For many years after Twitter came into being, I simply could not see the point of it. Tweeters, I thought, were simply irritating neophiles who would sup on shit if they were assured it was the latest, coolest thing to do. It wasn’t that I was behaving as your standard meldrew, hating whatever happened within 20 years of my birth. In fact, I didn’t hate it at all. It was that I simply couldn’t see the point of it. At it’s silliest it is just another PR tool to keep the client in the public eye. Or there is the angle of drumming business, with Robin Lustig trailing an interview with the Devil in tonight’s The World Tonight (he’s a keen tweeter) or Evan Davis twittering away about what this morning’s Today will be doing.
Most certainly there’s an element of neophilia, as evidenced by the disproportionate number of Guardianistas twittering to inform us of their most recent thought. But there is most certainly more to it than that, although for the life of me I can’t put my finger on it. The silliest thing is that I have had a Twitter account for the past few months and have tweeted now and again. But still can’t tell you what the point of tweeting is. And how daft is that? I do it but I don’t know why I do it. Unkind readers might suggest that I have lost the plot, and who might I be to deny it. If I have indeed lost the plot, I would most certainly, by definition, be the last to realise it.
It’s not that tweeting is simply a new technology. The fact that a great many people tweet - and here I really must stress that in the following analysis I am not including those press agents who tweet on their clients behalf - in an odd kind of way signifies a paradigm shift of some kind. It seems to indicate dimension in our conception of how we might relate to others. Now that sounds, or possibly sounds, rather grand, so let me bring it down to earth if possible. I suspect that essentially tweeting is not very new at all. What gives it the impression of novelty is the technology which makes it possible. That is to say if in years and decades and centuries gone by folk were able to proclaim their very opinion to the world, they would most certainly have done so. The difference is that they didn’t have the technology. That reminds me of what someone once said after the first transatlantic cable had been laid and Europe and America were able to communicate telegraphically. ‘Now,’ said someone portentously, ‘London can speak to New York.’ To which someone replied with what to me seems to be the obvious comment: ‘Yes, but does London have anything to say to New York?’
It’s rather the same as tweeting: it’s all find and dandy that we now have the means to trumpet our view and opinions to everyone on the planet with access to a smartphone or a computer, but it doesn’t necessarily make those views and opinions any the more important or even interesting. Part of me is as yet unconvinced and suspects that it simply boils down to the fact that the larger the crowd able to make a noise, the greater the cacophony. I’ll be more impressed by technological advances such as Twitter and the epistemological shifts they are claimed to bring about when rather fewer people vote in X Factor polls than bother to turn up to cast their vote in national elections. We all have opinions, but unfortunately 99 per cent of us are also as thick as shit.
Friday 2 March 2012
Tuesday 28 February 2012
Dictators v democracy: a (perhaps necessary) clarification. And as things go ever more wrong in Argentina, it begins to fake inflation figures and pick another fight with Old Blighty over the Falklands
After my entry of a few days ago highlighting Peter Hitchens report from Moscow, it occurred to me that I should, perhaps, clarify my view in case it is misinterpreted. The essential point I was trying to make was that everything comes at a price, just as energy cannot be created from nothing, but merely changed from one form to another, or ground gained here must be lost there.
Most certainly I would like to live in a free society, a democracy, and I do. But Britain achieved its freedoms after many centuries of complex evolution. Even the Commons we had at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century was more a gathering of rival gangs of cronies than anything resembling a group which represented the citizens of Britain. The apparently progressive Reform Act of 1832 was, at heart, just a cynical exercise by the ruling class – that is no mere buzz phrase, there really was one – to ensure its survival by allowing the upcoming commercial class to vote. This was done while memories of the French Revolution, which took place uncomfortably close to Britain, were still real for many.
It is, therefore, not just sheer nonsense to claim that democracy can be introduced to countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq, is dishonest nonsense. Certainly, they can have a parliament which is elected by universal franchise and most certainly the voters will be glad for the chance to have their say. But there is far more to democracy than holding an election every few years. And it takes just a little more than an edict from Washington for a people to think democratically, for its culture to be so suffused with the principles of democracy that not living in a democracy is quite inconceivable. Democracy demands, at the very least, the rule of law, and where the rule of law is absent, claims that a country is a ‘democracy’ are pretty premature.
By all accounts the rule of law has absent from modern Russia. Certainly, a the level of traffic offences, of course, or petty theft, there is likely to be the usual mechanisms involving the police and the courts, although one does here that corruption among the police is widespread and that is quite possible to bribe one’s way out of trouble. But rule of law most certainly doesn’t exist where the stakes are higher. Any number of businessmen who fell foul of the Russian leadership – for which read Vladimir Putin – suddenly found themselves under lock and key for ‘tax offences’. And until there is a true rule of law, which would, for example allow businessmen and women who feel a contract has not been honoured to go to court for an impartial judgment on the matter, Russia can kiss goodbye to any thoughts of a thriving economy which doesn’t rely on selling off the family silver, or in its case oil and gas.
The trouble with democracies is that they can be messy. When a free vote was held in the Gaze Strip several years, Hamas came to power, an outcome which the West and Israel could well have done without. One of the difficulties slowing down all attempts to resolve the euro crisis is that our democratic principles demand that everyone affected should have their say according to the protocol laid out in a country’s constitution. And it is that delay (which in the case of the euro will most certainly lead to disaster) which is the price we pay for living in a democracy.
Conversely, in countries led by a ‘strong man’ there is, apparently, far more order. Things happen far faster (although the country is not necessarily more efficient as a result), for the simple reason that no one need be consulted. Wise ‘strong men’ ensure that the majority of their nations people life in comfort and have no immediate cause to get uppity and question the arrangement. Those at the bottom of the pile, of course, are kept in check by terror and sheer brutality.
My analysis is, of course, broad brush and each country will have its own local variations on the two themes. But I feel my central point still holds: you pays your money and you makes your choice. Opt for freedom and the rule of law and put up with any number of irritations, delays, petty differences and the like. Opt for a more totalitarian state and, if you watch your Ps and Qs life need not be too bad. But you have to watch what you say.
There’s the story of the dog who arrived at the Ukrainian/Russian border and demanded to be let into Russia. The amazed border guard told him that he got many dogs coming the other way, but he was the first actually wanting to leave the Ukraine.
‘Why do you want to go to Russia?’ he asked.
‘Because I’m fed up with going hungry every day,’ the dog told him. So he was let through.
The dog was back a week later.
‘I thought you were fed up with going hungry in the Ukrained,’ the border guard told him.
‘I was said the dog, and I shall be hungry again. But at least I can bark in the Ukraine.’
. . .
No one would or could, I think, claim the Economist is sensationalist, although almost every fourth issue contains an apology of some kind or another, so it might even gain a certain reputations among those who care about these things as being a maverick. It does often take an oddly high-handed tone as in: ‘The world is coming to an end: here’s how to stop that happening’, and my brother once suggested that the line it would take in the issue which appeared after Armageddon would be: ‘Well, the worst is over. What lessons can be learnt.’ But as a rule it is surely classed as one of the world’s more ‘boring’ newspapers and magazine (despite is glossy, A4 format, it likes to call itself a ‘newspaper’) along with the FT, the FAZ, Die Zeit, the New York Times and the Washington Post. Actually, they are anything but boring, but that, at least, would seem to be how they are regarded by the mass of people who would prefer to watch a soap opera than think.
One of the Economist’s features at the back of the magazine (‘back of the book’ is the newspaper jargon to this day I have never been able to get used to, though I couldn’t tell you why) are loads of economic data. This is very interesting stuff, I’m sure, if you understand it, but I don’t (understand the data, though I do many of the issues) so I have not spent more than eight seconds reading that section since I started reading the Economist.
Part of that data is the rates of inflation from around the world, and last week the Economist announced would no longer be publishing the official Argentine inflation figures, but would still publish relevant data from private sources. Why not? Well, because as far as the Economist is concerned, they they are thoroughly phoney: whereas Argentina claims inflation is running at around 8/9 pc, private sources reckon it is well above 20 pc. Remember, Argentine pulled the plug on all is debtors and defaulted a few years ago, so it has form.
When official figures are fake (as we can now only suppose they are), the obvious conclusion is that the economy is in a terrible state, and has been for some time. In recent months, Argentina has also become increasingly bellicose about what they like to call the Malvinas but which we all know are really called the Falkland Islands. This is no flash in the pan and it has already persuaded neighbouring countries to deny access to British flights and only yesterday a cruise ship was unexpectedly and without notice turned away from the Argentine port it was heading for. Things are going wrong domestically, so external trouble is created to take the restless citizens’ minds off matters: a strategy as old as the hills.
. . .
It is just before 9am. Just outside my brother’s flat in London where I sleep when I come to work is a primary school. By this time I am usually up and gone to work (a short 20-minute walk away in Kensington) but occasionally I am still here. And as the young children arrive for school, they gather in the playground and play until the bell is rung to summon them in. And from around 8.45 until just before 9, there is a crescendo of young shouts, young shrieks, young calls and all the other noise young innocents make when they are playing with each other. For me, it is one of the most delightful (and when I am in a certain mood, most moving) sounds on earth: children playing. I just love it.
Most certainly I would like to live in a free society, a democracy, and I do. But Britain achieved its freedoms after many centuries of complex evolution. Even the Commons we had at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century was more a gathering of rival gangs of cronies than anything resembling a group which represented the citizens of Britain. The apparently progressive Reform Act of 1832 was, at heart, just a cynical exercise by the ruling class – that is no mere buzz phrase, there really was one – to ensure its survival by allowing the upcoming commercial class to vote. This was done while memories of the French Revolution, which took place uncomfortably close to Britain, were still real for many.
It is, therefore, not just sheer nonsense to claim that democracy can be introduced to countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq, is dishonest nonsense. Certainly, they can have a parliament which is elected by universal franchise and most certainly the voters will be glad for the chance to have their say. But there is far more to democracy than holding an election every few years. And it takes just a little more than an edict from Washington for a people to think democratically, for its culture to be so suffused with the principles of democracy that not living in a democracy is quite inconceivable. Democracy demands, at the very least, the rule of law, and where the rule of law is absent, claims that a country is a ‘democracy’ are pretty premature.
By all accounts the rule of law has absent from modern Russia. Certainly, a the level of traffic offences, of course, or petty theft, there is likely to be the usual mechanisms involving the police and the courts, although one does here that corruption among the police is widespread and that is quite possible to bribe one’s way out of trouble. But rule of law most certainly doesn’t exist where the stakes are higher. Any number of businessmen who fell foul of the Russian leadership – for which read Vladimir Putin – suddenly found themselves under lock and key for ‘tax offences’. And until there is a true rule of law, which would, for example allow businessmen and women who feel a contract has not been honoured to go to court for an impartial judgment on the matter, Russia can kiss goodbye to any thoughts of a thriving economy which doesn’t rely on selling off the family silver, or in its case oil and gas.
The trouble with democracies is that they can be messy. When a free vote was held in the Gaze Strip several years, Hamas came to power, an outcome which the West and Israel could well have done without. One of the difficulties slowing down all attempts to resolve the euro crisis is that our democratic principles demand that everyone affected should have their say according to the protocol laid out in a country’s constitution. And it is that delay (which in the case of the euro will most certainly lead to disaster) which is the price we pay for living in a democracy.
Conversely, in countries led by a ‘strong man’ there is, apparently, far more order. Things happen far faster (although the country is not necessarily more efficient as a result), for the simple reason that no one need be consulted. Wise ‘strong men’ ensure that the majority of their nations people life in comfort and have no immediate cause to get uppity and question the arrangement. Those at the bottom of the pile, of course, are kept in check by terror and sheer brutality.
My analysis is, of course, broad brush and each country will have its own local variations on the two themes. But I feel my central point still holds: you pays your money and you makes your choice. Opt for freedom and the rule of law and put up with any number of irritations, delays, petty differences and the like. Opt for a more totalitarian state and, if you watch your Ps and Qs life need not be too bad. But you have to watch what you say.
There’s the story of the dog who arrived at the Ukrainian/Russian border and demanded to be let into Russia. The amazed border guard told him that he got many dogs coming the other way, but he was the first actually wanting to leave the Ukraine.
‘Why do you want to go to Russia?’ he asked.
‘Because I’m fed up with going hungry every day,’ the dog told him. So he was let through.
The dog was back a week later.
‘I thought you were fed up with going hungry in the Ukrained,’ the border guard told him.
‘I was said the dog, and I shall be hungry again. But at least I can bark in the Ukraine.’
. . .
No one would or could, I think, claim the Economist is sensationalist, although almost every fourth issue contains an apology of some kind or another, so it might even gain a certain reputations among those who care about these things as being a maverick. It does often take an oddly high-handed tone as in: ‘The world is coming to an end: here’s how to stop that happening’, and my brother once suggested that the line it would take in the issue which appeared after Armageddon would be: ‘Well, the worst is over. What lessons can be learnt.’ But as a rule it is surely classed as one of the world’s more ‘boring’ newspapers and magazine (despite is glossy, A4 format, it likes to call itself a ‘newspaper’) along with the FT, the FAZ, Die Zeit, the New York Times and the Washington Post. Actually, they are anything but boring, but that, at least, would seem to be how they are regarded by the mass of people who would prefer to watch a soap opera than think.
One of the Economist’s features at the back of the magazine (‘back of the book’ is the newspaper jargon to this day I have never been able to get used to, though I couldn’t tell you why) are loads of economic data. This is very interesting stuff, I’m sure, if you understand it, but I don’t (understand the data, though I do many of the issues) so I have not spent more than eight seconds reading that section since I started reading the Economist.
Part of that data is the rates of inflation from around the world, and last week the Economist announced would no longer be publishing the official Argentine inflation figures, but would still publish relevant data from private sources. Why not? Well, because as far as the Economist is concerned, they they are thoroughly phoney: whereas Argentina claims inflation is running at around 8/9 pc, private sources reckon it is well above 20 pc. Remember, Argentine pulled the plug on all is debtors and defaulted a few years ago, so it has form.
When official figures are fake (as we can now only suppose they are), the obvious conclusion is that the economy is in a terrible state, and has been for some time. In recent months, Argentina has also become increasingly bellicose about what they like to call the Malvinas but which we all know are really called the Falkland Islands. This is no flash in the pan and it has already persuaded neighbouring countries to deny access to British flights and only yesterday a cruise ship was unexpectedly and without notice turned away from the Argentine port it was heading for. Things are going wrong domestically, so external trouble is created to take the restless citizens’ minds off matters: a strategy as old as the hills.
. . .
It is just before 9am. Just outside my brother’s flat in London where I sleep when I come to work is a primary school. By this time I am usually up and gone to work (a short 20-minute walk away in Kensington) but occasionally I am still here. And as the young children arrive for school, they gather in the playground and play until the bell is rung to summon them in. And from around 8.45 until just before 9, there is a crescendo of young shouts, young shrieks, young calls and all the other noise young innocents make when they are playing with each other. For me, it is one of the most delightful (and when I am in a certain mood, most moving) sounds on earth: children playing. I just love it.
Sunday 26 February 2012
A ‘strong man’ or ‘democracy’? Peter Hitchens sticks his neck out (again). And three cheers for a man who refuses to play the game
Oh, if everything in life were as simple as it was when you were five, supper at 5pm, followed by bath, story and bed. We who are no longer six know what lies in store for all innocent five-year-olds. Most of us survive into and beyond adulthood more or less painlessly, learning and adopting along the way into our dotage various strategies which will make the transition from birth to death a little easier. Others, of course, have shitty lives. But what we all have in common is that for three, four or five years we were utterly innocent of the ways of the world.
I mention this innocence because, ironically, as we grow older, it is what lingers longest if life is reasonably kind to us. The usual knocks and bumps meted out to us as we hit 20, then 30, then 40, then 50 might hurt, but at least they teach us a little and the personal innocence diminishes by the year. But there is another kind of innocence which no amount of experience seems to be able to - well, I was going to write ‘cure’, but even for me that would seem cynical beyond imperatives which dictate the attitudes of a hack writing a blog. So I will settle for ameliorate. Often that innocence, or some aspect of it, is necessary if the kind of idealism which fuels the anger of the young is to survive.
For us old fogeys youthful protest - for a freer country, against this, that or t’other dictatorship, for lower college fees, the list of what the young want to protest against is endless - might often elicit a sigh of resignation, but without that youthful idealism, are sighs would, sooner or later, come a lot thicker and a lot faster. We might despair that ‘the young’ rarely seem to wash, listen to ‘awful music’, drink far too much for their own good, and never seem to get a good night’s sleep, but at the end of the day they are doing us all a very big favour. And it mainly down to the fact that more or less each and every one of them is as innocent as the driven snow.
The innocence which keeps the world alive occurred to me when I came across a piece by a certain Peter Hitchens in today’s Daily Mail. Peter, the brother of Christopher who died recently, prides himself on being right-wing. And there is nothing wrong with that. Whenever guys like Peter Hitchens are derided for their political views, I always reflect on just how intolerant are a bunch which regards tolerance as one of the cornerstones of its philosophy life. The irony is, of course, that they tolerate only what they sanction. Views which are wholly at odds with their own are not to be tolerated.
So Peter Hitchens is something of a rarity in our liberal society: a man utterly at odds with established thinking, but one who is not insane, evil or stupid. That Hitchens (I shall now drop his first name because it should be obvious that I am talking about Peter not the late Christopher) is not a member of the great liberal consensus is important because as far as I am concerned he is a vital counter-balance to a great deal of woolly thinking.
In his piece today, which you can find here, he is skating on thin ice. But that is something he always does anyway, as he is rather more inclined to speak his mind than many another commentator. Next week, Russia goes to the polls to choose a successor to President Dmitry Medvedev and his predecessor, mentor and prime minister Vladimir Putin seems like a shoo-in. And Hitchens, who worked as a foreign correspondent in Moscow for two years in the dying days of the Soviet regime, is backing Putin.
The headline to his piece in the Mail on Sunday will give a flavour of what he writes and works well as a neat summary: ‘If not Putin, who? It’s because I love my own country that I can see
A Russian democrat. He might even be a liberal
the point of this sinister tyrant who so ruthlessly stands up for Russia.’ You can see why I describe him as skating on thin ice. There were surely gasps of disbelief around Britain when many opened their Mail on Sunday or logged onto the Mailonline website and saw what Hitchens was writing.
I trust readers overcame their horror and went on to read what Hitchens writes, because I think he makes some very good points. Were one to be very unfair, and, it has to be said, dishonest, his thesis could be described as: ‘What Russia now needs is a strong man’. But he is not actually saying that, and it should be obvious to all but the dullest that Hitchens values freedom and the rule of law. He is not urging the Russia should once again be ruled by a dictator, but warning (yet again, as it happens, it is more or less the leitmotif of his journalism) that not only is a certain kind of liberalism rather less effective than it might consider itself to be, but that it can often prove to be quite dangerous. The innocents of this world will cry out: Russia/Libya/Syria/Burma and the rest must become democratic. To which I give two cheers. But the rather less innocent, those who have been scarred by life a little will also know that it is rarely that simple and even more rarely that neat.
In short there is a dilemma: neither arrangement is perfect (and the naive search for perfection has caused a lot of misery). A ‘strong man’ might well ensure that the lights turn on when you want them to, that food is in ready supply and that, generally, order is predominant. But you have to be very careful what you say, and the rule of law is rather fragile. In a ‘democratic state’ you are free to express your thoughts and feelings and, in theory, are protected by the rule of law, and that will keep the idealists happy. But such states are often chaotic, especially when they are in the throes of transition from a dictatorship to a democracy.
Don’t forget that for all our huffing and puffing and rather smug pride about living in a stable democracy, it took centuries of political evolution to get here, and the road could, at times, be very bloody indeed. And in the United States, which can, at times, be the most insufferably smug of all the smug democratic states, racism, poverty and unemployment make life extremely unpleasant for a substantial minority. Yes, they are free to vote for whoever they want, but if you are being evicted, you’re hungry or you’ve fallen ill and can’t afford health insurance, that freedom slips rather lower on your list of priorities. And, another irony, in a democracy too many citizens take their freedoms for granted: in the 2008 presidential election only six out of ten voters bothered to go to the polls. That’s not bad, I hear you say. Perhaps, but it’s not good either.
Here I must confess to a certain cowardice. I like to make out that I am neutral, neither proposing nor opposing ideas. When I write above of the eternal dilemma between, very broadly, a ‘strong man’ who brings stability and a ‘democracy’ in which too much tends to chaos, you will notice that I don’t come down on one side or another, which would be in keeping with my ‘neutrality’. I like to present myself as solely describing the dilemma. But therein lies my cowardice: at the end of the day none of us is ‘neutral’. All of us must make a choice. But we should also be fully aware of the consequences of that choice. That is one reason - there are many others - why life is just so much sweeter for a five-year-old. The trouble is none of us remains five for longer than a year.
. . .
Peter Hitchens is an interesting cove. Like his brother Christopher, he was a member of the hard left in his salad days, but quite soon drifted to the right of centre. Christopher did the same (though he would have denied it). There was a terrible sibling rivalry between the two, which began, according to Christopher, when Peter was born. Pyschologists could have a field day sorted out the roots of it all, but then psychologists could have a field day delving into the psyche of each and every one of us, and furthermore, as it quite a lucrative profession, at least, for private practitioners, psychologists treat themselves to as many field days as they possibly can.
As far as I can tell, Peter is a one-off. There are swivel-eyed, proudly right-wing Englishmen and women (and the women are twice as bloodthirsty as the men) who demand the return of capital punishment, flogging, the deportation of ‘immigrants’ (the irony being, of course, that we are all the descendants of ‘immigrants’ and insist to the point of apoplexy that garlic has no place whatsoever in an English kitchen. Peter is not one of these. In fact, I am often quite surprised that he calls himself ‘right-wing’. He seems to me less interested in the politics and rather more interested in highlighting the hypocrisy and cant which plays such and important part in our lives. I find I agree with a great deal of what he says, and I most certainly do not regard myself as right-wing.
His one failing might be that given we have to deal with the hand we are dealt, he is rather unworldy. For example, the Conservative Party under David Cameron has become as insufferably right-on as Labour and the Liberals. The point is that they really have no choice: no politician in his or her right mind would these days refuse to sing the praises of ‘green policies’ and ensuring ‘sustainability’ even though privately they think it’s all a load of cock. If you take part in the game, you are obliged to play the game. What I like about Peter is that he resolutely and honestly refuses point-blank to ‘play the game’.
I mention this innocence because, ironically, as we grow older, it is what lingers longest if life is reasonably kind to us. The usual knocks and bumps meted out to us as we hit 20, then 30, then 40, then 50 might hurt, but at least they teach us a little and the personal innocence diminishes by the year. But there is another kind of innocence which no amount of experience seems to be able to - well, I was going to write ‘cure’, but even for me that would seem cynical beyond imperatives which dictate the attitudes of a hack writing a blog. So I will settle for ameliorate. Often that innocence, or some aspect of it, is necessary if the kind of idealism which fuels the anger of the young is to survive.
For us old fogeys youthful protest - for a freer country, against this, that or t’other dictatorship, for lower college fees, the list of what the young want to protest against is endless - might often elicit a sigh of resignation, but without that youthful idealism, are sighs would, sooner or later, come a lot thicker and a lot faster. We might despair that ‘the young’ rarely seem to wash, listen to ‘awful music’, drink far too much for their own good, and never seem to get a good night’s sleep, but at the end of the day they are doing us all a very big favour. And it mainly down to the fact that more or less each and every one of them is as innocent as the driven snow.
The innocence which keeps the world alive occurred to me when I came across a piece by a certain Peter Hitchens in today’s Daily Mail. Peter, the brother of Christopher who died recently, prides himself on being right-wing. And there is nothing wrong with that. Whenever guys like Peter Hitchens are derided for their political views, I always reflect on just how intolerant are a bunch which regards tolerance as one of the cornerstones of its philosophy life. The irony is, of course, that they tolerate only what they sanction. Views which are wholly at odds with their own are not to be tolerated.
So Peter Hitchens is something of a rarity in our liberal society: a man utterly at odds with established thinking, but one who is not insane, evil or stupid. That Hitchens (I shall now drop his first name because it should be obvious that I am talking about Peter not the late Christopher) is not a member of the great liberal consensus is important because as far as I am concerned he is a vital counter-balance to a great deal of woolly thinking.
In his piece today, which you can find here, he is skating on thin ice. But that is something he always does anyway, as he is rather more inclined to speak his mind than many another commentator. Next week, Russia goes to the polls to choose a successor to President Dmitry Medvedev and his predecessor, mentor and prime minister Vladimir Putin seems like a shoo-in. And Hitchens, who worked as a foreign correspondent in Moscow for two years in the dying days of the Soviet regime, is backing Putin.
The headline to his piece in the Mail on Sunday will give a flavour of what he writes and works well as a neat summary: ‘If not Putin, who? It’s because I love my own country that I can see
the point of this sinister tyrant who so ruthlessly stands up for Russia.’ You can see why I describe him as skating on thin ice. There were surely gasps of disbelief around Britain when many opened their Mail on Sunday or logged onto the Mailonline website and saw what Hitchens was writing.
I trust readers overcame their horror and went on to read what Hitchens writes, because I think he makes some very good points. Were one to be very unfair, and, it has to be said, dishonest, his thesis could be described as: ‘What Russia now needs is a strong man’. But he is not actually saying that, and it should be obvious to all but the dullest that Hitchens values freedom and the rule of law. He is not urging the Russia should once again be ruled by a dictator, but warning (yet again, as it happens, it is more or less the leitmotif of his journalism) that not only is a certain kind of liberalism rather less effective than it might consider itself to be, but that it can often prove to be quite dangerous. The innocents of this world will cry out: Russia/Libya/Syria/Burma and the rest must become democratic. To which I give two cheers. But the rather less innocent, those who have been scarred by life a little will also know that it is rarely that simple and even more rarely that neat.
In short there is a dilemma: neither arrangement is perfect (and the naive search for perfection has caused a lot of misery). A ‘strong man’ might well ensure that the lights turn on when you want them to, that food is in ready supply and that, generally, order is predominant. But you have to be very careful what you say, and the rule of law is rather fragile. In a ‘democratic state’ you are free to express your thoughts and feelings and, in theory, are protected by the rule of law, and that will keep the idealists happy. But such states are often chaotic, especially when they are in the throes of transition from a dictatorship to a democracy.
Don’t forget that for all our huffing and puffing and rather smug pride about living in a stable democracy, it took centuries of political evolution to get here, and the road could, at times, be very bloody indeed. And in the United States, which can, at times, be the most insufferably smug of all the smug democratic states, racism, poverty and unemployment make life extremely unpleasant for a substantial minority. Yes, they are free to vote for whoever they want, but if you are being evicted, you’re hungry or you’ve fallen ill and can’t afford health insurance, that freedom slips rather lower on your list of priorities. And, another irony, in a democracy too many citizens take their freedoms for granted: in the 2008 presidential election only six out of ten voters bothered to go to the polls. That’s not bad, I hear you say. Perhaps, but it’s not good either.
Here I must confess to a certain cowardice. I like to make out that I am neutral, neither proposing nor opposing ideas. When I write above of the eternal dilemma between, very broadly, a ‘strong man’ who brings stability and a ‘democracy’ in which too much tends to chaos, you will notice that I don’t come down on one side or another, which would be in keeping with my ‘neutrality’. I like to present myself as solely describing the dilemma. But therein lies my cowardice: at the end of the day none of us is ‘neutral’. All of us must make a choice. But we should also be fully aware of the consequences of that choice. That is one reason - there are many others - why life is just so much sweeter for a five-year-old. The trouble is none of us remains five for longer than a year.
. . .
Peter Hitchens is an interesting cove. Like his brother Christopher, he was a member of the hard left in his salad days, but quite soon drifted to the right of centre. Christopher did the same (though he would have denied it). There was a terrible sibling rivalry between the two, which began, according to Christopher, when Peter was born. Pyschologists could have a field day sorted out the roots of it all, but then psychologists could have a field day delving into the psyche of each and every one of us, and furthermore, as it quite a lucrative profession, at least, for private practitioners, psychologists treat themselves to as many field days as they possibly can.
As far as I can tell, Peter is a one-off. There are swivel-eyed, proudly right-wing Englishmen and women (and the women are twice as bloodthirsty as the men) who demand the return of capital punishment, flogging, the deportation of ‘immigrants’ (the irony being, of course, that we are all the descendants of ‘immigrants’ and insist to the point of apoplexy that garlic has no place whatsoever in an English kitchen. Peter is not one of these. In fact, I am often quite surprised that he calls himself ‘right-wing’. He seems to me less interested in the politics and rather more interested in highlighting the hypocrisy and cant which plays such and important part in our lives. I find I agree with a great deal of what he says, and I most certainly do not regard myself as right-wing.
His one failing might be that given we have to deal with the hand we are dealt, he is rather unworldy. For example, the Conservative Party under David Cameron has become as insufferably right-on as Labour and the Liberals. The point is that they really have no choice: no politician in his or her right mind would these days refuse to sing the praises of ‘green policies’ and ensuring ‘sustainability’ even though privately they think it’s all a load of cock. If you take part in the game, you are obliged to play the game. What I like about Peter is that he resolutely and honestly refuses point-blank to ‘play the game’.
Thursday 23 February 2012
Arriving home to misty, drizzly Cornwall and trying to appreciate what I have perhaps forgotten to appreciate
I first began to visit Cornwall after my father retired, remarried and settled here in St Breward, in a cottage less than a quarter of a mile from where I now live. His second wife, my stepmother (of whom I have become increasingly fond as the years go by) was born of an Irishman and Irishwoman in Bodmin. Her father, Ignatius Aloysius O’Keeffe, ran the local - well, what do you call it now? In years gone by it was, tactlessly, called a ‘lunatic asylum’ or, more colloquially a ‘looney bin’. I can’t offhand remember what his qualifications were, whether he was a medical doctor or a psychiatrist [she has since told me he graduated from Dublin University in ‘medical pysychology’, so really your guess is as good as mine], but I can tell you that the mental hospital - a more genteel, not to say kinder, description was St Lawrence’s Hospital. It was (according to the website I have just googled) ‘originally known as ‘Cornwall County Asylum’ it was founded in 1815 at Westheath Avenue, Bodmin and became known as St Lawrence’s Hospital under the National Health Service’.
Ignatius Aloysius was one of four: he had three sisters, one who, as it was told to me, ran away from home to become a nun and went off to China to work as a missionary, a second who died of cancer in her early 30s, and a third, Fanny, who came over to Bodmin with him and worked as a physiotherapist in the local hospital. My stepmother’s mother, Gertrude, a name she always hated, came from a far bigger family: she was one of 14. Both Ignatius Aloysius and Gertrude were Irish born and bred, and my stepmother, who will be 75 on March 19 and was born the fourth child and third daughter, has a great many of the virtues of that admirable nation. But as she was born and grew up in Bodmin, she might reasonably also be able to call herself Cornish. I put this to her yesterday, but she was having none of it. She regards herself as Irish, not Cornish.
In the early Seventies her Aunt Fanny died and left her a legacy. With this my stepmother - born Patricia Mary Josephine O’Keeffe, though known as Paddy O’Keeffe, a name perhaps familiar to some who regularly tuned into BBC radio’s From Our Own Correspondence which she produced until she married my father and took early retirement in the mid-Eighties - bought a cottage here in St Breward. My father had a little earlier sold our family home in Henley-on-Thames (which, oddly, makes it sound rather grander than it was) after my mother died in 1981 and with the cash he and his new wife the cottage. The kitchen became bigger, as did the bathroom, and above the kitchen a new room was created which was officially my father’s study in which he wrote the book he had always wanted to write, a history of relations between the Germans and the IRA.
Initially, after my father’s second marriage, relations between myself and my stepmother were, on my part at least, a tad frosty. Until, as they say, my father made an honest woman of her, my stepmother had been my father’s mistress for around 20 years, and I found it a little difficult to adapt to the new set-up. I had been close to my mother almost all my life, although in my early 20s, after a kind of very silly disagreement over my then girlfriend, I did not treat her as well as I might have done as is the way of the kind of self-regarding idiot I was in those years, and her death hit me rather harder than could reasonably be expected. She died of a heart attack at the comparatively early age of 61 and, more to the point, I had found her dead. Looking back, it took me quite a few years to deal with a shock which, at the time, I thought I had completely taken in my stride.
But my stepmother is a good-hearted sort and when, within two or three years of her marriage I began to come to see her and my father regularly, she was very kind to me. At 67, my father developed prostate cancer. The cancer eventually spread and he died at the age of 68 just over 20 years ago. One of his last wishes was that we, his four children, should take care of Paddy, so I began to visit her here in Cornwall more and more often.
From mid-1990 until I moved down here myself at the end of 1995, I lived and worked in London. I didn’t then run a car - there was no need to do so - so when I came, I caught the train at London Paddington to Bodmin Parkway. And - this is the whole point of this entry - every time I got out of the train at Bodmin - every time - I was struck by how much slower and more tranquil was the pace of life down here in Cornwall, and how much more peaceful. I must stress that this struck me the moment I opened the carriage door and stepped out of the train.
An hour or two ago, I arrived back home after leaving work in West London and taking the train to Exeter and then driving the 60-odd miles back here to St Breward. (I get out at Exeter and drive the rest of the way because it’s a damn sight quicker like that, quite apart from the fact that the last train to leave London which makes its way all the way to Bodmin leaves at 6.35pm.) But each time I get out of the car once I arrive back home, I am conscious that I no longer get that sensation of life being slower and more peaceful. I have, unfortunately, become immune to the change of pace. It’s something I reflect on every week when I arrive back home, but tonight I didn’t immediately go into the house after locking the car but stayed for several minutes to try to recapture that sensation. I’m sorry to say I didn’t, but I did once again appreciate being able to call deepest rural Cornwall my home. The weather was misty and drizzly and I love it. I really couldn’t tell you why, but I do. One day, I hope, I shall really be able to slow down properly and fully appreciate it. But I was glad that tonight I did manage it, if just a little bit.
Ignatius Aloysius was one of four: he had three sisters, one who, as it was told to me, ran away from home to become a nun and went off to China to work as a missionary, a second who died of cancer in her early 30s, and a third, Fanny, who came over to Bodmin with him and worked as a physiotherapist in the local hospital. My stepmother’s mother, Gertrude, a name she always hated, came from a far bigger family: she was one of 14. Both Ignatius Aloysius and Gertrude were Irish born and bred, and my stepmother, who will be 75 on March 19 and was born the fourth child and third daughter, has a great many of the virtues of that admirable nation. But as she was born and grew up in Bodmin, she might reasonably also be able to call herself Cornish. I put this to her yesterday, but she was having none of it. She regards herself as Irish, not Cornish.
In the early Seventies her Aunt Fanny died and left her a legacy. With this my stepmother - born Patricia Mary Josephine O’Keeffe, though known as Paddy O’Keeffe, a name perhaps familiar to some who regularly tuned into BBC radio’s From Our Own Correspondence which she produced until she married my father and took early retirement in the mid-Eighties - bought a cottage here in St Breward. My father had a little earlier sold our family home in Henley-on-Thames (which, oddly, makes it sound rather grander than it was) after my mother died in 1981 and with the cash he and his new wife the cottage. The kitchen became bigger, as did the bathroom, and above the kitchen a new room was created which was officially my father’s study in which he wrote the book he had always wanted to write, a history of relations between the Germans and the IRA.
Initially, after my father’s second marriage, relations between myself and my stepmother were, on my part at least, a tad frosty. Until, as they say, my father made an honest woman of her, my stepmother had been my father’s mistress for around 20 years, and I found it a little difficult to adapt to the new set-up. I had been close to my mother almost all my life, although in my early 20s, after a kind of very silly disagreement over my then girlfriend, I did not treat her as well as I might have done as is the way of the kind of self-regarding idiot I was in those years, and her death hit me rather harder than could reasonably be expected. She died of a heart attack at the comparatively early age of 61 and, more to the point, I had found her dead. Looking back, it took me quite a few years to deal with a shock which, at the time, I thought I had completely taken in my stride.
But my stepmother is a good-hearted sort and when, within two or three years of her marriage I began to come to see her and my father regularly, she was very kind to me. At 67, my father developed prostate cancer. The cancer eventually spread and he died at the age of 68 just over 20 years ago. One of his last wishes was that we, his four children, should take care of Paddy, so I began to visit her here in Cornwall more and more often.
From mid-1990 until I moved down here myself at the end of 1995, I lived and worked in London. I didn’t then run a car - there was no need to do so - so when I came, I caught the train at London Paddington to Bodmin Parkway. And - this is the whole point of this entry - every time I got out of the train at Bodmin - every time - I was struck by how much slower and more tranquil was the pace of life down here in Cornwall, and how much more peaceful. I must stress that this struck me the moment I opened the carriage door and stepped out of the train.
An hour or two ago, I arrived back home after leaving work in West London and taking the train to Exeter and then driving the 60-odd miles back here to St Breward. (I get out at Exeter and drive the rest of the way because it’s a damn sight quicker like that, quite apart from the fact that the last train to leave London which makes its way all the way to Bodmin leaves at 6.35pm.) But each time I get out of the car once I arrive back home, I am conscious that I no longer get that sensation of life being slower and more peaceful. I have, unfortunately, become immune to the change of pace. It’s something I reflect on every week when I arrive back home, but tonight I didn’t immediately go into the house after locking the car but stayed for several minutes to try to recapture that sensation. I’m sorry to say I didn’t, but I did once again appreciate being able to call deepest rural Cornwall my home. The weather was misty and drizzly and I love it. I really couldn’t tell you why, but I do. One day, I hope, I shall really be able to slow down properly and fully appreciate it. But I was glad that tonight I did manage it, if just a little bit.
Tuesday 21 February 2012
Are they mad or just insane? Surprise as the Greek nation agrees to come quietly - or rather incredulity, Dom Strauss Kahn is revealed as pimping Mr Big (allegedly – I’m not daft) and will the real Angela Merkel please stand up (according to yet another group of conspiracy theorists)
I’m sorry if I’m behaving like a dog with a bone, but the more I consider the ‘crisis in Greece’ and various ‘solutions’, the more I think that an awful lot of people have seriously taken leave of their senses. According to the Financial Times, which I don’t think anyone would regard as sensationalist, the list of EU demands of Greece in order to qualify for its bailout includes a change to its constitution to ensure paying off its debts the top priority of any government of whichever hue. The Greeks are also being asked to agree to a permanent team of ‘monitors’ based in Athens to ensure they – well, the only way it can realistically be described it to ‘do as they are told’. And they will not get one cent of bailout money until the austerity package agreed last week is actually seen to have been put into practice.
I know I am running the risk of being thought racist and could well find myself up before a magistrates court if a clever Crown Prosecution Service were dyspeptic enough to get me charged with something like ‘racism’, but for Christ’s sake, we are dealing with a proud nation of hotheads here, not a gang of dull Dutchmen or catatonic Scandanavians who could hardly be enthused to riot in a month of Sundays. It’s all very well for Greece’s politicians to agree to bend over and take it up the arse if that’s what’s necessary (an apt metaphor as it happens as I am writing about Greece), but that leaves the Greek people completely out of the equation. Does anyone reading this or anyone living high on the hog in Brussels honestly think that, fingers crossed, the EU might well see this one through? Does anyone seriously believe that either the extreme Left or the extreme Right in Greece whose ratings are soaring as high as those of the centre-left and centre-right are plummeting will feel in the slightest obliged to support and honour the austerity measures by agreeing to help form a coalition? And does anyone really believe that the election due in April will actually be conducted peacefully. Does anyone seriously believe that, y’know, with a bit of luck, God willing and all that, they might, just might . . .? Do they hell.
I wrote yesterday of The Slog’s conspiracy theory – that a Greek default will be formerly announced just after 6pm EST on Friday, March 23, and that everything else is simply a masquerade to avoid a run on the banks in the meantime – and although I am usually not a great supporter of conspiracy theories, judging by the incredible behaviour of many protagonists and the utterly naïve assumptions one has to adhere to if you swallow the whole bailout story, his theory tends to make a damn sight more sense than anything else at the moment.
. . .
When I look at the stats to see what people happening on this blog like to read, two names are always prominent: Mandy Rice-Davies and Dominique Strauss Kahn. And Dom is back in the news again and it involves sex, again. Now there’s a surprise. Lord, the Left in France must be thanking their lucky stars that the whole, extremely murky, business in New York happened before Dom, as expected by almost everyone, was put forward as their candidate for the presidency. It now seems that Dom wasn’t just the boss of the IMF. Oh, now, he was also moonlighting as a Marseille pimp, incredible as that might sound. Come again, I hear you ask. OK, it now seems that Dom – if that was even his
‘What can I say? Bang to rights?’
real name – was just swanning around with politicos worldwide as a cover for his real existence as the biggest of the Mr Bigs in Marseille. You can’t a couple of keys of coke? Dom, or more likely one of his minions, was your man. You wanted a couple of good-time girls for that party you were organising for a gang of visiting Red Chinese capitalists. Have a word with Dom. And he’s a card, too. Here’s a Dom quote I love (which isn’t actually from Mr Big himself, but from his lawyer Henri Leclerc, a name which could have come straight from the pen of an English novelist who has not once set foot in France). Responding to claims that Dom had been ‘romping’ with whores, M. Leclerc replied: ‘I challenge you to distinguish a naked prostitute from any other naked women.’ On the face of it that sounds quite reasonable. The giveaway is, of course, that he the naked woman has either demanded money upfront or indicated that she will be demanding money after the act, then she’s a prostitute. Well, sort of.
Speaking of conspiracy theories, I have a vague recollection of there being one around the time Dom was up on sex charges in New York. I don’t remember the details (and can’t really be arsed trying to track them down), but the theory was that he was being stitched up in order to scupper his chances of being the Left’s presidential candidate and possibly even being elected Frances’ president. Like all conspiracy theories it makes sense, though that doesn’t mean it is true. And it might well have been either the left or the right stitching him up, if stitched up he was.
. . .
Yesterday I mentioned happening upon another blog called The Slog, which I read primarily for it’s claim that there is conspiracy afoot to kick Greece out of the euro towards the end of March and that the conspirators are biding their time in order to erect a firewall around the banks they wish to protect (or something like that). But another entry caught my eye: a profile of Germany chancellor Angela Merkel which is not complimentary. Reading that I followed another link and came across a German website in English which strikes me already tending into paranoia country, or if not paranoia country, a nearby neighbour. (Incidentally, can one ‘tend’ or have I just made up a word?) All that got me thinking along the lines of: is it ever really possible to get neutral information about anything which can help one make up one’s own mind. I rather think it isn’t.
I’ve long believed, and long claimed publicly, that our newspapers aren’t quite as powerful as some would have us believe, that, in fact, they tell us what they think we want to hear. Well, OK, it isn’t usually that straightforward, but the tend to do that. I suspect something similar goes on with arguments: most of us believe what we believe, however irrational it might be, and then cast about for ‘evidence’ and ‘proof’, discarding any ‘facts’ we encounter which rather argue against what we believe and highlighting those ‘facts’ which ‘prove’ we are right in our belief. Well, I don’t want any of that, and that is why increasingly I choose not to take part in any discussion which strikes me - it’s always pretty obvious from the outset - as being essentially just another exchange of prejudice. I want to take part in what I can only call ‘neutral’ discussion. For example, when there is discussion of the euro crisis, I’m not at all interested in hearing from those who loathe the EU and everything they think it stands for and, given half a chance, will bend your ear till dawn with ‘facts’ proving it is nothing by a dark conspiracy organised by murky bureaucrats. Conversely, I’m not in the slightest interested in being invited to cheer along the European project and how it will, in time, bring about peace on Earth and goodwill to all men.
The blog entry about Merkel’s past is interesting and the facts are, admittedly intriguing (more of which another time). But I am disinclined to go along quite yet, if ever, with the writer’s conclusions.
I know I am running the risk of being thought racist and could well find myself up before a magistrates court if a clever Crown Prosecution Service were dyspeptic enough to get me charged with something like ‘racism’, but for Christ’s sake, we are dealing with a proud nation of hotheads here, not a gang of dull Dutchmen or catatonic Scandanavians who could hardly be enthused to riot in a month of Sundays. It’s all very well for Greece’s politicians to agree to bend over and take it up the arse if that’s what’s necessary (an apt metaphor as it happens as I am writing about Greece), but that leaves the Greek people completely out of the equation. Does anyone reading this or anyone living high on the hog in Brussels honestly think that, fingers crossed, the EU might well see this one through? Does anyone seriously believe that either the extreme Left or the extreme Right in Greece whose ratings are soaring as high as those of the centre-left and centre-right are plummeting will feel in the slightest obliged to support and honour the austerity measures by agreeing to help form a coalition? And does anyone really believe that the election due in April will actually be conducted peacefully. Does anyone seriously believe that, y’know, with a bit of luck, God willing and all that, they might, just might . . .? Do they hell.
I wrote yesterday of The Slog’s conspiracy theory – that a Greek default will be formerly announced just after 6pm EST on Friday, March 23, and that everything else is simply a masquerade to avoid a run on the banks in the meantime – and although I am usually not a great supporter of conspiracy theories, judging by the incredible behaviour of many protagonists and the utterly naïve assumptions one has to adhere to if you swallow the whole bailout story, his theory tends to make a damn sight more sense than anything else at the moment.
. . .
When I look at the stats to see what people happening on this blog like to read, two names are always prominent: Mandy Rice-Davies and Dominique Strauss Kahn. And Dom is back in the news again and it involves sex, again. Now there’s a surprise. Lord, the Left in France must be thanking their lucky stars that the whole, extremely murky, business in New York happened before Dom, as expected by almost everyone, was put forward as their candidate for the presidency. It now seems that Dom wasn’t just the boss of the IMF. Oh, now, he was also moonlighting as a Marseille pimp, incredible as that might sound. Come again, I hear you ask. OK, it now seems that Dom – if that was even his
real name – was just swanning around with politicos worldwide as a cover for his real existence as the biggest of the Mr Bigs in Marseille. You can’t a couple of keys of coke? Dom, or more likely one of his minions, was your man. You wanted a couple of good-time girls for that party you were organising for a gang of visiting Red Chinese capitalists. Have a word with Dom. And he’s a card, too. Here’s a Dom quote I love (which isn’t actually from Mr Big himself, but from his lawyer Henri Leclerc, a name which could have come straight from the pen of an English novelist who has not once set foot in France). Responding to claims that Dom had been ‘romping’ with whores, M. Leclerc replied: ‘I challenge you to distinguish a naked prostitute from any other naked women.’ On the face of it that sounds quite reasonable. The giveaway is, of course, that he the naked woman has either demanded money upfront or indicated that she will be demanding money after the act, then she’s a prostitute. Well, sort of.
Speaking of conspiracy theories, I have a vague recollection of there being one around the time Dom was up on sex charges in New York. I don’t remember the details (and can’t really be arsed trying to track them down), but the theory was that he was being stitched up in order to scupper his chances of being the Left’s presidential candidate and possibly even being elected Frances’ president. Like all conspiracy theories it makes sense, though that doesn’t mean it is true. And it might well have been either the left or the right stitching him up, if stitched up he was.
. . .
Yesterday I mentioned happening upon another blog called The Slog, which I read primarily for it’s claim that there is conspiracy afoot to kick Greece out of the euro towards the end of March and that the conspirators are biding their time in order to erect a firewall around the banks they wish to protect (or something like that). But another entry caught my eye: a profile of Germany chancellor Angela Merkel which is not complimentary. Reading that I followed another link and came across a German website in English which strikes me already tending into paranoia country, or if not paranoia country, a nearby neighbour. (Incidentally, can one ‘tend’ or have I just made up a word?) All that got me thinking along the lines of: is it ever really possible to get neutral information about anything which can help one make up one’s own mind. I rather think it isn’t.
I’ve long believed, and long claimed publicly, that our newspapers aren’t quite as powerful as some would have us believe, that, in fact, they tell us what they think we want to hear. Well, OK, it isn’t usually that straightforward, but the tend to do that. I suspect something similar goes on with arguments: most of us believe what we believe, however irrational it might be, and then cast about for ‘evidence’ and ‘proof’, discarding any ‘facts’ we encounter which rather argue against what we believe and highlighting those ‘facts’ which ‘prove’ we are right in our belief. Well, I don’t want any of that, and that is why increasingly I choose not to take part in any discussion which strikes me - it’s always pretty obvious from the outset - as being essentially just another exchange of prejudice. I want to take part in what I can only call ‘neutral’ discussion. For example, when there is discussion of the euro crisis, I’m not at all interested in hearing from those who loathe the EU and everything they think it stands for and, given half a chance, will bend your ear till dawn with ‘facts’ proving it is nothing by a dark conspiracy organised by murky bureaucrats. Conversely, I’m not in the slightest interested in being invited to cheer along the European project and how it will, in time, bring about peace on Earth and goodwill to all men.
The blog entry about Merkel’s past is interesting and the facts are, admittedly intriguing (more of which another time). But I am disinclined to go along quite yet, if ever, with the writer’s conclusions.
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