I Got This Title Idea Whilst Walking Into Lesser Sodom This Morning
It works into the Intro later on.
Okay! So the prog rockers BJH originate from Oldham, which I never suspected, as it is possibly the least-sexy origins site for a band, barring Hampton Parva. Your Humble Scribe actually had one of their albums waaaay back in the days shortly after the dinosaurs were nuked, when music technology had barely-evolved from the wax disc. Art!
It might have been this, because one of the tracks upon it is "Child Of The Universe", which I remember, partly because it mentions Northern Ireland and Vietnam as locations of warfare, which hasn't been true for a generation now. Nothing ages faster than politics, hmmmm?
I also remember the song "Mockingbird", which is surely poetic licence as I'm pretty sure the skies of Oldham have been innocent of these avians since Day One.
O the name? Apparently composed of the last three names left in a hat. Art!
I have a feeling the album was worked-up around the title.
About twelve years ago I remember Jo, a lady I worked with, going on about a concert she and her hubbo had been to. Hubbo had contacts in the music industry and she'd gone along with him to watch BJH, whom she described as 'Old men lumbering about on stage', rather to the offence of Gavin, my manager, who had a definite yen for prog rock. Given that a couple of them have, indeed, died of old age, she has a point, if a cruelly sharp one.
ANYWAY of course - obviously! - this has nothing to do with the rest of this Intro, which is about, SURPRISE! how badly the Ruffian economy is doing. Today my information comes from Big Konstantin of the "Inside Russia" Youtube channel, who has left Ruffia but whom still has family, friends and associates living in Modern-day Mordor, and also "Prune60", the self-proclaimed "Queen of Anglo-Saxonia", who posts looooong Tweets detailing the Ruffian economy and how badly it is doing. Art!
The Mighty Prune's avatar
"It's all about the money", proclaimed Big K. He had 11 separate items to discuss, which would probably bloat the blog to 12,000 words if done altogether, not to mention Mighty Prune's additions, so we are going to focus on the first one, which comes under the handy title of 'Inflation'. PATIENCE ABOUT LACK OF HARVEST.
Inflation in Ruffia has been a problem since the start of the Special Idiotic Operation. Currently there is a glut of money being spent on the war industries and to contract soldiers. The catch here is that the products being made for war do not add value to society at all, given that there is little demand amongst Ruffians for T-90M tanks or Su-57 fighter jets. Prices thus increase. Art!
How to strangle cats the Alexey Zabotkin way!
This is Ol' Zabby, one of the deputy directors of the Ruffian Central Bank and a key player in the Ruffian economy. As Big K noted, officials of the RCB are getting bolder and more honest in their descriptions of problems with the economy, and they are both too valuable and too experienced to suffer a sudden fall from windows. PATIENCE ABOUT LACK OF HARVEST. Mind you, if you read about Ol' Zabby suddenly getting tired of life and acting like a - like a mockingbird, and trying to fly from a window, then things are realllllly bad. Art!
A bit dated, but it gives you a flavour
Ol' Zabby confirmed that inflation is not being tackled, despite interest rates being hiked. Mighty Prune broke the news on Friday, after Big K had already published, that the Ruffian interest rate is now 19%, and may - for which read 'will' - be raised again in future. I should point out that the big blue spike in the chart above was immediately the SMO began, at 20%, and the planned rate is now only 1% below this.
Given that banks are now lending at 22%, businesses must be having kittens themselves having kittens at the prospects of trying to invest and increase their profits.
PATIENCE ABOUT LACK OF HARVEST.
Here is where Big K has an advantage over non-Ruffians; he can get practical and accurate information from his contacts back in Modern-day Mordor. Art!
The figures for August inflation had it decreasing by <drum roll cymbal crash trumpet toot> 0.02%. Essentially staying static. However - O! my beautiful word again! - food prices did NOT drop. Normally late July and into August is the harvest season in Ruffia, when prices for <draws breath> cucumber, plums, tomatoes, corn, potatoes, apples, apricots and cherries fall dramatically. They become ridiculously cheap, which Ruffians take advantage of, buying stuff by the bucketful in order to preserve or pickle it. Not this year. Art!
Prune Mighty Prune also posted information about a poor wheat harvest in 2024, thanks to bad weather, which seems to have alternated between drought and flooding. She posted - yes, she is a female engineer, get over it - that the official Ruffian 'Institute for Agricultural Market Studies' had warned that the harvest prediction had been decreased by 1.6 million tons, from an original forecast of 83.8 million tons. That's a 2% drop, which is going to eat into - forgive the pun - overall profit margins and allocated internal tonnage for Ruffians themselves. Barley harvest totals have been reduced by 400,000 tons to 16.8 million, and corn by 1.1 million tons to 12 million tons, with the same provisos as for wheat. Art!
Barely barley
Thus a shortfall in grain exports and therefore less revenue. Ooopsie.
Okay, okay, perhaps Wild Church Bottom instead of Hampton Parva.
Deconstruction Of The Tables
Nothing to do with the REM album whose title closely resembles this one. Perhaps it would be closer and more accurate to say 'On The Tables' and if Art will put down his bowl of coal -
Yes, this is the hex-and-counter board game "The Great War In Europe", which I have gamed through several moves. Problem is, I left it so long I cannot remember which point I'm at. Not only that, in learning the rules whilst going on, I missed out on a few important ones that significantly disadvantaged the Allies.
So - I am now removing all the counters and will eventually put them back onto sheets of A4 with a bit of Blu-Tak securing them. I may try the Italian Front next, because it seems to be the smallest possible scenario. FYI, in real life it only involved the Italians and Austro-Hungarians, with a few Teutons, British and French coming into play late in the game*.
What I didn't appreciate is how long it would take to deconstruct the game, which has taken over an hour-and-a-half so far and we're only about two-thirds done.
Wish me luck! Art?
More Of Contusions
If you read this afternoon's blog AND YOU SHOULD HAVE FOR THE SAKE OF YOUR DESCENDANTS then you'll recall Conrad whanging on about "SIG" and "SIR", those being acronyms that I'm not going to go into. Read the earlier blog.
So, imagine my surprise when my titanium underwear resisted an attack by the Coincidence Hydra, because - Art!
You can see from the timestamp that this was recent. Obvs Ian McCollum thinks the same way as Conrad, which is worrying for one of us.
Hmmmmmm
I think this sets a dangerous precedent. Art!
If I recall correctly, this is how the "Termite" empire of "Nemesis The Warlock" begins, with the establishment of subterranean housing. Art!
The strange and fantastic beginnings
Finally -
Time to rock it, sock it dock it, and also to indulge a sneaking regard for the designers who made 'Polly Pocket'.
* Do you se - O you do.
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