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.]
Showing posts with label Ed Miliband. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ed Miliband. Show all posts
Saturday, 9 May 2015
Friday, 8 May 2015
The Spine Election Podcast - Episode 9
Wrapping things up with (definitely) my last election podcast.
Sunday, 3 May 2015
Ajockalypse Now
I'm being treated to a day away from my keyboard so I only have about fifteen minutes to unwrap this morning's news before I have to head for the train.
I've just read Boris Johnson talking about Milband in The Sunday Times and I'm not sure which part of the argument I liked the least. We have more baiting of Scotland with the headline phrase 'Ajockalypse Now', which might make a few people smile but I just frowned. It's more of that tactic we've seen at this election of deliberately winding up Scottish voters so they're even more pissed with the established Westminster parties. The more Tories wind up the Scottish, the stronger the SNP's hold is Scotland becomes and the weaker Ed Miliband's position in Westminster. I'm not Scottish, though my grandmother was, but I still find it shabby and insulting. I have no doubt that Boris would be making similar jokes if the election was going to be decided by voters in the north or the south west, or any area other than the great South East who seem to be the only people that really matter in this and every election.
Secondly, Boris came out with this gem. "Ed Miliband fundamentally doesn’t believe in the market. I don’t believe there’s any aspect of capitalism that he seems to relish or approve of."
Ignore what Miliband might or might no believe. Think instead about the thing that Boris seems to hold as an unquestionable truth. His faith in capitalism sounds almost religious. Why should anybody 'believe' in the market as though the market were some omnipotent being? I don't believe in the market but I can see that it exists. I can see also, in certain contexts, that it works extremely well. However, I can also see that the market is often deeply flawed and that's my problem with the current Tories: they seem to believe that society should be entirely aligned to the market.
Working on something else the other day, I came across Simon Mainwaring's book We First: How Brands and Consumers Use Social Media to Renew Capitalism and Build a Better World. From the parts I had chance to read, it was pretty gushing about social media but, from my point of view, quite chilling in the way that social media was going to make people's lives indistinguishable from the patterns of consumerism. I'm probably not doing the book justice but I think the argument went that companies should aim to organically intertwine their business with people's every patterns of life. It was depressing but goes to what I think is the root of this election. It goes back to that phrase the Tories keep using and I find so troublesome: hardworking people.
It implies everything that the Mainwaring book pinpointed: that we are merely fodder for the consumerist meat grinder. Tories celebrate 'hardworking people' though rarely does anybody point out how many of the buggers earn in excess of £30,000 or £40,000 a year for just a couple of hours consultancy work each week. Hardworking or 'on a good thing'? I suppose only you can decide. Yet what do they really mean? That we should be happy because they give us mobile phones, Twitter, and a couple of hours a week to do something other than stick doorhandles on a car?
But that's my 15 minutes and here I have to end it. If you want more, I suggest you watch this excellent exchange between Kenneth Williams and Michael Parkinson, in which the subject of sticking doorhandles on a car in central to the argument (begins about the 7 minute mark). In case you're wondering, I think Parkinson is absolutely right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkUyDr97NU4
I've just read Boris Johnson talking about Milband in The Sunday Times and I'm not sure which part of the argument I liked the least. We have more baiting of Scotland with the headline phrase 'Ajockalypse Now', which might make a few people smile but I just frowned. It's more of that tactic we've seen at this election of deliberately winding up Scottish voters so they're even more pissed with the established Westminster parties. The more Tories wind up the Scottish, the stronger the SNP's hold is Scotland becomes and the weaker Ed Miliband's position in Westminster. I'm not Scottish, though my grandmother was, but I still find it shabby and insulting. I have no doubt that Boris would be making similar jokes if the election was going to be decided by voters in the north or the south west, or any area other than the great South East who seem to be the only people that really matter in this and every election.
Secondly, Boris came out with this gem. "Ed Miliband fundamentally doesn’t believe in the market. I don’t believe there’s any aspect of capitalism that he seems to relish or approve of."
Ignore what Miliband might or might no believe. Think instead about the thing that Boris seems to hold as an unquestionable truth. His faith in capitalism sounds almost religious. Why should anybody 'believe' in the market as though the market were some omnipotent being? I don't believe in the market but I can see that it exists. I can see also, in certain contexts, that it works extremely well. However, I can also see that the market is often deeply flawed and that's my problem with the current Tories: they seem to believe that society should be entirely aligned to the market.
Working on something else the other day, I came across Simon Mainwaring's book We First: How Brands and Consumers Use Social Media to Renew Capitalism and Build a Better World. From the parts I had chance to read, it was pretty gushing about social media but, from my point of view, quite chilling in the way that social media was going to make people's lives indistinguishable from the patterns of consumerism. I'm probably not doing the book justice but I think the argument went that companies should aim to organically intertwine their business with people's every patterns of life. It was depressing but goes to what I think is the root of this election. It goes back to that phrase the Tories keep using and I find so troublesome: hardworking people.
It implies everything that the Mainwaring book pinpointed: that we are merely fodder for the consumerist meat grinder. Tories celebrate 'hardworking people' though rarely does anybody point out how many of the buggers earn in excess of £30,000 or £40,000 a year for just a couple of hours consultancy work each week. Hardworking or 'on a good thing'? I suppose only you can decide. Yet what do they really mean? That we should be happy because they give us mobile phones, Twitter, and a couple of hours a week to do something other than stick doorhandles on a car?
But that's my 15 minutes and here I have to end it. If you want more, I suggest you watch this excellent exchange between Kenneth Williams and Michael Parkinson, in which the subject of sticking doorhandles on a car in central to the argument (begins about the 7 minute mark). In case you're wondering, I think Parkinson is absolutely right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkUyDr97NU4
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.
Saturday, 25 April 2015
Why the hell Aston Villa?
The list of things that count as a 'brain fade' is pretty long. Forgetting the dates of battles, wars, victories, births, deaths, exams and appointments are just the beginning. It would be understandable if you forget your mother's noodle recipe or the contents of that brown cardboard box on the top shelf in your shed. You might forget your National Insurance number or ever your car number plate. It's easy to forget the name of films or books, even though you might claim they're a favourite. It's easier still to forget the name of that actor you like who only plays bit parts in films but always does with a certain manly swagger. In that case, you're probably forgetting the name Ed Harris or Scott Glenn. Really, the list of things it's okay to forget is extremely long and varied. But nowhere on it does it include the name of your football team.
I mean nobody, not even the recently lobotomised, forgets the name of their football team. It just doesn't happen. Not even as a verbal slip. You don't suddenly say 'Manchester United' if you mean Liverpool, 'Everton' if you support Leeds. It's not simply a trick of a tired brain. You don't have one thing in mind and accidentally say it, like you might say to somebody, ' pass me the knife' when you meant spoon but you just happened to be holding a knife when you reached for the word. Those things are understandable. Forgetting your football team is about as likely as forgetting your own name. Never is my life have I introduced myself 'Eric' or 'Bruce' or 'Norma'. I'm certain about that. 100% of the time I say that my name is David.
I wouldn't image that David Cameron would ever introduce himself as Eric, Bruce or Norma Cameron either, which makes it so hard to believe that today told an audience in Croydon that his favourite team is West Ham. For years he's been telling us that it's Aston Villa and how he is the nephew of a former Villa chairman who took him to his first match when he was 13.
The significance of the story is bigger than the details. What I love about this gaff is that it's an apparently trivial mistake which might have big consequences. It's the kind of story that will click with large portions of the electorate. It's hard to judge a man based on economic predictions or the well practised spiel of a campaign speech. It's much easier to judge what you think about a man who suddenly forgets which team he supports. Had this happened in any pub across the land, the victim of the 'brain fade' would be ribbed about it for months, years, perhaps even the rest of his life.
So, why did it happen?
It happened, I think, because of the character of the man. It is a small point but I think it reveals so much about Cameron and his convictions or, more precisely, lack of convictions. I've never seen him as a true conviction politician. Thatcher was deeply ideological. Blair less so but still in a large part driven by convictions. Brown was deeply rooted in his convictions that came through his Presbyterian upbringing. Cameron, I think, is almost completely lacking in deep political thought. To put it in slightly wet terms: politics seems to be a convenient point on his life journey. It was easy for him to go from Eton to Oxford and then into the world of Conservative politics. Leadership came just as easily. David Davies was tipped as the next leader and then Cameron gave a speech behind closed doors which turned everything around. And with typical Cameron luck, he rose to the leadership at a time when the Labour Party had exhausted the ideas of one generation and a world economic collapse compounded their problems, meaning that a change in government was always likely to happen. I can't think of any party leader who went quite so quickly from obscurity to Number 10 via the ballot box.
His current 'brain fade' makes me think of Libya and the fall of Gaddafi. As revolutions go, it was a fairly easy one for a Prime Minister to cope with. It was easier still to head to Benghazi and take some of the credit and make some vague promises and we know how that turned out. We should only be lucky as he made that speech that he didn't praise the people of Syria or Liberia or even West Ham.
The gaff happened because I doubt if Cameron is invested in following Aston Villa with the passion of a true football fan. 'Aston Villa' is just the convenient tag that he can scrawl in that blank box whenever he has to answer the 'Favourite football team' question on his regular Q&As with the readers of Heat magazine.
Yet one question remains. Why the hell did he pick Aston Villa?
I can't get over the feeling that it's just a shrewd political calculation. If I were a politician who was particularly prone to taking the popular angle and always wanting to be seen on the side of the majority, who would I claim to support?
According to a recent Guardian article, the biggest three teams in the UK are Liverpool (15.21%), Arsenal (15.03%) and Manchester United (14.6%). However, at least two of those teams are great rivals. To support United or Liverpool would stain your character for supporters of the rival team. You might gain respect in the eyes of one 15% but you'd lost it in the eyes of another 15%. Chelsea, Tottenham, and Arsenal all have strong rivalries, as do teams such as Everton, Manchester City, and Leeds.
I suspect that a wily politician would choose a team that's well known but not so successful that it has bred much resentment. Does Aston Villa fit that profile? It has the fifth highest in terms of major honours among English clubs but hasn't won the top division since the 1980-81 season. Is it vanilla enough to be the team that breeds the most apathy in the league? I suspect it might. Choosing Aston Villa means that Cameron is only alienating the supporters of West Brom and Birmingham City in a heavily Labour supporting part of the country. Hostility towards Aston Villa doesn't reach across the country in the same way as you find deep resentments about other major teams. In political terms, it's as neutral a choice as it's possible to find in the top division. The votes he would potentially lose are votes which would probably be Labour in the first place.
Well, that's my theory. I have no way of knowing if it's real or not. I just expect the Tory party's media unit to now go into overdrive to prove that Cameron is a true Aston Villa fan. Expect to see the buttock tattoo before the end of the campaign. In the case of any other politician, I would have written that line thinking it a good joke to end. In Cameron's case, I'm not so sure it's a joke.
I mean nobody, not even the recently lobotomised, forgets the name of their football team. It just doesn't happen. Not even as a verbal slip. You don't suddenly say 'Manchester United' if you mean Liverpool, 'Everton' if you support Leeds. It's not simply a trick of a tired brain. You don't have one thing in mind and accidentally say it, like you might say to somebody, ' pass me the knife' when you meant spoon but you just happened to be holding a knife when you reached for the word. Those things are understandable. Forgetting your football team is about as likely as forgetting your own name. Never is my life have I introduced myself 'Eric' or 'Bruce' or 'Norma'. I'm certain about that. 100% of the time I say that my name is David.
I wouldn't image that David Cameron would ever introduce himself as Eric, Bruce or Norma Cameron either, which makes it so hard to believe that today told an audience in Croydon that his favourite team is West Ham. For years he's been telling us that it's Aston Villa and how he is the nephew of a former Villa chairman who took him to his first match when he was 13.
The significance of the story is bigger than the details. What I love about this gaff is that it's an apparently trivial mistake which might have big consequences. It's the kind of story that will click with large portions of the electorate. It's hard to judge a man based on economic predictions or the well practised spiel of a campaign speech. It's much easier to judge what you think about a man who suddenly forgets which team he supports. Had this happened in any pub across the land, the victim of the 'brain fade' would be ribbed about it for months, years, perhaps even the rest of his life.
So, why did it happen?
It happened, I think, because of the character of the man. It is a small point but I think it reveals so much about Cameron and his convictions or, more precisely, lack of convictions. I've never seen him as a true conviction politician. Thatcher was deeply ideological. Blair less so but still in a large part driven by convictions. Brown was deeply rooted in his convictions that came through his Presbyterian upbringing. Cameron, I think, is almost completely lacking in deep political thought. To put it in slightly wet terms: politics seems to be a convenient point on his life journey. It was easy for him to go from Eton to Oxford and then into the world of Conservative politics. Leadership came just as easily. David Davies was tipped as the next leader and then Cameron gave a speech behind closed doors which turned everything around. And with typical Cameron luck, he rose to the leadership at a time when the Labour Party had exhausted the ideas of one generation and a world economic collapse compounded their problems, meaning that a change in government was always likely to happen. I can't think of any party leader who went quite so quickly from obscurity to Number 10 via the ballot box.
His current 'brain fade' makes me think of Libya and the fall of Gaddafi. As revolutions go, it was a fairly easy one for a Prime Minister to cope with. It was easier still to head to Benghazi and take some of the credit and make some vague promises and we know how that turned out. We should only be lucky as he made that speech that he didn't praise the people of Syria or Liberia or even West Ham.
The gaff happened because I doubt if Cameron is invested in following Aston Villa with the passion of a true football fan. 'Aston Villa' is just the convenient tag that he can scrawl in that blank box whenever he has to answer the 'Favourite football team' question on his regular Q&As with the readers of Heat magazine.
Yet one question remains. Why the hell did he pick Aston Villa?
I can't get over the feeling that it's just a shrewd political calculation. If I were a politician who was particularly prone to taking the popular angle and always wanting to be seen on the side of the majority, who would I claim to support?
According to a recent Guardian article, the biggest three teams in the UK are Liverpool (15.21%), Arsenal (15.03%) and Manchester United (14.6%). However, at least two of those teams are great rivals. To support United or Liverpool would stain your character for supporters of the rival team. You might gain respect in the eyes of one 15% but you'd lost it in the eyes of another 15%. Chelsea, Tottenham, and Arsenal all have strong rivalries, as do teams such as Everton, Manchester City, and Leeds.
I suspect that a wily politician would choose a team that's well known but not so successful that it has bred much resentment. Does Aston Villa fit that profile? It has the fifth highest in terms of major honours among English clubs but hasn't won the top division since the 1980-81 season. Is it vanilla enough to be the team that breeds the most apathy in the league? I suspect it might. Choosing Aston Villa means that Cameron is only alienating the supporters of West Brom and Birmingham City in a heavily Labour supporting part of the country. Hostility towards Aston Villa doesn't reach across the country in the same way as you find deep resentments about other major teams. In political terms, it's as neutral a choice as it's possible to find in the top division. The votes he would potentially lose are votes which would probably be Labour in the first place.
Well, that's my theory. I have no way of knowing if it's real or not. I just expect the Tory party's media unit to now go into overdrive to prove that Cameron is a true Aston Villa fan. Expect to see the buttock tattoo before the end of the campaign. In the case of any other politician, I would have written that line thinking it a good joke to end. In Cameron's case, I'm not so sure it's a joke.
Saturday, 18 April 2015
Friday, 17 April 2015
Friday Notes
Posting my 'daily cartoon' the next day is the worst part of drawing them. Firstly, it's a mark that you're finished with one and that you have to start another. Secondly, you hope for feedback saying it's the best cartoon you've ever drawn when the reality is that it's barely looked at and, even when it is looked at, it's often passed over with a shrug of the shoulders. This feels particularly bad when you do happen to think that it is the best cartoon you've ever drawn...
Last night's was one of those rare cartoons when I thought I'd ticked my personal boxes. Perhaps I'm just pleased because my cross hatching worked out and that the cartoon tried to say something. I don't know if I can judge. The left side could do with more work and I'm not satisfied with colour. It looked good in black and white but colour, for me, distracts. Yet colour is expected so I needed to add some...
I've been providing some cartoons for Tim Marshall's new venture over at The What and the Why. Because the focus is on international affairs, I've been trying to spot cartoons with a world theme. It's not always easy but it's helpful to me because it forces me to draw things and people I wouldn't normally be drawn to satirise or even think about. Today's cartoon was different. A vain president jailing cartoonists would always draw my attention. Apparently Turkey's Erdogan doesn't like to be ridiculed (explanatory BBC news report in the link), which seems like an eminently good reason to ridicule him. My first attempt was probably a stretch too far. I started drawing jowls and, naturally, I thought I'd see how far I could take them. By 11pm last night, I realised I'd probably taken them too far so I tried again.
As I redrew the majority of the cartoon, I watched the challenger's debate from earlier in the evening, followed by hours of analysis. Some of it made sense. Much of it didn't. The parties were engaged in their typical spin operations and sometimes even the strongest will struggles to avoid following their bad logic down the rabbit hole of political bias.
I thought the biggest loser of the evening was (surprisingly) David Cameron. I hadn't expected the Prime Minister's absence to hurt him so bad. Yet listening to him claiming credit for the debate earlier in the day was simply nauseating. He spoke of unblocking the logjam when he'd been the cause of the logjam in the beginning. It made the resulting debate feel like justice in that it was an hour and a half of solid government bashing. No having somebody on the stage to defend their record might well be one of the biggest miscalculations of the election. It was bruising stuff.
Of the participants, my verdict was as follows.
Ed Miliband
Miliband didn't need to do much and just stay clear of trouble. He'd won the evening by simply turning up. What followed was, to use a cricket metaphor, a display of playing every ball with straight bat. He never looked like edging a ball to slip but, then, his opponents were hardly steaming in with their fastest deliveries. He ensured his victory at the end by challenging Cameron to a debate. It was a win-win move. If Cameron refuses, he looks week and undemocratic. If he accepts, Miliband gets to debate with Cameron who seems singularly uninterested into entering into any democratic process. From Cameron's point of view, he can't win either way but I think he stands more of a chance by debating.
Natalie Bennett
I can't explain why I have a soft spot for Bennett. Everything should go against her: that accent, those policies, a few woeful performances in various media spotlights. Yet each time she stands up to speak, I find myself surprised by how much I both like her and how much I agree with her. She was the only person to speak up for people who are too sick to be considered 'hardworking'. That, for me, spoke volumes. I know the Green manifesto is filled with risible nonsense. Andew Neil has done enough this election to prove that. However, Bennett has a knack of speaking about things which the other parties don't address. Not sure any of that makes sense but I'm not sure I can explain why Bennett keeps impressing me.
Leanne Wood
Wood attempted to relive her success of the opening leader's debate and she probably suffered for that. She seemed eager to lay into Farage, no doubt knowing it was the thing that she was praised for the last time they met. Beyond that, she spoke to her audience in Wales and about that I'm not really qualified to comment. She doesn't have that connection to English voters that Sturgeon has oddly seemed to have fashioned.
Nichola Sturgeon
People have constantly praised her performance throughout the campaign's debates but last night was the first time I sat up and thought she was something special. She repeatedly had the best answers on the night, though perhaps too few hard questions were directed her way. I can see why she appeals to so many. She has become the face of the election and has replaced Farage as the fashionable outsider that non-voters would like to vote for if they're in England and will vote for if they're north of the border.
Nigel 'Nige' Farage
Not so much a one-trick pony as a pony who has learned a few good tricks which he performs every time he's trotted out onto the national stage. Last night was more of the same from Nige. His tactic is clear. He wants to lose the studio but win the living room. Turning on the audience was probably a masterstroke. He obviously needed the boos to make his point. He wanted to portray himself as the man who speaks for the common folk who never get their opinions aired on TV. He summed it up with his line about 'I say what many of you are probably thinking'. He effectively acknowledged that ninety percent of the people in the room would dislike him and never vote UKIP. He took that fact and turned it to his advantage, reaching out to his core voters to remind them why UKIP is different to the rest.
Last night's was one of those rare cartoons when I thought I'd ticked my personal boxes. Perhaps I'm just pleased because my cross hatching worked out and that the cartoon tried to say something. I don't know if I can judge. The left side could do with more work and I'm not satisfied with colour. It looked good in black and white but colour, for me, distracts. Yet colour is expected so I needed to add some...
I've been providing some cartoons for Tim Marshall's new venture over at The What and the Why. Because the focus is on international affairs, I've been trying to spot cartoons with a world theme. It's not always easy but it's helpful to me because it forces me to draw things and people I wouldn't normally be drawn to satirise or even think about. Today's cartoon was different. A vain president jailing cartoonists would always draw my attention. Apparently Turkey's Erdogan doesn't like to be ridiculed (explanatory BBC news report in the link), which seems like an eminently good reason to ridicule him. My first attempt was probably a stretch too far. I started drawing jowls and, naturally, I thought I'd see how far I could take them. By 11pm last night, I realised I'd probably taken them too far so I tried again.
As I redrew the majority of the cartoon, I watched the challenger's debate from earlier in the evening, followed by hours of analysis. Some of it made sense. Much of it didn't. The parties were engaged in their typical spin operations and sometimes even the strongest will struggles to avoid following their bad logic down the rabbit hole of political bias.
I thought the biggest loser of the evening was (surprisingly) David Cameron. I hadn't expected the Prime Minister's absence to hurt him so bad. Yet listening to him claiming credit for the debate earlier in the day was simply nauseating. He spoke of unblocking the logjam when he'd been the cause of the logjam in the beginning. It made the resulting debate feel like justice in that it was an hour and a half of solid government bashing. No having somebody on the stage to defend their record might well be one of the biggest miscalculations of the election. It was bruising stuff.
Of the participants, my verdict was as follows.
Ed Miliband
Miliband didn't need to do much and just stay clear of trouble. He'd won the evening by simply turning up. What followed was, to use a cricket metaphor, a display of playing every ball with straight bat. He never looked like edging a ball to slip but, then, his opponents were hardly steaming in with their fastest deliveries. He ensured his victory at the end by challenging Cameron to a debate. It was a win-win move. If Cameron refuses, he looks week and undemocratic. If he accepts, Miliband gets to debate with Cameron who seems singularly uninterested into entering into any democratic process. From Cameron's point of view, he can't win either way but I think he stands more of a chance by debating.
Natalie Bennett
I can't explain why I have a soft spot for Bennett. Everything should go against her: that accent, those policies, a few woeful performances in various media spotlights. Yet each time she stands up to speak, I find myself surprised by how much I both like her and how much I agree with her. She was the only person to speak up for people who are too sick to be considered 'hardworking'. That, for me, spoke volumes. I know the Green manifesto is filled with risible nonsense. Andew Neil has done enough this election to prove that. However, Bennett has a knack of speaking about things which the other parties don't address. Not sure any of that makes sense but I'm not sure I can explain why Bennett keeps impressing me.
Leanne Wood
Wood attempted to relive her success of the opening leader's debate and she probably suffered for that. She seemed eager to lay into Farage, no doubt knowing it was the thing that she was praised for the last time they met. Beyond that, she spoke to her audience in Wales and about that I'm not really qualified to comment. She doesn't have that connection to English voters that Sturgeon has oddly seemed to have fashioned.
Nichola Sturgeon
People have constantly praised her performance throughout the campaign's debates but last night was the first time I sat up and thought she was something special. She repeatedly had the best answers on the night, though perhaps too few hard questions were directed her way. I can see why she appeals to so many. She has become the face of the election and has replaced Farage as the fashionable outsider that non-voters would like to vote for if they're in England and will vote for if they're north of the border.
Nigel 'Nige' Farage
Not so much a one-trick pony as a pony who has learned a few good tricks which he performs every time he's trotted out onto the national stage. Last night was more of the same from Nige. His tactic is clear. He wants to lose the studio but win the living room. Turning on the audience was probably a masterstroke. He obviously needed the boos to make his point. He wanted to portray himself as the man who speaks for the common folk who never get their opinions aired on TV. He summed it up with his line about 'I say what many of you are probably thinking'. He effectively acknowledged that ninety percent of the people in the room would dislike him and never vote UKIP. He took that fact and turned it to his advantage, reaching out to his core voters to remind them why UKIP is different to the rest.
Thursday, 16 April 2015
Election Notes
Okay. Today's cartoon finished and posted. Now time to write some words...
Another of the many frustrating parts of the election coverage is the way the media seem to be giving the most attention to the generally slack jawed and indifferent. I suppose it's 'news' that some people have no interest in politics but I'm not sure it's really important news. It's certainly a fact not worth repeating in every single news item.
The always excellent Emily Maitlis spent a good portion of last night's Newsnight wasting her quality heels wandering around some London hotspot asking smirking idlers about the party manifestos. It reminded me of being back in school when the teacher would ask the snot-nosed gibbon at the back of the room if he knew the name of the title character of 'Macbeth'. They would give the same shrug, the same creeping smile, eyes looking to friends for affirmation that their stupidity was admirable. And last night the exercise was similarly pointless and taught us nothing except that David Cameron should stop turning his beady eye towards the north when he starts talking about the shiftless.
There is, of course, a difference between wilful ignorance and ignorance that comes naturally. I believe only one guy had read a manifesto, which doesn't surprise me or, at least, surprised that Maitlis found at least one. I haven't read a manifesto and I don't intend on reading a manifesto. Manifestos aren't meant to be read. They're meant to be brandished like a holy book, waved above the head as though you're holding Dumbledore's grimoire or, as Maitlis correctly explained, finally opened but only when you want to prove that your government has gone back on its pre-election promises.
At this election, the manifestos don't even amount to any of those things. The manifestos are written by parties who don't believe they'll get into government and therefore are promising us the earth because they know that the juicy parts can be knocked out as soon as they enter into coalition negotiations. I imagine the first words out of David Cameron's mouth the morning after the election should he win a majority would be the words 'Shit... What did we promise!?'
Which takes us back to the news.
Today The Guardian are in the nation's most apathetic constituency which, surprisingly not, is up here in the North in Manchester Central. I sometimes wonder whether these reporters are setting out to find the story they've already written. I'm constantly depressed that the media in London talk about 'ordinary' folk being turned off politics. I'm not sure how I'm not myself 'ordinary'. I know a lot of ordinary people who talk about the election. It's just that the media never turn a microphone in their direction.
There can be no real surprise why so much of the nation is turned off politics and it has nothing to do with a person being ordinary or not. It goes to the heart of why Scotland has turned so much in favour of the SNP, which I'm certain should try to get the word 'independence' into their title, if only so that we'd be able to call then SNIP. Supporters of SNIP (for that's what they effectively are and what they effectively want) are clearly a generation tired of rule from Westminster and feel particularly aggrieved when their vote does not dramatically alter the government. Last time, Scotland voted in favour of Labour but got a Tory government delivering austerity. Yet the same is true of much of northern England and Wales. One Nation Toryism really has disappeared and the last government produced a Two Nation Toryism. It's everyone south of Birmingham and then the rest of us.
What you get is a sense that large portions of the country simply don't matter in this election. Where I live, the seat was decided generations ago. I might as well not vote or vote for whoever I like because the result will be the same. I suppose it's liberating knowing that you can vote Green or go Monster Raving Lunatic without any consequences but it's also pretty depressing. It means that there's no real campaigning going on. Nobody visits us and we are left with that familiar feeling that the election is being run by people who really don't care about the people. Tonight, I notice, David Cameron won't be attending the leaders debate. It's what he wanted, of course, and he clearly didn't want to attend the two 'debates' (or pitiful excuses for debates) that have already been held. This is the first time I've thought an election was being run by politicians some of whom are even less enthusiastic than the bloody listless public. In a way, I find my opinions hardening around those attitudes rather than the policies. I want to vote for politicians who show the passion and engagement with the public. Not politicians who slyly creep around the country meeting their loyal activists and sticking security personal in the face of some brave soul who dared put a little spice into the general election sing a slightly risqué song on his ukulele.
Another of the many frustrating parts of the election coverage is the way the media seem to be giving the most attention to the generally slack jawed and indifferent. I suppose it's 'news' that some people have no interest in politics but I'm not sure it's really important news. It's certainly a fact not worth repeating in every single news item.
The always excellent Emily Maitlis spent a good portion of last night's Newsnight wasting her quality heels wandering around some London hotspot asking smirking idlers about the party manifestos. It reminded me of being back in school when the teacher would ask the snot-nosed gibbon at the back of the room if he knew the name of the title character of 'Macbeth'. They would give the same shrug, the same creeping smile, eyes looking to friends for affirmation that their stupidity was admirable. And last night the exercise was similarly pointless and taught us nothing except that David Cameron should stop turning his beady eye towards the north when he starts talking about the shiftless.
There is, of course, a difference between wilful ignorance and ignorance that comes naturally. I believe only one guy had read a manifesto, which doesn't surprise me or, at least, surprised that Maitlis found at least one. I haven't read a manifesto and I don't intend on reading a manifesto. Manifestos aren't meant to be read. They're meant to be brandished like a holy book, waved above the head as though you're holding Dumbledore's grimoire or, as Maitlis correctly explained, finally opened but only when you want to prove that your government has gone back on its pre-election promises.
At this election, the manifestos don't even amount to any of those things. The manifestos are written by parties who don't believe they'll get into government and therefore are promising us the earth because they know that the juicy parts can be knocked out as soon as they enter into coalition negotiations. I imagine the first words out of David Cameron's mouth the morning after the election should he win a majority would be the words 'Shit... What did we promise!?'
Which takes us back to the news.
Today The Guardian are in the nation's most apathetic constituency which, surprisingly not, is up here in the North in Manchester Central. I sometimes wonder whether these reporters are setting out to find the story they've already written. I'm constantly depressed that the media in London talk about 'ordinary' folk being turned off politics. I'm not sure how I'm not myself 'ordinary'. I know a lot of ordinary people who talk about the election. It's just that the media never turn a microphone in their direction.
There can be no real surprise why so much of the nation is turned off politics and it has nothing to do with a person being ordinary or not. It goes to the heart of why Scotland has turned so much in favour of the SNP, which I'm certain should try to get the word 'independence' into their title, if only so that we'd be able to call then SNIP. Supporters of SNIP (for that's what they effectively are and what they effectively want) are clearly a generation tired of rule from Westminster and feel particularly aggrieved when their vote does not dramatically alter the government. Last time, Scotland voted in favour of Labour but got a Tory government delivering austerity. Yet the same is true of much of northern England and Wales. One Nation Toryism really has disappeared and the last government produced a Two Nation Toryism. It's everyone south of Birmingham and then the rest of us.
What you get is a sense that large portions of the country simply don't matter in this election. Where I live, the seat was decided generations ago. I might as well not vote or vote for whoever I like because the result will be the same. I suppose it's liberating knowing that you can vote Green or go Monster Raving Lunatic without any consequences but it's also pretty depressing. It means that there's no real campaigning going on. Nobody visits us and we are left with that familiar feeling that the election is being run by people who really don't care about the people. Tonight, I notice, David Cameron won't be attending the leaders debate. It's what he wanted, of course, and he clearly didn't want to attend the two 'debates' (or pitiful excuses for debates) that have already been held. This is the first time I've thought an election was being run by politicians some of whom are even less enthusiastic than the bloody listless public. In a way, I find my opinions hardening around those attitudes rather than the policies. I want to vote for politicians who show the passion and engagement with the public. Not politicians who slyly creep around the country meeting their loyal activists and sticking security personal in the face of some brave soul who dared put a little spice into the general election sing a slightly risqué song on his ukulele.
Sunday, 12 April 2015
Wednesday, 8 April 2015
Sunday, 5 April 2015
The Spine Election Podcast - Episode 4
Rushed. No time to edit this better, perfect my vocals or do any of the hundred other things I was intending on doing. So, it was either publish it as it is, or waste everything I'd done so far. Anyway, for what it's worth: enjoy.
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.
Saturday, 28 March 2015
How Ed Miliband Would Win The Election
My fevers, aches and coughing fits finally eased last night so I finally had the energy and concentration to sit down and watch the Sky News/Channel 4 interviews with the leaders of the two main parties.
The first thing to say is that I thought David Cameron won on the night but it was a hollow victory. All the interesting things that need to be said are about Miliband. Miliband might have come second but that's purely a political score. If it were a football match, Cameron was Stoke City parking eleven players in front of the net and going through on away goals. Miliband was on the losing side but he played the better football. If you were to follow a team based on just this performance, glory seekers might support Cameron. Fans of good football would want to follow the red team.
But let's begin with Cameron. Even if the novelty wore off years ago, I'm often surprised at how personable David Cameron can be. He says warm friendly things with such a practised conviction that you'd be forgiven for forgetting that he's been in charge of the government for the past five years. Over that time, the Tories have lost none of their 'Nasty Party' vibe and, in fact, they seem to have enhanced it. In a sense, it's an amazing skill to develop. I'm not quite sure how Cameron, the Prime Minister, managed to somehow distance himself from the government of Michael Gove, Iain Duncan Smith and George Osborne. He is, I suppose, the velvet glove disguising the iron fist. I read recently that he considers himself a One Nation Tory yet his idol was Baroness Thatcher. That is a big clue to the man and perhaps explains what has happened to the nation under his watch.
On screen, he's the smiling face, well groomed hair, with compassionate answers which you know he's practised ad nauseum in the mirror. He's one of those politicians trained never to point but to use that strange thumb to knuckle gesture that irritates you once you spot it being used. He's another politician who believes that his family shouldn't be used to make political points yet he's another who happily uses his family to make political points. He also plays the One Nation Tory so well. He's the Etonian toff who wants to dedicate a few years to the national service of 'saving the nation' before he goes off to make his fortune. The reality is that he's a Thatcherite at heart; the leader of a deeply radical government that believes that the market is the best arbiter for government as well as business. He is the merciless opponent of real standards and that 'closed shop' mentality brought about by such 'outmoded' concepts as professional qualifications or experience. His government repeatedly helps the rich and uses the poor as the red meat to feed their braying constituency. Paxman's question about zero hour contacts was the best of the night but the consequences of that weren't taken to their logical conclusions, exploding the reality of the 'them' and 'us' culture of government and (I suppose) the media. Miliband is regularly attacked because of the proposed 'Mansion Tax' that might hit the super wealthy but Cameron rarely has to defend the real 'Bedroom Tax' which is already hurting poor people. Instead, the charm of the man carried him through the evening. He laughed and smiled and said we're all in this together and let's jolly well get the chuffing job finished! At the end of the hour, the audience knew no more about him or what the next five years might truly entail.
One of the only things to really note about the first half of the show was that Kay Burley was too sycophantic to the PM. She has a track record, of course. Her career at Sky News has been marked by repeated examples of her allowing her impartiality to slip. She often gives authorities an easy ride, her saccharin interviewing technique landing many one-on-ones with people in power. Yet, to anybody disadvantaged or protesting against the status quo, it's a quite different style that emerges: she becomes combinative, bullying, hectoring, her interviews laced with tart asides and last word quips, usually all followed by a knowing look to camera once the interview is over. She channels the Fox News spirit into a British sphere and it's wholly unwelcome. Given her past history, there wasn't a presenter I thought less suited to this debate and so it proved as she punctuated the Miliband session with editorial judgements such as 'that's a politician's answer' and the moment she interjected 'let's not talk about the conservatives, let's talk about what you do. I'm sure members of the audience remember about [...] the note that was left behind'. Why Sky chose Burley just baffles me when they also have the wonderful Anna Jones.
By the time Miliband appeared on stage, my feeling was that Cameron had set the bar pretty low. Miliband only needed to turn up to win an easy victory. Only, it didn't turn out like that.
His preparation was Miliband's undoing. He had a deliberate strategy, which was clearly the product of whatever awful 'people' people the Labour HQ are currently employing. He's clearly gone through the media friendly drills: ask the audience member their name and preface every answer with little lead in phrases such as 'let me explain why'. It made for a polished performance but, really, it stripped him of his personality. He was attempting to play the game by Cameron's rules and highlighted the strange dichotomy that exists between what we want of our politicians and what we probably deserve.
There's a phenomenon in current British politics that's barely been explained. The rise of the New Right is not simply a seismic shift of political allegiance. UKIP membership is not simply the far right of the Tory party. If it were, they wouldn't command 20% in the polls. Instead, they've eaten into Labour and Lib Dems support. The shifts are fluid, of course, and go many ways. Some Lib Dems might have moved to Labour but a surprising number of old Labour supporters now throwing their votes towards UKIP.
UKIP's success, I would argue, isn't merely about a current concern with immigration. It's surprising to see many people professing their support for UKIP when previously they'd have been staunchly Labour. The explanation is that it's not simply about policy. UKIP are more Tory than the Tories and many of their votes would never have voted Tory in their lives. Instead, it's about language and the nature of British political debate which started with Tony Blair. Iraq might be the legacy that most people associate with Blair but, for me, it was the neutering of the political arena. Blair's government were master manipulators of the message. They used the techniques of PR to convince people that they were right. Ministers were told to remove beards and use key phrases. It led to a bastardized politics that remains to this day. It's the politics of the coming election when argument will be replaced by billboards, sound bites and cheap smears. We already hear the key phrases such as 'long term economic plan' and 'for hardworking people'. It's Pavlovian politics, whereby you repeat an untruth enough times that it takes on the permanence of a truth.
It's a political strategy that suits Cameron immensely and he plays it supremely well. David Miliband would have also played it well but brother Ed is not suited to the game. In fact, not only should he not play it but not playing that game might be his greatest strength.
I contest that UKIP's success is primarily down to the figure of Nigel Farage, an odd looking man, often seen standing in a pub his huge ugly teeth on show as he laughs open mouthed. He's graceless, without much sense of fashion. He's exactly the opposite of Cameron and, here's the important part, people love him because of that. His virtue is that he's not cut from the same cloth as David Cameron or Tony Blair. He's a throwback not just to a bygone England but to a former political style. He appeals to many people who simply feel that politicians talk over them, in cleverly rehearsed rhetoric which never answers a single question. Farage is popular because he's one of the few alternatives to vanilla party politics. Yet on the basis of last night's performance, Ed Miliband is about 90% of the way towards having a similar common touch. It's just that 10% of polish which gets in the way.
For example, at one point, Paxman demanded that Miliband set a figure for the potential population of the UK in the coming years. 70 million? 75 million? 80 million? Miliband tried to play the game. He refused to provide a number and instead tried to move the debate on to the question about our membership of the EU. 'I haven't mentioned the European Union,' waited Paxman. 'You're making up questions yourself'.
It was the lowest point of the evening as the audience sniggered. Having been the subject of enough schoolyard bullying in my life, I recognised it for what it was. Somebody asks you to name your favourite band and no matter what you answer, you become a laughing stock to a crowd all too ready to follow the example set by bully. I've always liked Paxman but I thought he went too far. Perhaps he knew that himself given that we could faintly hear him ask 'Are you okay, Ed?' as the credit's rolled.
Yet oddly it was the bulling that seemed to break Miliband's nerve. His temper frayed and Miliband rose to another level. The last five minutes of his interview had more conviction than the rest of the show. Had he been that passionate and informal in the preceding mannered minutes, the night would have been his.
What struck me about the debate was that perhaps Miliband's greatest virtue might be that he's nothing like Cameron. Large portions of the electorate are turned off politics because politicians don't answer straight questions with straight answers. Miliband could turn that to his advantage. John Major did exactly that when he deployed his stupid crate of oranges that everybody thought a ridiculous ploy until it connected with the nation in an odd but meaningful way.
I'm not sure if Miliband need a crate of oranges but I think he simply needs to find that edge. He needs to stop listening to his 'people' people and stop being so damn nice. He's not going to out-nice Cameron. What he could do is galvanise an electorate who are sick of political sock puppetry. He could talk to a nation largely unrepresented by an Etonian elite running the country from the heart of a city that feels ever more remote to the rest of the nation. He should turn the debate from the questions the media want to ask to the questions that the rest of the country want to hear answered. You do not win the country simply by winning London. The only question is how Labour go about doing that. If they play the election on Cameron's terms, they won't been seen as a viable alternative. They should instead play the game as Farage plays it: with self-deprecating humour, spontaneous moments of genuine character, off the cuff encounters with common people even if that means having those 'media' moments with dissenters. I caught just a hint of it last night but for the first time I realised that Miliband's lack of polish and willingness to engage the electorate might be the very thing that just might win him the forthcoming election. It's only a matter of whether Labour have the wits to realise this.
The first thing to say is that I thought David Cameron won on the night but it was a hollow victory. All the interesting things that need to be said are about Miliband. Miliband might have come second but that's purely a political score. If it were a football match, Cameron was Stoke City parking eleven players in front of the net and going through on away goals. Miliband was on the losing side but he played the better football. If you were to follow a team based on just this performance, glory seekers might support Cameron. Fans of good football would want to follow the red team.
But let's begin with Cameron. Even if the novelty wore off years ago, I'm often surprised at how personable David Cameron can be. He says warm friendly things with such a practised conviction that you'd be forgiven for forgetting that he's been in charge of the government for the past five years. Over that time, the Tories have lost none of their 'Nasty Party' vibe and, in fact, they seem to have enhanced it. In a sense, it's an amazing skill to develop. I'm not quite sure how Cameron, the Prime Minister, managed to somehow distance himself from the government of Michael Gove, Iain Duncan Smith and George Osborne. He is, I suppose, the velvet glove disguising the iron fist. I read recently that he considers himself a One Nation Tory yet his idol was Baroness Thatcher. That is a big clue to the man and perhaps explains what has happened to the nation under his watch.
On screen, he's the smiling face, well groomed hair, with compassionate answers which you know he's practised ad nauseum in the mirror. He's one of those politicians trained never to point but to use that strange thumb to knuckle gesture that irritates you once you spot it being used. He's another politician who believes that his family shouldn't be used to make political points yet he's another who happily uses his family to make political points. He also plays the One Nation Tory so well. He's the Etonian toff who wants to dedicate a few years to the national service of 'saving the nation' before he goes off to make his fortune. The reality is that he's a Thatcherite at heart; the leader of a deeply radical government that believes that the market is the best arbiter for government as well as business. He is the merciless opponent of real standards and that 'closed shop' mentality brought about by such 'outmoded' concepts as professional qualifications or experience. His government repeatedly helps the rich and uses the poor as the red meat to feed their braying constituency. Paxman's question about zero hour contacts was the best of the night but the consequences of that weren't taken to their logical conclusions, exploding the reality of the 'them' and 'us' culture of government and (I suppose) the media. Miliband is regularly attacked because of the proposed 'Mansion Tax' that might hit the super wealthy but Cameron rarely has to defend the real 'Bedroom Tax' which is already hurting poor people. Instead, the charm of the man carried him through the evening. He laughed and smiled and said we're all in this together and let's jolly well get the chuffing job finished! At the end of the hour, the audience knew no more about him or what the next five years might truly entail.
One of the only things to really note about the first half of the show was that Kay Burley was too sycophantic to the PM. She has a track record, of course. Her career at Sky News has been marked by repeated examples of her allowing her impartiality to slip. She often gives authorities an easy ride, her saccharin interviewing technique landing many one-on-ones with people in power. Yet, to anybody disadvantaged or protesting against the status quo, it's a quite different style that emerges: she becomes combinative, bullying, hectoring, her interviews laced with tart asides and last word quips, usually all followed by a knowing look to camera once the interview is over. She channels the Fox News spirit into a British sphere and it's wholly unwelcome. Given her past history, there wasn't a presenter I thought less suited to this debate and so it proved as she punctuated the Miliband session with editorial judgements such as 'that's a politician's answer' and the moment she interjected 'let's not talk about the conservatives, let's talk about what you do. I'm sure members of the audience remember about [...] the note that was left behind'. Why Sky chose Burley just baffles me when they also have the wonderful Anna Jones.
By the time Miliband appeared on stage, my feeling was that Cameron had set the bar pretty low. Miliband only needed to turn up to win an easy victory. Only, it didn't turn out like that.
His preparation was Miliband's undoing. He had a deliberate strategy, which was clearly the product of whatever awful 'people' people the Labour HQ are currently employing. He's clearly gone through the media friendly drills: ask the audience member their name and preface every answer with little lead in phrases such as 'let me explain why'. It made for a polished performance but, really, it stripped him of his personality. He was attempting to play the game by Cameron's rules and highlighted the strange dichotomy that exists between what we want of our politicians and what we probably deserve.
There's a phenomenon in current British politics that's barely been explained. The rise of the New Right is not simply a seismic shift of political allegiance. UKIP membership is not simply the far right of the Tory party. If it were, they wouldn't command 20% in the polls. Instead, they've eaten into Labour and Lib Dems support. The shifts are fluid, of course, and go many ways. Some Lib Dems might have moved to Labour but a surprising number of old Labour supporters now throwing their votes towards UKIP.
UKIP's success, I would argue, isn't merely about a current concern with immigration. It's surprising to see many people professing their support for UKIP when previously they'd have been staunchly Labour. The explanation is that it's not simply about policy. UKIP are more Tory than the Tories and many of their votes would never have voted Tory in their lives. Instead, it's about language and the nature of British political debate which started with Tony Blair. Iraq might be the legacy that most people associate with Blair but, for me, it was the neutering of the political arena. Blair's government were master manipulators of the message. They used the techniques of PR to convince people that they were right. Ministers were told to remove beards and use key phrases. It led to a bastardized politics that remains to this day. It's the politics of the coming election when argument will be replaced by billboards, sound bites and cheap smears. We already hear the key phrases such as 'long term economic plan' and 'for hardworking people'. It's Pavlovian politics, whereby you repeat an untruth enough times that it takes on the permanence of a truth.
It's a political strategy that suits Cameron immensely and he plays it supremely well. David Miliband would have also played it well but brother Ed is not suited to the game. In fact, not only should he not play it but not playing that game might be his greatest strength.
I contest that UKIP's success is primarily down to the figure of Nigel Farage, an odd looking man, often seen standing in a pub his huge ugly teeth on show as he laughs open mouthed. He's graceless, without much sense of fashion. He's exactly the opposite of Cameron and, here's the important part, people love him because of that. His virtue is that he's not cut from the same cloth as David Cameron or Tony Blair. He's a throwback not just to a bygone England but to a former political style. He appeals to many people who simply feel that politicians talk over them, in cleverly rehearsed rhetoric which never answers a single question. Farage is popular because he's one of the few alternatives to vanilla party politics. Yet on the basis of last night's performance, Ed Miliband is about 90% of the way towards having a similar common touch. It's just that 10% of polish which gets in the way.
For example, at one point, Paxman demanded that Miliband set a figure for the potential population of the UK in the coming years. 70 million? 75 million? 80 million? Miliband tried to play the game. He refused to provide a number and instead tried to move the debate on to the question about our membership of the EU. 'I haven't mentioned the European Union,' waited Paxman. 'You're making up questions yourself'.
It was the lowest point of the evening as the audience sniggered. Having been the subject of enough schoolyard bullying in my life, I recognised it for what it was. Somebody asks you to name your favourite band and no matter what you answer, you become a laughing stock to a crowd all too ready to follow the example set by bully. I've always liked Paxman but I thought he went too far. Perhaps he knew that himself given that we could faintly hear him ask 'Are you okay, Ed?' as the credit's rolled.
Yet oddly it was the bulling that seemed to break Miliband's nerve. His temper frayed and Miliband rose to another level. The last five minutes of his interview had more conviction than the rest of the show. Had he been that passionate and informal in the preceding mannered minutes, the night would have been his.
What struck me about the debate was that perhaps Miliband's greatest virtue might be that he's nothing like Cameron. Large portions of the electorate are turned off politics because politicians don't answer straight questions with straight answers. Miliband could turn that to his advantage. John Major did exactly that when he deployed his stupid crate of oranges that everybody thought a ridiculous ploy until it connected with the nation in an odd but meaningful way.
I'm not sure if Miliband need a crate of oranges but I think he simply needs to find that edge. He needs to stop listening to his 'people' people and stop being so damn nice. He's not going to out-nice Cameron. What he could do is galvanise an electorate who are sick of political sock puppetry. He could talk to a nation largely unrepresented by an Etonian elite running the country from the heart of a city that feels ever more remote to the rest of the nation. He should turn the debate from the questions the media want to ask to the questions that the rest of the country want to hear answered. You do not win the country simply by winning London. The only question is how Labour go about doing that. If they play the election on Cameron's terms, they won't been seen as a viable alternative. They should instead play the game as Farage plays it: with self-deprecating humour, spontaneous moments of genuine character, off the cuff encounters with common people even if that means having those 'media' moments with dissenters. I caught just a hint of it last night but for the first time I realised that Miliband's lack of polish and willingness to engage the electorate might be the very thing that just might win him the forthcoming election. It's only a matter of whether Labour have the wits to realise this.
Friday, 27 March 2015
A Bercow/Hague Cartoon
I drew this in the time it took me to watch Question Time last night. I wish Question Time had been longer, though it was nearly 3am by the time it finished. I was up for another five hours, unable to sleep because of the strange sensations going on in my throat. Sleeping sitting up never works for me so I ended up watching random things on the BBC iPlayer. I didn't have any means of watching the leader's 'debate' otherwise I'd have watched that. However, I understand it was pretty bad (though Paxman was good) and that Kay Burley did her usual stunt of sucking up to the rich and powerful and going all in to hammer the relatively weak or powerless. I have to see if I can find it online. I simply forgot it was on last night. (And, in fact, I was about to delete the comment about Kay Burley since I didn't see it myself and it was sister (politically pretty neutral) who told me and was really indignant about it. Then I saw this and figured it sounded pretty typical.)
Away from politics, I'm pretty certain I know what's been wrong with me. I thought I had a cold. I'm now sure I picked up a viral throat infection at some point in Chester. I've had all the symptoms and an absence of cold and flu symptoms. It's still not turned into a proper cold and I don't feel as bad as I'd usually feel with a cold and an almost total absence of solid sleep. More amusingly, my Barry White voice has gone because I can no longer string more than two words together before it leaps into the higher octaves, only audible to dogs and Liberal Democrats. Not sure if this is now technically laryngitis but my family think it's highly amusing.
Anyway, I hit the websites looking for cures. Green tea and honey was supposed to be good. I'm sure it is if you stomach the stuff. The slowly brewed yeast off a mouldy old badger wouldn't have tasted so bad.
Friday, 13 March 2015
Review: This Week (12/03/2015)
This Week* remains, for me, the best show on TV. The current brouhaha about Clarkson would pale compared to my reaction should Andrew Neil ever receive the BBC poleaxe. The virtue of the show is that it's rarely about policy. The various issues of political debate are rarely highlighted as much as the debate itself. The show is really about the meat and bones of Westminster: the personalities, the strategic calculations, and the great machinations of state.
The show is at its best, as it was last night, when the nasty underbelly of politics is exposed and tickled. This week, that nastiness arrived in the form of Michael Gove's wife, Sarah Vine, who also happens to be a Daily Mail columnist with a particularly vile line in acid. Both Michael Portillo and Alan Johnson attacked her strongly for the astonishingly vicious piece she recently wrote about Ed Miliband's wife. If anything, their visible anger didn't go far enough but what we had was a riveting exchange and a highlight of my week.
If This Week has a failing, however, it's always the final segment when they try to broaden the appeal of the show by inviting somebody from outside the political sphere to contribute to the debate. It's often some uber hip member of a reality TV show or the saxophonist from a 1970s supergroup who has since moved into organic truffles. Last night it was an astonishingly irritating nineteen year old who swaggered into the studio with an attitude that wouldn't be out of place in a prime ministerial address to the nation. It wasn't just the nascent sideburns struggling to stretch from his ears to somewhere beneath his puppy fat chin. Nor was it the black cravat he was wearing. It was the sheer banality of his views that made me sit up and wonder how the hell Tyger Drew Honey has come to the producer's attention. He proceeded to give the 'yoof' view of social issues and offered such a bland summary of life's problems that it would only endorse a view that people under twenty one don't really know enough about anything to have an 'opinion'. Yet, good guys to the last, both Portillo and Johnson patronised him with their favourable words. He was 'opening their eyes' to issues but, really, had they not been aware of those issues, then you'd question their place on the sofa.
'Tyger' came out with, frankly, feeble nonsense such as 'I know a lot of adults think that kids have the intelligence not to do these things, but I think that's ridiculous because put yourself in the position when you were a teenager, when you knew something was wrong, you'd still try to get away with it'. That wasn't true when I was a teenager and it's no longer true now. Yet, I guess, I can't speak for everybody. He then proceeded with this gem. 'I think we need to think about educating moreso the adults in the above generations as to what precautions you can put in place to actually stop my generation from being able to do certain things, on the internet especially'.
In other words, parents should keep any eye on what their children are doing and watching. Astonishing. Quite the novel idea. Not sure where I've heard it before...
It is only with hindsight that his words become particularly ironic and are the reason I'm writing this now. Wondering who the hell I was watching, I went onto the internet to research 'Tyger Drew Honey' and to understand why the producers of This Week thought his views should matter. I didn't have to look far. Thankfully, Wikipedia has all the answers. It all begins here:
Drew-Honey was born in Epsom, Surrey, the son of pornographic actor and director Simon James Honey and adult actress Linzi Drew.
Following the father's link, takes you to:
Simon James Honey (born 23 May 1956 in Sittingbourne, Kent), better known as Ben Dover, is an English pornographic actor, director and producer
Follow the mother's link, you discover she was:
'a Page 3 girl, stripper, glamour model and porn actress and was at one time the editor of the British edition of Penthouse magazine'.
She was also, incidentally, on the cover of Roger Water's excellent album, 'The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking', a cover designed by Gerald Scarfe.
I know the sins of the father aren't those of the son but I find it telling that in the supposedly egalitarian society of modern Britain, it's the son of the man who made 'Ben Dover's British Anal Invasion' (1997) and 'Ben Dover's Soccer Sluts' (2003) who is sitting on TW's sofa telling us that it's the older generation who should be our moral watchdogs. By the looks of things, it's his elders who have largely contributed to the moral degradation of our society, earning a small fortune in the process and funding his education at Epsom College (Patron H.M. The Queen) where fees range from £7,335 to £10,730 a term, a privileged start to life which has now helped launch him into a career in TV punditry.
You couldn't make this stuff up and, as great a show as it is, it makes me wonder what kind of researchers are working on This Week. Andrew Neil, Michael Portillo, and Alan Johnson deserves better because, last night, knowing what I now know, their responses looked mildly ludicrous to a Tyger who did not burn particularly bright.
* That's right. The title of the show is 'This Week'. Anybody who'd call it 'The Week in Politics' clearly doesn't know what they're talking about. However, it's an easy mistake to make. There are so many of them: The Daily Politics, The Sunday Politics, Strictly Come Politics With Andrew Neil. It's easy to get confused...
Saturday, 22 November 2014
Men Like Joe
Life's rarely fair. Take the case of Mr. Daniel Ware: picked out of nowhere because a passerby shared a picture of his chez res on social media and before the ink is dry on his contract with The Sun he's standing in front of the media as the representative of an entire class. He hadn't asked to be judged and it would be wrong of anybody to try to understand his soul simply by looking at him. So, let's not make this about Mr. Daniel Ware who, according to his neighbours, is simply a 'gentle giant'. I really don't want to talk about Mr. Ware. I really don't care about Mr. Ware.
Instead, let's talk about people who look like Mr. Ware. I'm sure you won't have to look very far.
In the early hours of yesterday, Emily Thornberry resigned from the shadow cabinet (or, according to some reports, she was sacked) because she had been resorting to stereotypes about the working classes. How dare she judge a man by the flag he waves... Or so the argument begins. There's nothing wrong with people who are proud of their country and, if a man (not Mr. Ware, just a man who looks like Mr. Ware) just happens to drive a white van, then he's one of many tens of thousands who take to our roads every day in vans painted white. Maybe they represent the national average in some obscure but meaningful way. Maybe, if you wanted to take a snapshot of Britain on the 21st November, 2014, you would come away with a portrait of a man who looks very much like Mr. Ware but, obviously, isn't Mr. Ware. Let's call this lookalike Joe Anybody. Joe looks just like Mr Ware and, lucky for us, has a very similar biography.
For example, Joe just happens to sport a skinhead and have that fold of flesh at the back of his head that always makes me think of Grossberger in Stir Crazy. It makes me think of violence and warehouses late at night. Unlike Grossberger, Joe also sports a few tattoos. But there are probably thousands of men who are like Joe: heavily tattooed and also supporters of West Ham United. And just because Joe supports West Ham and has a skin head, it would be wrong to mention that English football hooliganism began with West Ham's 'Bovver Boys' of the 1960s or that they were sympathisers of the National Front and characterised by their tattoos and skin heads.
Joe also reads The Sun but so do lots of men. They enjoy looking at the women with the big tits but lots of men enjoy looking at women with big tits. He deals in cars which is a legitimate business and great for the economy. The nation thrives because of wheeler dealers. And if he happens to enjoy climbing into a cage and beating other men up, he's not breaking any laws. He simply needs to relax after a head day's wheeling and dealing.
Critics of Emily Thornberry would say that none of this matters. And they're right because clearly, none of this has anything to do with the real person Mr. Daniel Ware. Her tweet about him was reductive and crude.
However, had Emily Thornberry tweeted a picture of the house belonging to our entirely imaginary friend Joe, would we think that her stereotype was at all inaccurate?
Maybe the very worst thing you can say about Joe is that if you were casting a role for a brutish modern thug with far right sympathies, he would land the role on £120 quid a day and everything he can eat from catering. Perhaps if you were interested in modern British culture, you might also say that Joe is an example of a current and deeply troubling phenomenon. Men like Joe are the epitome of the new moronic Britain. They are the stuff of our most moronic TV, usually hosted by our favourite Joe lookalike, Ross Kemp, and with titles involving the words 'hardest', 'meanest', and 'most dangerous'. They are familiar because they're loutish and loud, muscle bound and steroid thick. They are the cretins who smash bottles on our high streets on a Friday night. You want to indulge in cheap stereotypes, then how about muscle vests, medallions, sovereign rings, ethnic tattoos, names of their numerous kids trailing up their vein-thick necks. How about pitbulls and rottweilers, broken noses, gold teeth, four by fours, road rage, gang culture, drug wars, English nationalism, football terraces, racism, hatred, violence, lad culture, pornography, rape...
Or perhaps there's another story here. Perhaps we should be more worried at the way the media rushes to appoint a skin-head tattooed West Ham supporter who happens to be a cage fighter as the sole representative of the working classes.
Is this what we've come to as a nation?
The media are cowardly stepping around the story. We live in an age when it's so easy to cause offence. Yet nobody asks if it's right to cause offence. Maybe we need to go on the offensive against men like Joe because, if you met a man like Joe in the flesh, what would you really think?
And yet in asking this, I know I could be accused of being elitist and sneering towards the working classes. Perhaps I am but I think I have the right because I am pure bred working class. Men like Joe and Mr Ware are standing as proxy for me.
But let me be clear. I don't mean that I'm working class in some kind of exotic way. I don't 'identify' with the working classes because that's a cool thing to do. I'm pretty well educated but I don't have a middle class upbringing. I'm not suddenly finding a kitsch appeal in the working classes. I see myself as working class because I am working class. I am born of working class parents. My grandparents were all working class and one of them was a Lithuanian (or possibly Russian, there remains some confusion) immigrant whose parents fled the Bolshevik revolution. I live in a working class town, surrounded by working class people and everybody I meet each and every day is working class. And what might sound strange is that not all of them are inarticulate or lazy or socialist or angry or loud or violent or tasteless or dumb or any of the stereotypes that are routinely thrown our way. Not all of us keep the brown sauce on the dining room table or wear slippers to the corner shop or eat fish and chips every night before taking our teeth out in order to suck on a bottle of Newkie Brown. Not all of us have tattoos or skinheads or gold chains or enjoy cage fighting. Of course, there are some that do a few of these things and there are people I see every day who obviously do a great many of these things. However, the majority of the people I know would simply look at Joe and give the sniff we all give to men of that type. They're the type we know only so well because the rarely whispered secret is that nobody hates the working classes more than the working classes. We know our ranks. We know our archetypes. We know the bad types.
They're found in every neighbourhood and in every neighbourhood they express the same thoughts and feelings and communicate in the very same loud boorish ways. You don't need a degree in sociology to identify them and you don't need extensive research to reach the conclusion that the type is neither typical nor average. I live next door to a fine example of the breed. I hear the anger, the shouting, the arguments that spill out into the street. I see the money they have, the success they find in a world that rewards their type. There's another up the road who looks the same, walks the same, and has exactly the same political outlook, the same hugely expensive 4x4. I could walk you to the homes of a dozen of their type and never lose sight of my own doorstep. In fact, from where I write this, I look out over a gym that is a second home to dozens upon dozens of men who all look like Joe. The town is filled with men who look like that. But are they typical? Can they represent us in any meaningful way?
This is what ultimately galls me about the coverage this story has been given this morning in the media. The most insulting part of this story isn't the shadow minister's tweet. It's the Labour leadership and, in turn, the newspapers who would defend men like Joe and hold him up as something good and noble. The insult to the working classes is to say that we're all somehow like that. And how bloody dare anybody equate me to a bald tattooed West Ham supporting white van driving cage fighter who drapes himself in the flag of St George.
Maybe -- just maybe -- Emily Thornberry's tweet was succinct and meaningful. Maybe stereotypes exist not because they're a lazy way of thinking about the world but because they're a handy way to spot the modern archetypes that exist in the real world. Maybe Emily Thornberry's tweet said something profound about England on the 21st November, 2014, a nation that abandoned boxing because it was simply too tame and took up cage fighting which is as repellent as it is bloody and brutal. The ultimate insult to the working classes is that we're not having a debate about tattoos, and muscles, and the culture of macho violence and, ultimately, the kind of men who wave the flag. What does it say about British politics when a political party is happy to damage itself and disown its own over a slightly misguided tweet, simply in order to reach out to that kind of man?
Saturday, 15 November 2014
Ed Miliband and the Kim Kardashian Factor
And here's my Not Safe For Work video and my spontaneous rant about Kim Kardashian's arse, Dr Matt Taylor's so called 'sexist' shirt, Ed Miliband's leadership, culture, populism, art, and the lack of real debate around the Ched Evans story. Partway through the video, I repeat a section of video, so you' not going mad if you think you've seen that before. In the final part of the video, I make comments about the Ched Evans story which I wouldn't wish to be seen as a defense of Ched Evans. I merely ask why celebrity should have any bearing in our forming a decision in any kind of moral debate.
Friday, 14 November 2014
A Topical Ed Miliband Cartoon
New optimism this morning. Yesterday I installed a new plugin to this blog and it claims to track my RSS feed. I thought literally nobody picked up my feeds but now I see it's even more popular that reading the site through a browser. Oh, I know many of the hits are bots working for news aggregators. I also know that simply because my stuff appears in people's feed readers doesn't mean they actually read my words. But it feels oddly better being unread by thousands of people that being visited by just a few hundred.
This morning I faced a mild dilemma. What do you do when SPAM isn't SPAM? The Chinese are clearly a clever people and are adapting their tactics. I've been hit by their SPAM for months and I've been able to delete it all without hesitation. This morning, however, I found this comment waiting for me:
The problem is that it's not entirely SPAM. Whoever left it, looked at my post long enough to spot that I'd included a panorama shot of Sherdley Park in St Helens and, clearly, the people of Hong Kong trawl the web looking for panorama shot of Sherdley Park in St Helens... I'm not sure what I can do if the spammers start to read my blog. It's my nightmare scenario.
As you can see, I don't have much time to write so I've quickly narrated last night's cartoon. It's eight minutes of my usual nasal waffle (I always sound like I have a cold, which is probably to be expected because I do always seem to have a cold). Today's brief rant is about UK politics and Nigel Farage and my difficulties with drawing Ed Miliband's face.
***
This morning I faced a mild dilemma. What do you do when SPAM isn't SPAM? The Chinese are clearly a clever people and are adapting their tactics. I've been hit by their SPAM for months and I've been able to delete it all without hesitation. This morning, however, I found this comment waiting for me:
Love your full scenery shot~!
Welcome visit me back http://ecinfant.blogspot.hk/
The problem is that it's not entirely SPAM. Whoever left it, looked at my post long enough to spot that I'd included a panorama shot of Sherdley Park in St Helens and, clearly, the people of Hong Kong trawl the web looking for panorama shot of Sherdley Park in St Helens... I'm not sure what I can do if the spammers start to read my blog. It's my nightmare scenario.
***
As you can see, I don't have much time to write so I've quickly narrated last night's cartoon. It's eight minutes of my usual nasal waffle (I always sound like I have a cold, which is probably to be expected because I do always seem to have a cold). Today's brief rant is about UK politics and Nigel Farage and my difficulties with drawing Ed Miliband's face.
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