Wednesday, 27th July …..

The world of paint has entered an age where the naming of different colours has become a major undertaking. Once upon a time we would have a choice of Cream or Pale Green, Primrose or Duck Egg Blue. But now we are faced with a myriad of colours with bizarre names. I glanced at a Dulux paint chart and found Precious Pink, Wiggle, Ginger Crumb, Caramel Sundae, Rainmaker, Oath and Plumburn, among hundreds of others.

What colour is Oath? Wiggle, I note is Green. Is there a Green Wiggle?

Clearly the names are intended to suggest an emotional response. Caramel Sundae is a classic example: cool and sweet, a real comfort. Rainmaker, a bluey-grey, makes sense, and so does Ginger Crumb.

In our little house where the paint is being touched up, we only have a handful of colours but it’s a pretty good sample of what you might expect if you are starting to decorate. The walls are Hogsbristle, the red wall in the kitchen is Carmen Miranda, a couple of grey doors are Mineshaft, a small patch of brown in the lounge is Cordovan and the wardrobe doors are Blushing Beige. It’s wonderful!

I’m expanding my reading this week following a worrying after-taste which I experienced after finishing The Unnecessary War. In fact, the author, Patrick J Buchanan, started Chapter 1 by stating:

ALL ABOUT US we can see clearly now that the West is passing away.
In a single century, all the great houses of continental Europe fell. All the empires that ruled the world have vanished. Not one European nation, save Muslim Albania, has a birthrate that will enable it to survive through the century. As a share of world population, peoples of European ancestry have been shrinking for three generations. The character of every Western nation is being irremediably altered as each undergoes an unresisted invasion from the Third World. We are slowly disappearing from the Earth.
Having lost the will to rule, Western man seems to be losing the will to live as a unique civilization as he feverishly indulges in La Dolce Vita, with a yawning indifference as to who might inherit the Earth he once ruled.

He didn’t come over as just another right-wing zealot ranting about immigration. His argument is that, for 300 years European nations provided the leadership which brought world development but during the 20th century their stupidity has weakened them to such an extent that they are swiftly being side-lined by the growth of other cultures. Maybe that’s OK. Maybe it’s time for a change and the rise of new cultures could bring benefits. But, maybe it’s not all positive and do we really understand what the world will be like in 50 years, or even 20?

There has been a flurry of comments about the failure, in European countries of multi-culturalism. This debate was re-visited following the tragedy in Norway this week so I thought I would download what is being said by people such as David Cameron and Angela Merkel, and so on. The difficulty in following the discussion is to avoid the racist rants of the radio shock-jocks, but there must be some intelligent words among the dross. I’m assuming this debate might have a great deal to do with elements of our population who choose to live apart from other Australians, transplanting their culture from their native land, without any wish to adopt the way-of-life which has evolved since Europeans first came here more than 200 years ago. I gather, also, that the word multi-cultural is good (as it recognises the diversity in our population) but multi-culturalism is bad (as it has led to groups setting themselves apart from the rest of the population, and outside the laws of the land). Could be interesting.