A very immodest confession

Now, look, says Malcolm, blushing fuschia to the hairline, I know it's expected of me, and all the other politicos (except the Boy David, of course) have come across and put their hands up. But, well, err....

Look, Malcolm, you haven't done it in years, have you?

Of course not.

So, just come out with it. You'll feel better, and we'll all understand.

Well, it was a long while ago. Very early sixties, you know.

Yes ....

Well, you see, ... we didn't.

What do you mean you didn't?

Well, it hadn't really started to happen in those days. It was the next generation that got into that whole thing.

You didn't? Not even once?

No ... sorry. I don't want to feel I've let everyone down.

That's all right, old man. We quite understand.

But I've used buses in Wood Green, you know. Stood in the bus shelters, waiting. Does that almost count?
Sphere: Related Content

Something old, new and very fine

Late night proms are the place for the different and the deviant. Malcolm recalls John Dankworth and the music of Ellington and Basie bursting into the cultural stratosphere thereby. And quite right, too.

Last night was exceptional, however.

Now, Malcolm's generation did everything: if you can remember the Sixties, you weren't there. And, as a result, some of us never made it here.

Stereo LPs for a start. About 1958 Pye Records (in the UK: it was Audio Fidelity in the USA) brought stereo to the market: Malcolm's generation briefly thought this was the ultimate ear-candy, if only because our prized Dansettes were instantly obsolete. Later, we realised the hell to which the most sin-stained sound engineers should be consigned involves endless bombardment by total separation, as instruments leap across the sound-stage unpredictably.

And so to last night's concert. Alessandro Striggio was a Mantuan, but moved into the court of the Medici at Florence. Cosimo Medici employed him as a diplomat, which brought Striggio to London (where his music inspired Tallis) and Munich (the motet Ecce beatam lucem seems to have been commissioned for a Bavarian Royal wedding). Inevitably much of Striggio's work has been lost, but one piece resurrected itself.

Around 1566, Striggio composed Missa sopra Ecco si beato giorno, which takes polyphony to new levels. Towards the conclusion, in the Agnus Dei, five separate choirs, each of twelve different voices, produce sixty (count them if one can) different voice-parts. As Striggio traipsed across Europe — Vienna, Brno, Munich and Paris — he left copies of his composition behind. All went missing, until Davitt Moroney (now at UC Berkeley) located one in the French National Library.

Last night, for the first time in nearly half-a-millennium, the work was revived.

Occasionally, just occasionally, the human singing voice transcends itself: a single soprano can somehow find the harmonics in the masonry of King's Chapel, and make stone resonate. Last night, the cast iron and brick of the Albert Hall were assaulted by sheer weight of numbers. Catch it for the next week on the BBC Radio 3 website. No sound engineers needed for a wall-to-wall sound.

Eat your heart out, Spector. Sphere: Related Content

One for the cat tray?

It's "put out the trash" day, so Malcolm is in full "bin it" mode. However, he paused for a snortle at the chance combination of four words.

This from The Times Law supplement of 10th July:

What's in a name?
Law to change on "prostitute".
Gary Slapper's Case Notes
timesonline.co.uk/business/law

That's it, Malcolm? Just another cheap shot?

Nope, nothing's cheap with lawyers involved. Sphere: Related Content

Who do you think you are?

One of the rudest questions, and one of the most civilised BBC programmes.

Since it started in the autumn of 2004, BBC2 has made barely two dozen of these programmes, with another eight promised for this autumn. For the totally ignorant, a celebrity is invited to research her or his family history. Many of these encounters turn out to be profoundly emotional experiences.

A grateful nation was transfixed in January 2006 when Jeremy Paxman, old hard-boiled Paxo himself, was confronted by the hardships of his ancestors. These included the "directed labour" that the Poor Law Commissioners imposed on the Paxmans of Framlingham, Suffolk, transporting them to Bradford, to work in the woollen mills. And Malcolm now refuses to explore the topic, Engels and Anti-Dühring, despite the temptation.

This evening, long overdue, Malcolm caught up with the Stephen Fry episode on one of the minor cable channels. On one side of the family, there had been workhouse and childhood TB: on the other, roots in Slovakia which led inexorably to Auschwitz.

There is always the risk that such "entertainments" can become exploitative and trite tragic-comedy. Malcolm found this Danubian exploration as cathartic as any tragedy. He knows of families who, similarly, have little knowledge or documentation of the fates of their close relatives.

The bitter-sweet truth is that anyone of us will have other, perhaps lesser but still real and emotive stories in our family history. Malcolm's therefore celebrates the lost ancestors. Sphere: Related Content

Southall: storm in a DC cup?

One would think, from the media hysteria, and the foam and froth on weirdo sites like those of Tim Montgomerie and even the usually more-reliable Iain Dale, that there was something cataclysmic happening in Ealing Southall. Wiser heads, like Malcolm's, continues to doubt that.

He feels reinforced in this by the graph of the odds on http://www.politicalbetting.com/ (seen above).

'Nuff said? Sphere: Related Content

Send for Commissario Brunetti!

The little things are the most bewildering. Size we cope with: you go up against a fully-grown tiger only when carrying serious heat. But then there is the mystery that is Rutland: how can one small area contain so much that is, well, nice.

So what's with Ross Clark's piece in the Spectator: "London matches the glory of Venice in its prime"? This seems to be an extended conceit, finding parallels between La Serenissima, the Queen of the Adriatic, and the Smoke, the Old Tart of the Thames.

The point of departure is itself quite convoluted:

... that London could hack it as a city-state has been entertained at both ends of the political spectrum. For economic liberals independence is a way of freeing London from the burden of its £20 billion annual subsidy to the rest of the country. The Mayor himself, Ken Livingstone, seems to like the idea of a London city-state, too. Returning from a visit to the Far East he declared last year: ‘Having been to Singapore and seen how successful it was, I think anything short of a fully independent city-state is a lost opportunity.’

Much of the subsequent "reasoning" comes down to real estate:

£15 million London houses are being rebuilt as £30 million palazzos...

Should the economy turn, on the other hand, it will become a lot clearer just how many Londoners have become reliant on Gordon Brown’s tax credits and on subsidised housing. In fact, Gordon Brown’s failure to address house-price inflation may turn out to be his eventual undoing.

Malcolm admits those two quotations are separated by four lengthy paragraphs, but they sit uncomfortably in the same article.

Then there's the obligatory European thing, without which modern Toryism might stand a ghost of a chance:

Sadly, Britain’s opt-outs from some EU legislation such as the Working Time Directive and now the European Charter of Fundamental Rights have been neither as extensive nor as long-lasting [as the A.D. 992 compact between the Doge and the Holy Roman Emperor], but the principle remains: if you want to succeed in trade, it pays to join your local trading bloc — but to keep it at arm’s length.

And the usual whinging about welfare:

By the end of Venice’s life as a city-state in 1797 one in six was living on welfare benefits. Sound familiar? They are the same pressures as on London today: a grudging attitude towards economic migrants, ever more rules but increasingly unreliable enforcement of them — sometimes weak, sometimes vindictive. Less immediately obvious, at least while the economy is booming, is the growing dependence upon welfare.

That seems to grate if it is rubbed up against David Cameron's touchy-feely community stuff, or Ian Smith's beer-money subsidy to the married condition.

Curiously, if the roars of St Mark's lion are the coming vogue, they haven't yet been heard up the Archway Road. Outer London Boroughs are clamouring, not for less Government subsidy, but for more. The great cultural divide is still — just — north of Watford: we are not yet pulling the wagons into a circle round the North Circular.

On the other hand, Trafalgar Square flooding each acqua alta, Paolin setting up a gelaterie,
the vaporetto to Heathrow, a nationalised railway with prices one can afford ...

The people's Ken might appreciate the election-for-life, but could he cope with the Doge's hat? Sphere: Related Content

Chalk and cheese

Malcolm has spent a couple of days reviewing camera specifications. For him this is the equivalent of crossing Africa, armed only with one of those antique maps notable for fanciful imaginings and Heere be Dragons warnings. Equipped with a magazine and numerous googlings, he began to come to a conclusion: a lot of this guff was badge engineering.

The proof positive was finding patently the same devices, in amazon.com and amazon.co.uk, but with different model numbers and, it goes without saying, vastly different price-tags.

The 7% Solution

Tomorrow morning's Sunday papers will show a similar parallel vision. Murdoch's Shagging Record (OK: The News of the World) will show an opinion poll:

Labour 35%; Tories 28%; LibDems 13%, based upon a sample of 1008.

Meanwhile, the Sunday Telegraph has a poll:

Labour 40%; Tories 33%; LibDems 19%, based upon a sample of 1008.

Same pollsters; same sample; same gaps. If this were cheese, it would be over-ripe Gorgonzola or Pont l’Evêque, for such results are one of those coincidences that aren't.

Iain Dale, blogging for the class enemy, has the explanation: they are in fact the same poll:

Ian Kirby from the NOTW explains that it was a shared poll with the Sun Tel. He says: "In response to your query about different results, Paddy did a state of the parties question. We asked "which party do you feel warmest to?" (to gauge potential floating voters) and crossed it with how did you vote in the last election".

Well, why not say so in the first place? Any bets that both papers trumpet their "exclusives"?

Malcolm is left wondering if Times Newspapers and the Barclay Brothers (successors to the noble Conrad, Lord Black of Crosshaven) know they have bought regurgitated pap.

Mousetrap

A cynic, but never someone as sanguine and benign as Malcolm, might imply there is an ulterior motive at work here. It's the "leading up the garden path" trick. Wouldn't an autumn election fill the columns and sell the papers? It couldn't possibly be such a thing, could it?

Chalking it up to experience

Years back, Malcolm remembers late-summer dining in the garden of a hôtel in Aix-les-Bains. He was irritated by two picky daughters hankering for English bangers and baked beans. Then came the cheese trolley. Malcolm's spoken French is ropey enough, and the second bottle of Savoie wine may not have helped. It was only when the stuff was on his plate, he appreciated the horror to come. A very over-ripe and caprine goat's cheese, and of a commendable size was sitting there.

Silence descended. No more bickering. Four gimlet eyes bored into him. He had to devour the last chalky oozing, and be seen to enjoy. By the same token, those who live by the opinion poll (politicos and journos alike) may be forced to swallow the damn things whole.

Now, if only the difference between a PZ-80 and a CR-82E, which masquerade behind identical photographs and descriptions, were as easily digested. Sphere: Related Content

Our north-western nook of Europe

Malcolm's two-hundredth entry is his first draft at defining what is right and wrong with the weighted names for our home nations, as we relocate ourselves into discrete and smaller "nationalities", within a wider European framework.

In it he uses quotations from Henry Reed's 1942 poem, Naming of Parts.
___________________________________

A day or two ago, Mark Devenport was commenting on the (long overdue) first British Irish Council meeting. Devenport, the BBC's Northern Ireland political editor is usually reliable, witty and precise. He is also well-used to navigating the minefields of local politics.

Then the politico-linguistics caught him out:

I have just talked on Radio Ulster's Talkback about the summit bringing together all parts of the "British Isles". But I have since been reminded that the Irish government doesn't like this term. So is it the "Council of the Isles"? This gets around nationalist sensibilities, but doesn't help much if you are trying top explain things to someone who lives in the Canaries or another archipelago.

Which brings me to "the Atlantic Archipelago" — a term coined by some geographers. It avoids all political controversy, but would provoke blank looks so far as most people are concerned.

Blame it on Davies?

Norman Davies was a forerunner of this in 1999, when he published The Isles: A History. Remarkably for a heavy history book, it adapted to audiobook, narrated by Andrew Sachs. Davies consciously has two contexts and a view-point: Europe reunited since the Iron Curtain, and Britain after the Union, but seen always from the peripheries. There is a telling interview by Czech-born, Cambridge-educated John Tusa of Welsh-born, Oxford-educated Davies:

Tusa: ... I suppose the essential part of this discussion is that there's now a tendency to say, well, the Irish know who they are, the Scots seem to know who they are, and at least half the Welsh know who they are. But the English don't, or the English are saying that they don't. Why do you think the English are finding it so hard to define themselves, outside of all the other contexts in which they have existed politically and nationally for the X hundred years?

Davies: The English as the domination nation within the British mix have been schooled for longer than living memory certainly, to confuse their own identify, their own Englishness with general Britishness and of course with the imperial family. If you read Rudyard Kipling, he talks about the English garden; but what he means is all the little boys and girls right round the world, whether they're in Australia or India or Gibraltar or wherever or in these isles, who are part of what you would call the English family. One of the characteristics if you like of the imperial mission of the English, which goes right back before the British empire , the English empire within the Isles, was this sense of this special divine calling of the English, as opposed to the other lesser nations. This reached its height, of course, during the Empire where, as it were, the god-given right of the British among whom the English were — they're usually called English in those days, even if you were Scots — the divine mission of the English was accepted as part of the natural order. And because of this special position of the English as the dominant element within the imperial family they somehow lost the awareness of who they were, other than the rulers of this great Empire. So, now it's gone, of course they're extremely confused; and it's the depth of the confusion which I still can't understand... One meets, you know, highly educated people who don't know the difference between what is English and what is British.

Slugging it out:

Inevitably, Devenport's dysphemism cropped up in the world-famous Slugger O'Toole's Pugilistics Parlour and Flyting Academy. Two contenders raised the old, familiar topic of national awareness in Ireland: that venn-diagram where 32 and 26 counties never overlap, and where any reference to who, what, where and when soon becomes close combat.

Today we have naming of parts.

“Ireland” as a term should be, and generally is universally acceptable. Malcolm was in a pub in the deepest-dyed Co. Down Unionist heartland, watching the 43-13 Six Nations game at Croke Park. There were no doubts there: once the embarrassments of national anthems were overcome, Kermit was proved wrong and it was easy to be green.

Daniel Corkery, way back in 1931, reckoned the three characteristics of nationalism, land and religion distinguished the Irish “national being” from those of England (and Malcolm believes he used that name, rather than any other). Corkery was Corkonian, a committed Fianna Fáil man, and fervid for a celtic-twilight rustic simplicity: today we might dismiss that as parochialism.

... what to do after firing

So, when the 1937 Constitution came about, it reflected the views of Corkery and his like. De Valera's gloss in the preamble proclaims the laudable aims:

that the dignity and freedom of the individual may be assured; true social order attained and the unity of our country restored and concord established with other nations.

It was, Malcolm acknowledges, remarkably liberal-democratic for that historic moment, when totalitarianism and worse were dominant across Europe. However, the Constitution meant that “Éire” as a term produces serious problems.

... silent, eloquent gestures, which in our case we have not got.

Connotations mean we do not have a value-free translation between two languages. Problems stem from de Valera's inclusion of partisan, political and illiberal elements.

Articles 2 and 3, defining a 32-county republic, were de Valera nodding to the national ideal of a United Ireland: he could do no less. Yet, they played massively for the bone-headed Craigavon clique, who eagerly disseminated and amplified them to the Unionist masses.

Article 44 affirmed the "special position of the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church as the guardian of the Faith". This was a compromise: it may have angered the ultras (notably Fr Fahey's theocratic Maria Duce) but was markedly different from the secular 1922 settlement. The result was continued emigration among religious minorities, who were disproportionately merchants and professionals.

“Éire” had its first President in Douglas Hyde, son of the Church of Ireland rector of Kilmactranny. Before independence, 10% of the 26-counties' population were Protestant: by 1990 it was barely 3%. Cork once had Gerald Goldberg as its Lord Mayor. In the 1920s, there were 400+ members of the Jewish community in Cork. When Dick Hogan interviewed Goldberg (for the Irish Times, 17 Feb 1998), there were only eight practising Jews left in the city.

... assaulting and fumbling the flowers

And then there was Article 41:

... the State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.

The State shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home.

This has to be read alongside Article 45, setting out "the general guidance of Parliament", including:

The State pledges itself to safeguard with especial care the economic interests of the weaker sections of the community, and, where necessary, to contribute to the support of the infirm, the widow, the orphan, and the aged.
The State shall endeavor to ensure that the strength and health of workers, men and women, and the tender age of children shall not be abused and that citizens shall not be forced by economic necessity to enter avocations unsuited to their sex, age or strength.

... the point of balance, which in our case we have not got

All of which seems, as Peter Berresford Ellis has maintained, radical departures from the 1916 Declaration of Independence:

The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities for allits citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and all its parts, cherishing all of the children of the nation equally ...

It certainly alienated the support of many feminists, not least of all Dorothy Macardle, de Valera's hagiographer in The Irish Republic, and provoking her to write him a letter (21 May 1937):

as the constitution stands, I do not see how anyone holding advanced views on the rights of women can support it, and that is a tragic dilemma for those who have been loyal and ardent workers in the national cause.

... please do not let me see anyone using his finger ...

Britain is a name wished on us by the Romans. They were borrowing from the Greeks, who could be borrowing from the Phoenicians, who may well have got it from the Cornish. Even Imperial Rome had problems with the definition.

Julius Solinus (about 260) and Martial (in the first century) seem to think it's the whole lot, while Cicero, Caesar and Pliny distinguish Britannia from Hibernia. Even the Roman province of Britannia was a bit elastic. Then, in the Arthurian period, the Britons are definitely not the Saxons, Scots or Irish, but do include the Bretons, the Welsh and all the way up through Lancashire and Cumbria. Later still, after the Union under the Stuarts, upper-class Edinburgh Scots are quite flattered to become North British (and the North British Railway linked Edinburgh to Berwick). And so we come to 1801, when for a brief while we are the "British Isles", while the North Sea is the "German Ocean", but for 90 years Heligoland is "British".

So "Britain" is a very slippery concept—which has caught out more than just Devenport.
"... soldiered not without glory"

Malcolm sees the [British] National Theatre revival of Shaw’s Saint Joan (four stars in today's Guardian and Times reviews) as significant. That play and Shaw's Preface, written in 1923-4, address nationalism.

Shaw gives Cauchon (the Bishop who sends Joan to the stake) a key speech:

… as a priest I have gained a knowledge of the minds of the common people; and there you will find yet another most dangerous idea. I can express it only by such phrases as France for the French, England for the English, Italy for the Italians, Spain for the Spanish, and so forth. It is sometimes so narrow and bitter in country folk that it surprises me that this country girl can rise above the idea of her village for its villagers. But she can. She does. When she threatens to drive the English from the soil of France she is undoubtedly thinking of the whole extent of country in which French is spoken. To her the French-speaking people are what the Holy Scriptures describe as a nation. Call this side of her heresy Nationalism if you will: I can find you no better name for it. I can only tell you that it is essentially anti-Catholic and anti-Christian; for the Catholic Church knows only one realm, and that is the realm of Christ’s kingdom. Divide that kingdom into nations, and you dethrone Christ. Dethrone Christ, and who will stand between our throats and the sword? The world will perish in a welter of war.

One can read that in the context of 1914-18 or the Irish Civil War, or as a general observation. It follows from a pamphlet Shaw wrote for the Labour Party in 1920: Irish Nationalism and Labour Internationalism. The title in itself tells where GBS was coming from.

This all resonates with Malcolm, but particularly because he was tidying a shelf yesterday, and flicked the last chapter of Jeremy Paxman’s The English. Of which this is the concluding paragraph:

The English are simultaneously rediscovering the past that was buried when ‘Britain’ was created, and inventing a new future. The red-white-and-blue is no longer relevant and they are returning to the green of England. The new nationalism is less likely to be based on flags and anthems. It is modest, individualistic, ironic, solipsistic, concerned as much with cities and regions as with counties and countries. It is based on values that are so deeply embedded in the culture as to be almost unconscious. In an age of decaying nation states it might be the nationalism of the future.

For all these reasons, Malcolm finds much sympathy for linguistic sloppiness like Devenport’s, and squirms when banner-waving mobs, armed with prejudices, catch-cries or shibboleths, take to the barricades.

... all of the neighbouring gardens ...

Today is the Twelfth: Orangeman's Day, which is where the root and branch of the problem lies.

For all of the snot-green spouting that it is "British-occupied Ulster", the Westminster government has always been leery of the Northern Irish connection. Or, to look at that from the other end of the telescope, the Ulster Unionists have good reason to fear a sell-out.

Malcolm has been back into Brian Girvin's The Emergency: Neutral Ireland 1939-45. He finds the account of the wheeling-and-dealing of June 1940, Girvin's chapter on "An Offer that Could Be Refused" particularly telling.

Sir John Maffey (the UK representative in Dublin) seems to have spent the weeks after Dunkirk hammering at de Valera's office door. Maffey was reporting back to London that there could be leverage on de Valera's neutrality if concessions were made on the Six Counties. Back in London Ernie Bevin was urging Churchill to look to a post-war reunification in exchange for present co-operation. Chamberlain was on his side. The Chiefs of Staff were pressing for an understanding and access to the 26 counties. Smuts was demanding occupation of the treaty ports, using force. Malcolm Macdonald (by then Minister for Health, but with a track-record dealing with Irish affairs as Dominions Secretary) was twice in Dublin for face-to-face negotiation. Even Churchill is writing a note:

I certainly sh'd welcome any approach to Irish unity; but I have forty years experience of its difficulties. I c'd never be a party to the coertion of Ulster to join the Southern counties; but I am in favour of their being persuaded. The key to this is de Valera showing some loyalty to Crown and Empire.

That was then: there is little to suggest that the view from behind the Westminster arras has not greatly altered over the subsequent years.

The obstructions to reunification, therefore, were (and are) in Dublin and Stormont. And in a mindset that finds it impossible to agree a formula of words to describe the small corner of Europe which we are obliged to share.

Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards

The 26 Counties emerged from the "Emergency" reasonably prosperous: eighth in the world for per capita income, comparable with the Benelux countries and Denmark, ahead of devastated Austria, Finland, France and (of course) the Germanies.

All of the baggage that de Valera had loaded in his 1937 Constitution, and defended with the policy of neutrality, subsequently became burdensome. Nationalism had become protectionism.

Emigration completed the work begun by the Famine: but this time the majority being exiled were women. The proportion of women in work and the marriage rate were the lowest in Europe. The rural communities, Corkery's ideal of Irish society, and de Valera's heartland, were sick to death. In Girvin's conclusion:

For those who continued to live in Ireland, there were attractions. It was safe, stable and conservative, emphasizing traditional Catholic-nationalist values. It was a society largely unconcerned about the outide orld, but perhaps irritated that the outside world did not take notice of it.

Until Harold Macmillan discovered Europe, and Dublin had no alternative but follow...

Sphere: Related Content

he perfect essay

Malcolm has spent a fair bit of his life in and around the essay: studying it, writing it, reading it, (heaven help him) marking it, and now once again, herein, composing and experimenting with it.

The curious thing is, once he left junior school, where Mrs Self insisted on the five paragraph essay — drafted, corrected and written out as a fair copy (and that was in the 1950s) —, nobody bothered to show him how it was done. He was expected to learn from models put before him, and by teachers' comments, always terse and frequently cryptic, appended at the end.

Today, every freshman student is given a grounding in the methods and rules: many of these briefings are available on the Net. Malcolm finds it instructive to notice differences in quality and content, which do not necessarily match the prestige of the institution.


pinion and style

Mr O'Gorman, preparing Malcolm and his ilk for Irish Leaving Certificate, presented a classic essay a week. So Malcolm met, among many more, the likes of John Donne, Dryden, de Quincey, Strachey, Shaw and Eliot. And above all, Bacon and Lamb (not at the same sitting), Addison and Steele.

The intention was, doubtless, to teach style and mannered writing. It is to be devoutly hoped that some of that rubbed off on the cowed, bowed heads before Mr O'Gorman.

The trouble was the opinions and anecdotes and, above all, sheer joy of lustrous words got in the way. And in that joy we were betrayed forever into aspirations our talents could never fulfil.


hom would we add today?

Virginia Woolf and Rebecca West, Neville Cardus and John Arlott, John B. Keane and Flann O'Brien/Myles na Gopaleen, Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson have already made it into collections. How else would any civilised person cope with the fundamentals of the human digestion system? Future generations of students will be sweating through academic selections thereof for generations to come.

This is, also, a growing industry. As newspapers become less relevant for "news", they become more reliant on opinion and comment for relevance. Here on the Net, anyone can have a go, in the hope of a cyberbubble reputation.


o, that leads Malcolm to wonder

.... which of our contemporary writers will be similarly aspicked.

Malcolm would instantly nominate Hiaasen's weekly column for the Miami Herald, Chris Hitchens popping up anywhere, Julian Barnes expounding francophilia in The Guardian, the late Molly Ivins pouring wit and acid with equal measure:

There is a radio station just across the border from Del Rio, Texas. It plays hymns during the day and broadcasts religious advertisements at night. They sell autographed pictures of Jesus to all you friends in radioland. Also prayer rugs as a special gift for all your travellin' salesman friends with a picture of the face of Jesus on the prayer rug that glows in the dark. And underneath the picture is a legend that also glows in the dark; it's written, "Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery."

That's under the sub-heading: They said it was Texas Kulcher/but it was only railroad gin.

Then there's Maureen Dowd, whose latest piece in the Gray Lady leaps from Condoleeza to Old English and back to the Biggest Issue on the Potomac and Euphrates:

Someone might tell Condi — who said in one of her golf interviews that her zest for sports is so all-encompassing that “I love anything with a score at the end” — that she’d better get to work or America’s score in Iraq will be zero.

The Iraq war she helped sell has turned into Grendel, devouring everything in sight and making it uninhabitable. It has ravaged Iraq, Bush’s presidency, the federal budget, the Republican majority, American invincibility and integrity, and now, John McCain’s chance to be president.

And there’s no Beowulf in sight. Just a bunch of spectacularly wrong hawks stubbornly continuing to be spectacularly wrong at what an alarmed Republican Senator John Warner calls “a time in our history unlike any I have ever witnessed before.”

Watching the warring tribes in Iraq grow more violent has caused the beginning of a reconciliation among the warring tribes in Washington, as they realize they have to get the car keys away from the careening president who has crashed into the globe.

eaching a conclusion

Every great essay sticks in the mind, quite literally, when it reaches its punctuating and definitive epigram.

Maureen Dowd, in the piece just mentioned, has this:

When presidents have screwed up and want to console themselves, they think history will give them a second chance. It’s the historical equivalent of a presidential pardon.

But there are other things — morality, strategy and security — that are more pressing than history. History is just the fanciest way possible of wanting to deny or distract attention from what’s happening now.

Not bad, if not in the same league (and similar sentiment) as ... for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

The other Malcolm, Malcolm Gladwell, has defined the process of "thin slicing". This, Gladwell proposes, is the human mind's capability to make snap decisions by scanning available information and planning instant action. At opposite extremes, this process is evident in the horrible tragedy of Jean Charles de Menendez in Stockwell tube station and in the ludicrous comedy of coping with three-for-two offers in bookshops.

As a consequence, Malcolm buys his novels by a skim of the opening sentence or two, but refers to the epigram of the final page for heavier tomes. Gladwell's thesis apart, this method achieves a fair success-rate, but numerous books on the shelves of Redfellow hovel remain unread beyond the opening chapter.


new beginning

This is the 199th entry in Malcolm Redfellow Revivus, since it was started in August last year. One further entry and it will be time to ask the umpire for a fresh guard, "Middle-and-leg, please!", to review the field settings, and to settle for another session.

Malcolm didn't expect this to continue beyond a passing fad, but now feels obligated to maintain some kind of presence.

Very few of the postings, on reflection and review, have wholly satisfied him. Some are, in retrospect, quite embarrassing. The perfect essay, Malcolm fully appreciates, is far beyond him, his intellect, and his capacities.

It has intrigued Malcolm how the most trivial postings have evinced some response, but more thoughtful efforts have tombstoned. The elves came and went (though not without remark). The mood and tone fluctuated. Several long-distance conversations have developed, for which Malcolm remains grateful.

Nor has Malcolm ever fully reconciled what his prime aim is. He mixes all his passing interests and fads here. He would defend himself by saying that "man is a political animal" does not circumscribe the whole being of our species with the argy-bargy of factions and "issues". Aristotle meant that we live and thrive in the polis, the city-state, the community, and all that entails: daily events, the culture and literature of our times and those long-gone, the way we interact and respond to events, problems, controversies and ideas around us.

Inevitably, in aspiring to that, Malcolm's grasp is far, far greater than his reach.


alcolm's blog ...

... was begun mainly, if casually, to satisfy an inner need, a personal inadequacy. In that respect it has been cheaper and given more lasting satisfaction than alcohol. Not that alcohol has not played its part.

That previous paragraph was going to start with the enclitic and unnecessary "Most of all...", which Mr O'Gorman would have struck out forcibly.

But there is a "most of all". It is that these postings force order on random thoughts and formality on their expression. A truly satisfying blog, for author and any potential reader alike, must conform still to Pope's three-century old definition:

True wit is nature to advantage dress'd,
What oft was thought, but never so well express'd.

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What's in a name?

Merie sungen the Muneches binnen Ely
Tha Cnut ching rew ther by.
Rowe ye cnites noer the lant,
And here we thes Muneches sæng.

Got that, didn't you? Malcolm remembers it from a very old guidebook to East Anglia: Merrily sang the monks of Ely, when Cnut, king, rowed thereby. Row, you knights, near the land, and hear we these monks' song.

JRR Tolkien's more forgettable bits (and, in his sourer moments, Malcolm thinks much of the oeuvre, leaving aside The Hobbit, definitely is) include The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son (catchy title that! It's an attempt to continue the story of the Battle of Maldon). Tolkien nicked the original for his ending:

Sadly they sing, the monks of Ely isle!
Row men, row! Let us listen here a while!

One of Malcolm's minor mystifications (sorry: the alliterative thing gets to one) is how Cnut (up there in a contemporary drawing) got to become "Canute". He suggests it was in the hope of putting scabrous and dirty-minded schoolboys off the scent. And all alternative versions of "Canute the Great" read almost as suggestively: in Norse "Knútr inn ríki", in Swedish "Knut den mektige", or in Danish "Knud den Store".

Then English pronunciation is, indeed, a dangerous thing. It took Malcolm a while to work out that the BBC radio newscaster's "Bew-garr-uv" was the Bugarov in the newspaper. And Private Eye had some fun with the Japanese worthy, Takeshita. Nor should we forget .... no, no, enough.

So, let's be positive. Since, in our modern world, we have used up all of the really unpleasant insult words, with what may we replace them? Gore Vidal, conforming to the US Supreme Court's "mad way with the First Amendment", published Myron in 1974 using the names of the Justices substituted for possible obscenities: I pushed my enormous Rehnquist into her Whizzer White. Robert Anton Wilson uses the same device in his Schrödinger's Cat trilogy.

Malcolm now wishes to add a new term, even more offensive than "Belgium" . That word is "pilger". It can be used as a noun or a verb.

The current issue of the New Statesman has an article by John Pilger: These are Brown's bombs, too. In essence, this piece comes down to one disputed factoid, and a gross illogicality.

The factoid derives from an academic paper, on line here. Four statisticians of Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and the Al Mustansirya University of Baghdad, suggested

We estimate that as of July, 2006, there have been 654 965 (392 979–942 636) excess Iraqi deaths as a consequence of the war, which corresponds to 2·5% of the population in the study area. Of post-invasion deaths, 601 027 (426 369–793 663) were due to violence, the most common cause being gunfire.

This has been frequently challenged, by other academics (see Science magazine), by Michael O'Hanlon and the Brookings Institute, by iraqbodycount.org (who, as of today, suggest the figure is between 66,939 and 73,253 violent deaths, based upon verifiable deaths reported through hospitals and the like: for comparison, Pilger wildly throws out "over a million") et alii.

Even the original research for the Lancet article admitted a possible error of 300,000: hardly convincing when giving a result to a single digit. The methodology used 47 cluster points for just 1,849 interviews, prompting one statistician, in the Wall Street Journal (which may know a thing or two about numbers), to comment: “I wouldn't survey a junior high school, no less an entire country, using only 47 cluster points."

Pilger’s consistent and gross illogicality seems to be that the evil Washington-London axis is culpable for those human tragedies in which they don’t engage, but damnable for those in which they do. This reaches its bathos in the assertion:

They were only Muslims. And Muslims are the world's most numerous victims of a terrorism ...

(Sadly, true: but mainly at the hands of their co-religionists across some denominational divide.)

.. whose main sources are Washington, Tel Aviv and London.

O, come on! Why not give us the full deal, and throw in the Illuminati and the giant reptiles behind the “New World Order”?

Malcolm has emailed the editor of the NS inviting a bit of honesty: if this piece had arrived, handwritten in green ink on lined paper, it would have been spiked, unread. Its only saving grace, in the eyes of the NS and, presumably, its supposed readership was the by-line. In short, Pilger epitomises Daniel Boorstin’s notion of “celebrity”, and this piece is a classic "pseudo-event":

It is planted primarily, not always exclusively, for the immediate purpose of being reported or reproduced.

It justifies itself by provoking responses like this very blog. It is, in net-speak, a form of trolling.

Still with Boorstin, Pilger earns a place in the NS columns simply because of his “well-knownness”. That's the difference between celebrity and greatness: at least Cnut achieved something to be a great one.

Or, to look at it from a different point of view, when and why did the New Statesman sign up for the Stalinism of a cult of personality?

pilger noun: a media tart, a whore, a journalistic batty-boy. Also verb, intransitive to write rubbish in a suggestive and seductive manner, with intent to inflame others to violence and vomiting.

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Success! He shoots! He scores!

Malcolm's cup runneth over. He is the Man!

Err, Malc. Any chance of letting the rest of us in on the triumph?

The New York Times, now Malcolm's other journal of choice, has started a weekly quiz on its cityroom blog-page. Last week, Malcolm got five of the seven puzzles right, and so is this week's champion. O.K., O.K., he knows that being an occasional competitor (and, once, second runner-up) in the Prince of Wales, Highgate, pub quiz means he is nearly-Olympian standard, but ... come on!

Let it be known to the Kingdoms and beyond:

He won a free three-month membership to Times Select.

We say to Malcolm: remember thou art but mortal!
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Melly, very well done.

Nobody is going to be surprised by the death of George Melly, announced this morning (BBC obituary here).

George Melly gave enormous pleasure to so many. Not only was he a "Celebrity"*, but he deserved his iconic status.

Which is why this short entry was made to the accompaniment of Michigan Water, and with a tear of affectionate nostalgia for all that fruitiness.

* Note how Malcolm refuses to add that "celebrity" in beings lesser than the Great George means "famous for being famous". But only because this phrase is now a cliché, and in any case a misquotation of Daniel Boorstin's "The celebrity is a person who is well-known for his well-knownness". That's from The Image.

Melly lived his own dream, and made a reality of it that was larger-than-life, and appropriately approached the surreal. Sphere: Related Content

Ordure! Ordure!

BNP aims to use Orange events to attract members
[The Irish Times, 4th July 2007, page 7]

Gerry Moriarty
Northern Editor

The British National Party (BNP) has confirmed a statement in the North’s Assembly yesterday that it intends using the Twelfth of July Orange marching season to attract new members. The party also intends standing candidates in the 2011 Assembly elections, a spokesman said.

Ulster Unionist deputy leader Danny Kennedy, during an Assembly debate on racial equality, said the BNP planned a recruitment drive over the Twelfth of July period. He branded the BNP a hate-mongering racist party which must be rejected in Northern Ireland.

“I have said to them that this isn’t the kind of imported hate-mongering that we want or need in Northern Ireland,” he said.

The Orange Order said yesterday that “fascist organisations were not welcome at Twelfth parades.”

Mr Kennedy added: “I welcome the indications from the Grand Lodge of Ireland which resolutely condemn and oppose this move.”

BNP spokesman Dr Phil Edwards said his party would be taking advantage of the Twelfth of July period to enrol new members. “The BNP doesn’t recruit, armies recruit. We are inviting people to join,” he said.

He rejected Mr Kennedy’s assertion, echoed by several other speakers in the Assembly yesterday, that the BNP was a “hate-mongering” party.

“The BNP exists to preserve the traditional culture and identity of Britain. How can that be peddling hate,” Dr Edwards told The Irish Times.

Dr Edwards, who has a PhD in science, said the BNP was already established in Northern Ireland and that it would be standing a number of candidates in the nest Assembly elections.

Sinn Féin MLA Martina Anderson said there were 936 racist incidents in the past year, double the total for the previous two years. She said some loyalists were behind a number of racist attacks and that the unionist politicians should be doing more to address that problem.

Alliance MLA Anna Lo, originally from Hong Kong, said that racism was not a new phenomenon in Northern Ireland. “A couple of years after I arrived in the 70s I was kicked in Belfast City Centre in broad daylight walking to catch a bus to go home,” she said. She said racism was on the increase in Northern Ireland and that a policy of “zero tolerance” must be pursued.

Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness said “no part of society has a monopoly on racism and we must act to eradicate it as quickly as possible”.

The Assembly endorsed an Alliance motion, amended by Sinn Féin, calling for a continuing and speedy implementation of a racial equality strategy for Northern Ireland.
_____________________________________

The above extract, although of some length, deserves wider circulation.

Malcolm has already noted, back on 11th December 2006, the closeness, even warmth, between some DUP leaders and Kenny McClinton, convicted UFF murderer and now "Pastor of the Ulster/American Christian Fellowship Mission" in Craigavon.

McClinton's associates, especially in the LVF, have hosted Combat 18 who came over to join the doings of the Orange Order in Portadown and Drumcree.
_____________________________________

Critical update:

Malcolm offers sincere apologies...
... for misleading his loyal readers.

The above-named "Dr Phil Edwards" is in fact a figment of the imagination of one Stuart Russell, who does exist as the BNP's spinmeister. There are numerous references on the web to this charade (for example the NUJ's site and The Gaping Silence).

And Russell's Phud is a matter of some doubt: see the Ministry of Truth.

Is not this Net-thing a wonderful place? Sphere: Related Content

London Pride

The image hangs on Malcolm's wall. It is a scaled-down reproduction of a 1946 GWR poster.

It is the iconic view of the Palace of Westminster, seen from across the river. The river is populated by a tugs, barges, wherries with tan sails (obsolete by 1946, surely), and white launches.

The perspective and strong rising diagonals invite us to read the painting from left to right. A steel-grey sky, above the dome of the Methodist Central Hall and the Abbey, symbolically clears to blue sky and the puffy clouds, borrowed perhaps from John Constable.

In the background, beyond the 1862 replacement for Wordsworth's Westminster Bridge:

This City now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky.

The view is, of course, impressionistic. It would only be possible in reality by hovering above the roundabout before Lambeth Palace (there in the bottom right), where the A3203 Lambeth Road crosses Lambeth Bridge. Today this would not be a quiet spot, away from the traffic.

The artist was Frank [Henry] Mason...

... not to be confused with Frank [Herbert] Mason, the New York artist.

Mason was born at Seaton Carew, the small resort at the mouth of the River Tees. He was educated for the sea at HMS Conway, on the Mersey, and served in the RNVR in the First World War. He earned his crust as an engineer, but was adept at knocking out watercolours for posters, especially of Yorkshire, and frequently of seascapes. These parallel careers came together in the Second World War, when he designed naval camouflage. The only useful guide to Mason and his work was published a decade ago by the Hartlepool Art Gallery.

In Malcolm's opinion, Mason's London Pride is a remarkable achievement.

The painting has many points of reference: not just Constable, and Wordsworth: Canaletto, too, had been there before. More significant is the way Mason captures the mood of the moment that was 1946, the first post-War English summer.

The gleaming white City that occupies the far right distance of Mason's image was, in large part, an imaginative leap into fallacy. White Portland Stone did not glow in the light: the prevalent colour and texture were sooty, unchanged since Dickens described it, and would remain so until the Clean Air Act allowed a decent scrub.

Yes, that was still the London where the tallest structure was St Paul's, but it was a city where the Luftwaffe had been the most radical town-planner since 1666.

Noel Coward used the nick-name ...

... of the saxifrage hybrid for his 1941 song. He claimed to have sat on a bombed platform, waiting for a train, and conceived the outline for London Pride:

Grey city! Stubbornly implanted,
Taken so for granted for a thousand years.
Stay, city! Smokily enchanted,
Cradle of our memories and hopes and fears.

Every Blitz your resistance toughening,
From the Ritz to the Anchor and Crown,
Nothing ever could override
The pride of London Town.

He certainly nicked the tune (with implicit acknowledgement, however) from a folk-tune and street-cry: Won't you buy my sweet blooming lavender? Ironically, it was an act of rescue, as Michael Nyman and others point out: Josef Haydn appropriated it in 1797. Then Haydn's hymn to Austro-Hungarian imperial grandeur acquired other lyrics with Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben's 1841 Das Lied der Deutschen, better known for the first lines:

Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,
Über alles in der Welt!

Malcolm's Dad (who had been a Met Policeman through the 1941 Blitz) grew the plant in his herbaceous border, until it took over completely. It was common on the bombsites, but not so much as epilobium, the omnipresent Fireweed or rosebay willowherb.

And, let it be recorded, London Pride is a good strong bitter, brewed by Fuller's of Chiswick: 4.1% draught; 4.7% in a bottle. It's not as strong as the same brewer's ESB (a.k.a. "lunatic broth") which runs at 5.9%. Since Young's Special is now brewed in Bedford, Pride is Malcolm's London drink of choice.

Where does all this leave us, Malcolm?

Well, what provoked this entry was a strong distaste for the recent reports in many U.S. websites (of which Drudge was a typical sensational example). Nor were the home media entirely innocent. Malcolm's objection was to the repetitive use of the word "fear". That's not the mood, and is not likely to be so.

More to the point was Gordon Brown's appearances. In later years, the cartoonists tirelessly recycled the cliché of "poodle Blair". If Brown is to be doggified, caninized, something more suitable would be the mastiff:

a gentle giant ... self-confident, watchful and patient ... Intelligent and dignified ... in its nature to defend its territory ... can be aloof with strangers.

Nick Assinder, the BBC Political correspondent, tries to encapsulate this as:

Gordon Brown is different, and that difference has been striking in his reaction to the latest attacks and the way he has tried to speak for, and to, the nation.

There have been none of the smooth sound bites we have got used to.

In their place has been the sort of solidity and weight, some will say dourness, that have always been the mark of Gordon Brown.

Brown's statement for television last evening was just four sentences:

The first duty of the government is the security and safety of all the British people. So it is right to raise the levels at airports and other crowded places in light of the threat.

I want all people to be vigilant and support police in light of the difficult decisions they have to make. I know the British people will stand together, united, resolute and strong.

Enough to the point of terseness, but confident and reassuring. That's nearer the prevailing mood: in London and Glasgow, alike. Consider the way the would-be travellers at Glasgow Airport were queuing, literally round the block, to secure their departures this morning. And the symbolism of the Pride London parade passing over the very location of the first car-bomb.

Magnificent.

The BBC News 24 programme tamely describes this popular mood as "extraordinary stoicism".

But that's what Frank Mason was suggesting, sixty years back.

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