Storm Clouds

We got some more podcast knowledge about the 'opium wars'. My précis: In the 18th century, Britain had a Trump-like problem with China. The British had become addicted to tea and China were our suppliers. There was no reciprocal trade, so British silver and gold was flowing east to cover the cost

Being marginally brighter than Trump (a low bar) the British did not try to strangle the trade with tariffs (taxes on tea earned the exchequer a fortune - just ask the American colonists). Instead, they came up with a stimulant of their own to sell back to China: opium. They struck lucky: a technique had just been devised to convert opium from a moderately damaging drug, that was eaten or drunk, into an instantly-addictive 'crack' version that was smoked in a pipe, destroyed lives and provoked social chaos. The trade exploded

To produce the opium, the East India Company forced peasant farmers across vast areas of north-east India to grow exclusively poppies and sell them to a state monopoly at a price fixed by the Company. Using land for other purposes was not permitted, even during periods of famine

That's about as far as we have got, but I was left with the thought that there must have been out-of-the way places where farmers defied the rules and grew food. I have a black-mirror vision of poppy-fields, deep within which were small, concealed clearings planted with clandestine chick-peas and lentils!

We had time to hear all this because the monsoon rain on the M40 reduced the traffic to a 30km/hr crawl, and it diverted my mind from thoughts of multi-vehicle pile-ups. We got home safely enough, but got a re-run later to provide a picture