Friday 10 December 2010

High jinks from our young, and the young grow old: plus ça change . . . Oh, and the day I almost started my own riot

High jinks in London yesterday as assorted students showed their displeasure at the Government’s plans to charge them up to £9,000 a year for their courses. They will be lent the money and will be obliged to pay it back once they have graduated and are earning more than £21,000 a year. I have no idea how many students turned up outside Parliament and proceeded to lay waste to the area as MPs debated the Government’s plans, but they were certainly in their tens of thousands. They seem to have enjoyed themselves a great deal, ripping up paving stones to smash up and throw at the police, setting fire to whatever might catch fire (not a lot in deep mid-winter) and, it seems, attacking the Prince of Wales and his good lady wife as their car passed through the area.
The first things which must be said is that, despite the claims, this was not primarily a demonstration against the planned fees but an opportunity to try to make life as uncomfortable as possible for the Conservatives and their Lib Dem catamites, who have agreed to keep keep them in power. For the fact is that Conservatives are not popular with young people, they never have been and never will be. And if our students and would-be students are so upset at being charged for their university education, why did they so meekly acquiesce when the charges were first introduced by Labour several years ago and the principle was first established that from now on they must pay? There was barely a peep out of them. But then the fact is that, broadly, Labour, as the party of the left, are the good guys, and the Tories, as the party of the right, the bad guys. The Lib Dems are, as always, an irrelevancy. (Incidentally, it was suggested today on the Week In Westminster (Radio 4, on all good radio sets) that perhaps the Tories are using the Lib Dems as fall guys for many of the unappetising decisions which have to be made. To which I reply: does the Pope shit in the forest? That’s where Brian Cowen and his buddies went wrong. They didn’t form a coalition with the Lib Dems.)



But it’s a fact of life that the young tend to the left and as they age, faced with a mortgage, loans, keeping up with the Joneses, career-building, unexpected pregnancy and other assorted ‘life event’, they invariably drift to the right. You, my dear reader, whoever you are and wherever you are reading this, know as well as I do that in ten years time the vast majority of those rioters will be boring fucks with mortgages and aspirations who wouldn’t dare rock the boat even if their life depended on it.
It is certainly true that those few who most enthusiastically took to smashing up the roads ‘to demonstrate their displeasure’, do not need an excuse to turn violent. Years ago, I had personal experience of such people and it was not pleasant.
I was at Dundee University and something of a layabout. I wasn’t an anarchist or a druggie or a politico or anything like that, but I was not a model student. I didn’t take part in demos (fighting apartheid was the big cause then) and the lefties thought I was right of the centre, whereas those on the right thought I was a lefties. I was, in fact, neither. The one principle which guided my life was anything for a laugh, and if a toke or five on a spliff was involved, so much the better.
One day Tony Benn came to the university to give a speech in the big lecture hall of the social sciences building. Benn, who might still have been calling himself Anthony Wedgwood-Benn – I can’t remember – was a Labour minister and thoroughly disliked. Although these days he is Mr Cardigan and everyone’s favourite elder statesman and reasonable to a bloody fault, in those days he was regarded by the Tories as a dangerous socialist, but, ironically, regarded by leftie students as an establishment stooge and not left-wing enough. Anyway, I have absolutely no idea why, but I organised a spontaneous ‘demo’ of about 15 people, and we sat at the back of the lecture hall banging our fists on the desks and chanting Give Peace A Chance. It was quite ludicrous that I should have been the ringleader because I didn’t have a political bone in my body. I was just having fun. But word spread and we were joined by others until the group at the back had almost doubled. I can’t remember what happened to the meeting, although we might well have brought it to a premature close, but I do remember my gaggle of 30 or so protesters returning to the students' union where we were joined by others who had just heard of the escapade.
And then I noticed something quite odd: the good-natured gaggle had subtly transformed itself into something quite different. It was now a rabble baying for more trouble. It was a mob. It wanted blood. And it was very ugly. It was no longer a group of individuals but an entity of quite another kind and there was absolutely nothing good-humoured about it. I remember being rather stunned by this very sudden transformation. As the instigator of the original disruption, it had, after all been, my group for a short while, but now I wanted nothing to do with it. I left there and then, and can happily report that those I left behind could think of nothing else to do, and slowly the mob went their separate ways. But it was very odd and it did teach me something about humankind.

. . .

It is standard journalistic practice to blame ‘a violent element’ when protests such as the one yesterday spin out of control, but I believe it is very much the case. It’s a sad fact that 90 per cent of us are sheep who can be led and manipulated with frightening ease. The Communists and the Nazis both made use of that. There need not be many, but those few are not like you or I. Several years ago, four or five were jailed after turning to quite sickening violence, ostensibly acting on behalf of animal welfare. Prince Charles and his darling lady wife Camilla (the ‘Duchess of Cornwall’ – I am dearly hoping that at some point in my life - though I am running out of time - I will be offered a knighthood so that I can turn it down) were being driven through London to some premiere or other (probably not Les Miserables) when they were caught up in the protest and their car was attacked. Apparently, someone managed to get his arm into the car and punched Camilla in the stomach. What exactly does that have to do with protesting against the rise in college fees? Every country has these lunatics, people who simply want to get violent and don’t need an excuse. If you are angry about being charged tuition fees and want to demonstrate that you disagree with the Government’s decision, smashing the window of the Roller Charles and Camilla are being driven in and punching the good lady in the stomach strikes me as a novel and, ultimately, futile way of putting forward your argument. You are more likely to persuade the neutral bystander that you are utterly uninterested in the issue at hand and merely want to perpetrate a little gratuitous violence. I am something of an openminded chap and always willing to be proved wrong but on this one I think you might feel inclined to agree with me.


A ride through London town becomes rather an
unpleasant night out for our future king and his missus as the locals get very restless



. . .

Being a fully-paid up member of the cliché industry, clichés are dear to me (at the end of the day, come rain or shine, when all is said and done, clichés are worth their weight in gold.) We hacks are always urged to ‘avoid clichés like the plague’), but the truth is that they are our lifeblood, our stock in trade, and to ignore them would simply be stupid. It’s not that they simply make our lives easier (it ain’t easy being original, so I’ve long ago given up trying to be) but because the public is familiar with them, they are comfortable with them and expect them.
I like to think that a cliché is not just a phrase, but that the notion of clichés can be extended to include our behaviour. So it is surely something of a cliché that a businessman should screw his secretary and marry her after divorcing his wife. Or that some of us guys ‘fall in love’ with the first girl they screw. (In my case it was my second, Sarah Hunter. She jacked me in after a while and, as is the way, I was devastated. She went on to screw a trendy psychology lecturer, a real tit call Martin Skelton-Robinson and then his wife. You might put it down to sour grapes that I should describe him as ‘a tit’, but anyone who calls his newborn son ‘Judas’ is a complete tit in my book. I should add, perhaps in mitigation, that this was at the end of the Sixties.)
I suppose what I am getting at is that just as a phrase becomes so hackneyed by overuse that it gains the status of ‘a cliché’, some behaviour is so predictably commonplace that it can gain a similar status. Thus, in the sense that I am suggesting, some attitudes can also gain the status of ‘cliché’. And, unfortunately, I am now at the age - 61 just under three weeks ago - where I am in real danger of having clichéed attitudes. In my defence, I am very aware of the danger and do my utmost to steer clear of them, but but as far as I can see, that is as futile as attempting to ‘steer clear’ of death.
Perhaps I am being a little harsh on those my age, but too many of us do seem to be living clichés. I would dearly like to exclude myself from that, but in all honesty I can’t. I have got to the age where new words and phrases are beginning to irritate me (e.g. we no longer ‘appeal against’ a decision, we simply ‘appeal’ it, which sounds wrong to my ears, but I am bound to admit that usage of that word has changed and that I am the one out of step. Then there’s the response people give when you ask ‘how are you?’ ‘Good’, they say, which just sounds plain daft to me. I would say ‘well, thank you’.)
All this is an almost excessively long-winded way of getting around to describing my thoughts about the modern take on giving presents. Yesterday my daughter - who is only 14 - texted me while she was on her way to school to ask me to buy her some Christmas cards to give to her friends - bloody 80 cards! 80! Then there is the amount of presents children get these days for Christmas. It is obscene. Three years ago, when we hauled out the sacks my children use as Christmas stockings to fill up again with small gifts, I discovered at the bottom of one a present which one or other of my children had not even opened. I try to instill in them the notion (which I firmly believe to be true) that the more you have, the less you value what you have, but whether or not the message is getting through, I really don’t know. When I was a child, we got one ‘big’ present from our parents, then something practical, like a pair of gloves. We would also get small gifts from grandparents and, perhaps, godparents. But these. The reason I started off this ramble with a reference to clichés was that surely it is a cliché to do what I am doing: ranting on about how ‘the younger generation’ takes too much for granted and how the whole ‘present-giving’ seems to have got completely out of hand? It has probably got a great deal to do with the fact that, for most of us at least, times have become ever easier over these past 60 years, with the recent - and now concluded - era of easy credit boosting the impression that we are all rather affluent.
Yet part of me still firmly believes that ‘plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose’. The ‘younger generation’ is not at all that different to us old farts. They are simply younger. I dislike my two children more or less as a matter of course switching on the TV as soon as they get up, and tell them so. But all I hear when I tell them so if my father ranting on at me. And guess who also would have switched on the TV more or less as a matter of course were early-morning television available when I was young? Just the one guess, but I’m sure you’ll get it right.

. . .

I’m pretty certain that finding a Daily Mail cartoon funny is a sure indication that retirement can’t be long away. So it is with some shame that I admit that every so often one or two of them do amuse me. Not Garfield and not Fred Bassett, certainly, but Chloe, which sometimes has to be toned down a little to avoid offending the middle-aged sensibilities of readers (why is it that as people grow older, many pretend they never had sex?), The Odd Streak and one called The Strip Show.
I wasn’t at all struck on The Strip Show when it first appeared, but it seems to have gained confidence and can often hit the button. The strip below, which appeared last week, particularly appealed to me. It is a slow burner, but all the better for that. The key to it is in the discrepancy of price. When I first read it, I wondered ‘What the bloody hell is/are ‘dote/dotes?’.

© Michiko
If, after reading it, you’re still wondering, this strip is not for you. Another Strip Show strip I enjoyed a few months ago simply showed the exterior of a building, the home of The Double Entendre Club. Outside the main entrance is a sign which reads ‘Members only’.

Wednesday 8 December 2010

Adams moves south as Tweedledum and Tweedldee blow it. And is Assange being stitched up? Just the one guess, please, but I'm sure you'll get it right

There was an item of news just over two weeks ago which, I think, surprised quite a few people. It was that Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein leader, member of the Northern Ireland Assembly and a MP in the House of Commons, had resigned his Assembly seat and announced that he would stand for election to the Irish Republic’s Dail at the next general election. (And my apologies to anyone who would like them if I get some of the terminology wrong. There was a time, when I was working subbing shifts on the Irish desk of the Sun, when I could write Taoiseach with my eyes closed. Now I have to look it up again.) I suppose those more informed or even involved in the front and backwaters of Irish politics, both north and south of the border, might not have been surprised and will have heard of Adams’s plans some time ago. But I am just a common or garden pub bore who, though he takes an interest in many matters, is less well-informed than he might be in many matters, especially Irish politics. So I remembering thinking when I read the news: I wonder why?
That occurred to me again tonight walking home and listening to The World Tonight report on the emergency budget in Dublin. Everyone is demanding an immediate election (although I’m sure Fianna Fail, who have even less to lose than they have to gain, will drag their heels on that one, knowing full well that each and every one of them will be out on his or her arse by the time the polls close.) After Brian Lenihan had presented the budget, the Opposition got up and, as is tradition, condemned it out of hand. It was then I remember thinking that Fine Gael, who accepted wisdom would assume would regain many seats and be a senior partner in any future coalition government, might also perhaps not be looking forward to an election quite as much as one might assume. And then it occurred to me the Gerry
Adams, who is nothing if not wily (and rather wistful in my picture), realised that Sinn Fein’s time might finally have come to score at the ballot box rather better than it has so far.
I’ll repeat that I know less about Irish politics than I do about nuclear physics and what I write is simple conjecture. But it would also make sense. In Britain, the Tweedledum/Tweedledee nature of our system has meant that first Labour would form the government, then it would be the Tories turn, then Labour again, for many years ad nauseam. That has all changed now that the Conservatives were obliged to form a coalition with the Lib Dems. Could the Republic also be facing a its own realignment in its politics? After all, the Irish might reason that one lot is as bad as the other, they’ve both screwed things up and allowed the bubble to blow up before it burst, and that the time has come to give Sinn Fein a chance. It already has many local politicians.
Adams, who is not getting any younger (is any of us?) decided some time ago that real progress towards a fully independent Ireland was more likely by democratic means, and standing for election as TD for Louth, believing that the voters are mightily fed up with the usual suspects might well be part of his game plan.

. . .

Why is Adams routinely referred to as a ‘barman’ or a ‘former barman’? Yes, I know that working as a barman was the only full-time job he had held down until he was elected to the the Commons ond the NI Assembly, but anyone who knows even very little about him will know that describing him as a ‘barman’ and implying that he sort of kind of, kind of sort of drifted into politics is complete bollocks. I suspect when he is described as a barman, it is done, when it is done, as a subtle – or even not so subtle – means of putting him in his place, of implying that he, and thus the ideas he stood and stands for, are rather jumped up and not worth taking seriously even for a moment. In the great British scheme of things, the job of 'barman' is not rated very highly. 'Oh, Blair, was a barman, but that was when he was a student in Paris, old boy, not the same thing at all.'
On the matter of the IRA, I must be a little careful. My dad could be moved to fury in a matter of seconds by any talk of what he and others referred to as ‘sneaking regarders’, so out of respect for my father I shall try very hard to avoid being seen as a ‘sneaking regarder’.
However, I can’t deny that what Adams, McGuinness and others were doing was not in essence different to what Menachem Begin did in the Forties, and what Hereward the Wake did many centuries ago. The problem I have with both the Republican and the Loyalist groups was that all too often too many of them were, whatever their political activities, also heavily involved in outright crime – drugs, robbery, prostitution.
To put my comments into perspective, I am obliged also to add that growing up in Berlin between the ages 9/10 and 13, the son of a German mother and attending German schools for four years, and then, when I came back to live in England, returned to the rather dismal life of a British public school (heating wasn’t turned on until November 1 however cold it got, and even then it was never enough. And the food was awful), I have never actually felt very British.
So the conviction that the provinces of Northern Ireland must forever be a part of Great Britain has never take root in my soul. (My brother Mark once told me of the old Soviet notion of its Jews as ‘rootless cosmopolitans’. Hmm, I remember thinking, I would mind being one of those, and, to be honest, it is a description which gets quite close to how I feel. The only drawback is that it might seem a tad conceited to describe oneself as a ‘cosmopolitan’, especially as this ‘rootless coosmopolitan’ now lives next to a farm in the depths of North Cornwall with nothing but cattle and mud for neighbours. But all this is way of the track.)

. . .



"You don't fuck with Uncle Sam!"


As of earlier today Wikileak’s Julian Assange is banged up in some jail or other in London ready to face a court hearing as to whether he should be extradited to Sweden to face criminal charges. Those charges relate to one-night stands he had with two women in August, and both are now claiming that he is guilty of ‘raping’ them as ‘rape’ has most recently been defined in Swedish law. From what I have read, the sex he had was consensual with both women, that one of the woman more or less pursued him after seeing him on television, and the other woman is claiming that he purposely split a condom. That same women is also on record as urging her sisters to give the bastard men in their lives hell if they step just one inch out of line, or what the sisters regard as being the line. All in all the developments in the Assange/Wikileaks affair are as murky as murky can get.
Meanwhile, in the U.S. various excitable politicians (and, I don’t doubt, a great many rabble-rousing radio shock jocks) are agitating for Assange to be extradited to face ‘spying’charges. Some are even calling for him to be ‘executed’. This is all rather ridiculous, but also rather worrying.
I wasn’t particularly impressed by all the leaking of embassy cables and don’t think it achieved anything, except some light amusement at the embarrassment of assorted politicians. All the claims that it was the democratic empowerment of the people blah-blah, is, as far as I am concerned 24 carat bullshit. (Note to pedants: yes, I know bullshit can't be 24 carat, but you know what I mean.) The Americans looked particularly stupid given how unbelievably lax their security was, and they have obviously taken very badly being made to look very silly in the eyes of the rest of the world.

The revelation of the locations and details of various installations considered ‘vital’ be the U.S. was admittedly pretty bloody pointless, and if I had to sum up the whole affair in one word it would be ‘bollocks’. But having said that, I really don’t like seeing Assange well and truly stitched up. And that is what is happening.
He is now too high-profile to be grabbed in broad daylight by the CIA and flown off somewhere on one of those infamous ‘extraordinary rendition’ flights – so much for all the ‘freedom loving’ bullshit we get far too much of from the U.S. – and doing so would be impossible. But the rape allegations in Sweden, though they appear to have come about independently, will be manna from heaven for the U.S., and I don’t doubt its embassy in Stockholm will be squeezing Swedish government’s nuts without mercy to ensure Assange is extradited from the UK to Sweden so that the U.S. can then extradite him themselves.

I suggested earlier that had Assange been made Russia or China looks stupid, they would have had no compulsion at all of getting rid of him. The only difference with the U.S. is that it feels obliged to cover its arse and make itself out to be doing things correctly. But be in no doubt, it will not rest until Assange has been banged up somewhere for 99 years without parole. No one makes Uncle Same look stupid and is allowed to get away with it.
The BBC is reporting that he was refused bail. That, too, is odd, as there is surely little chance he will skip the country. But then he didn’t just make the Yanks look very silly. The Brits also looked pretty daft. I suspect pressure has also been exerted on Switzerland, which has reportedly frozen Wikileaks accounts.

Monday 6 December 2010

Britain - and the Daily Mail's - class obsession (again) and what's Wikileaks up to now? Then there's the Guardian's singular brand of hypocrisy

And on it goes, Britain’s obsession with class and how – allegedly – all we all really want to be is ‘middle class’. Just days after I first posted about the Daily Mail’s own bee in its bonnet, on page 15 of the edition published on Monday, Dec 6, 2010 we get ‘(strapline) As it’s revealed 60 per cent of them went to public school . . . (main head) Why are today’s pop stars so posh?’ You can read it here.
Quite apart from the fact that the piece is crap anyway (the writer, David Thomas, who is called upon when the Mail want to publish a ‘humorous’ piece is to humour what McDonald’s is to cooking), it is rather difficult knowing from which direction it is coming. Is it ‘hooray, more of our rock stars are toffs’ or ‘boo, more of our rock stars are toffs’? And neither stance would sit comfortably with the Mail’s ‘we want to be middle class’ obsession.
As for the substance of the piece, it is full of bull. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones weren’t working class. Rock stars did not come ‘rampaging out of the back streets of industrial towns and the council estates of inner-city London.
Some might have, but most certainly not all. I would have thought that the parents of McCartney, Lennon and Mick Jagger would have been mortified – as only the middle class can be mortified – to be described as working class. Read the piece for yourself and decide whether you think it is bollocks or bullshit.

. . .

As for Wikileaks, the most recent revelations do rather question its motives. I have not yet read anywhere what it purports to be doing and what it hopes to achieve, but revealing the locations of vital installations ‘whose loss could critically affect US national security’ (according to the BBC) does strike at least me as rather odd. Is it in the public interest to do so. Wikileaks and its main man, Julian Assange, only seem to have access to confidential U.S. embassy cables, not any from, say, Russia or China. But it is fair to ask whether Wikileaks would be quite as industrious in publishing what had come its way were those cables to be Russian or Chinese, and also quite how long the chap would stay alive had he done so.
Say what you like about the Western world, but its security services aren’t quite as ruthless when it comes to ‘neutralising’ opposition as the SVR and, I suspect China. I think the only people who still claim to believe that the former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko was not murdered by the SVR in 2006 is, well, the SVR.
I’m not too sure what the Guardian is doing publishing every jot and tittle which comes its way courtesy of Wikileaks, including the list of ‘vital installations’. It like to portray itself as a journal of record which is on the side of the angels, but the truth is that however true that is or not, it is also a commercial enterprise jostling for position with other papers.
Technically, it is owned by a non-profitmaking trust, but quite how much that affects its commercial decisions is not clear. And I suspect that publishing all this stuff from Wikileaks will have got just as many cheers from the circulation manager, advertising staff and finance director as the assorted idealist who make up its editorial staff and readers. It is, after all, far easier to sell a half-page classified ad to a punter when you can assure him that because of rather spectacular editorial comment, a wide readership of that day’s issue is pretty much guaranteed.

. . .

I should like to point out here that I do not dislike the Guardian because I earn my daily crust beavering away as a sub on the Mail (whose editor is known to spit blood at the mere mention of that paper), but because that paper’s holier than thou stance does get right up my nose. For example, a standard ploy used by the saintly Guardian to publish prurient stories in all their salacious detail unearthed by the redtops (usally the Sun and the News of the Screws) is to do so under the pretext of ‘look at what those awful tabloids are printing now’. That allows its readers to get the full story as well as to maintain the condescending attitude to newspapers which they believe aren’t quite as ethical as the Guardian.
Fuck the Guardian. I do so dislike hypocrites.

. . .

Enough paragraphs, Barry?

Friday 3 December 2010

The shocking truth according to Wikileaks. (Well, up to a point, Lord Copper). Fifa's crims see off England, and paragraphs: don't you love then!

We’ve all read the assorted U.S. diplomatic cables from Wikileaks which we’re told are embarrassing governments and politicians the world over and, like me, you might have been mightily amused. This morning the paper’s are revealing the former EU bigwig Chris Patten was horrified by Vladimir Putin’s ‘killer eyes’. There’s the claim that Italy’s Gary Berlusconi took kickbacks from the Russians, that the Saudis begged the U.S. to bomb the living shit out of Iran, that the Yanks decided after one year that Gordon Brown was a hopeless Prime Minister, that Karzai - the role model to end all role models - thought the British were useless. And on it goes.
I have to report that I am neither shocked by these candid comments and cheering Wikileaks to the rafters, nor shocked that what were intended as private communications between diplomats should be publicised, thereby undermining trust, confidence, relationships, the integrity of cat food, bus tickets the world over, blah-di-blah-di-blah . . . What does shock me, although ‘shock’ is rather over-egging the pudding, is the amateurish carelessness of the U.S. which means these secret cables were available to, reportedly, at least two million government personnel the world over and just crying out to be leaked.
Despite all the Yankee fascination with the biggest, the fastest, the most expensive etc and coming on to the rest of the world that they have got it sussed (where ‘it’ is more or less anything you can think of), they are still apt to get that crucial, vital detail wrong. In this case it was ensuring that confidential views and opinions whose value lay in their being candid remained confidential. By allowing two million people and their dog access to them seems rather to miss the point.
(Similarly with the invasion of Iraq: you feel it was never properly thought through, and now, several years and thousands of deaths later - both American and Iraqi - the situation there is still pretty bad. The crucial, vital detail: why bloody do it in the first place? I’m sure Bush and his staff would be able to trot out this and that by way of spurious justification, but the fact is there was absolutely no need or reason to invade. My suspicion - and it is so far-fetched that it is both highly unlikely and eminently probably - is that George Bush Jnr agreed to some neo-con voice whispering in his ear that ‘showing Saddam whose boss’ was the thing to do because it might impress daddy, one George Bush Snr and a former president. As I say, the suggestion is quite ludicrously silly but also not half as daft as it sounds.)
I have heard on the radio and read in the papers the reasons why this stunt by Wikileaks is both very necessary and highly irresponsible, and you know, dear reader, I find I can’t get too excited either way. On the one hand, I find all talk that what Wikileaks has done empowers the voter, advances democracy, is a necessary counter to increasingly high-handed government action and all that kind of thing nothing but overblown, hi’ falutin waffle verging on bullshir. On the other hand, and although it does to a certain extent undermine relations between governments by making them look very silly indeed, it does not harm at all that they should be made to look very silly indeed. There is never the wrong time or place to taking our politicians down a peg or two.
I would also be very surprised indeed if the Americans, the French, the Saudis, the British, the Germans, the Iranians and everyone else were in the slightest bit surprised by what has been revealed. Individuals might be embarrassed, most certainly, but are we really supposed to believe that the foreign ministries of the various different countries were somehow taken by surprise that they weren’t quite has highly esteemed by their counterparts as they thought they were? If diplomats around the world aren’t cynical and highly suspicious, not only of their supposed enemies but also of their supposed allies, they shouldn’t be doing the job. I can’t remember (as though I ever knew) who first claimed that it was a diplomat's job to travel abroad and lie for his country, but it seems to me to be a fair enough job description.
So the suggestion that intelligent men and women in Washington, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, London, Madrid and Rome are in despair because others are saying unkind things about them is more than rather silly. Does Valdimir Putin really give a flying fuck that Chris Patten thought he had ‘killer’s eyes’?
One positive outcome of this whole Wikileaks affair is that the Yanks will undertake a mass cull of staff involved in keeping these communications confidential (‘assistant heads will roll’) and do their very best to ensure that, in future, they do remain confidential. And once the world’s diplomats are satisfied that the opinions and views and whatever tittle-tattle has come their way and which they would very much like to pass on will not be broadcast from the rooftops but will remain entre nous, normal service will quickly and quietly be resumed.

. . .

But what of this Julian Assange chappie? Who he? What’s his game? Is he really some idealist intent on making the world a better place? Are the rape charges against him politically motivated or does he have something to answer for? Answers, please, on the usual postcard (and I shall this time not repeat the usual joke). As for Wikileaks itself, what is its motive? Revealing information which might be ‘in the public interest’? It doesn’t quite ring true, does it? And the revelations it has made and is still making, end up rather flatter than I’m sure their revelation was intended after just a few moments consideration. There are, admittedly, several which are important: the claim that the UK was ‘overruled’ when it objected to the U.S. using British airbases on Cyprus when flying ‘suspects’ off to Hell. It must be very uncomfortable for the world to know that it was ‘overruled’ by the Yanks. I mean, how sovereign is that? Then there is the obvious question as to why we simply didn’t close the airbases to American military traffic. And just how strongly did the UK react when it was ‘overruled’? I get the impression that when it discovered the purpose of these rendition flights, it raised a mild objection (‘It’s not really on, is it, sir? I mean these chaps might be innocent.’), but when the U.S. ‘overruled’, the UK meekly acquiesced. (‘It was just a suggestion, sir.’)
But what of the other revelations? So the Saudis urged Washington to bomb the living shit out of Iran. But it didn’t, so just how important is that revelation? Berlusconi is said to be taking backhanders from Comrade Putin (who has ‘killer eyes’)? Is anyone actually surprised (if it’s true)? Has that claim actually damaged a man who hereunto was regarded as having a character as pure as a baby’s bottom? There’s the claim that Sarkozy is a bit of a prima donna. Are staff at the Elysee Palace shocked that the truth has been revealed. Then there’s the scurrilous rumour that Germany’s Angela Merkel is steady, unimaginative, reliable and risk-averse. My strong suspicion is that - if true - the vast majority of the German voters will be greatly relieved. Who wants a national leader who stays up all night boozing, gambling, whoring and likes to play Russian roulette in his or her spare time? Well, apart from the Italians and the Russians?
Sorry, but do the maths and I’m rather more inclined to give Wikileaks and E for effort than the Nobel Peace Prize. Sorry, chaps.

. . .

I was rather amused by England’s dismay that it wasn’t chosen by Fifa to host the 2018 World Cup. Not weeks earlier our newspapers and television united in an unprecedented attack on the 22 members of the governing body and accused them of being thieves, killers, rapists and — not to make too fine a point — that all too often they behaved in ways which did not behove a gentleman (many have been extraordinarily rude to their tailor). That wouldn’t make any difference whatsoever, said England. Maybe our press and TV did go over the top a tad, but, you know these things happen, don’t they, and anyway it’s all water under the bridge and Fifa has assured us it won’t be held against our bid.
Well, that strikes me as being naive far, far, far beyond the call of duty. For blow me down! Fifa decides not to award the 2018 to England! Up until then, of course, we had been full of it: we won’t get it in the first round of voting, they kept saying, but then that’s not important: in the first round all the utter no-hopers are eliminated and the real business doesn’t start until round two and possibly three. And then, well, then we’ll pick up all the votes we didn’t get in the first round and Bob’s your uncle.
He wasn’t off course. In the event, England won only two of the first round votes - one of which was the vote of its own representative on the board - and off we were sent to join the utter no-hopers. Not even bonny Prince William and the two most important Davids alive today - Beckham and Cameron - could swing it.
In hindsight we should have done what Russia has obviously done and distributed the used fivers where they were wanted. Russia got the nod even though Vladimir Putin, her current prime minister, couldn’t be arsed to fly out from his palace in Moscow to Geneva to shake a few hands. Well, it is now pretty obvious why he didn’t: he knew he didn’t have to. The sports and bribes department of the SVR knows what to do with a few million roubles when needs must, so Vlad stayed home knowing that it was all in the bag even before the vote was taken. And England?
Spain and Portugal also lost out, though they did progress far beyond no-hopers league. I should imagine that - Russian bribes apart - Fifa wasn’t too optimistic that by 2018 Spain and Portugal weren’t provinces of the Greater German Empire, what with the euro doing so remarkably well, and all. I have heard a rumour that our Iberian cousins did try a bribe, but when Blatter and his gang realised it was to be paid in euros not roubles, they lost all interest. Well, that’s understandable, isn’t, it?
England will now have to content itself with knocking six bells out of Australia’s cricket team and bring home the Ashes. Never mind that, by general consent, Australia were ill-advised to make up their squad from the most promising fourth-former of Woolla-Woolla Academy instead of chose players from the ranks of seasoned professionals down under, England has what it takes. And when they do bring home the Ashes, won’t we bloody know about it.

. . .

I have been ever so gently rapped over the knuckles for not splitting my blog entries into a sufficient number of paragraphs. I’m informed that it makes reading the blog just that much harder. So, today’s innovation: more paragraphs. The change will, of course, go through a pilot stage and will be introduced strictly on a trial basis, and if feedback is such that the majority of readers prefer fewer paragraphs, so be it. They will be done away with. But I’m sure you’ll all agree that we should all be forwarding-thinking and embrace change - not for itself, of course, but for the progress it can achieve. And what is life about if it isn’t about progress?

Wednesday 1 December 2010

Preaching to the converted: utterly pointless. So a warm welcome to the Spectator and the New Statesman

There are a few moments every day when each and every one of us is obliged to spend a little time alone. I shan’t be more specific than that because some readers might feel it would be a little indelicate, but if you don’t know what I mean, you might well be entitled to remedial help. Such moments alone can be regarded as a brief and necessary, though irritating, interruption as we go about the serious business of building our career. Or if, like me, you have given up all hope of every building a career, you can make the most of them and use them to snatch a little peace and quiet from the hurly-burly of being obliged to work for a living. And like me, you might also perhaps use those moments to catch up on a little light reading.
Working, as I do, in a newspaper office, there is always something knocking around which you can grab to take with you to read and this morning I spotted a copy of the Spectator and grabbed it to take with me. (Incidentally, there is a certain simple etiquette involved when picking up and taking a book, newspaper or magazine with you to that place where you will spend those personal moments alone.
You are not obliged to put it back where you found it. In fact, I should imagine most people would prefer you not to do so. So that would, of course, rule out taking with you first editions, reference books or hard-to-come-by reading material. Best stick to what will not be missed or which can easily be replaced, if necessary, by buying another copy.) I am not a regular reader of the Spectator. My brother and aunt are, but I find it, in a certain sense, quite insufferable. That doesn’t mean, though, that an occasional read doesn’t pay off and isn’t interesting – I wouldn’t have filched it from some feature writer’s desk if I thought I was about to spend the next five to ten minutes being bored out of my tiny mind – but there is something about the ‘Speccy’ which I find ineffably pointless. Anyone familiar with that magazine will know that its politics are right-of-centre, and given the overwhelming and almost compulsory liberalism of these past 15 years, the ‘Speccy’ might even be described as defiantly right-of-centre with an almost tangible tendency to unashamed fogeyism.
Many of its writers take a real pride in not ‘being modern’, in swimming against the tide, in being archaic. Everything which is even vaguely modern is ‘quite awful’. (‘I used one of those modern “mobile phones” the other day – well, I felt obliged to as my brother/sister/mother/father/wife/husband gave me one and it would have been rude not to – but what is the point? I mean, you poke around on them with your forefinger as you have seen other people do a hundred times and you pretend you know what you are doing, but all you finally get is some terrible noise in your ear telling you the whole exercise hasn’t worked. They are simple quite awful.’) As young men and women they will have adopted that kind stance as a pose, quite possibly to try to impress those they regarded as their elders and betters. Later in life (and later in life is always, unfortunately, far later than you ever thought it would be) the pose is not so much second nature as first nature. Its counterpart in politics of the left, and a magazine I similarly find to be ineffably pointless, is the New Statesman. The writers of that magazine also seem to take a perverse pride in harking back to the past, although in their case it is a past which consists, in their eyes at least, as a golden age of socialist triumphs, a celebration of the working man and when briefly society saw sense.For those it employs who are on the point of death, the Spanish civil war is praised as a beginning which came to nothing because of the combined forces of European fascism. Rather younger writers hail back to the glory days of the Seventies Labour governments before they were betrayed by the money men. And those the New Statesman employs who – boys and girls – who are just out of short trousers hail to the New Labour past as a lesson in what not to do (‘We betrayed socialism
by sucking up to the middle classes’.) At its most extreme the News Statesman is plain barmy, which might be typified by the occasional article claiming that Stalin might have been a bit of a wrong ’un who admittedly had a lot to answer for but he did succeed in dragging Russia out of the 19th and into the 20th century and we should, at least acknowledge that. But to be fair such out-and-out lunacy is pretty unusual these days. Mainly, its writers take an anguished look at how the ‘left is going wrong’, ask ‘what happened to our ideal’ and ponder ‘is there hope for progress’. (By the by, it might be illuminating and certainly very entertaining if at some point I compiled a list of all the young turks who fought tooth and nail to destroy the class system, bit who now, after many years of public service, find it rather comfortable indeed to spend their twilight years ensconced in lordly ermine. Plus ca change . . .
I must be fair, though, and concede that the New Statesman, and publications like it, are usually the first to champion and, in time, to help to bring about what, on reflection, are welcome changes to our values and morals. So, for example, being gay in Britain today is, as far as I know – I’m not gay, far easier than it was even ten or 15 years ago. To a far greater extent than ever before homosexuality is accepted (I shan’t describe it as ‘tolerated’ because I find such ‘tolerance’ quite offensive) as an alternative to heterosexuality, and the New Statesman and the Guardian are far more open to such changes than other publications.
But what I find utterly pointless about both the New Statesman and the Spectator is that they are always, always, always preaching to the converted. So when the New Statesman writes about how evil bankers are, it will be cheered along by its readers as though it had announced the Second Coming. And when the Spectator writes about how awful modern TV programmes are, it is similarly cheered along as though it had revealed an arcane truth. When the Spectator champions the Conservative government’s attempted reform of a welfare system which (even I agree) is horrendously complicated, inefficient wasteful and almost out of control, its readers will not only concur but insist ‘that chap Cameron isn’t going far enough by half. Not at all. He’s scared’. The New Statesman, on the other hand, which in an honest moment might quietly agree that what the welfare system has become is a dog’s dinner like no other, will still insist that the Tories’ attempts at reform are nothing buy a cynical smokescreen to do away with it entirely according to some shadowy ‘right-wing agenda’.
To a great extent these two magazines simply reflect that futile divide between ‘them and us’ (and you can identify both ‘them’ and ‘us’ with whoever you like as long as you acknowledge the dislike, contempt and, at times, seething hatred the one feels for the other). They also do what all partisan newspapers and magazines do – it doesn’t half boost sales – which is to tell the reader what it thinks the reader want to hear. (It is a very effective form of flattery: if you see your prejudices articulated by people you quietly suspect are rather brighter than you are, your self-esteem will briefly be boosted and for a short while you can be persuaded that you are not quiet the outright dunce you always feared you were.) But the Spectator and the New Statesman cannot be judged in the same way as other newspapers and magazines. For one thing their prime purpose is not to make money (which, believe me is the prime purpose of all our newspaper despite what they will tell you), but to provide a platform. Naturally, those who own them wouldn’t usually tolerate a loss (although a former owner of the Spectator, a millionaire, did just that) and would hope that ‘their journal’ at least paid its way, but they see themselves, in their conceit, as protagonists in their country’s political drama. (A ‘journal’, by the way, demands to be take far more seriously than a mere ‘magazine’, which is why the Spectator and the New Statesman regard themselves as ‘journals’.)
And that makes their preaching to the converted all the more futile. Surely to goodness if you believe your view if right and that the other man’s is wrong, you set about trying to persuade him. Yet it’s just as unlikely that your average Speccy reader will choose to plough his or her way through the New Statesman as a New Statesman reader will choose to investigate what the Speccy believes. That’s not the name of the game. Well, nothing bores me more than sitting around with a bunch of farts who all agree ‘that ‘- - - -’ is terrible, isn’t it!’ What I want is debate – honest debate, certainly – but real debate. And you won’t get that if the guy you are debating with you is four-square behind you. Unfortunately, it would seem that I am very much in a minority. And I don’t like it. Political ‘debate’ all to often degenerates into sloganizing and tribal insults. Well, if that’s your game, count me out. And that’s why the lavatory is one of the few places I will ever allow myself to be seen reading the Spectator or the New Statesman.

. . .

Further to my gibe about the brother and comrades who - no doubt against their better instincts but in the interest those dispossessed in whose cause they have struggled all their lives - have grudgingly accepted a peerage, I must extend some sympathy to those assorted lefties who can’t, in their private moments, deny they wouldn’t mind a bit of the action. Look, you struggle, worry, campaign, battle, fight, debate and agitate on behalf of the left for more than 30 years and all you have to show for it is a badly paid job as a secondary teacher, a run-down terrace house and a 15-year-old, beaten-up Ford Mondeo.
Your brother – who has no principles, absolutely none at all and who never worked at school or college - is now in the City earning millions selling ‘financial instruments’ and licking the arse of the ruling class, living in Surrey, two kids at private school and apparently enjoying it all. Where, where, where is the justice! Answers, please, on that traditional postcard, which you can yet again then rip up and throw away.