bbc proms 2014

The BBC Proms is "the world's largest and most democratic musical festival"
The Proms - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And it has just started:



BBC - Proms

The Proms, more formally known as The BBC Proms, or The Henry Wood Promenade Concerts presented by the BBC, is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hall in London. 



Founded in 1895, each season currently consists of more than 70 concerts in the Albert Hall, a series of chamber concerts at Cadogan Hall, additional Proms in the Park events across the United Kingdom on the last night, and associated educational and children's events. In 2009 the total number of concerts reached 100 for the first time. In the context of classical music festivals, Jiří Bělohlávek has described the Proms as "the world's largest and most democratic musical festival".^[1]

The Proms - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Endymion | world-class chamber music

Last Night of the Proms[edit]

The Last Night of the Proms celebrates British tradition with patriotic music of the United Kingdom.^[39][40]

Many people's perception of the Proms is taken from the Last Night, although this concert is very different from the others. It usually takes place on the second Saturday in September, and is broadcast in the UK on BBC2 (first half) and BBC1 (second half). The concert is traditionally in a lighter, 'winding-down' vein, with popular classics being followed by a series of British patriotic pieces in the second half of the concert. This sequence traditionally includes Edward Elgar's "Pomp & Circumstance March No. 1" (to part of which "Land of Hope and Glory" is sung), and Henry Wood's "Fantasia on British Sea Songs", which culminates in Thomas Arne's "Rule, Britannia!". However, the "Fantasia" did not feature from 2008 to 2011,^{[citation needed]}though "Rule, Britannia!" has retained its place in the programme in its own right. The full "Fantasia" re-appeared in 2012, but was again absent from the 2013 concert. The concert concludes with Hubert Parry's "Jerusalem" (a setting of a poem by William Blake), and theBritish national anthem. The repeat of the Elgar March at the Last Night can be traced to the spontaneous audience demand for a double encore at its premiere at a 1901 Proms concert.^[41] The closing sequence of the second half became fully established in 1954 during Sargent's tenure as chief conductor of the Proms.^[42] The Prommers have made a tradition of singing "Auld Lang Syne" after the end of the concert, but it is not included in the programme. However, when James Loughran, a Scot, conducted the Last Night concert in the late 1970s and early 1980s he included the piece as part of the programme. Since 2009, "You'll Never Walk Alone", for audience participation has been included annually – a contribution made by the current Proms director, Roger Wright.

The Proms - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



The BBC Proms 2014 Images South Kensington London | LondonTown.com

See also:
Jay Doubleyou: british music
Jay Doubleyou: cities and music
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reading skills

There are some great ways to improve your reading:

Jay Doubleyou: english literature and reading in english: a summary

Jay Doubleyou: extensive reading vs narrow reading
Jay Doubleyou: intensive reading: less is more
Jay Doubleyou: extensive reading

Jay Doubleyou: antimoon
Jay Doubleyou: pause and think: or, how to improve your language skills
The power of reading — two stories | Antimoon

Jay Doubleyou: american short stories pt 1
Jay Doubleyou: american short stories pt 3
Jay Doubleyou: story-telling
Jay Doubleyou: story corps - listening to america

Jay Doubleyou: prose as poetry
BBC Radio 4 - Just So Science - Episode guide
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"we should work less"... "but it's for part-time work, and it's all about the illusion of there being more jobs"

There has been wall-to-wall coverage of the Google founder's pronouncements on work:

"We should work less" says Google co-founder Larry Page

08 Jul 2014 by Guy Wright
 

Fireside chat with Google co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin with Vinod Khosla - YouTube

In a recent interview Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin said that perhaps it’s time to re-think the traditional 40 hour work week mentality.

According to Larry Page, “If you really think about the things that you need to make yourself happy—housing, security, opportunities for your kids—anthropologists have been identifying these things. It’s not that hard for us to provide those things,” he said. “The amount of resources we need to do that, the amount of work that actually needs to go into that is pretty small. I’m guessing less than 1% at the moment. So the idea that everyone needs to work frantically to meet people’s needs is just not true.”

"We should work less" says Google co-founder Larry Page [VIDEO] | ITProPortal.com
Google founder says people shouldn't work so much (which is easy to say when you're worth $32 billion) | Mail Online
Larry Page: Billionaire Google co-founder says ‘People shouldn’t work as much’ - People - News - The Independent

Is it time for a four-day workweek? - CBS News
Larry Page Wants You to Work Less | HREOnline's The Leader Board
Larry Page's vision of future looks like John Maynard Keynes' - SFGate
Billionaire Google CEO Thinks It Won't Be So Bad When Robots Start Taking Our Jobs

But is this debate simply about making more part-time work?
Part-time jobs can fix UK youth unemployment, says Google chief | The Times
Google CEO Larry Page Says Future Workforce Is Part Time | Re/code

An observation by the US commentator Rush Limbaugh makes clear that this isn't going to be a panacea: 

"Rush, why would the Google guys be all in favor of more part-time jobs?"

It's done to disguise the fact that there are fewer jobs. Look, we've got 95 to a hundred million Americans not working, right? Well, that's even an embarrassment to the socialists. So if you convert a significant number of full-time jobs to part-time jobs, you can end up hiring people. You don't have to create any new jobs whatsoever.

You don’t have to create a single new job. We just divvy every job up into two or three jobs, make everybody a part-timer, and they're working. Then you say, 'Look what we've done!'

'We expanded the number of people working. We bring down unemployment. We bring down that number.' But it's for part-time work, and it's all about the illusion of there being more jobs -- and, in fact, we are seeing that in our own jobs reports. It's sort of a form of featherbedding, if you want to look at it that way. But the point of it is that the whole idea of full-time work not possible in America anymore. Those days are gone.

That's the mind-set that's problematic.

Why the Google Guys (and All Leftists) Want More Part-Time Workers - The Rush Limbaugh Show

And taking this District as an example, 'job-creation' is often about part-time, low-paid work:
> Futures Forum: East Devon, the retail sector and questions about job creation: "How we can help meet the needs of business into the future in a world of enterprise and entrepreneurism..."
> Futures Forum: "The new build for the western growth area of the district will provide much-needed business and employment for the young families as they set up new homes."
> Futures Forum: "Statistics show us that small and medium-size businesses (including those in tourism) are our life blood."

This blog has looked at the issue of bringing down the number of hours we work:
Futures Forum: The 21-hour week: 'The British have solved unemployment'
Futures Forum: "A shorter working week would make us healthier, give us more fulfilling and sustainable lives and be better for the environment..."

A report on how we spend our time and why we need a shorter working week came out late last year:
Time on Our Side | New Economics Foundation
Work & Time | New Economics Foundation

And a similar report was published back in February 2010:
21 hours | New Economics Foundation

- and the video on YouTube is still generating regular comment:

About Time - 21 hours - YouTube

A very nice place to live, retire or holiday in is, of course, Devon 
- where you should be able to take it very easy:
Futures Forum: East Devon and toursim
Futures Forum: An idea for improving Sidmouth: making the town more pedestrian friendly

Tom Hodgkinson, editor of the Idler, lives in Devon. 
He has been suggesting a shorter working week and more 'idling' time for some time now:
Campaigners call for 30-hour working week to allow for healthier, fairer society - and more time for fun - UK Politics - UK - The Independent
The virtue of idleness - Tom Hodgkinson

Others might call it 'slacking':

Tech N9ne Slacker Video (Uncensored) HQ - YouTube

But a recent article in the New Yorker asked a simple question at the heart of this debate:

How did we get so busy?

Once, we were warned about a future of overabundant leisure. Now we’re busy complaining about being busier than ever. 

BY ELIZABETH KOLBERT MAY 26, 2014

In the winter of 1928, John Maynard Keynes composed a short essay that took the long view. It was titled “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren,” and in it Keynes imagined what the world would look like a century hence. By 2028, he predicted, the “standard of life” in Europe and the United States would be so improved that no one would need to worry about making money. “Our grandchildren,” Keynes reckoned, would work about three hours a day, and even this reduced schedule would represent more labor than was actually necessary.

“Most types of material consumption are strongly habit-forming,” Gary Becker and Luis Rayo observe in their contribution to “Revisiting Keynes.” (Becker, who died earlier this month, spent his career at the University of Chicago; Rayo is now at the London School of Economics.) “After an initial period of excitement, the average consumer grows accustomed to what he has purchased and . . . rapidly aspires to own the next product in line,” they write. By Becker and Rayo’s account, this insatiability is hardwired into us. Human beings evolved “so that they have reference points that adjust upwards as their circumstances improve.”

Joseph Stiglitz, of Columbia University, by contrast, takes a constructivist approach. People’s choices, he argues, are molded by society and, over time, become self-reinforcing. We “learn how to consume by consuming,” he writes, and how to “enjoy leisure by enjoying leisure.” In support of this position, Stiglitz cites the contrasting experiences of Europeans and Americans. In the nineteen-seventies, the British, the French, and the Germans—though notably not the Italians—put in just as many hours at work as Americans. But then, à la Keynes, the Europeans began trading income for leisure. The average employed American now works roughly a hundred and forty hours more per year than the average Englishman and three hundred hours more than the average Frenchman.

A third group of economists challenges the Keynesian presumption that leisure is preferable to labor. Work may not set us free, but it lends meaning to our days, and without it we’d be lost. In the view of Edward Phelps, of Columbia University, a career provides “most, if not all, of the attainable self-realization in modern societies.” Richard Freeman, of Harvard, is, if possible, more emphatic. “Hard work is the only way forward,” he writes. “There is so much to learn and produce and improve that we should not spend more than a dribble of time living as if we were in Eden. Grandchildren, keep trucking.”

Elizabeth Kolbert: Why Are We So Busy? : The New Yorker

And an earlier article in the New Yorker made similar points - and asks why professional people need to overwork:

The perplexing thing about the cult of overwork is that, as we’ve known for a while, long hours diminish both productivity and quality. Among industrial workers, overtime raises the rate of mistakes and safety mishaps; likewise, for knowledge workers fatigue and sleep-deprivation make it hard to perform at a high cognitive level. 

If the benefits of working fewer hours are this clear, why has it been so hard for businesses to embrace the idea? Simple economics certainly plays a role: in some cases, such as law firms that bill by the hour, the system can reward you for working longer, not smarter. And even if a person pulling all-nighters is less productive than a well-rested substitute would be, it’s still cheaper to pay one person to work a hundred hours a week than two people to work fifty hours apiece. (In the case of medicine, residents work long hours not just because it’s good training but also because they’re a cheap source of labor.) 

On top of this, the productivity of most knowledge workers is much harder to quantify than that of, say, an assembly-line worker. So, as Bob Pozen, a former president of Fidelity Management and the author of “Extreme Productivity,” a book on slashing work hours, told me, “Time becomes an easy metric to measure how productive someone is, even though it doesn’t have any necessary connection to what they achieve.”

James Surowiecki: The Costs of Working Too Much : The New Yorker

See also:

hard times أوقات عصيبة by copyfac - YouTube

Refusal of work - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Futures Forum: "We should work less"... "But it's for part-time work, and it's all about the illusion of there being more jobs"
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start up your own country

Would you like to set up and be part of a new country?
What would it look like?

Published on 17 Dec 2012

Why seastead? Joe Quirk, co-author of the forthcoming seasteading book, has more than a couple of reasons. Joe was one of dozens who attended the Seasteading Conference 2012 in San Francisco, which brought together dedicated adventure seekers and entrepreneurs looking to transform the ocean into the next frontier for humanity. Every great change throughout history has begun with a group of individuals who dreamt up a desire, and then acted to make their vision a reality. The number of reasons behind the desire to seastead are as numerous as the number of people in our community. Why are you seasteading?

Why Seastead? The Seasteading Institute Promotional Video - YouTube
The Seasteading Institute | Opening humanity's next frontier

Seasteading is the concept of creating permanent dwellings at sea, called seasteads, outside the territory claimed by the government of any standing nation. Most proposed seasteads have been modified cruising vessels. Other proposed structures have included a refitted oil platform, a decommissioned anti-aircraft platform, and custom-built floating islands.^[1] No one has created a state on the high seas that has been recognized as a sovereign nation, although the Principality of Sealand is a disputed micronation formed on a discarded sea fort near Suffolk, England.^[2]

The closest things to a seastead that have been built so far are large ocean-going ships sometimes called "floating cities", and smallerfloating islands.

Seasteading - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


The 'most popular novel ever' according to the Modern Library is 'Atlas Shrugged' by Ayn Rand:
100 Best Novels « Modern Library
Jay Doubleyou: english literature
Atlas Shrugged - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Free cities:
Honduras shrugged

Two start-ups want to try out libertarian ideas in the country’s new special development regions

Dec 10th 2011 | From the print edition

DISGUSTED by an increasingly invasive state, America's most capable entrepreneurs retreat to Galt's Gulch, a libertarian commune. That was the theme of Ayn Rand's magnum opus, “Atlas Shrugged”, a sacred text for libertarians ever since it was published in 1957. Actually creating such an enclave has been the dream of many fans of small government (or of none at all). Several have had a try at it, but their efforts have always ended in disaster (see table).

Now, for the first time, libertarians have a real chance to implement their ideas. In addition to a big special development region, the Honduran government intends to approve two smaller zones. And two libertarian-leaning start-ups have already signed a preliminary memorandum of understanding with the Honduran government to develop them.

One firm goes by the name of Future Cities Development Corporation. It was co-founded by Patri Friedman, a grandson of Milton Friedman, a Nobel laureate in economics, and until recently executive director of the Seasteading Institute, a group producing research on how to build ocean-based communes. The other is called Grupo Ciudades Libres (Free Cities Group) and is the brainchild of Michael Strong and Kevin Lyons, two entrepreneurs and libertarian activists.

Both share a purpose: to build “free cities”. Last April all three spoke at a conference organised by Universidad Francisco Marroquín, a libertarian outfit in Guatemala. In September they and Giancarlo Ibárgüen, the university's president, launched the Free Cities Institute, a think-tank, to foster the cause.

As so often with enthusiasts, divisions within the cause run deep. The two firms hail from different parts of the libertarian spectrum. Mr Friedman is an outspoken critic of democracy. It is “ill-suited for a libertarian state”, he wrote in an essay in 2009—because it is “rigged against libertarians” (they would always lose) and inefficient. Rather than giving its citizens a voice, he argues, they should be free to exit; cities should compete for them by offering the best services.

Free cities: Honduras shrugged | The Economist

The Free Cities Institute | Let A Thousand Nations Bloom

Startup Cities Institute.
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don't vote

Russell Brand is a British comedian.
Here he is on American TV:



Russell Brand Destroys MSNBC Talk Show Host - Discusses Bradley Manning And Edward Snowden - YouTube

He thinks it's a waste of time to vote in elections:



NEWSNIGHT: Paxman vs Brand - full interview - YouTube

Sorry Paxman, Here's Why I Don't Vote

Posted: 27/10/2013 20:5

What would I do with a ballot paper? Practice the art of origami, or maybe draw a crude stick man cartoon? Anything, really, but actually vote with it.

Does that mean I'm an angry youth hell-bent on anarchy or a lazy student, too drunk or asleep to have any interest in politics? Surprisingly no. I am one of many young people disillusioned with the current political system and refusing to pick a lesser of the evils we are offered every few years.

Russell Brand caused a stir (when doesn't he?), when he told a baffled Jeremy Paxman that he had never voted, and never will. He outraged the Newsnight host further by urging young people not to vote, something I think Brand got completely right.

Voting these days seems to be a choice between which posh man in a suit is going to lie to us least. As always the general election will be a two-horse race between parties who are completely out of touch with modern Britain. Unfortunately nobody understands that connecting with the youth of today is going to take more than a few Tweets and putting policies on an app. No political figure is accessible to the general public, they can talk about unemployment and understanding life on benefits but I doubt any of them needed grants at Oxbridge.

Sorry Paxman, Here's Why I Don't Vote | Planet Ivy

Russell Brand is wrong – if you don’t vote, you just won’t matter

Should the government ignore your job? Your education? Your family? If you don’t vote, that’s exactly what they will do.

BY TONI PEARCE PUBLISHED 5 FEBRUARY, 2014 - 09:40

• 
•  

 

Voting is the only way to make a difference. Photo: Getty

Today is National Voter Registration Day. It’s made me think of Russell Brand. I’m not going to apply condescension to his prose – I think he’s articulate and eloquent actually. I’m not going to dismiss him off hand as somebody who doesn’t know what he’s talking about, he does. I might have something to say about his attitude to women, but that’s for another article.

You don’t need to have a politics degree to capture the mood of the nation, echoed in Russell’s sentiments – voting is pointless and even dangerous: it only encourages them.

I actually agree with his overarching point - he wants to create a genuinely fair system. “To really make a difference, we must become different,” he says, and that’s exactly what I want to see. I do have one slight rebuke though – Russell, you’ve never voted, it’s careless to denounce something that you’ve never experienced.

However, that aside, Russell and I have some things in common. I too have moments of weariness and exhaustion with the process, but never let myself be indifferent. I do “give a fuck about politics”. That means I value my vote.

If you don’t vote, you won’t have your voice heard. The simple fact is the electoral roll underpins our democracy and our lives. If you don’t vote – will you resign? Will you quit your job? Will you just withdraw from society? Because you won’t have a say over employment, the economy, or any of the smaller or bigger polices that impact our lives on a daily basis – whether we like that they do  or not.

Should the government ignore your job? Your education? Your family? If you don’t vote, that’s exactly what they will do. If you examine voter turnout, what you see is white, older males dominating the process and government polices reflect this. Or take the power of the ‘grey vote’ – it’s rare, if ever, you’ll see this demographic protesting. They often don’t need to.

An Ipsos Mori poll showed that at the last election 76 per cent of over-65s were still voting. Their power at the ballot box is respected – because they use it. Voting means power and when you don’t vote, you give up this up.

New Statesman | Russell Brand is wrong – if you don’t vote, you just won’t matter

NON-VOTING:

• Cultivate Your Own Garden
• Why I Would Not Vote Against Hitler by Wendy McElroy
• Why I Refuse to Register by Carl Watner

voluntaryist.com - Non-Voting
Non-voting - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Non-politics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia





WARNING: DON'T VOTE (Jennifer Aniston, Leonardo Dicaprio, Halle Berry, Sarah Silverman, ...) - YouTube.
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why do scandinavians speak such good english?

Scandinavians seem to be particularly good at English.

Here are some entries from the AntiMoon blog:

The answer to your question: original or dubbed tv/movie products: 

1. Original voice in Tv products and movies is used in: 
Portugal, Flanders, Netherlands, Scandinavia, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia 
2. Dubbing is preferred: in most other countries 

That's why people from 1. are more likely to speak English on the street with foreigners, and their English is better than English of Germans, French, Spanish or Italians, Italians have terrible diction: pub ['peb@], dance ['dens@], cover ['kover]...

Why do Dutch and Scandinavians speak English so well? | Antimoon Forum
Question for Scandinavians | Antimoon Forum

As mentioned above, all films in Germany are dubbed into German while the Dutch watch the original language versions and can also pick up English TV broadcasts. 

Why are Germans among the worst speakers of English? | Antimoon Forum

And from other blogs:

I am from Poland and we had a Swede paying a visit and telling about the English of Scandinavians. 
The reasons are: 
- they listen to a lot of English tv with native subtitles 

Why do Scandinavians speak such good English?

Because we learn it at school. Besides, we don't dub TV shows or films. The very idea strikes us as barbarous. Everybody can read subtitles

How can Scandinavians speak English so well?

And from professionals:
Why do Scandinavians speak such a high standard of English? - The Translation People - Blog
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is it ok to steal 500, 000 euros from the bank?

There's quite a tradition of 'doing things differently' in Catalonia:

Video of the Day: 
“Come Back” – the Story of Enric Duran’s action and its aftermath

Stacco Troncoso

4th April 2014

“Come Back” is a full-length documentary film detailing the aftermath of Spanish activist Enric Duran’s notorious action against 16 major banks. In case you’re not familiar with his act of “financial civil disobedience”, Duran attained roughly half a million Euros in bank loans and subsequently distributed the funds to support anti-capitalist activist movements. This documentary revisits the years-long preparation for the action itself, and interviews the various groups of activists who consequently benefited from the money. The action also led to the foundation of the revolutionary Catalan Integrated Cooperative, a transition-minded post-capitalist community, which is currently thriving. You can read more about Duran and the CIC in this recent interview with Duran, conducted by Michel Bauwens, John Restakis and Neal Gorenflo.

“In this documentary over twenty people who had so far remained silent explain how they lived the facts of which they had first hand knowledge before they became public, and recall the projects and initiatives in which those resources were allocated.

The documentary has been released today, 6 months after the statement of the last 17 of September which said:

Today, taking into account that the Spanish legal system includes a law by which all crimes punished by less than 5 years of prison will go in to prescription five years after they happened, I can say that this action would not have been possible without the contribution of many people . Of paramount importance have been all the processes of consensus decision which allowed us to collectively choose how to use much of those funds and how to carry out the projects. Being aware of the origin of the money gave it a revolutionary political meaning with which we aim to develop alternatives to the established system which it would not have had if it had only been an individual action.

Perhaps now, taking advantage of the time gone by, it’s be more feasible for other people to share how they experienced this action and about how those funds were allocated.

Answering that call, many people begun participating in a process which made it possible to share this documentary today, 5th anniversary of PODEM, and of my arrest at the University of Barcelona. Come Back is a collaboration between about 20 people, many thanks to all of them, those who were present and those who, for various reasons, couldn’t be.”

P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » Video of the Day: “Come Back” – the Story of Enric Duran’s action and its aftermath

The story's been covered in the English-language media:
Spain's 'Robin Hood' swindled banks to help fight capitalism | World news | The Guardian
‘Robin Hood of the Banks’ to RT: We'll create different world with our own rules — RT News
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