemic had stopped me seeing him. So, I couldn’t tell him that “les cloches de l’église de Vayrac ne sonnent plus!” I’m glad he never knew that the great bell of our village church no longer tolled at 07.04, 12.04 and 19.04  as it had done for well over a century. Silenced by those selfish individualists from the city.   *Second-home ownership in the UK has shot up in the last twenty years, as Buy-to-Let has become so popular. But the number of people who have a second home in the countryside has remained fairly stable; the latest figure I could find was 2.8% of those living in England and Wales **Three English-language reports I read, including the one on the BBC website, had M. Verney’s petition saying “the tweet of Turtle Doves”. Clearly townies all three. If you need an explanation, you’re one too.   NB: This is an updated version of an article I wrote for Shaw Sheet magazine in December 2020. In memory of André and Simone Lalba.

by Stoker The point of winter, I have always thought, is to have a Mr Badger attitude.  No doubt most of Only Connect ’s readers are well acquainted with The Wind in the Willows , Kenneth Grahame’s wonderful tale for children, of the Water Rat, the Mole, Mr Toad, and of course, Mr Badger.  But Wind in the Willows is not just for children; it is a tale for adults, perhaps more so for adults, who will find in these adventures along the riverbank an examination of every human type, the experience of every human emotion, and the sharing of dreams of warm summers and snowy winters - and of the Wild Wood.    Grahame, a Scot but brought up by the River Thames in Berkshire by a grandmother, was an ambitious and clever man. He joined the Bank of England in his late teens and rose rapidly to become its Secretary – the third most senior official in the Bank – at the age of 39.  He married late in life, survived an assassination attempt (not what one might expect in that proud institution), took early retirement at 49 after some sort of management contretemps at the Bank (that we do expect), and lived by the Thames for the rest of his life.  He was already a highly regarded writer of children’s stories when in his retirement he wrote The Wind in the Willows . It became an immediate best seller; it has remained so ever since.    Not surprisingly perhaps, Grahame has ever since become a hero and role model to every banker with an urge to write or paint or compose.  Not many get the chance to take early retirement and settle on a riverbank to do it though.  Nor, it has to be said, do many (or indeed any) have the talent to create anything so long-lastingly popular as the tales of Ratty and Mole messing about on the river.    The world, our world, is full of Rattys and Moles, going out for picnics, learning to row, helping their neighbours the Otters find their missing child Portly, visiting  friends for tea and chat.  No doubt some even visit the local magnate, Mr Toad, in his grand house with lawns reaching down to the river.  Believe me, we all know Mr Toad. Mr Toad, or one  of his cousins, intrudes loudly into our lives, at work, in restaurants, speeding past us in his 4x4 on the motorway.  Mr Toad was even our Prime Minister for a while, a blond-haired Mr Toad, and has not given up hope he may be again.  Grahame’s Mr Toad is though, deep down, a likeable and kindly creature, for all his loudness and bombast, with his dreadful over-enthusiasms for Toad Hall and its magnificence, for sculling on the river, for canary-coloured carts, and finally and most dreadfully, for motor cars: “ poop-poop, poop-poop!”.     It is Stoker’s habit to buy a copy of The Wind in the Willows  for every young child of his near acquaintance and urge their parents to read it to them (Grahame wrote it as series of letters to his only child, Alastair).  Furthermore, Stoker at about this time of year, rereads the great tale and laughs and weeps and sighs, and wishes he had a tenth of Grahame’s talent (though not of his misfortunes, which we will not go into here, but would have broken a lesser man).    Stoker perhaps would, given a choice, live in the wild fells of the Eden valley, perhaps in one of those little border castles with a wood to shelter it from the northern winds, and a river – the Eden – down below, tinkling on its way, trout weaving among the bright stones. Little black cows might graze a few fields (preferably with somebody else to look after them); and this being the Eden valley, there would be (and is) a railway line on the hill to the west, with steam trains panting their way up the ever-resistant gradients.     Wonderful in summer; better still in winter, with howling westerlies and long-lying snow, with the little black cattle filling the stone sheds up with enough breathy steam to challenge the engines across the valley.  Ah; at this time of year, to be Mr Badger, to return you to the more sylvan banks of the Thames, and to The Wind in the Willows .    Mr Badger lives in a great sett, a magnificent and sprawling home, composed of tunnels entwined amongst tree roots, with a boot scraper by the front door, deep in the Wild Wood.  Nobody invades Mr Badger’s privacy; he has a certain reputation and is rarely seen out, especially in daylight. And in the winter, with deep snow all around, his sett becomes invisible under a deep layer of white, even that boot scraper, which comes to play a key role in this saga.  Mr Badger lights the fires in his great brick fireplaces (probably carved out of Roman ruins), retreats to his favourite armchair, takes up a copy of a decent newspaper – and snoozes the days away under it.  It is the invasion of his slumbering home by Mole and Ratty, lost and terrified in the Wild Wood, that eventually sets up the exciting and entrancing action sequence that dominates the second half of the book.  No plot spoilers here; you’ll have to read it for yourself, but it does lead initially to a wonderful series of happenings, the most evocative, the most moving part of the book.     The two friends return home from Badger’s via a snow-bound village street, glancing through lit windows in the dusk at the families within preparing for Christmas. Large handkerchief required now please; for we must dwell on home and old friendship, on what it means, and on what we have lost. But we never really lose it; the carol singers will always come, there will always be a few bottles of ale, and the gossip of past times will always comfort us.  Happy Christmas, readers; and felicitations for the New Year, in which we will forsake the Thames and the Eden, and settle by the Potomac to examine new tales of yet another Mr Toad, newly moved from his magnificent house at Mar-A-Lago to the wonders of the White House.