What have I been up to?

Evening all! Yes, it's 7.15 p.m. and I'm in the office, which is normal for me. But it's not normal for me not to post on here so late in the day. It's just been one of those rushed-off-your-feet ones. I've been here since 8.30, marking essays for the first-year Literature and Identity students. We gave them the Romantic classic The Sorrows of Young Werther and the not-quite-as-clever-as-he-thinks Noughties, which is suffused with conscious Romanticism, and asked them to compare the central protagonists. Young Werther kills himself: Eliot Lamb keeps quiet about a broken condom, and fails to deal with his high-school sweetheart developing a brain of her own. Autre temps, autres mores as they say, but there's a shared core across the centuries.

The essays were pretty good: few fails and quite a lot of A grade efforts. Even the fails weren't awful: people had gone astray rather than exposed themselves as incapable of being literary scholars. The only real screw-up was by, ahem, me. I finished the pile unexpectedly early and went off for lunch in the Sloppery, toting a copy of the London Review of Books as a prop to relax with in the spirit of a teacher who'd done a good job.

Except that I hadn't. I finished off the pile in record time because I'd accidentally stapled some unmarked essays to the back of a marked one. The students were, thankfully, amused rather than annoyed and I marked them after the class. The session itself was more fun than it could have been too. After a concluding discussion of the post-modern self in Lorna Sage's Bad Blood, I returned the essays and had a personal chat with every student. Some were a little upset, but all were mature and thoughtful. Some were even funny, which I don't think I'd have managed at that stage in my academic career.

So that's done. The rest of the week is dedicated to reading BA and MA dissertation drafts, and giving Paradise Lost tutorials. Easy!

Books in today: Grigson's The Faber Book of Epigrams and Epitaphs (inspired by my earlier post about popular mockery of prominent individuals); the unnecessarily expensive but very impressive Writing Wales: From The Renaissance to Romanticism (£55!) and a beautiful collection of Tom Gauld's cartoons, You're All Just Jealous of my Jetpack. I've a couple of Gauld originals decorating my office and once I shift this spare kidney on eBay, I'll get a couple more.

Soundtrack to the week? The new Low album (seeing them next week: yay), Suede's new effort, Jackie Oates' Lullabies, lots of Songs: Ohia, Kurt Vile's new album (good, but every song could be three minutes shorter without losing intensity), the new Vocalconsort Berlin CD of Gesualdo's sacred choral music, and the Hallé's great new Vaughan Williams 5th and 8th Symphonies. All highly recommended. 

And not forgetting this rather fine compilation of Thatcher songs. 

Fancy a foursome?

So, this weekend in between cooking delightful food (braised leeks in thyme and white wine, on a bed of pearl barley one night, followed by a zingy lime dahl the next), I went to see A Late Quartet, starring Christopher Walken, Catherine Keener, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Mark Ivanir.





The plot is pretty simple: a string quartet is faced with an uncertain future when its oldest member, the cellist, is diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Deciding whether to split up or replace him, all the tensions inherent in a quartet's symbiotic relationship over decades come to the surface. Disagreements over interpretation, over musical style and over the pecking order suddenly press on them just as they're dealing also with the emotional impact of loss. Added to this is a series of other pressures. Cellist Peter is a recent widow; the marriage between violist Juliette and second violinist Robert is under considerable strain. Meanwhile, metronomic first violinist Daniel's robotic carapace is cracked by his tempestuous affair with Juliette and Robert's talented but screwed-up daughter.

All this is conducted (sorry) under the pressure of practicing Beethoven's String Quartet 14, op. 131. It's a weird one, as the film very impressively discusses. Seven movements instead of four, no breaks in between so that the performers have to cope with all their instruments going out of tune in different ways…  it's a quartet about emotional and musical maelstroms, about dependence and trust and adaptation to your colleagues. So it's a nice conceit to go with the plot (and admirably performed by the magnificent Brentano Quartet, with the actors miming with some success.



The last time I saw Philip Seymour Hoffman in a film, he was sawing off someone's fingers while on a plane (or something) in Mission Impossible III. Likewise, while I've loved Christopher Walken in many many films, he mostly sticks in my mind for and Sleepy Hollow, in which he played the decapitated and  murderous ghost of an American War of Independence German mercenary:

So I was intrigued: how would these esteemed character actors whom I've only seen playing psychopathic loonies cope with the sensitivities of a High Culture part? The answer, actually, was admirably. Walken is controlling, hurt and entirely in thrall to music regardless of his comrades' emotional turmoil. Hoffman is pretty much perfect as the egotistical, insecure second violinist, convinced his wife has never loved him, itching to be the soloist. Catherine Keener is distant, controlled and yet convincingly torn between the demands of music and the requirements of a family life, while Mark Ivanir is perhaps best of all as the rigid perfectionist leader. 

And yet… it doesn't quite work. The film's shot like one of the Woody Allen's wonderful 70s New York films: snow, Central Park, rich white European-American New Yorkers facing the profound questions of life and creativity. But the film can't decide whether it's a middle-brow soap opera with some fancy High Culture stylings, or a High Culture film with a soapy sub-plot. The main problem is the affair between student Alexandra (played by Imogen Poots) and Daniel. She's a spoiled brat who feels like Mummy and Daddy never loved her enough because they were away with the quartet too much. She's preternaturally mature in some ways, yet hysterically teenage in others. By the time she tells her mum that she should have had an abortion rather than try to juggle motherhood and music, I was done, at least with this sub-plot. It's a shame really: the music world is rife with relationships between teachers and their proteges, and the UK music scene is being ripped apart at the moment following the revelation that music teachers have sexually abused, raped or coerced some of their students. The isolation, the intensity of the bond between maestro and élite student is ripe for exploitation and misunderstanding, yet A Late Quartet doesn't explore this: the sub-plot feels like an excuse to get some young flesh, a 15 certificate and a bit of relief from the endless discussions of bow marks, Beethoven's feelings and phrasing. 

I'd have gone the other way. There are plenty of films out there with firm young buttocks, car crashes and alien invasions. I watch a lot of them. So why not have the courage to make a film which is only and unapologetically about two fascinating subjects: the dynamics of a quartet as it faces change and the emotional power of a wonderful piece of music? Something for grown-ups? My cousin is the lead violinist and last remaining founder member of the Vanbrugh Quartet and have recorded the entire Beethoven Quartet cycle: I'd love to ask him how they've handled the transitions between members personally and emotionally. 

The attempt to widen the film's appeal by adding a soap twist and young flesh didn't work, by the way: there were 11 people in the audience. Of these 11, I would like to commit grevious bodily harm on several. If you deliberately go to watch a film based on a piece of music's emotional power and relevance, and the closing credits play the whole thing for the first time in the entire film, WHY WOULD YOU GET UP AND START TALKING OVER IT THE MOMENT THE SCREEN GOES BLACK? YOU REALLY MISSED THE POINT,  YOU MORONS, AND RUINED MY ATTEMPT TO LISTEN TO THE WHOLE THING. Honestly, some people belong in camps. 

Separated at birth?

Meet hack Charles Moore. He robotically repeats the Conservative Party line in a wide range of media outlets. And C3PO, who's less predictable despite having a positronic brain.

History Corner: a satire special for the Daily Mail.

For what seems like (but can't be) the fifth week running, the Mail is criticising the breasts and/or employment of people who celebrated Margaret Thatcher's demise. Some of these headlines are hard to make up.






It's also running a campaign to force the BBC to censor the Pop Charts because some people are marking the event by purchasing Judy Garland's 'Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead'. I don't want to add to their mental stress, but it was written by a lefty!

Personally, I prefer the Klaus Nomi version:

Now, there's a certain irony in the Mail (and the Telegraph, amongst others) calling for censorship. Why? Because these are the newspapers leading the charge against any kind of statutory regulation of the press. The Mail also got very, very angry when the BBC edited out a couple of racial epithets from a (1970s) Fawlty Towers episode and from an old Elvis Costello song: "If we let the BBC wield censor’s scissors whenever they like they will get away with being as imperious, bossy & bullying as Sybil Fawlty" it said. 'Censorship that shames the BBC', it said. 'A grim day for all those who value freedom', it said. What else? 'For centuries men and women fought and died for freedom of expression. Who are Miliband and Clegg to throw it away?' It also gave space to Peter Hitchens to announce that 'David Cameron ... will be remembered mainly as the man who brought censorship back to Britain'. Melanie Phillips rounded on Hacked Off and its influence: 'unelected campaigners' trying to hijack the public sphere in piece titled, with absolutely no irony at all, 'The Press is the last bastion of free thinking that the Left has not managed to conquer. Until now'.

And now for a little perspective. Firstly, the British have a long tradition of apparently tasteless public celebrations of deaths. I'm not sure if you know, but every year on November 5th, British people burn effigies of Guy Fawkes, who was tortured and murdered by the state after his failed attempt to blow up Parliament. Similar street parties were held when Mary Queen of Scots died, and usually followed the demise of unpopular rulers and regimes. A large number of traitors celebrated the American victory in the War of Independence in 1783, which they saw as a blow against imperialism and oppression shortly to be imported to Britain: imagine the Mail's reaction if it had existed then. Also, when George VI toured the Blitzed East End during WW2, it was presented as a triumphant bonding moment: in actuality, large numbers of ungrateful Cockneys roundly booed the monarch. A generation or two before, Queen Victoria was so unpopular that her advisors genuinely feared revolution.

And that's just the common herd. If the Mail is so upset by a song from a musical, imagine their shock if they'd ever seen any eighteenth-century satirical cartoons, or read poetry, from Byron to Pope. Here, for example, is Hogarth's Sir Francis Dashwood At His Devotions: Dashwood was a notorious sexual libertine, member of the Hellfire Club, and Chancellor of the Exchequer. You may notice that his Bible has been replaced with a naked woman and an erotic volume:



Here's another Hogarth, from the Times of 7th September 1763, in which he attacks the recently fired prime minister William Pitt, the man on stilts trying to 'fan the flames' of war. The heroic fireman is meant to be either his successor Bute, or the King, desperately trying to prevent war from spreading throughout Europe, while those firing on him are Pitt's political and media supporters:



Here's Gillray's attack on the Prince Regent, whom he considered a greedy, dissolute scoundrel (later immortalised in Blackadder the Third. This one is A Voluptuary Under The Horrors of Digestion:



Here's another one of the Prince Regent, by arch-conservative George Cruikshank:




And then we move on to literary satire. How about Byron's lines on the hated and arch-reactionary PM Viscount Castlereagh, who killed himself?

Epigram

So Castlereagh has cut his throat! - the worst
of this is, that his own was not the first.
So he has cut his throat at last! He? Who?
The man who cut his country's long ago.

Dedication to 'Don Juan'.

Cold-blooded, smooth-faced, placid miscreant
Dabbling its sleek young hands in Erin's gore,
And thus for wider carnage taught to pant,
Transferred to gorge upon a sister shore
The vulgarest tool that Tyranny could want,
With just enough of talent, and no more,
To lengthen fetters by another fixed,
And offer poison long already mixed.


Posterity will ne'er survey
a Nobler grave than this:
Here lie the bones of Castlereagh:
Stop, traveller, and piss!

And of course Shelley's lines on Castlereagh in 'The Mask of Anarchy', about the Peterloo Massacre:

I met Murder on the way –
He had a mask like Castlereagh –
Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
Seven blood-hounds followed him:
All were fat; and well they might
Be in admirable plight,
For one by one, and two by two,
He tossed the human hearts to chew…

There was also an outpouring of joy at the assassination of Villiers, Duke of Buckingham - lots more here.

'A Satire on the D of B'

For all thy quondam power, thy name shall bee
For ever hateful to posteritie.
Yet I could wish one thing for thee, belowe,
In those infernall shades where thou do'st goe,
Thou might'st a purgatorie finde, wherein
A thousand yeares mighte expiate thy sinne,
By purging those deepe staines, and vices fowle,
Which in thy life-time did infect thy soule,
That soe, at last, thou might'st enjoy that blisse,
Where our Creator and Redeemer is.

'Prosopopeia':

I that my countrey did betray,
Undid that king that let mee sway
His sceptre as I pleas'd; brought downe
The glorie of the English crowne
The courtiers' bane, the countries' hate,
An agent for the Spanish state;
The Romists' frend, the gospells' foe,
The Church and kingdomes overthrowe;
Heere a damned carcase dwell,
'Till my soule returne from hell.
With Judas then I shall inherit,
Such portion as all traytors meritt.
If heaven admitt of treason, pride, and lust,
Expect my spotted soule among the iust.

Here's a poem in praise of Mr Felton, the assassin:

Awake, sad Brittaine, and advance at last
Thy drooping head: let all thy sorrowes past
Bee drown'd, and sunke with their owne teares; and now
O're-looke thy foes with a triumphant brow.
Thy foe, Spaine's agent, Holland's bane, Rome's freind,
By one victorious hand receiv'd his end.
Live ever, Felton: thou hast turn'd to dust,
Treason, ambition, murther, pride and lust.

I could also point you in the direction of Alexander Pope, but I think instead I'll drop the nuclear bomb of satire: the Earl of Rochester's 1673 'Satyre on Charles II', which he supposedly accidentally handed to the king himself… before fleeing the country.

Warning: this contains words not normally seen in the Daily Mail.

I' th' isle of Britain, long since famous grown
For breeding the best cunts in Christendom,
There reigns, and oh! long may he reign and thrive,
The easiest King and best-bred man alive.
Him no ambition moves to get renown
Like the French fool, that wanders up and down
Starving his people, hazarding his crown.
Peace is his aim, his gentleness is such,
And love he loves, for he loves fucking much.
---Nor are his high desires above his strength:
His scepter and his prick are of a length;
And she may sway the one who plays with th' other,
And make him little wiser than his brother.
Poor prince! thy prick, like thy buffoons at Court,
Will govern thee because it makes thee sport.
'Tis sure the sauciest prick that e'er did swive,
The proudest, peremptoriest prick alive.
Though safety, law, religion, life lay on 't,
'Twould break through all to make its way to cunt.
Restless he rolls about from whore to whore,
A merry monarch, scandalous and poor.
---To Carwell, the most dear of all his dears,
The best relief of his declining years,
Oft he bewails his fortune, and her fate:
To love so well, and be beloved so late.
For though in her he settles well his tarse,
Yet his dull, graceless ballocks hang an arse.
This you'd believe, had I but time to tell ye
The pains it costs to poor, laborious Nelly,
Whilst she employs hands, fingers, mouth, and thighs,
Ere she can raise the member she enjoys.
---All monarchs I hate, and the thrones they sit on,
---From the hector of France to the cully of Britain.

So on balance, I think the right is rather over-reacting to some people spending 79p on a song from a musical.

From the vinyl vaults

There are a lot of Thatcher Death Party soundtracks floating around at the moment. One of my favourite collections in this one, because it includes some tracks that aren't just angry punk screaming.

Like this classic bit of rave-era revenge: sampling Thatcher ranting about acid parties to provide a self-referential soundtrack:



And now I'm going to go home and slump into oblivion. I've seen several dissertation students, counselled more by email, and been to 3 long meetings. No marking, no preparation and certainly no chance to sneak off for a swim. Feeling very fat and unhealthy at the moment.

There's plenty of other work to do too. I've agreed to review two new collections of R S Thomas's poems for Poetry Wales (Uncollected Poems and Poems to Elsi) which might add to the legend of RST, and a piece for the Literary Encyclopaedia on JG Farrell's Troubles. Plus several papers to start thinking about… But for tonight: the waters of Lethe. Once I've got the ironing done. It's a rock and roll life I lead, I tell you. At least I have the new Kurt Vile and Gesualdo LPs to soothe me, and the meta-genre stylings of my new literary discovery, Keith Ridgway's Hawthorn and Child.

Until tomorrow, I bid you adieu. Or rather, I'll let Jahn Teigen and Anita Skorgan do it for me, with the song of that name which formed Norway's entry to Eurovision 1982. A classic, I think we can all agree. And quite a contrast to the Thatcher track.

A Spotter's Guide to Conservatism

Have the Conservatives changed? Here are some old Steve Bell cartoons. You may want to click on them to enlarge

While listening to Tories eulogize Thatcher today, remember how ruthlessly they defenestrated her when the gloss wore off

Here's Bell's summary of Denis Thatcher's views: now official Conservative Party policy if you listen to Osborne, Camron, Gove et al. 

Satire then: reality now with some councils giving out Asda vouchers instead of emergency loans.

'And still you vote for us'. True then, true now. 

Can you be an honest Conservative?

It is, isn't it? Despite not dying on a trolley in an underfunded or privatised hospital, Thatcher's death at least happened. I was beginning to think she was immortal. But no, it's just like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: with the death of the evil queen, the snow melts away and the downtrodden populace cautiously emerges blinking into the political and literal sunlight.

Of course the analogy breaks down somewhat: Thatcher's evil progeny are in charge and going full steam ahead in their drive to make this country poorer, meaner and more divided than ever before. But I'm hoping that the liberation of knowing Maggie's gone will embolden the resistance.

I was wondering last night why I'm feeling so relieved that she's gone. After all, she was in the end a powerless, confused old lady, and the evils she did now have lives of their own, independent of her corporeal existence. I decided that it's symbolic. We lost, over and over again. We didn't even overthrow her: the Conservative Party ruthlessly defenestrated her without a moment's gratitude or sentiment (remember that when you see them on TV weeping crocodile tears). Her death was out of our control too, so we can't claim any kind of victory, but there's a satisfaction in knowing that it comes to the evil as much as too the good.

Why am I using the evocative word 'evil', with all its Manichean overtones? It's like this. Think of all the other Tory/Conservative Prime Ministers before Thatcher. John Stuart. Lord North. Pitt the Younger. Addington. Spencer Perceval (the only one to be assassinated). The Earl of Liverpool. Canning, Goderich and Wellington. Peel, Derby, Disraeli, Salisbury. Balfour, Bonar Law, Baldwin, Chamberlain, Churchill. Eden, Macmillan, Douglas-Hume and Heath. Some of them were bad. Some were sad. Some were even mad. But most of them thought that they knew what was best for the country. All of it. They were (in my view) almost always wrong, but they largely took the attitude that they had a responsibility towards friends and foes alike: political opponents and those from other walks of life.

For me, Thatcher was the first Conservative who abandoned this patrician attitude. She famously would ask whether her party members and people from other spheres were 'one of us', by which she meant fellow free-market Tories. If not, they were dead to her. Rather than applying Conservative policies for the good of the country, she and her supporters applied Conservative polices to the country for the good of her business friends, her political allies and her overseas backers: the Murdochs, the Pinochets, the House of Saud, ATOS, Capita, the weapons dealers, fossil-fuel burners, speculators and wide boys of the City.

It's a fundamental breach, encapsulated by the Kenyan politician who on election announced 'Now it is our turn to eat'. Under Thatcherism, success is due only to those who grab what they can: government should get out of the way, shouldn't referee competing interests or take long-term decisions. Pre-Thatcher, Conservatives could be wrong and principled. Since Thatcher, I have come to believe that they (and the higher echelons of the Labour Party under Blair and Brown) have abandoned the notion of the 'public good' entirely. Government becomes the vehicle of vested interests who occasionally tussle for control, but it's no longer seen as the expression of the public desire for a shared and equitable destiny.

Thatcher did this. Monetarism and raw capitalism requires a majority of losers to generate an elite of winners. Since then, government is little more than a fat cash cow ripe for exploitation by tax-evaders intent on asset-stripping the MoD, the Department for Education, the NHS and all the rest. The difference is that – as we've seen with Murdoch, Jeremy Hunt, Gove and many more – the Vandals are in office rather than battering down the door.

So in answer to my question: yes, it's easy to be an honest Conservative. It's just unfashionable, and increasingly rare.

Democracy in action: part II

Yesterday I emailed my prospective Labour Parliamentary Candidates about their platforms. You can read it here.

Today I got a reply from one of them. He misspelled my name and dropped some apostrophes, but as you can see, it's a pretty evasive response to my specific queries: so evasive as to constitute a f••• you, I feel.

Thank you very much for taking the trouble to write. I am looking forward to meeting all members of the CLP soon and engaging in robust face-to-face debate. This will be an excellent opportunity to set out my political stall and answer members questions and concerns. I trust that you will be an active participant in this process and hope we speak soon.
With best wishes Sundar Thavapalasundaram

Update: I got a reply from Mr Marris too (his responses are in red). Compare and contrast, then guess for which one I'm going to vote!

Presentation
I notice that Mr Marris provides a full Wolverhampton address and landline telephone number.  Don't worry, Rob:  I won't be popping round for a chat!   

Yes:  whilst I had the honour to be WSW MP, my home phone number was always in the telephone directory. 

Personal history
Mr Marris, you stress your long experience in the constituency, though you slightly gloss over losing the previous election, and you don't mention your work as a solicitor.  

There is no “glossing over”.  That I did not get re-elected is a matter of public record, known I believe every member of the CLP; including me, who now has to live in a constituency with a Conservative MP – something I spent a lot of time over many years trying to change. Whilst I am not currently practising as a solicitor, I remain qualified so to do.  I am employed by the National Union of Teaches as a Regional Officer. 

Political Positions
Mr Marris, you provide a long list of political principles, opposing privatisation, making the case for an empowering state, opposing student tuition fees, academies and free schools and deregulation, while supporting the nationalisation of railways, higher taxes for the rich, banking break-ups and so on.  I tend to agree with most of these positions.  However, I was a constituent while you were an MP.  I distinctly remember you voting for most of the things you now oppose.  Time and time again you behaved as lobby fodder for a government which established academy schools, curtailed civil liberties, introduced tuition fees (though you did oppose this), voted for one illegal and two foolish wars, strengthened NHS privatisation, deregulated the finance system, reduced taxation for the rich until very late on (and was 'intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich', failed to build social housing, oversaw the disastrous railway franchising scheme, and systematically weakened employees’ rights. I distinctly remember Mr Blair boasting about British workers having the least protection in Europe (the 'flexible' workforce).
So my worry is this, Mr Marris:  either you believed in what you did then, or you believed in what you say now.  Which is it?  Or perhaps you simply did what you were told, despite being a member of a massive majority.  If re-elected, will you simply follow the party line once more, or will you vote according to your principles?
I hope you see my quandary.  In Mr Marris we have a good, hard-working former constituency MP who enabled the worst excesses of the previous government and rarely displayed any independent principles, who now promises to oppose most of the things he supported.  

You suggest that “either you believed in what you did then, or you believed in what you say now.  Which is it?”  I am afraid that I do not accept much of the premise.  

Perhaps I may go through the list of policies in my letter to members, seriatim. 

equal opportunities, social inclusion, and co-operation 

The last Labour government passed the Equality Act 2010, the culmination of 13 years of progressive legislation on equal opportunities.  Before 1997, there was no legislation outlawing discrimination based on sexual orientation, age, or religion.  

quality public services, delivered by workers employed by local/national government. 

The last Labour government did not protect this as they should have.  My position was always clear.  However, that undermining did not require legislation.  

strengthen employment rights 

National Minimum Wage.  Paid holidays.  Strengthened health & safety legislation.  Rights for sufferers of industrial mesothelioma.  Anti-discrimination laws (supra).  I personally (as the minister subsequently confirmed to me) successfully persuaded the government to abandon its plans to introduce a fee (introduced from 01.04.13 by the Coalition) for applications to Employment Tribunals.  

construction of huge numbers of council houses, which will also jump-start the economy 

The Decent Homes programme, costing £13 billion, improved hundreds of thousands of council houses.  About £250 million was spent in Wolverhampton.  Nevertheless, I agree that I did not do enough in this regard.  It was only in 2007 that I urged the government to buy one of the major house-builders, then valued at £2 billion, to get its hands on 100,000 building plots which the company owned.  

boost manufacturing and foster innovation 

The last Labour government introduced major tax breaks for R & D.   

tax the rich, to increase funding for health, education, transport, pensions, social care 

I did argue for higher taxes for the well-off and strongly and vocally supported the 50p tax rate.  I also argued against the abolition of the 10p rate.  

sound public finances 

The key Labour slogan in the 2001 General Election was “An end to boom and bust”.  You will search in vain for that slogan in any of my election material:  I wouldn’t use it, because I knew it is nonsense:  capitalism has been cyclical for 300 years, and nothing had changed. I am very knowledgeable about Canada.  I used to live there, and I still keep very much up-to-date.  The deficit was a major issue there in the mid-1990s.  So, as far as I know, I was the only Labour MP arguing that running a deficit in the good times was a bad idea.   

keep the NHS public 

I did not vote for the foundation hospitals legislation.  I abstained.  I would have voted against it, but I had only one e-mail (no letters or telephone calls) urging me to vote against.New Cross had £13 million of PFI (radiology) before I was elected in 2001; but none whilst I was MP.  Contrary to what some believe, the Heart & Lung Centre is not PFI.  With the other 2 Wolverhampton MPs, I vehemently and successfully opposed PFI at New Cross.  The PCT had entered into a £90 million PFI (for GPs surgeries, and the Phoenix Centre etc.) before they even told the local MPs. At the request of the Labour council, I reluctantly did write a letter in support of the £3 million PFI for the new swimming pool at Bentley Bridge; but that’s locally elected councillors making their own decisions – either one simply mouths support for “localism” and does nothing, or one does something.  Apart from that, I am not aware of any other council PFI. BSF was not entered into whilst I was MP, although it was agreed.  Again:  localism.  

restore powers to local councils, with proper funding 

I did argue at Westminster that, if one says one supports localism, then one must act accordingly (supra).  

return schools to LEAs, abolish academies and “free” schools 

I opposed the introduction of the “Blair academies”, but there was no legislation and so no vote. “Free” schools are a terrible invention of the Coalition.  I did vote for the legislation introducing Trust Schools, but only after uniting with other backbenchers to secure 2 concessions from the government:  a binding, national Admissions Policy, and am agreement on a national pay framework for Teaching Assistants.  

graduate tax, not tuition fees 

Yes, I voted against.  

opposition to privatisation and to PFI 

See above.  With others, I successfully opposed the privatisation of the Forensic Science Service.  

break up the big banks 

I was the only MP to move legislation allowing the government to break up the big banks.  Unfortunately, I could not persuade a Labour government to agree.  

opposition to de-regulation, no “light touch” 

Most of this de-regulation did not require legislation, so there was nothing against which to vote.  I did oppose the very concept in debates on Finance Bills, and spoke at length in the House about it, to the effect that, to me, “regulation” is not a dirty word.  

re-nationalise the railways, by not renewing franchises 

Again, no legislation, but again I called for it in the House.  

combat, and adapt to, climate change 

It is my Private Member’s Bill which led directly to the sections of the Climate Change Act dealing with adaptation; I believe the first such legislation in the world. I did not vote for the 80% cut in CO2 emissions because, although I strongly support massive cuts (and I was probably in the top 10 greenest MPs in the House, in terms of lifestyle), the 80% target was playing games, grandstanding – “pass this, looks good, problem sorted, and we can move on”.  It was and is totally unrealistic; just showboating.  As I pointed out in the House on more than one occasion, CO2 emissions per capita rose under Labour (until the recession, from 2008).   

promote green energy, not subsidise nuclear 

I and others repeatedly pressed the government to promise not to subsidise nuclear, and they publicly stated that they would not do so.  

social justice, here and abroad 

The international development agenda of Labour was magnificent. In the UK, not enough was done to tackle inequality, and I should have pressed harder on this. So, firstly the contradictions which you perceive are not nearly as great as you believe.  Secondly, if I simply stood now for exactly that for which I stood 12 years ago, totally unchanged, then I would be a poor human being and a poor politician. 

As you personally know, I was a pretty good constituency MP as well! 

Democracy in action

Yesterday, I got letters from two men who want to be the Labour candidate for the constituency in 2015. One is Mr Marris, the slavishly loyal New Labour former MP who narrowly lost in 2010. The other is Dr Sundar Thavapalasundaram of, er, London.

Here's the joint letter I've just sent them.

Dear Mr Marris and Dr Thavapalasundaram,
thank you for your canvassing letters which both arrived yesterday. I thought I would reply jointly so you can see where I stand on both your pitches. Please be assured that as a Labour member, I will work hard to get the candidate elected, whichever one of you wins the selection.

Presentation
Dr Thavapalasundaram, I am less than impressed by the crudely photocopied header and footer on your letter, which appear to use the official party typeface, background, logo and discourse: I hope this isn't an attempt to look as though you've been endorsed by the party hierarchy. Additionally, 'Serving to Lead', 'Working and Winning for WSW' aren't proper sentences. They lack subjects and objects and are therefore meaningless, though reminiscent of the New Labour project. What do 'Serving to Lead' and 'Working & Winning' actually mean in this context? I note they're in the continuous present tense. What 'serving', 'leading', 'working' and 'winning' have you done in this constituency, and elsewhere.

You twice refer to yourself as the 'perspective candidate'. Is this a sophisticated political joke, or do you actually mean 'prospective'? Certainly your body text gives no indication of political 'perspective'. Furthermore, 'honor' has a 'u' in it in UK English. Labour has been slavishly loyal to US political direction in government: let's at least retain our own spelling, eh?

I notice that Mr Marris provides a full Wolverhampton address and landline telephone number. Don't worry, Rob: I won't be popping round for a chat! But Dr Thavapalasundaram only gives a mobile telephone number. Is that because you work and live in London and in fact have no links to or knowledge of this city at all?

Personal history
Mr Marris, you stress your long experience in the constituency, though you slightly gloss over losing the previous election, and you don't mention your work as a solicitor. Dr Thavapalasundaram, however, says that he is an NHS GP and a veteran of two wars. Now, that's not entirely accurate, is it? GPs are of course private contractors, and in your case, you work for (perhaps part-own?) Caversham Group Practice, which is incorporated as a company. Will you be gaining financially from the NHS reorganisation? What if any is your connection to Centrium Freehold Limited?

Political Positions
Mr Marris, you provide a long list of political principles, opposing privatisation, making the case for an empowering state, opposing student tuition fees, academies and free schools and deregulation, while supporting the nationalisation of railways, higher taxes for the rich, banking break-ups and so on. I tend to agree with most of these positions. However, I was a constituent while you were an MP. I distinctly remember you voting for most of the things you now oppose. Time and time again you behaved as lobby fodder for a government which established academy schools, curtailed civil liberties, introduced tuition fees (though you did oppose this), voted for one illegal and two foolish wars, strengthened NHS privatisation, deregulated the finance system, reduced taxation for the rich until very late on (and was 'intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich', failed to build social housing, oversaw the disastrous railway franchising scheme, and systematically weakened employees rights. I distinctly remember Mr Blair boasting about British workers having the least protection in Europe (the 'flexible' workforce).

So my worry is this, Mr Marris: either you believed in what you did then, or you believed in what you say now. Which is it? Or perhaps you simply did what you were told, despite being a member of a massive majority. If re-elected, will you simply follow the party line once more, or will you vote according to your principles?

Dr Thavapalasundaram: if anything, I'm even less impressed by your political principles, or rather, the total lack of them enunciated in your letter. Mr Marris has listed a number of specific positions. You do not name a single thing in which you believe. Instead, we're asked to accept a vague and fuzzy list of adjectives. Firstly, why do you think this is 'the toughest election battle in the recent history' of the constituency. I suspect Mr Marris might think that the election he lost would qualify for this honour. Or perhaps the many occasions on which our party lost? As far as I can see, running against a lazy, dishonest Tory who could only win by 691 votes against Gordon Brown's (unfairly demonised) government, with Labour strongly ahead in the polls, constitutes a relatively easy battle. I have conducted a running battle with Mr Uppal since the election, investigating and challenging his statements and behaviour forensically: I can't say I've noticed the CLP doing the same.

You say victory demands 'strong leadership, vision, and decisive action'. Well, I'm a bit sick of 'strong leadership' actually: I'd prefer a little consensual democracy. Particularly as 'vision' and 'decisive action' require political clarity, something entirely absent from your letter. You stress your service in Afghanistan and Iraq. What are we meant to make of this? You draw from it 'duty, honor, service and sacrifice'. Nobody opposes any of these things in principle. Yet none of them help in the day to day business of a constituency MP. What do you stand for? In terms of these wars: did you oppose them or did you support them? Mr Marris supported them - I disagree with him but I know where he stands. You, on the other hand, reach for the traditional clichés of patriotism and masculinity. You also say that  you 'know what it takes to lead by the courage of your convictions and from the front'. What was your rank and role in the military? What are your convictions?

You say you can 'unite the CLP'. Is it divided? Is this the extent of your 'vision'? How does 'leading from the front' equate with uniting the local party?

The closest you get to espousing a political principle is your vow to 'defend our most precious institution, the NHS'. Adding to my specific enquiry about your relationship to the NHS, can you explain what you mean? I have watched David Cameron saying that he will 'defend the NHS' and that the Conservative Party is 'the party of the NHS'. What you say is no more specific or meaningful than when he says it. You say 'I bring real life experience gained not in a policy seminar, but at the sharp end'. What do you mean? Mr Marris is or was a solicitor. You are a doctor and you've been a soldier. You've both worked outside politics. I suspect that you've both spent a fair amount of time in policy seminars however: I note that Dr Thavapalasundaram is a executive member of the Fabian Society: not exactly a proletarian, coal-face operation.

Your 'pledges' only just stop short of proclaiming your love of babies and blue skies: being 'faithful to the Constituency and our shared vision of electoral victory' is minimal to the point of meaninglessness. Imagine being opposed to party loyalty and wanting to win! Similarly, holding surgeries and doing casework shouldn't be a noble pledge: it's what MPs do, every single day.

I hope you see my quandary. In Mr Marris we have a good, hard-working former constituency MP who enabled the worst excesses of the previous government and rarely displayed any independent principles, who now promises to oppose most of the things he supported. In Dr Thavapalasundaram we have a carpet-bagger candidate who appears to have no political beliefs at all and appeals to the constituency on the basis of aspirational boiler-plate and personal qualities.

I'm not kidding myself that my vote will swing the selection in either direction, nor that my particular political beliefs are the majority in the CLP. But I do think that you both need to address my objections.

Yours,
Plashing Vole.

Groupthink

While I think about it, here's a poem from the 1930s about the way hegemony leads us to maintain, rather than overthrow, political systems which sacrifice us for the benefit of The System, or its operators. Thatcher would hate it. 

This Excellent Machine by John Lehmann

This excellent machine is neatly planned.
A child, a half-wit would not feel perplexed:
No chance to err, you simply press the button -
At once each cog in motion moves the next,
The whole revolves, and anything that lives
Is quickly sucked towards the running band,
Where, shot between the automatic knives,
It's guaranteed to finish dead as mutton.

This excellent machine will illustrate
The modern world divided into nations:
So neatly planned, that if you merely tap it
The armaments will start their devastations,
And though we're for it, though we're all convinced
Some fool will press the button soon or late,
We stand and stare, expecting to be minced -
And very few are asking 'Why not scrap it?'

Mocking the Weak

By now, you'll all have heard that Margaret Thatcher is dead. Within minutes, the self-appointed 'serious' liberals and leftwingers were reproving others for their gut, jubilant reactions. 'You should never rejoice' in an individual's death', they say. In a more sophisticated argument, some of them are saying 'Thatcher's dead, not Thatcherism'. And I have to say, I have some sympathy with this viewpoint: there's a direct line between her 'there is no society' to George Osborne and David Cameron explicitly linking poverty with infanticide.

And yet, and yet: we lived through her regime and those of her children: Blair, Brown, Osborne, Major, Cameron, Pickles, Pinochet, Gove et al. We saw them elected on a platform of division, fear and lies, of explicit contempt for capitalism's losers. The patriarchal sheen of paternalist Toryism (bad enough on its own) wore through and underneath we glimpsed the naked, raw contempt Thatcher had for anyone who wanted to rise with, rather than in spite of, their communities. While the 'wets' paid lip-service to their hierarchical vision of social unity (old maids cycling to Evensong, in John Major's phrase), the brutal reality was that our sick, our poor, our young, our land, our air, our water and everything else were up for sale as mere commodities for the enrichment of an elite few.

Who were the winners? The political elite, regardless of party lines. The jet-setters of the global plutocracy: Tesco, News International, Capita, ATOS, the outsourcers and asset strippers.

Who were the losers? The poor. The foreign. The global South. The victims of apartheid, kept in chains while she called Nelson Mandela 'a terrorist'. The victims of the countless small wars prosecuted to various put down Johnny Foreigner, keep foreign dictators with oil sweet, to maintain the flow of oil or simply to pretend that the UK still means something. The dead and maimed of Northern Ireland. The manual labourers and skilled industrial workers who gave their jobs in the cause of low inflation (Lamont's 'acceptable level of unemployment' which keeps the poor disciplined). Without mining, steel, large-scale manufacturing, publicly-owned utitilities and transport, the political, cultural and moral strength of an entire class has been wiped off the face of the earth, and with it the cultural capital required to resist the relentless cheapening and exploitation of our physical and intellectual resources. In dirt-poor countries across the globe, slaves stitch brand labels onto shoddy goods to be sold to us at inflated prices: we queue up to hand over our cash while those at the other end starve. If we complain about our own working conditions, our employers send our jobs (the current word is 'right-shoring') off to a more obedient, more desperate place until they in turn become too expensive. Yesterday I heard a Tory explain that companies shouldn't be made to pay a 'living wage' because they 'couldn't afford it'. It didn't strike him that an economic model which explicitly depends on the starvation of its workforce and a subsidy from the taxpayer is a broken economic model. With this has gone, of course, any respect and care for those at the other end: the customer. Service have become worse and more expensive. Our banks took us for fools, stole from us then turned to the government to rob us again in the form of bail-outs. As our libraries close, their bonuses increase.

What of my colleagues and I in what used to be called the 'public services': teachers, doctors, nurses? Thatcher and her successors have turned us into public enemies, or 'Enemies of Promise' as Mr Gove called me. What we do is no longer 'public' or a 'service': we purvey private goods to customers, with all the cheapening and corruption that implies. As such we become hirelings and you become customers, subject to sales and marketing, 'efficiencies' (i.e. corner-cutting) and those of us who still speak of the 'public good', of the vocation to serve, are relentlessly portrayed in the Thatcherite press as Trotskyists, wreckers, reactionaries, vested interests. Our motives – incomprehensible to the Monetarists – are reviled and distorted.

Who are the new heroes of Thatcherism? Salesmen. Financial engineers. Bank executives. G4S. Sugar and Branson and The Apprentice and Homes Under the Hammer and Flog It and all those whose fortunes depend on scaring us into accepting the crumbs we're given or into believing that we too could afford a Rolls-Royce if only we had the silver tongue, the shamelessness and the selfishness.

Not coincidentally, these are the people who've plunged us all back into poverty and again, not coincidentally, these are the people who protected themselves by raiding our hospitals, social security funds, pensions, schools and other public services to refloat their sterile, masturbatory finance capitalism.

So when people tell me that I shouldn't rejoice, or gloat, or smile or simply feel relief at Thatcher's death, I say: go tell that to the people of Rotherham, or Stoke on Trent, or Grenada, or Ethiopia, or India,  or those Londoners being put on cattle trucks to be resettled in the North. Tell that to those whose islands are sinking, whose air is stinking, whose schools are crumbling, whose occupations have been abolished, those who've been reclassified from 'human' to 'scum' for the crime of being left high and dry by an ideology which cares only for its own and not a jot for its citizens. Tell that to those whose phones were hacked by her favourite newspapers and to those bereft of intelligent newspapers, TV and radio because she relentless promoted the financial interests of the cultural vandals.

Tell those losers they shouldn't have a moment's relief from Thatcher and from Thatcherism. She didn't start it – she didn't have the brain – but she promoted it, she established the hegemony of TINA, she became its pin-up. Margaret Thatcher died a tired, confused old lady, presumably insensible at the end of the evils she unleashed (much like when she was in her prime). I can't rejoice in the death of a wizened husk. I wish she'd been compos mentis enough to live through the collapse of her belief system, though I strongly suspect that she wouldn't have seen anything wrong with the way we live now. But I'm not going to pretend that deeper, more atavistic emotions are bubbling under. After all the harm she did to me, my loved ones and everything I care about, I'm not going to take an pietistic high ground.

The next couple of weeks are going to be awful. The hypocrites, the revisionists. the careerists and the strategists are going to dominate the airwaves: sombre music, reassessments and the so-called 'left' uttering mealy-mouthed statements in case the Daily Mail monsters them: it'll be like the Diana death all over again, but worse. But I'm free. I don't have a political career ahead of me. I don't care what Grant Shapps or the Mail thinks about me. I can say what a lot of us are thinking: I'm glad she's dead.

Ask yourself this. Did Thatcher leave a kinder, gentler, cleaner, more sustainable, fairer, more peaceful, more prosperous and wiser world behind her? If not, then a modicum of relief is in order.

What I did on my holidays

Hi everybody. How are you all? I'm back from my holiday and unsurprised to find that the UK has become an even meaner, nastier place than when I left. All thanks to a government which has decided that the poor, the sick and the needy are the real villains. According to Mr Osborne and the Mail, claiming benefits is a gateway to killing your own children. No, really. But perhaps he's merely trying to distract attention from today, which marks the abolition of the 50% tax band, leading to a minimum of £50,000 more in the pockets of the bankers, speculators and conmen who currently staff and fund the Conservative Party.

But before my carefree holiday spirit wears off, let me tell you what I did in south-west Ireland. I slept a lot. I read a daily newspaper, sometimes two. On paper. I walked. I attended two stages of the Rás Mumhan bike race (anglophones: however you think this is pronounced, it isn't) and took lots of photos. I went to a well-blessing up a mountain and visited the sub-tropical paradise of Kells Bay. I even got a bit red in the sun, which is rather a contrast to the UK's experience of the past few weeks and made me feel a bit smug. I ate way too much chocolate and meat (not my usual diet at all) and read several books, mostly for pleasure. Matt Ruff's Mirage is a very enjoyable and provocative reversal of the 9/11 (or for the rest of us, 11/9) attacks and their aftermath, though rather uneven. Cobley's Seeds of Earth trilogy is enjoyable space opera hokum without much else to recommend it and a rather dubious racial premise, and Jilly Cooper's Riders (chosen for a module on social class) is execrable. It's not fun. The plot alternates between men riding horses and riding women (as they put it). The women shop to make themselves feel good. Then they have sex with the men. Then they feel bad. So they go shopping. At one point, the hero explains to his wife that he had to have sex with the stable girl because she (the wife) isn't sexual enough. She accepts this and apologises. All without a trace of irony. The New Statesman is described as 'Trotskyist' and the IRA and the 'Socialists' are roundly horrible. The heroine joins an anti-hunt demonstration but is converted to pro-hunting because the antis have bad hair whereas the huntsman has a large penis. We're told that all women really want – even the career women – is a husband and nice wallpaper. Though they're unhappy when they get it and wreck their marriages. The one strident feminist is converted after one forced kiss by the hero, after which her hair and clothes magically improve. Bad women have arm and leg hair. They can improve by shaving their pubic hair off, a real marker of the 1980s.

Of the lower orders, we only see the horrid but talented Jake. Jake is a Gypsy, and therefore superstitious, inscrutable and chippy. And his horrible family all have horrid Birmingham accents. But at least being a Gypsy he's mysteriously attractive: the rest of the lower orders, like the IRA and the Socialists, are threats which loom large but don't really appear. Foreigners are bloody. The Germans are efficient and speak viz lots of vees and zees; Italians are stylish but lazy, Spaniards are lazy and smelly except for the Fascist dictator Franco who has 'wonderful manners' and dresses well; the French are stylish but untrustworthy; Americans are gauche and prudish. The English middle classes are unutterably boring, but better than new money Brits, who wear medallions and undo their shirts and sell cat food and prefer carpets to Cotswold stone. You can shag them but you have to despise them.

And so interminably on. One damn illiterate sentence after another, one repeated plot twist after another, all mixed with the most astonishingly patronising narrative commentary, almost as if Cooper assumes her readership consists of drunk moronic halfwits. There's even a horse called Revenge so that people can say things like 'Revenge is sweet' and 'I'll get Revenge if it's the last thing I do'. For 915 pages, roughly the same length as Trollope's The Way We Live Now which covered similar ground only about a million and a half times more interestingly. I keep hoping for a shaft of humour or self-awareness, but none appear. For Cooper and her readers, the world really is (or should be) like this: National Velvet mixed with a Tory Party manifesto and the offcuts of some Danielle Steele juvenilia. That this misogynist nonsense is written by a woman is simply proof that false consciousness isn't a discredited notion. Apologies all round to my students.

What I didn't do on my holidays: listen to music or the radio; watch much TV; check my email; surf the web; mark essays; Tweet; switch on my phone; buy books. Very restful altogether.

Anyway, enough of this. Some holiday snaps. Click on them to enlarge, or see the whole lot here.

Killorglin and the Dingle Peninsula hills in the background

Waiting for the off in the Rás Mumhan

The Holy Stone of Clonricert, recently upgraded to Class 3

An Egret

Remember this? It's called… er… it'll come to me any minute…

Over the estuary to the Dingle peninsula

Boat and reeds

Pain and pleasure

Kells Bay Garden

All fields should have a bath

Burned foliage on the mountainside

Dinosaurs at Kells Bay garden

A shag goes fishing

Seaweed

Dingle from Kells Bay

Snowdonia from the train crossing Anglesey