Where will workers be situated once recovery starts?

This morning was listening to 909AM (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nsfwv will be available on Listen Again feature later). As we approach another general election, we'll find that those of us working in the public sector are the least likely to lose our jobs. Once the election is over and a government really sets about doing the unpleasant task of cutting back on spending, the public sector will be faced with massive job cuts. Who will be affected and how? Those of us who are 'blue collar workers' living just above the benefit threshold, earning as a family about 27 grand a year total. Tax credits will be 'changed' by the Tories and low-paid civil servants will once again be forced on to the dole and into retraining schemes. When employment starts to rise eventually (as it always does once an economic recovery starts kicking in[1]), those same blue collar types will find themselves forced into jobs with less pay in increasingly privatised and oppressive working conditions and with their broken unions unable to defend them well. Once again we see how crises of capitalism make the owners of production batten down the hatches and lay off those who suffer most during the periods of crisis.... those who sell their labour as their only commodity. Of course, those who mainly rely on the welfare state will also be squeezed, such that poverty will increase along with crime and violence. Britain will follow the American model: I watched the Around the World in 80 days programme on BBC last evening and saw how unfeelingly the US treats its poor, as illustrated with the conditions of those who suffered in New Orleans after Katrina and continue to do so; America's right wing, as typified in many of the blogs you can find on-line, hates the European stance of perceived 'softness' on terror and on Russia's imperialistic intentions, using metaphors such as 'Europe is the United States' wayward ward' (sorry, can't now find the particular blog again for reference but American Thinker will lead you to some examples). So where will we be situated once recovery starts? Well if we continue to choose between Conservatives and New Labour, most of us will be in the shit.

[1] the comments of a hard-nosed economics expert at http://oregonbusinessreport.com/2009/08/will-unemployment-prevent-recovery-from-the-recession/ include the following quote on unemployment: look carefully at the historic pattern and you'll see that the unemployment rate is a lagging indicator, meaning that it starts to improve after the overall economy is already improving. As such, it does not prevent the economy from improving. If high unemployment prevented a recovery from recession, then we never would have recovered from our first recession. But we've recovered from it, and from every other recession. There are plenty of things to worry about. The high unemployment rate preventing a recovery is not one of those things.

Poppy day

I've been moved to explore my feelings about Remembrance Sunday, or, rather less about 08/11/09 than about what it brings to mind. I have to set aside my opinions on the legitimacy or otherwise of the current conflicts to get to grips with this task.


Today, 11 o'clock caught me unawares when the presenter of the Radio 6 show I was listening to at that moment said something like, 'and now we remember those who gave their lives for the sake of freedom and peace'. As the prescribed period of silence proceeded, I put on the telly and watched the Cenotaph ceremony. There was Queen Elizabeth placing her wreath, as did maybe half-a-dozen others of the royal family, in their various capacities as officials in the British armed forces. It then hit me that they were of the very same spawn of Queen Victoria and her Germanic husband Albert as the initiator of those two major bloodbaths of the twentieth century, Kaiser Wilhelm. What an irony that the monarchical clan of Europe, of Britain, Russia and Germany, who ruled the common working people of that era, are the very same set we have leading the memorialising of the millions that they themselves as a species had sent to annihilate each other. Of course, the Romanov tyranny was overturned in 1917 by the class that formed the masses of the armies of Russia; a post-war upheaval and revolutionary movement in Germany that, although it got rid of the Kaiser and the royal family, was brutally suppressed allowing the seeds to be set for the cultivation of Nazism in the 1920s and thirties. I was set to wondering what would have been achieved had this nation thrown off its ruling classes and had been able to travel a republican road towards our present.


What I am exploring in this piece on what Remembrance Sunday means to me seems bound up with the following categories and others which we might bring to mind when we brainstorm the connotations of remembering fallen service-people each year:


The Cenotaph in Whitehall: The Great and the Good on display in common sobriety, their pacing and saluting and their walking backwards and their donkey-jacketless[1] apparel.


Patriotism: we have a [insert your own adjective] country of which to be proud. In what way is this not pejorative nationalism, even considering all the different skin hues we'll see in remembrance? I insert here a pertinent piece from George Orwell who had experienced being shot through the neck in the Spanish Civil War in the pursuance of freedom from fascism and wrote this in 1943 in the midst of WWII:

Tribune, 24 December 1943
Attacking me in the Weekly Review for attacking Douglas Reed, Mr. A. K. Chesterton remarks, "'My country -- right or wrong' is a maxim which apparently has no place in Mr. Orwell's philosophy." He also states that "all of us believe that whatever her condition Britain must win this war, or for that matter any other war in which she is engaged."
The operative phrase is any other war. There are plenty of us who would defend our own country, under no matter what government, if it seemed that we were in danger of actual invasion and conquest. But "any war" is a different matter. How about the Boer War, for instance? There is a neat little bit of historical irony here. Mr. A. K. Chesterton is the nephew of G. K. Chesterton, who courageously opposed the Boer War, and once remarked that "My country, right or wrong" was on the same moral level as "My mother, drunk or sober."

Sacrifice: a noun readily thrown around by those caught up in remembrance, which might, I reckon, be defined in connection to our forces of the two world wars by one or more of my following statements, but less comprehensively applicable to the current conflict: to give up one's life or limb for a cause; to be sacrificed for a cause; to be part of an aggregated offering to maintain or obtain or attain something, maybe freedom; to be a sacrificial offering whereby one is led to a place (altar, maybe) and where one becomes the helpless or willing (Isaac-like) sacrificial unit to placate a higher power such as a god, a king, a government, a general, the markets - in short - in furtherance of an ideal. In its analysis, the word 'sacrifice' becomes more nebulous of meaning in the context of Remembrance, except in its more accurate application when the memorialised dies to save others by falling on a grenade, for example, thereby giving his or her life to attempt the saving of the lives of others (the kind of sacrifice that we might associate within the Christian context of Jesus's crucifixion). Applying the self-sacrificial description to all our war dead cannot thereby work, and so beggars the question of who bears the responsibility of any sacrifice... who is the modern-day Aaronic heir who would demand such sacrifice? Stand up and come forward if you dare, with the same bravura you displayed at the outset and before it all started to fall apart.
Before I saw the flaws in the liberal use of the word 'sacrifice' I applied it readily to those of my ancestoral family of whom I knew had given their lives (or more accurately had their lives taken): a great-grandfather and two great uncles in the 1914-18 conflict and a cousin of my father's (himself a naval serviceman in WWII), who had been on the ill-fated HMS Hood [2], are just some examples; there will have been more.

Courage: as an Aristotelian mean, courage falls somewhere between fear and confidence; the virtue that separates the coward from the foolhardy, perhaps.
Heroism: Someone, help me clarify what this is please.

Honour: in certain discourses of power we value a standard of conduct that is unshakeable in measuring our actions, or those of the societal unit to which we belong, and which can effect changes in the perceived opinion in which we are held by our peers should we fall short of that standard.

Poppies: the red blooms associated with the fields of WWI Flanders, but more so the coloured paper emblem of the Royal British Legion and seemingly indispensable appendage for anyone wishing not to be singled out for criticism while parading themselves on tv at this Remembrance time of year.

I was affected by this week's fatalities, particularly of the five soldiers shot to death by the Afghan policeman whom they were training. The cold-blooded nature of that action is in a similar category, if not magnitude, as a suicide-bombing or the bombing of Dresden or Coventry or Nagasaki and, as such, has some bearing on how we view the protagonists and particularly the victims: in contrast, perhaps, to the racing passions that patrolling in a hostile area at risk of roadside bomb or being involved in a 'firefight' might engender, to die so passively and by such treachery, robs the victim of more than they might expect as action-ready combatants prepared to put themselves into the path of danger as part of their job; the manner of one's demise in this case is metaphorically without 'one's boots on', or with one's Viking axe in one's hand nor like the 300 Spartans against the might of Persia or the Light Brigade charging into the Russian cannon at Balaclava. How does such a death bear on the concepts of 'honour' and 'sacrifice' above? And how, indeed, does the attitude of our young men who in the bloom of youth merely want to go out and see some action, impact on all these categories? The same considerations might apply to those instances of death from 'friendly fire'.

I'll leave the subject, unresolved in my mind but possibly quite clear-cut in yours, with the usual and now cliched coda as used after Horace by Wilfred Owen in his Great War poem, still so relevant:

The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori

(The Latin bit translates as 'It is sweet and right to die for your country'. In other words, it is a wonderful and great honour to fight and die for your country).

[1] Michael Foot (see pic), the left-of-centre Labour leader in 1982 was lambasted by the right-wing press for wearing a practical, if inelegant, overcoat, which they labelled a donkey-jacket and described him as looking like an out of work navvy. I'd be pleased and probably sobered to know how many navvies gave their lives in the service of their country during the last century.
[2] HMS Hood sunk May 1941. Of the 1,418 crew, only three men survived.

Mad Mel and the evolutionists

That perennial figure of fun, and journalist, Melanie Phillips rants on about a 'ridiculous' judgement supporting an eco-warrior on the basis that his deeply-held convictions about climate change deserved the same consideration as anyone else's religious conviction. I've supplied the link to Mel's Spectator blog and below is just one of the threads from the comments to it.

Puzzled. Melanie writes "In any rational universe, he would be sent away with a flea in his ear for trying it on. " In any rational universe, religion would be rightly abandoned as Medieval superstition. Amusing that you bring Darwinism into it though. Evolution = a testable theory based on observation and experiment. Religion = er?

Martin Archer. Puzzled should read Karl Popper to see if Evolution, as a 'testable theory based on observation and experiment' [1] is actually any more provable than the existence of God and whether Darwinism isn't just another form of religion. The difference between prevailing ideologies and the rest lies in power relations.

YA. Martin Archer, that is exactly because of such snobbish lazy relativists like you, we are in such bad situation. Truth isn't "ideology". Put your finger in fire, and it will hurt. That is named testable truth - as well as evolution. In which case arguments are somewhat more complicated, but still well understood.. by those who are not too lazy.

Martin Archer. YA, the brevity of my comment on ideology might support your opinion of me as lazy. Beyond that, your evolution-as-truth argument displays a species of laziness which saddles itself to something energised and purposeful but which cannot guarantee to deliver you to where you want to go. Unlike watching the 'truth' of my finger burning in a flame, evolution is beyond testing... very much like the testing of the existence of a divine creator. At some point faith must overtake us in those of our beliefs which are not immediately supported by evidence. Evolution is not, YA, the same kind of truth as a charred member and as such belongs in my category of Belief.

Sergey. YA, Karl Popper never was a "snobish relativist" denying objective truth. Quite contrary, he was a valiant defender of idea that objective truth exists and can be acknowleged by science. But he also understood that some truths are beyond reach of scientific method and should be sought by other means, namely religion and philosophy. This does not undermines science, but is a mortal blow to scientism, a philosophy asserting omnipotence of scientific method. Choice of moral and religious truth is a true free choice: it is not logically predetermined. But it is a choice between curse and blessing, between life and death. Chose life!

YA. Sergey, ... when there is nothing to discuss, I stop. Popper - probably not.
Martin Archer: "..evolution is not the same kind of truth as a charred member.." - couple of posts earlier I've put here a "fathers chain" example [not included here] (IMHO it is quite close to "charred member". Do you know what "hyperbole" means?) Oh, BTW all you anti-evolutionists forgot to say that this imaginary construction is complete nonsence and has nothing to do with evolution, historical truth, and your own existence. So, say it. Will you dare?

Martin Archer. My last comment here is that I am rarely allowed an even-tempered discussion with Darwinist/Evolutionists. I don't argue from any religious standpoint but merely point out to YA and other Dawkinsian rabid types that they lack an imagination to go with their rationality. Surely, if we ARE the peak of evolution on the planet, we might be allowed myth and imagination to relieve us from the pointlessness of our time thereon: Romanticism; the arts; a welcome contrast to you scientists and your Enlightenment project which attempts to make some sense of a mystery of which you will only be allowed to scratch the surface.

YA. Martin Archer: "..peak of evolution on the planet.." - at least, not far from it...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNNbFkb0gBk [link to a beautifully played piece of guitar music by Villa Lobos]

Martin Archer. YA, I must break my promise to not comment again if only to say thank you for sharing your artistic appreciation. Sublime.

YA. Martin - impressed by your nobility old chap. Take care.

Noa Zrk. This judgement [as discussed in Melanie Phillips's original blog] clearly demonstrates the logical and practical anomalies arising from the widespread establishment of mind crimes. An effective tool for the intellectual crippling of society.

[end of comments]

The above is what I call a satisfying interchange and is an example of why I love the internet so much. It is an educational tool that is second to none, but we must encourage our youngsters to make the best of it rather than being tempted merely to cut and paste, to satisfy the demands of some or other school project, without reading or understanding.

Anyone wanting to read the whole article and the extensive comments that follow it, the link here should get you there: http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/5504821/the-deep-green-sophistry-of-religious-equivalence.thtml

[1] Popper, Karl. 1978. Natural selection and the emergence of mind. Dialectica 32: 339-355. (excerpt at http://www.geocities.com/criticalrationalist/popperevolution.htm )

Me 'old mate' Dr. Kim Howells

Journalist Mehidi Hasan, in his New Statesman blog of 4/11/09, wrote about former Foreign Office minister Kim Howells's 'seeing sense' in his comments about possible withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan. Howells's comments included:

'It would be better, in other words, to bring home the great majority of our fighting men and women and concentrate on using the money saved to secure our own borders, gather intelligence on terrorist activities inside Britain, expand our intelligence operations abroad, co-operate with foreign intelligence services, and counter the propaganda of those who encourage terrorism.~....Sooner rather than later a properly planned, phased withdrawal of our forces from Helmand province has to be announced. If it is an answer that serves, also, to focus the minds of those in the Kabul government who have shown such a poverty of leadership over the past seven years, then so much the better

There were 5 initial comments that followed his blog:

Jane H. Are you anti-war or pro-Taliban???
Hasan. Anti-war. Is that too difficult for you to understand?
Jane H. Easy to understand. Hard to believe.
Chris. Jane H, your comments are silly and pointless.
Martin Archer. Seems to me to be a well-reasoned few sentences of an article from Mr Hasan, Jane Harrison. When I think about the loss of the soldiers shot to death in such a treacherous way, the withdrawal that Kim Howells seems to be advocating is the only sensible course. Foreigners do not seem to be wanted by the Afghan people. Our general values have little in common with theirs and when it gets to the preciousness of kith and kin we cannot impose our 'enlightened' ways over their 'benighted' ones. Kim Howells I knew some 30 years ago, and, although people can change, I suspect that he has come to this opinion in all honesty.

(End of comments)



I was, as an apprentice compositor in the late 1970s, a student at the Cambridge College of Arts and Technology (CCAT), which later became Anglia Polytechnic University (where I completed a first-class honours degree in English and History as a mature student c.2000) and has since changed name again to Anglia Ruskin University. I attended, as a component of my course there, a weekly social sciences class taught by Kim Howells, who was then completing, I understand, his PhD thesis on an aspect of the S. Wales mining communities[1]. He was a laddish teacher and popular and I remember attending a party at his Cambridge flat with wine, cheese and bread and an air rifle, which he laughingly fired from his window into the curtains of the open window across the way. LOL. Kim is now the chair of Gordon Brown's Intelligence and Security Committee.



[1] Howells, K. (1979). A view from below : tradition, experience and nationalism in the South Wales coalfield, 1937-1957.

Do Royal Mail and the Government seek to destroy postal union?

Date: 16th October 2009

FROM : Communication Workers Union

TO: ALL BRANCHES WITH POSTAL MEMBERS

Dear Colleague

ROYAL MAIL DISPUTE: LEAKED ROYAL MAIL STRATEGY DOCUMENT

Branches will be aware of the media coverage of a leaked Royal Mail internal presentation of the company’s strategy in the current dispute, obtained by the BBC News Night” programme.

We have now seen the document in question. There can be no serious doubt about its authenticity. The document reveals an approach to the dispute, which while worrying and disappointing, comes as little surprise. In essence, the approach is to seek an agreement solely on Royal Mail’s terms. If this cannot be achieved Royal Mail will put in place “a framework for delivery of change without agreement”. This will involve various measures to “actively down dial the role of the Union” including “serve notice on the current Industrial Relations Framework and facilities/release arrangements and substitute the legal minimum”.

This approach – change driven through aggressively solely on Royal Mail’s terms is exactly what we have described throughout the dispute.

Media coverage has focused on the role of the Government. The document assumes “share holders support” for the company’s position but it is not clear how well founded this assumption is. It would be a matter of grave concern if a Labour Government had knowingly brought into a strategy designed to effectively de-Unionise a major publicly owned industry. We will of course be seeking immediate clarification of the Government’s position.

The document clarifies the reasons for Royal Mail’s rejection of the CWU’s offer of mediation. Its strategy sees a referral to mediation only as a last resort if “political will” to support Royal Mail’s aggressive approach of change by imposition evaporates.

Royal Mail does not want to adapt its plans by negotiation with the Union and it is not prepared to have its plans examined by a third party – such is the company’s fear of this option that it sees it only as a last resort if all else fails.
The document is conspicuous in its lack of concern for customer service. The only references to customers are in relation to the political risk of losing support.

The Union’s strategy remains unaffected. We will continue to work to seek change by genuine agreement, which protects the jobs, earnings and working conditions of our members and preserves a real commitment to customer service.

Given that the document is now in public domain, we have attached a copy. We would ask Branches to share the themes within the document with the membership. If anyone did have any doubts about the importance of supporting the union this document should be sufficient to dispel them.

To watch the coverage on BBC Newsnight please click on the following link: http://bbc.co.uk/i/ndtnq/.

Yours sincerely


Billy Hayes Dave Ward
General Secretary Deputy General Secretary (P)

Obama's peace

Today we hear that President Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009. The committee's reasons are to do with "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples" (BBC Homepage). Who am I to disagree with this laureateship?; the committee must have some criteria that they judge Obama to have satisfied http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2009/ . My feeling, however, is that we are barely into his term and that there is, so far, ostensibly, little beyond the colour of Obama's skin to suggest change in US attitudes and that, essentially, her policies and pursuit of self-interest in the wider world will continue.


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Obama: more than a colour problem.
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The idea of state, borders and hegemony in any nation's foreign policy is called realpolitik; that hardened sense of self-interest is what has driven the United States' neo-imperialistic actions for a hundred years or more. The federal government of that nation throughout the 20th Century has attempted to impose its prevailing ideology upon its own people and also the rest of the planet, such that any alternative view or movement to freely pursue any other kind of political format is either stillborn by the efforts of the malicious midwifery of the CIA or subjected to such harsh conditions in its infancy, that it grows up in its parent communities or nations as a hardened, brutal and untrusting youth; like many a youth who has a healthy view to maintaining an element of freedom in their life, it may resort to aggressive means, if necessary, as the only viable route towards maturity. (My simple example would be Soviet Russia, which in reaction to Great War developments, threw off Imperialism in pursuit of Internationalism, only to be ostracized by Capital and driven into a defensive corner which preceded the 'paranoia' of Stalinism.)


There are historians who could reel off the top of their heads the instances of intervention by the US in scores of countries since its cynically late intervention in World War II. Some of the more widely known are the Phillipines, Korea, Vietnam, Cuba and a host of South American nations. The excuses used for intervention, militarily or otherwise, are variously labelled 'democracy', 'freedom', 'rights' over perceived 'oppression' and, by extension, 'good' over 'evil'. These are certainly emotive terms, rallying terms, values held by the majority of us, I suspect, as worth fighting for. If we consider that those countries which have been subject to the attentions of the US and its allies in the aforementioned ways might just have the same desire for democracy, freedom, rights and the common good as the electorate of the US, then surely there must be common ground upon which to use diplomacy to resolve contentious issues. Is it not so that the whole community of nations has to deal with a wholly more pressing problem, one that involves protecting the environment in order to make life viable at all?



So, 'congratulations' to President Obama, but we know that he has so many hurdles to overcome: entrenched opposition from narrow-minded bigotry; self-interested individuals backed by corporations that seem to hold the short-term satisfaction of shareholders or vested interests in overseas markets over longer-term imperatives for the planet; a pervasive PR-influenced national ideology that sees socialism in any form as creeping Stalinism, which itself was an example of what happens to youthful nations subject to vitriolic criticism and the most aggressive forms of realpolitik.



Recommended reading: Chomsky, N. (1997). World Orders, Old and New London: Pluto

Oh Obama!

David Bromwich writes as if Obama’s main problem were a deluded search for bipartisanship in the face of intransigent Republican rascals – Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney, Fox TV and so forth (LRB, 22 October). It might be better to admit that the left has deluded itself into believing that Obama, a nice, eloquent young man from Harvard with no gubernatorial and little legislative experience, has some sort of magic wand, when the truth is that he’s out of his depth. He is, unfortunately, just one more Democrat who campaigned on a promise to change everything about the way Washington works. However popular that theme may be, it is ignorant and naive. The Washington political system has proved to be extremely resilient. You can huff and puff about change and chant ‘Yes we can’ as much as you like but the system will remain resolutely intact. History shows that the politicians who get results are the ones who understand the system best and are the best at making it work for them. LBJ is the classic example.

Similarly, a better sense of realpolitik and less reliance on eloquence would get Obama further in foreign policy. It’s no good just announcing a plan to solve things in the Middle East. The Israel-Palestine conflict is part of a long holy war which can only be managed at best, not solved. Serious advances are usually born of crises, such as the Yom Kippur war. The next opportunity may be an Israeli war with Iran.

As it is, here we are with Guantánamo Bay still in operation, the Afghan war likely to go on and get bigger, no progress at all in the Middle East, US unemployment over 10 per cent and healthcare perhaps already doomed. The collapse in Obama’s ratings suggests he could well lose the mid-term elections. And of course Jimmy Carter is right: some of that visceral reaction is bound to be racist. Hard to see how it could be otherwise.

It’s extraordinary how the Democrats keep on doing this. Jimmy Carter started it by ‘running against Washington’ – an understandable stance after Watergate – but all it really meant was that he made a hopeless hash out of relations with Congress and his legislation got nowhere. Remember his energy independence bill which he declared to be MEOW (the moral equivalent of war)? It got absolutely nowhere. It was the same with Clinton. Imagine being stupid enough to start off affronting all manner of powerful pressure groups by making gays in the military the first issue you tackle. Or being even more stupid in putting your wife in charge of health reform. If he wanted to do that, fine, but he would have had to do what JFK did with Bobby, make him a fully accountable cabinet member with the advice and consent of the Senate. To hand such a key area of reform to his wife and for her to remain an unaccountable private citizen was ludicrous.

The common factor, of course, was that both Carter and Clinton were Southern governors of smallish states in which the governor gets his budget through and then uses his patronage to do whatever he wants, utterly dominating the state legislature. Both seemed to imagine that being president wouldn’t be very different and that you could use cronies for everything. Obama’s own background as a community worker and campaigner isn’t any more appropriate, and giving foreign affairs over to Bill Clinton’s wife may not have been clever: thus far her diplomatic abilities don’t appear much greater than they were in healthcare reform. I fear a great disappointment is in the making.

R.W. Johnson
Cape Town

Alf Garnett; attitudes

Alf Garnett argues about Elsie's debt to Sabu the cornershop owner
'Till Death Us Do Part' and the sequel series, 'In Sickness and in Health', were comedy sitcom tv programmes of the 1960s and 1970s which caused controversy quite often because of their content, including what would be considered today as mild swearing and (although the debate was less clear than it is nowadays) race, racism and racialism. An ex-postman mate of mine had just posted a link showing part of one of the episodes situated in an Asian cornershop, where Alf's recently-deceased wife had a 'slate' which remains unpaid. Present in the scene are Alf, Sabu (owner), and a 'camp' West Indian guy. Bigot Alf, we anticipate will 'go off on one', while the Asian/Black tension that exists/existed will be evident, but is gently dealt with. I reckon that the writers, the actors and perceptive viewers will pick up on the irony. Of course, irony is a feature of drama imperceptible to some 'receivers'. The following dialogue I have taken from the recent Facebook interaction between myself and Royal Mail friends of mine. It has the potential of a decent sit-com in itself and goes to show how comedy writing 'by committee' has its benefits.

Martin Archer: Brilliant. They're scared to show this sort of thing now; what a state of affairs!
David Hume: Alf; we're laughing at him, not with him. That's right Nick, isn't it ?!?!
Martin Archer: I think the point is that Alf's a buffoon amongst buffoons, Dave. We're all of us buffoons.
David Hume: Mart', for a moment, I thought you were calling 'them'.... Baboons ! Mind Your Language, eh ?!?!
Alvin Drummond: Fuckin' hilarious. we should have MORE of this good old fashioned English comedy on English TV.
David Hume: Sitting there in your gravy stained In-ger-land shirt !
Nick Fagan(quoting from the scene): 'Bloody marvellous! They're flying 'em in now'.
Martin Archer: Now 'Mind Your Language' was funny too, in parts, but to see the scamming it
gets now by those half-wit politically-correct talking heads on countdown shows, you'd think it was inciting murder. Foreign people are funny; foreign people think Brits are funny when we visit their countries. So the fuck what! Offended by it? Yes, MYL was ignorant and it hasn't dated well, but I take offence at people who want even now to change the natural and casual racism that our grandparents and even parents exhibited merely out of a similar sort of ignorance. But then, I know quite a few thoroughly ignorant people of my generation who I dont expect to change, but we have to allow them to get on with it, too. But what annoys me intensely is that there are adherents to foreign ideologies in this country that want to change traditional British attitudes; I find them just as intolerant as it is said English people were in the 70s for instance. Rant concluded.

In my final comment above, and in response to ethnic Scot Dave Hume's reference to it, I cite another contemporary and inferior show, Mind Your Language, set in an evening school where disparate and stereotypical foreign visitors/immigrants to these shores meet with their English tutor to improve their mastery of the English language. The characters were depicted by actors having some commonality with the ethnicity portrayed (itself a contrast to the blacked-up comedians of It Ain't Half Hot Mum or even David Sachs's Manuel in Fawlty Towers): a French actress doing her ooh la la maid routine; an Asian in turban with rocking head movements; a Latin type, suitably mustachioed; and I seem to remember a severe fraulein in Valkyrie plaits). There is so much written on this subject out there by 'post-colonial' academics, including the wonderful 'Orientalism' by Edward Said, with which we are able to engage with debates around race and offence, ignorance through insularity and the Other in general.

I went to Egypt and was laughed at (not necessarily ridiculed) by the locals for my bald ''Kojak'' head and hairless face. I wonder if, after a while of such treatment, I would have become somehow oppressed by such behaviour. We are two or three generations on from the days of Till Death Us and MYL and the offspring of the original immigrants of those days understandably demand a degree of respect in this the land of their birth. The UK is a country in which they do not necessarily see themselves as 'English' or perhaps 'Scottish' in the way that the ethnic Whites of these islands feel secure in their identities, whether those identities are chosen or are 'given'.

Thanks to Dave Hume, Nick Fagan, Alvin Drummond and the writers of Alf (Warren Mitchell), http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/T/htmlT/tilldeathus/tilldeathus.htm and Mind Your Language http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075537/.

Bullingdon boys

The sort of people we continue to elect: top picture, far left is George Osborne, class of '92; bottom picture, second from left is David Cameron, prime minister in waiting and bottom row right, Boris Johnson, London mayor.



The Bullingdon Club of Oxford elitists. We continue to elect people who have nothing in common with most of us.

This is not inclusive democracy

(NB. Although these are my opinions, this is not my own research; the photos have been liberated by various daily newspapers and published previously)
check out this brilliant Trotskyist comment  on class war and to see that the holders of the copyright of this picture have withdrawn their permission for its use due to 'commercial reasons'!

Drummed Up

Martin Archer: has read up to p.50 of Günter Grass's 'The Tin Drum'. It's intriguing but there are a lot of pages to go. Is life too short for this novel ... does anyone know it? ... advise please.
30 September at 21:21 ·
Jacqui Beere: I don't, but the pop group Japan had an album of the same name.
Martin Archer: Aah, perhaps I should consult David Sylvian's website for any clues. Mick Karn... great bass lines... do you not think?
Jacqui Beere: I liked their music very much, especially Tin Drum. 30 September at 21:31
David Hume: Sorry, I've written them off as middle-class art school boys. Just playing at it. Am I wrong ? 30 September at 21:36
Andy Bossom: Excellent book...I think it is worth perservering with...the film is also in my top 10 of all time!! 30 September at 21:39
Tat Mersy: Great book, stick with it. Only one of his I've read, quite a while back now. Haven't seen the film. 30 September at 21:59
Martin Archer: Thanks for the comments; I've decided to stick with it. Glad I've not seen the film, though Andy, as I'd never have bothered with the book. Caroline, Sam's colleague, is half
German and recommended it to Sam for me to read. So it would be churlish not to give it a go. Anyway, I don't recall reading before about a dwarvish obsessive drummer as set against the rise of Nazism! As for Dagenham Dave's comments on Japan, I'm sure they're not far from the truth, but when I look back on my musical (British music) interests, there is a thread of art school running through my favourite stuff, but as played by baby boomer sons and their younger siblings, poorly advocating anything sensible, but enthusiastically reproducing for themselves that one positive mode of the 20th century, in my opinion... black American popular culture.
01 October at 20:22
Martin Archer: Today have listened to the World Book Club Radio 4 interview with Grass. Interesting. Thanks for the pointer Tat. Mon at 18:22
Tat Mersy: I've just re-listened to it myself, reminding myself of what a superbly significant piece of post-nazi literature this book is, (my bookshelves proclaiming me to be a fanatic Holocaust watcher.) If I could wish myself anything it would be the gift of writing with such clarity and cool pertinence on a subject that has dogged me since my teenage years.
Martin Archer: The modern state of Israel irritates me but my reactions are always tempered by reflecting on the Jewish people's history, the diaspora and the Holocaust. What I liked in Grass (notwithstanding his literary skills, as outlined by you above) is a wonderful candour concerning his own people's behaviour in the 20th Century and his denial that there is anything other than reality mirrored in his story( rather than any symbolic significance to be found in the props, e.g. the tin drum, central to Oskar's biography). I must admit, that I tend to stay clear of films dealing with the Holocaust, cos I anticipate their content and don't like to be brought down by the horror, the pathos, the discomforting proximity of the relative recentness of those events. I'd be interested, however, in reading how you have reacted to the whole theme and how you 'watch'.
Andy Bossom: I completely understand many of your arguments. It always seems supremely ironic to me that the modern Israeli state is verging on the "fascistic" at times. Does every state or race have to find someone else to persecute?? I usually never watch films once I have read the book - but I actually watched the Tin Drum as film before reading the book. The film is European art house rather than "Hollywood" style sensationalism. the film intrigued me to read the book. I rarely watch any "war" related film due to usually having difficulties with political interpretation and the shifting sands of historical perspective. In fact I am not even sure that film and print are mutually compatible! However you have enthused me enough to try and find time to re-read Oskar's story again!
Martin Archer: Andy, I don't know how you feel about the way people excuse their actions in such horrific situations. I am quite understanding I suppose of how people can do all sorts of awful things in the name of an ideology/belief system. I readily admit, in my self analysis, that I am moulded by just about every theory I read! I can in one month be persuaded by Marx as well as Nietzsche, Darwin as well as Genesis, Nationalism as well as Internationalism and the list of contradictions goes on. The person with convictions is the person who is sometimes the most dangerous!
Andy Bossom: There always seems to me an inherent contradiction between political ideology and fundamental "humanity". If there is no common ownership of land, does the peasant farmer have the "right" to kill the capitalist landowner in order to acquire a plot of land to feed his family. Or should he allow himself and family to starve due to lack of access to the means of production? Does anyone have the right to kill another human being? I have always had leftist tendencies, but prefer the notions of justice, freedom and equality rather than the armed struggle. As an individual in modern day Britain it is easy to decry fascism, but how would you act if you were a teenager in Nazi Germany in the the late 1930s? To conform to the prevailing ideology is the path most individuals take. I believe a critical analysis is fundamental to understanding the world around you, but how critical can you be with a Nazi gun to your head?
Martin Archer : There were, of course, and are, persons of strong enough character to be able to stand with principles that demonstrate their ''fundamental 'humanity'''. These are the 'heroes' that quite often are themselves convinced of a reward greater than might be attainable in this life. This is where religious belief may overtake political ideology in an individual's raison d'etre. The trouble, as you are no doubt aware, is that such 'fanaticism' becomes, in the idiom of those they oppose, a perversion, a wickedness of sorts. Perspective colours judgement. In terms of our initial theme as dealt with by Grass, the types of people I have in mind were conscientious objectors, notably Jehovah's Witnesses and others, who, in contrast to the sad fate of Jewish detainees, might have, at the signing of a declaration of fault, freed themselves from concentration camps and from an untimely death had they not peaceably made their stand. Again, the difference is more than subtle in their behaviour from those who might kill or resort to some other violent or otherwise transgressive action, to take what is theirs (within most estimates of what is right) but is denied them through prevailing power relations.
Andy Bossom: I suppose every individual has to decide how they wish to order their thinking. You can attach yourself to a religious code or political ideology or indeed adopt your own individual moral or ethical standpoint. I suppose the difficulty is in deciding how far you can move from that particular perspective. Or do the ends justify the means? There have been reported cases of those dissident Nazis who decided to fight fascism from within. Rather than openly confront they appear to outwardly conform. No one can see the inner mind of another individual and that is where true freedom can be located. you can then work against the system from within - perhaps helping some jewish detainees to escape their untimely death. I agree that once an individual believes that a greater heroic status will be bestowed upon them on sacrificial death, then it becomes much more difficult to counter. I have often wondered what my position would have been in 1939. Can you be a conscientious objector when you are needed to fight fascism? Could you sacrifice your moral position as a Jehovah's Witness in order to defeat an aggressive dictator? Should principles be put to one side for the "greater good"? Or is there any such thing as the Greater Good? Perhaps it is merely an expression of the prevailing cultural hegemony. English soldiers were not so much fighting fascism as "defending" their own "way of life!
Tat Mersy: I wonder if those with a declared political ideology or religious belief found it easier to kick against the Nazis than their own convictions. Although, it must be acknowledged that many bog standard, non-religious, apolitical Germans took a discreet stand against the regime. These people hid Jews, adopted their children or the family silver when their neighbours went into hiding, mobs of non-Jewish women stormed prisons to secure the release of their Jewish men-folk, camp employees smuggled supplies in and artwork out - an astounding amount of pictures, painted in foodstuffs, poetry and sculpture was smuggled out, all of it tiny due to the scarce resources. Oskar Shindler is an obvious, media-saturated example of ordinary volk made extra-ordinary by the times they lived in. And Raul Wallenberg, I've had a crush on Raul since I was 15. A young, Swiss diplomat, he disappeared behind the iron-curtain at the war's end, having secured travel documents for thousands of Jews during the war years.
Martin Archer: Just red a bit about Wallenberg's humanitarian and selfless stance, Tat. Our three-way discussion has revealed a number of reasons why folks behave the way they do. Simple belief in what is right over what is wrong seems to be the finest of the qualities displayed out of all the examples we've come up with; the so-called 'golden rule' of treating others the way we would be treated seems the touchstone to moral rectitude. Yet that conviction-crippling emotion called Fear... fear for family and friends' welfare should we act in the right way... must be difficult to overcome in a situation such as the intimidating rise of Nazism. I guess that is where the true definition of heroic action lies. Andy's development of how we might rationalise or 'order our thinking' is very much at the centre of how peaceable means can become militant means; how, if we are religiously 'devout', we are bizarrely moved to do God's work ourselves rather than leaving it to God to sort out. We can see such action in many examples, from South American Catholic priests who take up arms, to Islamists who maim indiscriminately and execute for effect. Were any of us interested in developing this discussion I might ask, How has postmodernity worked upon dissolving those grand ideological narratives that appeal to individuals' senses of patriarchy, eg., nationalistic defence of the realm against a perceived evil dictator or empire... the axis of evil comes to mind? Is it today possible for governments to mobilise whole populations toward fulfilling an idea... Liebensraum for instance?

blog

I've produced already one volume of autobiographical writing called It's All About Me. I hope to start a second book but different in form to the first with less of a journal format and more thematically led. I'm wondering whether to write into a wordprocessing package as before or into a blog application such as this one.

presumptions about my first day's blogging

I'm really running blind on this, but it's intriguing and no doubt I'll work it out as I go along.