Month: December 2006

[Alex]

Like Clive, I’m heading off to see the New Year in, so will sign off from here. It’s been a pleasure stepping – however gingerly – into Andrew’s boots this past fortnight and I’m just sorry I wasn’t, for reasons too tedious to relate, able to post more frequently. Nonetheless, it’s been a blast. Thank you for your tolerance and, in particular, to those readers who wrote in.

I trust you will enjoy your Hogmanay, see the New Year in with style, First Foot your friends and neighbours with gusto and, most importantly, thrive in 2007.

Thanks again to Andrew for entrusting his blog to us. May he be welcomed back by you all when he resumes duty.

[Alex]

John Edwards fired the first shot of his Presidential campaign this morning when he labelled the argument for increasing troop levels in Iraq the "McCain Doctrine". This is a smart move for Edwards and his party.

Smart for Edwards because he immediately strengthens his bona fides on the left; smart for his party because a Democratic bet that McCain’s hawkishness may prove too much for voters in 2008 seems – right now – a sensible investment. Roping McCain to an increasingly unpopular foreign policy position might pays off even if it hurts McCain’s chances of winning the GOP nomination since I’d imagine Democrats would rather run against, say, Mitt Romney than McCain or Rudy Giuliani.

(Similarly, part of the case against Hillary Clinton may be that many conservatives would like to run against her.)

[Clive]

I know it’s still daytime in the US, but it’s close to 11pm here, and I’m off to a low-key New Year’s Eve party. My thanks to Andrew, and all those readers who’ve put up with me for the past two weeks. I hope the content hasn’t lurched around too much. I know I haven’t pleased everyone, as you can tell from these two e-mails, my favourites of all the ones that have come in over the past two weeks.

This reader didn’t care for a passing reference to a weird game called cricket:

WTF is the Ashes in Australia and why would an American possibly give a f*** about the most homosexual physical activity short of male ballet and figure-skating?

And this lawyer in Maine just didn’t like me:

You are, I regret to say, a poor writer. I welcome the New Year with renewed gusto knowing I will have seen the last of your simplistic postings.

Brilliant. I’m going to print that one up and pin it in my study.

Happy New Year.

[Clive]

Searching for music clips has been the most enjoyable part of the last two weeks’ blogging. There’ve also been some neat recommendations from readers. Here’s a quick skim through some of them….  Eva Cassidy sings "Over The Rainbow",  bluegrass band 2nd Generation plays "Fox On the Run", pianist Bill Evans rehearses "Waltz For Debby" with Swedish singer Monica Zetterlund, Randy Newman remembers the great flood in "Louisiana, 1927".

I’m going to end with another track by the Brazilian master, Caetano Veloso, singing "Cucurrucucu Paloma" in Pedro Almodovar’s film "Hable con Ella". I hated the movie; the song is just beautiful.

[Clive]

Sorry about the length of this post, but having missed yesterday’s instalment, I’m rounding off the blogger series with a longer than usual set of recommendations.

Madame Arcati, mischievous media/arts commentator and gossip-monger, eavesdrops on political intrigues in imperial Rome:

Robert Graves’ wonderful novel "I, Claudius" was published in 1934. Among other things it anticipates the research methodology of Kitty Kelley which is to cherry-pick all the spicy bits of a life story and then pack them into what I call a meta-faction ‚Äì a hyper soap that‚Äôs far too interesting to be life as it’s lived. Graves plucked a lot of juicy gossip from Roman historian Suetonius (Tiberius‚Äôs reputation never recovered). It‚Äôs a thrilling read, and often a funny one ‚Äì people forget that this novel is essentially high camp inhabited by straight people (excepting Caligula). Shockingly, women feature prominently. Ancient sources barely acknowledge their existence.

That thoughtful New York diarist, Anne Cunningham, indulges in some post-modern deconstruction:

I have a bad habit of breaking books down into parts I like and parts I don’t. On re-readings, I seem to turn "War and Peace" into a slimmer, flightier, largely Napoleon-free volume called "Peace". A.S. Byatt’s "Babel Tower" contains a novel within a novel, which I barely read the first time, and which I always ignore when I go back to it. However, the outer framing story is so good, so gripping a re-telling of the Persephone myth, that had it been released on its own, it would be my favourite book of all time. As it is, I can’t recommend it with a completely clear conscience. And yet, the fact that it contains what is for me a massive flaw makes it strangely inspiring‚Äîincomplete, gesturing at some mythical better story, like a map of hidden treasure found on a deserted beach.

Peter Whittle, director of the right-of-centre New Culture Forum, writes in praise of an untamed polemicist:

This year we lost a great writer and journalist when Oriana Fallaci died, aged 77, in her native Florence. I have just re-read "The Rage and The Pride", the short book (originally a series of articles) which she wrote after the 9/11 attacks. Her criticism of the tenets of Islam, and her exasperation at the lack of  European will in countering Islamic fundamentalist threats to Western liberal democracy, led to calls for the book to be banned, for Fallaci to be prosecuted as an ‚ÄòIslamophobe‚Äô, and for a ‚Äòhealth warning‚Äô caution to be printed on the cover. These responses perfectly proved her point.  The need for Fallaci‚Äôs brand of fearlessness has increased, not diminished, in the years since.

Quirky Damian Counsell, better known to his readers as PooterGeek, goes back to the future

Frederik Pohl and C.M.Kornbluth’s "Wolfbane" meets the requirements of readable speculative fiction: it depicts immense strangeness, populated with just-about-plausible human beings. The novel was published in 1959, but, perhaps because it’s more political satire than space opera, it hasn’t dated as seriously as some other science fiction of that period.

I was worried the story was going to become a monotonous Randian hymn to individual heroism, but it’s subtler and more interesting than that. "Wolfbane" isn’t a great work of literature, but it’s better written than much of the output of, for example, Philip K. Dick. It’s also to the book’s credit that it reminded me more of the dystopian fiction that followed it – "Logan’s Run", "The Matrix" – than the literature that preceded it – "Brave New World", "Lord Of The Flies". Fifty years after it was published, there’s much in it for the non-geek to enjoy. I think it’s out of print, but it shouldn’t be difficult to get hold of a copy.

And finally, David T., co-author on that tireless left-wing group blog, Harry’s Place, reveals a romantic streak:

"I’m telling you stories. Trust me." I first read Jeanette Winterson’s "The Passion" while I was in the stages of breaking up with my first love. Well, I say I was in love with her: but in fact, I only came to think that way after we’d gone our separate ways. Funny how being dumped can do that to you.

The melancholy autumn which followed, in which I completed little work, fitted me for Winterson’s tale of love and loss. I read it three times in as many months; following the journey of Henri, the farmer’s lad who runs away to fight with Napoleon but ends up merely slaughtering his chickens, and Villanelle, the cross-dressing Venetian boatman’s daughter with webbed feet, on the journey back from defeat and disaster in Moscow. Villanelle gambles, finds, and then loses the love of her life. Henri’s own passion for Napoleon is similarly confounded. They survive and struggle on.

Adolescent heartbreak is something to be cherished and celebrated, I think. The older I get, the more I miss the ache.

[Clive]

Richard Clarke runs through a list of major national security tasks left undone because of the Iraq war. If that’s not gloomy enough, take a look at journalist Ahmed Rashid’s latest prognosis on Al-Qaeda. Not dead yet, he says. Far from it, in fact. Since he’s one of the most seasoned terror analysts around, his assessment makes particularly worrying reading:

Every dismissive assumption made about al-Qaeda before September 11 was wrong. So is the assumption that it is in any way receding today…Osama bin Laden has not been driven underground or lost touch with his followers. Al-Qaeda is using the internet extensively to communicate with its supporters and to further its aim of creating new bases from which to organise terrorist attacks.

Suggestions that it may have morphed into some kind of "ideological" or "inspirational" organisation that merely encourages copycat groups of young Muslims to emulate its greatest "achievements", are contradicted by its leadership’s steady stream of instructions to followers.

Thanks to the blunders in the Middle East and Afghanistan, argues Rashid, the danger of a war of civilisations looms larger. One more treat to look forward to in 2007….

[Alex]

From the BBC comes a list of stories and snippets of knowledge that may have escaped you this year. I had not, for instance, been aware that:

 When filming summer scenes in winter, actors suck on ice cubes just before the camera rolls – it cools their mouths so their breath doesn’t condense in the cold air.

Like humans, cows have regional accents

There is one fatality on Mt Everest for every ten successful ascents.

And, most usefully, a polar bear would beat a lion in a fight

[Alex]

The Union may be under threat  – though 300 years of marriage is pretty good going  –  but a certain "Britishness" will still exist even  if Scotland and England go their seperate ways. Shakespeare remains Shakespeare after all. 

Yet despite our closeness – and centuries of intermarriage –  there remain remarkable differences between Scotland and England. The English, for instance, are rather better at laughing at themselves than my countrymen. Like many Scots I rather like the English but am frequently baffled by them.

But the question of who the English really are is one that has been waiting to be asked by Englishmen for more than half a century. The English, much more than the Scots, have yet to find a proper role for themselves in the post-imperial era (and the disastrous running down of the armed forces by successive Conservative and Labour governments ensures that the army is in any case ill-equipped to play its part in these neo-imperial days. You may think that a good thing of course).

Still, reviewing a new book, "The English National Character: the History of an Idea from Edmund Burke to Tony Blair" by Peter Mandler, Max Hastings has some fun:

Graham Laidler, the cartoonist Pont, made a famous series of drawings for Punch in the 1930s under the heading The English Character. They bore such captions as: Love of Fresh Air, Inability to Learn Foreign Languages, Hatred of Throwing Things Away, Inability to Make Conversation.

The English middle classes have always loved Pont’s depictions of them. Most identify qualities in ourselves that we ought to blush about, but are rather proud of, such as our reluctance to treat anything entirely seriously. A Pont cartoon of 1940 showed an outraged housewife confronting a German stormtrooper in her garden, saying: “How dare you come in here!” Britain’s reluctance to get serious about Hitler nearly sunk us, of course, likewise our resistance to industrial change, languages, collaboration with Europe, etc. Yet until recently, most of us have been pretty smug about what we think we are — more cultured than the Americans, nicer than the French, prettier than the Germans, funnier than almost everyone, and pretty good at fighting once we get going.

[Incidentally, only an Englishman could cite an Irishman (Burke) and a sort of Scot (Blair, born and schooled inorth of the border) – in the title of a book about Englishness. Another reminder that these are mongrel islands.]

[Clive]

Count yourself lucky if you missed this: royal consort and E-list celebrity James Hewitt takes part in a celebrity darts match on late-night satellite TV. I sent this image to an American friend of mine just to persuade her to give up on the notion that we Brits spend their leisure hours watching the equivalent of "Masterpiece Theatre". For decades we’ve gotten into the habit of describing our television as "the least worst in the world". I don’t know if that’s still the case. All I do know is that the gap is narrowing. Yes, the news output is generally classy, and we still make fine documentaries, but as you can see from this glimpse of the Christmas schedules, celebrity fever is as rampant here as it is in the States. Most of the outstanding drama series I’ve seen lately have been American, and as for comedy, a re-run of "Seinfeld" beats just about anything home-grown. Including Ricky Gervais. (Sorry to be so out of step, but I still don’t think he’s ever more than mildly amusing.)

[Alex]

At the risk of a Tartan overdose in these parts, it’s worth pointing out that the Scottsh Labour party is these days perhaps more hostile to the idea of independence than are the Tories. Simple self-interest, shockingly, lies behind this calculation since, deprived of their 50 or so Scottish members, Labour would struggle to win a majority of seats in the rump UK parliament. No wonder Gordon Brown, Blair’s gloomy, very Scottish, heir apparent, is concerned. The break-up of Britain would make it impossible for him to remain Prime Minister.

This leads to strange arguments. Writing in the Guardan recently David Clark, a former advisor to another Scots Labour MP, the former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, rightly noted that the  SNP’s spending proposals are, um, ambitious and that following the "Iish model" might not be possible.

The SNP argues that an independent Scotland would be able to follow Ireland in slashing corporation tax to attract higher levels of inward investment. But Ireland also has the second-lowest levels of public spending in the OECD – 34% of GDP. Scotland has one of the highest, at more than 50%.No amount of oil wealth could bridge this gap. For Scotland to emulate Ireland’s "Celtic tiger" model would require an assault on public services far more brutal than anything inflicted by Margaret Thatcher.

You’re all way ahead of me here, I know, if I observe that this is precisely what actually needs to happen if Scotland is to have any hope of being what the advertising hoardings at Edinburgh airport boastfully proclaim: "The Best Small Country in the World."

I’ll grant you that this is an unlikely claim, but it is so precisely because Scotland has for years  pursued policies anathema to growth and prosperity: policies embraced by Mr Clark and his ilk who now claim that the consequences of their failures are the reasons for opposing change. Rum, very rum.