Our Lady of the Bright Economic Vision!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The daily temperature graph fluctuates, but its general direction is down.  Windows and doors are still open, but the cloud cover emphasises the cooler temperatures.  At least it is not raining, and I can keep congratulating myself that I am not in the UK.

     Our Prime Minister Without a Popular Mandate has, at last, come out of hiding and given a few interviews to the local media, she doesn’t seem ready to take on the nationals with the threat of the Today Programme on BBC4 a big no, no.

     The key element in what Truss said was that, in spite of virtually all reasonable economic punditry condemning her reckless gamble on the British Economy, she had to do “what I believe is right”!  So, if I understand her correctly, she didn’t need a budgetary forecast about what she was proposing because that would have been based on informed projections and facts by proven experts, whereas what she and her wrecking chancellor were about was more to do with self-justified "belief".

     So, the lying Northern girl who has misrepresented her early life of “grinding middle class poverty” and spread her lies about a “failing school” that somehow managed to get her into Oxford University, has now reinvented herself as some sort of mystic: Our Lady of the Bright Economic Vision. 

     I imagine her as a grotesque reworking of Bernini’s sculpture of The Agony of Saint Teresa, lying back clothed in her carefully selected High Street brands (to demonstrate her un-Rish¡ down-to-earthiness) framed by strips of the golden wallpaper of her disgraced predecessor torn from the wall, calculating eyes half-open (to note and take advantage of the main photographic chance as it presents itself) and waiting for the gilt arrow of the Angel of the 1% to pierce the space where her heart should be so that she can unleash foison on those that already have.

     We really shouldn’t be surprised, as it is the same “belief” that drove forward the absurdity of Brexit and that continues to power its demented defenders in the face of demonstrable disaster. Brexiteers actively and robustly excluded so-called experts (Britain, declared Goblin Gove, has “had enough of experts”) from any consideration of the merits in the discussion for deciding the most momentous question of the new millennium.  It wasn’t facts, demonstrable facts, that drove the argument, it was “belief” – and we have seen just how efficacious that has been in boosting the wealth and reputation of the nation!

    Of course, the most obvious problem with dealing with someone whose ideas are based on “belief” is that there is no argument that can win.  The ‘facts’ may line up against the point of view, but all the holder of it has to say is, “But, I believe differently” and what is there to say to that?

     Belief and prejudice are nearly related, and while I believe that facts may strengthen “belief” and give it a foundation in fact so that it is no longer a belief but something approaching a scientific fact amenable to the ‘scientific method’, I also believe that facts must eventually defeat prejudice – you will have noted that I have used the dreaded word “believe” myself!

     I suppose when you come down to it, the way that you think is governed by what you think society is, and what your response to humanity is. 

     If there is one thing that I believe in, it’s people, working and thinking together.  It is the community, whether it be of science, or economics, or the arts, or nations, or whatever grouping you like to use to define the mass, that determine what is true and what is right.   

     I pop my daily pills, not in the mere belief that they will do me good, but because the scientific community and the medical establishment have produced, checked, and authorized their use.

       Cult leaders can fleece their flocks by wielding ‘belief’ as an effective tool to part ‘believers’ from their wealth, but I expect more from my political leaders.

     And that last thought might well be a naïf belief.   

       But it is one I cling to.

Things change

 

 

I am not going to be coerced into making fatuous New Year Resolutions; I refuse to be dragooned into making a list of aspirations just because everyone else is doing it at the same time.

     Actually, I don’t think that many people actually do make such lists – they are more the preserve of desperate editors on the Today programme on Radio 4, looking for a cheap and easy vox pop to pad out some time.  As if the events of 2021 going into the equally bleak looking 2022 have any lack of ‘real’ news items to sober-up any English (remember all the other nations of the UK have imposed restrictions) revellers who might be thinking of a better way to be after the festivities on an untrammelled New Year’s Eve!

     So, I am merely going to knuckle down again to the task of writing.  I have been remiss for the past umpteen days and, while it is easy to put such indolence down to ‘Christmas Preparations’ it would be a ludicrous overstatement of the amount of time that we actually spent on thinking about the 25^th.

 

     My card writing is now consigned to a single Christmas donation to Oxfam, and Christmas presents are strictly Catalan Family, and usually proscribed by family members in advance, to make things easier.  Food is catered for by a restaurant meal.  All one has to do is turn up.

     Unless, that is, after the traditional Christmas Eve giving of presents (shat out of a log) [it’s a Catalan thing] and returning home to sleep before the Christmas Meal, you happen to have an email on Christmas Day informing you that a swimming friend with whom you had a cup of tea a few days previously had tested positive for Covid.

     Everything changed.

     I was still within the four-day period after ‘last contact with the positive subject’ and so I had to isolate myself.  The test I took was negative, but I would need to take another on the Monday after Christmas to make sure that I was securely negative.

     I therefore I had a solitary Christmas Meal, and I was similarly alone for my Saint’s Day - Boxing Day or Saint Stephen’s Day.  In Catalonia a Name Day is more of a deal than in the UK (where the concept doesn’t really exist) as it usually involves a special meal and presents.

     Before any sympathy is wasted on poor little me, I might point out that I was able to make myself a sumptuous and self-indulgent Christmas Feast and, anyway, I had books to read!

     My name day celebrations will probably be postponed until next weekend, when The Family will come down to Castelldefels and enjoy a walk along the beach.

     A walk, I imagine that will be seen as something as a luxury in the coming days and weeks, when the Super Spreader Events that characterize national fiestas nowadays will inevitably result in a startling (though entirely predictable) increase in Covid infection – and the belated imposition of more stringent limitations on our freedom of movement.

     Admittedly, Catalonia has already imposed a curfew from 1am to 6am and has emphasised the social distance rules and strengthened the public association regulations, but I fear that, as is natural for politicians, it is too little too late. 

     Which makes the lack of action in England all the more startling and worrying. 

     The Tousled Thug who masquerades as Prime Minister has, yet again, abdicated his primary responsibility, which is striving to keep the people of the UK safe.  His ‘masterly inaction’ which in his sick mind he probably thinks is modelled on the behaviour of the late Queen Elizabeth, is rather more reminiscent of the appeasement of Chamberlain as he waves a little piece of paper with his interpretation of “The Science” to justify a cowardly ‘doing nothing’ to keep the semi-evolved dregs of the Conservative back benches quiescent.

     In one respect the woeful responses of our political masters have ‘worked’, in so far as a reasonable number of people to whom I have spoken have a sort of fatalistic acceptance that, “We’re all bound to get Covid at some time or other” which means that more and more people have bought-into the ‘herd immunity’ approach to pandemic management, with a shoulder-shrug to the consequent deaths that this acceptance must entail.

 

As the more observant reader will have noticed, there is a sort of ‘wasn’t that in the past’ sort of vibe about the previous writing.  Which is fair, as it was written a week ago.  Or more.

     In the meantime, I have tested negative again and life of sorts can resume.  Except.

     There is always an except.  My questionable knees have now decided to make a statement about their physical well-being and have opted for the ‘pain and discomfort’ way forwards.

     In what has been a remarkably limited number of days, my right knee has gone from ‘something ought to be done soon’ to ‘basically, not working’.  This has meant that my progress up, down, and along is now only possible with the ostentatious use of Toni’s crutches (a bargain, 12 euros on the internet).  And our house is composed almost entirely of stairs.  Or at least it seems that way to me as I tap and hobble my way around with a complete lack of grace and agility.

     In less than a week we have gone from the ‘something ought to be done’ to the ‘something has to be done – now!’ in a matter of days.  In the middle of a pandemic.

     I do have an appointment for ‘rehabilitation’ – but, at we don’t really know where my knees have been (so to speak) there is little for the medical staff to go on.  We are hoping that my obvious discomfort will prompt the people there to demand a scan, be appalled at what they see, and put me on a list for something.  Anything.  To make what is a fairly intolerable position slightly more acceptable.

     The waiting times for surgery that have been suggested to me, not necessarily from doctors, but from surprisingly well-informed casual acquaintances, has been at the far end of eight or nine months.  And I think, given the backlog thanks to Covid, that is a dewy-eyed optimistic prediction. 

     However.  At present, I have more pain than information, and I am looking forward to the Catalan health service coming forward, scalpel advanced, to my aid.  I have to say from previous experience with the medical services of this country, I have been more than impressed, and I will throw myself on their mercy – before I swallow whatever socialist principles are left to me and go private!

 

On the more positive side of life, the Family did come down to Castelldefels for my postponed Name Day and a good meal was had by all. 

     And it’s not raining. 

     One takes one’s positives where one finds them.

Who are they?

 New Lockdown: Day 6, Wednesday

I admit it. I got up very early, in the darkness and, under the subterfuge of going to have a pee, I had a sneaky look at my mobile to find out the state of play in the American election.  What I read was not exactly comforting and my attempt to go back to bed and sleep until daybreak did not work.

     So, up before dawn and reading my Guardian app on the phone while listening to Radio 4, I had a consolatory cup of tea and pondered on the sheer unadulterated differentness of people.

     People like me are going to have to come to terms with the fact that Trump got more votes than he did in the election in 2016.  Whatever the outcome of the election, and, as I type nothing at all seems even remotely settled, over 50 million (probably nearer to 60 million by now) people watched Trump be ‘president’ for four years and still voted for him.  I will not recite Trump’s glaring faults – perhaps they trip too easily off liberal tongues, like mindless repetition of rosary prayers.  I am tempted to say that the repetition has the same empty efficacy, serving merely as sonic balm to hide the fact that they are merely words with no further function than mouthed sounds.

     I listened to a Trump supporter say that she had her doubts about the character of Trump but felt that she shared his ideas and values.  She obviously didn’t mean the repulsive ideas and values that I see in him, but presumably some hazy version of what being a Republican means.  She was affluent and had higher education, but she mentioned the disturbingly left-wing policies of Biden (!) and the fear that he would limit freedom in some undefined way as justifications for her instinctive rejection.

     Obviously, this woman was on camera, felt under an obligation to ‘justify’ her support of Trump and, as far as I could tell in the fairly unnatural position of a televised interview, she seemed sincere and content with her choices.  She seemed decent enough, but had obviously put aside, or perhaps rejected as False News, much of the negative (factual) coverage of this depressing presidency.

     It is certainly tempting, from my point of view to dismiss Trump supporters as self-deluding idiots, and some of the choices that non-American commentators make in their choice of Trump supporting interviewees seem to fit that category, but 60 million Americans (and counting) voted for this person, and they cannot all be idiots, and to continue to think so will ensure that the divide in the country will never be healed.

     Some of the Trump supporters are in it for the money and for the power, or are the immediate nepotistic-sweetened family, but that only covers a fraction of the voting electorate.

     The four years of Trump have led some people who seem to live fairly coherent lives to say that, “He is the best president we have ever had!”  To say, “He really understands people like us!” or, “He cares!”  They see his public speaking, which I see as cringe-makingly embarrassing, as “natural” and “welcoming”, that he is, “really speaking to us!”  His free association of incoherent and contradictory meanderings allow Trump supporters to see the wealth-inherited billionaire (he claims) as one of their own, chatting to them in a way no other ‘politician’ can - or would dare to.

     Even as I try and be fair-minded, I can feel my bitterness and contempt seep through into my writing.  But astonishment at his continued ‘success’ will do nothing to stem the toxic populism that he represents and fosters.

     People on the left have a duty to understand how it is that so many people reject what seem like age-old standards of human decency for a strident self-defeating national selfishness.  And where do we start?

     Only one of my friends has admitted (that is an important qualification) to voting for Brexit.  None of them admits to voting for the Conservatives.  I read The Guardian and study the History of Art and live in Catalonia, not the obvious background to a right-wing populist, or a background likely to bring me into contact with other populists.  But my point is, that if the numbers of those voting for Trump or Johnson can be taken as a guide to how widespread their ‘ideology’ is then I must know a fair number of people who vote for what I regard as the disturbingly right-wing, and they are the people I need to understand and interact with in the expectation of bettering not only my own understanding of what is making people tick at the moment, but also of bettering our national dialogue.

     The problem, of course, is what to do next.

     I reject the idea of living in a Trumpian world: virtually everything he does and says is anathema to me.  But how do you change what seems to be a perniciously attractive way of looking at the world and one’s place inside it to many whom I have been able to regard (and I mean in an observational sense) as ‘other’?

     Perhaps, as part of our ‘Family Wisdom’ has it, “Anything is better than nothing!”  Speaking, conversation, writing, participating in political life, sharing thoughts, ideas - who knows what might eventually help, but an awareness of the divisions within society and a sensitivity towards them must surely be a step forward.

     And, when I get up tomorrow, perhaps Biden might have garnered the requisite number of Electoral College votes to start the process of the reinvention of the New Normal Politics, and then we can work on the New Normal during/after Covid without worrying what the so-called Leader of the Free World might tweet off the top of his head!

 

Life today

I have just been listening to the afternoon play on Radio 4, not only because it was a dramatization of part of Muriel Sparks’ life, but also because I caught on a trailer for it, that it was about disinformation during the Second World War in Britain. 

     With a bump I was taken back to a library book I took out when I was in school and the name Sefton Delmer came back to me.  It took a bit of Google searching, but the title of the book that I read (I actually recognized the cover!) was called Black Boomerang, written by Sefton Delmer the head of our black propaganda efforts during the war and published in 1962, so I was remembering a book I read over half a century ago.

     Although most of the details of the book are long lost to my retrieval system, the name of the author is something that has always stayed with me, together with thoughts about the morally ambiguous basis for black propaganda.  I have used this concept as something that linked usefully in to my work in school with media, advertising and indeed literature in the ways that all of them attempt to persuade and convince.

     The Radio 4 play was a fairly insubstantial piece of fluff, but it did raise a number of interesting ethical dilemmas and, although the ending of the play was flip and facile (even if it was true, which given the subject matter of the play etc etc) but has provoked me into writing.

     It has been famously reported that when Sir Strafford Cripps found out what Sefton Delmer was doing, he wrote to Anthony Eden the Foreign Secretary and said, “If this is the sort of thing that is needed to win the war, why, I’d rather lose it.”  Perhaps, even at the time, this attitude was considered a trifle precious, after all we were fighting ‘total war’ that seemed to justify anything – and against a foe whose moral worth was demonstrably low.  But, and there is always a but, if you lose your own moral standards in fighting someone with low moral standards how are you better than they are?  The ends justify the means is Machiavellian, literally!

     And the times in which we are living make you wonder if the pioneering work of Sefton Delmer in the black arts of information manipulation are not now the normal way that all governments behave – but openly and with a complete lack of shame and a totally confusing acceptance of fabricated lies are truth and reality.

     The present governmental attitudes towards information about the Coronavirus (or ‘Caronavirus’ to the idiot in the White House) have much more to do with presentation than reality.  We expect totalitarian regimes to hush up, massage, lie, obfuscate, whitewash and bluster – but these techniques are all too familiar to the degraded governments of the part-time British Prime Minister and the full-time American golfer.

     Given the state of truthfulness in the political world today, perhaps I should re-read Black Boomerang to remind myself of the techniques that are being used on me today.  If you are interested, then all of Seton Delmer’s books are available on-line at psywar.org.

In spite of the fact that I sometimes use the weekend to justify laziness in getting up, today I got up for my early morning swim and was rewarded with a lane of my own (eventually) and a well-deserved cup of tea outside (in my coat, obviously) afterwards.

My post-swim cup of tea and notebook use produced further ideas for the recalcitrant poem, or maybe another completely different one.  I will try and mash the concepts together and find out what happens, though I think that I have a title.

     For the first time in my life I actually thought about the phrase, “Now then!”  And wondered why its contradictory nature had never struck me before.  It can be used in different circumstances and could mean anything from “Steady the Buffs!” to “That’s enough of that!” to “Just wait until you hear what I have got to tell you!” to “Don’t be nasty” and so on.

     I liked it, when I thought about it, for the way in which it links the present to the past in an easy colloquial phrase.  And ambiguity is always stimulating! If you are interested in further discussion then I suggest you look at the site https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/24882/the-origin-of-the-phrase-now-then

I will, however use the phrase in my own way!

My zest for lino cutting did not win out against tiredness and bed last night, but I might be open to doing a bit of artistic slashing this evening. 

     The major problem for me with this new/old hobby is that I never can find enough free surfaces to allow the prints to dry before I make other cuts and prints. 

     I think that I will have to ‘prepare’ backgrounds so that I have a ready supply of treated pages to use at leisure. 

     Well, it’s worth a try and, as I always say about my attempts at things artistic, “What have I got to lose but my self-respect”!

All Brexit Eve

Loping towards the burning fires fuelled with the broken hopes of gullible voters, the knuckle dragging denizens of comfortable wealth look towards their warm future with undisguised relish as they realize that, once again, the people who could have made a difference have, once again, voted against their own interests and allowed the arrogant, the privileged, the entitled and the callous to do what they do best: gloat.

As with virtually all aspects of Brexit, the idea that today is the eve of something tangible is actually as diaphanous as the reality that the Liars’ Liar paraded during the election campaign.  There will be no real Brexit tomorrow.  Things will go on going on and little will actually be settled.  The only actualite will be the issuing of a “celebratory” 50p piece (without the Oxford comma) which at least gives we Remainers something concrete to spurn!

Meanwhile, whatever the tousled-haired tosser says, the interminably sad saga of Brexit goes on.  And on.  And on.  He might be able to ban the word itself from the discourse of government, but Brexit is yet to be achieved.

Amazingly (or not, if you have been following the tortuous and torturing progress of the Conservative Party throwing the country under the bus [the one with 350m quid on its side] to persevere its existence) we still do not actually know what has really been decided and we still have no confidence that we will depart with a comprehensive deal.

At least in Spain we Brits think that we have some sort of deal which allows us to sleep at night, with pension and healthcare taken care of – unless things fall apart, and we do eventually crash out finally and catastrophically.  For we people, Brits living in Europe (or rather The Rest of Europe as Britain has decided that it is not part of the continent on whose shelf it is perched) we have another eleven months of uncertainty as we see our futures in the hands of the third-rate chancers that now govern us, being used as bargaining chips in what will surely turn out to be a depressingly one sided negotiation.

I don’t want this to turn into yet another Moan from somebody who has still not come to terms with the result – though it is difficult (if not impossible) to get the sense of unreality out of one’s mind.  The British electorate have done what they have done, for whatever reasons and we have to accept that the system by which we are governed allows this travesty to happen.

It would be easy to roam around Cassandra-like bemoaning the horrible reality, but one has to try and fine something positive to take from the debacle.

I once asked my mother whether she had considered that Britain could have lost when she was living through World War Two and she replied that she never, for one moment, ever considered the prospect of defeat.  I pointed out that there were times when the situation of Britain looked dire and the German military machine looked unstoppable.  She accepted that there had been bad times, but, as she put it, “I always knew that we would muddle through!  Eventually.”

You could, of course look at that sort of attitude as one of self-delusion – but she was right.

I have often thought about my mother’s attitude during the bleaker times of the on-going process of Brexit and thought that the British do seem to have a sort of ability to “muddle through” and “make the best of it” no matter how negative things look.

I do not wish my country ill.  I want the country to prosper.  I want a decent NHS and education and transport.  I want full employment and so on.  I have absolutely no desire to see my country come to harm just so that I can point towards the architects of the chaos and say, “I told you so!”  That petty triumph will mean the defeat of so many who are less able to defend themselves than the comfortable hypocrites of the Conservative Party as they carefully move their wealth off-shore or to EU states so that they can buttress themselves against the storm that the self-inflicted harm of Brexit could bring.

We might have made things more difficult for ourselves, but those are the obstacles that we have to surmount.  And I am sure that we will.  We will find a way to play our part in the continent of which we are, self-evidently, a crucial part.  But, just like Universal Credit, a reasonable idea badly administered will have casualties.  People will die, as they have done as a result of IDS’s botched fiasco.  But the casualties need to be limited.

I feel resentment and anger about what is going to be done in my name.  But resentment and anger are negative and the division that has and will rip the country apart must, somehow be overcome if we all are to prosper.

I will be nauseated by any celebration of the dark day that Brexit signifies, but more important than my disgust is my willingness to work to mitigate the effects of the policy and to remember that a country is composed of more than Guardian readers. And listeners to Radio 4. 

And that is something that I will have to accept.  All societies are plural and diverse.  Let us hope that the obvious talent and enterprise of our country can show a way to bring us together.

I wait to be convinced.

Not knowing is the worst!

I have no idea what’s happening!  No, really!  I know that the world hasn’t ended because I am still here.  And, thanks to the wonders of the internet radio and (praise be!) Radio 4 I know that the Blond Buffoon has made his first Brexit speech in which he managed to do a very convincing vocal impersonation of The Donald by using sentences composed entirely of unrelated phrases and dismissive waffle.  What a repugnant, self-seeking, condescending apology for a politician he is!

           

            The Donald has some sort of reason for his putrid existence, as he is the logical outcome of the Republican excoriation of every breath that Obama has taken, irrespective of any logic or ideology – apart that is, from the pandering to the lowest possible common denominator of prejudice that they could find.  I am not sure that the previous sentence went any logical way itself, but in its own befuddled way it does at least express my sadness at what the party of Lincoln (whose speed of rotation in his monument must be approaching the speed of light at the moment) has created.

            But The Blond Buffoon is an entirely different creature.  I assume that his hair is natural (at least in its colour) but the buffoonery is entirely intentional on his part.  He is no fool.  He is capable of writing a mean sentence.  He has a sense of humour.  And he wants, oh how he wants, to be Prime Minister.  I don’t for a single solitary second believe that he went through anything even remotely approaching ‘heart searching’ to determine what position he should take on the question of Britain remaining in the EU.  The only thought, no, the main thought in his nasty tousled head was what would bring him closer to his main goal in life.  He has reasoned, because unlike The Donald he is capable of that, that opposition to British membership of the EU is likely to play best with the voters in the Conservative Party whether or not the UK votes in or out.  He has calculated that even if the vote goes against him, he can take the wishes of his discredited party towards his ultimate goal.

            The Capering Clot’s jovial mask slipped when it turned out that he (oh, sorry, not him, just one of his most trusted advisors) told senior officials in the London Mayor’s Office that they had to support his point of view or shut up!  It was, of course, a “cock-up” as he described it later, when the instruction had been discovered, using what he thinks of as the language of the common man, the man in the street (not the woman of course, they are only good for bedding and betraying) to show how blusteringly funny and out of character it all was.  Not a bit of it!  That is the man.  The privileged autocrat with the excruciating fractured conversational line of filler-filled marshmallow ideology to deflect opprobrium.

            You may wonder why this vitriol towards The Beast of Boris.  The answer is prosaic: Toni is visiting his family and I have not turned the TV on.  I am not sure that I know how.  I mean I know how to turn the television on, but not to get the programme that I want.  There is also a way of getting the language into English, but the complex button pressing to get that to occur is beyond my thumbs.  The end result is I have no idea what Spain is up to.

            You rarely hear anything about Spain on the national news on Radio 4, though I think the recent occasion of the Infanta (the sister of the present so-called king) being cross examined in court and, in answer to the questions that she deigned to answer, lying her head off – I think that made the news, and I think that Brits actually got to see pictures of her in court looking uncomfortable.  

As she should.  

But, apart from the more garish and outlandish elements in our news, the day-to-day corruption and the fact that we do not have a government are not deemed newsworthy.

            I can’t really blame the news outlets, because saying, “Oh, the Spanish Popular Party (Conservative) seems to have another case of corruption where their politicians have been stealing from the public purse!” is rather like saying, “Oh, IDS has told another corpse that it is fit for work!”  They are both so common that they are hardly noteworthy.

            But, there is a gleam of hope for Spain.  The right ‘lost’ the election and the ‘left’ won.  But the parties on the ‘left’ still have not agreed to pact – and time is running out before the so-called king has to declare another general election.

            There is a simple solution, and one in which a start could be made to try and rectify the terrible damage that PP has done to the country during their time in power.  But the two parties cannot agree and so, day by sad day, we march on to the unpredictability of a second general election.

            Even my OU studies are not helping, because I have now arrived at that part of the course where our thoughts have turned to Renaissance Art and Death.  Looking at various representations of the Danse Macabre, I feel like photocopying a few of them and sending them to the politicians who I feel are hindering the formation of a new leftist government.  Time is fleeting!  Get on with it!