Marxist Moments

Most Sensational Breaking News…

 

From the i for Tuesday April 24^th, 2018:

Queen thrilled at news of Kate and William’s baby boy

          Is this the paper’s most extraordinary scoop this year? Or ever? Could we ever have known that this might be the Queen’s reaction to the news? The idea of the Queen being ‘thrilled’ at the birth of another great-grandchild, and male at that, is nothing short of astonishing, as is the event itself, which took nine months to come to fruition. So incredible that the Daily Mail devoted its first seventeen pages to the happy event, plus a sixteen-page pull-out supplement. The Queen was no doubt ‘thrilled’ also by all that Royal free publicity, though in retrospect this does not seem to have been unpredictable.

          Admittedly, it’s more cheerful than the dread of expecting a new tweet from Donald Trump.

 

In Praise of Typewriters

          Much as we like novelty as consumers, there has always been a nostalgic streak in us for retaining old things or old ways of doing things. This tendency would seem to have been expanding rapidly over the past few years as capital-driven tech spins round ever faster, throwing up mind-blowing innovations almost every month, or so it seems. Ordinary consumers would seem to be having trouble keeping up with ‘progress’ of this increasingly frenetic sort, as evidenced by ‘retro’ all around us.

          We learn, for example, that printed book sales are outperforming Kindles, though only a few short years ago our pundits were pontificating on the Death of the Book.

          The government had decided to switch off FM by 2020 seeing as how everyone was turning to digital or delayed broadcasting nowadays. Unfortunately it overlooked the phenomenon of domestic homes becoming so stuffed with electronic gadgets that interfered-with DAB reception is almost impossible for many, apart from having a very unpredictable transmission range, whereas good old FM goes chugging on with some listeners actually preferring its tone. So FM remains with us, still popular enough to command the attention of politicians, at least for the time being.

          Likewise, ‘smart’ meters were going to revolutionise energy readings although the government didn’t actually back up the changeover from traditional meters with legislation. Now we discover that ‘smart’ meters spy on us, are expensive to install with little or no savings to make this worthwhile, and require replacing if one chooses to switch energy suppliers. So there goes another bright idea.

          No sooner have we perfected the art of streaming when almost overnight punters return to the trusty old LP vinyl, thought to have been killed off forty years ago by audio cassettes. Indeed cassettes, ‘killed off’ in their turn by CDs, are also making an extraordinary comeback. LP and cassette retailers are springing up all over.

          Who could have predicted the success of Talking Pictures TV, devoted almost exclusively to old and usually British black-and-white movies (most of them incredibly obscure) and drama series? Its aural equivalent for some time now has, of course, been Radio 4 Extra…

          Of course magazine racks weighted down with Classic Car magazines, and buses, and tractors, and trains, and vans, etc., etc. have never really gone away but they are obviously keeping a large section of an apparently dying magazine publishing business going. I can’t imagine all the readers are into actually buying any of these old rattlers. It’s nostalgia. Let’s face it, a Morris Minor convertible or Traveller is a far hotter item on the street today than what has become the computer-designed uniformity of today’s cars, for which you must find the marque in order to learn the make. Great differences among them in performance, no doubt, but they all look the bloody same.

          WH Smith pulled itself out of the doldrums a while back by jettisoning most of its electronic-wares business and handing back its traditional stationary sections more floor space. Result? Profits for Smith’s have soared. Whether it’s Smith’s or elsewhere, the burgeoning of the stationary on display is as great as ever before and perhaps even more diversified. I thought we were into a ‘paperless’ age by this time? But it seems not. Retailers wouldn’t flog it if people didn’t buy it.

          What about digitised antique phones which can be found in any decently chi-chi notions shop? What about razor and soap (with brush) which many men obdurately prefer – get a barber to shave you to find out why – despite decades of TV advertising for the ever-better and ultimately perfect electric  razor?

          Surely now it is time for the typewriter to re-enter the scene? Tom Hanks has led the way by championing the lowly manual typewriter and owning something like 120 of them. Electronic typewriters are still made in Japan but production of manuals ceased in Britain in 2012 (as late as that!) Electronic typewriters always seemed to me like half-assed word-processors: for me the true typewriter is the manual. So what is there about them?

          They are portable – the big old office ones are difficult to find - and in a handy bag (often supplied by the retailer) they can be set up and used anywhere, like a laptop.

          They are durable. If you keep it clean your manual will last you the rest of your life, and then some.

          They are cheap. The price range is around £50 to £110. Of course you can’t get them new anymore, but re-conditioned ones good-as-new are available through the internet. My retailer here is Brian Rothwell of Inkjet Stores in Bury, Lancs, who also sells a range of typewriter accessories, such as a felt mat that makes them quieter. The modern ones in a plastic casing are already quieter than the older all-metal models that made such a clatter. Incidentally, this plug for Brian comes as a free favour to him which he doesn’t even know about. But of course there are others. Personal experience makes me suggest you avoid eBay, though, unless you can get a very reliable opinion on the performance of what you intend to buy. Ribbons are easy to order, perhaps in bulk, and last far longer and are a hell of a lot cheaper than ink cartridges!

          The manual requires no power except muscular. Like the wind-up radio it is popular in the southern world, in offices in Latin America and Africa plagued by frequent power blackouts making computer use hazardous. We may be proud of our smartphones but remember that every new stage in miniaturisation eats up energy like nobody’s business. A world of the tiniest smartphones will kill off the environment for sure. We MUST get back to more manual and mechanical uses if we are to conserve energy for use only where it is strictly necessary in future.

          You can’t hack into a manual typewriter; it is entirely oblivious to electricity, let alone cyber systems. That’s why governments are turning to manual typing of top-secret documents and cables, in order to avoid the prying eyes of the NSA, the Russians, or 15-year-olds in suburban bedrooms. The only trace left behind by a typewriter is paper, and if you can’t secure that for secrecy it’s entirely your own fault. Incidentally, paper can be recycled.

          It is even possible to obtain carbon-paper, though not usually from a high-street stationer’s. This obviates the need to photocopy your typewritten document and of course copying is not a separate operation. One sheet of thin carbon paper will last for ages before it gives up the ghost.

          If you’re new to typing, and most people now are, be prepared with lots of whitening fluid, for mistakes are inevitable though you can improve with practice. At any rate the keyboard is the same as on a word-processor so it’s not difficult to get the hang of it. Though as you’ll discover in various ways, it’s a bit more ‘hands-on’….

          Why type at all? The simple answer is to get weaned off excessive screen-watching which is doing your eyes in. For instance I mainly type letters to my friends and send them through the post rather than emailing. Like longhand, typewritten looks as if a human being has done it: it has a personal touch. Typewriters themselves were never wholly uniform, and in old detective stories killers and blackmailers were often unmasked through the print-peculiarities of the particular typewriters they used. There is something comfortably not all that high-tech about typewriters, though they remain beautiful objects of mechanical engineering at its best.

          As well as nostalgia for old things, people are rediscovering the joys of bread-making, or cooking from recipes instead of takeaway and the CO2 menace of microwave ovens.  Or throwing their own pots. Any of these will bring their own reward. I would add manual typewriting to this: it gives a ‘human’ touch to correspondents who otherwise spend every day viewing anything from a dozen to two-dozen emails a day or more. And a letter sent that looks as if some effort has gone into it (whether through the typing or by improved orthography) shows that the sender cares.

          Typing fits into a multi-media environment what with photocopiers, scanners for turning the typing into a computer documents and emails to attach it to for quicker sending. As I say, the object is to spare your eyes by doing more stuff off-screen, not to ‘save time’, whatever that means.