Showing posts with label westminster. Show all posts
Showing posts with label westminster. Show all posts
Friday, 1 January 2016
Tuesday, 29 December 2015
Wednesday, 4 November 2015
Tuesday, 6 October 2015
Sorry but I think I would have thrown that egg myself*
The problem with an old-fashioned egging is that it lacks political nuance. Last Sunday's assault on Young Conservatives in Manchester has quite rightly been greeted with universal disapproval by the media and it doesn't really matter that 60,000 people didn't hurl eggs. One chose to vent their anger in yolk form and it was wrong, not least because this act of free-range stupidity gave the Tory party the perfect story against which to define themselves at the start of their annual conference. They can now claim to be the party that doesn't hurl eggs, or, at least, not outside the context of a dining club hazing.
Conflict is hardly new when the Tories come north. Political debate in this part of the country is a snarling business but that emanating from the left often seems more snarl than substance. Jeremy Corbyn can ask for gentler politics and Topman himself from collar to cuff but the crowd at protests will usually attract some braid-wearing pert-nippled class warriors with a good arm, lucky aim and a misguided notion of free speech.
Yet amid the sham outrage and sham counter outrage, I noticed something very familiar about the video titled ‘A Tory just got EGGED!!’ when it popped up on Youtube. I recognised the scene of the 'crime'. I spent years working in an office just around that corner on the edge of Chinatown. I've stood where the Tories stood and know how tempers run hot in a city that often feels like it has more Bez tribute acts than it has Tory voters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZB8_RMwFfI
Because I know the corner so well, I wonder how those Young Conservatives found themselves standing at that junction of Portland Street and Oxford Road. It's the latter road that channels protest marches that routinely run out of the university precinct to the south. That corner is the closest point that protesters get to the security barriers protecting Tory attendees. You'd have to walk a few minutes back towards Central Library in order to reach the Midland Hotel and further still to reach the conference venue.
It makes it hard not to question the motives of those Young Conservatives when they picked that spot to openly wear their conference passes (against the advice of event organizers) and to wave copies of The Telegraph, conference brochures, and pictures of Margaret Thatcher. These are perfectly legal things to do, of course, but perhaps not wise in the middle of an anti-austerity march unless your intention is to provoke the other lot into proving what a despicable bunch they can be. And, as usual, somebody in that other lot was only too happy to oblige.
The result is online sniping between the hard left and hard right. The left justifiably feel they have statistics on their side because it was only one among 60,000 who committed the terrible deed. The right justifiably feel that they have morality on their side because they claim the right to dress how they like and walk the streets unmolested by egg yolk. Yet it's hardly partisan to point out that the Young Conservatives seemed delighted to have provoked that response.
Manchester has many virtues but bow ties are rare and the v-necked sweater with old-school tie is not a look that wins many friends. Seen through my eyes, at least, the Young Conservatives looked just that: very young and very Conservative. I would also argue that you don't need to be on the political left to have a visceral reaction to the smugness of youths flaunting their privilege in a context in which others are protesting genuine poverty and government policies that are leading to the deaths of vulnerable people. Given the anger, the noise, the passion of the moment, I'd have been hard pressed not to lob an egg myself. Except, sitting here coolly and rationally, I also know that I wouldn't. Or perhaps I would. That's the problem with passion. It makes reasonable people do things they would regret and often those things are far worse than throwing an egg. The bigger question is why people attend a political march carrying eggs in their pockets and it's in the premeditation that my sympathy for the protesters ends.
The difference between passion and premeditation is, I suppose, at the heart of my argument. It's the premeditation of protestors looking to hurl eggs and the premeditation of the Young Tories looking to stoke the anger of the crowds. Yet the story also expresses a deeper reality about the Tories annual pilgrimage to Manchester. That they tend to hold their annual conferences in Labour heartlands makes as much sense as Blackpool’s Tower Ballroom hosting the Last Night of the Proms. The whole thing feels like a premeditated provocation on a scale grander than either the Young Conservatives or Dim Eggthrowers could ever hope to organize. It implies a reach into cities and regions that simply doesn't exist or is overstated. In the north, the Tories are largely successful in areas of affluence, the suburbs on the outskirts of major conurbations where gardens are large and every shadow cast by leaf or Range Rover. Elsewhere they are the second, third or even fourth choice party. For a few days, they might fortify themselves inside a heavily protected compound in central Manchester but the security only highlights how removed they are from ordinary Mancunians and how much effort they need to expend to truly understand the city, the people and its culture.
And that's what the story highlights to me. Throwing an egg was unconscionable but what the Young Conservatives were throwing back was cheap, snide, and self defeating. It was a militant distain about the cares of average people who will never know or enjoy their privilege. It was a lack of compassion, consideration, or conscience that only encourages more people to take to the streets and make the divides in our society feel deeper and more wilful than we've ever known them in our lives.
Whilst the Left need to identify the anarchists and trouble makers polluting their message through violence, the Tories need to rethink their own strategy and stop countenancing the fetishism of cruelty sometimes displayed so overtly by their youth.
* The title of this article was obviously intended as 'clickbait' but that doesn't actually stop some people from thinking that I would throw an egg or I'm defending the people that do throw eggs. I wouldn't throw an egg. I've never thrown an egg and I can't conceive of a context in which I would throw an egg. I'm not saying that I'm incapable of throwing an egg. If the conditions were perfect and I lost my temper and happened to have an egg in my hand, I can't be entirely certain about my actions. But, generally, I disapprove of all egg throwing and general misbehaviour with eggs.
Conflict is hardly new when the Tories come north. Political debate in this part of the country is a snarling business but that emanating from the left often seems more snarl than substance. Jeremy Corbyn can ask for gentler politics and Topman himself from collar to cuff but the crowd at protests will usually attract some braid-wearing pert-nippled class warriors with a good arm, lucky aim and a misguided notion of free speech.
Yet amid the sham outrage and sham counter outrage, I noticed something very familiar about the video titled ‘A Tory just got EGGED!!’ when it popped up on Youtube. I recognised the scene of the 'crime'. I spent years working in an office just around that corner on the edge of Chinatown. I've stood where the Tories stood and know how tempers run hot in a city that often feels like it has more Bez tribute acts than it has Tory voters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZB8_RMwFfI
Because I know the corner so well, I wonder how those Young Conservatives found themselves standing at that junction of Portland Street and Oxford Road. It's the latter road that channels protest marches that routinely run out of the university precinct to the south. That corner is the closest point that protesters get to the security barriers protecting Tory attendees. You'd have to walk a few minutes back towards Central Library in order to reach the Midland Hotel and further still to reach the conference venue.
It makes it hard not to question the motives of those Young Conservatives when they picked that spot to openly wear their conference passes (against the advice of event organizers) and to wave copies of The Telegraph, conference brochures, and pictures of Margaret Thatcher. These are perfectly legal things to do, of course, but perhaps not wise in the middle of an anti-austerity march unless your intention is to provoke the other lot into proving what a despicable bunch they can be. And, as usual, somebody in that other lot was only too happy to oblige.
The result is online sniping between the hard left and hard right. The left justifiably feel they have statistics on their side because it was only one among 60,000 who committed the terrible deed. The right justifiably feel that they have morality on their side because they claim the right to dress how they like and walk the streets unmolested by egg yolk. Yet it's hardly partisan to point out that the Young Conservatives seemed delighted to have provoked that response.
Manchester has many virtues but bow ties are rare and the v-necked sweater with old-school tie is not a look that wins many friends. Seen through my eyes, at least, the Young Conservatives looked just that: very young and very Conservative. I would also argue that you don't need to be on the political left to have a visceral reaction to the smugness of youths flaunting their privilege in a context in which others are protesting genuine poverty and government policies that are leading to the deaths of vulnerable people. Given the anger, the noise, the passion of the moment, I'd have been hard pressed not to lob an egg myself. Except, sitting here coolly and rationally, I also know that I wouldn't. Or perhaps I would. That's the problem with passion. It makes reasonable people do things they would regret and often those things are far worse than throwing an egg. The bigger question is why people attend a political march carrying eggs in their pockets and it's in the premeditation that my sympathy for the protesters ends.
The difference between passion and premeditation is, I suppose, at the heart of my argument. It's the premeditation of protestors looking to hurl eggs and the premeditation of the Young Tories looking to stoke the anger of the crowds. Yet the story also expresses a deeper reality about the Tories annual pilgrimage to Manchester. That they tend to hold their annual conferences in Labour heartlands makes as much sense as Blackpool’s Tower Ballroom hosting the Last Night of the Proms. The whole thing feels like a premeditated provocation on a scale grander than either the Young Conservatives or Dim Eggthrowers could ever hope to organize. It implies a reach into cities and regions that simply doesn't exist or is overstated. In the north, the Tories are largely successful in areas of affluence, the suburbs on the outskirts of major conurbations where gardens are large and every shadow cast by leaf or Range Rover. Elsewhere they are the second, third or even fourth choice party. For a few days, they might fortify themselves inside a heavily protected compound in central Manchester but the security only highlights how removed they are from ordinary Mancunians and how much effort they need to expend to truly understand the city, the people and its culture.
And that's what the story highlights to me. Throwing an egg was unconscionable but what the Young Conservatives were throwing back was cheap, snide, and self defeating. It was a militant distain about the cares of average people who will never know or enjoy their privilege. It was a lack of compassion, consideration, or conscience that only encourages more people to take to the streets and make the divides in our society feel deeper and more wilful than we've ever known them in our lives.
Whilst the Left need to identify the anarchists and trouble makers polluting their message through violence, the Tories need to rethink their own strategy and stop countenancing the fetishism of cruelty sometimes displayed so overtly by their youth.
* The title of this article was obviously intended as 'clickbait' but that doesn't actually stop some people from thinking that I would throw an egg or I'm defending the people that do throw eggs. I wouldn't throw an egg. I've never thrown an egg and I can't conceive of a context in which I would throw an egg. I'm not saying that I'm incapable of throwing an egg. If the conditions were perfect and I lost my temper and happened to have an egg in my hand, I can't be entirely certain about my actions. But, generally, I disapprove of all egg throwing and general misbehaviour with eggs.
Tuesday, 8 September 2015
Precision-Guided Cynicism
'I'll tell you what,' said the man on the 141, lowering his paper. 'I agree with what that David Cameron's done.'
'What's that?' asked the woman, who was coincidentally also on the 141 but gazing out the window towards Boots.
'He's had them bloody British Isis fighters blown up. Good riddance to 'em!'
'They were going to shoot the Queen,' tutted the woman. 'We can't be having that!'
'Indeed we can't!' I thought to myself from the seat behind.
The man and woman on the 141 were pretty typical of the mood on Britain's buses this Tuesday morning. 'Wham! Bam! ..Thank you Cam' was the exact headline on the day's edition of The Sun. I say 'exact' because I'm less sure about the legitimacy of their punctuation than I am sure about the legitimacy of the drone strikes. If running off to join a theocratic death cult seeking to replace all democracies in the world with a caliphate through forms of barbaric torture, abuse and murder doesn't make you the legitimate target for precision munitions, then I don't know what does. The only mildly questionable part of the action was the targeting of British nationals. Depending on how you spin your logic, this was either an act of national self defence or an example of state sanctioned assassination. A nation meting out justice to its own nationals seems reasonably more acceptable than meting justice out on non-nationals but others might argue the opposite. The difference is a matter for the lawyers to write cheques about. In most people's minds, the Daesh fighters gave the government legitimacy the moment they tried to weaponise their passports.
Yet beyond the general sense of it being a case of 'one of up for the good guys', David Cameron has here set quite the precedent. The UK government now claims the right to kill any person on the planet who threatens our national security. Just so long as they have the approval of a majority of people on the nation's buses, Cameron et al are on firm ground. Indeed, standing at the Despatch Box, Cameron seemed immune to criticism. He repeated a defence that has been used countless times by Prime Ministers before him. 'My first duty as Prime Minister is to keep the British people safe. That is what I'll always do. [...] I'm not prepared to stand here in the aftermath of a terrorist attack on our streets and have to explain to the House why I did not take the chance to prevent it when I could have done'.
Again, there's little to criticise in the specific details. This was a black and white case of the good guys taking out the bad. Yet set this into the broader context and you might begin to feel that the black and whites do occasionally slide into to grey.
What makes me pause to think is the timing of this murky business. These strikes took place on the 21st of August, two weeks before Cameron stood up in the Commons. It felt like such a convenient time to make this announcement. A day before, Cameron had been the subject of widespread condemnation as the British government repeatedly tried to hide behind the curtains as the world looked for somebody to aid the Syrian refugees. A day later, the couple on the 141 bus had forgotten all about the refugees and were full of praise for their Leader. Clever? Convenient? Planned? Is there any coincidence that long-term Cameron friend, Rebekah Brooks, returned to News UK (owners of The Sun) just last week? Is it a case of The Sun what spun it?
Secondly, this announcement comes just days before the Labour leadership election. It's been widely reported that the Conservatives are looking forward to testing the anti-war resolve of Labour's new leader, whichever candidate called Jeremy Corbyn might win. The drone strikes were possibly the first stage in that political war and we can expect to see the distinctions grow finer between waging an air campaign over Syria and fighting a proxy war fought trough drones. Cameron readily talks about 'meticulous planning' and this 'precision airstrike' but, tellingly, he didn't mention 'drone' (the commonplace term) but 'remotely piloted aircraft' which makes it feel so much more conventional. I should also imagine that much of the ordinance dropped from UK aircraft has the word 'precision' stencilled somewhere on their casing. It leaves me to wonder if the remarkable part of this story isn't the precision nature of the weapon but the precision nature of the politics. It wasn't the military operation that was well planned. It was the way the story was deployed at a moment of government crisis. The story left a front page crater a headline wide. The Syrian refugee story never had a chance.
'What's that?' asked the woman, who was coincidentally also on the 141 but gazing out the window towards Boots.
'He's had them bloody British Isis fighters blown up. Good riddance to 'em!'
'They were going to shoot the Queen,' tutted the woman. 'We can't be having that!'
'Indeed we can't!' I thought to myself from the seat behind.
The man and woman on the 141 were pretty typical of the mood on Britain's buses this Tuesday morning. 'Wham! Bam! ..Thank you Cam' was the exact headline on the day's edition of The Sun. I say 'exact' because I'm less sure about the legitimacy of their punctuation than I am sure about the legitimacy of the drone strikes. If running off to join a theocratic death cult seeking to replace all democracies in the world with a caliphate through forms of barbaric torture, abuse and murder doesn't make you the legitimate target for precision munitions, then I don't know what does. The only mildly questionable part of the action was the targeting of British nationals. Depending on how you spin your logic, this was either an act of national self defence or an example of state sanctioned assassination. A nation meting out justice to its own nationals seems reasonably more acceptable than meting justice out on non-nationals but others might argue the opposite. The difference is a matter for the lawyers to write cheques about. In most people's minds, the Daesh fighters gave the government legitimacy the moment they tried to weaponise their passports.
Yet beyond the general sense of it being a case of 'one of up for the good guys', David Cameron has here set quite the precedent. The UK government now claims the right to kill any person on the planet who threatens our national security. Just so long as they have the approval of a majority of people on the nation's buses, Cameron et al are on firm ground. Indeed, standing at the Despatch Box, Cameron seemed immune to criticism. He repeated a defence that has been used countless times by Prime Ministers before him. 'My first duty as Prime Minister is to keep the British people safe. That is what I'll always do. [...] I'm not prepared to stand here in the aftermath of a terrorist attack on our streets and have to explain to the House why I did not take the chance to prevent it when I could have done'.
Again, there's little to criticise in the specific details. This was a black and white case of the good guys taking out the bad. Yet set this into the broader context and you might begin to feel that the black and whites do occasionally slide into to grey.
What makes me pause to think is the timing of this murky business. These strikes took place on the 21st of August, two weeks before Cameron stood up in the Commons. It felt like such a convenient time to make this announcement. A day before, Cameron had been the subject of widespread condemnation as the British government repeatedly tried to hide behind the curtains as the world looked for somebody to aid the Syrian refugees. A day later, the couple on the 141 bus had forgotten all about the refugees and were full of praise for their Leader. Clever? Convenient? Planned? Is there any coincidence that long-term Cameron friend, Rebekah Brooks, returned to News UK (owners of The Sun) just last week? Is it a case of The Sun what spun it?
Secondly, this announcement comes just days before the Labour leadership election. It's been widely reported that the Conservatives are looking forward to testing the anti-war resolve of Labour's new leader, whichever candidate called Jeremy Corbyn might win. The drone strikes were possibly the first stage in that political war and we can expect to see the distinctions grow finer between waging an air campaign over Syria and fighting a proxy war fought trough drones. Cameron readily talks about 'meticulous planning' and this 'precision airstrike' but, tellingly, he didn't mention 'drone' (the commonplace term) but 'remotely piloted aircraft' which makes it feel so much more conventional. I should also imagine that much of the ordinance dropped from UK aircraft has the word 'precision' stencilled somewhere on their casing. It leaves me to wonder if the remarkable part of this story isn't the precision nature of the weapon but the precision nature of the politics. It wasn't the military operation that was well planned. It was the way the story was deployed at a moment of government crisis. The story left a front page crater a headline wide. The Syrian refugee story never had a chance.
Saturday, 9 May 2015
The Spine Podcast: Why Tristram Hunt should be the next Labour Leader
Well, this for me is a big decision. I've made a non-election podcast. I'll be making more and not all of them will be about politics. However, I'm still in a political frame of mind and today I wanted to argue why I think Tristram Hunt should be the next Labour leader. I know real Labour folk will disagree but real Labour folk are possibly the reason why they keep failing. Idealism gets in the way of common sense. Anyway, give it a listen and if you enjoy it, have any suggestions, or just want to give me encouragement to do more, please leave a comment or email me at thespineblog@gmail.com. I'm still not sure what I'm doing but I'm having fun doing it. [Apologies for the vulgar 'coke' joke at the beginning. Once written, I couldn't resist leaving it in.]
Friday, 8 May 2015
The Spine Election Podcast - Episode 9
Wrapping things up with (definitely) my last election podcast.
Sunday, 26 April 2015
The Spine Election Podcast - Episode 6
After a long week and a few delays due to my being off on various jaunts, I've finally edited together the latest podcast. I'd like to thank Bella Sassin who lent a real touch of professionalism to this production. Her acting makes me sound like the slow guy who hangs around the village well in eighteenth century novels set in Ireland.
Sunday, 12 April 2015
Friday, 3 April 2015
Wednesday, 1 April 2015
Monday, 30 March 2015
The Spine Election Podcast Episode 1
This took longer than it should and I'm not convinced that I shouldn't have ditched the idea. My voice is utterly buggered and some parts of this aren't the best but are simply the best not punctuated by coughing fits. I've been wanting to do a podcast for a while, after the great Elberry suggested I give it a try. Typically, the time I thought I would do it is first time I've ever caught a viral throat infection. So, please be kind. I might do more. This might go down as one of my noble failures. If I were feeling better, I'd be bright, funnier, and lest liable to rushing, which I do throughout this. It's a bloody miracle I could record anything. I'm currently coughing on every other breath.
Monday, 23 February 2015
Thursday, 19 February 2015
The Connoisseur of Ordure
Not having a great day. Just spend two hours travelling to the 'local' hospital. It was bike ride, a train journey and then a good walk simply to help my sister out in an emergency. Coming back, I couldn't face the walk so I hopped on the bus to take me the couple of miles back to the station. Cost £2.10 to go just one stop, which should be criminal if it weren't merely symptomatic of our wonderful nation. I read yesterday that Tories in Wandsworth tried as recently as 2011 to charge children £2.50 to use a playground. You'd weep if it didn't make you so bloody furious.
To make matters worse, the headphone jack of my Samsung Note tablet has bust. I was trying to break the monotony of the journey by listening to the audiobook of Christopher Hitchen's Portable Atheist. I could barely make out what was going on. I had cracking in one ear and silence in the other. Feeling pretty heartbroken. My Note is my right hand. I listen to music on it as I draw on it when I'm not reading books on it, web browsing on it, or playing Boom Beach. Now I'll have to do everything in silence.
Today's cartoon: it's probably nasty, distasteful, cheap but it's really not as nasty, distasteful or cheap as I feel about its subject. I actually sat long and hard last night trying to image the most vulgar drawing I could attempt. Nothing quite worked and I was sadly left with this which is far too gentle. I might try again. There's a whole well of anger from which I've barely supped. I'm treating it as an intellectual exercise in how to draw the morally bankrupt.
The problem of working digitally on the Note is that there's no facility to really throw ink around. At my desk, I'd probably try to emulate the wonderful chaos of a Steadman drawing by throwing ink at the page from a distance of six feet. Sitting on a railway station, drawing on a small 10 inch screen: everything is too controlled. Too clean. I really wanted to convey how angry I felt after watching the Michael Cockerell documentary and seeing Mogg, a truly ugly stretch of sanctimonious malevolence, strolling around Westminster and getting in the way of real politicians who are there to help people.
Wednesday, 18 February 2015
Hello Tim Marshall, Thank You Michael Cockerell, Goodbye Jacob Rees Mogg
Before I get to the meat of today's blog, I should point you in the direction of a new website, TheWhatandTheWhy, which is the site of Tim Marshall's re-emergence into the world. You might have read my original piece about why I thought Marshall was the last good reason to watch Sky News, my vow to start a letter campaign, or the forlorn attempt that Stan Madeley made to persuade 'Harding the Hack' to hire Marshall over at the BBC. Well, none of that went well but there is a new website and it contains enough words and video to get the heart racing. I don't understand what the hell is happening in the Ukraine but I feel a lot better knowing that Tim Marshall is around to explain the parts that make a little sense.
Speaking of chaos, I drew today's cartoon really late last night after watching Michael Cockerell's documentary about the House of Commons. I couldn't sleep. My mind was restless. I didn't want to draw cartoons that other people like. If I'm honest, I don't really like that type of cartoon I know I should be drawing if Private Eye are ever to buy one. It was late, I was angry, confused, thoughtful, so I resorted to type. I drew something for which there was be an audience of one. I don't know why George Clooney with a peg-leg amuses me but does there always have to be a reason?
I sometimes wonder how many people share my sensibilities. I cannot, for example, understand why there weren't riots when Tim Marshall left Sky News. Nor do I understand why Cockerell's series isn't a cause of national celebration. The series just gets better with each episode and convinces me that I'm utterly addicted to politics.
It's been such a sublime experience. The series has never once felt like it's pushing an agenda. The narrative feels supremely balanced, despite every step in the process of documentary production being in some sense editorial. Yet it's to Cockerell's credit that none of this feels directed to an end. There are no tricks on show. No sly camera movements or clever editorial juxtapositions by which a cut implies a whole new level of meaning. It's a programme that genuinely feels like it's watching but not intruding. Anything else is left to the reader to intuit. Was David Cameron being genuinely kind when he stopped to congratulate a politician who was being interviewed for the cameras or was Cameron being typically calculating knowing the cameras were on? In this household, that's a debate that raged for a week and countless replays. (The consensus is that it was the latter.)
Perhaps it's the way age gathers memories into ripe bundles but the BBC always seemed to make TV this good back when it wasn't racing with 200 other channels to find the lowest common denominator. Next week is, sadly, the last episode. It will be missed. It will, however, have a legacy and I can sense what that legacy will be after only three episodes. I already have a renewed faith in some politicians and, especially, the people behind the scenes. The series has been best when it followed the clerks as they laughed at the incongruities of the system. Conversely, the series had done nothing to lessen my hatred of party politics and, in fact, has in many respects confirmed it. The greatest threat to the parliamentary system are the big party machines which erode the significance of the individuals working to benefit their constituents. The greatest hope to the parliamentary system are the individuals who refuse to submit to the party machine and continue to work for their electorate.
In that sense, my suspicion of party politics is balanced by a new admiration I've found for the people who work in the system. The real stars of the series are people whose names you might not remember for long after the series ends. It's people like Kate Emms, Clerk in charge of Private Members' Bills at House of Commons, and Sir Robert Rodgers, the Clerk of the House, who announced his retirement in the first episode. If there is a message from the series, it seems to be one that affirms the believe that the system is safe in these people's hands.
Beyond the unexpected stars, the biggest winners are individual politicians. Sarah Champion, MP for Rotherham, suffered an inauspicious introduction in episode one ('I need a wee' she said, ushering the camera crew out of her bathroom) but revealed herself to be the kind of MP I'd want fighting on my side. I never expected that. I was expecting to dislike her but found myself very quickly warming to her. It perhaps says something about our distrust of politicians but, over the first three episodes, I never expected to see so many MPs spending so much time working on the behalf of others. That was an almost spiritual revelation.
At the same time, the series has also show me how much a few MPs seem to work on behalf of nobody but themselves. I've spoken to a couple of people about this and they've both backed up an observation I made which sounds party political but it really isn't. I don't particularly dislike Tories any more than I dislike Labour supporters or Lib Dems. My mind doesn't run down such well worn ideological grooves. Yet saying that, Tories have not come out well from the series. With the single exception of Peter Bone who was featured in last night's episode, many of the Tories came across as either self-promoters or wide-eyed ideologues. And as much as I find myself reassured that we have a system that's outdated and retains many anachronisms, there is one anachronism I don't feel in any way reassured by. It is the anachronism who calls himself Jacob Rees Mogg.
This morning I was talking to my sister about last night's episode and she made a remark which I thought was telling. She's more interested in the day to day workings of politics than me yet she is nowhere near as cynical or hard-bitten. Yet even she found Mogg too much to bear. 'It's like he's never had to struggle for anything in his life!' she despaired. 'Everything seems to have been handed to him on a bloody plate.'
Last week's episode was a perfect example. Mogg was filmed filibustering a Lib Dem's private member's bill that would have protected the poorest in our society (particularly the disabled) from cuts to their housing benefits if they were deemed to have 'surplus rooms'. He first filibustered on the floor of the House of Commons and then again when the bill reached the Committee Stage. Some might admire or find it slightly amusing that he attempts to derail the bill by wasting time, languorously quoting the hymn, 'Our God, Our Help in Ages Past' by Isaac Watts . 'I want to talk about time,' Mogg begins, 'time, like an ever rolling stream, bears all its sons away...' MPs looked on in frustration.
It just made me furious beyond measure that the system rewards a man like that. It astonishes me that a man who has lived his entire life in the lap of the establishment, cosseted at Eton and Oxford, earning a second income (allegedly £500,000 since 2010) should play games with people's lives. In what sense can he even understand the plight of somebody living in council accommodation, on a low wage, perhaps with a serious illness? What gives him the right to judge and to block laws which would improve their lives?
My first novel (the one that was going to be published until the publisher was bought up by Harper Collins) was a thinly veiled lampoon of Mogg. Yet even I was left astonished by the depth of his twisted morality. The more you pick apart the Mogg biography, the more your fingers bleed. The Honorable Mogg is an ex investment banker, the son of the noted editor of The Times and married into one of the wealthiest families in the country. So, naturally, he believes in zero-hour contracts and, according to Theyworkforyou.com, any policy that denudes the few protections that give the rest of us a chance to live a moderately tolerable life. For example, the Member for North East Somerset:
For a man who clearly cares so much about correct parliamentary process, Mogg is a walking hypocrisy. This entry in his Wikipedia page says so much: "In December 2014 Rees-Mogg was reported to the Parliament's standards watchdog for speaking in debates on tobacco, mining and oil and gas without first declaring he is founding partner and director of Somerset Capital which has £multimillion investments in the sectors."
I could descend to some found language here but I don't want to demean my argument. My opinion of Mogg has never been lower and, for that, I am so glad that Cockerell was there to educate me.
Ralph Steadman once declared that he was stopping drawing politicians. His website describes it like this:
I don't think Steadman is wrong but Cockerell has reminded me why it's important to keep drawing the worst of them. Just a few weeks ago I'd have never thought of this reason. We owe it to the rest of them.
Speaking of chaos, I drew today's cartoon really late last night after watching Michael Cockerell's documentary about the House of Commons. I couldn't sleep. My mind was restless. I didn't want to draw cartoons that other people like. If I'm honest, I don't really like that type of cartoon I know I should be drawing if Private Eye are ever to buy one. It was late, I was angry, confused, thoughtful, so I resorted to type. I drew something for which there was be an audience of one. I don't know why George Clooney with a peg-leg amuses me but does there always have to be a reason?
I sometimes wonder how many people share my sensibilities. I cannot, for example, understand why there weren't riots when Tim Marshall left Sky News. Nor do I understand why Cockerell's series isn't a cause of national celebration. The series just gets better with each episode and convinces me that I'm utterly addicted to politics.
It's been such a sublime experience. The series has never once felt like it's pushing an agenda. The narrative feels supremely balanced, despite every step in the process of documentary production being in some sense editorial. Yet it's to Cockerell's credit that none of this feels directed to an end. There are no tricks on show. No sly camera movements or clever editorial juxtapositions by which a cut implies a whole new level of meaning. It's a programme that genuinely feels like it's watching but not intruding. Anything else is left to the reader to intuit. Was David Cameron being genuinely kind when he stopped to congratulate a politician who was being interviewed for the cameras or was Cameron being typically calculating knowing the cameras were on? In this household, that's a debate that raged for a week and countless replays. (The consensus is that it was the latter.)
Perhaps it's the way age gathers memories into ripe bundles but the BBC always seemed to make TV this good back when it wasn't racing with 200 other channels to find the lowest common denominator. Next week is, sadly, the last episode. It will be missed. It will, however, have a legacy and I can sense what that legacy will be after only three episodes. I already have a renewed faith in some politicians and, especially, the people behind the scenes. The series has been best when it followed the clerks as they laughed at the incongruities of the system. Conversely, the series had done nothing to lessen my hatred of party politics and, in fact, has in many respects confirmed it. The greatest threat to the parliamentary system are the big party machines which erode the significance of the individuals working to benefit their constituents. The greatest hope to the parliamentary system are the individuals who refuse to submit to the party machine and continue to work for their electorate.
In that sense, my suspicion of party politics is balanced by a new admiration I've found for the people who work in the system. The real stars of the series are people whose names you might not remember for long after the series ends. It's people like Kate Emms, Clerk in charge of Private Members' Bills at House of Commons, and Sir Robert Rodgers, the Clerk of the House, who announced his retirement in the first episode. If there is a message from the series, it seems to be one that affirms the believe that the system is safe in these people's hands.
Beyond the unexpected stars, the biggest winners are individual politicians. Sarah Champion, MP for Rotherham, suffered an inauspicious introduction in episode one ('I need a wee' she said, ushering the camera crew out of her bathroom) but revealed herself to be the kind of MP I'd want fighting on my side. I never expected that. I was expecting to dislike her but found myself very quickly warming to her. It perhaps says something about our distrust of politicians but, over the first three episodes, I never expected to see so many MPs spending so much time working on the behalf of others. That was an almost spiritual revelation.
At the same time, the series has also show me how much a few MPs seem to work on behalf of nobody but themselves. I've spoken to a couple of people about this and they've both backed up an observation I made which sounds party political but it really isn't. I don't particularly dislike Tories any more than I dislike Labour supporters or Lib Dems. My mind doesn't run down such well worn ideological grooves. Yet saying that, Tories have not come out well from the series. With the single exception of Peter Bone who was featured in last night's episode, many of the Tories came across as either self-promoters or wide-eyed ideologues. And as much as I find myself reassured that we have a system that's outdated and retains many anachronisms, there is one anachronism I don't feel in any way reassured by. It is the anachronism who calls himself Jacob Rees Mogg.
This morning I was talking to my sister about last night's episode and she made a remark which I thought was telling. She's more interested in the day to day workings of politics than me yet she is nowhere near as cynical or hard-bitten. Yet even she found Mogg too much to bear. 'It's like he's never had to struggle for anything in his life!' she despaired. 'Everything seems to have been handed to him on a bloody plate.'
Last week's episode was a perfect example. Mogg was filmed filibustering a Lib Dem's private member's bill that would have protected the poorest in our society (particularly the disabled) from cuts to their housing benefits if they were deemed to have 'surplus rooms'. He first filibustered on the floor of the House of Commons and then again when the bill reached the Committee Stage. Some might admire or find it slightly amusing that he attempts to derail the bill by wasting time, languorously quoting the hymn, 'Our God, Our Help in Ages Past' by Isaac Watts . 'I want to talk about time,' Mogg begins, 'time, like an ever rolling stream, bears all its sons away...' MPs looked on in frustration.
It just made me furious beyond measure that the system rewards a man like that. It astonishes me that a man who has lived his entire life in the lap of the establishment, cosseted at Eton and Oxford, earning a second income (allegedly £500,000 since 2010) should play games with people's lives. In what sense can he even understand the plight of somebody living in council accommodation, on a low wage, perhaps with a serious illness? What gives him the right to judge and to block laws which would improve their lives?
My first novel (the one that was going to be published until the publisher was bought up by Harper Collins) was a thinly veiled lampoon of Mogg. Yet even I was left astonished by the depth of his twisted morality. The more you pick apart the Mogg biography, the more your fingers bleed. The Honorable Mogg is an ex investment banker, the son of the noted editor of The Times and married into one of the wealthiest families in the country. So, naturally, he believes in zero-hour contracts and, according to Theyworkforyou.com, any policy that denudes the few protections that give the rest of us a chance to live a moderately tolerable life. For example, the Member for North East Somerset:
Voted very strongly against paying higher benefits over longer periods for those unable to work due to illness or disability
Voted very strongly for reducing housing benefit for social tenants deemed to have excess bedrooms (which Labour describe as the "bedroom tax")
Voted very strongly for university tuition fees
Voted very strongly for a reduction in spending on welfare benefits
Voted very strongly against equal gay rights
Voted very strongly against smoking bans
Voted very strongly against raising welfare benefits at least in line with prices
Voted strongly against slowing the rise in rail fares
Voted very strongly against increasing the tax rate applied to income over £150,000
Voted very strongly against greater regulation of gambling
Voted strongly for restricting the scope of legal aid
For a man who clearly cares so much about correct parliamentary process, Mogg is a walking hypocrisy. This entry in his Wikipedia page says so much: "In December 2014 Rees-Mogg was reported to the Parliament's standards watchdog for speaking in debates on tobacco, mining and oil and gas without first declaring he is founding partner and director of Somerset Capital which has £multimillion investments in the sectors."
I could descend to some found language here but I don't want to demean my argument. My opinion of Mogg has never been lower and, for that, I am so glad that Cockerell was there to educate me.
Ralph Steadman once declared that he was stopping drawing politicians. His website describes it like this:
Finally so disgusted by the antics of those who should be running the country, Ralph decided in 1997 to stop drawing caricatures of politicians. He felt it fed their over-weaning egos and they liked the attention too much. It distracted them from the jobs they had been voted in to do by a long suffering public.
I don't think Steadman is wrong but Cockerell has reminded me why it's important to keep drawing the worst of them. Just a few weeks ago I'd have never thought of this reason. We owe it to the rest of them.
Sunday, 18 January 2015
Thursday, 15 January 2015
Why Al Murray should stay out of politics
Wish I had time today to write about this at length and more subtlety but it appears that Al Murray is going to challenge Nigel Farage for the parliamentary seat of Thanet South in Kent.
The first thing to say is that the problem of politics is not the system. It's the people. As much as I dislike UKIP, I hate to see politics debased by these cheap stunts. If people want to vote for Farage, then they have the right. It's not up to others to 'spoil' the election. It's why I dislike these schemes whereby people try to 'swap' votes. Politics looks like a game but it shouldn't be played as though it's a game where cheating is tolerated.
The second thing is that the title of Murray's party 'FUKP' is pretty risible. Again, the problem of politics is not the system and a General Election is not the place to make cheap vulgar jokes. Culture is already debased so much that we hardly need another 'fuck' placed prominently on our news media. It might make a few schoolboys snigger but it's hardly the best of Al Murray. Nor, incidentally, is a general election the place to to enhance your profile as a comedian.
The third thing is that Al Murray's act has always been problematic. He supposedly has a brilliant mind and razor sharp comedic senses. He claims that he does what he does with a knowing wink. However, it's sometimes hard to see the wink. I know for a fact that many people who enjoy his act, don't understand the act. Sometimes it's easy to become the very thing you mock. Murray plays the bigoted English nationalist so well that he's enjoyed by people who enjoy listening to bigoted English nationalists. Watch a video of a typical Al Murray performance and question why the audience is laughing. It's clever stuff but I'm not totally convinced that there's not a small undercurrent of real nationalism running through it. That's not to say that pride in your country is bad. Patriotism and nationalism are too easily elides in meaning and, as Orwell points out:
Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved.
Damn. Now I'm quoting Orwell and I really wish I had time to write more than this. I have a website to build and a tutorial for my new Windows application to record.
I guess all I wanted to say was that the General Election will is too important to devalue with cheap stunts. David Cameron should attend the debates and Al Murray and every other celebrity should keep out of politics. As for last night's cartoon: I drew it in a rush. I'll try harder tonight.
Tuesday, 9 December 2014
Tuesday, 2 December 2014
An Alternative UKIP Christmas Card
Prompted by an article over at The Guardian, I rejigged my cartoon of earlier to give it a festive feel. If I hadn't been in such a rush this morning, this is probably what I should have done before posting the previous cartoon. It ties the two UKIP stories together quite nicely.
Richard Desmond Launches New Adult Magazine
And UKIP have my permission to use as their Christmas card...
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