Coppola Comment

This is a little light relief from all the miserable stuff I've been posting recently. For several years now, every load of washing, when removed from the washing machine, has contained at least two odd socks. I put these odd socks in an Odd Sock Bag. Or, rather, I used to. But the Odd Sock Bag has been full for quite some time now, and still odd socks appear with every washing load. From time to time, I assign a teenager to the job of sorting out the Odd Socks Bag, pairing up the socks and returning them to their owners. Teenagers do a reasonable job, but for some reason they never manage to  empty the bag. In fact they rarely manage to eliminate more than half the odd socks. The rest remain in the bag in the hope that at some time in the future, their pair will be found. It has become apparent to me that the socks that most resist being paired are mine and my daughter's. My son and my partner both pair up their own socks prior to washing them, and theirs seldom go missi...

This morning, I had a rather depressing conversation with two people who, like me, are professional musicians who rely for much of their income on giving instrumental lessons to children. And I have had similar conversations with other instrumental teachers over the last few weeks. Things are not good in the instrumental teaching world. Instrumental teaching is strongly cyclical: numbers are at their highest in the autumn, when children take up music lessons on starting at a new school, and they gradually drop off after Christmas as children lose interest and exam pressure takes over. And we have a horrible gap in August when even those who intend to continue their lessons go on holiday. Inevitably, during August we take on debt and we pay that off in the autumn when things pick up again. Except that this year, they haven't. The number of new students starting lessons is pitiful - it is nowhere near enough to make up the losses over the last year. My teaching hours are down fro...

It is often thought that the essence of music is harmony - and, indeed, that the essence of human life is harmony. The goal of humanity is to live in harmony with ourselves, with each other and with our surroundings; let wars cease, let there be no anger, no suffering, no exploitation. The lion shall lie down with the lamb; “they shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain”, as the Bible has it. When humans who don’t know each other well sing together spontaneously, they sing in harmony. It’s quite surprising how rich that harmony can be, but it is ONLY harmony. No-one dares to step out of line, to be at odds with the group, so the basic harmony remains the same. Passing dissonances, blue notes and so forth may appear as transient variations, but they don’t effect change. If the singing started on a chord of D, it’s still on D after 5 minutes. If the group knows each other better they may attempt more varied harmonies. They may even move from D to the dominant, A, and bac...

Throughout this post I shall use the British shortening of the word "mathematics". I struggle with maths. Well, ok, as the proud possessor of a maths 'A'-level and a finance MBA I suppose I don't struggle with it that much, really, compared to many people. But in my head I struggle. I look at a page of equations and my eyes glaze over. I can't look at a graph and imagine the equations that explain it. Nor can I look at an equation and work out what shape of graph it would create. I can visualise the forces in a mechanical system, but converting that into algebra is a bit of a problem as I can never remember what the letters stand for. I have the same problem with econometrics too - even when the terms are clearly documented at the top of the page, by the time I'm halfway down it I've forgotten what they mean and have no idea what the equations are supposed to show. Many people have the same problem when faced with a musical score. But I don't. ...

The Megan Stammers affair is is being handled very badly by all the parties concerned. It seems to me that in the middle of the media storm, the heartfelt appeals from the family and the vilification of the teacher, the one person whose interests are not being considered is the girl herself. Firstly, there is the heavy-handed behaviour of the police. I have a 15-year-old daughter. Believe me, if she ran away with her maths teacher (or any other adult male - or female, for that matter) ALL the police would be doing is bringing her back, as safely and as QUIETLY as possible. And that would be the end of the matter unless she herself chose to pursue action against him for something - abduction, rape, sexual assault, scrumping apples, whatever. I would not give permission for "medical checks" such as have already been conducted on Megan Stammers: I know what those involve, and until I had spoken to my daughter and heard her version of events, no way would any police doctor get ...

From the Oxford Dictionary:     folly :  noun   ( plural  follies ) 1  [ mass noun ]  lack of good sense; foolishness: an act of sheer folly [ count noun ]  a foolish act, idea, or practice: the follies of youth 2  a costly ornamental building with no practical purpose, especially a tower or mock-Gothic ruin built in a large garden or park. Origin: Middle English : from Old French  folie  'madness', in modern French also 'delight, favourite dwelling'  (compare with  folly (sense 2) ) , from  fol  'fool, foolish' The Business Secretary, Vince Cable, has outlined plans for what he calls a Business Bank, with the aim of improving the flow of credit to small & medium-size businesses. "We need a new British Business Bank with a clean balance sheet and an ability to expand lending rapidly to the manufacturers" said Cable to his fellow party members at the Liberal Democrat conference. Wow, I tho...

The title of this post is unashamedly plagiarised from the film, The Day after Tomorrow , in which extreme consequences follow from climate change. Three enormous storms develop - one each over the US, Europe and Asia - which together force the planet into a new Ice Age, killing millions and forcing the survivors to move south. The science behind this film has I think been largely discredited from a climate change point of view. But I have been struck by the similarity with our economic situation. We have, indeed, three enormous storms - one each in America, Europe and Asia. And the consequences may be a fundamental realignment of the global economic landscape. Storm 1 is already familiar to us. This financial storm is progressively destroying the Western system of finance. The "global" financial crisis of 2008 was centred over the US, the originator of the subprime debt collapse that underpinned the disaster, and the UK because of its primacy in global finance. But the ...