Never trust stereotypes

The only good thing about the Express newspaper was the cartoonist Giles.  And since he is dead there is nothing at all good about that vile little rag.  However, a cartoon by Giles came into my mind when I thought about what happened to me in the Spanish Social Security Office.

            The cartoon showed a class of worried school children watching Chalky (the death mask looking teacher) writing a pile of reports.  One of the kids is whispering to another, “I hope that’s not my report he’s writing.  He’s smiling!”  A normal reaction to those in authority when they show enjoyment.  If they are smiling then someone is going to suffer.

            So, waiting to hear just how much paper pushing would be necessary for me to claim my state pension via the Spanish system was worrying enough without the person dealing with me smiling a lazy smile!

            It took five minutes!  It was all done on-line and now any inefficiency will be on the part of the British system and not the Spanish.  And the smile on the official’s face was genuine happiness, sharing my delight!

            It is difficult to understand.  If I had (as I couldn’t) pressed my claim in Britain then I would have to have filled in an astonishing document which, in one section, asked me to list all the places in which I had lived with full addresses and dates!  And that was only one section!  Carmen tells me that her application of her Spanish state pension demanded reams of paper to be filled in.  But a Brit, having worked for a short period in Spain and now living in Spain: a few minutes, and job done!

            A sobering thought is that the rest of this swift process can take up to four months!

            I have been entitled to my state pension since last October but I wanted to delay it for a year as you get an extra percentage if you wait.  Brexit has wiped out the advantage of that, by already reducing my pension by more than 10% thanks to the plunging pound.  I need ready money rather than jam tomorrow!  It will be instructive to see when real money makes it into my actual account!  But still, just a few minutes and the administration was done!  Unbelievable!

            And to cap this extraordinary result, we also found a wonderful little restaurant, exceptional value and tasty food.

            The only thing to make the day even more perfect will be to discover that the lottery tickets that we purchased on a day of such obvious propitiousness have turned up trumps and I won’t need the pension!

Dip me in chocolate and throw me to the lesbians!

Never ask a swimmer what he is thinking about as length after length is completed: he might tell you!

            Which is a lead up to my telling you what I was thinking about as I swam my way through my daily metric mile.  I would love to admit that poetic ideas swirl through my mind as my flailing arms create more substantial currents in the placid salty waters of my local pool; or that the themes from my Open University courses course through my mind – but that would be, generally, a lie.

            What actually went through my head was the phrase, “Dip me in chocolate and throw me to the lesbians!”  If I could work out why this, admittedly delightful, phrase went through my mind, I feel that I would gain a valuable insight into my basic motivations and understand my character with a clarity which is so sadly lacking in my day to day existence.  But I can’t.  It came out of nowhere and, once I had thought of it, like one of those irritatingly compulsive snatches of music that you dread hearing because you know that you will be hearing in your mind for the rest of the day, it battered its way back and fore in my brain for the rest of the swim.

            I know swimming is essentially boring, but it’s not so boring that the repetition of an out of context phrase is enough to keep you stable.  I had to think of context and I soon realized that my knowledge of this phrase comes from an opera.  Admittedly an opera that I have seen on television rather than in an opera house, but one that was deliberately provocative and created ‘problems’ in Cardiff, prompting a far-right, so-called Christian demonstration outside the Millennium Centre shocked at the language and themes in the piece which was based on a musical interpretation of ideas suggested by the Jerry Springer show.  The actual phrase was part of the lines sung by a participant in the show called Baby Jane who enters singing,

This is my Jerry Springer moment. 

I don’t want this moment to die. 

So dip me in chocolate and throw me to the lesbians. 

I don’t want this moment to die

I had actually remembered the line as “Coat me in chocolate . . .” which is not as effective as the ‘real’ line, but that is not the point.  My mind did not stay on this, shall I call it ‘concept’, and instead as I continued my swim I began to think about other odd lines in operas.

            Probably my favourite odd line in opera is from Albert Herring by Benjamin Britten which is, “And a box of Swan Vestas!”  An opera which stays in my mind from the Welsh National Opera production in Cardiff’s Sherman Theatre, because when Albert’s flowered circlet (he had been crowned Virgin King of the May) was thrown into the audience, it was caught by my friend Robert!

            “Pigeons on the grass, alas!” was the title of one of James Thurber’s wonderfully funny occasional pieces written for the New Yorker.  As Satan said to an insufferably smug member of the angelic throng in an unpublished extract from Paradise Lost that Milton never used, “Not to know Thurber is to argue yourself unfunny, the lowest of your throng!”  It was with unparalleled delight that, having bought an interesting looking second-hand record in Kettering market, I discovered not only the music of Virgil Thomson, but also the ineffably pretentious libretto of the one-and-only Gertrude Stein and the fact that “Pigeons on the grass, alas!” was one of the more memorable lines from the opera Four Saints in Three Acts by Thomson and Stein!

            When I finally got to see a production of this somewhat obscure opera in London with the ENO I was overwhelmed and turned to the staid lady sitting next to me and said breathlessly, “Wasn’t that wonderful!”  To which she replied, “No.”  Ah well, each to his or her own. 

And “pigeons on the grass, alas!” by the way, is one of the more comprehensible lines in this opera.  For odd quotations you are spoilt for choice in Four Saints in Three Acts, but if I had to choose just one, it might be, “Having happily had it with a spoon.”  And if that doesn’t make you want to find out more and listen to it, then you are made of sterner stuff than I.

I will end with a line that I did not hear in the whole opera, but heard in an extract, “Life without hats?  How extraordinary!”  That is a line where context really makes it.  I have forgotten the composer, but I know someone who will know, if I can be bothered to ask.  Or there is always Google, or ‘research’ as we used to call it!

            Now off to Terrassa for a Birthday Celebration for which, for once, all the presents are ready and wrapped!

Better with time? I think not!

The days pass, but the result of the (insert your own derogatory epithet) referendum gets no easier to accept.

Let’s face it: this was an exercise in democracy and one side convincingly won. Not my side admittedly, but there was a distinct majority and that is something that I have to accept. Or do I?

The Leave side made it perfectly clear that if the majority to Stay was less than 60/40 they would continue to campaign for another vote etc etc etc. I see no reason that my efforts should not match theirs, especially as the ramifications of Leave as a reality seem to be increasingly disastrous.

What worries me is that the discussion about what to do about Brexit veers disturbingly close to anti-democratic populism. The people, we are told by the Remainers were too stupid to know what they were really voting for and we have to reform the vote so that it becomes the opposite from what was voted for. Though I am more than enthusiastic to have the vote overturned, I find it difficult to see how this can be done without compromising the principles by which I have lived. Any ideas, this side of totalitarianism gratefully received!

The more you think about such concerns as medical research and development; regional development; educational exchange; cultural exchange; workplace rights; continental justice, and on and on, the more you realize that 40 years of cooperation and implementation cannot be easily rearranged in a couple of years. Brexit is simple insanity. Perhaps we can have the leaders of the Leave campaign sectioned? Though that would be just protecting future voters, it would do nothing for what they have already done!

In the speeded up political life that goes for normality nowadays, we have had the sight of at least two of The Donkey Drivers of the Apocalypse fading into the wastelands of public opprobrium: Boris has fled the limelight, with ghastly face, with the realization that the horror that he had created was well outside the limits of the restricted attention span. The Knife Wielding Gove – more bludgeon than stiletto – appears to be too much even for the notoriously ruthless Conservative Party to accept and, with any luck, that goggle-eyed ideologue will sink down further than the justice department and shrivel in the sunshine of popular hatred. And his hag-like queen as well, with any luck.

What I find totally unacceptable is that the Conservative Party, having trashed the future of the United Kingdom through the cynical manipulations of Cameron who used the whole country as a bargaining counter for his own party-political purposes together with the antics of The Four Donkey Drivers of the Apocalypse – now get to decide who the future Prime Minister is. In fact, of course, it is not even Conservative voters who decide; in fact it might not even be the members of the Conservative Party who decide if May is elected by a landslide of MPs. It will merely be the inept political moaners who fomented this crisis in the first place. The phrase ‘coming home to roost’ seems not to apply to that bunch of right wing wreckers – and I might add that those last three words did not form the first phrase that came to mind to describe them.

And the Labour Party. It is a truism that the thing that the Left does without peer is internecine warfare. At a time when the Labour Party ought to be making the sort of headway that makes punching through a wet Echo hard work, it is spending all its energy in ripping itself apart. I have to admit, even for the Labour Party, the present ability to implode, explode, melt-down, fragment, cannibalise, shred, destroy, vaporize and flush itself down the toilet simultaneously is impressive and unprecedented in my observation of the British political scene. I weep.

Brexit is, quite simply, an absurd future to look forward to, and Something Must Be Done – short of cynically changing the democratic will of the people. I’m a retired English teacher studying Art History, what do I know of the practicalities of political life? A bloody sight more than my political masters given the last few months.

If politics is the art of the possible, then it should be possible for a way to be worked out that allows the British people to stop shooting themselves in the foot before they progress to the brain.

I live in hope and look towards our highly paid and educated leaders to find a way that puts the welfare of the people first rather than petty party political concerns.

Fond hope I fear.

A sad, bad man

The referendum has come and gone.  The Spanish elections have come and gone.  My response in both cases has been to write poetry and feel thoroughly depressed – something of a literary tradition in times of sadness.  But, there are limits to what even the sublimity of poetry can achieve.  In these cases it is only the rough workaday utility of prose that suffices.

            Boris Johnson (one of the Four Donkey Drivers of the Apocalypse) has declined to be one of the candidates for the leadership of the Conservative Party and the next (God Help Us) Prime Minister.

            I can think of no explanation for his action which reflects anything but badly on him. 

Let us consider the possibilities.

1              Cowardice

Having seen the state of social, political, financial and cultural crisis that his opportunistic and selfish leadership role in the Leave Campaign has delivered to the British people, Bumbling Boris has a clear case of what I am sure he would term, ‘funk’.  He has no intention of accepting responsibility for the chaos that he has caused (why should he?  The philandering liar has no history of doing anything like that) and has offloaded the messy situation for somebody else to deal with.

2              Opportunism

Having decided that there is no personal advantage to be gained by doing the hard work of overturning or mitigating the disaster he has helped cause, he will now bide his time and assiduously work on the myth of ‘The Greatest Prime Minister We Never Had’ and, when the dust has settled and the level of British misery has reached its nadir, Boris can then poke his stylish writing above the parliamentary parapet, wave his illusory political credentials in the Westminster air and shyly shuffle into the limelight that he will have switched on for the occasion.

3              Consolation Prize Status

After taking a leaf out of Cameron’s “I am an abject failure but I am also capable of a pretence of dignity in a self-made defeat” Boris’s chummy statement (which is the equivalent of “It’s a fair cop!”) is an obvious plea for a senior position in the next government.  No Prime Minister in their right mind would want a lazy deadweight like Boris in a real parliamentary role, but the Blue Rinse Hero Worshippers might force his participation, by sheer unthinking adulation, into some meaningless political role.

4              Going back to his real job

No one can accuse Boris of being a competent Mayor of London or MP, but he is a fluent writer.  Perhaps he has realized that being in a situation where he would actually have to turn up on time and do some real work would interfere intolerably with where his real money making opportunities are found: in writing, public appearances and dangling from photo opportunity zip-wires.

5              Deception

It is much more than fair to argue that Boris has done nothing more than he has always done: let people down.  There is only room for one person in Boris’s life and that is Boris himself.  He did pretend over the last few months that he had the interests of the British people at heart, but nothing in his previous career would justify believing him, so, in a way, the heading of this section should be ‘self-deception’ – not by Boris (he, after all thought he knew exactly what he was doing) but by those who actually fooled themselves that they might have a micro space in a totally exclusive ego.

6              Lying

Perhaps it is almost like the last category, but there has to be a separate category to epitomize the character of the charlatan.  He was and is a liar.  He entered the referendum after writing a Brexit and an Remain piece for his highly paid column and then chose the Brexit.  After, we are told, a great amount of heart searching.  Liar!  Why is anything other that mendacity expected from a serial liar?  So, at the end, even his assertion that “I will [ . . . ] give every possible support to the next Conservative administration” can be thought of in terms of how much support he gave his pal Cameron.  Liar!  Once a liar always a liar.  It is my belief that given time and space Boris can, almost in his own words, “win and be better and more wonderful and, yes, a greater liar than ever before.”

Boris is a contemptible person.  He is an opportunistic politician.  He is a disaster.  He is a coward and shirker.

There is one thing that he can do to partially redeem himself.  Apologise.  Give a humble, sincere and abject apology.  Then resign from public life and all public offices.

What chance is there of that?

Are they all working to make me miserable?

The trick of being a Briton living in Spain is not to despair when looking at the political news in either country. 
     Despair is a perfectly reasonable response to the savage self-mutilation of the Conservative party, lashing out at itself at the expense of the country that it is supposed to be governing.  While, in Spain, the inability of so-called left wing political parties to form a new government to try and stop the haemorrhaging of any residual respect for a totally corrupt old political class is hardly an inspiring sight. 
     In neither country has a majority of the population voted for the rubbish that is parading itself as a government, but the oppositions in both countries have also shown themselves to be woefully inept at combining to change a disgraceful situation.

I read, with increasing horror, the way that the Conservatives in Britain are destroying the National Health Service.  Their high handed and duplicitous approach to an institution that they did all in their power to strangle at birth when it was founded, is depressing but entirely expected given their past history. 

Education, under Ms Morgan (or should I say Gideon, because he is the one who seems to be announcing educational policy nowadays) is headed towards disaster, with teachers becoming more and more disillusioned with the profession.

The support for Brexit speaks for itself, especially the collection of freaks on the Conservative side that speak out for it.  The referendum exists solely to keep Cameron in a job, as it was his panicked response to the rise of Ukip and has absolutely nothing to do with democracy or morality or belief, simply to do with political survival.  However, even Cameron’s selfishness pales into insignificance when compared with the incandescent self-absorption of The Boris, our own unconvincing and vapid British take on The Donald.  And these, and even lower life forms, pretend to govern us!  God help!

Which He certainly hasn’t done when it comes to Spain.  
The failure of the political elite (I use the phrase very, very loosely) to form a government is, in my view, a disaster.  I fear that Spain is, at the moment, an inherently conservative country and, in spite of the fact that PP (the Conservative party) has been shown to be systemically corrupt and little less than an elected kelptocracy, making themselves rich at the public expense, at least a third of the voting population will put their cross next to a party that will continue to rip them off.

The vulgarity of the criminality of PP is too extensive to document in a single blog, but simply Google ‘PP corruption' And see what you come up with!  And no one resigns, in spite of overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing.  The system in this country has been set up, or has developed to the extent that justice is not a concept that has anything like the respect that it deserves.

There are whole swathes of society in this country that are ‘above’ the law or have a privileged position.  Judges are political appointments and they display astonishing partiality.  Political parties have far too much power and, bear in mind there is no transparency law in Spain!

We are to have a new election and the polls tell us that the basic situation is not going to change with the parties getting much the same proportion of the vote with PP increasing (sic!) its share, C’s increasing its, PSOE and Podemos dropping support.  That is difficult to understand and is totally depressing.

In my view, anyone who votes for PP, knowing the range and extent of corruption that is a key element in their existence, is doing a grave disservice to Spain. 

Anyone who votes for C’s is taking style for substance and ignoring the fact that the only real guiding principle of the party is the acquisition of power, especially by the photogenic leader.

Anyone who votes for PSOE is wilfully ignoring the fact that the failure of a government of change to keep Rajoy (aka Bromo) out should be squarely placed at its door.  Ideally, the leader of PSOE should resign for his total political ineptitude, but I recognize that it is impossible at this stage in an election.

So, for me, Podemos and the parties of the real left are the only real alternative for the country; and it looks as though the country is not going to agree with me and they will vote for the tired, corrupt and inept.

I confidently expect that the elections will, eventually, give this country another right wing government and that will be the result which will galvanize the independence movements in The Basque Country and Catalonia and lead eventually to the break up of Spain.

It is therefore with something like relief that I turn to my OU studies, the editing of an anthology of our poetry group, and the writing of the content of my next book of poems.  Never let it be said that the arts could not soften the horror of political life!

And the sun is shining!