Boris the Barbarian

“A flat and rather dull comedy” which details the antics of a “dullard diplomat”.  Not, actually, a description of May’s appointment of the Loquacious Lout to the Foreign Office and what used to be regarded as one of the Major Offices of State, no, the quotations refer to a black and white film which came to mind when I was first informed of the Bumbling Blond’s accession to political prominence: Carlton Browne of the FO, starring gap-toothed Terry Thomas as the “dullard diplomat”.  The film is a farce, so it is entirely fitting as a reflection on Boris the Barbarian and his laughable role in the new government.

            Thanks to Brexit, any admission of British nationality to those of other nations not afflicted with self-destructive traits provokes bewildered smiles of amused sympathy.  The appointment of Boris to any post in government, let alone that of Foreign Secretary degrades an already farcical situation to the level of unthinking slapstick.

            Surely there is some sort of petition on line (which I would rush to sign did it exist) demanding that May rethink this risible appointment and restrict his antics to his well-paid column in The Telegraph where his words will do less harm than face-to-face insults to heads of state.  What a condition this country has been reduced to when an over-privileged lout can be promoted way beyond his ability to appease the less than savoury narrow minds of hard core Conservatives.

            On a day when the full toll of senseless death from the slaughter in Niece is still being reckoned we need politicians with some degree of gravitas and moral rectitude to act as leaders to bring people together, not egotistical wreckers concerned only with their own well being and status.  How can a person like Boris say anything in a serious situation without trivializing it?  How can he voice heartfelt emotion when he is clearly incapable of seeing beyond the parameters of his own personality?  His appointment is an insult to the office and a clear mark of contempt to the people of Britain.  May used words that show that she has at least heard of the concept of a “One nation” approach.  She has warned that the Conservatives are seen as the “nasty” party.  She has spoken of inclusivity and reaching out to the under-privileged.  The appointment of Boris would indicate that what she has said is mere verbiage, lacking substance.  She is, in fact, taking a leaf out of Boris and Cameron’s own book, and doing something which bolsters her own position in the party at the expense of the country.  Boris is a sop to the right-wing Brexiteers, gives cohesion to the party that engineered the chaos, strengthens May’s hold on power and rubbishes Britain in the eyes of the world.

            Carlton Browne of the FO has a happy ending. I only hope that reality follows fiction, because what is happening in Britain now would be difficult to make up.

Traitors?

Nothing in his life

Became him like the leaving it.

Anyone who thinks that the white-faced comments from one political coward, or the scripted seeming-modesty of one failed chief deserve anything other than contempt, is willfully ignoring what they have done.  At least in the quotation from Macbeth above the treacherous Thane of Cawdor “confessed his treasons” and “implor’d pardon” and expressed “deep repentence” – but that was literature.  Unfortunately, in Europe in 2016, we are dealing with what is laughingly referred to as reality.

Anything other than odium lavished on the selfishly parochial Cameron as he wryly accepts that he has to leave the position that he thought he would be able to solidify by his callously gambling with the future of the nation that he was supposed to be serving is obnoxious.  He recklessly used the future status and well-being of the United Kingdom as an easy casino chip thrown away on a throw of the dice, trying to cement his position in the contemptible party which he thought he led.  He was a disaster, and his forced smiles as he made his final jokes is nothing more than a calculated insult to the nation that he has failed.

            Wherever he goes from now and until the end of his sad days he should be treated with the contempt that he richly deserves.  His positive achievements (which I recognize) become irrelevant compared with his great betrayal.  He is little more than a traitor and the fact that he can smile amid the ruins that he has created is disgusting.

           

Which is also and adjective that I would apply to the whole of the Conservative Party.

           

There is nothing more infantilizing that watching (we are, after all, mere junior spectators and should, apparently, be grateful that we are even allowed to observe) the Conservative Party in full halloo after their tradition prey: POWER!

           

Their hands still smeared with the spinal fluid from daggers plunged deep between vertebrae of erstwhile friends, these shameless assassins have the temerity to preach to the population about progress and equality in the chaos that they have created.

           

Prime Minister May (sic) will be judged, in the short term, by who she choses to include in her ‘government’.  There are a few litmus test choices: will she include the blond, lazy, loquacious, lout?  The egoist who helped precipitate this disaster?  Will she include the Minister for ‘Justice’ – proven liar and treacherous colleague?  Will she include any of the utter bastards who have made her (anyone’s) job in the ‘new’ disunited kingdom so much harder?  Will any one of that disreputable crew have the guts to offer a sincere apology to the country that they have offended?  Well, they are Conservatives, so that sort-of answers itself.

           

And what of the Labour Party?  They (it?) have taken internecine fighting to a new level of destructiveness.  At the best of times the present disunity of the Labour Party would be vicious self-indulgence; at a time of national emergency when they should not only be taking the authors of our misfortune to task, but also presenting positive ideas for the stability and progress of the nation – in such times, the present laughable chaos is completely unacceptable.  Except of course in these bizarre times, after a referendum campaign notable for its lack of decency, truth and basic reality, anything goes.  The more I think about the full import of Brexit, the more I fear that the grotesque monster that is Trump stands more than a reasonable (!) chance of making all the way to the White House.  I hope to God not; but then I didn’t think for a moment that Brexit could appeal to a majority of thinking voters.  So what do I know!

           

And, I went for a swim with my mobile phone in the pocket of the shorts that I was wearing when I plunged into the pool.  And it wasn’t waterproof.  And even after a night in a bag of dry rice it doesn’t work.  And I’ve had to buy another one.  I am not quite sure how I am going to blame this disaster on Brexit, but I will think of a way to do so and I will be fully justified in so doing.

           

Roll on something to smile about!

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.