Staunch though his championship may be of the popular hate figure Peter Mandelson, Sordel's defence budget also extends to chinooks for Simon Cowell. Cowell (in the popular imagination at least) is stricken this holiday season as a consequence of the bird flipped collectively in his direction by the people of Great Britain when they made "Killing in the Name" number one this Christmas.
"Fuck you," chorused the Facebook masses: "I won't do what you tell me!"
This is a pretty remarkable consensus given the fact that the bankers took their bonuses, the MPs refused to give back their swag (or the bags that it came in) and we are still (still!) prosecuting two unjust wars overseas. Way to go, People of Britain ... you really managed to focus out the Pervasive Evanescent this holiday season.
Cowell, if only because he scowls so much and wears a lot of black, is good casting for a pantomime villain, and - in the dim apprehension of a great many Rage downloaders - cheating him of the top of the festive chart is the equivalent of stick a large bomb down his underpants and running away chortling.
Apparently all that was needed to motivate the campaign against the harmless Joe McElderry and his largely pleasant single was the perception that Cowell's X Factor had locked up the "coveted" throne at the top of the hit parade and was preventing other musical acts (JLS, Cheryl Cole, Alexandra Buck, Leona Lewis and the X Factor Charity single, presumably) from getting their fair time in the spotlight. Next week the big chart showdown, for example, is scheduled to be Cole vs. McElderry. Assuming that the Facebook community is resting on its laurels and collecting its winnings from William Hill, you wouldn't need the National Weather Center's help to forecast business as usual for 2010.
Cowell, like the Formerly Red Baron, is with us so untiringly that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse may as well advertise for a keyboardist & second drummer before heading into the coming decade as a sextet.
Before we bid a fond farewell to 2009, however, it is worth shunning the sherry long enough to remember with due sobriety the many British families bereaved this year as a consequence of the brace of conflicts continuing in the absence of an effective Facebook campaign to end them. Sordel will be remembering in his prayers also the families of the many Soviet troops killed and injured in Afghanistan as a consequence of the U.S.-backed insurgency there.
Killing In The Name indeed.
And on that cheerful note Sordel bids a Merry Xmas to all his reader.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Nutts to (Gordon) Brown
Until the birth of New Labour it was comparatively rare for a British politician to be assassinated. These days, the only job more perilous is being a member of the Columbian judiciary.
Consider Alan Johnson, once considered the brightest and best in the Labour ranks.
This, of course, is like being considered the most liberal member of the B.N.P. or most charismatic member of the Liberal Democrats. Nevertheless - however shallow the compliment - it was enough to push Johnson way out in front in the race to lead his party through its rapidly-approaching eight years of impotence and opposition.
Having taken the Brownian shilling however, Johnson now finds himself with a portfolio that can best be described as Minister for Shitty Jobs. Now that the traditional poison chalice set to the lips of tall poppies of yore - Minister for Northern Ireland - has been leeched of its venom, prime ministers have to be more creative in sticking it to the junior ranks.
The bad news started for Johnson when he was (literally) pushed to the front in the Afghan War, becoming the first Home Secretary to be honoured with a paddleless visit up that particular creek. Presumably Bob Ainsworth - a Defence secretary who has unwittingly become the most persuasive apologist for every standpoint that he opposes - is now so unwelcome that even close members of his family shy him with date-expired vegetables when he arrives home.
Thus it is that Johnson found himself arguing in defiance of all physiological instinct to blush that he regarded Britain's continued support for C.I.A. operative Ahmed Wali Karzai and his vote-rigging brother as a key element in the war against domestic terrorism.
This is a bit like sending the Minister for Transport out to Afghanistan on the basis that reducing military traffic on British roads is a key element in our motorway policy.
Anyway, no sooner was Johnson done with hitching his wagon to that particular lost cause than Mrs. Brown's little boy peered out from his customary place of hiding with another job that he needed doing. Inclining an ear to the mahogany drawer from which the Prime Minister's glowered up at him, Johnson must have been surprised to hear that he was being asked to write a letter sacking David Nutt.
It is not recorded whether he had the courage to ask "Who?" but Nutt's name had certainly not been tripping off the tongue until Brown decided that it was important to (send a flunky to) sack him.
Thus it was that Johnson found himself appending his John Hancock to a letter motivated by no higher purpose than Gordon's spite and vindictiveness. Go back a few centuries and Johnson would have been hiding his weapons under a sycamore tree and demanding that Thomas Beckett submit to the King's will.
Yet we weep not for Johnson, for this is a man who - contrary to all hopes that other might have placed in him - decided that the percentage play was neither to join the rats leaving the sinking ship nor wrest the wheel from the captain who had driven it aground in the first place. Instead, he chose the honour of serenading on first violin those running up and down the deck attempting to save their birdbaths and toilet seats from the rising waters.
In contravention of the elegantly-phrased Miltonian epigram, he is the first man in history to think it was actually better to serve in Hell than rule in Heaven.
Consider Alan Johnson, once considered the brightest and best in the Labour ranks.
This, of course, is like being considered the most liberal member of the B.N.P. or most charismatic member of the Liberal Democrats. Nevertheless - however shallow the compliment - it was enough to push Johnson way out in front in the race to lead his party through its rapidly-approaching eight years of impotence and opposition.
Having taken the Brownian shilling however, Johnson now finds himself with a portfolio that can best be described as Minister for Shitty Jobs. Now that the traditional poison chalice set to the lips of tall poppies of yore - Minister for Northern Ireland - has been leeched of its venom, prime ministers have to be more creative in sticking it to the junior ranks.
The bad news started for Johnson when he was (literally) pushed to the front in the Afghan War, becoming the first Home Secretary to be honoured with a paddleless visit up that particular creek. Presumably Bob Ainsworth - a Defence secretary who has unwittingly become the most persuasive apologist for every standpoint that he opposes - is now so unwelcome that even close members of his family shy him with date-expired vegetables when he arrives home.
Thus it is that Johnson found himself arguing in defiance of all physiological instinct to blush that he regarded Britain's continued support for C.I.A. operative Ahmed Wali Karzai and his vote-rigging brother as a key element in the war against domestic terrorism.
This is a bit like sending the Minister for Transport out to Afghanistan on the basis that reducing military traffic on British roads is a key element in our motorway policy.
Anyway, no sooner was Johnson done with hitching his wagon to that particular lost cause than Mrs. Brown's little boy peered out from his customary place of hiding with another job that he needed doing. Inclining an ear to the mahogany drawer from which the Prime Minister's glowered up at him, Johnson must have been surprised to hear that he was being asked to write a letter sacking David Nutt.
It is not recorded whether he had the courage to ask "Who?" but Nutt's name had certainly not been tripping off the tongue until Brown decided that it was important to (send a flunky to) sack him.
Thus it was that Johnson found himself appending his John Hancock to a letter motivated by no higher purpose than Gordon's spite and vindictiveness. Go back a few centuries and Johnson would have been hiding his weapons under a sycamore tree and demanding that Thomas Beckett submit to the King's will.
Yet we weep not for Johnson, for this is a man who - contrary to all hopes that other might have placed in him - decided that the percentage play was neither to join the rats leaving the sinking ship nor wrest the wheel from the captain who had driven it aground in the first place. Instead, he chose the honour of serenading on first violin those running up and down the deck attempting to save their birdbaths and toilet seats from the rising waters.
In contravention of the elegantly-phrased Miltonian epigram, he is the first man in history to think it was actually better to serve in Hell than rule in Heaven.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
The Arena of Antagonism
Devotees of gladiatorial combat on television will have enjoyed the last few weeks, during which the red corner has been pitted against the blue corner with a regularity not seen since The Jerry Springer Show.
It all began with a warm-up: the Resident Intellectual vs. Mrs. Brown's Little Boy, during which Andrew Marr enquired about some health issue to which it would doubtless be legally hazardous to allude too specifically. This was the appetizer, however, to a discussion of the same on Question Time, during which overweening windbag David Starkey grappled to the mat Preening Coxcomb Ben Bradshaw. These two combatants (one blue rinse away from playing the ugly sisters in an exceptionally well-cast run of Cinderella at a seaside town) provided the most compelling man-on-man horseplay since Alan Bates and Oliver Reed went at one another in Women In Love.
Better was to come, however, for in the Main Event Ian Hislop was being oiled up for a round or two with Sordel's favourite Brownie, Yvette Cooper-Balls. I have alluded to the Stepford perfection of YC-B in previous blogs. She is like the youngest matron in a boarding school: an object of fascination to boys and masters alike yet given to a defensive frostiness only thawed in the communal imagination by suspicions of illicit liaison with one of the unattached housemasters. In an environment where personal attractiveness is a secondary consideration and gender itself barely a prohibitive one, YC-B is about as comely as Labour ladies come.
Hislop, however, is no respecter or of the fairer whatever. His career on Have I Got News For You? has been founded on the sneer of startled loathing with which he meets every guest on the show, as though the only way he would even tolerate their company is if he were well-paid beforehand. Evidently he holds the duo Balls in special contempt, because it was without a blush that he accused the distaff ball of riding to a political career on the coat-tails of her husband.
At which Stepford perfection - as it always will - short-circuited and YC-B have a look that could have only been more perfectly emoted had her eyes glowed red and a spring popped out of her left ear.
Shame on you, Mr. Hislop. A low blow indeed.
This, then, is an era in which hard thoughts are given voice, as when the Resident Intellectual put it to David Cameron that he was a bit of a toff.
Yet for all the political combat, the crowning unpleasantness of this purple patch comes not from a political programme but from The X Factor, for it was here on Saturday that Danii Minogue decided (and I forget whether the predominant metaphor here was wrestling or boxing) to take off the gloves completely.
It is difficult to see exactly what prompted Danii's animosity to Danyl Johnson, but it may have something to do with a proprietorial anger at someone else choosing to spell their name in a non-standard way. Whatever the reason, she chose to greet the 27-year old's first performance on live television by alluding to tabloid stories that he is ... well, I'm guessing bisexual or bi-curious.
(Sordel doesn't read tabloids ... and if that sounds snobbish, he doesn't read broadsheets either.)
So, this is what we've come to.
It seems a long way to travel in a short time to go from an entirely reasonable question as to whether the Prime Minister is healthy enough to do the job to an (at best) tangential reference to the sexual orientation of a virtual nobody who may at some future point wish to resume his regular career as a teacher.
Maybe, though, the British Public has grown tired of the bread and only a genuine circus will do.
It all began with a warm-up: the Resident Intellectual vs. Mrs. Brown's Little Boy, during which Andrew Marr enquired about some health issue to which it would doubtless be legally hazardous to allude too specifically. This was the appetizer, however, to a discussion of the same on Question Time, during which overweening windbag David Starkey grappled to the mat Preening Coxcomb Ben Bradshaw. These two combatants (one blue rinse away from playing the ugly sisters in an exceptionally well-cast run of Cinderella at a seaside town) provided the most compelling man-on-man horseplay since Alan Bates and Oliver Reed went at one another in Women In Love.
Better was to come, however, for in the Main Event Ian Hislop was being oiled up for a round or two with Sordel's favourite Brownie, Yvette Cooper-Balls. I have alluded to the Stepford perfection of YC-B in previous blogs. She is like the youngest matron in a boarding school: an object of fascination to boys and masters alike yet given to a defensive frostiness only thawed in the communal imagination by suspicions of illicit liaison with one of the unattached housemasters. In an environment where personal attractiveness is a secondary consideration and gender itself barely a prohibitive one, YC-B is about as comely as Labour ladies come.
Hislop, however, is no respecter or of the fairer whatever. His career on Have I Got News For You? has been founded on the sneer of startled loathing with which he meets every guest on the show, as though the only way he would even tolerate their company is if he were well-paid beforehand. Evidently he holds the duo Balls in special contempt, because it was without a blush that he accused the distaff ball of riding to a political career on the coat-tails of her husband.
At which Stepford perfection - as it always will - short-circuited and YC-B have a look that could have only been more perfectly emoted had her eyes glowed red and a spring popped out of her left ear.
Shame on you, Mr. Hislop. A low blow indeed.
This, then, is an era in which hard thoughts are given voice, as when the Resident Intellectual put it to David Cameron that he was a bit of a toff.
Yet for all the political combat, the crowning unpleasantness of this purple patch comes not from a political programme but from The X Factor, for it was here on Saturday that Danii Minogue decided (and I forget whether the predominant metaphor here was wrestling or boxing) to take off the gloves completely.
It is difficult to see exactly what prompted Danii's animosity to Danyl Johnson, but it may have something to do with a proprietorial anger at someone else choosing to spell their name in a non-standard way. Whatever the reason, she chose to greet the 27-year old's first performance on live television by alluding to tabloid stories that he is ... well, I'm guessing bisexual or bi-curious.
(Sordel doesn't read tabloids ... and if that sounds snobbish, he doesn't read broadsheets either.)
So, this is what we've come to.
It seems a long way to travel in a short time to go from an entirely reasonable question as to whether the Prime Minister is healthy enough to do the job to an (at best) tangential reference to the sexual orientation of a virtual nobody who may at some future point wish to resume his regular career as a teacher.
Maybe, though, the British Public has grown tired of the bread and only a genuine circus will do.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Mand of the Hour
Even those who viewed with scepticism Sordel's previous adulation of the Formerly Red Baron cannot deny that Peter Mandleson has had a good couple of days.
Sunday was, of course, the day when he put in his application to work for the forthcoming Conservative government, by announcing during the course of a Sunday Times interview that he would certainly be willing to serve his country during a future Cameron administration. This is entirely consistent of Baron M., since if the thought of working for people who loathed him was uncomfortable to the Great Man, he certainly wouldn't be toiling for Gordon Brown. Indeed, the faces of his colleagues could scarcely be less friendly if they belonged to die-hard Tories.
Monday then saw Baron M.'s speech to conference.
Unlike another prominent Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Peter Mandleson is not a well-known conference darling. Michael Heseltine - in many ways his closest antecedent as a maverick, egotistical power-broker - returned to the conference podium like a rock star coming to the stage in his home town. Mandleson, however, has merely been tolerated ... like a blob of toothpaste on an adolescent pustule.
The sound-bite that the news went with was "If I can come back, we can come back": a line delivered with a coprophagous grin and the air of one delivering a very simple joke to a very young nephew. He gave a sort of stage chuckle half way through, simulating good spirits in much the way that someone might simulate appetite by licking their lips and rubbing their stomach in a great big clumsy circle.
The line - however well-received in the hall - makes very little sense, though. It's like saying "if herpes can come back, swine flu can come back." The entire point about herpes is that it comes back: a guarantee that does not extend to the Labour Party.
In any case, Mandleson's best line was less widely reported. "I know that Tony said our project would only be complete when The Labour Party learned to love Peter Mandleson ... I think perhaps he set the bar too high." Here we see the essence of the splendid Baron: a man who at the summit of his power can still reproach those who declined to sign their name in blood on the dotted line.
It takes a particularly gloating form of villainy (one not seen since Cary Grant hung from Mount Rushmore providing Eva Marie Saint with a lifeline) to step on someone's knuckles when they are clinging on for dear life. Peter, Übermensch that he is, could do it with a smile.
Not, perhaps, a warm one.
It has widely been reported that the Baron has secured the prime minister's future and won over the hearts and minds of the Labour delegates with his performance.
Sordel suspects that in this case the media and the party faithful have both been misled. To misquote Richard Thompson: they thought he was saying good luck when he was saying goodbye.
Sunday was, of course, the day when he put in his application to work for the forthcoming Conservative government, by announcing during the course of a Sunday Times interview that he would certainly be willing to serve his country during a future Cameron administration. This is entirely consistent of Baron M., since if the thought of working for people who loathed him was uncomfortable to the Great Man, he certainly wouldn't be toiling for Gordon Brown. Indeed, the faces of his colleagues could scarcely be less friendly if they belonged to die-hard Tories.
Monday then saw Baron M.'s speech to conference.
Unlike another prominent Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Peter Mandleson is not a well-known conference darling. Michael Heseltine - in many ways his closest antecedent as a maverick, egotistical power-broker - returned to the conference podium like a rock star coming to the stage in his home town. Mandleson, however, has merely been tolerated ... like a blob of toothpaste on an adolescent pustule.
The sound-bite that the news went with was "If I can come back, we can come back": a line delivered with a coprophagous grin and the air of one delivering a very simple joke to a very young nephew. He gave a sort of stage chuckle half way through, simulating good spirits in much the way that someone might simulate appetite by licking their lips and rubbing their stomach in a great big clumsy circle.
The line - however well-received in the hall - makes very little sense, though. It's like saying "if herpes can come back, swine flu can come back." The entire point about herpes is that it comes back: a guarantee that does not extend to the Labour Party.
In any case, Mandleson's best line was less widely reported. "I know that Tony said our project would only be complete when The Labour Party learned to love Peter Mandleson ... I think perhaps he set the bar too high." Here we see the essence of the splendid Baron: a man who at the summit of his power can still reproach those who declined to sign their name in blood on the dotted line.
It takes a particularly gloating form of villainy (one not seen since Cary Grant hung from Mount Rushmore providing Eva Marie Saint with a lifeline) to step on someone's knuckles when they are clinging on for dear life. Peter, Übermensch that he is, could do it with a smile.
Not, perhaps, a warm one.
It has widely been reported that the Baron has secured the prime minister's future and won over the hearts and minds of the Labour delegates with his performance.
Sordel suspects that in this case the media and the party faithful have both been misled. To misquote Richard Thompson: they thought he was saying good luck when he was saying goodbye.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Outsider Art
Not since the angel with the fiery sword told Adam and Eve that if their names weren't on the list they weren't coming in has humanity so strained with fury at the injustice of an exclusion.
It seems that Gordon Brown has been refused admission to the cool kids' table. President Obama's dance list was mysteriously full every time that Gordon's party planners suggested a Terpsichorean tryst. If it were a Jane Austen adaptation he would be hiding his face behind a fan and hissing to his sisters at this very minute.
According to FT.com, a spokeswoman has been attempting to play down what lesser news outlets are describing as a snub. "She argued that the two were talking informally all the time – including a short encounter in the kitchens of the United Nations in New York."
Let's script that out shall we?
Obama: "While I'm here can I get a club sandwich?"
Brown: "Mr. President, it's Gordon!"
Obama: "My error ... can I get a club sandwich, Gordon?"
Sordel's amusement at this serious insult that our leader has suffered at the hands of the Rebels (surely the most vexing since the Boston Tea Party) is not unmixed, however, with fellow feeling. I was myself excluded this week: from the Anish Kapoor exhibition at the Royal Academy.
Now, it must be acknowledged before I go any further that the exhibition had not, in fact, opened yet, but it was nevertheless galling to be forced to gaze impotently through the glass at corridors that will soon be thronged with milling culture vultures. By the time I am able to form an opinion on this particular exhibition the expiry date for such an opinion will doubtless have passed and I will be left bewildered by discussion of the next artistic sensation.
It was not an entirely wasted journey, however.
For those of us unable to pass the gate, the Royal Academy has provided a very large courtyard sculpture that is best described as a Fizzy Drink. Shiny polished spheres (something of a stock in trade to which Kapoor resorts for his more obviously institutional artworks) effervesce upwards in a loose column, providing reflections of the surrounding buildings and one another.
As a consequence, those of us unable to enter the exhibition were forced to contemplate our own bleak physiognomies peering back at us.
It would be nice to think that Mrs. Brown's little boy will also use his time in the wilderness to indulge in a little self-reflection. In a crowd of little versions of himself he might at last find some friends.
It seems that Gordon Brown has been refused admission to the cool kids' table. President Obama's dance list was mysteriously full every time that Gordon's party planners suggested a Terpsichorean tryst. If it were a Jane Austen adaptation he would be hiding his face behind a fan and hissing to his sisters at this very minute.
According to FT.com, a spokeswoman has been attempting to play down what lesser news outlets are describing as a snub. "She argued that the two were talking informally all the time – including a short encounter in the kitchens of the United Nations in New York."
Let's script that out shall we?
Obama: "While I'm here can I get a club sandwich?"
Brown: "Mr. President, it's Gordon!"
Obama: "My error ... can I get a club sandwich, Gordon?"
Sordel's amusement at this serious insult that our leader has suffered at the hands of the Rebels (surely the most vexing since the Boston Tea Party) is not unmixed, however, with fellow feeling. I was myself excluded this week: from the Anish Kapoor exhibition at the Royal Academy.
Now, it must be acknowledged before I go any further that the exhibition had not, in fact, opened yet, but it was nevertheless galling to be forced to gaze impotently through the glass at corridors that will soon be thronged with milling culture vultures. By the time I am able to form an opinion on this particular exhibition the expiry date for such an opinion will doubtless have passed and I will be left bewildered by discussion of the next artistic sensation.
It was not an entirely wasted journey, however.
For those of us unable to pass the gate, the Royal Academy has provided a very large courtyard sculpture that is best described as a Fizzy Drink. Shiny polished spheres (something of a stock in trade to which Kapoor resorts for his more obviously institutional artworks) effervesce upwards in a loose column, providing reflections of the surrounding buildings and one another.
As a consequence, those of us unable to enter the exhibition were forced to contemplate our own bleak physiognomies peering back at us.
It would be nice to think that Mrs. Brown's little boy will also use his time in the wilderness to indulge in a little self-reflection. In a crowd of little versions of himself he might at last find some friends.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Beam Me Up, Scotty
In my mind's eye it must have been like one of those golden evocations of childhood from European cinema ... possibly German, probably French. A little girl, slightly anxious, slightly hurrying, runs from hiding location to hiding location, but every closet door she opens reveals an older child who shoos her away. As the ominous sound of another child counting towards a hundred gets louder in the background, there seems not a table or bed that does not already conceal a hider.
In this case, the little girl in the story is Patricia Scotland, the soon-to-be-erstwhile Attorney General, and amongst the various bigger children one might find: Gordon Brown (still under the desk and now in desperate need of a bath and shave); Yvette Cooper-Balls (still crying after the B.B.C. interviewer dipped her pigtails in ink); "Whatever Happened To" Jacqui Smith; and Alistair Darling, who now wears the permanently-dazed expression of someone who has survived being struck by lightning. The only one not evidently in hiding is Baron M., and whether this is because his hiding place is too well chosen or because he himself is "coming to get you" is yet to be established.
Poor Baroness Scotland of Asthal! Labour actually has only one big political idea, and it is basically this: get the costs of government paid for twice by the taxpayer by passing back to ordinary citizens the cost of regulation. In this case, employers have been given increased responsibility for ensuring that the people who work for them are not illegal immigrants. Patricia knows all about immigration, not because she was born in Dominica herself but because she was a Q.C. (the first black woman to become one, incidentally) and - oh yes! - she was a Home Office minister who was involved in framing the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality 2006 which tightened those responsibilities on employers.
So, if there was one member of the government you could guarantee would not be caught employing an illegal immigrant, it is Baroness Scotland of Asthal.
(I think when that petard detonated it scared a whole bunch of pigeons that had come home to roost.)
Accordingly - and in a neat piece of role-reversal that will appeal to connoisseurs of irony - the Red-faced Baroness's apology to the nation had to be delivered by Mrs. Brown's little boy, who has become the nation's favourite deliverer of vicarious contrition ever since he apologised for the maltreatment of Alan Turing last week. Surely only the public revelation that his pants were on fire can have dragged the Prime Minister from his customary refuge.
Just when you thought that no member of the government less credible could be found to rush to Scotland's defence, however, Labour demonstrated that in this one critical area they can exceed all reasonable expectations.
The person who was sent onto Newsnight to speak on the behalf of Baroness Scotland of Asthal (Asthal, one notes, being the Oxford village where she now resides, rather than the area of Walthamstow where she grew up) was none other than Keith Vaz.
Keith Vaz, Ladies and Gentlemen!
(Or, if you need to Google him in a hurry, Vaz Scandal.)
Now Sordel is aware that it may be claimed that Baroness Scotland, Keith Vaz and Trevor Phillips attract controversy not because allegations against them are true but because they themselves are not white. Sordel gives due credit to this possibility.
However ... the day that I need Keith Vaz to stand in front of gunfire to protect me, I hope that I will have the courage to talk him out of it.
In this case, the little girl in the story is Patricia Scotland, the soon-to-be-erstwhile Attorney General, and amongst the various bigger children one might find: Gordon Brown (still under the desk and now in desperate need of a bath and shave); Yvette Cooper-Balls (still crying after the B.B.C. interviewer dipped her pigtails in ink); "Whatever Happened To" Jacqui Smith; and Alistair Darling, who now wears the permanently-dazed expression of someone who has survived being struck by lightning. The only one not evidently in hiding is Baron M., and whether this is because his hiding place is too well chosen or because he himself is "coming to get you" is yet to be established.
Poor Baroness Scotland of Asthal! Labour actually has only one big political idea, and it is basically this: get the costs of government paid for twice by the taxpayer by passing back to ordinary citizens the cost of regulation. In this case, employers have been given increased responsibility for ensuring that the people who work for them are not illegal immigrants. Patricia knows all about immigration, not because she was born in Dominica herself but because she was a Q.C. (the first black woman to become one, incidentally) and - oh yes! - she was a Home Office minister who was involved in framing the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality 2006 which tightened those responsibilities on employers.
So, if there was one member of the government you could guarantee would not be caught employing an illegal immigrant, it is Baroness Scotland of Asthal.
(I think when that petard detonated it scared a whole bunch of pigeons that had come home to roost.)
Accordingly - and in a neat piece of role-reversal that will appeal to connoisseurs of irony - the Red-faced Baroness's apology to the nation had to be delivered by Mrs. Brown's little boy, who has become the nation's favourite deliverer of vicarious contrition ever since he apologised for the maltreatment of Alan Turing last week. Surely only the public revelation that his pants were on fire can have dragged the Prime Minister from his customary refuge.
Just when you thought that no member of the government less credible could be found to rush to Scotland's defence, however, Labour demonstrated that in this one critical area they can exceed all reasonable expectations.
The person who was sent onto Newsnight to speak on the behalf of Baroness Scotland of Asthal (Asthal, one notes, being the Oxford village where she now resides, rather than the area of Walthamstow where she grew up) was none other than Keith Vaz.
Keith Vaz, Ladies and Gentlemen!
(Or, if you need to Google him in a hurry, Vaz Scandal.)
Now Sordel is aware that it may be claimed that Baroness Scotland, Keith Vaz and Trevor Phillips attract controversy not because allegations against them are true but because they themselves are not white. Sordel gives due credit to this possibility.
However ... the day that I need Keith Vaz to stand in front of gunfire to protect me, I hope that I will have the courage to talk him out of it.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Balls to (Derren) Brown
Tricks are all very fine, and we admire the work that goes into them.
The Banking industry, for example. One can hardly fail to doff one's metaphorical hat to a business that operates profitably through a boom and then - when the going gets tough - persuades the government to bail it out without apparently conceding in return even a modicum of increased regulation. As bystanders, one cannot help but chuckle appreciatively as the illusionist hands back the bewildered prime minister's watch and handkerchief while unobtrusively tucking his wallet into a back pocket.
(It is only when one remembers whose money was in the wallet that the jokes wears thin.)
Yet when the illusionist turns to the audience and proceeds to "explain" the trick, by reference to the marmoset that, by frequent applications of disappearing ink, he has made invisible before training it in the art of the cutpurse, the audience begins to murmur amongst itself with something less than appreciation. Sure, we want to be deceived. But we don't want to be treated like fools.
Sordel has always enjoyed Derren Brown's act. Hypnotism has always been a part of it, but less of a part than it might first appear, and trying to disentangle a good illusion is always good fun. Sometimes you can "get" a part of it.
Even, however, before Brown explained his latest stunt (apparently forecasting the lottery numbers) it seemed a trifle underwhelming. The numbers were written in felt-tip on a row of ping-pong balls that were apparently visible at all times, but which were only turned to face the camera after the actual result was announced live on B.B.C. 1.
On his explanation show, Brown claimed that there were only three ways he could have done the trick: fake a lottery ticket, rig the machines or genuinely predict the result. Faking the ticket in this case meant that the writing had to be applied to the balls after the result was given; not impossible, I suppose, and Brown certainly misdirected the audience from exploring that option. Not interesting, though.
For most of the hour Brown "explained" how he genuinely predicted the result by averaging the predictions of a special group of people that he had trained for the purpose. This was, of course, complete and utter bollocks.
Brown then, in the last five minutes, outlined another way of doing the trick that involved substituting a heavier set of balls in the Camelot machines. He made a big point of saying that obviously had he done the trick that way he could not admit it, but I also happen to think that the second explanation was bollocks too.
Sordel is not too good at working out how a trick is done, but it seems to me that the only way it could be done was for Brown to know the result in time to write down the numbers before his own programme started. If the lottery result is usually broadcast with a short delay, then he only required the slightest collusion from Camelot to make the stunt work. If it is not usually broadcast with a delay, he needed a little more collusion, but since Brown's stunt was a massive free advert for the National Lottery, it's not difficult to see Camelot's motivation.
The problem is this: the explanation of that trick is never going to be very interesting, and creating a false explanation does nothing to make it more so.
Should the bankers ever do an explanation show, though, I'd watch it. They seem to win the lottery every week.
The Banking industry, for example. One can hardly fail to doff one's metaphorical hat to a business that operates profitably through a boom and then - when the going gets tough - persuades the government to bail it out without apparently conceding in return even a modicum of increased regulation. As bystanders, one cannot help but chuckle appreciatively as the illusionist hands back the bewildered prime minister's watch and handkerchief while unobtrusively tucking his wallet into a back pocket.
(It is only when one remembers whose money was in the wallet that the jokes wears thin.)
Yet when the illusionist turns to the audience and proceeds to "explain" the trick, by reference to the marmoset that, by frequent applications of disappearing ink, he has made invisible before training it in the art of the cutpurse, the audience begins to murmur amongst itself with something less than appreciation. Sure, we want to be deceived. But we don't want to be treated like fools.
Sordel has always enjoyed Derren Brown's act. Hypnotism has always been a part of it, but less of a part than it might first appear, and trying to disentangle a good illusion is always good fun. Sometimes you can "get" a part of it.
Even, however, before Brown explained his latest stunt (apparently forecasting the lottery numbers) it seemed a trifle underwhelming. The numbers were written in felt-tip on a row of ping-pong balls that were apparently visible at all times, but which were only turned to face the camera after the actual result was announced live on B.B.C. 1.
On his explanation show, Brown claimed that there were only three ways he could have done the trick: fake a lottery ticket, rig the machines or genuinely predict the result. Faking the ticket in this case meant that the writing had to be applied to the balls after the result was given; not impossible, I suppose, and Brown certainly misdirected the audience from exploring that option. Not interesting, though.
For most of the hour Brown "explained" how he genuinely predicted the result by averaging the predictions of a special group of people that he had trained for the purpose. This was, of course, complete and utter bollocks.
Brown then, in the last five minutes, outlined another way of doing the trick that involved substituting a heavier set of balls in the Camelot machines. He made a big point of saying that obviously had he done the trick that way he could not admit it, but I also happen to think that the second explanation was bollocks too.
Sordel is not too good at working out how a trick is done, but it seems to me that the only way it could be done was for Brown to know the result in time to write down the numbers before his own programme started. If the lottery result is usually broadcast with a short delay, then he only required the slightest collusion from Camelot to make the stunt work. If it is not usually broadcast with a delay, he needed a little more collusion, but since Brown's stunt was a massive free advert for the National Lottery, it's not difficult to see Camelot's motivation.
The problem is this: the explanation of that trick is never going to be very interesting, and creating a false explanation does nothing to make it more so.
Should the bankers ever do an explanation show, though, I'd watch it. They seem to win the lottery every week.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
The Rescuers Abroad
This from BBC.co.uk: "The final decision to order the rescue of kidnapped journalist Stephen Farrell was taken by the foreign and defence secretaries, Downing Street has said. Gordon Brown was consulted, but David Milliband and Bob Ainsworth sanctioned it."
Had things gone differently, I suppose Downing Street might have made a different announcement. There would have been Mrs. Brown's little boy, smiling with shy pride and unaffected delight before the hissing flashbulbs of the assembled press, explaining his pivotal role in this Entebbe-esque victory. How Gordon would have beamed.
Failure, however, is an orphan. Worse, it is an orphan who has just been unwillingly adopted by David Milliband and Bob Ainsworth: the sort of punishment that even an orphan asking for more gruel might consider severe.
Special forces operations, like wars, roll a die, and the relationship of risk to reward is a complex one, but in a situation where the best case scenario was freeing two prisoners, it was at best a daring operation to undertake. Saving one out of the two ain't bad I suppose, and if it matters to you that it was the British one that they saved then you may feel that the result was broadly successful.
Nevertheless to save one man from very uncertain death at the price, seemingly, of the deaths of four others - the interpreter, a soldier, two civilians - isn't exactly the sort of thing that gets people hanging out the bunting and draining glasses to the health of the Dear Old Queen. If - as is suspected - Sultan Munadi was killed by the bullets of those attempting to rescue Stephen Farrell, then the success was something worse than equivocal.
The question that most stubbornly occurs, though, is this. What was the basis for the decision made by this pair of politicians (without any collusion whatsoever from our prime minister, who merely peeped out from under his desk while stretching for a cup of tea that had been thoughtfully left on the carpet for him)?
Surely only a cynic could suggest that the Go order was given in the hope of securing a headline-flashing victory in the course of an increasingly miserable occupation?
Had things gone differently, I suppose Downing Street might have made a different announcement. There would have been Mrs. Brown's little boy, smiling with shy pride and unaffected delight before the hissing flashbulbs of the assembled press, explaining his pivotal role in this Entebbe-esque victory. How Gordon would have beamed.
Failure, however, is an orphan. Worse, it is an orphan who has just been unwillingly adopted by David Milliband and Bob Ainsworth: the sort of punishment that even an orphan asking for more gruel might consider severe.
Special forces operations, like wars, roll a die, and the relationship of risk to reward is a complex one, but in a situation where the best case scenario was freeing two prisoners, it was at best a daring operation to undertake. Saving one out of the two ain't bad I suppose, and if it matters to you that it was the British one that they saved then you may feel that the result was broadly successful.
Nevertheless to save one man from very uncertain death at the price, seemingly, of the deaths of four others - the interpreter, a soldier, two civilians - isn't exactly the sort of thing that gets people hanging out the bunting and draining glasses to the health of the Dear Old Queen. If - as is suspected - Sultan Munadi was killed by the bullets of those attempting to rescue Stephen Farrell, then the success was something worse than equivocal.
The question that most stubbornly occurs, though, is this. What was the basis for the decision made by this pair of politicians (without any collusion whatsoever from our prime minister, who merely peeped out from under his desk while stretching for a cup of tea that had been thoughtfully left on the carpet for him)?
Surely only a cynic could suggest that the Go order was given in the hope of securing a headline-flashing victory in the course of an increasingly miserable occupation?
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
"Must These Have Voices?"
In retrospect, it wasn't really necessary to wage a massive campaign in Afghanistan to make the country (slightly less un-) safe for voters. It turns out that an honour guard around Hamid Karzai's photocopier would have done just as well.
Personally, Sordel has always felt that we should get democracy working here before imposing it on others. Lest we forget, the man currently cowering under the prime minister's desk was not elected (even by his own party) yet this has not stopped him grabbing the tiller and setting a course for the nearest iceberg. His predecessor was indeed elected, but he spent much of his premiership explaining why (much as he deeply respected the opinions of the overwhelming majority of the electorate) we'd be doing things his way for now. Having promised a referendum before further European integration, Labour decided to ratify the Lisbon Treaty without one, and the low cunning of this decision is confirmed by the failure of Ireland to pass a referendum on the same issue. Et cetera.
This is merely to say that democracy does not operate in the United Kingdom, but let us suppose that it did. Under a constituency system in which the winner takes all, the overwhelming majority of voters will live in a constituency where only two political parties can possibly win. Many people will live in a constituency where one political party has an insurmountable majority.
The smallest parliamentary majority is apparently Crawley, where the current incumbent is handing on by the varnish on her nails to a majority of 37. She's a Labour MP, so I fancy that her chances of holding the seat at the next election are slender. Let us imagine, however, that you live in Crawley at the time of the next election, the seat is won or lost by a single vote, and you find yourself on the winning end. Would this be a validation for you of the democratic system, to have made such a seemingly enormous difference? Or would you consider that the body of votes sloshing backwards and forwards had pretty much made your individual vote worthless? Democracy values all citizens equally, but does not value them highly.
Why, then, are we so persuaded of the value of the democratic system that we are willing to sacrifice lives in order to transform Afghanistan into one? Set aside for a moment patriotic concern for British troops; I am not convinced that is worth the death of a single individual of any nationality to establish a democracy in that country, even were it possible to do so.
Of course, I see that there are significant motives for governments to like democracies, whether domestic or foreign.
But why on Earth should we?
Personally, Sordel has always felt that we should get democracy working here before imposing it on others. Lest we forget, the man currently cowering under the prime minister's desk was not elected (even by his own party) yet this has not stopped him grabbing the tiller and setting a course for the nearest iceberg. His predecessor was indeed elected, but he spent much of his premiership explaining why (much as he deeply respected the opinions of the overwhelming majority of the electorate) we'd be doing things his way for now. Having promised a referendum before further European integration, Labour decided to ratify the Lisbon Treaty without one, and the low cunning of this decision is confirmed by the failure of Ireland to pass a referendum on the same issue. Et cetera.
This is merely to say that democracy does not operate in the United Kingdom, but let us suppose that it did. Under a constituency system in which the winner takes all, the overwhelming majority of voters will live in a constituency where only two political parties can possibly win. Many people will live in a constituency where one political party has an insurmountable majority.
The smallest parliamentary majority is apparently Crawley, where the current incumbent is handing on by the varnish on her nails to a majority of 37. She's a Labour MP, so I fancy that her chances of holding the seat at the next election are slender. Let us imagine, however, that you live in Crawley at the time of the next election, the seat is won or lost by a single vote, and you find yourself on the winning end. Would this be a validation for you of the democratic system, to have made such a seemingly enormous difference? Or would you consider that the body of votes sloshing backwards and forwards had pretty much made your individual vote worthless? Democracy values all citizens equally, but does not value them highly.
Why, then, are we so persuaded of the value of the democratic system that we are willing to sacrifice lives in order to transform Afghanistan into one? Set aside for a moment patriotic concern for British troops; I am not convinced that is worth the death of a single individual of any nationality to establish a democracy in that country, even were it possible to do so.
Of course, I see that there are significant motives for governments to like democracies, whether domestic or foreign.
But why on Earth should we?
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
The Van Gogh School of Music
Generally speaking (perhaps universally speaking if one restricts one's sample to the "youth of today") people would rather watch a talkie to a silent movie, and will watch a colour film in preference to one in black and white. When James Cameron releases Avatar, you can pretty much bet that people will flock to it so that they can ooh and aah over the 3D, and perhaps one day we will all resolutely favour films with the illusion of depth over the flat movies of yore.
There is, however, good reason to suppose that just after entertainment technology makes its critical forward leap, some of the best work will be done in the antiquated form of the medium that has just been outdated. City Lights, one of Chaplin's most revered films, was a (more or less) silent film made in 1931: four years after The Jazz Singer had pointed the way to the future.
September 9th sees tranche of wallet-emptying releases by The Beatles and the most impoverishing part of it is The Beatles In Mono: a 13-disc boxed set that will set you back £200 (or about twenty euros at the current rate of exchange). That's right, mono ... what you bought the headphones for.
The argument runs like this. The stereo versions of early Beatles albums were only ever an afterthought designed to generate a little additional revenue from the few trailblazers who had decided to invest in the new flash-in-the-pan audio format with one extra speaker. Most of the studio time was invested in perfecting the mono mix. Moreover, the stereo mixes were not "true" stereo: what they did was basically split the mono instrument tracks between the two channels, so you get separation but no soundstage.
If you want to form an opinion on all this, it will cost you twenty euros, or slightly more if you are relying on our domestic and quantitatively-eased currency.
But here's the thing. The Beatles In Mono doesn't just cost a bit more than The Beatles In Stereo: it costs vastly more. You can't just buy Please Please Me in mono together with its stereo counterpart and give them a listen, because the mono version is only available in the boxed set. So you will need to buy the mono boxed set plus as many of the stereo releases as you will want to hear.
Which is as it should be, because elitism costs, and right here is where you start paying.
If you just want to, y'know, "listen to The Beatles", you will be fine with vanilla stereo. But - assuming that you have all this stuff already - you will likely be buying for a second, third or fourth time to take advantage of the widely-hyped remixes and their improved sound quality.
If that is your motivation, can you really afford not to have the mono mixes? Because I can tell you this right now. Very few of those who shell out for The Beatles In Mono are going to end up holding the opinion that stereo is better.
That's a luxury they really can't afford.
There is, however, good reason to suppose that just after entertainment technology makes its critical forward leap, some of the best work will be done in the antiquated form of the medium that has just been outdated. City Lights, one of Chaplin's most revered films, was a (more or less) silent film made in 1931: four years after The Jazz Singer had pointed the way to the future.
September 9th sees tranche of wallet-emptying releases by The Beatles and the most impoverishing part of it is The Beatles In Mono: a 13-disc boxed set that will set you back £200 (or about twenty euros at the current rate of exchange). That's right, mono ... what you bought the headphones for.
The argument runs like this. The stereo versions of early Beatles albums were only ever an afterthought designed to generate a little additional revenue from the few trailblazers who had decided to invest in the new flash-in-the-pan audio format with one extra speaker. Most of the studio time was invested in perfecting the mono mix. Moreover, the stereo mixes were not "true" stereo: what they did was basically split the mono instrument tracks between the two channels, so you get separation but no soundstage.
If you want to form an opinion on all this, it will cost you twenty euros, or slightly more if you are relying on our domestic and quantitatively-eased currency.
But here's the thing. The Beatles In Mono doesn't just cost a bit more than The Beatles In Stereo: it costs vastly more. You can't just buy Please Please Me in mono together with its stereo counterpart and give them a listen, because the mono version is only available in the boxed set. So you will need to buy the mono boxed set plus as many of the stereo releases as you will want to hear.
Which is as it should be, because elitism costs, and right here is where you start paying.
If you just want to, y'know, "listen to The Beatles", you will be fine with vanilla stereo. But - assuming that you have all this stuff already - you will likely be buying for a second, third or fourth time to take advantage of the widely-hyped remixes and their improved sound quality.
If that is your motivation, can you really afford not to have the mono mixes? Because I can tell you this right now. Very few of those who shell out for The Beatles In Mono are going to end up holding the opinion that stereo is better.
That's a luxury they really can't afford.
Monday, August 24, 2009
The Quality of Mercy
Readers with a long memory may remember the Guildford Four being released from court after their conviction for the Guildford pub bombings was quashed. The scenes outside the court were indeed jubilant, as indeed they would have been in the home of Daniel Day-Lewis had he foreseen at that moment that from this acorn the mighty oak of Academy Award nominations for himself and Pete Postlethwaite would grow.
The release was a significant one, because they came at the end of a long (seemingly interminable) campaign that many onlookers of the time had associated with a propoganda war being waged at that time by Sinn Fein, an organisation then considerably less respectable than it is today. There was a strong sentiment that the attack upon the legal process that had resulted in the convictions of the Guildford Four, the Macguire Seven and the Birmingham Six was the continuation of war by other methods. Those who favoured a successful appeal were on the Republican side, almost be definition.
History has tended to see these belated acquittals rather differently ... has tended to see those reversed evident miscarriages of justice as heroically fighting not only against the immediate obstacle of a corrupt police force, but also the more remote antagonism of the British Public.
Abdelbaset Al Megrahi will never have the sensation of walking free with his name cleared. The second appeal against his conviction for the Lockerbie bombing was repeatedly delayed by a number of ruses, both political and judicial. Despite the fact that the Scottish Criminal Cases Commission concluded in 2007 (after a four year investigation) that there was a prima facie case for the second appeal to be heard, no such appeal ever took place. Despite the fact that Al Megrahi's case is due shortly to be heard at a still higher court, no one seems to have felt that there was any urgency to hearing the case.
Nevertheless, although we do not know with any great certainty whether Al Megrahi is guilty or innocent, the pictures of his arrival in Libya are surely suggestive. No medal was pinned to his chest, no U. S. flags burnt, Colonel Gaddafi did not congratulate him on a job well done. The reception was, instead, entirely consistent with the celebrations outside the high court in 1989 when the Guildford Four walked free.
Far from honouring a killer, the Libyans acted as though they thought Al Megrahi had been the victim of a miscarriage of justice. Quite possibly they were wrong, but unfortunately we are unlikely to know if so.
Not surprisingly, in a culture where it is still widely thought that Saddam Hussein was guilty of the 9/11 bombings, there is an equally strong conviction that Al Megrahi was guilty. The U. S. has been immoderate in its condemnation of the release, not least as a consequence of its own catastrophic failure to bring subsequent terrorists to trial. Having made prosecution impossible by its enthusiastic use of torture, the U. S. has become a bystander to international law, shaking its impotent fist while other countries embrace due process.
Which leads me to a modest proposal.
With its unique approach to international law, why does the U.S. not simply fly a drone over and blow Al Megrahi up? It would after all not be the first time that the U.S. has bombed Tripoli.
Indeed, for a truly unrepentant bomber one need look no further.
The release was a significant one, because they came at the end of a long (seemingly interminable) campaign that many onlookers of the time had associated with a propoganda war being waged at that time by Sinn Fein, an organisation then considerably less respectable than it is today. There was a strong sentiment that the attack upon the legal process that had resulted in the convictions of the Guildford Four, the Macguire Seven and the Birmingham Six was the continuation of war by other methods. Those who favoured a successful appeal were on the Republican side, almost be definition.
History has tended to see these belated acquittals rather differently ... has tended to see those reversed evident miscarriages of justice as heroically fighting not only against the immediate obstacle of a corrupt police force, but also the more remote antagonism of the British Public.
Abdelbaset Al Megrahi will never have the sensation of walking free with his name cleared. The second appeal against his conviction for the Lockerbie bombing was repeatedly delayed by a number of ruses, both political and judicial. Despite the fact that the Scottish Criminal Cases Commission concluded in 2007 (after a four year investigation) that there was a prima facie case for the second appeal to be heard, no such appeal ever took place. Despite the fact that Al Megrahi's case is due shortly to be heard at a still higher court, no one seems to have felt that there was any urgency to hearing the case.
Nevertheless, although we do not know with any great certainty whether Al Megrahi is guilty or innocent, the pictures of his arrival in Libya are surely suggestive. No medal was pinned to his chest, no U. S. flags burnt, Colonel Gaddafi did not congratulate him on a job well done. The reception was, instead, entirely consistent with the celebrations outside the high court in 1989 when the Guildford Four walked free.
Far from honouring a killer, the Libyans acted as though they thought Al Megrahi had been the victim of a miscarriage of justice. Quite possibly they were wrong, but unfortunately we are unlikely to know if so.
Not surprisingly, in a culture where it is still widely thought that Saddam Hussein was guilty of the 9/11 bombings, there is an equally strong conviction that Al Megrahi was guilty. The U. S. has been immoderate in its condemnation of the release, not least as a consequence of its own catastrophic failure to bring subsequent terrorists to trial. Having made prosecution impossible by its enthusiastic use of torture, the U. S. has become a bystander to international law, shaking its impotent fist while other countries embrace due process.
Which leads me to a modest proposal.
With its unique approach to international law, why does the U.S. not simply fly a drone over and blow Al Megrahi up? It would after all not be the first time that the U.S. has bombed Tripoli.
Indeed, for a truly unrepentant bomber one need look no further.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Some Idiot Went To War And All I Got Was This Lousy Tee-Shirt
Like most of Britain's citizens, Sordel is content to fight his wars on the Home Front. I am not entirely convinced, however, that our Prime Minister should be allowed to do the same.
It used to be inferred from his sullen silence on the subject that Gordon Brown was no supporter of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. War, one felt, was incompatible with a man for whom prudence had become not so much a watchword as the nervous tic of a genteel Tourette. The mongering of war sits uncomfortably alongside fiscal responsibility, which is why many voters may have assumed that Brown would draw a line under the adventuring of his predecessor and quietly withdraw our troops from theatres of war with the discretion of an impresario closing a West End flop.
How wrong we all were.
Brown, it is true, is no wartime leader. One cannot imagine Churchill, or Thatcher, or Blair, presiding over a country at war without the occasionally morale-raising speech, the shake of the flag, the salute to the forces. Brown acts, however, like someone for whom war is conducted far away by strange and distant relatives.
It is an impression that can only have been fostered by Blair's own remoteness. One imagines Tony to have been like as a small boy at boarding school writing reluctant postcards to a disciplinarian and slightly mad aunt. "UN nice, food okay, send more money." "Thank you for the seedcake, dug out a rabbit hole on Saturday, send more money." "Met the president, going to war, send more money."
Sat at home with this collection of haikuesque epistles, the dismal Gordon could only have thought of statesmanship as something that happened to other people in distant lands. Mrs. Brown's little boy - admitted to Edinburgh University by the age of sixteen when most of his peers would have been getting their prefect badges and first serious girlfriends - continued along the sad little road upon which his feet had long ago been set.
No war for Gordon. No prefect badge for Gordon. Gordon excused school sport on account of a nasty injury incurred during rugby.
The result is a man gazing uncomprehendingly at war through a window-pane. When a crisis occurs for which he feels himself prepared (if, for example, someone is needed to pass billions of pounds across the table to the banking fraternity) Brown is the man for the job.
But war is something to which he takes no principled exception and to which he can make not the least practical contribution.
Helicopters? The brass might have more luck asking for seedcake.
It used to be inferred from his sullen silence on the subject that Gordon Brown was no supporter of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. War, one felt, was incompatible with a man for whom prudence had become not so much a watchword as the nervous tic of a genteel Tourette. The mongering of war sits uncomfortably alongside fiscal responsibility, which is why many voters may have assumed that Brown would draw a line under the adventuring of his predecessor and quietly withdraw our troops from theatres of war with the discretion of an impresario closing a West End flop.
How wrong we all were.
Brown, it is true, is no wartime leader. One cannot imagine Churchill, or Thatcher, or Blair, presiding over a country at war without the occasionally morale-raising speech, the shake of the flag, the salute to the forces. Brown acts, however, like someone for whom war is conducted far away by strange and distant relatives.
It is an impression that can only have been fostered by Blair's own remoteness. One imagines Tony to have been like as a small boy at boarding school writing reluctant postcards to a disciplinarian and slightly mad aunt. "UN nice, food okay, send more money." "Thank you for the seedcake, dug out a rabbit hole on Saturday, send more money." "Met the president, going to war, send more money."
Sat at home with this collection of haikuesque epistles, the dismal Gordon could only have thought of statesmanship as something that happened to other people in distant lands. Mrs. Brown's little boy - admitted to Edinburgh University by the age of sixteen when most of his peers would have been getting their prefect badges and first serious girlfriends - continued along the sad little road upon which his feet had long ago been set.
No war for Gordon. No prefect badge for Gordon. Gordon excused school sport on account of a nasty injury incurred during rugby.
The result is a man gazing uncomprehendingly at war through a window-pane. When a crisis occurs for which he feels himself prepared (if, for example, someone is needed to pass billions of pounds across the table to the banking fraternity) Brown is the man for the job.
But war is something to which he takes no principled exception and to which he can make not the least practical contribution.
Helicopters? The brass might have more luck asking for seedcake.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
The Old School Ties That Bind
There was much hand-wringing yesterday as the results of a report commissioned by the Prime Minister were published. It seems that far from being a land founded on the guiding principles of liberty, egality and fraternity, Britain is increasingly controlled by a minority that has a hereditary grip on society.
For example, if your parents paid for your education at an independent school while additionally paying tax to support the education of others, you are likely to do the same.
Moreover, if you are born into a household that bears a disproportionate tax burden, then you too are likely to pay higher tax throughout your working life. Conversely, if you are born into a household that is a beneficiary of social welfare schemes, you too are likely to become a beneficiary of such schemes.
It seems like the dynastic poor have the entire system rigged!
The real worry here is not the curse that the middle classes are passing from generation, however, but the way in which this curse is becoming yet more severe. If your parents attended university free of charge, you are disproportionately likely to incur serious personal debt attempting to obtain a similar education.
If you have a public school education, you are also likely to face an elevated risk of suicide as a consequence of your increased likelihood of entering the notoriously self-destructive health professions.
The bad news just keeps coming.
We could, of course, look to the government to alleviate the misery experienced by many middle class households. Perhaps parents could be weaned off their dependency on private education by improving public sector education?
Perhaps, but the resources required to effect such a change make it more likely that the government will opt for an alternative policy of alleviating the burden of professional affluence by a staged programme of economic attrition and increased taxation. While tough choices may be ahead for Britain's politicians (memoirs or directorship? House of lords or television pundit?) they are hard at work ensuring that deciding between two alternative jobs is a worry that no Briton need face in the future.
We cannot hope ever to be as lucky as those who inherited the path of truancy from their fathers and forefathers, but it is not beyond belief that we may one day be able to say that Income Support is available to all, regardless of educational background.
For example, if your parents paid for your education at an independent school while additionally paying tax to support the education of others, you are likely to do the same.
Moreover, if you are born into a household that bears a disproportionate tax burden, then you too are likely to pay higher tax throughout your working life. Conversely, if you are born into a household that is a beneficiary of social welfare schemes, you too are likely to become a beneficiary of such schemes.
It seems like the dynastic poor have the entire system rigged!
The real worry here is not the curse that the middle classes are passing from generation, however, but the way in which this curse is becoming yet more severe. If your parents attended university free of charge, you are disproportionately likely to incur serious personal debt attempting to obtain a similar education.
If you have a public school education, you are also likely to face an elevated risk of suicide as a consequence of your increased likelihood of entering the notoriously self-destructive health professions.
The bad news just keeps coming.
We could, of course, look to the government to alleviate the misery experienced by many middle class households. Perhaps parents could be weaned off their dependency on private education by improving public sector education?
Perhaps, but the resources required to effect such a change make it more likely that the government will opt for an alternative policy of alleviating the burden of professional affluence by a staged programme of economic attrition and increased taxation. While tough choices may be ahead for Britain's politicians (memoirs or directorship? House of lords or television pundit?) they are hard at work ensuring that deciding between two alternative jobs is a worry that no Briton need face in the future.
We cannot hope ever to be as lucky as those who inherited the path of truancy from their fathers and forefathers, but it is not beyond belief that we may one day be able to say that Income Support is available to all, regardless of educational background.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
It Shouldn't Happen To A Dog
The naming of dogs, as T. S. Eliot once so nearly put it, is a difficult matter.
BNP supervillain Nick Griffin was interviewed by resident B.B.C. intellectual Andrew Marr at the weekend, encouraging the viewer to believe that a great unmasking was in the offing and that those darned meddlesome kids would be blamed at any minute for the would-be Great Dictator's fall. Having softened Griffin up with some tedious policy questions, however, Marr steadied himself for that last question ... the coup de grace. What are the names of Griffin's dogs?
Those, like Sordel, who had heard the story before were one step of the drama unfolding before their eyes, for Griffin's dogs (at least, according to widespread assertion) are called Anne and Frank. Griffin's jet-shoes and discombobulator ray could surely not save him now. The Resident Intellectual had the "genocidal racist" parked upon his own petard on the cusp of detonation.
Except, it turns out that the Griffin hounds are called Bella and Otto.
Now, I'm not sure where I heard that thing about Anne and Frank, but in retrospect it always sounded rather odd. As a thought experiment, the idea of an anti-Semite calling something that he intends to love, feed and exercise by a name that will call to mind a young Jewess does not seem especially likely. Unless Griffin actually bought the dogs to beat - an imputation that even his many detractors have yet to suggest - it would have made more sense for him to have named the pets Adolph and Eva.
Or perhaps, in the light of his patriotism, Oswald and Diana.
The problem is that one is only too ready to believe the worst of Griffin. When a man, with sober rationality, proposes sinking the ships of would-be immigrants, the views that he will espouse in public invite speculation as to the ones that he is concealing.
Gordon Brown for example, speaks of a future increase in public spending, when everyone knows that he is lying through his teeth and intends to cut it dramatically. In the light of this shameless and transparent neglect of the truth by a "mainstream" politician, no great leap of the imagination is required to hop from sinking ships to Arbeit macht frei.
So, perhaps Griffin is lying about the names of his dogs. Or perhaps he is lying about something considerably more sinister.
Either way, the more that Griffin is perceived to have been smeared by his unscrupulous opponents, the more likely it is that the electorate will be to discount even those accusations that have a sound basis in truth.
Which is a worry, because the tag that Griffin used most frequently when referring to those opponents was Liberal elitists.
And, to be perfectly honest (delightful though it might be to meet The Resident Intellectual) Sordel would not wish to do so at the cost of the bring the first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
BNP supervillain Nick Griffin was interviewed by resident B.B.C. intellectual Andrew Marr at the weekend, encouraging the viewer to believe that a great unmasking was in the offing and that those darned meddlesome kids would be blamed at any minute for the would-be Great Dictator's fall. Having softened Griffin up with some tedious policy questions, however, Marr steadied himself for that last question ... the coup de grace. What are the names of Griffin's dogs?
Those, like Sordel, who had heard the story before were one step of the drama unfolding before their eyes, for Griffin's dogs (at least, according to widespread assertion) are called Anne and Frank. Griffin's jet-shoes and discombobulator ray could surely not save him now. The Resident Intellectual had the "genocidal racist" parked upon his own petard on the cusp of detonation.
Except, it turns out that the Griffin hounds are called Bella and Otto.
Now, I'm not sure where I heard that thing about Anne and Frank, but in retrospect it always sounded rather odd. As a thought experiment, the idea of an anti-Semite calling something that he intends to love, feed and exercise by a name that will call to mind a young Jewess does not seem especially likely. Unless Griffin actually bought the dogs to beat - an imputation that even his many detractors have yet to suggest - it would have made more sense for him to have named the pets Adolph and Eva.
Or perhaps, in the light of his patriotism, Oswald and Diana.
The problem is that one is only too ready to believe the worst of Griffin. When a man, with sober rationality, proposes sinking the ships of would-be immigrants, the views that he will espouse in public invite speculation as to the ones that he is concealing.
Gordon Brown for example, speaks of a future increase in public spending, when everyone knows that he is lying through his teeth and intends to cut it dramatically. In the light of this shameless and transparent neglect of the truth by a "mainstream" politician, no great leap of the imagination is required to hop from sinking ships to Arbeit macht frei.
So, perhaps Griffin is lying about the names of his dogs. Or perhaps he is lying about something considerably more sinister.
Either way, the more that Griffin is perceived to have been smeared by his unscrupulous opponents, the more likely it is that the electorate will be to discount even those accusations that have a sound basis in truth.
Which is a worry, because the tag that Griffin used most frequently when referring to those opponents was Liberal elitists.
And, to be perfectly honest (delightful though it might be to meet The Resident Intellectual) Sordel would not wish to do so at the cost of the bring the first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Just Like The Girl From Dr. No
Q: How many members of the government does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Two. Gordon Brown to change the light bulb and Peter Mandelson to explain that the bulb hasn't been changed.
Sordel is something of a fan of The (Formerly) Red Baron. In the past, government apologists have always adopted a fixed and ingratiating smile: the physical memory of something passing for charm. Kenneth Baker always had that smile. Ed Balls and his Stepford wife have that smile.
Baron M. does not have that smile.
He conveys to all watching that it is his painful duty to tolerate the stupid questions put to him and then (with an air of high moral seriousness somewhat inappropriate to a man hawking rotten fish) to set the interviewer right on a few points. Like a lidless headmaster exhausted by the folly of his charges his body language indicates that patience is at an end but rectitude in plentiful supply. The man is unflagging, indomitable: like the shapeshifting terminator and just as Protean.
We are only just getting started on his virtues, however, for Baron M. is also the consummate survivor of British politics. If there is a global nuclear war the only things left alive will be the cockroaches and him, but the cockroaches will lack the capacity to celebrate their victory. When Baron M. goes home at the end of the day there must be some fleeting moment (perhaps shortly before, perhaps shortly after turning off the light) when he indulges in a stiff but passionate dance of victory. One can imagine him silhouetted against a window frame, gyrating in unholy exaltation at the thought of his perennial return to power.
Surely every jilted lover has dreamt of the moment when his or her lover would come crawling back for that moment of jubilant closure. Is there a line in Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" that would disqualify it as Baron M. personal anthem? Yet when The (F.) R. B. walked in and found Gordon with that sad look upon his face, he neither crumbled nor lay down & died ... nor declared that he was saving all his lovin' for someone who's lovin' him. The love of Baron M. is boundless, and extends even to a stricken foe.
He walked on the water while the sharks were coming for Brown.
So how can one not admire Baron M.? Here is a man who - given a sow's ear - attempts to make a silk purse: a man who never encounters excrement without having a can of Mr. Sheen at the ready. His attitude is Can Do. His personal motto is The Difficult We Do Right Now, Winning The Election May Take A Little Time.
What's not to like?
A: Two. Gordon Brown to change the light bulb and Peter Mandelson to explain that the bulb hasn't been changed.
Sordel is something of a fan of The (Formerly) Red Baron. In the past, government apologists have always adopted a fixed and ingratiating smile: the physical memory of something passing for charm. Kenneth Baker always had that smile. Ed Balls and his Stepford wife have that smile.
Baron M. does not have that smile.
He conveys to all watching that it is his painful duty to tolerate the stupid questions put to him and then (with an air of high moral seriousness somewhat inappropriate to a man hawking rotten fish) to set the interviewer right on a few points. Like a lidless headmaster exhausted by the folly of his charges his body language indicates that patience is at an end but rectitude in plentiful supply. The man is unflagging, indomitable: like the shapeshifting terminator and just as Protean.
We are only just getting started on his virtues, however, for Baron M. is also the consummate survivor of British politics. If there is a global nuclear war the only things left alive will be the cockroaches and him, but the cockroaches will lack the capacity to celebrate their victory. When Baron M. goes home at the end of the day there must be some fleeting moment (perhaps shortly before, perhaps shortly after turning off the light) when he indulges in a stiff but passionate dance of victory. One can imagine him silhouetted against a window frame, gyrating in unholy exaltation at the thought of his perennial return to power.
Surely every jilted lover has dreamt of the moment when his or her lover would come crawling back for that moment of jubilant closure. Is there a line in Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" that would disqualify it as Baron M. personal anthem? Yet when The (F.) R. B. walked in and found Gordon with that sad look upon his face, he neither crumbled nor lay down & died ... nor declared that he was saving all his lovin' for someone who's lovin' him. The love of Baron M. is boundless, and extends even to a stricken foe.
He walked on the water while the sharks were coming for Brown.
So how can one not admire Baron M.? Here is a man who - given a sow's ear - attempts to make a silk purse: a man who never encounters excrement without having a can of Mr. Sheen at the ready. His attitude is Can Do. His personal motto is The Difficult We Do Right Now, Winning The Election May Take A Little Time.
What's not to like?
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Hide & Seek
Occasional readers of this blog may have come to recognise that it is only with great irritation and self-reproach that Sordel condescends to respond to the Pervasive Evanescent.
Nevertheless, the P. E. is always with us, and so it is that I hang my head in anticipatory shame and turn my attention to: Wimbledon coverage on the B.B.C.
(Just be grateful that I am not watching Big Brother this year.)
The stereotypical depiction of an audience watching a tennis match involves the swivelling of eyeballs right and left at regular intervals, and so it is with the B.B.C.: from One to Two and Two to One the audience is invited to pop with the grace of every serve and volley. "Viewers hoping to see the end of this rally should turn to our coverage on B.B.C. Two" smirks the elusive Sue Barker.
Thank God for remote controls, or it would be more exercise than frail flesh can stand.
Worse still, however, is when the entire channel switches channels. You know that moment when a train pulls out of a station and it seems for a second as though the entire world is moving around you? During Wimbledon, that illusion becomes reality. Rather than switch tennis from 1 to 2 they sometimes switch all other programming from 1 to 2 instead.
Try complaining to the B.B.C. about this (go on, I dare you) and your whining, self-pitying epistle about missing The Supersizers do ... The Fifties because Crimewatch has broken & entered into B.B.C. Two will almost certainly be read out on the air. Shortly thereafter, a B.B.C. "executive" will explain (as one addressing a small and exceptionally dim child) that providing coverage of a live sporting event will inevitably mean adjustments to the schedule.
S/he will then go on to point out (as broadcasters have been very keen to do over the last 24 hours) that 12 million people watched Murray's so-called "epic" five-setter. (On which subject, tell it to the Greeks ... they were ten years outside the gates of Troy and knocking a fluffy ball over a net for four hours doesn't compare.)
12 million people can't, it seems, be wrong, even when four million of them are fruitlessly waiting for Crimewatch, two million of them are watching under protest having planned to watch The Supersizers do ... The Fifties and another three million or so are imprisoned by B.B.C. One having earlier thrown their remote controls out of the window in frustration.
Come to think about it, there must be a sizable proportion of the population who can only receive B.B.C. One. That's the only thing that would explain why anyone is watching it in the first place.
Nevertheless, the P. E. is always with us, and so it is that I hang my head in anticipatory shame and turn my attention to: Wimbledon coverage on the B.B.C.
(Just be grateful that I am not watching Big Brother this year.)
The stereotypical depiction of an audience watching a tennis match involves the swivelling of eyeballs right and left at regular intervals, and so it is with the B.B.C.: from One to Two and Two to One the audience is invited to pop with the grace of every serve and volley. "Viewers hoping to see the end of this rally should turn to our coverage on B.B.C. Two" smirks the elusive Sue Barker.
Thank God for remote controls, or it would be more exercise than frail flesh can stand.
Worse still, however, is when the entire channel switches channels. You know that moment when a train pulls out of a station and it seems for a second as though the entire world is moving around you? During Wimbledon, that illusion becomes reality. Rather than switch tennis from 1 to 2 they sometimes switch all other programming from 1 to 2 instead.
Try complaining to the B.B.C. about this (go on, I dare you) and your whining, self-pitying epistle about missing The Supersizers do ... The Fifties because Crimewatch has broken & entered into B.B.C. Two will almost certainly be read out on the air. Shortly thereafter, a B.B.C. "executive" will explain (as one addressing a small and exceptionally dim child) that providing coverage of a live sporting event will inevitably mean adjustments to the schedule.
S/he will then go on to point out (as broadcasters have been very keen to do over the last 24 hours) that 12 million people watched Murray's so-called "epic" five-setter. (On which subject, tell it to the Greeks ... they were ten years outside the gates of Troy and knocking a fluffy ball over a net for four hours doesn't compare.)
12 million people can't, it seems, be wrong, even when four million of them are fruitlessly waiting for Crimewatch, two million of them are watching under protest having planned to watch The Supersizers do ... The Fifties and another three million or so are imprisoned by B.B.C. One having earlier thrown their remote controls out of the window in frustration.
Come to think about it, there must be a sizable proportion of the population who can only receive B.B.C. One. That's the only thing that would explain why anyone is watching it in the first place.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Elvis Has Just Left The Building
Zappa! thou should'st be living at this hour.
Satire tends to stop at the water's edge when it comes to the recent death of the good, the bad and the ugly. Jade Goody, of whom there was much to be said to the detriment, still flutters in angel's wings with a halo, and now there is another angel (possibly black, possibly white) fluttering beside her in the firmament. How wrong was Shakespeare when he wrote that "The evil men do lives after them; / The good is oft interred with their bones."
Frank Zappa, of course, also died prematurely: shortly before his fifty-third birthday. Unlike those of Goody and Jackson his life was not beset with even the shadow of scandal, but such was his relentless irreverence that he was minded to scourge the famous even when more prudent tongues fell silent. Back when the worst thing you could say about Michael Jackson was that he had too much plastic surgery, Zappa sang about it. Almost certainly, he would have sung about the other stuff as well.
And why not?
My sticking point with Jackson is not that he shares a sub-genre of adolescent comedy with Gary Glitter but this. Imagine that a trusted friend of yours, a man in his 40s whom you had known many years, told you that he occasionally shared his bed with a child unrelated to him. Then imagine that his reason for doing so was merely preference, recreation ... personal enjoyment. Imagine your reaction: incredulity? bewilderment? suspicion? condemnation?
Not, surely, worshipful indulgence.
Yet Jackson was not the trusted friend of the majority of the people now sobbing on television to the delight of the news editors. Even before he ran into scandal, he was regarded as a bizarre eccentric: a man more properly described as infantile than childlike. Even at his best (and it is for once not an exaggeration to say that his best was great) his strengths did not lie in singing or songwriting. The only ability that he held to an extraordinary degree was to command a stage and dance.
The bathos is all there in his title. King of Pop. What next, The Emperor of Ice-Cream?
Of course, thanks in no small part to Quincy Jones, Jackson did record some great singles. To be honest, I've always had a soft spot for "Rock and Roll parts 1 & 2", "I'm the Leader of the Gang (I Am)" and even "I Love You Love Me Love" as well. And we certainly owe a debt of gratitude to Phil Spector for the many classics in which he played a part, although our debt does not quite extend to unlocking his cell door.
Much more was proved against Spector and Glitter than was ever proved against The Artist Formerly Known As Wacko.
But, as tributes flood in, I wouldn't recommend that we let all our former doubts get washed away in the flood.
Satire tends to stop at the water's edge when it comes to the recent death of the good, the bad and the ugly. Jade Goody, of whom there was much to be said to the detriment, still flutters in angel's wings with a halo, and now there is another angel (possibly black, possibly white) fluttering beside her in the firmament. How wrong was Shakespeare when he wrote that "The evil men do lives after them; / The good is oft interred with their bones."
Frank Zappa, of course, also died prematurely: shortly before his fifty-third birthday. Unlike those of Goody and Jackson his life was not beset with even the shadow of scandal, but such was his relentless irreverence that he was minded to scourge the famous even when more prudent tongues fell silent. Back when the worst thing you could say about Michael Jackson was that he had too much plastic surgery, Zappa sang about it. Almost certainly, he would have sung about the other stuff as well.
And why not?
My sticking point with Jackson is not that he shares a sub-genre of adolescent comedy with Gary Glitter but this. Imagine that a trusted friend of yours, a man in his 40s whom you had known many years, told you that he occasionally shared his bed with a child unrelated to him. Then imagine that his reason for doing so was merely preference, recreation ... personal enjoyment. Imagine your reaction: incredulity? bewilderment? suspicion? condemnation?
Not, surely, worshipful indulgence.
Yet Jackson was not the trusted friend of the majority of the people now sobbing on television to the delight of the news editors. Even before he ran into scandal, he was regarded as a bizarre eccentric: a man more properly described as infantile than childlike. Even at his best (and it is for once not an exaggeration to say that his best was great) his strengths did not lie in singing or songwriting. The only ability that he held to an extraordinary degree was to command a stage and dance.
The bathos is all there in his title. King of Pop. What next, The Emperor of Ice-Cream?
Of course, thanks in no small part to Quincy Jones, Jackson did record some great singles. To be honest, I've always had a soft spot for "Rock and Roll parts 1 & 2", "I'm the Leader of the Gang (I Am)" and even "I Love You Love Me Love" as well. And we certainly owe a debt of gratitude to Phil Spector for the many classics in which he played a part, although our debt does not quite extend to unlocking his cell door.
Much more was proved against Spector and Glitter than was ever proved against The Artist Formerly Known As Wacko.
But, as tributes flood in, I wouldn't recommend that we let all our former doubts get washed away in the flood.
Monday, June 22, 2009
The Mouldering Edifice
They're cranking open the roof of the laboratory at Labour Central Office again and praying for a stormy night.
It is a source of amazement to me that Margaret Beckett is regarded as a serious candidate for the role of Speaker. Were Russell Brand to stand for election as Commissioner for Standards in Broadcasting, there is a slim chance that he might defy expectations and not mention his willy in the acceptance speech. There is, however, no chance at all that Mags would reform the Commons. She is the steady-as-you-go-Lads-and-you'll-be-needing-those-spoons-for-gravy candidate.
This is, after all, a woman who actually managed to have a claim for expenses declined by the Fees Office. So incompetent was her fleecing of the public purse that she actually put in a receipt for having her pergola painted. Officials accustomed to swallowing camels strained out this gnat, so the patched horror was required to dip into her own resources.
Is it any wonder that her campaign slogan is "No Gazebo Left Behind"?
John Bercow, another front runner for the Speaker's job, is regarded (when standing next to Margaret Becket) as a reform candidate, but is in fact a member of the "£23,083 Club": those members distinguished for having claimed the maximum allowable in '07-08. The man does backflips for fish and was forced to write out a cheque for £6,508 at about the same time that his colleagues were shoving thick copies of Hansard down their breeches in expectation of a caning from the Beak.
All of which leaves Ann Widdecombe (the Have I Got News candidate) looking surprisingly acceptable for the role. HIGNFY is, you will recall, the route by which Boris Johnson managed to get elected as London Mayor. On the principle that brand recognition is better than a glowing c.v., Miss Widdecombe becomes the natural People's Choice.
Moreover, she actually managed to make it into The Telegraph's "Saints" section. The poor thing actually commutes to London and doesn't claim for a second home at all.
So she won't win it.
By the time you read this, the issue will probably have been settled, but informed rumour (i.e. baseless speculation) has it that it is the Goldilocks candidate - George (Not Too Hot, Not Too Cold But Just Right) Young - who may yet be dragged protesting to the Speaker's chair. Another member of the £23,083 Club, he has nevertheless avoided the whiff of scandal thus far and does not require a bolt of lightning for reanimation.
On the whole, though, it would be somehow fitting were the Speaker to require the periodic reattachment of limbs. The stench of recent disinterrment would be a reminder to Gordon Brown that he long ago traded the sweet smell of success for that of impending ruin.
It is a source of amazement to me that Margaret Beckett is regarded as a serious candidate for the role of Speaker. Were Russell Brand to stand for election as Commissioner for Standards in Broadcasting, there is a slim chance that he might defy expectations and not mention his willy in the acceptance speech. There is, however, no chance at all that Mags would reform the Commons. She is the steady-as-you-go-Lads-and-you'll-be-needing-those-spoons-for-gravy candidate.
This is, after all, a woman who actually managed to have a claim for expenses declined by the Fees Office. So incompetent was her fleecing of the public purse that she actually put in a receipt for having her pergola painted. Officials accustomed to swallowing camels strained out this gnat, so the patched horror was required to dip into her own resources.
Is it any wonder that her campaign slogan is "No Gazebo Left Behind"?
John Bercow, another front runner for the Speaker's job, is regarded (when standing next to Margaret Becket) as a reform candidate, but is in fact a member of the "£23,083 Club": those members distinguished for having claimed the maximum allowable in '07-08. The man does backflips for fish and was forced to write out a cheque for £6,508 at about the same time that his colleagues were shoving thick copies of Hansard down their breeches in expectation of a caning from the Beak.
All of which leaves Ann Widdecombe (the Have I Got News candidate) looking surprisingly acceptable for the role. HIGNFY is, you will recall, the route by which Boris Johnson managed to get elected as London Mayor. On the principle that brand recognition is better than a glowing c.v., Miss Widdecombe becomes the natural People's Choice.
Moreover, she actually managed to make it into The Telegraph's "Saints" section. The poor thing actually commutes to London and doesn't claim for a second home at all.
So she won't win it.
By the time you read this, the issue will probably have been settled, but informed rumour (i.e. baseless speculation) has it that it is the Goldilocks candidate - George (Not Too Hot, Not Too Cold But Just Right) Young - who may yet be dragged protesting to the Speaker's chair. Another member of the £23,083 Club, he has nevertheless avoided the whiff of scandal thus far and does not require a bolt of lightning for reanimation.
On the whole, though, it would be somehow fitting were the Speaker to require the periodic reattachment of limbs. The stench of recent disinterrment would be a reminder to Gordon Brown that he long ago traded the sweet smell of success for that of impending ruin.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
On The Whole, Not To Be
Watching bad Shakespeare is a misery from which only an interval can set one free. Thus it was that Sordel & Party streamed eagerly from Wyndham's Theatre and spared themselves further hours of Jude Law's Hamlet.
Hamlet is something of a star vehicle, but here that logic has been taken to an extraordinary degree. Kevin McNally, more than capable of a memorable villain, seemed to be under the misapprehension that Claudius is a bank manager. Penelope Wilton, one of the better actresses of her generation, stood rooted to the spot like a debutante startlet uncertain as to whether she had hit her mark. Neither appeared to have benefited from any actual direction, while lesser-known members of the staff looked like sixth-formers struggling to shine in a below-par school production. In the group scenes lines were spoken withBREATHLESSdeterminationANDrandomemphasis: thrown away in a bid to get back to Law's prince and another interminable soliloquy.
Law himself chose an interesting way to dramatise the dilemma of action and thought. With a pantherish physicality he prowled the stage (frankly at his best when miming a crab or squatting on his haunches), spitting out most of his lines (replete with jarring misreadings) in an effort to get to the next good bit of verse. Once he arrived there, he became ruminative and lifeless, like a teenage Lothario unrolling his poetry to a besotted paramour. Perversely, he was actually the best thing in the production, and on occasion (such as his interrogation of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern) actually quite good.
But the times when Law was at his best were not the things for which one goes to see Hamlet.
The blame for all this must line with the Michael Grandage, who delivered one of the best Shakespearean productions that I have ever seen with Chiwetel Ejiofor's Othello at the Warehouse yet has seemed all at sea at the Donmar's temporary home. Kenneth Branagh evidently received good notices for Ivanov, but the play was dismal and unconvincing. Judi Dench found herself mired in one of the most celebrated turkeys of the decade in Mishima's Madame de Sade; not a critic had a kind word to say about it. In both cases, however, the comparative unfamiliarity of the material kept Sordel in his seat until the final curtain.
But Shakespeare - especially Hamlet - is so well known to its audience that once you've seen one act you have pretty much seen the entire thing. This isn't team sports: a stern talking-to from a coach at half time is hardly going to teach the cast how to speak poetry.
Inevitably, the weaknesses of the production will raise further questions about the value of productions that have become focused on headline-grabbing casting, yet in this case Denmark was rotten from the top of the bill to the bottom. When not a single actor shines in a production, you can't blame the star.
But you can walk out.
Hamlet is something of a star vehicle, but here that logic has been taken to an extraordinary degree. Kevin McNally, more than capable of a memorable villain, seemed to be under the misapprehension that Claudius is a bank manager. Penelope Wilton, one of the better actresses of her generation, stood rooted to the spot like a debutante startlet uncertain as to whether she had hit her mark. Neither appeared to have benefited from any actual direction, while lesser-known members of the staff looked like sixth-formers struggling to shine in a below-par school production. In the group scenes lines were spoken withBREATHLESSdeterminationANDrandomemphasis: thrown away in a bid to get back to Law's prince and another interminable soliloquy.
Law himself chose an interesting way to dramatise the dilemma of action and thought. With a pantherish physicality he prowled the stage (frankly at his best when miming a crab or squatting on his haunches), spitting out most of his lines (replete with jarring misreadings) in an effort to get to the next good bit of verse. Once he arrived there, he became ruminative and lifeless, like a teenage Lothario unrolling his poetry to a besotted paramour. Perversely, he was actually the best thing in the production, and on occasion (such as his interrogation of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern) actually quite good.
But the times when Law was at his best were not the things for which one goes to see Hamlet.
The blame for all this must line with the Michael Grandage, who delivered one of the best Shakespearean productions that I have ever seen with Chiwetel Ejiofor's Othello at the Warehouse yet has seemed all at sea at the Donmar's temporary home. Kenneth Branagh evidently received good notices for Ivanov, but the play was dismal and unconvincing. Judi Dench found herself mired in one of the most celebrated turkeys of the decade in Mishima's Madame de Sade; not a critic had a kind word to say about it. In both cases, however, the comparative unfamiliarity of the material kept Sordel in his seat until the final curtain.
But Shakespeare - especially Hamlet - is so well known to its audience that once you've seen one act you have pretty much seen the entire thing. This isn't team sports: a stern talking-to from a coach at half time is hardly going to teach the cast how to speak poetry.
Inevitably, the weaknesses of the production will raise further questions about the value of productions that have become focused on headline-grabbing casting, yet in this case Denmark was rotten from the top of the bill to the bottom. When not a single actor shines in a production, you can't blame the star.
But you can walk out.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Topless Tennis Star In Magazine Cover Shock
Well, I say magazine. It's The Radio Times. Or RadioTimes, as a cunning rebranding that I somehow missed in the (probably) several years since it was made would have it.
The tennis star in question is Andy Murray, who is standing in his white shorts with a yearning expression in his eyes supposedly indicative of a thirst for future sporting accolades. Unfortunately, given his somewhat unnecessary pectoral exhibition, it looks to me rather like the expression of longing found in the eyes of a small boy who has just been told that the other team is Shirts.
Yes, Wimbledon is upon us again: a sporting fixture that Sordel used to watch for hours a day as a wee bairn but which has rather passed him by in the last decade or two. Grim psychological tussles between well-matched opponents used to be the stuff of summer afternoons back before the opening rounds became a series of thrashings delivered by the top seeds. Generally speaking, tennis up until the quarter finals (at least) is currently a game that might better be resolved by an extended system of byes.
As ever, though, a patriotic heart beats in the breast of the Great British Public when one of our lads takes to the court. Murray has inherited the mantle of Henman (and seemingly, in this cover shot, wishes that it was of a more tangible form) so we will all be rooting for him, while the Scots gaze frostily Southward and complain that the English are misappropriating their tennis stars as avariciously as we previously swiped their oil.
Meanwhile, our nation continues to reel at the shock of success in Formula 1, one of the few sports where we have a more or less unbroken record of comparative success. Lewis Hamilton ("och, Hamilton, he must ha' been a Scots boy") won last year and Jenson Button stands fair to displace him. There is a danger that those who chase the Union Jack wherever it may be flown in a sporting context (whipping themselves up into a chauvinistic fervour at our tremendous performance in the latest international tiddlywinks or dwarf-tossing competition) will hardly know which way to turn. Already party shops are reporting a shortage of white and red make-up in anticipation of the face-painting orgy that is bound to ensue.
For my part, I wish Murray well and (for reasons that perhaps do not need underlining) will be hoping for a future resurgence in the British Ladies' game.
The tennis star in question is Andy Murray, who is standing in his white shorts with a yearning expression in his eyes supposedly indicative of a thirst for future sporting accolades. Unfortunately, given his somewhat unnecessary pectoral exhibition, it looks to me rather like the expression of longing found in the eyes of a small boy who has just been told that the other team is Shirts.
Yes, Wimbledon is upon us again: a sporting fixture that Sordel used to watch for hours a day as a wee bairn but which has rather passed him by in the last decade or two. Grim psychological tussles between well-matched opponents used to be the stuff of summer afternoons back before the opening rounds became a series of thrashings delivered by the top seeds. Generally speaking, tennis up until the quarter finals (at least) is currently a game that might better be resolved by an extended system of byes.
As ever, though, a patriotic heart beats in the breast of the Great British Public when one of our lads takes to the court. Murray has inherited the mantle of Henman (and seemingly, in this cover shot, wishes that it was of a more tangible form) so we will all be rooting for him, while the Scots gaze frostily Southward and complain that the English are misappropriating their tennis stars as avariciously as we previously swiped their oil.
Meanwhile, our nation continues to reel at the shock of success in Formula 1, one of the few sports where we have a more or less unbroken record of comparative success. Lewis Hamilton ("och, Hamilton, he must ha' been a Scots boy") won last year and Jenson Button stands fair to displace him. There is a danger that those who chase the Union Jack wherever it may be flown in a sporting context (whipping themselves up into a chauvinistic fervour at our tremendous performance in the latest international tiddlywinks or dwarf-tossing competition) will hardly know which way to turn. Already party shops are reporting a shortage of white and red make-up in anticipation of the face-painting orgy that is bound to ensue.
For my part, I wish Murray well and (for reasons that perhaps do not need underlining) will be hoping for a future resurgence in the British Ladies' game.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Prophetic Top Trumps
Top five Old Testament prophets? Anyone?
Well, obviously Jonah rates highly on intelligence alone, but it is impossible to imagine him in the flesh without associating him with the strong smell of fish guts. On balance then, I'd have to give pride of place (as, incidentally, did the Israelites) to Elijah.
One of the most interesting stories about Elijah is his confrontation with the Priests of Baal: a gameshow of sorts in which, instead of getting over three oversized red balls, the contestants were required to prove whose god was the more powerful. Given that religious power within the Kingdom of Israel was at this point balanced on a knife-edge between Yahweh, the tribal god of the Israelites, and Baal, the tribal god of Queen Jezebel, the stakes were high.
The nature of the contest was to see which of the two gods (Yahweh or Baal) would accept the sacrifice of a bullock. The Priests of Baal (450 in number) might have done better to choose a task where they could bring their numerical supremacy to bear. A tug of war perhaps. Instead, they fell into Elijah's trap and spent the day doing the best that they could to entreat Baal to signal his acceptance of their sacrificial bullock, which he was required to do by setting it spontaneously alight.
During their vain attempts, Elijah mocked them for the benefit of the audience, saying "Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked." (Irreverence is not a modern invention.)
At the end of this, the Priests gave up, Elijah prepared his own altar (complete, one suspects, with mirrors and a large painted sign saying The Great Elijah) and arranged for his bullock to be inundated with twelve barrels of water (or, as even a mild cynic must suspect, lamp oil).
At this point Elijah called upon Yahweh, at which we are told that the following happened. "Then the fire of the LORD fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that [was] in the trench."
Whether Elijah kept his eyebrows is unrecorded in Biblical history.
Now this story may seem at first to be of little consequence, but it seems to me that it is one of the most important episodes in the history of religion.
Yahweh is a water god: He moves on the face of the waters; He drowns the world; He parts the Red Sea; He brings water out of a stone; He turns water into wine; He walks on water. As befits the god of a desert tribe, He is most strongly associated with the medium that brings life, and when He deals with fire it is often (not exclusively, but often) in opposition to it, as when the three men emerge unharmed from the burning fiery furnace.
Elijah does not only defeat the Priests of Baal, but - by setting a task to be answered by fire - he also dramatises the crucial step for a monotheistic religion from an elemental deity to an all-encompassing God, which is the basis of monotheism. And monotheism is both the greatest strength and greatest weakness of the religions that adopt it.
While I will admit, therefore, that a cackling voiceover from Richard Hammond would probably have improved things ... that's what I call entertainment.
Well, obviously Jonah rates highly on intelligence alone, but it is impossible to imagine him in the flesh without associating him with the strong smell of fish guts. On balance then, I'd have to give pride of place (as, incidentally, did the Israelites) to Elijah.
One of the most interesting stories about Elijah is his confrontation with the Priests of Baal: a gameshow of sorts in which, instead of getting over three oversized red balls, the contestants were required to prove whose god was the more powerful. Given that religious power within the Kingdom of Israel was at this point balanced on a knife-edge between Yahweh, the tribal god of the Israelites, and Baal, the tribal god of Queen Jezebel, the stakes were high.
The nature of the contest was to see which of the two gods (Yahweh or Baal) would accept the sacrifice of a bullock. The Priests of Baal (450 in number) might have done better to choose a task where they could bring their numerical supremacy to bear. A tug of war perhaps. Instead, they fell into Elijah's trap and spent the day doing the best that they could to entreat Baal to signal his acceptance of their sacrificial bullock, which he was required to do by setting it spontaneously alight.
During their vain attempts, Elijah mocked them for the benefit of the audience, saying "Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked." (Irreverence is not a modern invention.)
At the end of this, the Priests gave up, Elijah prepared his own altar (complete, one suspects, with mirrors and a large painted sign saying The Great Elijah) and arranged for his bullock to be inundated with twelve barrels of water (or, as even a mild cynic must suspect, lamp oil).
At this point Elijah called upon Yahweh, at which we are told that the following happened. "Then the fire of the LORD fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that [was] in the trench."
Whether Elijah kept his eyebrows is unrecorded in Biblical history.
Now this story may seem at first to be of little consequence, but it seems to me that it is one of the most important episodes in the history of religion.
Yahweh is a water god: He moves on the face of the waters; He drowns the world; He parts the Red Sea; He brings water out of a stone; He turns water into wine; He walks on water. As befits the god of a desert tribe, He is most strongly associated with the medium that brings life, and when He deals with fire it is often (not exclusively, but often) in opposition to it, as when the three men emerge unharmed from the burning fiery furnace.
Elijah does not only defeat the Priests of Baal, but - by setting a task to be answered by fire - he also dramatises the crucial step for a monotheistic religion from an elemental deity to an all-encompassing God, which is the basis of monotheism. And monotheism is both the greatest strength and greatest weakness of the religions that adopt it.
While I will admit, therefore, that a cackling voiceover from Richard Hammond would probably have improved things ... that's what I call entertainment.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Black Balls For White Supremacists?
Short of having a peerage, could Gordon Brown be less democratic? As an MP for a Scottish constituency he, like so many of his auld acquaintances, owes his place in the Commons to a West Lothian bye. He was never elected to his place as leader of the Labour Party, and never elected to be prime minister either. If he wants someone in the cabinet but can't get them elected (such as Peter Mandelson) he hands them a peerage. Moreover, at a time when it is painfully obvious to everyone that he can command the support neither of the country nor his own party (nor, quite possibly, his own cabinet), he clings on to power with the same Nanny-knows-best logic as his predecessor.
This is the man showing a new zeal for parliamentary reform.
It is interesting that he - and others - have been attacking the old abuses of the Commons with the emblem of a "gentleman's club". This comparison suits the class war mentality that he and Baron Mandelson seem to believe plays to a Great British Public resentful of privilege, yet it also seems a remarkably thin comparison. Gentlemen's clubs are, it is true, known for their leather armchairs, but extensive redecoration of the Commons is scarcely affordable, let alone necessary. Clubs are also known for their sleepy atmosphere, but - given the tireless energy that the members have been putting into their expenses - clearly there has been little time for napping between debates.
Moreover, it is worth bearing in mind that gentlemen's clubs supply a luxury that is paid for by its members, and not taxed out of the pockets of those milling outside its doors. People don't enter gentlemen's clubs to make money; they generally have it on the way in and somewhat less of it on the way out.
Presumably the basis of the comparison, then, is this: clubs are exclusive. They keep out the people who don't "fit".
It is interesting, then, that recent news has taught us a lot more about the ways of democracy with regard to the BNP. Evidently the other political parties have been colluding to run additional candidates in areas of local BNP strength in order to dilute their vote. There is, in short, a conspiracy against the BNP. When Nick Griffin said last night that the egg-throwers were only doing what the major political parties wanted them to, he was far-right on the money.
Now, I can't say that I like the BNP much, but amongst the reasons for Hitler's rise a prominent one was the defects of the Weimar Republic, and the roots causes of support for the BNP are not so distant. The Labour government spent years whipping up anti-Islamic sentiment in an effort to persuade us that fighting a war abroad was the only way to prevent domestic terrorism here. It was shameful fear-mongering, and has resulted in a country where dislike of foreigners now has an institutional root. Open the door to xenophobia (for contemptible political ends) and racist politicians will squeeze through.
Another factor to consider here is politicians tend to be made in the image of the tactics used against them, and the eggs are only the latest of the harassment used upon Nick Griffin, who has been unsuccessfully prosecuted for inciting racial hatred twice and was, of course, prevented from attending the vote count on Sunday at his first attempt by the mob demonstrating outside.
According to Wikipedia, Nick Griffin has a Boxing Blue from Cambridge. He apparently took up the sport after a "brawl with an anti-fascist". He will learn and employ tactics appropriate to those used upon him.
It goes without saying that there is no moral equivalency between racial hatred and spangly loo-seats but I do have a nagging fear that the true threat to the British political system is not the people clamouring to get into our parliament but the people fighting so ignobly to stay there.
This is the man showing a new zeal for parliamentary reform.
It is interesting that he - and others - have been attacking the old abuses of the Commons with the emblem of a "gentleman's club". This comparison suits the class war mentality that he and Baron Mandelson seem to believe plays to a Great British Public resentful of privilege, yet it also seems a remarkably thin comparison. Gentlemen's clubs are, it is true, known for their leather armchairs, but extensive redecoration of the Commons is scarcely affordable, let alone necessary. Clubs are also known for their sleepy atmosphere, but - given the tireless energy that the members have been putting into their expenses - clearly there has been little time for napping between debates.
Moreover, it is worth bearing in mind that gentlemen's clubs supply a luxury that is paid for by its members, and not taxed out of the pockets of those milling outside its doors. People don't enter gentlemen's clubs to make money; they generally have it on the way in and somewhat less of it on the way out.
Presumably the basis of the comparison, then, is this: clubs are exclusive. They keep out the people who don't "fit".
It is interesting, then, that recent news has taught us a lot more about the ways of democracy with regard to the BNP. Evidently the other political parties have been colluding to run additional candidates in areas of local BNP strength in order to dilute their vote. There is, in short, a conspiracy against the BNP. When Nick Griffin said last night that the egg-throwers were only doing what the major political parties wanted them to, he was far-right on the money.
Now, I can't say that I like the BNP much, but amongst the reasons for Hitler's rise a prominent one was the defects of the Weimar Republic, and the roots causes of support for the BNP are not so distant. The Labour government spent years whipping up anti-Islamic sentiment in an effort to persuade us that fighting a war abroad was the only way to prevent domestic terrorism here. It was shameful fear-mongering, and has resulted in a country where dislike of foreigners now has an institutional root. Open the door to xenophobia (for contemptible political ends) and racist politicians will squeeze through.
Another factor to consider here is politicians tend to be made in the image of the tactics used against them, and the eggs are only the latest of the harassment used upon Nick Griffin, who has been unsuccessfully prosecuted for inciting racial hatred twice and was, of course, prevented from attending the vote count on Sunday at his first attempt by the mob demonstrating outside.
According to Wikipedia, Nick Griffin has a Boxing Blue from Cambridge. He apparently took up the sport after a "brawl with an anti-fascist". He will learn and employ tactics appropriate to those used upon him.
It goes without saying that there is no moral equivalency between racial hatred and spangly loo-seats but I do have a nagging fear that the true threat to the British political system is not the people clamouring to get into our parliament but the people fighting so ignobly to stay there.
Monday, June 8, 2009
Brownian Motion
So: the big result is in.
The charming thing about The Apprentice is that it isn't decided by a public vote. Going back to my earlier comments on elitism, we should celebrate an area of televisual competition in which victory is allocated solely on the basis of the decision of a single judge who (rightly or wrongly) is acknowledged as the expert. Generally unerring though Simon Cowell may be, he is still forced to share power with the two lesser lights on his various panels, and is then forced to submit their collective decision for ratification to the collectively tin ear of Britain. The future Lord Sugar stands alone; it is indeed his way or the highway.
Had the European elections been settled on a similar system, the BNP would probably not have won its first two seats last night. Someone (quite possibly - on the basis of his extensive experience of European voting systems - Graham Norton) would decide for us all, and the inevitable confusion that follows from allowing the Great British Public to settle any question of moment would have been avoided.
The downside of all this, however, would have been that the losers would not have been able to call upon an enormous range of fanciful excuses to explain their failure.
If you listen to the Labour faithful (as we must now describe Lord Mandelson, who has engineered the biggest turnaround since Saul stopped persecuting Christians and changed his initial letter to P) then we all want him and Gordon to get back to the serious business of sorting out the economy. The anti-Labour vote was seemingly a slap on the wrist delivered to all politicians but focused upon the ruling party. The vote for the BNP was cast by people too stupid to be trusted with the vote in the first place, who evidently have no idea that the BNP is a racist party. So, at least, run interpretations repeated last night with such unanimity that any teacher worth his salt would have inferred collusion.
This post hoc gerrymandering, in which the vote is explicated one way or another to suit the standpoints of the politicians, is what happens when the usual excuse for ignoring the British public - "the only poll that counts is the one held this week/next week/sometime/never" - is rendered fatuous by an election actually having taken place.
What we really want is someone with the authority of the soon-no-longer-to-be Surallan to tell us all Why I Fired Them. In the absence of that certainly, the paths of our political masters are as inscrutable as the movement of pollen particles in water.
We can only congratulate ourselves that so many of them have sunk without trace.
The charming thing about The Apprentice is that it isn't decided by a public vote. Going back to my earlier comments on elitism, we should celebrate an area of televisual competition in which victory is allocated solely on the basis of the decision of a single judge who (rightly or wrongly) is acknowledged as the expert. Generally unerring though Simon Cowell may be, he is still forced to share power with the two lesser lights on his various panels, and is then forced to submit their collective decision for ratification to the collectively tin ear of Britain. The future Lord Sugar stands alone; it is indeed his way or the highway.
Had the European elections been settled on a similar system, the BNP would probably not have won its first two seats last night. Someone (quite possibly - on the basis of his extensive experience of European voting systems - Graham Norton) would decide for us all, and the inevitable confusion that follows from allowing the Great British Public to settle any question of moment would have been avoided.
The downside of all this, however, would have been that the losers would not have been able to call upon an enormous range of fanciful excuses to explain their failure.
If you listen to the Labour faithful (as we must now describe Lord Mandelson, who has engineered the biggest turnaround since Saul stopped persecuting Christians and changed his initial letter to P) then we all want him and Gordon to get back to the serious business of sorting out the economy. The anti-Labour vote was seemingly a slap on the wrist delivered to all politicians but focused upon the ruling party. The vote for the BNP was cast by people too stupid to be trusted with the vote in the first place, who evidently have no idea that the BNP is a racist party. So, at least, run interpretations repeated last night with such unanimity that any teacher worth his salt would have inferred collusion.
This post hoc gerrymandering, in which the vote is explicated one way or another to suit the standpoints of the politicians, is what happens when the usual excuse for ignoring the British public - "the only poll that counts is the one held this week/next week/sometime/never" - is rendered fatuous by an election actually having taken place.
What we really want is someone with the authority of the soon-no-longer-to-be Surallan to tell us all Why I Fired Them. In the absence of that certainly, the paths of our political masters are as inscrutable as the movement of pollen particles in water.
We can only congratulate ourselves that so many of them have sunk without trace.
Friday, June 5, 2009
Reality TV
So, Big Brother started again last night, which rather confuses things.
For example: "The House this year will be a place for wholly unsurprising twists." Is that the Big Brother House or the House of Commons? "The General Public will lose interest in activities within The House unless they see arguments and intrigue." BB or HoC? "Voters will be throwing people out of The House until mid-Summer, when there will only be a handful of fame-hungry eccentrics left." BB or HoC?
It's so difficult to tell.
This year, the only way to stay in The House is evidently to shave off one's eyebrows and draw spectacles and a funny moustache on your face in permanent black marker. (No, I've stopped playing that game now.) Those who have watched the series in previous years will shrug and yawn at the tedium of watching an assortment of page 3 girls and homosexuals go into a studio very quickly and come out again very, very slowly.
Meanwhile, in the other House, the entertainment value is noticably higher but impossible to keep up with even in so evanescent a medium as a blog. Last night, as the polls closed, we discovered that the Minister for Eating Biscuits had resigned, or so it appeared on Breakfast Time today where the only video the BBC had managed to scrape together of James Purnell was of his conspicuously filling his face while Gordon Brown held forth of a topic of national importance to his left.
It wasn't so much the biscuits that were important to the video, I suppose, but his positioning as Brown's literal "right-hand man". Nevertheless, it was the biscuits that formed the crucial semiotic element of the picture, and I only infer that it was biscuits on which the future rebel was feasting based on the unlikelihood that cabinet meetings are supplied with anything else. It may have been custard creams that he was hitting with the urgency of a man who missed breakfast and last night's supper, but he may have been tucking in to a full thali with complementary popadum for all I know. Whichever, the BBC was keen to show that in that moment of contemplative mastication the future savour of treachery was developing.
Either that, or they couldn't find a better clip of him.
Newsnight, which begins so precisely after the end of Big Brother that a segue is implicit, covered the Purnell story in an extended programme, which would be laudable had the programme been extended to cover the Purnell story. Instead, it was extended to give viewers a preview of Newsnight's forthcoming coverage of the General Election.
That's right: Newsnight is beginning a year-long schedule of activities including: commentary from an American pollster and - wait for it! - three people sitting around a table talking about politics.
Watching someone shave of their eyebrows and draw spectacles and a funny moustache on their face suddenly doesn't sound so bad, does it?
To be fair, Newsnight does have one actual new idea, which is a Dragon's Den style series in which members of the public pitch political ideas to a panel of so-called experts, but that does go merely another step further to adding to our confusion. All we need is Surralan to step into the picture and ... oh ... this just in ...
Perhaps if the editors of Newsnight want to increase their viewing figures by speculating about the future occupants of The House a year out, they picked the wrong House to cover.
For example: "The House this year will be a place for wholly unsurprising twists." Is that the Big Brother House or the House of Commons? "The General Public will lose interest in activities within The House unless they see arguments and intrigue." BB or HoC? "Voters will be throwing people out of The House until mid-Summer, when there will only be a handful of fame-hungry eccentrics left." BB or HoC?
It's so difficult to tell.
This year, the only way to stay in The House is evidently to shave off one's eyebrows and draw spectacles and a funny moustache on your face in permanent black marker. (No, I've stopped playing that game now.) Those who have watched the series in previous years will shrug and yawn at the tedium of watching an assortment of page 3 girls and homosexuals go into a studio very quickly and come out again very, very slowly.
Meanwhile, in the other House, the entertainment value is noticably higher but impossible to keep up with even in so evanescent a medium as a blog. Last night, as the polls closed, we discovered that the Minister for Eating Biscuits had resigned, or so it appeared on Breakfast Time today where the only video the BBC had managed to scrape together of James Purnell was of his conspicuously filling his face while Gordon Brown held forth of a topic of national importance to his left.
It wasn't so much the biscuits that were important to the video, I suppose, but his positioning as Brown's literal "right-hand man". Nevertheless, it was the biscuits that formed the crucial semiotic element of the picture, and I only infer that it was biscuits on which the future rebel was feasting based on the unlikelihood that cabinet meetings are supplied with anything else. It may have been custard creams that he was hitting with the urgency of a man who missed breakfast and last night's supper, but he may have been tucking in to a full thali with complementary popadum for all I know. Whichever, the BBC was keen to show that in that moment of contemplative mastication the future savour of treachery was developing.
Either that, or they couldn't find a better clip of him.
Newsnight, which begins so precisely after the end of Big Brother that a segue is implicit, covered the Purnell story in an extended programme, which would be laudable had the programme been extended to cover the Purnell story. Instead, it was extended to give viewers a preview of Newsnight's forthcoming coverage of the General Election.
That's right: Newsnight is beginning a year-long schedule of activities including: commentary from an American pollster and - wait for it! - three people sitting around a table talking about politics.
Watching someone shave of their eyebrows and draw spectacles and a funny moustache on their face suddenly doesn't sound so bad, does it?
To be fair, Newsnight does have one actual new idea, which is a Dragon's Den style series in which members of the public pitch political ideas to a panel of so-called experts, but that does go merely another step further to adding to our confusion. All we need is Surralan to step into the picture and ... oh ... this just in ...
Perhaps if the editors of Newsnight want to increase their viewing figures by speculating about the future occupants of The House a year out, they picked the wrong House to cover.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
The Rat That Missed The Piper
Last night (in true Les Mis fashion) Sordel dreamed a dream, and in this dream the Labour Party presented one of those surreal it'll-never-happen European Election Broadcasts in which the spokesman was inappropriate to a surreal degree. You know the sort of thing ... talking giraffe, Lord Lucan, badger in spectacles and a hat?
Except that in this case it was Eddie Izzard. And it wasn't a dream.
Back in the days of Cool Britannia it used to be the case that Labour liked to adorn itself with celebrity bling because it was so widely supported that even the likes of Oasis felt that it could take the Blair shilling without, um, shilling too conspicuously. The cash-for-bangers Popular Vote is a nice little runaround for most of the year, but to show off one's success one does like a rock star for the one dry Saturday in July.
Unfortunately, at a time when even the cabinet are high-tailing it out of Dodge like a bunch of banditos with the posse on their tail, watching a celebrity endorsement is rather like seeing a bag lady in a moth-eaten mink coat. There is a definite suspicion that Izzard was bumbling through the studio improvising a brilliant monologue full of hilarious non sequiturs when Jacqui Smith handed him a mic before casting a nervous glance over her shoulder and bolting for the nearest exit.
"Tell them why you're voting Labour, Eddie!" a director must have hissed, mopping sweat from his brow like the producer of the last radio station in government hands in the midst of a South American military coup.
And, like the trouper that he evidently is, Izzard ventured upon a heroic defence of The Labour Party (circa 1948) while, out the back, the editors spliced in some fanciful propaganda in which pensioners complained that David Cameron was intending to take away their bus passes. Short of suggesting that David Cameron was bayonetting babies, the broadcast could not have been more traditional in its selection of canards.
Of course, it remains open to Izzard to claim in future years that it was all a wry, ironic joke. Or, for that matter, he may don a woman's weeds and vanish in the crowd.
It will be a poignant moment, however, when darting a quick, mascara'd glance around him from under a Quaker bonnet he comes face to face with Gordon Brown, similarly arrayed and wearing the same shade of lipstick.
__________________________________
Errata and Corrigendum
In a blog of 6th May, 2009, Sordel inadvertantly implied that Jacqui Smith "never would be missed". I wish to apologise to Mrs. Smith for any distress that this error may have caused either her or her family. What I should have said is that she never will be missed.
Except that in this case it was Eddie Izzard. And it wasn't a dream.
Back in the days of Cool Britannia it used to be the case that Labour liked to adorn itself with celebrity bling because it was so widely supported that even the likes of Oasis felt that it could take the Blair shilling without, um, shilling too conspicuously. The cash-for-bangers Popular Vote is a nice little runaround for most of the year, but to show off one's success one does like a rock star for the one dry Saturday in July.
Unfortunately, at a time when even the cabinet are high-tailing it out of Dodge like a bunch of banditos with the posse on their tail, watching a celebrity endorsement is rather like seeing a bag lady in a moth-eaten mink coat. There is a definite suspicion that Izzard was bumbling through the studio improvising a brilliant monologue full of hilarious non sequiturs when Jacqui Smith handed him a mic before casting a nervous glance over her shoulder and bolting for the nearest exit.
"Tell them why you're voting Labour, Eddie!" a director must have hissed, mopping sweat from his brow like the producer of the last radio station in government hands in the midst of a South American military coup.
And, like the trouper that he evidently is, Izzard ventured upon a heroic defence of The Labour Party (circa 1948) while, out the back, the editors spliced in some fanciful propaganda in which pensioners complained that David Cameron was intending to take away their bus passes. Short of suggesting that David Cameron was bayonetting babies, the broadcast could not have been more traditional in its selection of canards.
Of course, it remains open to Izzard to claim in future years that it was all a wry, ironic joke. Or, for that matter, he may don a woman's weeds and vanish in the crowd.
It will be a poignant moment, however, when darting a quick, mascara'd glance around him from under a Quaker bonnet he comes face to face with Gordon Brown, similarly arrayed and wearing the same shade of lipstick.
__________________________________
Errata and Corrigendum
In a blog of 6th May, 2009, Sordel inadvertantly implied that Jacqui Smith "never would be missed". I wish to apologise to Mrs. Smith for any distress that this error may have caused either her or her family. What I should have said is that she never will be missed.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Celebrating Diversity
One of John Zorn's leftfield music projects - Naked City - made its name from neck-jarring changes of direction that showed off both the skills of the musicians and a witty approach to the idea of genre. Given that much of Naked City's music is borderline unlistenable, you wouldn't expect to see them on a talent contest: certainly not one that might see in its final three a rather plain woman able to turn out a decent showtune, or a saxophonist with aspirations to become the next Kenny G. Remarkably, however, it turns out that Britain does have talent after all. Whether through the dark art of vote-rigging or a genuine outpouring of taste in the Great British Public, the winner of that ignoble television event was the dance counterpart of Naked City.
Sordel is something of a sucker for dance, being one of the last remaining people who would rather watch Riverdance than Stavros Flatley. Perhaps it comes of being part of the original Torville and Dean generation, but anything genuinely exciting in the dance line always reduces me to slack-jawed admiration, and three of the dance acts in the final of BGT were worthy of celebration. Diversity was the best of a rather fine trio: best not merely because they were incredibly polished and disciplined, but because of how carefully their act had been tailored for the stage on which they were performing.
As always with these stories, there is a deeper backstory that emerges once you look into it, for the Diversity that performed last night was drawing on the experience of a Diversity that is visible on that patient chronicler of entertainment evolution, YouTube. Viewing the video of their stunning performance at Streetdance '08 it is easy to see that the lean, crowd-pleasing routine that won BGT was the brilliantly-choreographed offspring of the muscular routine that wowed the street dance audience. The younger dancers - a clever seasoning to the street dance - were pushed into greater prominence for a mass audience, the gymnastic tumbling reined in, the cultural references gathered together for our collectively low attention-span.
This is the true vindication of the story, because while several of their competitors were examples of pure unvarnished talent (such as the genuinely staggering vocals of Shaheen), the success of Diversity was that of talent, intelligence, wit, experience, grace, determination and hour upon aching hour of rehearsal. While a victory for Susan Boyle would have gratified those for whom fame is a second national lottery, victory for Diversity reminded the rest of us that there are some fairly important steps between our sofas and the front pages of the tabloids.
It is highly unlikely that the cognoscenti will spend as many hours delving into the genius of Diversity as they have into the genius of John Zorn, but their virtues are consonant and worthy of comparison. The success of Diversity is a cheering reminder that great art finds a way to flourish in the most unpromising of soils.
Sordel is something of a sucker for dance, being one of the last remaining people who would rather watch Riverdance than Stavros Flatley. Perhaps it comes of being part of the original Torville and Dean generation, but anything genuinely exciting in the dance line always reduces me to slack-jawed admiration, and three of the dance acts in the final of BGT were worthy of celebration. Diversity was the best of a rather fine trio: best not merely because they were incredibly polished and disciplined, but because of how carefully their act had been tailored for the stage on which they were performing.
As always with these stories, there is a deeper backstory that emerges once you look into it, for the Diversity that performed last night was drawing on the experience of a Diversity that is visible on that patient chronicler of entertainment evolution, YouTube. Viewing the video of their stunning performance at Streetdance '08 it is easy to see that the lean, crowd-pleasing routine that won BGT was the brilliantly-choreographed offspring of the muscular routine that wowed the street dance audience. The younger dancers - a clever seasoning to the street dance - were pushed into greater prominence for a mass audience, the gymnastic tumbling reined in, the cultural references gathered together for our collectively low attention-span.
This is the true vindication of the story, because while several of their competitors were examples of pure unvarnished talent (such as the genuinely staggering vocals of Shaheen), the success of Diversity was that of talent, intelligence, wit, experience, grace, determination and hour upon aching hour of rehearsal. While a victory for Susan Boyle would have gratified those for whom fame is a second national lottery, victory for Diversity reminded the rest of us that there are some fairly important steps between our sofas and the front pages of the tabloids.
It is highly unlikely that the cognoscenti will spend as many hours delving into the genius of Diversity as they have into the genius of John Zorn, but their virtues are consonant and worthy of comparison. The success of Diversity is a cheering reminder that great art finds a way to flourish in the most unpromising of soils.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Spending-Our-Money-Like-Water-Gate, Day 2072
Like an over-loved teddy bear Harriet Harman has evidently been put out of the reach of small hands until Mummy can get to her with needle and thread. So much can be inferred from the fact that Margaret Beckett (a politician for whom the answer to the question "Is she still alive?" has for some years been No) was disinterred and sent creaking into the world last night for the purposes of occupying the Labour seat on Question Time. Since this seat is the only one likely to remain in Labour hands after the next election, leaving it vacant would clearly be at best unwise.
Now QT is - as we all know - a bear-pit on an average night, and like watching the Christians thrown to the lions on a good one. In this case, there were several lions on the panel and a great number in the audience, giving the clear impression of a three-day convention at which only one small plate of vol-au-vents has been served.
To clarify the metaphor, Mrs. Beckett was the principal canape on that plate, and one would have felt sorry for her but for the self-serving and casuistic arguments that she brought to bear in order to justify her various positions.
The first of these is that Grace and Favour apartments are not given to politicians free of charge. How the lions roared with pity for those politicians faced with onerous duty of living (as Mrs. Beckett has done) at Chevening and One Carlton Gardens! Their eyes grew quite wet with hunger.
The second argument that she ventured is that the issue of politicians' pay was really much too complicated for us to understand and we should stop worrying our little heads about it. The lions nodded appreciatively at this argument and shook out their napkins with a renewed appreciation of their meagre intellectual abilities.
Best of all, however, was Mrs. Beckett's answer to the question as to whether she approved of The Telegraph's decision to publish the details of MPs' pay in the first place. Puff pastry that she was, all plump with chicken and mushroom, she had the timerity to argue that she condemned The Telegraph for having taken delivery of the personal details of (and at this point I insert a conspicuously unnecessary parenthesis for the true significance of this to sink in) MPs' staff.
The lions blinked at one another, uncertain as to whether their manes had fallen in their ears again.
No, they had it right first time. Evidently the concern of MPs at their dirty washing having been laundered in the full light of day is not directed towards themselves but entirely towards poor Muggins-in-the-office, slaving away at the paper shredder unconscious of the fact that the security of her data was about to be jeopardised by The Telegraph. (Since Muggins-in-the-office is quite probably a member of their own family, perhaps MPs are right to be concerned.)
At this point the lions paused for a snack and were later seen to be giving Mrs. Beckett's arguments full consideration as they flossed her out of their fangs.
Now QT is - as we all know - a bear-pit on an average night, and like watching the Christians thrown to the lions on a good one. In this case, there were several lions on the panel and a great number in the audience, giving the clear impression of a three-day convention at which only one small plate of vol-au-vents has been served.
To clarify the metaphor, Mrs. Beckett was the principal canape on that plate, and one would have felt sorry for her but for the self-serving and casuistic arguments that she brought to bear in order to justify her various positions.
The first of these is that Grace and Favour apartments are not given to politicians free of charge. How the lions roared with pity for those politicians faced with onerous duty of living (as Mrs. Beckett has done) at Chevening and One Carlton Gardens! Their eyes grew quite wet with hunger.
The second argument that she ventured is that the issue of politicians' pay was really much too complicated for us to understand and we should stop worrying our little heads about it. The lions nodded appreciatively at this argument and shook out their napkins with a renewed appreciation of their meagre intellectual abilities.
Best of all, however, was Mrs. Beckett's answer to the question as to whether she approved of The Telegraph's decision to publish the details of MPs' pay in the first place. Puff pastry that she was, all plump with chicken and mushroom, she had the timerity to argue that she condemned The Telegraph for having taken delivery of the personal details of (and at this point I insert a conspicuously unnecessary parenthesis for the true significance of this to sink in) MPs' staff.
The lions blinked at one another, uncertain as to whether their manes had fallen in their ears again.
No, they had it right first time. Evidently the concern of MPs at their dirty washing having been laundered in the full light of day is not directed towards themselves but entirely towards poor Muggins-in-the-office, slaving away at the paper shredder unconscious of the fact that the security of her data was about to be jeopardised by The Telegraph. (Since Muggins-in-the-office is quite probably a member of their own family, perhaps MPs are right to be concerned.)
At this point the lions paused for a snack and were later seen to be giving Mrs. Beckett's arguments full consideration as they flossed her out of their fangs.
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