I still retain my buff and blue

Flying the flag for well-dressed blogging

2005-12-19T16:03:00.000Z

It appears someone wishes to awaken this blog from the depths of slumber into which it had crept.

"I can vouch from first-hand experience that these fine fellows dressed in the fashion that JP promotes, but as you can see they have all but given up blogging, unfortuantely. Which just leaves Wardytron to fly the flag for well-dressed blogging, I think. And Norman Geras, of course."

http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2005/12/19/recognise_anyone.php

Perhaps I shall return in the New Year in the fashion of a dandified Barbarossa. Now, however, my liver demands special attention and I have neither the time nor the opportunity to sort things out.

Coincidence?

2005-06-30T22:20:00.000+01:00

I'm usually a sceptical about surveys (four out of every ten are made up) but here are two unrelated ones which appear to back each other up.

The Irish are a very happy bunch - and they take a lot of drugs.

And if you believe only five per cent of Irish adults take cannabis, well good luck to you.

Persian punch

2005-06-18T17:51:00.000+01:00

Hitchens in Iran

I found a bootlegger on my arrival at Tehran's airport and was offered alcohol on principle in every home I entered—Khomeini's excepted—even by people who did not drink.

News travels fast, doesn't it?

Well, well, wellio welio-oh, well, well, well, well, well

2005-06-17T17:30:00.000+01:00

Plenty of reminders in recent weeks about the sleaze of the Haughey era. By coincidence I was reading one such report while listening to Fela Kuti’s ITT.

If I were a fancy pants podcaster, I’d play it for you now. As it is you’ll have to go and buy a copy, or go and download it if you haven’t got one; trust me, it’s great.

I was struck by the lyrics:

They pick a man… of low mentality to become of high position… then go to friend, friend to journalist; he friend, friend to commisssioner; friend, friend to permanent secretary; friend, friend to minister; friend friend to head of state, then start, start to steal money… like Charlie Haughey and Ray Burke.

Okay, he didn’t sing the last bit. Ireland’s not as corrupt as Nigeria (that’s not meant to be as damning as it sounds), but here’s Kevin Myers (subs required) on the link between garda corruption and the high-handed attitude to power typified by CJH and chums,
A taster:

But there was more to Sean Doherty than that. On his watch, the rule of law almost ceased to exist in Roscommon, as he obliged his petitioning constituents in relation to drunk-driving and speeding charges. What garda was ever going to risk his career with such a man, who had absolutely no sense of right or wrong? For his real duties were defined not by any morality, but by loyalty to the extended clan that was his constituency, and his tribal chief who was Charles Haughey.

Indeed, he was not a political representative of a modern, secular society in which government serves the state; the reverse was the truth. He truly was a pre-Enlightenment man, who saw the state merely as a useful instrument to be manipulated in the service of his party and its leader....

Moreover, one factor above all else made it obligatory not to hide the truth behind the usual parade of obsequies: the Garda scandal in Donegal...

Now this scandal did not occur somewhere in the wilder reaches of the Belmullet peninsula or Connemara, but in the front line of the Border war against terrorism, the very area where our most élite and dedicated gardaí should have been deployed. Instead, we got corner-boys and liars who, far from being sacked after the shocking Morris revelations, have not even been suspended; instead, lucky, lucky Dublin is to have the benefit of their services.

In other words, there is something rotten at the heart of justice in Ireland, and this rottenness was not the creation of Sean Doherty but the concoction of generations of political manipulation of An Garda Síochána.

PS: For those of you who are a bit slow on the uptake and who wondered at my characteristic sneering response to Geldof’s pious mitherings on the G8 debt relief deal, there’s a clue in ITT. The title for starters, plus the mantra (oppression, inflation, corruption… aids) might point you in the right direction.

Splendid fellows

2005-06-17T17:26:00.000+01:00

I like the sound of the Aka tribesmen profiled in the Graun recently. Quite rightly they let the women do their share of going out hunting while the chaps sit around doing the central African version of sitting around watching daytime TV. I should imagine it would be even easier than a househusband’s job in Europe. For instance, I doubt that hunter gatherers have to worry about the kids sticking their fingers in electric sockets so they can probably leave them to it.

Sadly it doesn’t say whether their womenfolk are the sort who would insist on doing the cleaning again – thereby making it easier to get away with a half-arsed effort – to meet some, superior, feminine standard.

Anyhow, they seem ideal role models until the glorious day when we can persuade women to do all the tough and unpleasant tasks themselves.

"It is a glorious prospect, for an idle fellow." Jerome K Jerome.

Facilitating exchange and mutual critique between the world's people (actual three-dimensional people)

2005-06-16T22:30:00.000+01:00

One would hope that the senior figure in church founded on murky compromise, cups of tea and, erm, Henry VIII's sex life would be a patient, forgiving soul. If so, Dr Rowan Williams must have read The Times report of his speech on the media with a more-in-sorrow-than anger sigh.

In a superb vindication of the Murdoch world, his plea for a more “more realistic, less fevered" approach was misrepresented somewhat in the hunt for a good headline.

And so it came to pass that Harry's Place waxeth wrath, verily until the Gruaniad's online edition of the speech came unto them. At which there was great tut-tutting and wringing of hands as the liberal media basketh in their own virtue as do the dolphins in a new age voyage of self discovery.

The Times's timing was even better in that it came in the week when Dominic Lawson finally got the boot from the Sunday Torygraph - the same rag which announced that the tsunami had caused the archbish to question his faith. Of course, he had done no such thing.

In many ways the archbishop seems like a good egg, but he really has only himself to blame when he makes pronouncements - his argument is basically the media needs to be careful not to get too full of its self-importance and try to be as accurate and fair as possible - which make certain blogs seem like models of clarity and brevity. "Unpoliced conversation" was an unfortunate phrase; "they are designed to speak to God and to each other and to give names to the things of the world around them. They are who they are in and through how they communicate" is classical academic jargon.

The header here is taken from his speech. It's what I should be doing on this blog were I a good Anglican. Which I'm not.

Roll out the pork barrel

2005-06-15T22:50:00.000+01:00

The Irish genius for lip service strikes again. In a bid to revive a language few people understand, the government pursuades the EU to translate all its stuff into Irish; a great way to get people reading it.

Plenty of dissenting views, and a long debate on Slugger O'Toole.

For me though, any language in which the word for rat and Frenchie are the same* deserves all the help it can get.

* Spelled francach and Fhrancaigh respectively. Francach pertains to official French things which will soon resemble to proverbial sinking ships.

Speak for yourself mate

2005-06-15T22:38:00.000+01:00

Millionaire Bob Geldof on the G8 debt relief deal: “Tomorrow 280 million Africans will wake up for the first time in their lives without owing you or me a penny from the burden of debt that has crippled them and their countries for so long.
“Money we didn’t even know we were owed and never wanted in the first place."

Some of us could use the money you know. It's not as if we're going to build a fifth palace or buy arms with it.

Still it's great to see world leaders acting altruistically... what's that?

Reasons to read newspapers, but not to watch TV

2005-05-28T18:28:00.000+01:00

It has come to my attention that Channel Four is screening a most objectionable programme called Big Brother. It would appear that owing to an unfortunate misreading of George Orwell's prescient novel, the programme makers have conceived of an entertainment whereby, like visitors to Bedlam of old, we are invited to laugh at the antics of various lunatics suffering from sundry disorders such as self-delusion, sexual incontinence, psychopathy and tediousness.

Obviously I have no intention of promoting the wretched affair but I was highly amused to learn that one of this year's contestants is the intriguing Derek Laud: a black, gay, fox-hunting Tory, with a knack for getting himself into unfortunate scrapes.

The reason I mention this odd fish is that he was once the subject of one of the finest newspaper profiles I have ever read (in the Observer, pre-internet I'm afraid; you'll have to visit their HQ if you wish to read it in full).

Apart from quoting his merry ripost to a hunt saboteur who told him "A hundred years ago they'd have been chasing you" - "And two hundred years ago I'd have been eating you." It contained the most brilliant euphemism I have ever encountered. Clearly he was somewhat more cagey about his sexuality in those days, because he was described as "a confirmed bachelor, like most of his close friends". Genius.

Reasons not to read newspapers

2005-05-28T18:11:00.000+01:00

When uber-Blairite David Aaronovitch bid farewell to the Graun's G2 section (I assume Seamus Milne wouldn't let him anywhere near his shrine to the blessed George of the oil vouchers) he signed off with the modest remark:

With writers such as Emma Brockes, Laura Barton, Lucy Mangan and Hadley Freeman, not to mention the comic talent of Tanya Gold, you won't miss me.

Sure enough, the amount of tooth-furring bollocks in G2 has remained steady since he left for the Times. By the far the worst has been the following mini-autobiography from Sue Townsend during her stint doing the prize quiz:

Sue Townsend will never forget the night of "shock and awe" when Baghdad was bombed by British and American planes. She wonders if Tony and Cherie gathered their children together to watch the television as the bombs fell on the children of Baghdad.

For uninformative smugness this is hard to beat. Why remember that rather than, say, mass murder in various parts of Africa? Does she imagine a Prime Minister who's just started a deeply unpopular war would have nothing better to do at the time?

Surely she doesn't feel the little virtuous glow of those so convinced of their rightness that there couldn't possibly be an alternative view?

I have no especial desire to choose between the self-deluding hypocrites on both sides of this overblown debate, but I must say that Sue Townsend's approach is as simplistic as Fox News's; only considerably more annoying.

Kill all hippies

2005-05-24T16:38:00.000+01:00

I am sure that many of my vintage remember the campaigners who urged us to boycott McDonald's because they were destroying the Amazon rainforest to rear their cattle.

Obviously, they would have been better advised telling us to boycott the stuff because it is truly vile muck served by gormless teenagers; but in a wonderful irony it emerged last week that the people destroying the rainforest were the soya farmers who help to keep the veggie brigade in tofu.

"Much of the destruction has been blamed on the illegal logging of land for soya production, say experts at Nature Conservancy in Brazil."

According to a 2000 Ecologist report the anti-GM brigade are also responsible. Fortunately this one also blames the beef barons.

The latest fad

2005-05-23T16:07:00.000+01:00

around blogging types is the list of 10 things I've never done. Some of the one's have read seem to have been written by people with rather limited horizons (imagine that from folks who spend every waking hour in front of a computer). Still I like this one of Harry's, mainly because of the slightly alarming spectacle of himself and venichka drooling over Eighties popstrels.

Here's mine, anyhow. Most of these, I am sure would be character forming in one way or another

1. Taken hallucinogens and then listened to the entire Ring Cycle.
2. Knocked and entered at the portals of the East.
3. Fought a duel.
4. For lust of knowing what should not be known, taken the golden road to Samarkand.
5. Turned my base mettle into gold.
6. Eaten a snake's heart.
7. Come face to face with Satan.
8. Encountered the members of Girls Aloud in a moderately high class bordello.
9. Turned down a knighthood.
10. Paid off my gambling debts in full.

Yes to wind

2005-05-20T16:19:00.000+01:00

After all that election nonsense we can at last get back to issues of substance. There were, of course, posts I could have published in the interim; but the world is not yet ready for the story of how the Golden Eagle was introduced to Brixton and discretion towards some of our best known Hollywood stars precludes me from commentating about the strange events in South Kerry earlier this month.

Instead a solution to two long-term problems which confront Western society. The first of these is the looming energy crisis. Most experts would agree that fossil fuels are, erm, fuelling global warming (with potentially disastrous consequences) . So what's the preferred solution: windfarms? (will they generate enough power though?), develop alternative technologies? (unproven as yet) or - as Tony Blair's government are trying to avoid deciding to do - build more non-greenhouse gas-emitting nuclear power stations and upset all those who've been calling for action on global warming?

But at the risk of repeating an old suggestion, I think we can generate sufficient power in a way that tackles another massive problem: the obesity timebomb (TM all journalists in the English-speaking world). Treadmills in schools (or hamster wheels if you've a sense of humour about this sort of thing), excercise bikes in offices - all hooked up to the national grid. What could be cleaner, what could be healthier? Forward not back indeed.

It's a beautiful day (because I haven't heard a squeak from Bono),

2005-04-09T18:17:00.000+01:00

Democracy, like the internet is a wonderful thing. The freedom both generate have brought felicity, prosperity and manifold benefits to many. The only problem is that all the wrong sort of people come along and spoil things.

So it is with some caution that I approach the British elections. I need not stress the importance of voting - especially since if you don't, someone else might on your behalf. However, I am aware than my endorsement could be a critical factor in this poll, but since neither the Whig Party, nor the Party of Moderate Progress Within The Bounds Of Law are standing (unless you take Gerry Adams's latest at face value) my support for any party will be conditional.

Labour and the Tories, of course, are too frightful: both seem determined to get the votes of the most unpleasant elements of society by competing to see who can lock up more gypsies and swarthy foreign types (possibly without the right to a fair trial). Kilroy too, seems to be aiming at the Chav vote, his targeted constituency is the sort of place where six St George flags on a Ford Escort is restrained patriotism and pubs hold regular auctions for goods of doubtful provenance.

As for the Lib Dems, I fear that voting for them is rather akin to self abuse. Everyone does it at one time or another, but it is ultimately unsatisfying and not something to boast about.

Which leaves us with an unattractive coalition of oofy tree huggers, swivel-eyed loons and other weird monomaniacs with strange obsessions.

Fortunately, there is a party that offers the requisite excitement and dash to keep the turn out at a healthy level: Respect, George Galloway's merry alliance of Trotskyists and Salafists. With the SWP and Muslim ~~Brotherhood~~ Alliance of Great Britain both on board, voters will have the delicious frison of not knowing whether they will end up with a Cuban style worker's paradise or a Theocracy. Surely anyone with an once of sporting blood would want to back this lot.

I'll maybe do a post on Northern Ireland next week, if I can contemplate that ghastly prospect.

Saturday never comes

2005-04-06T17:20:00.000+01:00

Zadok the barber and Nathan the social worker anointed Charles and Cam as...

Of course not. The febrile mixture of fawning sentimentality and mass hysteria surrounding the Pope and Charles and Camilla (what's that? Prince Rainier dead too, you say? Too bad. Let's hope the President of San Marino* is okay or it would complete a terrible week for tiny statelets) is inducing a mixture of nausea and boredom I have not experienced since Princess Diana died. (This is pretty awful too).

Thank goodness for the Grand National.

*Or similar

Final papal ramblings

2005-04-02T20:03:00.000+01:00

One has to admire JP's reluctance to meet his boss - I do sympathise with that. However, I was struck by the fact that another over-80, Robert Mugabe, seems to be in perfect health. Let's hope nothing happens to him, eh?

Still: is this a good time to ask which man' s policies are responsible for more deaths in Africa?

Ducks for cover.

Rebranding reaches Vatican

2005-04-01T17:19:00.000+01:00

The Last Rites are now known as the Sacrament of the Annointing of the Sick. How reassuring: "I assure you, there's no cause for alarm. It's just a little ritual for those who are feeling a bit under the weather."

Diaspora delights

2005-03-31T16:12:00.000+01:00

My Russian correspondent rouses himself from the gutter outside the Kremlin to send his latest dispatch. Through the residual meths and brake fluid fumes he tells me he still hasn't manged to get inside the inner sanctum of the Russian state, but instead offers the following consolation: an interesting fact about Kyrgzstan (the best I could do was that it has the world's largest free growth walnut forest - is there another type?):

This is a part of the Islamic world that wears its religion lightly, merging it with the traditions of a proud steppe-based nomad people that defeated the Mongols and held off the great Tamburlaine. In the rural areas, the courtship ritual is still conducted on horseback, where the women beats off her chosen suitor with a horse whip until she deems him determined enough to be acceptable.
This is not a form of mating procedure that finds favor with the
ayatollahs in Tehran or the Wahhabite clerics of Saudi Arabia.

One imagines that would be the done thing in certain echelons of British society - certainly it seems preferable to some of the romantic nonsense one is forced to endure these days.

My correspondent also offers the following observation:

Was also amused to read that, aftermonths of references to the forthcoming "tulip revolution" is Kyr, the govt ripped out all the tulips in Bishkek in advance of the elections. Expect something similar to happen with apricots in Armenia, should thatever cease to be a despotic gangster-led kleptocracy with an influential and hypocritical and selectively blind diaspora. Which is unlikely.

All of these leads me to wonder about the vexed subject of diasporas. There is no doubt that some people seem better at the exiles business than others.

The question is: whose exiles have the best away form? The Italians and Irish, for instance, seem to have devoted much of the last 200 years establishing themselves in the New World and using their connections back home to fund various political movements/legitimate business enterprises. There are also massive Indian and Chinese diasporas across the continents.

The trick it seems, to establish yourself across the superpower of the time (hint: if you go to Patagonia, no one will pay any heed). The Armenians seem to have a presence in parts of Africa and the Med for a long time, but when it comes to highlighting their historical grievances no one seems interested. It also helps to maintain a separate cultural indentity (which disqualifies the English, except for their criminal classes who have a country made in their own image) or even a series of historic grudges (the Germans are possibly the biggest ethnic group in the US, but they're not really in a position to whinge, are they?)

The Jews for instance (please, no paranoid rants) simply by dint of sheer persistence probably deserve the prize for top exiles. After 2000 years this particular people do exercise a certain cultural, political and economic clout - but not more so than the aforementioned Chinese, Indians and Irish (since when did you see a Jewish festival turned into a marketing opportunity for a major brewery).

But they're beaten to it by a disapora with even more financial, cultural and political power: the Scots. From unpromising beginings in Northern Ireland (if you now feel obiliged to rant about Planters and 800 years of blah or the Cruithin, please go away) via lands of tedium such as Canada and New Zealand, the Scottish dispora runs England and could now be considered the most influential group in America, and therefore the world.

It also appears that the fun-loving Presbyterian church can also claim credit for the exuberant vitality of gospel music. Thanks to Ross for these links)

I know how the Pope felt on Sunday

2005-03-29T16:38:00.000+01:00

I am nearly recovered from Easter. For those who don't know, on Good Friday the prissy, purtainical side of the Irish national character comes to the fore in the Smoke-Free State and all the pubs and offies shut as a mark of respect (forcing people to go on a big consumerist binge instead). Naturally, many people take this as their cue to stockpile massive stocks of booze and get unfeasibly drunk. Even now, I have scarcely levelled out from the effects of red wine, Calvados and a normal working weekend.

However, in a beautiful bit of synchronicity thousands of Irish soccer fans descended on Tel Aviv just in time for Purim: the one Jewish festival which is ("traditionally a time for dressing up, reveling and excessive drinking of alcohol" says Hareetz). I seem to recall that Purim also saw lots of clowns being put in places like Golders Green. You can probably make some gag about the Irish performance out of that.

If nothing else, the fans were lucky to escape the rain and all the reams of self-congratualtory guffe about the first anniversary of the Smoking Ban (the love of patting themselves on the back is another of the less attractive Irish character traits).

As one who rarely smokes cigarettes (and I have no intention of exposing myself to derision by standing out in the street for a Cuban cigar or a pipe) and am getting heartily sick of sitting by myself among half drunk pints while everyone troops out for a smoke. I fear it is yet another nail in the coffin for the art of conversation. Of course, the nannying prigs would suggest I hang out with non-smoking types, but really what sort of a person makes a minor health risk the basis for their whole social life?

More importantly, I have not seen one article that referred to the true pioneers of the smoking ban - Turkmenistan. All my hints to this effect have been ignored...

Even my dog is irritatingly smug

2005-03-10T22:54:00.000Z

Can you put animals down for this?

Buster, our mongrel, is good at fetching the Guardian. When the Telegraph was delivered by mistake, he destroyed it. Good taste or what? Jeremy and Rosemary GoringSt Leonards-on-Sea, E Sussex

Remember: your choice of newspaper does not make you morally superior.

Update: Get a life, says one anonymous contributor. Venichka immediately thinks of the Camden New Journal. Camden sparks in me the memory of one Glaswegian tramp I met who had trained his dogs to carry tins of Special Brew in their mouths. Now that is animal training at its best.

Now here's a bit of fun

2005-02-26T17:57:00.000Z

Courtesy of my old chum Quink a sort of bookshelf bingo. You simply replace the writers who aren't on your shelf with one's who are. Shamefacedly, I confess I haven't even heard of some of the originals.

1. ~~Iain Pears~~: Elizabeth Bowen
2. ~~John Irving~~: Venedickt Erofeev
3. ~~Alice Munro~~: Charles Baudelaire
4. ~~Barbara Hodgson~~: Mark Twain
5. ~~Elizabeth George~~: Medlar Lucan and Durian Grey
6. ~~Nick Bantock~~: PG Wodehouse
7. ~~Ruth Rendell~~: Ian Rankin
8. ~~Anne Tyler~~: Francis Wheen
9. ~~Margaret Atwood~~: The Marquis de Sade
10. ~~Leif Enger~~: Maria Edgworth
11. ~~Agatha Christie~~: Michel Houellebecq
12. Graham Green
13. ~~Ann Patchett~~: Fyodor Dostoevski
14. ~~Azar Nafisi~~: David Mitchell
15. ~~Donna Leon~~: Arthur Conan Doyle

God rot all princes

2005-02-26T17:33:00.000Z

I weep with boredom every time members of the royal family appear on television, and I fail to understand why some rather sad individuals should care so deeply about Charles's nuptial arrangements. There are far better grounds to prevent him from every becoming King than this.

He seems to have no conception of his duties: namely idling, drinking, gambling and hanging around with loose women. Edward VII must be the role model here. If I were in Charles's position, I should certainly surround myself with a better class of floozie and be seen at the racetrack more frequently.

Furthermore, the Prince of Wales is constitutionally obliged to become an arbiter of style: one thinks of the Prince Regent's patronage of Beau Brummel or the Duke of Windsor's pioneering hatless style. Charles has tried, I suppose - certainly I would love an account at his tailor's - but a look at the deplorable dress sense of most Britons shows what a poor job he has done. Truly the Beckhams have won the allegience of the mindless grovelling classes*.

* According to the ridiculous uptight, prisily correct bourgeoise at the Graun this means I am guilty of repellent class hatred. Sorry.

Stopperdammerung

2005-02-26T17:13:00.000Z

A typically light-hearted discussion over at Harry's Place on Normblog Geras's great composers poll. If you scroll down you will see that some impertinent little fellow has the temerity to attack my remarks concerning Wagner. However, on mature reflection, I wonder if he might not have a point. After all, given the febrile state of the world we wouldn't want to give comfort to any unacceptable composers.

In my revised opinion, therefore that in the name of human decency the following fellow-travellers must be expunged from the western canon, and if I catch any of you voting for these fellows, I shall set a mob of students on you:

Wagner (you know the score. Also goes on a bit, I've had love affairs that were shorter than Gotterdammerung - although, fortunately, there were fewer histrionics at the end)
JS Bach: (repeats the blood libel)
Shostakovich (Stalinist lick-spittle)
Handel (Judas Maccabeus glorifies Highland clearances)
Tchaikovsky (1812 Overture glorifies Tsarist tyranny over the values of the French Revolution)

I'm not certain how far this should go, however. What are we to make of the shilly-shalling of Beethoven regarding Napoleon, for instance? or Purcell's seemless switch from supporting the Papist tyranny of James II to supporting Orange bigotry with William and Mary? or Prokofiev on the Russian revolution? And should murders like Gesualdo also be excluded. All most vexing.

Those whom the gods love

2005-02-25T18:25:00.000Z

The Pope's continued shilly-shallying is most un-Christian. Does he have any idea of the distress his continued failure to chose between life and death is causing? Of course he doesn't because he's lying in a a drug-induced stupor. Meanwhile Vatican officials are stressing out by trying to run a church without anyone to sign the paperwork and take mass (okay, they probably do have a few people qualified to take mass, but you know what I mean). The world's media are on tenterhooks and hundreds of hacks are working extra hard only to find that he's decided to hang on a bit longer anyway. Elsewhere, peasant women the world over are doing serious damage to their athritic joints by spending hours in prayer before blowing their pensions on candles and flowers.

This is already worse than Arafat. He, at least, had some excuse for being reluctant to meet his maker. What's Karol's excuse?

Tally ho chaps

2005-02-18T23:09:00.000Z

Although country sports aren't really my thing, I can't help wondering, in the wake of the hunting stuff in England and Wales last week whether it would possible to collect a pack of foxes and train them to hunt down dogs and cats.

It seems they're already pretty good at it and, if some Grauniad letter writers are to be believed, it wouldn't be such a bad thing.