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.

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?

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?

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.

Drinking then writing, or writing and drinking? Just don't kid yourself. And then there's Wikileaks...

Just home from work after a drink with a friend who had persuaded me that as the weather was cold and miserable, we should treat ourselves to a whisky. I had a one to one whisky and Drambuie (officially a Rusty Nail, unofficially a Drambuies Shandy) and as that first went down well, I treated myself to two more. I don’t have far to walk home, and I had written at least three quite brilliant novels by the time I arrived there. Alan Bennett was once asked whether he ‘wrote when he drank’. No, he said, he didn’t, but he often ‘drank when he wrote’. This might sound as though the chap were being disingenuous, but there is a difference. In a way it’s related to ‘the urge to be creative’ and the ‘ability to be creative’. And the distinction between the latter two is probably a little clearer than that between ‘drinking and writing’ and ‘writing and drinking’. How often have you, dear reader (and forgive that rather arch address, but I am encouraged that bit by bit rather more people are reading this blog and I do prefer to address you directly) – how often have you walked home from the pub (the bar in Med countries), your belly full of booze and your heart full of optimism and faith in your talents and ability, and felt moved to create? You pick up your guitar and start strumming, you sit down at your desk and take out a pen and paper or you switch on your PC or laptop (as I have just done) and start writing, you find a pencil and start doodling or perhaps you even haul out your oils and start painting. And all because the booze has rather raddled your judgment and led you to believe that what you are now appreciating – the stars, the city lights, a woman’s beauty, the sounds, whatever it is must be immortalised, or at the very least, recorded. And how often have you read what you wrote, listen to what you recorded (something I have done far too often since computers and software made it all so easy) or look at what you drew and though: Lord what crap. Incidentally, as a former fan and long-term user of cannabis I should add that what I write here applies just as much to smoking, sniffing or, I suppose, though I have never tried it, injecting as boozing. The result is the same: if you are only in the slightest bit honest, you are obliged to admit that what you produced was unadulterated crap. But that is ‘writing while drinking’. ‘Drinking while writing’ might not necessarily be so unproductive, although there always comes a point where you are obliged to call it a day – or, more probably, a night – because the quality of what is being produced is becoming pretty dire.
I should imagine everyone reading this has, as I described above, had a skinful or two and persuaded him or herself that as far as artists go, they have the right stuff. But appreciation does not amount to a creatively ability and nor does a desire to be creative mean that you have what it takes. Any teen who has attempted verse and poetry will be all too familiar with the illusion that intense feeling equals high art. But no, it doesn’t. Intense feeling can lead to the creation of high art, but is by no means the same thing. As for booze, or cannabis or, I should imagine cocaine or heroin, the one thing they most definitely do is to cloud your judgment. That is why one of the best pieces of advice given to a writer is to write, then put aside what he or she has written for a day or two, and then to read it with a dispassionate and critical eye. You'll soon edit it down and might throw it out entirely. One of the best pieces of advice that one can take to heart is that it doesn’t necessarily matter who you bullshit as long as you never, ever bullshit yourself. Unfortunately, that is something all of us do all too often. I know I do, even though I know full well I shouldn’t. It’s at its worst when I think, as I tell myself, as I sometimes do, ‘you’re a pretty down-to-earth sort of chap, Patrick.’ It’s at the moment if thinking as much that I realise that I’m not and have quite a long way to go before I am. And even writing that last bit doesn’t change a thing. Or even that last bit. Or even that bit. Or even that. If you’ve been there, which I suspect you have, you’ll know exactly what I am talking about. If not, this blog isn’t for you. Oh, Lord.
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By way of drawing breath, I should tell those who might not know who Alan Bennett is who he is. He is a playwright and writer who first came to prominence as one of the four Cambridge graduates who wrote and performed a revue called Beyond The Fringe at the Edinburgh Festival. All four – the other three are Jonathan Miller, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore – all went on to have successful careers of one kind or another. Cook and Moore are now dead, Cook ending his life as an alcoholic, and Moore having made several bad marriages. Miller went on to direct theatre and opera and has become a darling of the cultural London establishment (and, as far as I’m concerned, seems to take himself just a little too seriously). I have just looked up the history of Beyond The Fringe and learny a little more. The show was, in fact, put together by an impresario specifically to perform at the Festival. It didn’t actually do too well, but found success when it transferred to London. Bennett has become something of a grande dame in Britain about whom no one has a bad word to say. And he is remarkably unpretentious, with a very dry wit which is usually a delight. I have not seen any of his plays, but I have seen one or two of the films for which he wrote the screenplay, most notably The History Boys, which was based on his play of the same name. It was OK, and I suspect the – longer – play upon which is based was rather better. The film almost seems to proselytise for homosexuality, and I found that theme rather odd and a tad hamfisted at that. Bennett has in recent years come out as gay, although it is not quite as clear-cut in that as he was also linked to a woman for many years although quite what the nature of their relationship was I don’t know. Anyway, that is Alan Bennett. But back to ‘creating’ and the fact that boozing can make us think we are far better at doing what we want to do than we really are.

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I hadn’t actually been drinking last night when I decided to write about the Wikileaks revelations, but on reflection I thought my views were rather crap and didn’t add my two ha’porth to this blog after all. But the whole affair still does make me wonder. First of all, how on earth can the Americans be so stupid as to have a system which reportedly allows something like two and a half million of their employees around the world – from enlisted men to I don’t know who else – access to the database of emails from diplomatic staff? It is breathtaking in its naivety. They have made themselves look remarkably silly, although I can’t really see that a great deal of damage has been done. What I find far more interesting is Julian Assange, his merry gang of leakers at Wikileaks and his motives. Why is he doing it? The obvious answer that it is all in the interests of ‘openness’ doesn’t convince me for one second. Just how ‘empowered’ are we for knowing what we know? Rather less than we might think. Of course, for the media this is a great story, but in all honesty there is not a great deal to it. I’m sure the Saudis are rather peeved that their private thoughts about the Iranians have been aired, but I would be very surprised if the Iranians were fully aware of those thoughts and have been for some time. Likening Russia’s president Medvedev as Robin to prime minister Putin’s Batman won’t exactly massage his ego but I can’t see anyone in the Kremlin losing any sleep over the matter. As far as Russia is concerned no one in the West has the faintest clue as to what is going on. In these past few days I have heard both that there is a growing ‘rift’ between Medvedev and Putin and that they are still the same double act that they always were. Both claims can’t be true, and I am more inclined to go with the Mutt and Jeff routine. But whatever the ture explanation is, Wikileaks revelations will do very little to alter the course of the river. As for the claim that U.S. diplomats were allegedly urged ‘to spy’ on Ban Ki Moon and other UN officials, the former British ambassador to the UN rather devalued it this morning on the radio. He pointed out that the diplimats were urged to do whatever ‘was possible’ and that they all knew full well that any outright spying and similar skulduggery was pretty much ‘impossible’ if they wanted to remain effective as diplomats. These revelations have most certainly caused the U.S. a certain amount of embarrassment, but they can live with that, and know they can live with that. What could be going on? Will we ever find out? You know, I don’t think we ever will.