Friday 6 May: Rishi should listen to Sir Matt

With only a quarter of results in as I write, it is already clear that the Conservative Party have lost credibility with a significant portion of the UK population.  Their stewardship of the UK has been exposed as disastrous (NHS and Teaching recruitment crises, widespread discharge of untreated sewage into rivers, appalling service from many rail companies, energy companies making massive profits as energy prices soar, rampant food inflation, etc etc). They have run out of ideas.

So, they may well turn to the politics of abuse – stirring up the “Woke” debate, and inciting a moral panic over immigration, the “small boats” and the “criminal gangs”.   Rishi Sunak might be well advised to consider the wise words of Matt Busby (the hugely respected Manchester United Manager between 1945-69).  By the early 1970s, with an ageing squad, Manu were struggling to avoid relegation.  The combative Scot, Tommy Docherty, was manager between 1972-1977.  In early 1974 as relegation became a threat and then a reality, Docherty’s team resorted to the well-established strategies of muscular physicality, time wasting, and gamesmanship.  Busby took him aside and gently advised, “Tom, if we’re going to go down, lets go down with some dignity”.   Sunak should reflect on this, because after the Johnson era, Trumpism, fake news and social media abuse, the one quality politics badly needs is a bit more dignity.

April 2023: Raab resigns after report into bullying allegations: Doesn’t Raab’s aggressive tone in his response to the report on his alleged bullying rather undermine his case that he has been treated harshly?

March 2023: No ghosts and precious few leaders?

Marley was dead.  So Scrooge downsized the firm, shed some staff, re-focused the mission, outsourced the supply chains, redesigned the logo, and refreshed the brand.  The company was re-floated, with a parent company registered in the British Virgin Islands, owned in turn by a holding company registered in Liberia.  With his tax exposure minimised, he sold out to a hedge fund and invested the proceeds in houses and flats.  With rental income rolling in, Scrooge retired to the Channel Islands and lived out his years in luxury, untroubled by ghosts of past, present or future. And that my friends, is how under the dominant influence of neo-liberal economics, and Mrs Thatcher’s enterprise culture, business-people have learned to think.

The good news, I believe, is that although still a dominant influence, the philosophy of neo-liberal economics is no longer hegemonic – it does not lead.  Too many people have lost all faith in it.  The phrase “trickle-down economics” just produces a hollow laugh.  The remaining zealots (I’m looking at you, Liz Truss), are like cartoon characters, having run off the edge of the cliff, but unaware of their position, have kept on running.

Indeed, the beginning of the end was around fifteen years ago, when the over enthusiastic provision of sub-prime mortgages, combined with ever more elaborate debt re-packaging, crucially damaged the Western banking system. The failure to adequately address these banking collapses led us into a decade of austerity, and ever more grotesque gulfs between the rich and the poor.  So, from 2008, there was a growing crisis of hegemony. In such a circumstance, as Gramsci tells us, a variety of morbid symptoms will appear. Eventually the first harbingers of a new settlement will start to crystallise.  For a worrying period it looked as if the likes of Trump, Johnson, and Bolsanaro might be harbingers of a new right wing formation capable of engineering a new right populist hegemony, but it now looks more as if they may prove to be morbid symptoms.

There is certainly a large level of discontent manifest in a hundred diverse forms – abuse and offence on social media, a harsh and unforgiving condemnatory tone in public debate, an impatience and frustration with how things are.  Yet, I believe there is also yearning, inchoate but searching, for ways, means forms, in which things might be other than they are.  

It is present, I would suggest in the huge success of Repair Shop (BBC), which has tapped into a utopian desire for a world in which the precious and much-loved artefacts that embody domestic memories, can be lovingly and patiently restored.  This is an imaginary resolution in that we know well that the cost of such labour cannot be borne (under the present economic relations), so is it just a romantic and ultimately conservative nostalgia for a world of corer repair shops that once was?  I think not, because there is a degree of pre-figuring going on.   Repair shop style organisations have begun to emerge, in which it is recognised that wage rates may make the cost of repair unaffordable, and an alternative avenue, based on skill transfer, is evolving. In this schema, citizens with precious objects in parlous state, can engage with experts in various craft skills, who will advise them as to how to mend things, and provide some of the tools and resources.

Now, of course this is not in itself a strategy for renewal, but it is a harbinger of some of the qualities we might want our world to have if we had more power.  On a bigger scale, one could consider the example of the British Labour Party’s proposed Green New Deal – arguably the most worked through, developed, and resilient of party policies currently advocated.   It is decisively forward facing, and unlike so much public policy thinking on all sides, is not blind to the major climate crisis coming our way.

This is a far more distinct harbinger of what could be a new settlement, as dramatic in its way as the post 1945 moment.  This, however, will only come about through struggle to win support, to understand the dimensions of the current crisis, to make the new agenda, to grasp the future.  The next few years will show if the Labour Party under Keir Starmer’s leadership can rise to the challenge.

March 2023: My play, Vladimir and Jerome, is now available as an e-book and paperback on Amazon KDP.  Just go to Amazon UK and search for the title.

Vladimir and Jerome is a two-act play concerning an imagined meeting and growing friendship between the writer Jerome K. Jerome and the Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin. The first act takes place in a central London pub in 1902, when Lenin was 32 and Jerome 43. The second act is set in the tea-room of the British Museum. in 1908.    It was written in 2019-20.

I wrote this play between Spring 2019 and Summer 2020 so in a way it is a product of the coronavirus lockdown.  It has a longer genesis. For some twenty years I have been regularly walking along Tavistock Place, London WC1.   I noticed two blue plaques just a few doors apart indicating that both the comic writer Jerome K. Jerome and the Russian communist leader Vladimir Lenin had lived there, although not at the same time.   I took to wondering what might have happened had they met.  When the idea began nudging at me, I felt it was time to try and write it.  I did a fair amount of research into their lives at the time of their imagined meetings, in 1902 and then again in 1908.  I imagined them meeting first in a rather shabby corner pub near to Tavistock Place.

Once I began to write, the word came alarmingly fast.  It was as if the two of them, were in front of me, chatting away, and I was merely taking dictation.  At times, they would become impatient and urge me to keep up.  Up till now I have only written non-fiction, and so this was, for me, the strangest of experiences.

When it was complete, surprisingly rapidly, I showed it to some friends and was very pleased by their universally enthusiastic responses.  I am very grateful to all those who read and commented–David Buxton, Helen Carr, Chrissie Charlton, Julie Everton, Justin Fleming, Jessica Higgs, Michael Jackson, Stephen McCubbin, Nicky North, Deborah Philips, Gavin Stewart, Kate Whannel, Carole Woddis, and Giles Wright. For providing very useful advice, many thanks to Angus Douglas, Julie Everton, Jessica Higgs, David Hunter, and Bill Dare. I am doubly grateful to Chrissie Charlton, not just for the cover design, but for her engagement with the project as a whole.

 In retrospect, after its completion, I realised two elements that had been an unconscious influence.  For some time I have had a research interest in the history of political comedy and Vladimir and Jerome represented the two halves of that coupling.  Perhaps more significantly, my own lifetime feelings of ambivalence about gradualist and revolutionary approaches to socialist transformation had haunted the writing.  Above all, though, I wrote it to amuse.

Monday 21 November 2022: I have been silent for a long time on this blog.  Far too long.  Was I lost for words?  All out of words? Struck dumb?  Certainly recent political events demand commentary and yet have the power to render one speechless.

My radio silence goes back further, though, and The Truss Days cannot be used as an excuse.  Anyway, after two years of lockdown and family illnesses, I may have developed a locked in syndrome – able to read, perceive and think, but not utter.

am working on it.  I will start posting again.  Expect a degree of catching up, or perhaps, given the chaos the Tories have inflicted, mopping up might be more appropriate

I am greatly relieved that there seemed to be a distinct anti-Trump response in the mid-terms, although only a fool would be complacent – still eminently possible for him to win the primaries and become the Republican candidate.  So, while it would be a mistake for a European like me to engage in the US electoral process, I do hope that those entitled to vote will maintain vigilance and activism.  And, it seems to be goodbye Bolsanaro and hoorraayy for Lula, so there are reasons for hope.

Wednesday 2 February 2022: Well, what can I say?  A long radio silence.  Sometimes I have nothing to say or nothing to write worth reading.  Sometimes words fail me.  Sometimes, life just intervenes. The possibility of a Trump re-run for President in 2024 keeps me awake at night.  I just hope that Americans of goodwill are doing all they can to prevent a second Trump presidency.  A Trump presidency will destroy any remaining hope that the battle to stop climate change can be won.  And that is before we go onto consider any other consequences.

Wednesday 8 September: Get profit out of our healthcare

How about we remove the profit aspect of social healthcare by establishing non-profit groups – trusts, charities and local authority organisations? Why should taxpayers be forced to stuff money into the pockets of the owners of private health groups? Just a thought.

PS apologies that to many of my readers worldwide, my posts must seem a bit parochial. I am where I am. However the profit out of health theme applies around the world.

Sunday 25 July: Delivering Leaflets in Thunder

Because someone has to.

Because I cannot bear to live under this dreadful Tory Government for much longer

Because I had almost finished the round when the thunder and rain started.

Because I cannot read the whole paper anymore without

A) starting to cry

B) getting very depressed

C) getting foaming-at-the-mouth angry.

D) feeling guilty that I do so little to help fight back.

Because when I consider the policies of the Home Secretary and the Home Office, I feel ashamed to be associated with it through nationality.

Because for all those people who know how wrong things are and yet do nothing, we have to work twice as hard to have an impact.

I have no great hopes for a utopia and not many for radical transformation

But I do know things can be a little bit better

Possibly a lot better

And for so many, that is a really big deal.

Richard Neville, one of the founding editors of 60s/70s magazine, OZ, once said

“There is only an inch of difference between the Conservatives and Labour…but it is that inch we all live in.”

I want to live in that inch while I am still here.

Because I may be a party hack (What is the definition of a party hack?  You deliver one thousand leaflets, and then discover you have none left and you haven’t read it.) but I know all the great policies in the world are as worthless as last year’s pools entry, unless you can start putting them into practice.  To set the world to rights we have first to win power.

Anyway, it is good exercise, and thunder and rain make you walk faster.

Wednesday 28 April 2021: We can change all this. 

We do not need to be a country that can only offer a 1% pay raise for NHS; a country in which cash aid goes in greater amounts to constituencies with Tory MPs; a country that foreign workers are fleeing; in which asylum seekers are menaced by visits to hostels by far right thugs; where there is gross exploitation of part time workers, gig economy workers and zero hours contracts; where racist and misogynist abuse on social media is endemic. A country in which contracts go to the chums of ministers.  We do not have to have crony capitalism.  We can be better than this.   We are better than this.  Most people are big hearted and community minded.   Let’s get back our self-respect.  Think about this when you vote next week.

Wednesday 14 April 2021:  IOC Ploughs on Regardless.  Depressingly, there is still little sign that the IOC is going to recognise, belatedly, the absurdity of staging an Olympic Games (even with no foreign spectators) in the middle of a pandemic. So, athletes, officials, bureaucrats, journalists and media technicians from virtually every country in the world will travel to live in close proximity for a fortnight in Tokyo, a high-density city, before returning home.  The latest poll shows 72% of Japanese want the Games cancelled or postponed. Will the IOC and the Tokyo Organising Committee pay any heed?

April 2 2021: Deborah’s book on Sandy Wilson arrived today! few better moments for an author than when the book arrives in a parcel.

And This is My Friend Sandy: Sandy Wilson’s The Boy Friend, London Theatre and Gay Culture

by Deborah Philips (Bloomsbury 2021)

(published 25th March 2021)

This book situates the production of The Boy Friend and the Players’ Theatre in the context of a post-war London and reads The Boy Friend, and Wilson’s later work, as exercises in contemporary camp. It argues for Wilson as a significant and transitional figure both for musical theatre and for modes of homosexuality in the context of the pre-Wolfenden 1950s.

Sandy Wilson’s The Boy Friend is one of the most successful British musicals ever written. First produced at the Players’ Theatre Club in London in 1953 it transferred to the West End and Broadway, making a star out of Julie Andrews and gave Twiggy a leading role in Ken Russell’s 1971 film adaptation. 

Despite this success, little is known about Wilson, a gay writer working in Britain in the 1950s at a time when homosexuality was illegal.

Drawing on original research assembled from the Wilson archives at the Harry Ransom Center, this is the first critical study of Wilson as a key figure of 1950s British theatre. Beginning with the often overlooked context of the Players’ Theatre Club through to Wilson’s relationship to industry figures such as Binkie Beaumont, Noël Coward and Ivor Novello, this study explores the work in the broader history of Soho gay culture. As well as a critical perspective on The Boy Friend, later works such as Divorce Me, Darling!, The Buccaneer and Valmouth are examined as well as uncompleted musical versions of Pygmalion and Goodbye to Berlin to give a comprehensive and original perspective on one of British theatre’s most celebrated yet overlooked talents.

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/and-this-is-my-friend-sandy-9781350174214/

March 18 2021: When Clown Becomes King

OK I was going to write a blog entry this morning.   However, instead I am going to suggest you go and read todays Long Read in the Guardian.  It is called In The Court of the Clown King, and it is by Edward Docx.  It examines Boris Johnson through the lens of the clown archetype, and the awkward relationship between “clown” and “power”.  I have an uncomfortable feeling that this article is better than anything I might have written.  Go read it.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/mar/18/all-hail-the-clown-king-how-boris-johnson-made-it-by-playing-the-fool

March 9 2021: No Complacency

So Uncle Joe is President, Ubu is languishing in Florida.  Covid is at last being tackled properly, and the USA is rejoining the Paris Climate Accord.  Goody.  But, let us remember, Biden is not Bernie, and Ubu is not gone for good.  The toxic blend of (white) working class anger at disempowerment, and a resurgent supremacist movement engineered and encouraged by the Donald is a dangerous feature of the US political scene.  A significant part of the threat lies in the resistance of this constituency to rational argument, its rejection of evidence, and its willingness to believe even quite bizarre conspiracy theories.

None of this would matter quite as much were it not for the shocking unwillingness of the majority of Republican politicians to break with Trump, or even criticise him, even now he is out of office.   This, let us not forget, is showing loyalty to a figure who gave open encouragement to his followers to storm Congress, putting the lives of some politicians including Republicans in very real danger.  The party is making itself very vulnerable to a takeover by the forces for which Trump is the figurehead.   Now the populist template is well established, it is certainly possible to imagine that even if Trump himself were to be discredited by various pending court cases, another charismatic figure might step up to the plate.  Seldom has a political party been quite so in need of a moral compass.

Meanwhile, those many Europeans who are deeply concerned, watch on, helpess, like fans in the back row of the bleachers offering advice to the coach.   The US elections, as has been said before, may be too important to be left to Americans, but only Americans can deal with the threat that faces us.  To put it simply, let’s just focus on one issue – the most important issue – of climate change.  United, nations of goodwill, working together, can help lead the struggle to defeat the climate emergency.   If a Trump style campaign wins in 1924, and removes USA from this battle, as Trump effectively did, it will constitute an existential threat.   A strategy must emerge to combat this danger.

February 26: From our Royal Correspondent. Apparently Prince Harry was on the James Cordon show on American television recently, discussing his baby son Archie, and complaining about media intrusion into his private life.  Is there perhaps a hidden irony here?  He also revealed that the Queen had given him a waffle maker for Xmas.  I wonder if her Majesty may have been sending a subtle message of some kind?  Think back to the postponed State Opening of Parliament in 2020 when she complained that the Crown was too heavy for her, and instead sported a blue hat with yellow flowers, remarkably similar to the EU flag.  The media, for the most part, studiously avoided any comment.

FEB 16th 2021: Green shoots

Well for what it is worth I think there will be, at least in some areas a very rapid pickup in the leisure sector, for two reasons:

1.  When the virus is finally well under control (which could be by Autumn, but may not be till next spring, I am sad to say), there will be a huge enthusiasm for going out: pubs, cafés, restaurants, sport events, museums, movies, clubs, just as there was in the late 1940s after the Second World War, when almost all these activities registered their record attendances.

2.  Due to the large number of closures, especially in the case of major high street stores, there is going to be a drop in high street rents and lease costs and a lot of property available in good-for-retail areas.

SO: any individuals or groups planning startups in the sectors of pubs, cafés restaurants, bars, and cinemas  will be very well placed to take advantage.

If the Government and local authorities are shrewd they will tweak business rates and other forms of corporate tax, to encourage this trend – it will pay off in a boost to employment, and will up the tax take.

Reasons to be cheerful, you read it here first !

The current advice from an “agency” to the senior Labour team to foreground the flag and patriotism is, at the least, unfortunate.  In terms of strategic planning there are really, in the end, two types of people: those who recognise now that the climate emergency requires emergency thinking and that, as Keir Starmer put it, the green agenda needs to inform everything we do; and those who will eventually, after the increasing incidence of floods, forest fires, extreme climate events, disruption to the food supplies around the world, growing migration drive by crop failures, come to realise that emergency thinking is required.  Any political strategy that does not put the climate emergency centre stage is doomed to fail.  There ain’t no black in the Union Jack, as Paul Gilroy told us, but there ain’t no green either.

February 5 2021: Coming Out

The last month has been grey and cold.  Central London has been very quiet.  Although I try and go out every day, it became hard to find the incentive.   Several times, I spent three or four days without going any further than the newsagent across the road.  However, there is now, in February, a glimmer of light – not so cold, lighter, longer days. Sometimes the sun even shines.  It helps to have a mission.  Yellow Bean Sauce has been on the kitchen board for weeks.  Even the Korean shop in Tottenham Court Road has none.  So today I walked down to Gerrard Street in Chinatown and back – two and a half miles in total.  This is, sadly, about the limit for my arthritic knees.  Even that length is painful.  But I was OUT!  And MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, in the shape of a tin of Yellow Bean Sauce.  And for the first time I felt the gentle thrill of the flaneur. Nothing is urgent, nothing crucial and nowhere to go. At my new ultra-slow walking pace, I notice a lot more.  The cityscape is, of course dystopian and nowhere more so than an empty Soho – with all its places of entertainment cafés, pubs, bars, restaurants and jazz clubs.   However, there is also a special semi-secret promise of better times returning eventually.  It is a bit like catching a glimpse of wrapped presents under the tree.

February 3 2021 Nolympics?

The Olympics is a major event, both for the host country and for the multi-millions who watch on TV around the world.  It is also a career pinnacle for the thousands of competitors.  This we know.

We also know other things – the pandemic is still raging, indeed as of January 2021, it is, in many countries spreading faster (perhaps due to new variants and mutations) than ever.  It is not self-evident that even the strictest of restrictions are making sufficient impact on the exponential growth of cases.   Vaccines are coming online but it is already clear that they will only reach a proportion of the populations of most countries by early summer.  In addition those least likely to have had vaccination by May will be the younger more active members of a population, and hence more likely to be spreaders.  

Consequently it is dangerously over-optimistic to image the virus will be “under control” by summer.  And yet, the plan is to stage an Olympic Games.  Thousands of people, from all over the world, will travel to Tokyo, and live in close proximity, subsequently returning to their own countries.   We already know that international travel makes a significant contribution to the spread of the virus. Even without live spectators (and there may well be a plan to have one-third capacity crowds in stadia) It is hard to imagine a better way of boosting the spread of the virus.

By May, I predict, it will become increasingly clear that an Olympic Games is a bad idea.  At that point one of two things will happen.  First the IOC and the Organising Committee, will eventually, under growing pressure, acknowledge the inevitable, and cancel the games at very short notice.  Or, second option, despite growing pressure the IOC and the Organising Committee will stage a drastically limited games, in which numbers of spectators, officials, events, media workers and even competitors, will be much reduced in number.  Neither outcome will be good for the Olympic Movement.  Neither outcome will do much to aid the fight against the pandemic.  If cancellation, as I now believe, is the only sensible and viable option, it should not be left till the last moment.

There is an alternative, and that is to mount a global campaign to encourage the IOC to show leadership and cancel the games as soon as possible.  There is already a global NOlympic network (see https://nolympicsla.com/nolympics-guide-to-tokyo-2020/).  The campaign will need broad support across the political spectrum, including from people in the sport and media worlds.  It will not succeed if it appears to be led only by the usual suspects.  It can be done. It should be done.  We need to start now.

January 29, 2021: On the maskless minority

OK, the vast majority of people are following the guidelines for safety in public and, for example, wearing masks in shops.  However, every day, I see people wondering around in supermarkets without masks.  The security guards do not challenge them.  I fully understand if staff (poorly paid, and inadequately trained) seek to avoid confrontation.  People can become aggressive.  

But, here’s the thing – if I wandered into a shop smoking, we all know what would happen. The security staff would approach me and politely but firmly, we trust, insist that I leave the shop and not return until I have extinguished my cigarette.  There is no doubt – this is what would happen.  So why cannot they take the same line with masks?  Every person allowed to enter a shop maskless is sending a message to others – the regulations do not matter.  If you don’t want to wear a mask then don’t.   

Sadly, this is yet another symptom of neo-individualism.  For some people there is no communal spirit, no sense of the collective good, no concept of responsibility or the social consequences of individual action.  No such thing as society.  And, yes, I am an old lefty, and yes it can all be blamed on Thatcher.  Or at the least, on the new individualism that grew out of the “enterprise culture”, neo-liberal economics and the globalisation of trade.   I am an atheist, but yes, you are your brothers keeper, you are responsible for the consequences of your actions – just as with speeding, drunk driving, and smoking in confined public spaces.  So just wear a mask.

The Government could have provided a much stronger lead to shops by stipulating that people without masks cannot be served unless they produce evidence of a medical reason for their masklessness.  Then shops could apologise and point out to the maskless that they could not be served. It is a bore wearing a mask.  It is stuffy and uncomfortable.  We are deprived of that most basic of human exchanges, facial expression. No-one wears a mask for fun. I do it, not so much to protect me, as to protect you.  I ask that you show me the same respect. Please.

20 Jan 2021: UBU has left the building.  

At last, the long nightmare of President Donald is over.  We have survived, most of us, although we should not forget the five who died during the assault on Congress, nor the many who have suffered since January 2017.  It began with an extraordinary assault on reality – disputing the crowd size at the Inauguration, against all available evidence.   This fighting of an unnecessary battle by the Trumps told us so much about the role that egotism and narcissism would play in this presidency.   The surreal courting of Kim Jung Un; the posturing over the “wall”; the picking of a fight with London Mayor; all were symptoms of an infantile and thin-skinned character, with no grasp on protocol, strategy or gravitas. The recycling of viciously racist material; the encouragement given to hard right bigoted groups and the clear incitement in his speech to the rally before the storing of Congress, though revealed an even darker basis for Trumpian populism.  The bitter legacy in which experts, facts, evidence and proof have come to mean nothing against lies, rumours, and misinformation will take years to heal.  He promised to drain the swamp but instead, he poisoned the well.

19 Jan 2021: The Kraken Wakes

Wake up, head aching, ceiling out of focus, fuzzy head.  Vague sense of being asleep for a very long time.  We are in Rip Van Winkle territory.   I remember being in semi lockdown sometime in autumn, becoming aware my body seemed to be trying to hibernate.  Waking late, to bed early.  Reluctance to get up.  Feelings of torpor during the day.  Drifting off. Falling into a deep pit on a mattress of finest goose feathers, darkness creeps in very gradually, from a gentle rose-pink glow, to a deep blue evening sky, which slowly goes darker. And suddenly it is 2021.

No, of course not, that is not how it went, although part of me wishes it were so.   But the fact is I have not posted on this blog for months.  At times there seemed no words and nothing to say. At other times too much to say, too many words, many of them angry.  It became very difficult to write in the blog. Elsewhere I was fine – I completed a journal article and a book chapter.  I completed a rewrite of a play I wrote between August 2019 and July 2020.  But you, dear reader, have been sadly neglected. Still, it is 2021, apparently.  Must try harder, will try harder, or as Beckett says, fail better.

June 2020: No Going Back Where?

A decade of austerity politics fostered the rise of a new populist right, manifest in figures as otherwise diverse as Trump, Johnson, Orban, Bolsanaro and Modi.  In the lengthy hegemonic crisis we have been living through since 2008, it seemed increasingly clear that neo-liberalist economic policies were losing their grip on the political sphere around the world.   It was less clear what the emergent elements in a new hegemonic era might be.  Worryingly the new populist right seemed in the strongest position.  However, as is so often the way, a new series of disparate events have become condensed in this moment of crisis.   The departure of the UK from Europe; the global pandemic; in the USA, the death of George Floyd at the hands of brutal and racist policing; and the growing sense that climate change constitutes an emergency, have broadened and deepened the crisis we are living through.  

The disastrous and incompetent managing of the pandemic by most of the new populist leaders has damaged the credibility of the populist style.  It no longer looks as if right populism is the newly emergent element.  Instead, Trump and Johnson and others increasingly look more like morbid symptoms (as Gramsci phrased it) of the death of the old neo-liberal order.

This has been replaced by a widespread, if ill-defined sensibility that there must be no return to the past.  Recovery needs to involve building something new, rather than returning to the old. It is possible that this sensibility has some similarity to the “no return to the thirties” mood that helped frame the post-war era in the UK in which the National Health Service was born.

The new sensibility is diffuse and vague but some of its themes seem to be: proper value placed on key workers (with wages to match); greater attention to combating climate change (as in the green new deal); no more turning a blind eye to racism; reducing the massive inequalities that grew so drastically under neo-liberalism; the possible introduction of a universal living wage.

This set of themes does not yet constitute a coherent or co-ordinated agenda.  Yet it provides solid substance to work on.  It does, I think, constitute a set of fragments which could provide the basis for a road towards a new settlement.  Only, though, if tackling the climate change emergency becomes etched into everything we attempt to do.  These strange grim times provide plenty of fuel for pessimism of the intellect.  Yet in these new fragments there is also ample support for an optimism of the will.

30 May 2020: Rather a red letter week, one way and another.  On Monday DP completed her book about Sandy Wilson, the author of The Boy Friend. On Tuesday, DP finally finished reading Proust’s A La Recherche du Temps Perdu, (in French!) after commencing twelve years ago in a field at the back of Helen’s house in Lot.  And, on a more mundane level, on Wednesday Minnie and I arrived in San Francisco, completing our walk across America.  Of course, it was Minnie (Hill Wood) who did the walking, in 1916.  All I did was sit in a chair with a cup of tea and read.  Nevertheless, I feel a strange sense of surrogate achievement.

30 May 2020: Decided it was high time my old and battered Goya 12 string guitar was rewarded with a new set of strings. Re-stringing a 12 string is a long job, and as for tuning – don’t get me started.

I bought this guitar around twenty five years ago, while on a long weekend travelling down to Devon for a wedding.  Stopped off in Totnes (where I lived in 1974), saw a 12 string guitar, a bit battered, in the street market.  Decided I had always wanted one.  I have had many 6 string accoustics over the years and currently own three, none of them anything special.  I have also had a long sequence of solid body electric guitars – Watkins, Hofners, Fenders, Gibsons.  But never a 12 string.  Hard to defend – I am not much of a folkie nor a finger style player.  BUT we guitar players always think we are horse traders and we can persuade ourselves that it is a bargain and that we will sell it to our best friend for a small profit (this rarely happens, of course). 

So I bought it for £90, and, regarding it as a fairly mundane instrument – I enjoyed giving it the occasional workout over the years.  Only lockdown led me to get curious, and by inspecting the label carefully, I was able to discover that Goyas were made in Sweden, marketed in New York (at least in the 1960s), that my own one was probably made c1965.  Similar vintage instruments seem to be on sale online for around £500.  So I thought the least I could do was restring it.

27 May 2020: Is it not about time the Government got called out for its shameful and secretive boycott of the BBC in general and particular programmes specifically (eg Newsnight, which to its credit is making clear the Govts deliberate boycott) ? 
This would be unacceptable at any time. In the middle of a national crisis, when there are very serious questions which the public would like asked, it is an intolerable way for a Government to behave towards one of the key and central broadcasting institutions. The Johnson government is already emerging as one of the most cowardly in memory when it comes to public scrutiny, whether by Parliament or by the media.

22 May 2020: On deep thinking:  On Wednesday our Prime Minister, Johnson, announced that, after much deep thought, he had decided not to waive the charge imposed on non-UK NHS workers for using the NHS.  On Thursday (presumably after more deep thinking) it was announced that he had changed his mind.  So have his philosophical ponderings brought him to the level at which he is able, like many philosophers, to look both ways on consecutive days?  Is this dialectical thinking?  Perhaps not.

21 May 2020: I remember this vividly – around 45 years ago, some scientists were beginning to go public with what they then referred to as the greenhouse effect.  They warned that temperatures would rise around the world,  They suggested that the polar ice caps could melt, that sea levels would rise,  They speculated that extreme weather conditions would become more frequent.  They were derided by many as alarmist.  In any case even if one took the warnings seriously, all this seemed a long way in the future.,  Few laugh now, when they seem to have been right about so much,  The future has arrived and threatens immense danger.  Yet the Covid19 emergency offers a huge opportunity to make dramatic changes to deal with the climate emergency.  We cannot go back to the old normal. We can leap towards a carbon neutral future.  We need to make sure the Green New Deal is hardwired into everything we do.  We can do this – it is not yet too late.

19 May 2020: If I was an American stand-up, I think I would dispense with any scriptwriters and just use the daily pronouncements of your President.  Just read them out – they barely need any additional comment.  More seriously, if USA votes him back in again, it will be hard not to despair for the future.  To all the millions of sensible Americans, please don’t let this happen.  It really doesn’t matter what you might think of Joe Biden, USA and the world will not fare well under another four years of Trump in charge.  Those of us outside the USA who are not Americans have no vote, and yet this election affects us all.  Help!

10 May 2020:  Ninth week of no sport. For a week or two it was a strange novelty, then it became a refreshing change.   One Saturday I had a short nap and woke at 4.55pm.  Great, I thought, Sports Report – football results. Then I remembered.   I thought I was handling it so well, until they started talking about bringing it back.  I think this is a bad idea for all sorts of reasons.  Football behind closed doors, with no crowds is a bit like amateur dramatics in the Village Hall.  Playing in neutral grounds seems daft, even if necessary for security reasons.  Above all, what happens when some footballers start testing positive ?  Nonetheless, the nearest rumour of the Bundesliga staring up and I have commenced behaving like a heroin addict who has heard rumours of a dealer in the vicinity.   Not only have I taken to watching the Match of the Day Podcast, and the re-runs of old games, I tuned in to a Radio 5 Extra replay of the entire commentary of an England Australia Test Match from 2005.  I need help.

5 May 2020: If we were in a disaster movie, would Trump be the Richard Chamberlain character in Towering Inferno?  Would Boris Johnson be the Mayor in Jaws who wants to keep the beaches open?  If we are in a movie, then dystopian science fiction is the correct genre, but one with which I am less familiar.  As a matter of fact, though, ever since Trump was elected, I have had the feeling we are in a Terry Southern novel.

4 May 2020:  re the informal and undeclared boycott of the BBC and Channel 4 News by the present Government mentioned below, Health Minister Matt Hancock was on Sky News a few days ago.  For the Government to show consistent partiality in this fashion would be unacceptable at any time, but in the midst of the crisis triggered by the Covid-19 virus, it is outrageous.

4 May 2020: One of the dangers of a blog, as is well known, is that, as there is no editor, there is little to stop the writer going off on one, and droning on and

1 May 2020 International Workers Day: The eight richest billionaires have as much wealth as the poorest half of the world’s population combined, according to a recent Oxfam report. The eight include Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.  “It is obscene for so much wealth to be held in the hands of so few when one in 10 people survive on less than $2 a day,” said Winnie Byanyima, Oxfam’s executive director.

When are we going to do something about it?

22 April 2020: The importance of scrutiny:  so far in the CV crisis, the UK Government has, largely, been able to avoid direct forensic scrutiny.  Parliament has been in recess, the reguiar press conferences, presented with journalists in remote locations, are heavily stage managed, with no follow up questions allowed.   Even before the crisis commenced, it was clear that the Government was operating an informal and undeclared boycott of major television and radio news and current affairs programming.   This has continued.  Appearances of senior ministers on programmes such as Newsnight, The Today programme, World at One, and PM, have almost entirely ceased. Despite the very serious issues being raised by newspapers as diverse as the Sunday Times and The Guardian, proper responses by government are distinguished by their absence.   Even on the daily press briefings, official figures seem to avoid precisely addressing the issues – inadequate testing, shortage of protective equipment, neglect of the social care sector.  The one apparent success story – the rapid construction of the Nightingale temporary hospitals, has, reportedly, been undermined by the great shortage of surplus nursing staff.  So the return of Parliament today is much needed.  Obviously during a grave crisis, a degree of national unity is required.  That, though, should not be an excuse for proper and rigorous questioning about the apparent failures of the supply of personal protective equipment and of the testing system.  Time for the opposition to step up.

21 April 2020: When this is all over, are we going to slide back into the old ways and resume our suicidal descent into catastrophic climate change ?  Or will we make sure things are different?

Will we restore the aviation industry, with its tax breaks on fuel, and short-haul budget flights?  Are we content to allow the resumption of prolific business flights everywhere, constantly, for little real justification ?  Are we going to transform the monetary value put on the real crucial workers of the economy, (we know who they are) and end the giant salaries and bonuses of those who do nothing but make money from money?  Are we going to end the ability of landlords to live of unearned income from monstrously high rents ? Are going to ensure that petrol fueled cars are replaced with electric ones ?  Are we going to rethink our concepts of food security ?

We need security of tenure, rent control, and levels of taxation designed to address the obscene gap between the rich and the poor. We need to take seriously the possibilities of a universal basic income.  There are so many opportunities for social transformation that can grow out of the aftermath of the corona crisis. The stakes have never been higher.  Neo-Liberalism is a busted flush. We cannot afford to let the previous ways of operating reassert themselves.

15 April 2020: Walking down the road today and stopped to look up, transfixed by a Red Kite, soaring around on rising air currents.  Don’t know if this sort of departure from Government guidelines is permitted.  Brisk walking, cycling, exercise and jogging all fine but just standing and looking for a moment, or having a brief sit-down, seems somehow disapproved of.  This crisis has brought out the puritan streak underpinning neo-liberalism.  People with arthritis might be able to manage a fifteen minute walk to a park, but then need a sit before the return journey, but some councils have chosen to tape up the park benches.  However, we have drifted away from today’s subject, the Red Kite – a quite glorious site, in its elegant profile, broad wing span and spectacular array of colours.  A few decades ago these birds were regarded as endangered.   New breeding pairs were introduced into the Chilterns, and boy did they do their job well – possibly too well. Now the birds are ubiquitous in the Chilterns and the Vale of Aylesbury.  As a large bird of prey, they may possibly have scared off some other species, but nonetheless, they are a joy.  Take time today to look up, at buildings or at birds.  You never know what you may see.  At dawn today, the handsome half moon was chased across the sky by the rising sun.

14 April 2020: Report in The Guardian today indicates that the UK Government was involved in early EU talks about joint procurement, and still, for reasons not entirely clear, failed to be part of the subsequent continent-wide effort to procure essential medical supplies. Now is not the time, perhaps, but when this crisis is over, there is a very clear case for an independent public enquiry into the UK’s lack of preparedness.

13 April 2020: As well as illness and death, the coronavirus is causing large numbers of people to be plunged, abruptly, into poverty, with eventual risk of homelessness.   There are two very simple measures that would provide a safety net n the case of future pandemics.  The first is the universal wage – which would mean those who find themselves suddenly deprived of earnings would  still have the means of financial survival, without dependence on special measures, insurance, or application for universal credit, all of which are uncertain and take some time to arrive.  The second is to introduce rent control, rent caps and security of tenure, all of which are desperately needed.   During ten years of austerity measures,  landlords have escaped any constraints on their substantial unearned incomes.  It is time for this undeserved free ride on the property gravy train to be terminated.

9 April 2020:  Does anyone know anything about Minnie Hill Wood?

Minnie Hill Wood walked from Washington DC to San Francisco in or around 1916 and subsequently published her diary of the walk, Afoot and Alone,  in 1924.  She did it to establish that a woman could walk alone, safely right across America.  walking at least 12 miles a day and sometimes as much as 50, it took her from June 7th to November 11th.And she has no Wikipedia entry, although, dammit, she deserves one!

8 April 2020: So far in my limited experience people have been meticulous in observing the 2 metre distancing rule, in shops, and while walking.  This should be no great surprise because, it seems to me, the English take rather readily to social distancing. In a way they have been practising for it all their lives.  The Italians, Spanish and French, who have always tended to favour the hug and the double kiss as standard modes of social greeting and parting must be finding distancing rather hard to adjust to.  The English on the other had with their far greater social reserve, tend to stiffen and rear back involuntarily, at the approach of another human.  They may have adopted more “continental” manners, but, one suspects, have never been comfortable.  Perhaps some secretly yearned that Brexit might bring a reversion to our rather stiff social manners.  Few would have anticipated this happening so soon, nor that it would be enforced by Government decree.  So it could be a while before the kiss on both cheeks and the bear-hug return.

7 April 2020: The sun is shining, and no-one in my immediate circle has Covid-19 as far as I know.  My children are working from home.   On a broader scale, the Prime Minister is in an intensive care unit, thousands have died around the world, and although many governments have taken firm action, the pattern is uneven.  The crisis has exposed the weak state of international organisation, whether it is WHO, UNESCO, or the UN in general.  A great many things will need to change once we have weathered the storm.   In the UK, the immediate financial measures were aimed at protecting companies, and so employment.

However, the less secure your employment, the less the protection.  So freelance workers, part-time and casual workers and those on zero hours contracts have inadequate or no protection against the terrible impact of instant loss of earnings.   The protection for tenants is grossly inadequate.  Landlords must be stopped from evicting people during this crisis, and then we need proper security of tenure.   On the more global scale, the poorest, as ever, will suffer the most.  In particular those in the giant slum areas of Mumbai, the shanty towns of Rio, the refugee camps of the Middle East are immensely vulnerable to the spread of a highly infectious disease.   The longer-term legacies of disease and hunger will need resolute action.

The legacy of three decades of neoliberalism – grotesque inequalities combined with unpreparedness – stand exposed.  The culture of “efficiency” and “productivity” has not produced a lean and mean public service; but rather has stripped the public services to the bone.   There is no back up, no safety margin, no surplus capacity. The much adopted “just in time” approach to the supply chain turns out to be dangerously inefficient when large quantities of key material – personal protection equipment, and ventilators for example – are needed urgently.

Such dramatic events, as always will bring out both the worst and the best of people.  The good news is that is has been all too clear that huge numbers of people are willing to mobilise to do what is necessary whether it is self-seclusion, or volunteering help.  As I write, three quarters of a million – three quarters of a million – people are about to start work as back-up for the hard-pressed National Health Service.

3 April 2020: To a writer who likes to read, of course, to a certain extent, seclusion is ambrosia.

31 March 2020

Waking up from nightmare – strange bedroom, not where I thought I was.   Cannot remember how long I have been asleep.  Memories crawl back extremely slowly. What are we doing here? Who are we?  How long have I been out of it ?  What is going on?

I recall drinking Jameson with friend Nigel from New York, but that seems a lifetime ago.

I refer to my own blog – no entry for at least a month. Where did March go? Was it a Long March? I seem to have finished Middlemarch, so must have been conscious.

The jigsaw pattern of memories flooding back now.  We are in the family cottage in Bucks and have been for a while – over three weeks in fact. Events dear boy, events but old Harold Macmillan never warned us how quickly they come nor how much turmoil they can cause.

So by daily diary terms I am, once again, way off the pace in terms of our global plunge into seclusion.  But, what the hell, Defoe called his account of London 1665 a “Journal of the Plague Year“.  But it was not written till 1721. In 1665, Defoe was 5 years old, and presumably not writing that much.  Not only was did 56 years pass before he wrote the Journal, but it was not even a proper Journal, but a work of fiction.  He wrote it to warn London that another plague was probably on the way. I am starting this post only three months after the first inkling of trouble in the orient began to seep into the London coffee houses.  So give me a break.

Here is how it went:

Early March, Nigel arrives from NY, stays night (I believe whisky may have been involved), and then straight off to Chester to see his ageing mother.  I have meal with two old college friends in a Turkish restaurant.  We are all blissfully unaware if what is about to change – i.e . everything.  In fact the main concern is disruption due to floods – I have to postpone a trip to give a talk in Aberystwyth on George Plimpton.  On Friday to Leopoldstadt with friends. Innocent hugs and late meal at Zedel’s Brasserie.  Saturday to Crystal Palace v Watford preceded by lunch in the Spoon with daughter and her boyfriend.

At dawn on Sunday, Nigel sets off for Bulgaria where he is working on educational project. Monday morning text from Nigel – in Bulgaria all public events are off which puts an end to his project visit.  By evening he is back in London. Busy Tuesday: Penultimate dentist visit (or so I thought) before implants fitted; to Aubrey Beardsley exhibition with Nigel; Labour Party branch – two of our members recently in northern italy, but no one seems that worried (one had since had negative corona test, the other had not been since last year). Suddenly sport events being cancelled as concerns mount.  On Wednesday to Bucks with Nigel.  Peaceful weekend but all news reports indicate the virus is spreading rapidly and restrictions are growing.

Just ten days later everything was cancelled, postponed or shut.  Liverpool Football Club potentially needing just three points to play are due to play Crystal Palace, but all games are off until further notice.   Those poor Liverpool fans, who must have been thinking for a few weeks, nothing can stop us from winning the Premiership.  On Saturday I send daughter texts imagining the Liverpool Palace game is on. In virtual land, Liverpool duly win and clinch the title.  Sunday, Nigel in panic mode as all flights to USA will be suspended from midnight on Monday.  After a lot of IPad pounding, he has new flight on Monday.  I drive him to the airport and return to near total lockdown mode.

And here we are and here we remain. One day at a time.

February 2020

Apparently Jeff Bezos, boss of Amazon, is giving 10 billion dollars to combat climate change.  Doubtless he can afford it.  But what we could probably do with is fewer grandiose public gestures of self-promoting benevolence from billionaire company bosses, and more straightforward paying of taxes in the same national territories in which they are making money.  That way, we, or at least, our elected representatives, get to decide how it should be spent

February 2020

I was due to travel to Aberystwyth to give a talk at a research seminar, but the two recent storms and resultant severe flooding disrupted travel and I had to take the hard decision to cancel, due to the uncertainty.  I hated having to do this, and maybe could have managed to get there, but what with cancelled trains, slow running, replacement bus services, navigating around flooded roads, it all seemed a bit questionable.  I hope they don’t think I am some metropolitan snowflake, and that they re-invite me next year.

January-February 2020

A rather extraordinary and varied four days:

Spent evening of Friday 31 (EU leaving day) in deepest Bucks, with friends J and P – J being a Methodist Minister – eating, drinking and talking, and trying not to think too hard about the EU.

Then I got the train down to London for the memorial event for Peter Wollen at Bishpsgate Institute. Some 14 speakers including Tariq Ali and Perry Anderson, but, surprisingly, no music.  I could not imagine being despatched without music.  Started watching a film made by Peter, Friendship’s End, starring Bill Paterson and Tilda Swinton.  Viewing interrupted by the usual do list demands and have yet to get back to it, but will.  Back to Bucks, but then back to London the next day for our Labour Party Branch fundraising dinner.  Keir Starmer was to have been the guest of honour but a serious accident to a close family member meant he could not attend.  Polly Toynbee filled in, like some sort of after dinner super-sub.  And of course a few words from the highly impressive Leader of Camden Council, Georgia Gould.  Then on Monday evening, our constituency general members meeting to select our favoured candidate for Labour Leadership, which as expected, Keir Starmer won with a large majority.  Feeling more positive about the world after that weekend.

January 2020

Two weeks in India which included a lightning fast tour of Rajasthan – what amazing sights; and a more relaxing family Xmas in Bangalore kept us from grieving over the election result and the thought of a potential five years of government led by Boris.  But in January the reality flooded back in.

Election Diary 2019: Friday 13 December

A very disappointing night. I am not going to outline just how desperately disappointed I am, but anyone who recalls the words of Hunter S Thompson in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail,regarding his feelings in the last week of the 1972 US Presidential Election between Nixon and McGovern will have a good idea.

Clearly the message of Get Brexit Done has proved to have considerable rhetorical force.   Evidence suggests Corbyn was not popular – although, as with last time, as the campaign wore on, as his speeches gained more media coverage, his ratings improved.  Was the issue of anti-semitism a big factor?- it seems so.   The party has acknowledged that there has been a problem, has changed procedures, has apologised, and has renewed its oft cited commitments to combat all forms of racism.  However, I think it is also clear that a moral panic developed in which the issue became, in secondary accounts, exaggerated to a degree that departed from rationality. To suggest that the party is institutionally racist, or that a toxic poison has been injected, or that antisemitism is all pervasive, is ridiculous.   The issue was used to demonise Corbyn, as evidenced in Gove’s ludicrous reference to Corbyn’s “anti-semitic policies“.   Meanwhile the nation has elected as Prime Minister a man who has used phrases like “piccaninnies” yet has been given a much easier time, and has been allowed to evade much of the intense media interrogation that the other leaders were subject to.

One more thing – the total vote share for Labour and the Liberal Democrats was 43.7% – fractionally greater than the Conservative share of 43.6%.  This is not an argument for electoral pacts for tactical voting, which are problematic for dedicated local party workers, but rather for some form of proportional representation.   If seats were won in direct proportion to the popular vote the new Parliament would look like this:

Conservative   283

Labour            209

Lib Dems         75

SNP                  25

Green              18

Brexit              13

Election Diary – Wednesday 11 December: this election has become a piece of dystopian fiction.  The one where the people had the chance to vote for Robin Hood, but decided to vote for the Sheriff of Nottingham.

Election Diary 2019 – Tuesday 10 December: In terms of manipulation of the media, serial falsehoods, shameful repetition of falsehoods after they have been exposed, dirty tricks, and disinformation on social media; the Tory campaign has taken politics to a new low.  Echoes of all the things President Nixon and his cronies believed they could get away with.

Election Diary 2019 – Monday 9 December: Can people considering voting Conservative really believe that they will do anything to alleviate homelessness?  Or that they will remove some of the manifest injustices of the Universal Benefit system? Or that they will reform the rapacious private rental sector ?   Or that they have any viable plan for improving social care?  Or that a single local authority library will be able to re=open? Or, above all, that they are capable of doing what is now urgent in massively reducing carbon-based activities that produce greenhouse gases?

If so, they must also be expecting Santa Claus to come right down their chimneys.

Election Diary 2019: Saturday 7 December: The most depressing thing about the last big debate on BBC last night (the head to head between Johnson and Corbyn) was the absence of any questions on climate change.  Did this reflect the lack of interest in the audience, or an editorial decision by the BBC ?

Otherwise, it exposed the sheer poverty of the Conservative campaign – which consists almost entirely of three strands: endless repetition of “Get Brexit Done”; personal attacks on Corbyn; and outrageous and persistent lying over both their spending plans and those of Labour.

Examples:

“We will build 30 hospitals” means actually building six and making seed money available for planning the others.”

“We will recruit 50,000 new nurses”, actually means recruiting 31,500 and retaining 18,500 existing nurses by persuading them not to leave!

The claim that Labour’s spending plans amount to £1.2 trillion is a massive over-estimate, based on including a whole range of measured that were discussed, but are not in the manifesto, and assuming that all Labour plans will be instantly implemented whereas many are planned to phase in over 5 years, and the reduction in working hours is an ambition to be achieved over ten years.

The BBC Fact Checker usefully analyses all of this, but elsewhere the Conservatives, and especially Johnson are avoiding proper scrutiny, and continue to repeat these lies. Yet they are still ahead in the polls. What is to be done?  Try and persuade undecided voters that only Labour have a properly costed, transformational, yet achievable agenda

Election Diary 2019: Friday 6 November: Say it ain’t so, little Joe – but it is true – the New Statesman has denounced Corbyn and refused to endorse the Labour Party. Despite the elaborate criticism of Johnson and Swinson in the editorial, which urges tactical voting to combat the danger of a Conservative victory, the editorial evades a key pragmatic issue.   All the evidence suggests that there are only two likely outcomes of this election – a Conservative government , possibly propped up by the DUP again, led by Johnson; or a Corbyn led Labour government, supported by the SNP and others.  To declare Corbyn unsuitable to lead the country, you have to accept that by implication at least, you believe Johnson to be more suitable, or at least less unsuitable.   The NS position is, it seems to me, morally suspect.  It also represents a betrayal of the very purpose of the paper, whose founders must, to bother a weary cliché, be turning in their graves.

Election Diary 2019: Thursday 5 December

Judging by consistent media reports there is an alarming disaffected cynicism underpinning public attitudes – as expressed in such views as “They’re all the same, how can you trust any of them, I am not going to vote.”  I have been lucky enough to meet at least a dozen MPs over the years, and the first thing I can say with absolute confidence is that they are not all the same.  For the most part, the ones I have met (not all Labour, although most have been) have struck me not as motivated by greed, or personal aggrandisement, but by a desire that the world be changed in a particular direction.  In other words, they wanted to make the world better, as they saw it.  Certainly, there have been and are, MPs who are egoists, frauds, venal or corrupt.  I have not met any in this category (well, maybe one), and I believe they are not the majority, by any means.   There are also clear differences between parties – knowing a bit about recent history and reading the manifestoes will reveal this.  Just think about some of the social problems of our time – homelessness, food banks, massive inequalities, climate change – and consider which parties seem genuinely likely to make an impact on addressing these issues.  Sadly, judging by phone ins, although many members of the public are sharp and well informed, these properties are by no means universal.  Many people seem woefully ill-informed despite the best efforts of journalists and politicians.   It is largely, not their fault. We no longer teach what used to be called “civics”.   We do not educate our children about the political process.  They do not get taken, routinely, to council sessions or to the law courts.  And although, for those few who at school, do media studies, we do not otherwise arm our children with media literacy, so crucial in the fake news and social media era. We do not, outside of the posh schools for the rich, teach rhetoric.  Some mainstream media, and especially the BBC, go to great lengths, with briefing material, background summaries, and fact checkers, to provide a political education. However the media also focus too much on the gladiatorial contest of leader against leader; are too caught up, in the attempts to smear and besmirch political figures, and too little on enabling serious adult discussion of the issues and proposed policies.

There is a week to go. There is still time to prevent a conservative majority.  Please consider the issues, vote, and persuade others to do the same.

Election Diary: Wednesday 4 December

Slowly, the gap between Tory and Labour in the polls is narrowing. And in fact, as many experts acknowledge, the intersection of long held party loyalties, with leave/remain, is making this election very hard to predict with any degree of accuracy.  The last 8 days could still have an impact.

Election Diary: Tuesday 3 December

Aggressive questioning – clearly it is needed.  Without it, politicians will dodge or ignore the question, and head for the issue and theme they want to discuss.  Before you know where you are they will be reading a memorised chunk of vacuous but carefully honed propaganda.  The media are there to ask the awkward questions – of all sides.  BUT, I have begun to feel a bit queasy with the macho manner in which they pursue this style at all times to all interviewees.  And while I refer to the macho manner, it is not just limited to the Andrews Brothers – Emma Barnett and Emily Maitlis are every bit as effective in this mode.

Of course it is very exhilarating seeing a powerful figure held to account.  So the way Mr Johnson has persistently dodged interrogation in this election, especially avoiding the show all other party leaders have agreed to do, Andrew Neil, is outrageous. Seemingly, it is not just Rees-Mogg who has been dropped into the oubliette.   The interrogation format is a hit with viewers, probably for all the wrong reasons.

The tough interrogation, perhaps because the practitioners have, like fox-hounds, acquired a taste of blood, is being pursued a little indiscriminately.    This week, on Newsnight, actor and climate emergency campaigner Jane Fonda was given a tough time.  Jane Fonda is, yes, a tough and experienced campaigner with strong views.  Generally she can look after herself. But she is not a candidate in the British election, or indeed any other election.  She was not waffling or being evasive.  I am not saying she should be given a free ride, but neither was it perhaps appropriate to give her quite as severe a grilling (bad choice of words on climate issues).  Let’s let the dogs out by all means, but let’s point them at the most appropriate targets.

Election diary: Monday 2 December

Strange election, which seems to be stuck in a groove.  Same themes all round, the party leaders (except Mr Johnson) have been well featured on a series of debates, the manifestoes have been launched, and a sense of tiredness and ennui is visible.  Maybe the public have worked out that enough people will buy into Get Brexit Done to prevent Labour winning, while enough are enthusiastic about Labour’s programme to prevent a Tory majority.  There was such enormous passion around before the election that the whole thing promised to be a powder keg.  Instead, a weariness.  I would like to see more of Mr McDonnell, who is the person with the ability to convey teh radical yet practical anture of Labour’s programme.

Election Diary – Sunday Night December 1:

Another TV debate and again no Mr Johnson.  He was PM from July to November and managed to almost entirely avoid Prime Ministers Questions in the House of Commons; the campaign revolves entirely around the increasingly weary sounding repetition of “get Brexit done”, and personal attacks on Mr Corbyn; the manifesto is largely devoid of substance; and now Mr Johnson is getting away with evading media scrutiny. A chap could become rather annoyed.

Election Diary -Sunday December 1:

Sunday at 5.00pm in the afternoon on a cold  December night is truly the dark teatime of the  soul, but that is when organisers meet to plan the next week. So onward and upward one more time

Election Diary: Profits from the homeless: Friday 29 November

Further to the item below on private profit being made from other people’s illness: A for profit company has been appointed in Camden, North London, to provide healthcare to homeless people sleeping rough.   This was reported in the Camden New Journal of 28/11/19, on page 5.  Profiting from the illnesses of the homeless is about as low as it gets, and is a clear and stark indication of what is going on in the NHS at an increasing rate ever since the Lansley Health and Social Care Act of 2010.  I think the Labour Party slogan NHS: Not For Sale, is not quite pitched right, and I really hope that Labour Party speakers will try and convey the message that the NHS is being hollowed out from within – it is being hollowed out from within. Although the Conservatives alone did not invent this process, it was greatly accelerated by the 2010 Act.  And whatever fancy rhetoric about competition and efficiency that might be advanced, it ends with the grotesque exploitation of the poorest and most vulnerable for purposes of profit.  This is just wrong.

Election Diary: The C4 Green Debate: Thursday 28 November

Last night on Channel 4 there was a debate for party leaders on the green agenda.  Conservative leader Boris Johnson and Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage did not attend, rejecting the appointment.  The conservatives sent Michael Gove who was politely turned away, with the explanation that the debate was specifically for “party leaders”.   Outrageously, the Conservatives have had the nerve to report C4 to Ofcom the regulator, alleging bias!  Even more outrageous the usual unnamed source (we know who you are) has let it be known that C4’s status as a public service broadcaster could be in jeopardy.  All to take attention away from Boris Johnson’s cowardly and dishonourable attempts to avoid the interview with Andrew Neil, that every other leader has signed up to.

Channel 4, rather cheekily, substituted two melting ice sculptures for Johnson and Farage.  They were not missed.  What followed was a sensible grown up discussion between five leaders who broadly agree that there is a climate emergency and that urgent action is required.  It was a glimpse of what government could be like in a situation where there is clear agreement on the aim and constructive debate on the means.

Election Diary: Thursday 28 October

I intended on commencing an election diary 3 weeks ago, but things have been hectic.  For me it has been an emotional roller coaster.  It is one of those rare moments when a Labour manifesto is both radical and potentially popular.  In fact in many ways it is not even that radical, as the level of public provision and expenditure it proposes would bring the UK in line with mainstream European countries, and would still lag behind Scandinavian ones. The proposal to raise Corporation Tax only brings it back to just under the level it was when the Tories took power in 2010.  The Conservative repertoire in this election consist largely of two themes – the hysterical repetition of the Get Brexit Done slogan, and the orchestration of personal attacks on Jeremy Corbyn.  So there is a clear choice.  Yet the polls are still not moving in the favour of Labour.  Of course it is a volatile electoral situation and two weeks to go.

More broadly, I believe we are in a hegemonic crisis, and have been for some years.  There are no clear signs of what a new settled state might look like.  For a while the rise of Podemos and Syriza looked like harbingers of a new popular socialism, but that dream has soured a little.  A lot of attention has been devoted to the rise of the new populist right around the world, but again, that may have stalled.  Gramsci (read him if you haven’t) says that in such a crisis, when the old is dying and the new cannot yet be born, a while variety of morbid symptoms appear.   I was worried that Trump (Pere Ubu), Boris Johnson (Mr Toad), Viktor Orban and Jair Bolsanaro might be harbingers of the new settlement, but I am now hoping that they are, rather, morbid symptoms.  Plainly, at the least, the neo-liberal globalised mode of capitalism no longer enjoys the hegemony that it had from the early 1980s until around 2008.  The climate emergency imposes an urgency on social change – we cannot go back to the old ways or the old days.   The Labour Party was once rather deaf to the green agenda, but it is rapidly becoming much more serious on the necessity of a carbon reduction.  Think and then vote.

October 2019

I really struggle with the idea of people making money out of other people’s illness.  Let me rephrase that – I don’t struggle with the idea of people making money out of other people’s illness at all – I believe it is utterly wrong and in a civilised society it would not happen.  It is sometimes argued that the profit motive pulls in millions of research and development money from Big Pharma.  It seems to me that the profit motive totally distorts the research field.  It enables big funds for any research that results in a saleable and patentable product – a new medicine, whereas research pursuing other forms of treatment that may not be pharmacologically focused, or that will not result in a vastly profitably patent medicine, goes without significant funding.

September 26 2019 The Will of the People Does Not Exist

There is no such object as “the will of the people”.  There are some immediately apparent reasons why this is so.  On the immediate topic of our relation to the European Community, it is clear that there is no agreed view or “will” – opinions strongly diverge, passions are high, and arguments intense.   See full version of this The Will of The People does not exist

September 20 2019: Long live live music

Live music has a range of extraordinary powers, addressing as it does both the ears and the eyes, but also the memory.  I have had two remarkable musical experiences in recent days.  First the Four Brothers Reunion at the Pizza Express Jazz Club in Soho.  Us Londoners probably tend to take this modest venue for granted, so it was striking to hear one of the vastly experienced American musicians refer to it as one of the best jazz venues in the world.   I imagine that he registered that it is a place for proper musicians and real jazz fans – both are treated with proper respect by the staff and management.

Anyway, the “Four Brothers” alludes to the famous group of saxophone players with the Woody Herman Big Band, who in an early incarnation featured Stan Getz, Zoot Sims and Al Cohn, immortalised in the number “Four Brothers” by Jimmy Giuffre.  The reunion of four musicians who have all played in the Herman band featured the remarkable 90 year old, Frank Tiberi.   The ensemble playing was perfection, showing all the discipline of those schooled in one of the best big bands in jazz history.  It was rich, mellow and tight.  The soloing all evening was great stuff too – structured, lucid and absorbing.   Audience and band were linked in a warm communality of experience that brought history and present together, and shoe-horned the full richness of big band playing into a smaller format – four saxes, plus the excellent James Pearson Trio, who are currently house band at Ronnie Scott’s just around the corner.   Incidentally, many years ago, when informed that the next Ronnie Scott Quartet gig was at Pizza Express, around 3 minutes walk from Scott’s own club, Ronnie frowned, and said tetchily, “well…what are the travel arrangements?”).

The second experience was at a wake, for old friend Jim Cook.   It was in Newcastle-Under-Lyme, in a small pub which Jim regarded as his local in his later years.  Jim stipulated there should be live music, which was provided by a small jazz outfit who played with a relaxed easy accomplishment.   My whole sense of the event was of warmth – the warmth of the room, of the faces of old friends, of the tributes and stories; and above all, knitting things together, the warm convivial and communal feel of the music, doing exactly what music should do on such occasions.   So, go and hear some live music, soon.  It is a precious thing that we should never take for granted.

July 28 2019: To  market, to market, to buy…whatever.

In Paris, for us an absolute Sunday ritual is to go to the flea market at  Porte de Vanves; have coffee and a merguez hot dog at the food van, listen to Roland Godard play his tiny (and sadly very out of tune) piano, and then walk around the market.  This southside market is a lot smaller and less posh than the sprawling maze that is the northside market at Clignacourt.   It is endlessly fascinating to see the array of furniture, clothing, bric-a-brac and, frankly, complete junk, that is on display.  We rarely leave empty handed, and sometimes find real bargains – a treasured set of heavy copper pans in almost mint condition, for a fraction of their value, for example.  It has been a great source of small tables, lamps, crockery, kitchen utensils and musical instruments.  There is something else too.   A flea market in England is less fascinating for our eyes – we know our own cultural histories, and it is easy to place the discarded artefacts in their original social contexts. Not so much in France, where the complex range of tastes, styles, and objects is engaging but not so easy to read. And then a long lazy lunch at Didot and for a while the current conjuncture – the continuing hegemonic crisis that has brought right wing populism to the fore – the whole ghastly ship of fools – you know to whom I refer – seems, just for a while, remote. We will be back to the affray all too soon, but for now, a lazy Sunday afternoon is perfect.

July 2019: Bad news and good

The worst news is possibly not so much Boris becoming British Prime Minister, but rather the Cabinet team he has assembled, which indicates just how much in hock to the right wing Boris has become.  No sign that he is taking climate change seriously.  The good news is that even if so many of our leaders fail to “get” the urgency with which we need to respond to climate change, regional, local, and town councils seem to be dong some good stuff, and more and more individuals too are being active and making changes.  Onward and upward – this is no time to despair or give up.

July 2019, Saturday 20th

Writing is a very odd trade. Once you learn to ride a bike, or skate, or swim, in general you can always do it, even if you have not done so for a while. Muscle memory gets you through. Writing is not like that.  Some days it flows so well you can barely type fast enough.  But other days, nothing will come.  You stare at the screen, resort to displacement activities, write the same sentence a dozen times, and reject them all.  Sometimes, you write the same word over and over , until it loses all meaning. You start feeling like a moron.  Take a break, go for a walk, come back and sometimes it is better.  And sometimes it isn’t better.

Why is this?  I suppose if it was easy, everyone would be doing it – but, hold hard, everyone is doing it.  Or at least an awful lot of people are.  Try selling a short piece on food – the internet is full of such stuff for free.   The market has been devalued.  And now, back to writing…

July 2019

Ode to Joy, adopted as the European anthem is a magnificent hymn to positivity and togetherness, and is one of the more potent symbols of a shared European-ness. Apparently many of the new UK Brexit party MEPs turned their backs when it was played at the opening of the new EU Parliament

This merely demonstrates what a narrow, inward looking bunch of joyless philistines they are. Never particularly liked the phrase, but, seriously, this morning I feel ashamed to be British, or rather ashamed that my country is represented by these particular people.

June 2019

Appalled that I have not posted since March, but will catch up very soon.  News of demonstrations, meetings, Brexit and Tory leadership race, meetings with famous people (John McDonnell, Mike Brearley, Pete Frame (look him up!)), reflections on the great Doctor John, who died last week, and other random notes.  Promise I will do all this soon.

March 4th 2019

People very rarely take photographs at funerals – there is almost a taboo.  Yet, far more so than at weddings. we are likely to meet old friends, people we have not seen for a long time, people we wish to remember.  We reminisce and dig up old anecdotes.  Seldom is any of this captured by posterity,   Could it be that we are, collectively, wary of being caught frozen for posterity, smiling or laughing, instead of wearing stiff faces of rigid gravitas?  Note to self – leave note encouraging photographs at own funeral.

March 2nd 2019

Eric Dunning, (1936-2019) was a Professor of Sociology at the University of Leicester, who played a major role in the establishment and development of the sociology of sport. He was taught by and strongly influenced by Norbert Elias and an advocate of figurational sociology. I met him several times over the years, at conferences, book launches and parties and although we did not see eye to eye on many things he was always enjoyable to talk with. Thinking back, I am not entirely sure I would have become an academic, had it not been for reading his work on transitions from folk football to modern football in the mid 1970s, when I was an undergraduate.   It alerted me to the ways in which sport might be subjected to organised and coherent analyses.

He was described, accurately, in one obituary, as “a bon viveur who loved wine and jazz, a teller of jokes and shaggy dog stories but, above all, as an extraordinarily kind and generous person…a larger than life character and a good companion.”

February/March 2019

A lot of variety in the last six days. Tuesday night my local Labour constituency General Committee Meeting; Wednesday night to Selhurst Park for Crystal Palace v Manchester United; Thursday two long skype calls to Edinburgh to discuss progress on the 3^rd edition of Understanding the Olympics with my colleague John; Friday travelled to Leicester for the funeral of Eric Dunning; Saturday night my son Sam came round to cook us a long delayed and rescheduled Burns Night Supper; and on Sunday we attended a fund raising dinner at an Indian restaurant, at which the guest speakers were Georgia Gould (leader of Camden Council) and Keir Starmer (Labour’s shadow Brexit Minister) It would be tempting to find some artful and nuanced themes linking these activities, but having made my own variant on a cranachan for our Burns Night, I can only suggest that there are few days in these dark dark times that cannot be improved by a mouthful of whisky porridge.

February 21 2019

After around two months of living in a twilight zone, I can, finally, hear again. A bad cold in early December left my ears badly blocked with wax. I have never experienced this before. At its worst, I could not hear the phone ring, and certainly not hear the voice on the other end. Social encounters were difficult, especially if there was any background noise. Little point in going to the movies, and even I could tell that the television volume, in order for me to hear it, was far too loud for our neighbours.

It took me a while to realise treatment was needed and to get referred to the appropriate service. They don’t syringe anymore – grand-dad, where have you been – syringing is so 20^th century. Now they irrigate.  First time it did not work and I was sent away to spend 2 weeks pouring olive oil down my ears. Felt like a Greek salad. Then, demoralizingly, the second treatment did not work either. I was put on a course of bicarbonate of soda drops. Follow this up with an egg and some flour and you would have a perfect cake mix.

Only at the third appointment did we get a breakthrough. Suddenly I could hear. I peered at the absurdly tiny flecks of wax that had been removed.   Walking home, I could hear builders noises and tell what was being done. I could hear footsteps, and work out what kind of shoes were making the sound. I could hear vehicle engines and distinguish between types of vehicle. All those things we take for granted if we have hearing. Suddenly, I was able to rejoin the world. Huge respect to the hard of hearing and the deaf for coping. (In fact I have been a little hard of hearing for a few years. Now thinking of investing in a hearing aid). Meanwhile, I just feel blessed.

January 21 2019

Trying to write. This is how it is supposed to go:

read > note > think > write > read > note > think > rewrite

This is how it actually goes:

Drink coffee > stare out of window > read > note > answer emails > think > check last nights football results > browse paper > write > go to shops > have lunch > go out and pull up some weeds > read > cook > chat on phone > note > walk up road and back > think > check tonight’s TV schedules > set things to record > suddenly I am watching Pointless > sun is over yard-arm > light fire > pour drink > rewrite, maybe

January 17

Parliament is deadlocked – May’s deal is roundly defeated, yet votes of confidence from the hardline Brexiteers, and from the Labour Party cannot win either.   There is little prospect of an election.   Any deal with a customs union will be voted down by hardliners; any deal without a customs union will mean a hard border in Ireland. There seems to be a big majority in Parliament for preventing a departure with no deal. Europe is unwilling to be drawn into further negotiations, but even if it was, there is no different deal likely to be able to break the parliamentary deadlock. We are in crisis and it is a crisis that Parliament cannot resolve. Yet, apparently we cannot have a second referendum because it would be denying the “will of the people”. How exactly is giving everyone a second chance to vote their preference obstructing anyone’s will?

2019 New Years message

Salutary and grim words on climate change recently, clearly offered from well informed people and aimed at galvanising the rest of us and encouraging a focus on this crisis. So let us try and be galvanised.   Can those of us in political parties work to force this issue up the agenda? Can we encourage the media to put politicians on the spot?. What if it became routine, in television interviews, to ask politicians how their policies address the issue of climate change? Above all, lets try not to give in to pessimism. We seem, collectively, to have managed to address the hole in the ozone layer. Clearly the answers are not simply in individual action, important though it is. We have to push our politicians harder, to get then out of their blinkered and short-termist mindsets. Let’s have a bash!

December 30 2018: Palace v Chelsea

Well, just look back to the entry on Palace v Tottenham a few weeks ago – more ground hog day. Palace held Chelsea at bay for most of the match, but let in one fatal goal – the only one I saw in 270 minutes of Xmas holiday football. Palace make themselves hard to beat, but most teams seem to rise to the challenge. The game was dull, except for the pleasure of introducing my USA friend Mark to his first “soccer” game.

December 29 2018: Wimbledon v Blackpool:

With James and Margaret to watch their team, AFC Wimbledon play Blackpool, but only after a pleasant light lunch (excellent soup) warmed by some fine red wine. In League One the quality of first touch is noticeably inferior. Once again no goals scored by either side. Seemingly the Xmas gift giving is over. James regards the half time interval as his favourite part of the game. We enjoyed a couple of beers in the warmth of the bar and shamefully, did not emerge until 25 minutes of the second half had elapsed.

December 26 2018: Palace v Cardiff:

As Palace fans we were elated to win away at Manchester City just before Xmas – the first team to do so this season. So we were definitely up for the Boxing Day game against Cardiff. However, it turned out to be a rather grim spectacle, with no goals, although Palace managed around 30 shots at goal.

December 23 2018: Southwark Cathedral

beautiful rendition of the nine lessons. Although an atheist I like a good carol. This year it was a bit odd, as my ears are bunged up to the degree I am living, in effect, under water.

December 18 2018: Deborah off to India to see her sister for Xmas.

I am an atheist and while I love a good party and Xmas is a fine excuse for eating, drinking and present giving, this year reminded me that it is friends as well as family that are important. Lengthy friendships regularly nurtured are particularly rewarding, as the extent of shared experiences of life’s twists and turns is deepened. I have known Ian and Toby for over 20 years, and Keith for almost as long. They are by no means my oldest friends – Phil and I have know each other for around 55 years – but I saw each of them over drinks this xmas, and each occasion brought its own pleasures, its own moments of laughter and of sympathy. Cheers all.

December 15 2018: Peter and Sonia’s parties

Hail to our friends Peter and Sonia, amongst the last of the great hosts. In an era in which many seem to have given up on throwing parties in favour of cocooning, nesting, box set bingeing, fleeing to their rural gites, or traveling the world, Sonia and Peter continue to throw friendly, generously catered parties, which are always a lovely opportunity to catch up with old friends and meet new ones.

December 2018: Friday night supper

Invited to Friday night supper with extended family, distantly related to Deborah. Fourteen people around the table. I am the only non-jew. The only really religious aspects are the ritual blessing of wine and bread beforehand and the lengthy singing of prayers at the end of the eating. This is, above all, about the strong bonds of family. I felt privileged to be invited to be part of it.

December, generally: BLOODY BREXIT!

Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Party Leader is, it is widely acknowledged, is a man of principle. He sticks to, works for, and defends his beliefs. Personally I am delighted to have the Labour Party headed by a real socialist. As so often the strengths of a public figure are also perversely, their weaknesses. Examples – Thatcher and May – both strong and stubborn. It has become clearer and clearer that Brexit in practice is a really bad idea. Even the supporters of Brexit rarely speak with any confidence about it any more. Instead they are highly defensive. The options are narrowing by the day. May’s deal will probably fail to get through Parliament. Leadership is needed, to speak out in favour of a second referendum. Jeremy Corbyn has long been a Eurosceptic, and is not a man to let pragmatism over-rule principle. Yet, eventually, remorselessly we are heading for a stark choice between leaving without a deal, or staying in. I believe, and hope, that in the final analysis, Labour leaders, Corbyn included, will come to see the need to listen to their members on this issue and push for a second referendum.

December 5 2018: David and Deborah and Central London pubs

I used to enjoy pubs in the early evening, when they are still quiet, until I moved to central London. Here, the pubs are rammed from 5.00pm till 8.00pm, as people have end of day drinks. If you want a quiet drink, it is best to go later the evening. Raymond Chandler wrote a lyrical passage about the joys of the first drink of the evening in a quiet bar.

Met old friends David and Deborah from Sydney for a meal. I suggested meeting in The Wheatsheaf, in Rathbone Place, in order that I could tell them it was where Dylan Thomas met Caitlin. But we could not even get in the door. Eventually found a berth in a rather less distinguished pub for a drink, before excellent fish and sea food in Pescatori.

After which, back to ours for a nightcap, during which new kitten Wilfred gave Deborah a thorough mawling, which, I have to say, she took very well.

November 22 2018: HIGNFY in Elstree

Rather bizarre Thursday evening in Elstree watching Have I Got News For You being recorded for television transmission the following day. Surprisingly, a bit low key and of course, around 4 times as long as the 30 minutes of transmitted television, which is far pacier. My mood not heightened by having to queue outside for over an hour, not knowing for sure that one would get in – hard to see why this is necessary – they say that no-shows mean empty seats, so they give out more advance tickets in case, but the audience is shown very rarely and it would be very easy to have all the empty seats (if any) in the back row.

November 21 2018: Bob Gilbert, trees, and Ada Salter

Bob Gilbert has written a wonderful book about trees, based on a year of absorption in the trees of Poplar. Really. It is one of those rare books that changes the way you look at the world, partly because it is not just about trees but also about the historical processes that have governed their place in urban society. Thanks to a talk by Bob in the Living Maps series (link) I discovered Ada Salter (1866-1942). Ada Salter’s slogan: “The cultivation of flowers and trees is a civic duty.” She was a reformer, environmentalist, pacifist and Quaker. She became President of the Women’s Labour League and President of the National Gardens Guild. She was one of the first women councillors in London, the first woman mayor in London and the first Labour woman mayor in the British Isles.

Establishing a “Beautification Committee” in 1920, over the next decade she was responsible for planting 7000 trees, decorating buildings with window-boxes, and filling open spaces with flowers. She was married to Alfred Salter who also devoted his life to Labour politics and to reform.

November 18 2018: Non-thanksgiving

About twenty years ago, we took to having a pre Xmas family and friends meal. This became an annual ritual. It migrated backwards into late November, as peole kept complaining about the pre Xmas rush. At this point we named it the Non-Thanksgiving Day Lunch, in honour of the two regular American participants. Generally around 14 of us sit down for a big lunch – usually with a goose, ducks, leg of lamb or pork, or side of beef as the centre-piece. The problem with being an atheist is the lack of ritual.   Whether it is a birth, marriage, a death, Christmas, Easter, Eid, Passover, Ramadan, religions generate ritual. This never used to bother me, but as I age, I appreciate far more the cohesive and collective joys of rituals. So it is pleasing to have developed one.

November 11 2018: Wilfred

The arrival of a new cat into our lives – Wilfred joined us on Remembrance Sunday, and is thus named after war poet Wilfred Owen, and also, it has to be said, Crystal Palace star, Wilfried Zaha.

November 10 2018: Palace v Spurs

Crystal Palace v Tottenham: this is becoming a bit like a groundhog day – Palace have a well organised defence thus year, and they hold Spurs out for almost an hour.   Then Spurs score, and, because Palace have such difficulty scoring (centre forward shaped hole in the attack) that is how it ends: 0-1. Like the old Arsenal chant – 1-0 to the Arsenal. Except the other way round.

November 8 2018: Gwen’s funeral

I recently wrote about the sad death of Gwen Shaw, but the funeral was wonderfully warming and uplifting. One of her seven children acted as – MC? compere? presenter? – none of these terms seem quite appropriate.   The other six all contributed. There was a wide range of music, poetry, and laughter. A moving send off for a remarkable woman.

November 1-2 2018: Holiday in Berlin

To Berlin by train for a long weekend. Can there be another city anywhere in which the footprints of 20^th century history have made so profound an impact? Nazism, communism, and late capitalism. Mid 19^th century grandeur on Museum island, overdesigned museum and gallery spaces in the new cultural quarters. Austere neo-classicism in the Olympic Stadium.

October 2018: Apology written in January 2019 (I am speaking to you from the future!)

Apologies for radio silence for the last 2 months – due to colds, temporary deafness, seasonal ennui and melancholia. I will add a lot of entries over the next couple of days. I resolve to do better in the New Year.

October 2018:  Is Chapman the new Lynam?

In a bleak world, we all need moments, often profoundly unimportant in themselves, that cheer us up. For me, of late, some of these moments have been provided by the BBC sports presenter, Mark Chapman. Often, these moments emerge in the BBC coverage of American Football, fronted by the lively and witty three-hander presentational team, Chapman and the former players Jason Bell and Osi Umenyiora.

When Desmond Lynam began presenting Grandstand, around 1983, I wrote in praise of him in Broadcast.   Too much sport broadcasting was a bit over intense, rather pompous and dominated by the blazerati.   Desmond Lynam always had a slight twinkle, that seemed to convey the sense that, despite Bill Shankly’s oft quoted aphorism*, really sport is not really a matter of life and death, and sometimes it is richly comic.

Mark Chapman has something of the same quality. He too has a gleam in his eye, which suggests a chuckle is not far away.   He takes an impish delight in gently winding up his fellow guests. He registers and draws our attention to the amusement to be had in sport. At the same time, he always remembers the fans in the audience, who do not want the amusement to swamp the contest itself. This is a difficult act to pull off and Chapman is now doing it with growing confidence and assurance. Even if you do not like American Football, take a look at some of the BBC coverage and maybe the Chapman style will grab you too.

• Bill Shankly, Liverpool Manager between 1959-1974, once said”Football is not a matter of life and death.   It is far more important than that”

October 2018: Remembering Celia at Wembley!

We attended a remarkable memorial event recently. Remarkable partly because it was inside Wembley Stadium, in the Wembley Suite – a hospitality room just yards from comfortable seats with a great view of the stadium. Remarkable mainly because we were marking and celebrating a remarkable person – Celia Brackenridge.   Celia devoted much of her last twenty years researching the abuse of sports people by their coaches. This issue has hit the headlines in recent years, but for a long time was such a sensitive topic, that most sport organisations would go to great lengths to avoid having to confront it.

Although I have known Celia for a long time, and was always struck by her clear-eyed focus, clarity and determination, I had not fully appreciated how inspiring her life and work were for so many.   I knew of course, of her labours researching the abuse of athletes by coaches. I remember her telling me that she was “playing a long game”, and was impressed by her rigorous resistance to any probing about who she might be investigating.   The recent wave of cases involving such abuse is a fitting if not yet adequate result of her work and its influence.   So we were proud to have know her.

Also in the 1990s, we were all at a conference in Las Vegas together. There was no sign of Celia apart from during the sessions, and word reached us that she hated Las Vegas so much that she was refusing to leave her room. So, at the end of the day’s sessions, equipped with a bottle of whisky, we went up to call on her with the intention of cheering her up. We may have spread cheer, but could not persuade her to come out on the town. Ever the woman of principle!

October 2018: Sad death of Gwen Shaw

Saddened to hear of the death of Gwen Shaw. My parents and the Shaws were good friends. My father met Roy Shaw sometime in the 1950s. I have been friends with their son Phil (one of seven) since the early 1960s. Gwen Shaw was an impressive person, by any measure, as the Guardian obituary, written by her oldest son, Martin, reveals (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/oct/22/gwenyth-shaw-obituary).

I recall having tea with the Shaws when I was in my teens, and being struck by the calm way she coped with dishing up food and drink for more than ten people.   It was only after I became a parent myself, that I realised the massive organisational resources she must have had to marshall, every day, for years, simply to keep the whole family fed and watered. All of this while completing an OU degree (her second).

My own mother died in 1984 and we did not want a religious ceremony. It did not take much thought to decide that Gwen might be the ideal person to give the address, and so I was very pleased when she agreed to take the task on. I remember that she spoke with the perfect combination of gravitas and warmth.

September 2018: Fear and Hope

The more that emerges about the US Presidential election of 2016, the clearer it is that Trump never expected to be elected. He obstructed the early work of the transition team, rebuffed attempts to get him to focus on the need for immediate appointments, his team booked a small and rather unprepossessing room for the election night party and, apparently, he did not draft a victory speech. The expectation that he would not, could not, win, seems to have been shared by the liberal middle class.   Between February-April 2017, I interviewed a dozen people in the USA, in Texas, Illinois, Washington DC and New York.   They included young and old, men and women, gay and straight, white and black, American and non-American. To my surprise they had one thing in common – none of them thought Trump could become President until some point on election night.

The vote to leave Europe, similarly, came as a major surprise to politicians, political journalists and much of the population.   Michael Gove and the ever-opportunistic Boris Johnson, were, visibly, in shock the morning after the Referendum. It is a reasonable assumption that Jeremy Corbyn never expected to be leader of the Labour Party. Certainly some of those who nominated him (hello, Margaret Beckett) did not expect him to win. Yet as things stand, a confident and relatively united Labour Party, with more members than any equivalent European Party, with a socialist programme and a leader who is committed to socialist policies will be heading into the next election with optimism.

That so many events in contemporary politics appear unpredictable is, perhaps, a symptom of the intensity of the crisis we have been living through – a crisis of hegemony, in the terms of Gramsci. The neo-liberal consensus has been fragmenting since 2008. In such a moment, established expectations break down. New opportunities open up, both on the right, but also on the left.   All that is solid turns to air. It will take some considerable time before a new more settled equilibrium begins to emerge.   The rise of the new right is of considerable concern, but there are also plenty of sources for hope. New creative thinking is developing on the left – in Greece, in Spain, in France, and perhaps most significantly, in the UK.   Precisely because of the conditions of crisis there is, more than has been the case for many years, room for manoeuvre.

September 2018: On avoiding self-harm

Six weeks in France highlighted the massive difference in news agendas. In the UK, Brexit, rightly, is top or near top for much of the time.   In France, it is a minor issue, compared to the economy, unemployment, Macron’s reconstruction programme and other news. So it is shocking to return and discover that the progress (or more accurately lack of progress) as we approach more or less unmovable deadlines is so deeply unimpressive. The May Cabinet plan lurches on despite strong signals from Brussels that significant elements will not be acceptable.   The hard line Brexiteers seem set on sabotaging it anyway, without any really coherent plan of their own. It is striking that none of the participants seem to have a viable solution to the Irish border issue.

A no-deal exit, which, was, only a few months ago, widely seen as “unthinkable”, now seems entirely possible. David Davis has said this would not be “the end of the world”, to which Jon Pieanar (Deputy Political Editor, BBC News) drily commented that most people would agree that a no-deal Brexit would “not be the end of the world”.   The collapse of confidence amongst Brexiteers is such that much of their current rhetoric has precisely this defensive tone. Meanwhile, much of the most sober and thoughtful briefing (using that old fashioned technique of basing arguments on evidence) has highlighted the possible negative consequences of a no-deal Brexit on medical supplies, cross border transportation, prices, investment, and not least, food supplies.

If we saw someone engaged in a public act of self-harm, would we pass on by? Would we say, well, it is his/her choice? The will of the people?   Or would we feel the need to intervene, to prevent further damage?   The current political fiasco that characterises our road to Brexit, the dangers of a no-deal, and the probable consequences of Brexit generally, do seem like acts of national self-harm. Why did leaving Europe seem like a good idea?   Sovereignty? All around the world nations are struggling against the power of giant and powerful trans-national corporations and the mega powers. Sovereignty is in crisis with or without Europe. Better to be part of a wider unit with some clout. Bring back our law making power? We never lost it – only a small proportion of law is made in the EU (Where by the way we do have democratic representation).   To be free of bureaucratic restrictions? Which ones in particular – health and safety, food standards, working hours, job security?   What of inward immigration? around 50% of migration rates involve non-European citizens and therefore will not be affected by our departure. As for European migration – this partly involves people with skills, who find work; and being heavily work dependent has an inbuilt level of self regulation.   The UK has also not fully exploited the right, within the EU, to require that inward EU migrants find work with a specified length of time, or leave. What does that leave us ? Oh yes, free trade – in which the UK will be subject to the raw discipline of global free trade, vulnerable to the export of jobs to low wage economies, the importing of manufactured goods from these economies, the decline of our own manufacturing base still further, and of course, trade deals made by a desperate UK with larger and powerful countries are not going to be in our favour. Hence the well documented fears of hormone rich beef and chlorine washed chicken from North America. The hidden agenda is the transformation of the UK into a low wage, low tax economy in which the owners and entrepreneurs will get ever richer, while the working lives of the rest of people become brutal, exhausting and insecure. No thank you.

August 2018: Join the dots…

This summer the heatwaves seemed to have a different character with exceptional seasonal temperatures recorded everywhere from Sweden to Tunisia, Japan to the UK. In California, the news of fires has become a regular and routinised section of the news.

One could argue that only an idiot would lightly dismiss the view held by over 95% of scientists that climate change is occurring, and that it is fuelled by human activity. There has been a significant fund raising effort aimed at securing a second term for Donald Trump. Large donations have been received from billionaires. Some of these donations come from people with interests in oil and coal production. Trump of course, has withdrawn USA from the Paris Accord on Climate Change, arguing that it is a bad deal for America. Most of us do not have a vote in the American Elections, but we are all affected by climate change.

June 2018: Sitting on the Dock of the Bay: My father, the movies, jazz and the navy

One problem with being an only child is that, once your parents have both died, there are too many unfathomable mysteries, and no siblings with whom to compare notes. I know that my father left school at around 14, and that he then became a projectionist in the small Scottish town in which he was born. I also know that he joined the Navy in 1942, when he was 20. In the seven or so years before his call-up, he must have shown most of the most successful American and British films of the 1930s and early 1940s. His fascination with America (where he spent the last 10 years of his life, in the 1970s) began with the movies. He once told me that when he was growing up he believed William Powell and Myrna Loy to be the epitome of sophistication. He also loved jazz, but although I know he liked above all the small swing bands of the late 1930s and early 1940s, I do not know quite when this interest developed.

I do know that he had a most unlikely war experience. For reasons I do not know, his unit was seconded to the USA Navy for training. So he reported for duty at Southampton Dock, never having left Scotland before, to board one of the giant ocean liners that was to ferry them to North America. He was seasick even before the ship left the jetty – an inauspicious start for an aspiring able seaman.   After crossing the Atlantic, they were stationed at a naval base at Asbury Park, New Jersey for basic training. I do not know how long they were there, but at some point they were sent across the whole vast width of USA by train, to Alameda Naval Base, Oakland, California. It is hard to imagine what an extraordinary experience the journey must have been for a young lad, never previously out of Scotland, but already fascinated with movie images of America. I do not know how long he was at Alameda either, but at some point his unit were transferred to an aircraft carrier and sent to the Pacific.   He told me he never heard or saw any conflict – the planes would take off and a while later they would return and land.   His job was to stow the planes away below deck.   His ship put in at some exotic places – Sri Lanka (then Ceylon), South Africa, and Egypt, among others.

So, one day in San Francisco, sitting on the dock of the bay – gazing at the majestic Bay Bridge and in the distance almost invisible, shimmering but blurred, was Oakland. I wondered, wistfully, whether my father and his mates ever got on the bus, crossed the bridge and went in search of jazz bars. He must have done. But he is long dead and I will never know.  His close friend from the late 1950s onward, Alan, tells me that that the jazz scene in San Francisco was not that hot (it became considerably more lively after the war) – but there were some jazz and blues bars in Oakland. Like me, though, Alan does not know if he experienced American jazz live at this period. Of course if he did see jazz in America, it is more likely that he did so while stationed in Asbury Park, New Jersey, a short journey from 52nd Street, New York. 52^nd Street, between Fifth Avenue and Seventh Avenue was a huge jazz base between the 1930s and the 1950s, and most of the best know jazz musicians of the day played in the clubs there. I will never know, and sitting gazing across the bay, I wished Oakland, and his life in this period could, just briefly, come into focus for me.

June 2018: One Night in Marin County

Mill Valley, Marin County is a strange place. It is just across the Golden Gate Bridge, no more than one hour by air conditioned bus from downtown San Francisco, but is nonetheless a different world.   It feels like a very small place, surrounded by dramatic hills, full of trees and centering on a village green, very clean and neat, and clearly full of affluent people who have the laidback air of people who no longer have a pressing need to earn more money. It feels a little like a home counties English town (Leatherhead? Dorking?) until one is struck by the number of men with greying pony tails who look like they were once rock stars, and women in their sixties who look like they were once part of the rock scene. It was, DP suggested, where white heterosexual rock stars go to die.   There is a local joke that when San Franciscans die and go to heaven, they look around for a while and then say, ‘Well, it’s nice, but it’s no San Francisco’! Of course I am being disingenuous in that I know well that a large number of successful and not so successful Bay Area musicians did indeed move to Marin County – not least the Grateful Dead, who first moved to Marin when the communal house in Haight Ashbury became somewhat impractical due to the arrival of huge numbers of aspirant hippies in the late 1960s.

We were there on a mission.   I have a research interest in political humour. The comedian Mort Sahl, now 91, moved to Mill Valley around ten years ago and still performs once a week, on Thursdays, for one hour, at the Throckmorton Community Theatre. The live audience is quite small, but the show is streamed live and usually watched by around 1000 people. Mort Sahl has, not surprisingly, some of the stiffness and slowness of a 90 year old, but is still sharp, witty and entertaining. We were also able to go backstage for a short while, which was a magic experience.   His lifelong love of jazz was striking – in response to my question, he not only remembered going to Ronnie Scott’s Club during an early 1960s visit to the UK, but could remember exactly who he had seen play there.

Afterwards, we needed a drink and wandered round to the Sweetwater Bar and Music Hall, not much more than 100 yards from the theatre.   With my own love of music and fascination with Grateful Dead related info, I should of course, have known about this extraordinary bar. The original bar was tiny, but nonetheless, famous musicians from the area regularly played there – often informally and unannounced. It went out of business for a while and then was revived, in larger premises with a small bar, courtyard and music room. Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead, was one of the investors. We felt too tired to go into the music room, and proposed just to have a drink. That night, members of the Electric Flag (1960s Chicago style blues band) had got together to celebrate their 50^th anniversary – and the line-up included Harvey Mandel on guitar and Nick Gravenites singing.   The gig was relayed to the bar on very high quality speakers, and on a large television with very well produced live pictures. We sat happily with our drinks, in comfort, and watched the whole show. It was the most unexpected of evenings, and had an Alice in Wonderland quality to it – as if we had fallen down a rabbit hole into an enchanted garden. The imagery may be running away with me at this point given the all too obvious referent of the Grace Slick song White Rabbit. I don’t think anyone slipped anything into our drinks, and Owsley is no longer with us, of course.   We returned to our downtown hotel in the middle of the homeless (See below) and the next morning the evening already seemed like a dream. I needed to write it up just to fix it in my mind.

Late June 2018: Eating out in San Francisco

Only there for a few days but did have some lovely meals. A seafood lunch at Alioto’s on the very touristy Fisherman’s Wharf, fine seafood, relaxed ambience and view of the bay. A rather heavier lunch in John’s Grill, home of the Maltese Falcon (upstairs in a case) and the Dashiell Hammett Society. What did we have ? Big steaks, baked potatoes and bourbon, natch. Best of all, though, and partly in homage to the recently deceased chef and broadcaster, Anthony Bourdain, a visit to the tremendous Swan Oyster Depot. It sells nothing but crab, lobster, octopus, prawn, shrimp and clam. So you can have a seafood cocktail, seafood salad, clam chowder, or crab back. They don’t even sell fries! Just bread. All washed down with cold wine or beer. Even though we had to queue for one hour (it only seats 18, all at the counter) staring daggers at those already in, it was still worth it. Highly recommend that you visit it.

Bourdain’s death clearly came as a huge shock, both to those who know him, and to those who only read his books, and watched his television programmes.   It was a double shock when it emerged that he had killed himself. From the outside, few lives seemed more enviable – travelling the world to make programmes about food. He was a handsome man and at 61, still remarkably slim. He found success as a chef, as a writer and as a broadcaster. His television work was highly engaging. He apparently found being away from home for much of the year difficult, although there may have been ambivalent feelings about this – after all he did not need to work so much.   He grew up in a profession, cooking, that is almost the antithesis of a stable home life, and maybe was wedded to the life of the nomad.   Watching some of the programmes since his death, it is striking how often mentions of and images of death seem to occur – for example after enjoying absinthe in Paris and staying in the room that Oscar Wilde died in. Yet the death remains puzzling, and should prompt us to reflect on the strange and irrational character of depression – which has the potential to cause us to see only darkness.

June 2018: San Francisco

In San Francisco the homeless cluster in large numbers around Market Street near the UN Plaza.   This area has the City Hall, the Civic Center, the (magnificent) San Francisco Public Library, the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, the Art Institute of California, and the SF Symphony. Many of the homeless are male black and elderly. Some have disability issues – there are people with wheelchairs, zimmer frames and other walking devices. Some have visible medical conditions that require attention that they do not seem to be getting.  And all this near Silicon Valley with all of its veneer of caring sharing mission statements. Very angry. I cannot photograph these things, although I believe that it needs to be done. (See  Mission Statements and Mission Street, in Writing Section).

June 20-24: International Association for Media and Communication Research Annual Conference, June 20-24, Eugene Oregon

Went to IAMCR Conference in Eugene Oregon.   Impressed the waiter in the Wild Duck Café because I was able to identify the large photograph of an athlete as Steve Prefontaine, a great middle and long distance runner (1951-1975), born in Oregon and a student at the University of Oregon. He died in a car crash at age 24.   His death is commemorated in the annual Prefontaine Classic, held every year at Haywards Field, Eugene, Oregon.   While we were at the conference, a fence surrounded the Field, prior tom the demolition of the old grandstand, a matter of some controversy as it was around 100 years old.   In typical American can-do dynamism, the stand was demolished in a day – we set off for our seminars at 8.00am and it was still there, and by 6.00pm it was nothing but rubble.

Eugene is a neat and clean place, with a real environmental conscience – recycling, bicycle lanes everywhere, pedestrian zones.   It has plenty of trees, its buildings are mostly low rise, and the surrounding hills are spectacular. The people are friendly, and the city is calm and relaxed.   As Joseph Heller might have written, “Yossarian hated it!” Why am I such a horrible metropolitanite, in thrall to dirt, grime, noise, sleaze and conflict, that I cannot warm more to such a lovely spot? I kept thinking of the old joke about Toronto – New York run by the Swiss.

American universities often surprise by their relative lack of bars – we Brits forget the drinking age restrictions in the USA.   So we have become used to walking off campus (never very far) to find bars.   We spent a happy evening in Max’s Tavern. Matt Groening, the originator of The Simpsons went to the University of Oregon and Max’s Tavern, at which he was a regular, is widely believed to be the model for Moe’s in The Simpsons, although Max’s is rather more convivial.

May 2018: The Remarkable Powers of Music

A week of experiences that has reminded me of the extraordinary and diverse powers of music. Last Sunday at Crystal Palace, the last game of the season, was a festive occasion. Palace began the season with a new Dutch Manager, Frank de Boer, who made the serious mistake of deciding how he would like the team to play before he had seen them play! Clearly puzzled as to what he wanted them to do, they made a memorably poor start, losing the first seven games, in which they did not even manage to score. Wisely, the club dispensed with their manager and hired Roy Hodgson. The form and confidence picked up immediately. Despite an extraordinarily bad run of injuries, the winning habit returned and they ended up mid table. So there was a lot of noise, and a lot of singing. When BBC football commentator John Motson came out to get an award to mark his retirement, the crowd spontaneously sang the Match of the Day theme tune. A slightly difficult tune to sing, as note frequency escalates towards the end, but very evocative peg on which football memories hang.

Two days later, I was at the funeral of an old friend from school, Del Mandel. We learned to play guitar together between age 12-16 – except he learned far faster than I did and spent his whole adult life as a working musician. When I arrived at the crematorium, I noticed the large number of men with greying ponytails, and Hawaiian shirts (the shirts being a Del signature look), and thought – musicians. It occurred to me that with so many musicians present, the wake might well be an interesting event. And so it transpired. Although Derek’s death was deeply sad, and far too premature, there was dancing and live music at the wake, which was somehow uplifting. The Sixties All-Stars, one of many bands Derek played with, launched into Sweet Home Chicago, where my father spent the last 10 years of his life, and my own favourite American city. So a lot of assorted memories welled up.

On Thursday, I was at the British Library to hear members of The Last Poets discussing their career and their politics.   The following night, I was there to see them perform live as part of an evening of radical poetry.   A highlight was Hearing them performing When the Revolution Comes – powerful, direct, passionate political music. If you don’t know them, check them out.

On Saturday, by absolute contrast, and despite being a republican, I listened to the Royal wedding, while cooking, and have to say the music throughout was beautiful. The radio was the perfect medium, allowing the listener to focus on the music without the distracting images of famous rich and powerful people, fidgeting in their seats.

Cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason played Sicilienne by Maria Theresia von Paradis, (an 18^th century composer); Apres un Reve, by Faure, and Schubert’s Ave Maria. The Choir of St George’s Chapel sung works by Thomas Tallis and John Rutter.

Karen Gibson and the Kingdom Choir: Christian gospel group performed Stand By Me by Ben E. King. A trumpet led prelude to events featured pieces by Bach and Vaughan Williams. The orchestra played Elgar, Holst, Parry, and Vaughan Williams, among others. Every item was well chosen and exquisitely performed. For me it made a dramatic and uplifting conclusion to an extraordinary week of diverse experience.

April 2018: Memories of Derek

I heard this month that an old friend from school has died. I first met Derek Mandel in 1961. We learned to play guitar together, although Derek proved to be far more diligent at practising than I did. We both had tape recorders and spent hours experimenting with what they could do. Like so many guitarists in that period, we had copies of Bert Weedon’s Play in a Day. For much of the years between 1965-1975 we were part of a loose group of south London musicians who drank in the same pubs, and played in various combinations, casually. For a short period in 1970-72 we were part of a shared household in Brixton. Derek taught me a Django Reinhardt piece that I still practice, and is to this day my “party piece”, if I want people to think I can actually play a bit. See writing section for Memories of Derek.

April 2018: Sony Photographer of the Year

Absolutely thrilled to read in the paper that Alys Tomlinson, daughter of my old friend and sometime collaborator, Alan, has won the Sony Photographer of the Year Award. A very prestigious award to win. We were fortunate to be able to go to Somerset House to see the exhibition of entries, the day after the awards were announced and even luckier to be able to congratulate Alys in person. Understandably, she was still a little shocked at having won.

April 2018: A Living Wage?:

Surprisingly, the concept of a universal wage is gaining adherents across the political spectrum. Indeed it has an appeal. It deals with the problem posed by job loss due to automation. It promises to remove the “stigma” of welfare, and abolishes the need for costly and discriminatory means assessments. It appears to address the growing divide between the 1% super-rich and the rest. Why, it is almost socialistic. Isn’t it?

I heard a discussion on the Andrew Marr programme in which the contributors, all broadly sympathetic to the concept, discussed the different means by which it might be applied and the various impacts it might have.   During this, it struck me that, in the way the concept was being proposed and discussed, it focused on the problems of poverty, social disadvantage and job loss largely in isolation from the issues of wealth accumulation, and tended to avoid the more crucial question of the relation between wealth accumulation, ownership and poverty.

From the perspective of the rich, the supposed growing crisis in job availability due to automation has triggered a growing concern that their wealth cannot be defended, morally, in the context of job insecurity and the gig economy. So the universal wage can function as a shield; alleviating the worst impacts of poverty, whilst leaving the structures that produce wealth accumulation in a few hands largely intact.

It is not that billionaires are simply or necessarily immoral – many proclaim their intentions to give away much of their wealth, in the form of charitable donations or philanthropic trusts. Of course this does not really help the beleaguered public sector, where what is needed is not simply funds, but the ability to choose on behalf of the community where money should be spent.

It is, I am guessing, easy enough to give away 500 million dollars, when you have 3-4 billion. A more radical gesture would be to give away the company – hand it over to the workers, and let future decisions be taken in the interest of the workforce as a whole. Or more radical still, establish co-operatives in which communities might also be involved in decision making. That might be a bit more transformative (although not much more so than the John Lewis Partnership, the Co-Operative movement and the few remaining mutual Building Societies) and in the long term, combined of course with fundamental tax reform, it could even start impacting on the massive gulf between the super-rich and the rest, in ways which neither philanthropy nor the universal wage can hope to do.

April 1st 2018: Off the Wall Notions:

Another interesting but unworkable idea from Pres. Trump – in response to the tendency of occasional unhinged citizens to burst into schools and start shooting students and staff, he has suggested that teachers might be armed.   The flaw is all too clear – it will ensure that the teacher is the first one to be shot.  Here’s an alternative – lets arm the children. Faced with a whole sea of the little critturs, the potential killer will not know who to gun down first. Any one of them might be the first to fire.   This could act as a significant deterrent.

Extract from Modest Proposals, forthcoming.

March 2018: Tampering with the ball down under.

Strangely upsetting to see Australian men cry – perhaps because the dominant masculine code appears to be one of sunny optimism, an egalitarian matey homosociality, a gung-ho can-do-ism, and a sporty heartiness. Doubts, fears, angst, dark nights of the soul, sit uneasily in this context and so when they erupt, it is all the more dramatic. We know a line has been crossed, and yet what is it?   In the era of commercially driven imperatives to be successful, what are sporting ethics? In cricket, it is alright to polish one side of the ball, in the hope the ball will swing in the air; but not OK to use artificial means to rough up the other side. Yet aggressive short pitched intimidatory bowling, and abusive sledging, do not attract the sort of moral panic that has now broken out.

In Premier League Football, where every move can be examined from endless angles in slow motion, concern is expressed about players who dive – faking a foul to gain a penalty. I have a degree of sympathy for players who, in the phrase of the day, “go down easily”, using the pretext of a slight touch to fall down.   Crystal Palace’s winger Wilfried Zaha was, last season, apparently the most fouled player in English football. And that statistic, of course, only records the fouls that resulted in the award of a free kick, and does not include the numerous kicks, hacks and tugs that could have but did not, get penalised.   Talented ball players like Zaha, are accustomed to the use of unfair means to try and stop them.   It is hard to be too censorious when, tackled in the penalty area, they go down and let the referee judge.   This is very different from the clear “dive” – in which a player flings themselves theatrically to the ground, even though no contact has been made. This is deliberate cheating, and should be punished more harshly.   Rather than complain about being booed, such players might usefully watch a few playbacks of their action and consider changing their habits.  Otherwise, the rest of us will be crying…

March 2018: still dreaming…

Another worrying dream last night. We were at a party with a surprising number of top brass from the tory party attending. Jacob Rees-Mogg was there in a top hat and white tie.   Contrary to his image as a gentleman of courtesy, he was being very snooty and ignoring all oikish remainers. George Osborne was circulating, working the room, and mocking anyone from the left.  Theresa May kept coming in with trays of starters, and then, when they were rejected, going out and returning with a completely different set of nibbles. Most disturbing, David Cameron, who seemed far cooler and hip than we dreamt possible, and was demonstrating a surprisingly detailed knowledge of arcane pop music of the 1990s.   He still seemed uncertain of which football team he supports, though.   Then I woke. What can it all mean?

February 2018: Crisis of hegemony?

Clearly, all over the western world, at least, we are in the midst of a hegemonic crisis. The globalised neo-liberal project no longer has the power to win consensual support. The symptoms are everywhere in the rise of parties and individuals of the left (Podemos, Syriza, Bernie, Corbyn) and more worryingly, of the right (the Front Nationale in France, Alternative for Germany, Victor Orban in Hungary and the Lazarus-like return of Berlesconi).   The centre parties sound less and less confident as the centre ground shifts below their feet.

It is an early stage in this crisis, plenty of room for manoeuvre, but not at all obvious what the new settlement might look like. I have previously suggested that Trump is best understood as a “morbid symptom” of this crisis, rather than a harbinger of a future strategy (see May 2017).   The prospect of Brexit is, in a way, far more serious, promising as it does, to fatally weaken the British economy, forcing us down the road of becoming a low tax low wage economy.

It is a time for political boldness on the left – a range of evidence suggests the willingness of British people to support radical policies – witness the apparent popularity of renationalisation of the rail system and other public utilities. Labour could give us a genuinely transformative manifesto – but it has to take a clear and distinctive stand on Europe – to open up some clear water between Labour and the Tories.

December 2017: Ray’s Wonderful Empire

My friend Ray, who has built an empire of bars, cafés and restaurants in Italy is thinking of retiring. I asked him if I might tell his story. See Writing section for Ray’s Wonderful Empire

December 2017: The Borderline

Last night, I saw The Pretty Things perform at Borderline. Borderline is a small, fairly long established club, lurking behind Charing Cross Road. An awkwardly shaped room, painted entirely in black, dimly lit, with a small stage in one corner, a bar at the rear, with some banquette style seating, and a rather startling L shaped corridor leading to the toilets. If the intention was to recreate the feel of some 1960s dives, apart from the bar (which in the 1960s would have been more rudimentary) it succeeds admirably. Not as well, though, as The Pretty Things (see longer piece Double Acts, in the Writing section).

Note: Double Acts has now been translated into French and is available on the Cultural Industries website as Spectacle à Deux

October 2017: Highgate, The Woodman

My daughter and I finally finished the Capital Ring Walk. 80 miles, and, done in 15 stages of between 5-8 miles, it took us 5 years – I just worked out that this equates to an average speed of 0.02 miles per hour.  Even now there are slugs, snails and tortoises training for an assault on our majestic land speed record. Still, we did it, and no-one can take that away!

The Capital Ring is definitely my kind of walking. On the one hand, you pass through a familiar urban environment, except that often, you are on canal paths, river banks, crossing parks, gardens and commons – including many little gems, oases of calm just yards from the North Circular, for example. On the other, in the event of rain, wind or just general misery (and no, I cannot see any pleasure in walking in the rain, sorry), you are never that far from a café, a bar, or a restaurant; or at least a bus or tube ride.

Many was the time a walk concluded in a pleasant bar just in time for the lunchtime live football and a pint of beer. I may not be a fully anoraked rambler, but I know what I like.

October 2017

On Wine:

“unique among all foods and drinks, for none of these have in them anything of which the pleasure is transported from the body to the soul , producing therein,…an abundance of happiness, animation, openness, stimulation, self-contentment, generosity and freedom from cares and sorrows…It is wine that provides excellence to society and conversation…and there is nothing that makes possible relations of intimacy and confidence between friends so tastefully and pleasantly and effectively as does drinking wine together.”

Abu Zayd al-Balkhi, in The Welfare of Bodies and Souls, 10^th century; quoted in London Review of Books 8 Sept 2016, by Malise Ruthven.

September 2017

Of course as many have observed, the time goes quicker as you get older.  This year is whizzing especially fast.  This is possibly because, having spent 9 weeks in the USA (which I believe is the longest I have been out of the UK in one stretch), we managed to spend longer in Paris than normal.  This has given us a degree of distance from the Brexit debate.  Returning to the UK with a strengthened conviction that this is an act of national self-harm, borne out of post-imperial melancholia.  Those who voted remain have every right to speak out.  Every day, following the negotiations, it becomes clearer and clearer, just what a mess our departure from Europe will leave.   The national conversation cannot be stopped.  However, I cannot but help missing Paris and “the bar” (see the Writing section)

August 2017

Of course, as soon as I was enjoying the good run of writing detailed below, I began to suffer the back problems associated with too many hours crouched over a laptop.   At home I use an orthopaedic chair, and a high level screen, which is better for the back.  Still, it is interesting that it has taken a couple of hundred miles of cultural distance and a bad back to prompt me to write something about Test Match Special – I am in Paris, it is August, I have a cold, and suddenly realised I could happily while away a hot afternoon by listening to TMS.   Bliss. (Longer piece –  Why TMS is special – in writing section).

August 2017

Writing, as any writer will tell you, has a particular frustration – on some days inspiration flows, the words seem to come as fast as you can type, and everything has clarity.   More often, nothing will come, the ideas are cluttered, the words ill-chosen.   If you can swim or ride a bike, then you can always do it, no matter how long you neglect the skill. Writing is not like that. Fortunately, I have been on a roll for the last couple of weeks and progress has been made. This may be due to the stimulus of a changed environment, working in the elegant tranquillity of the Richelieu site of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. All too aware that this roll will not last.

July 2017 Chengdu, China

David Lodge’s book Small World starts with a parody of the opening passage of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, in which, from spring, people begin to get the urge to go on pilgrimages. Only, as Lodge, tartly points out “nowadays, they call them conferences”. So it was that I set off for Heathrow, to catch a plane to Amsterdam and there transfer to a flight to Chengdu, China.   For four days. Why?

The answer lies in a combination of ego, desire for intellectual interchange, and culinary curiosity.   Ego because Professors, typically refusing the career route that runs Department Head>Dean>VC, seek validation through esteem indicators, such as books, journal articles and keynote talks. There is something especially pleasant about going somewhere exotic at someone else’s expense. Desire for intellectual interchange because in order to have output (writing) there must be input (reading, hearing other people talk, and conversation).   Culinary curiosity because, of the four main Chinese cuisines (Beijing, Cantonese, Huaiyang, and Sichuan) Sichuan is possibly the most interesting and distinctive and is less common in London.

for more see The Pandas of Chengdu and other Thoughts, in Writing section.

July 2017

Clearly to understand sport, you have to accept that sport like every other aspect of social life, has a politics.   Conversely, enjoying sport, involves the pleasure of holding politics at bay – escapist you might say, but a life spent solely contemplating the grimness of the iniquities of politics is not a whole experience.   For those of us who love spectator sport, the best arenas are those that are so enclosed and enveloping one cannot even catch a glimpse of the world outside. Court One at Wimbledon (and indeed Centre Court) deliver this admirably. So a happy day spent watching Marin Čilić, Johanna Konta, and Venus Williams, and we didn’t even contemplate trying to start a chant of “whoa, Jeremy Corbyn”.   And as the sadly departed Barry Norman used to say, “and why not?”

Grenfell Tower Fire: The dreadful and terrifying fire and the tragic loss of life have become encapsulated in the stark image of the blackened stump of the Grenfell Tower. Many issues will need to be explored but they all cluster around building regulations, their enforcement, de-regulation, attitudes to public housing, and the 20% reduction in local authority funding. In January 2011, in an ill-chosen metaphor that has become especially chilling, David Cameron called for a “bonfire of regulations”.   The Grenfell fire is a stark reminder of just why we have regulations, why they should be both well drafted and rigorously enforced, and why we should all be very suspicious of those who see leaving the European Union as an opportunity to “sweep away red tape”.

Several terrible incidents (Manchester, London Bridge, Finsbury Park) have only demonstrated once again the futility of randomised political violence. Hugely heartening is the typical response – we stand together against acts of terror and hatred and will not let them divide us.   This, though now needs to be translated into a much greater effort to combat hate crime and the cultures that make it possible. This means opposing, with tangible and determined measures both those who foster a climate of Islamophobia, and those who forment “Islamist” political violence.

June 2017 Election

During the election campaign it became increasingly obvious that Labour would do well, especially after the Labour manifesto was clear, radical, popular and well-costed; whilst the robotic Mrs May was lurching from one problem to another. Fascinatingly, Jeremy Corbyn, having seemingly followed David Cameron’s tart advice to get a decent suit and shirt, and do up his tie, looked stronger and more confident every day. Still our expectations were centered on keeping the Tory majority down, and so a hung parliament was a huge leap forward. Yet they are still in power and perversely the very strength of Corbyn’s Labour Party means the Tories will do everything to avoid an election. A frustrating and dangerous period of stasis lies ahead.

June 2017

We have moved on since the 1990s and in the intensely self-reflexive media environment, the audience seem far more alert to spin and sound-bite.  The Tories commenced with heavy and constant use of “strong and stable” but were rumbled in the first two weeks, and widespread mocking resulted in “S&S” being significantly de-emphasised.   Hopefully, the latest vacuity, “the money-tree”, will suffer a similar fate.   Meanwhile candidates who can talk clearly and sincerely, from deeply held beliefs (Jeremy Corbyn, Caroline Lucas, Nicola Sturgeon) now play far better on television than those whose every utterance betrays a concern with focus group, sound-bite and keyword. May’s cynical attempt to engineer a quiet and content-free election on the back of an apparent large lead in the polls might just have backfired. But only if all who want change GET OUT AND VOTE !

May 2017

We are, I think, undoubtedly in the middle of a hegemonic crisis. The neo-liberal globalisers are no longer able to lead and the dominance of their perspective has been shaken.   Yet in this moment when the left might be aspiring to mount an effective counter-hegemonic challenge, it is not yet able to do so.   On the other hand, the far right, despite its recent high visibility has also been unable to win sufficient support for its nationalistic and xenophobic perspectives.   So the old is dying and yet the new cannot yet be born. It seems likely that we will remain in a condition of crisis, an unstable equilibrium, for some time. As Gramsci told us, in such circumstances a whole variety of morbid symptoms will appear.   So, is Trump a morbid symptom, and if so, a symptom of what, what is the prognosis, and what might be the cure?

April 2017

Friday April 14 2017: Ill in New York, fuzzy head, lost voice, a bit feverish. Can’t hear, can’t talk.   Susan, Deborah and Ian out somewhere, while I languish, like a Victorian heroine on a chaise longue, in the Park Central Hotel.  We all did the Hi-Line earlier.  Even the title seems a little piece of New York – up, positive, above, up, up and away.

Even after seven weeks there has been so little time to reflect and so much to reflect upon.  Constant movement but also a sense of stasis.   Diddley dum diddley dum diddley dee diddley dee the train goes down the tracks.  That plaintive wistful yearning keening of the engine warning klaxon, like the tone of Miles Davis trumpet, nostalgic for a place to which it can not return.  The runaway train ran down the tracks and she blew. Big locomotive number 99, left the engineer with a worried mind.  The open road, the distant horizon.  A fresh start in a new town.   Always fresh opportunities just over the hill.  She drew out all her money from the Southern Trust, and put her little boy upon the Greyhound bus. The empty promises of capitalist enterprise.   The first people in secure the land ownership, the mineral rights, the oil.  The next wave end up working for them, the wave after that struggle to find work and move on westward, westward.  Flotsam, jetsam, the dispossessed, everything loose ends up in LA.   The thirst for fame.

As always paradoxes – much beauty, much ugliness.  The sprawl of freeway and car-based America – gas station, burger bar, pizza joint, vacant lot, lube shop, beauty parlour, poodle bar, gas station, vacant lot.   Yet in the Hudson Valley, achingly beautiful hamlets of wooden houses in the middle of forests.  Travelling across the Appalachians – up a river valley that seemed to rise for miles with only trees for company.   America the Beautiful.  Small, indeed tiny towns, in the middle of nowhere in Texas, with the air of settlements built in the frontier days and never changed.  Fixed modes of operating, a long way from external sources of influence.

Trapped lives, mobile lives, trapped minds, mobile minds.  The country of Trump and Bannon, but also of Rosa Parks, Jackie Robinson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Theolonius Monk.  Terrible things happening on news daily but also lots of pushback.  Flux, movement.  In a hegemonic crisis, movement, repositioning is suddenly possible.

Restless, restless, always building, up, up and up.  A visual metaphor of piles of money accumulating, like the stacks of chips in front of successful poker players.  Zoot Sims once commented to fellow saxophonist Ronnie Scott, “they’re walking on the Moon, and I’m still playing ‘Indiana’.”  Everything solid melts into air – and yet, despite rust belt, the economy appears not yet fatally damaged by the rise of Asia, far from it.

(longer piece on America to follow soon)

March 2017

We had an amazing encounter in Austin, on 6th street, which is full of music bars. A very cool Eddie Murphy look-a-like, in a long coat ,was on the corner doing a ventriloquist act.   As we passed, his dummy made a remark in broad Yorkshire  “Are you all right, flower ?  Where you going?” (very convincing accent).  So DP asks the dummy “where are you from?”  The dummy replies “I’m from Yorkshire, luv, where are you from?” And suddenly DP is in conversation with the dummy.   Meanwhile I am watching the ventriloquist, thinking -you are good, I can’t see your lips move, and also, brilliant Yorkshire accent for an American.  The dummy is busy telling DP about all the acts he has worked with – Danny La Rue, Ken Dodd etc.  Until the name Jim Bowen comes up, and the ventriloquist comes out of character, to say, sadly, that he has heard that Jim Bowen is unwell, and we get talking to him.  Of course it turns out he is from Huddersfield.  He is called Scarlet Ray Watt (try googling him) and we chatted away happily about comic acts from the 1950s.

February 2017

The dispiriting slump in form of Crystal Palace seems to go on and on. Threw a jolly convivial party.   Completed Residents Association Newsletter, and then suddenly, having rushed up on us remarkably quickly, time to fly to Texas, where DP is a research fellow at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin,  and I am Visiting Scholar at the Dept of Sociology.   I notice it is the first anniversary of this blog – Happy Birthday, Blog.

January 2017

A bit late reporting on January, sorry. It came, it went. Bought a beautiful 1920s rolltop desk, and rearranged my study to accommodate it.   Head down and did some work, prepared for USA trip.   Who is this guy Larry and what has he got to be so happy about, anyway?

December 2016: Xmas in India

One challenge that India poses is that all the senses become over stimulated. Sound, sight, smell, touch, taste: sound: honking car horns – the horn is used for every conceivable motoring purpose – passing, turning left, turning right, warning others of your presence, and, it seems just general sociability. Despite the chaos on the roads people rarely seem to get genuinely angry. Noises in malls and cinemas often seem cranked up high. When music is played it is loud. Birds sing, especially noticeable at dawn and dusk. Dogs bark, and there are a lot of street dogs. Even in a peaceful haven such as the one we are in, a car backfiring will set off a chain of dogs disputing its presence with their perturbed and assertive yelps. Quietness in urban India is a rare and precious thing.Sight: one of the first things to strike the visitor is the vividness of colour – iridescent greens, glowing saffrons, deep indigo, luscious scarlets everywhere. Then it is decoration and embellishment – buses and lorries often heavily decorated – Ken Kesey’s legendary International Harvester Bus, Furthuur, would hardly stand out here despite its riot of day-glo paint. Plants look exotic to western eyes, as do the flowers.Dark eagles and tough crows soar overhead. And in any street scene the sheer number of moving elements – cars, buses, lorries, bikes, goats, cows, and people, is hard to register fully. Signage is striking for its styles. The injunction, absolutely ignored by all, to “Preserve Lane Discipline”, seems to catch something of India’s ambiguity: its rule-bound bureaucratic sensibility and its anarchic spirit. (for much longer version of this, see Notes From Beantown, in the Writing section  of this site).

December 2016: 

Disturbing dream last night.   I was trying to conduct a large choir of young people from around the world. Full of enthusiastic smiling faces – from China, Korea, India, Africa, South America, North America and Europe. We were working on The Internationale. However, they kept singing “the Internationale divides the human race”, despite my increasingly frantic pleading, “no,no, it unites the human race”.

Oi!

November 2016

If it is hard to write about BREXIT, the election of Donald Trump to the Office of President of the Unites States of America poses even greater problems. Personally, I thought, quite wrongly, it seems, that the huge respect for the Office, and a sense of the reverence the holder should inspire, and the gravitas the holder should provide, might, in the end, persuade people that maybe Donald J. might not be qualified for the post (leaving aside his total absence of experience of electoral office or political posting, and his all too apparent sketchy sense of foreign affairs. This has become, for many of us a year in which bad dreams became lived reality and it is hard to keep hope alive.   SO – one hope is that coherent, persuasive and well-informed people can somehow get the ear of the new President and at least persuade him not to withdraw USA from the Paris Climate Change Agreement, which for all its flaws, is the only game in town on this issue, and possibly our last chance for meaningful action.

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The profound shock of BREXIT continues to reverberate.   It is hard to fully process, and after a few weeks I am even more convinced that this is an error of massive proportions – it is not merely shooting ourselves in the foot, but using a machine gun to do so.  I do understand the deadening sense of urban decay that shapes lives in many towns, especially smaller ones, that must seem to have a past but no future. The sad fact is that leaving the EU will not lead to an improvement in the conditions of people in run down old industrial areas. The interesting question, is which political force will be best placed to speak for these aspirations when, as seems inevitable, disillusion with Brexit sets in.

October 2016

Furniture Auctions: an interesting cultural world.   I go to one in Tring every few months. Several hundred items, everything from fine Victorian roll-top desks to a load of assorted lengths of old rope (yes, there is money in old rope, apparently). A mixed crowd – aristocratic looking people, dressing down, shrewd eyed people from the trade, raffish duckers and divers – very like horse racing in this sense. A lot of good quality stuff goes reasonably cheaply – a lot of people don’t want old stuff, and would rather go to IKEA, and yet wardrobes, for example, can be had much cheaper. But who has space for an old fashioned gentleman’s wardrobe, anymore? Actually, I found the space. The auctioneers, all very different in style, are hugely entertaining, and have immense stamina. Sometimes an item attracts no bids and then gets the saddest of sign-off lines from the auctioneer – “No-one wants,” followed by a smart tap of the gavel, and the next item is up.

Sombre autumn colours, nights getting shorter, air cooling down. Grim terrain in global politics these days. When an honest history of the UN is written, the “great” powers will be shown to have shabby records.   The UN, which may be flawed, but is “the only one we’ve got”, has been undermined more and more by the contempt with which the “great” powers regard it.   The US/UK intervention in Iraq, the recent Russian actions in Syria, the Chinese construction of bases in the Pacific – all have one thing in common: a disdain for the court of world opinion.  When we desperately need some leaders of dignity, gravitas and moral responsibility, it is profoundly dispiriting that Donald Trump can even be mentioned as a viable candidate for President, let alone have a goodish chance of winning.

September 2016

Now the Labour party leadership contest is over, I sincerely hope all members and MPs will now come together and focus on constituting a proper opposition and winning support before the next election (which could be early, but my guess is probably not).   I am not holding my breath for an outbreak of unity. As so often in its history, the pragmatic and idealist elements of the British Labour movement seem unable to generate a new equilibrium.   Another attempt to appeal to the middle ground with anodyne and vacuous non-policy utterances will get us nowhere, but a more socialist programme, which the party is certainly capable of generating, requires that the party be far more effective in winning support than it has been in the past.   Yet the ground is not unfavourable – we are in the middle of a hegemonic crisis in which the political class have failed to be a leading moral and intellectual force in a key endeavour – staying in Europe.  The previous settlement is broken, and both major parties have been rocked by these events.   There is room for manoeuvre, and we do not know what form a new emergent stability might take. However if the Tories do go for hard Brexit, they should be able to hold onto their right wing. The impact on the wider economy will probably be more long term, and one interesting question is how those who voted Brexit will react as it becomes clearer that restricting immigration is not going to make the very real problems of deprivation and disadvantage go away.

Aug 2016: In Paris and suffering from flu. Didn’t go out much for two weeks but did a lot of reading. It was a little like a beach holiday, but on a sofa. Hard to consume the Olympics effectively – the most exciting events (let’s face it athletics is really the boss sport) were on in the middle of the night. Highlights on French Television (quite reasonably) focused on events in which the French did well – fencing and handball in particular – and did not dwell unduly on this in which the UK did well. My collaborator John Horne kept me posted with despatches from Rio. As ever in Paris, there was a period of quite punishing heat (36 degrees C) but the library (the beautiful old Salle Ovale in the Rue Vivienne) was comfortable and coolish. We visited friends in Lot et Garonne for a weekend, and wandered around the delightful Sunday market in Villereal.  And, joy of joys, it is now easier to listen to Test Match Special, via the BBC website – a service specially for overseas listeners.   The coverage of cricket in L’Equipe is, it has to be said, minimal.  In fact, non-existent.

July 27-31: Leicester. Here for IAMCR conference. I used to come here in 1980s and 1990s for sport sociology events but have not been for some time. Good to be in a human scale city after Tokyo and London. Went to explore the covered market – ordinary covered markets are such a wonderful thing – the only big one in London, Borough, good though it is, is dominated by foodie culture and over priced. So I am very jealous of cities like Newcastle and Leicester that have centre of town markets with ordinary stuff at ordinary prices, and good old school butchers and fishmongers. I came across Lineker’s stall – presumably Gary Lineker’s family. And why in all these years has no-one drawn my attention to the urban gem that is the New Walk ?  an 18th century pedestrianised road that leads from the cathedral to Victoria Park, by the University campus. Highly recommended.

July On emptying rooms. There are minimal folk who have beautiful decor, where all is neatness and space, where never a cough can be allowed to sully the environment, where one is almost afraid to sit. Our flat is not like that. It has taken a week to empty furniture and contents from a bedroom awaiting decoration. The carpet is a totally different colour where it has been under furniture. 15 years of dust lurked behind wardrobes. Bundles of clothes pushed to backs of shelves saw daylight for ther first time in a decade. And now every room in the house is full of bags of stuff. And we are, temporarily, living like students, sleeping on a mattress on the floor of the front room. We do not take well to such chaos. But the end product will, hopefully be worth it.

(Note in the entry below, predictive text originally changed Brexit into Brecht !  If only…)

Brexit and into July: Hard to write about this at all, the impact is so great, the turmoil so complete, the disaster so ominous and the tragedy so dispiriting. Like many who wanted, despite many reservations about the EU, to stay in Europe, I have been bouncing around the stages of grief, especially anger, denial, depression and bargaining.   Acceptance has yet to arrive.   I feel strongly that this is a very bad decision.

June 2016 in Japan: Never been before, and always wanted to go. So many impressions in such a short time, and still assimilating and processing.   Highlights included the joys of eating in street kitchens in Fukuoka; seeing Kabuki Theatre; the profound, disturbing and yet strangely uplifting experience of visiting Hiroshima; the deep peace of the large Buddhist temple in the heart of Kyoto.   And then encountering the combination of Metropolis and Blade Runner that is modern Tokyo.   Very intense, buzzy and, I thought, somewhat scary.   This is what the world will look like if corporate capitalism is able to rebuild it without constraint.

The closing days of May 2016: Eleven days of extraordinary variety at end of May. Terrific party at the Athenauem, thrown by a long-standing and very generous friend. The following day, gathered around television with my grown-up children, and watched Crystal Palace fail, sadly, to beat Manchester United. A week later, enjoyed Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera at the NT on Saturday, and on Monday, off to Wembley with a gang of AFC Wimbledon fans to see them win promotion to League One. AFC, a club formed by their fans, after Wimbledon was moved, by its owners, to Milton Keynes, have fought their way up through the divisions, until they are now well established in the Football League – a great achievement. The next day to Oxford for the funeral of a remarkable woman, the mother of one of my best friends. Only met her a couple of times, but last year visited her for tea and at age 94, she lit up the room with her warmth and animated engagement with all that life offered. Finally, by way of further contrast, saw the remarkable Archie Shepp at Ronnie Scott’s.   This is all very untypical, honestly – I mostly stay in and read or watch television. I am practically a hermit.

May 16th 2016 Extraordinary end to extraordinary season

Manager who weathered a ‘Wenger must Go’ campaign, whose team finished second, is very half hearted about the achievement

Manager whose team finishes third has to apologise for the team’s performance on the last day (Pochettino and Spurs)

Manager wins League Cup and qualifies for Champions League and yet has to leave (Pellegrini at Man City)

Manager who has (so far) won nothing this season and has probably failed to qualify for Europe may well be staying (Van Gaal at Manu)

Manager of away side cheered to rafters by home fans (Ranieri at Chelsea)

Manager of relegated team is cheered to the rafters with fans begging him to stay (Benitez at Newcastle)

Player who did not even play makes speech and is cheered to rafters (Terry at Chelsea)

Let’s not even mention the Old Trafford fiasco

Did Lewis Carroll write this script ?

Palace for the Cup !

April 19th 2016 At a Guardian Live event to hear Slavoj Zizek.   Amused to hear his account of commiserating with ex Greek finance Minister Varoufakis over his treatment by Brussels. Zizek reported that he asked Varoufakis, “what were you expecting – some king of rational Habermasian public sphere, perhaps?”

April 16 2016: Very large demonstration in London against Government policies on housing, education and health.   The media said it was 150,000 but I would guess more. It took over an hour to advance about 200 metres in Gower Street.

April 11th 2016: Enough of travel for a while and it will be good to get back to the library. The awful Housing Bill mounts an assault on the very concept of public housing, and will inevitably throw more families into the private renting sector.   Surely time to impose some form of rent control and proper security of tenure? Landlords have been getting fat on unearned income for far too long.   Read through the White Paper on Education. In around 40 years of research I have read many such documents but rarely one so poorly drafted and so devoid of evidence or clarity of argument.   In contemporary politics in the UK, there appears to be a growing disconnect between the forms of language in which policy is discussed and the real dynamics underlying Government strategy.   I think Naomi Klein’s book Shock Doctrine is an instructive read in this regard.

April 4th 2016: Spotted a Preston Sturges film we had never heard of and so went to see it, discovering of course that there was a good reason it was a lesser known Sturges film. Delightful convivial evening with old friends, which involved meeting new friends too. Good to know that in mid 60s it is still possible to make new friends!!   Went to the Henri Rousseau exhibition. Often, seeing an exhibition produces an enhanced respect for the work of the artist. Sadly, this one tended to have the opposite effect – he is not as good as I had thought. Odd.

April 2nd 2016: Through Eurotunnel and drive towards Paris along the alarmingly straight highways. Weren’t English motorways planned with regular gentle curves to help maintain driver concentration?   Still, less than six hours travelling time, which certainly wasn’t possible in A Tale of Two Cities.   Smollett’s writing on travelling in France has a waspishness that suggests his temper was not improved by travel and its discomforts. So, must not grumble.

March 31st 2016: Wow!! Good news day for us both.   I have been offered an Emeritus Professorship by the University of Bedfordshire (where I was a Professor of Media Cultures from 1999-2015). Deborah has been awarded a Research Fellowship by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.  I am brushing the dust from my Stetson.

March 28th 2016: To friends near Cirencester, and the next day, morning coffee and explore Cirencester. Pleasant, sedate. Then, like an idiot I drive 30 miles in the wrong direction, without realising, so we see something of Stroud, circle Gloucester, and, even less necessary, straight through Cheltenham, before the bows are pointing back towards Oxford.   No, I don’t have a sat-nav. Don’t get me started! One great find – in a supermarket charity book section – is Elizabeth David’s magisterial book on bread – one of her less perennially reprinted books, and yet what a terrific work of scholarship. Plus she writes so well.

March 23rd 2016: In rural Bucks – so close to London and yet so remote too. As a Londoner since 1958, I feel relatively at home, these days in cities around the world –despite their obvious differences, they are also rather similar.   Arrive in a new place and after a nervous few hours of liminality, I can settle down. A few basic questions have to be resolved: where can I buy a bottle of water? how does the local transport work, and how do I get a ticket? Where is the market, where are the restaurants, the cinemas, the museums and the bars?

But the countryside is not like this – different rules and rhythms; different sounds and smells. It is so quiet that it is noisy – you hear every dog bark, cow moo, distant cars approaching, rain on rooftops, wind in trees.   Without the 24/7 background rumble of urban life, I can find it difficult to get to sleep.   However, the slow pace of change, the continuities, the calmness and the stability are joyous.   And the daffodills are out. You don’t notice these things in Gower Street.

March 22^nd 2016: Aching muscles today after 2 days emptying front room for decorating. Some people question why we have so many books – the answer is possibly to be found in Walter Benjamin’s essay Unpacking my Library, or maybe in Phil Cohen’s Reading Room Only: Memoirs of a Radical Bibliophile.   On the other hand Oppose Book Worship by Mao Zedung strikes a more cautionary note.

March 20^th 2016: Leeds – Two lovely days in Leeds – arrived, went straight to West Yorkshire Playhouse and saw Great Expectations, then quick walk through markets, checked in to hotel, and then to Damned United in the evening.   Indian meal. Next day to Saltaire to see Hockney’s amazing IPad paintings.

March 16^th 2016: Brighton – always on the verge of seducing the visitor, with its overlapping worlds and subcultures – students, goths, gays, antique dealers, retired folk, EFL students, professors.  The narrow lanes suddenly give way to the broad sweep of the Steine and the extraordinary Pavilion.   All this and a salty wind, a whiff of seafood, and the high keening sound of seagulls.  For Londoners, arriving at the station into this strange amalgam of the respectable and the louche, Brighton forever has the hint of forbidden fruit – a brief time away from the reality principle. Outsiders view, of course, – living there must be a whole different experience.

March 9^th 2016: In Newcastle, which does not, in my view, shout loudly enough about its attractions – not just the five bridges (seven bridges now??), the Angel of the North or the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, but also the lovely covered market, the elegant 1830s streets (more listed buildings than any other city bar London and Bath!) and above all the terrific Lit and Phil (Literary and Philosophical Society) Library.   To see a beautiful library that is clearly loved by its users and staff alike, when so many are being closed due to Government cuts to local authority budgets, is really moving. And, cover your eyes at this point librarians, you can have a cup of coffee and a biscuit while reading your book ! Bliss !!   Oh, yes and there is a rather fine football stadium. Shame about the team….

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March 8th 2016:  Once again, did not win New Statesman competition, alas.  The brief was to devise a message posted on a Trip Advisor type site, that manages to miss the main point of the resort reviewed.  My entry:

Venice: Imaginative idea to turn many streets into canals, and the effect is pretty, but sadly, they didn’t know where to stop.   Far too much water, making getting about difficult.   Hotels are drearily old, with few mod cons. The shopping is mediocre, and they really have to do something about their public transport.   You can wait all day and not even see a bus !

The Grand Canyon: Interesting flat semi-desert plain, with intriguing vegetation and wild-life. Climate pleasantly hot and dry. Small village shops sell Indian crafts.   Unfortunately the experience is ruined by the ugly giant cutting that has been constructed, for no obvious reason, between the north and south districts.

Lourdes: Very few decent bars, and not a single nightclub worthy of the name. Everything seems to shut down at 10.00pm. The gay scene is non-existent, and the general atmosphere of excess piety is dispiriting.

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March 3 2016:  True Story:  After watching Arsenal beaten 2-1 by Swansea at the Emirates Stadium last night, I had a  strange dream in which I was wandering aimlessly through a hospital.   Within the dream, the following dialogue took place:

Sister (to nurse):  and what about his mental state ?

Nurse:  well, we know he was at the Emirates last night.

Me:  I’ll do the jokes…

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Feb 23 2016: Welcome to this page, established to let people keep up to date with my activities, works, and plans.   Feedback welcome.   If you want to invite to me to speak at a conference, seminar or other event, just email me (see Contact link above).   Topics I am currently researching include political comedy, images of science, and news and vortextuality.