bridget riley said that pollock's work was a dead end.
that is the problem with rothko.
look at the dynamism and edge of gerhard richter. he changes often, and his eclectic work - which does cohere to a single, genuinely powerful body (one of the true greats of contemporary art, and don't you mark it) - more than bewitches you.
ADIDAS.
Sunday, 3 August 2003
there were so many beautiful lights tonight in the sky; they were blinking.
and i think i fell in love with them.
at first they appeared as UFOs = unidentified flying objects (fitting the bill pretty well).
then i realised they were tall buildings.
i love mark rothko's mature work and yet - for something i profess to "love" - i criticise it an awful lot.
and i think i fell in love with them.
at first they appeared as UFOs = unidentified flying objects (fitting the bill pretty well).
then i realised they were tall buildings.
i love mark rothko's mature work and yet - for something i profess to "love" - i criticise it an awful lot.
Friday, 1 August 2003
another interesting one, although unsure about the sound of his book (in my lazy thinking, reflexively prejudiced social liberal way, Charles Murray would no doubt shout {Jeremy Clarke's strange rant here})
yeah great perhaps Kim Howells should start taking notes off Mussolini, after all his autostrada were bang on eh
~
there is a serious point there, one supposes
~
there is a serious point there, one supposes
Thursday, 31 July 2003
On the Friday that (pay attention here eh; this is how columnists who’ve run out of decent ideas always start, you know – a ‘where I was…’ section at the beginning…) the news broke out that Dr Kelly had committed suicide, two companions and i were having a few scoops on the pavement outside the Sherlock Holmes, which is on Northumberland Avenue, between Trafalgar Square and the Embankment (we’d not actually bought the jars from the alehouse, we were just sipping Special Brew on the pavement like the pissheads we are). At about 4 in the afternoon, one of us shouted out something – in confused surprise – about the dead mole, or somesuch. He’d seen an Evening Standard van trundle past with something written on the side.
So one raced along to the news-stand that’s by the tube near that Italian caff that sells really nice hot chocolate, not too far from the Waterstone’s going away from Whitehall and i bought me Evening Standard and got back and we crowded round and perused it, in shock afterward.
The two of us that don’t work for the government, after we’d discussed how terrible this was, and how upsetting for the man’s family, etc., then – after about 20 further of quiet drinking as we tried (and clearly failed) to ‘take it all in’ – spent about an hour, in a now stereotypical Daily Mail/Mirror stylee, berating the one of us that does, and slagging him off, saying was Blair going to resign, was Hoon or Campbell going to resign, etc. of course Alastair Campbell is going to resign now, anyway, although we’ll see if it’s before or after the Hutton Inquiry finishes. As someone who’s been an enormously helpful doodah for Tony Blair, do you think it means the beginning of the end for Mr Blair’s personal career? i’m not sure, i mean campbell will be staying on, as ever; certainly not with the announcement that the PM intends to run for a third, full term, but these are all interesting questions.
Anyway, as was slagging off our colleague and trying to account for how this monstrous state of affairs, this seedy suicide had come about, of course, do realise that was the shock talking, there’s been some right nonsense written about this sad affair in the past week, all that ‘wages of spin is death’ and suchlike, shockers. What sadly happened is, it seems, a respectable (and brilliant, nominated for the nobel peace prize as well) family chap was put into a position he was not familiar with, and it was too much. A little was made, earlier last week, of Andrew McKinlay MP probing Dr Kelly at the FAC, but the truth is, this was not bullying, a lot of FAC depositions and questioning, etc., is done in a similar manner. A lot of the stuff written about this entire tawdry episode has been pretty juvenile (some rags even dragging up the name of poor old Vince Foster, trying to seek parallels: you might remember how arch-conspiracy theorist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard used to bang on about that for quite a spell in the pages of the Sunday telegraph). One’s not going to defend the opinions of the twice-disgraced Mr Mandelson of course, or anything like that, but just love any carping about the Sun attacking the Beeb, etc., about Mr Blair or Mr Campbell resigning blood on their hands etc., etc., just silly, the words of the FAC chairman about Mr Gilligan were quite interesting as well at the time, what was it, “unsatisfactory session” with an “unsatisfactory witness”.
Below is a column from Nigel Farndale about David Kelly, and it makes quite good reading.
++
The words "tragedy" and "tragic" are so overused in journalism they are almost invisible on the page. And usually they are misused, because all the journalist means is that there has been an unfortunate accident, disaster or unexpected death. But the words seem appropriate for Dr David Kelly. His assumed suicide has the characteristics of a Greek tragedy. Here, clearly, was a man too noble for the world; more sinned against than sinning.
But there is also something of the low-budget, Monday night television drama about his death. Indeed a leading article in The Telegraph compared it to an Inspector Morse mystery. "The cameras take us down the beguiling summer lanes of the Oxfordshire countryside, and there, against all expectations, lies the body of an educated and respectable man." You can almost hear Kevin Whatley's Geordie voice: "But why would he take his own life, sir?" And John Thaw's reply: "Think, Lewis. Think."
We know Dr Kelly was an honourable man because he came forward to his line manager at the Ministry of Defence and admitted that he was probably the primary source for Andrew Gilligan's story. I strongly suspect that in the weeks to come it will emerge that Dr Kelly knew that MI6 was on to him as the mole, but that should not detract from the fact that he did the decent thing and owned up.
We also know from the way he conducted himself in front of the Foreign Affairs Committee that Dr Kelly was a pedantic man. He couldn't be sure that he had used the exact words which Mr Gilligan attributed to him, and so he had second thoughts about him being the primary source. My guess is that he went home and had third thoughts. He realised he hadn't been entirely forthcoming about his briefing to Gilligan. For a man of honour, a guilty conscience must be a dreadful, perhaps unbearable burden.
Under cross-examination by the committee, Dr Kelly had said that he "could not recall" if he had named Alastair Campbell. You'd think that would be a hard thing to forget. But would it? Who can remember exactly what they said in a conversation two months ago? We can remember the general thrust of what was said, but the actual words may have blurred in the memory.
Now, Andrew Gilligan is a talented reporter with a number of impressive scoops to his name. He is also personable, clever, and easy company. Dr Kelly had known him for some time. The two had collaborated on stories before and they trusted one another. When they met at the Charing Cross Hotel on that fateful day in May they were picking up the threads of previous conversations. What Gilligan probably did was lead Dr Kelly into revealing more about the dossier than he intended. That is what journalists are supposed to do. You can imagine how their conversation might have gone.
Dr Kelly, shaking his head: "I tell you Andrew, Downing Street really spoiled its case by exaggerating the threat posed by Saddam's WMDs."
Gilligan: "By making the dossier sexier, you mean?"
Kelly, laughing grimly: "It's not a word I would use myself, but yes."
Gilligan: "And by Downing Street you mean Campbell?"
Kelly: "Of course."
Gilligan: "And the classic example of Campbell sexing up the dossier would be the line you mentioned earlier about Saddam's WMDs being deployed in 45 minutes?"
Kelly: "Yes. Exactly."
It is possible that, two months later, Dr Kelly did not recall referring to Campbell by name or giving the 45 minute story as the classic example, perhaps because he had only nodded or said "yes" when those suggestions were put to him. When Gilligan read the conversation back to him, though - perhaps paraphrasing at times so that when he asked how the transformation of the dossier happened in the week before publication, Kelly's answer became a single word "Campbell" - Kelly was happy that this reflected their dialogue. So happy that he repeated the gist of it to reporters from Newsnight and the BBC News At Ten O'Clock. So happy indeed, that he did not complain to Gilligan after the initial broadcast.
I know it might seem cold-blooded to speculate about all this so soon after Dr Kelly's death, but Gilligan has been vilified by Downing Street and by anti-BBC Murdoch papers, namely The Sun and The Times, and it doesn't seem fair. Dr Kelly, meanwhile, has become in death a national hero, something which he may well have been in life. If Dr Kelly did mislead the committee, Lord Hutton should not judge him harshly. He was wrong-footed. He was under enormous pressure. And what he did next was, truly, a tragedy.
~
sunday telegraph leader, 27th july '03.
: -
In politics, one must always ask: who, whom? Last weekend, it was already clear that Dr David Kelly, the MoD scientist whose death is now the subject of a judicial inquiry, had been inappropriately treated by both the Government and the BBC.
Government officials had offered wholly improper assistance to journalists trying to identify the source of Andrew Gilligan's infamous Today programme report on the September Iraq dossier. The BBC, meanwhile, had raised the stakes prodigiously by incorrectly describing Dr Kelly as "an intelligence source" - a misrepresentation which it is still struggling to defend.
Dr Kelly certainly had access to intelligence reports, but he was neither an MI6 officer, nor on its payroll. He could not reasonably be treated as the primary source for a story about the anger of the intelligence services at Alastair Campbell's alleged insertion in the dossier of the claim that Saddam could deploy weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes.
The BBC was entitled to repeat such a claim, but its normal journalistic procedure should have dictated that it broadcast the response of senior intelligence officials - who, we now know, would have denied the central allegation strongly (the 45 minute claim was indeed a late addition to the dossier, but had been put there by the Joint Intelligence Committee, not Mr Campbell).
In the past week, however, it has emerged that Dr Kelly was not the passive figure he initially appeared to be: in this story, he was "who" as well as "whom". Indeed, it is clear that, in different ways, he led the BBC, the House of Commons and the Government a merry dance. The corporation's chairman, Gavyn Davies, presents a robust defence of its position on this page, displaying the journalistic skills familiar to those readers who recall his articles about economics in the City pages of this newspaper.
Mr Davies has in his sights those Cabinet Ministers who are now privately swearing vengeance against the BBC, muttering darkly about charter renewal and the future of the licence fee. But this bloody feud between Labour and the corporation would not have reached such a pitch had Dr Kelly not told BBC journalists - as it now seems he did - that Mr Campbell had tampered with the dossier against the wishes of the JIC. This was an allegation of the greatest seriousness and one which, because of the BBC's stature, was repeated around the world.
Dr Kelly also made a fool of the Foreign Affairs Committee which grilled him on July 15. To read his answers in transcript is a very different experience to watching the clips of this soft-spoken scientist apparently being harangued by MPs. Dr Kelly chooses his words with an exquisite care of which Francis Urquhart would be proud: "It does not sound like the sort of thing I would say", "Not that I am aware of", "I cannot recall using the name Campbell in that context", and so on. The committee was persuaded that he was not the source for Mr Gilligan's story. But, as we report today, one of its members now admits that he and his colleagues were taken for a ride and that "Dr Kelly was pretty economical with the truth".
The Government, too, suffered grievously because of Dr Kelly's briefing. Although the specifics of his claim were inaccurate, they chimed with a growing sense that the Prime Minister and his aides had exaggerated the threat of weapons of mass destruction. This newspaper has never wavered from the belief that the liberation of Iraq was justified: Saddam had failed to account for a terrifying quantity of WMD; he had refused for 12 years to co-operate with the UN's inspectors or comply with its resolutions; it was clear that he hoped to develop his deadly arsenal if permitted to do so.
Yet the zeal with which the Prime Minister and his aides seized on every piece of intelligence, however insubstantial, ultimately did their cause - which was noble - a disservice. The campaign to persuade the public of the case for war became conflated with the long-running saga of "spin". As we have noted in this column before, the trouble with the allegation against Mr Campbell was not that it was true - it was not - but that it rang true.
Nobody, we can suspect, grasped all of this more fully than Dr Kelly himself before his death. What precisely drove him to a lonely end may or may not become clearer in the course of Lord Hutton's inquiry. But it is easy to imagine a man of great eminence in his field, annoyed at what he saw as a distortion of the subject he knew most about, taking matters into his own hands with the media (perhaps wishing he had done so more "honourably" at the time the dossier was published).
Perhaps his intention was to set the record straight, and - to those who knew him in the curious demi-monde he inhabited - clear his own name of what he perceived to be a violation of the truth. Perhaps, too, the pride that led him to do that - the pride of a distinguished public servant - had as its flipside a sense of shame which led him to self-destruction. Perhaps, in the end, Dr Kelly was both the greatest culprit and the greatest victim of this terrible story.
So one raced along to the news-stand that’s by the tube near that Italian caff that sells really nice hot chocolate, not too far from the Waterstone’s going away from Whitehall and i bought me Evening Standard and got back and we crowded round and perused it, in shock afterward.
The two of us that don’t work for the government, after we’d discussed how terrible this was, and how upsetting for the man’s family, etc., then – after about 20 further of quiet drinking as we tried (and clearly failed) to ‘take it all in’ – spent about an hour, in a now stereotypical Daily Mail/Mirror stylee, berating the one of us that does, and slagging him off, saying was Blair going to resign, was Hoon or Campbell going to resign, etc. of course Alastair Campbell is going to resign now, anyway, although we’ll see if it’s before or after the Hutton Inquiry finishes. As someone who’s been an enormously helpful doodah for Tony Blair, do you think it means the beginning of the end for Mr Blair’s personal career? i’m not sure, i mean campbell will be staying on, as ever; certainly not with the announcement that the PM intends to run for a third, full term, but these are all interesting questions.
Anyway, as was slagging off our colleague and trying to account for how this monstrous state of affairs, this seedy suicide had come about, of course, do realise that was the shock talking, there’s been some right nonsense written about this sad affair in the past week, all that ‘wages of spin is death’ and suchlike, shockers. What sadly happened is, it seems, a respectable (and brilliant, nominated for the nobel peace prize as well) family chap was put into a position he was not familiar with, and it was too much. A little was made, earlier last week, of Andrew McKinlay MP probing Dr Kelly at the FAC, but the truth is, this was not bullying, a lot of FAC depositions and questioning, etc., is done in a similar manner. A lot of the stuff written about this entire tawdry episode has been pretty juvenile (some rags even dragging up the name of poor old Vince Foster, trying to seek parallels: you might remember how arch-conspiracy theorist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard used to bang on about that for quite a spell in the pages of the Sunday telegraph). One’s not going to defend the opinions of the twice-disgraced Mr Mandelson of course, or anything like that, but just love any carping about the Sun attacking the Beeb, etc., about Mr Blair or Mr Campbell resigning blood on their hands etc., etc., just silly, the words of the FAC chairman about Mr Gilligan were quite interesting as well at the time, what was it, “unsatisfactory session” with an “unsatisfactory witness”.
Below is a column from Nigel Farndale about David Kelly, and it makes quite good reading.
++
The words "tragedy" and "tragic" are so overused in journalism they are almost invisible on the page. And usually they are misused, because all the journalist means is that there has been an unfortunate accident, disaster or unexpected death. But the words seem appropriate for Dr David Kelly. His assumed suicide has the characteristics of a Greek tragedy. Here, clearly, was a man too noble for the world; more sinned against than sinning.
But there is also something of the low-budget, Monday night television drama about his death. Indeed a leading article in The Telegraph compared it to an Inspector Morse mystery. "The cameras take us down the beguiling summer lanes of the Oxfordshire countryside, and there, against all expectations, lies the body of an educated and respectable man." You can almost hear Kevin Whatley's Geordie voice: "But why would he take his own life, sir?" And John Thaw's reply: "Think, Lewis. Think."
We know Dr Kelly was an honourable man because he came forward to his line manager at the Ministry of Defence and admitted that he was probably the primary source for Andrew Gilligan's story. I strongly suspect that in the weeks to come it will emerge that Dr Kelly knew that MI6 was on to him as the mole, but that should not detract from the fact that he did the decent thing and owned up.
We also know from the way he conducted himself in front of the Foreign Affairs Committee that Dr Kelly was a pedantic man. He couldn't be sure that he had used the exact words which Mr Gilligan attributed to him, and so he had second thoughts about him being the primary source. My guess is that he went home and had third thoughts. He realised he hadn't been entirely forthcoming about his briefing to Gilligan. For a man of honour, a guilty conscience must be a dreadful, perhaps unbearable burden.
Under cross-examination by the committee, Dr Kelly had said that he "could not recall" if he had named Alastair Campbell. You'd think that would be a hard thing to forget. But would it? Who can remember exactly what they said in a conversation two months ago? We can remember the general thrust of what was said, but the actual words may have blurred in the memory.
Now, Andrew Gilligan is a talented reporter with a number of impressive scoops to his name. He is also personable, clever, and easy company. Dr Kelly had known him for some time. The two had collaborated on stories before and they trusted one another. When they met at the Charing Cross Hotel on that fateful day in May they were picking up the threads of previous conversations. What Gilligan probably did was lead Dr Kelly into revealing more about the dossier than he intended. That is what journalists are supposed to do. You can imagine how their conversation might have gone.
Dr Kelly, shaking his head: "I tell you Andrew, Downing Street really spoiled its case by exaggerating the threat posed by Saddam's WMDs."
Gilligan: "By making the dossier sexier, you mean?"
Kelly, laughing grimly: "It's not a word I would use myself, but yes."
Gilligan: "And by Downing Street you mean Campbell?"
Kelly: "Of course."
Gilligan: "And the classic example of Campbell sexing up the dossier would be the line you mentioned earlier about Saddam's WMDs being deployed in 45 minutes?"
Kelly: "Yes. Exactly."
It is possible that, two months later, Dr Kelly did not recall referring to Campbell by name or giving the 45 minute story as the classic example, perhaps because he had only nodded or said "yes" when those suggestions were put to him. When Gilligan read the conversation back to him, though - perhaps paraphrasing at times so that when he asked how the transformation of the dossier happened in the week before publication, Kelly's answer became a single word "Campbell" - Kelly was happy that this reflected their dialogue. So happy that he repeated the gist of it to reporters from Newsnight and the BBC News At Ten O'Clock. So happy indeed, that he did not complain to Gilligan after the initial broadcast.
I know it might seem cold-blooded to speculate about all this so soon after Dr Kelly's death, but Gilligan has been vilified by Downing Street and by anti-BBC Murdoch papers, namely The Sun and The Times, and it doesn't seem fair. Dr Kelly, meanwhile, has become in death a national hero, something which he may well have been in life. If Dr Kelly did mislead the committee, Lord Hutton should not judge him harshly. He was wrong-footed. He was under enormous pressure. And what he did next was, truly, a tragedy.
~
sunday telegraph leader, 27th july '03.
: -
In politics, one must always ask: who, whom? Last weekend, it was already clear that Dr David Kelly, the MoD scientist whose death is now the subject of a judicial inquiry, had been inappropriately treated by both the Government and the BBC.
Government officials had offered wholly improper assistance to journalists trying to identify the source of Andrew Gilligan's infamous Today programme report on the September Iraq dossier. The BBC, meanwhile, had raised the stakes prodigiously by incorrectly describing Dr Kelly as "an intelligence source" - a misrepresentation which it is still struggling to defend.
Dr Kelly certainly had access to intelligence reports, but he was neither an MI6 officer, nor on its payroll. He could not reasonably be treated as the primary source for a story about the anger of the intelligence services at Alastair Campbell's alleged insertion in the dossier of the claim that Saddam could deploy weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes.
The BBC was entitled to repeat such a claim, but its normal journalistic procedure should have dictated that it broadcast the response of senior intelligence officials - who, we now know, would have denied the central allegation strongly (the 45 minute claim was indeed a late addition to the dossier, but had been put there by the Joint Intelligence Committee, not Mr Campbell).
In the past week, however, it has emerged that Dr Kelly was not the passive figure he initially appeared to be: in this story, he was "who" as well as "whom". Indeed, it is clear that, in different ways, he led the BBC, the House of Commons and the Government a merry dance. The corporation's chairman, Gavyn Davies, presents a robust defence of its position on this page, displaying the journalistic skills familiar to those readers who recall his articles about economics in the City pages of this newspaper.
Mr Davies has in his sights those Cabinet Ministers who are now privately swearing vengeance against the BBC, muttering darkly about charter renewal and the future of the licence fee. But this bloody feud between Labour and the corporation would not have reached such a pitch had Dr Kelly not told BBC journalists - as it now seems he did - that Mr Campbell had tampered with the dossier against the wishes of the JIC. This was an allegation of the greatest seriousness and one which, because of the BBC's stature, was repeated around the world.
Dr Kelly also made a fool of the Foreign Affairs Committee which grilled him on July 15. To read his answers in transcript is a very different experience to watching the clips of this soft-spoken scientist apparently being harangued by MPs. Dr Kelly chooses his words with an exquisite care of which Francis Urquhart would be proud: "It does not sound like the sort of thing I would say", "Not that I am aware of", "I cannot recall using the name Campbell in that context", and so on. The committee was persuaded that he was not the source for Mr Gilligan's story. But, as we report today, one of its members now admits that he and his colleagues were taken for a ride and that "Dr Kelly was pretty economical with the truth".
The Government, too, suffered grievously because of Dr Kelly's briefing. Although the specifics of his claim were inaccurate, they chimed with a growing sense that the Prime Minister and his aides had exaggerated the threat of weapons of mass destruction. This newspaper has never wavered from the belief that the liberation of Iraq was justified: Saddam had failed to account for a terrifying quantity of WMD; he had refused for 12 years to co-operate with the UN's inspectors or comply with its resolutions; it was clear that he hoped to develop his deadly arsenal if permitted to do so.
Yet the zeal with which the Prime Minister and his aides seized on every piece of intelligence, however insubstantial, ultimately did their cause - which was noble - a disservice. The campaign to persuade the public of the case for war became conflated with the long-running saga of "spin". As we have noted in this column before, the trouble with the allegation against Mr Campbell was not that it was true - it was not - but that it rang true.
Nobody, we can suspect, grasped all of this more fully than Dr Kelly himself before his death. What precisely drove him to a lonely end may or may not become clearer in the course of Lord Hutton's inquiry. But it is easy to imagine a man of great eminence in his field, annoyed at what he saw as a distortion of the subject he knew most about, taking matters into his own hands with the media (perhaps wishing he had done so more "honourably" at the time the dossier was published).
Perhaps his intention was to set the record straight, and - to those who knew him in the curious demi-monde he inhabited - clear his own name of what he perceived to be a violation of the truth. Perhaps, too, the pride that led him to do that - the pride of a distinguished public servant - had as its flipside a sense of shame which led him to self-destruction. Perhaps, in the end, Dr Kelly was both the greatest culprit and the greatest victim of this terrible story.
one thing i find odd about mark steyn – and i do like his work i admit, if only because i generally disagree with a lot of the thrust whilst sort of agreeing with what he actually says, although not in those words (although that’s an untruth, but bugger it) – is his bullishness.
take his recent piece on idi amin in the sunday telegraph. here he was discussing a dictator but i found myself nearly as aggrieved with his phrasing as the subject. he basically used the piece, as far as one could tell, as an excuse to excoriate western mealy-mouthed leaders (especially post-colonial guilt appeasers, hawkish zionist steyn’s favourite target alongside the canadian government, islamofascists and peaceniks) trying to get out of criticising kleptocratic afro-marxist leaders.
what the hell is wrong with me that i would object to someone criticising a vicious bloodthirsty dictator with near feelings of distaste in my gut about his phrasing and slagging off possibly misguided left-wing internationalism (if you see it that way)? i do know at least one mate of mine, who in the immediate minutes on television (before he stopped being a reprehensible cunt and remembered himself) about watching 9/11 (this was after dinner time in the UK don’t forget) was thinking repulsive thoughts about ‘well, now the americans know what it’s like’. do you remember the guardian letters page in the days after 9/11?
you might disagree with the independent or the times or the telegraph (or a tabloid) but the only time i’ve seen – widescale – in this country, letters to a paper that made me ashamed to be english were the letters page in the guardian in the few days after 9/11. you can probably remember. i ain’t going to paraphrase such morally bankrupt trash anyway.
loads (by far the majority, TBH) of my mates are in the left-wing area, and purely off my personal experience (obviously!) left-social liberal guardianista readers, etc., have this strange compass going on where they’re more likely to slag off tabloid editors etc., over their hard-line solutions than the people ‘causing’ the actual problems. i realise the actual line is that however distasteful we find an individual’s acts, we must protect and safeguard their rights, etc., because we do not wish to disenfranchise anyone cause you never know when it might be you next, etc., but even so it’s still taken for granted that ‘well, of course, we don’t need to state that these offenders are horrible, because our moral compass is pointing in the right direction’ so much (it seems) that, frankly (surely?), rather –too- much energy is expended in shoving rude words in the direction of tabloid editors, etc.?
i don’t know, clearly i don’t.
there again, middle-class (and i mean PROPER middle class) folks that one knows will be all NIMBY about stuff.
i can’t abide indie kids slagging off scallies, that ~really~ pecks my head, it’s the height of (inverse-inverse whateva?) snobbishness and every Yeah Yeah Yeahs/IDM/acid jazz/intelligent dnb/Varese fan trustafarian 19 year old Guardian (hideously offensive generalisation or what?!) reading sort does it, snobbish types, it rilly pecks my head, exceedingly clueless NUMPTIES (especially bad round my way, let me tell you)
there now follows kevin myers : -
“
The next stage in "reality" television starts tomorrow on Channel Four. That'll Teach 'Em will put 30 16-year-old pupils and nine teachers into a "1950s" boarding school for a month. The programme's producer, Simon Rockell, said: "We are creating the whole school world - the religion, the games, the food."
Well, "the whole school world" is precisely what the programme won't be creating, because vital to that world, and without which all the rules and the regulations are quite meaningless, is the teenage culture of that time. To impose rules from over 40 years ago on young minds today is as useful as trying to feed hay to cars. I should know: I caught the last days of the old English public school.
The fons et origo of authority in that system - corporal punishment - will be absent from the series in spite of cane-flexing publicity photographs. This is Hamlet without Prince, Ophelia and Queen Gertrude. For corporal punishment was not only the ultimate sanction in the school: it was also the deciding arbiter of school culture. Boys expected to be beaten, and how one took one's beating was a measure of one's manhood. We certainly didn't think it unfair: quite the reverse. That was the system - arbitrary, incomprehensible, illogical - and fairness had nothing to do with it.
I was beaten only three times - once for reading Biggles in first year Latin class, once for cheekiness, and once for pillow-fighting, and frankly, I would have been ashamed to have left school without having been caned. It was, however, quite astoundingly painful. The only comparable agony in adulthood came when I fell on rocks and broke three ribs.
Corporal punishment not merely established a hierarchy of manhood; it also opened a window into the world of serial abuse, the existence of which all of us at least suspected; and some had experienced. At the prep school to my boarding school, boys were routinely beaten till they bled. One master used to hold boys by their jaws at a single arm's length from the top of the Victorian bell-tower, and boys in my dormitory would wake up screaming in terror at the memory.
With every lash of the cane, we were reminded of the possible existence of a world of totalitarian brutality which could spring into existence with little provocation. And privately, we were all resolved to endure whatever terror and violence came our way in uncomplaining silence. Our determination to keep our home lives and our school lives apart was total. We would have endured just about any privation or abuse rather then undergo parental intrusion or complaint into our school-world. So victims always protected the abuser: that was part of the perverse contract of our times.
That'll Teach 'Em cannot possibly comprehend such aspects of public school life. Instead, it is introducing the anachronistic concept of co-education. This is fatuous. The absence of girls was as much a defining a feature of the culture of English public school as the threat and the reality of institutional violence. Trying to capture that essence with girls and without flogging on "reality" television is like making a series of programmes about apartheid, except with universal suffrage and no townships.
Instead of dealing with the contemporary realities, the programme seems set to deal with current obsessions and prevalent myths, sex being the most obvious. Cassandra Jardine writing of the series in The Telegraph last Friday gave an inadvertent clue. She wondered how the boys (but not the girls) would take to the news that what she quaintly called self-abuse was damaging. This merely reflects the current media obsession with male masturbation, rather than female. If That'll Teach 'Em were to go back another 50 or so years, would a programme maker of 2003 dare to brave modern feminist wrath by relaying Mary Wood-Allen's solemn and public warnings (in What A Young Girl Should Know, 1905) of the dangers of "the solitary vice", which caused girls to eat mustard, vinegar, clay, salt, chalk and charcoal?
Other days, other ways: so when we hear the producer talking American, and referring to the "tough love" of his imagined public school of the past, we should worry. Public school was without "love": it was a power structure, in which violence, obedience and rote-learning became second nature, all of which could none the less result in blinding discoveries. Once one had grasped the beauty of grammar, language opened up like a vast bejewelled warehouse: few discoveries in my entire life equal the revelations which were liberated by that precious key.
That key was not cut in a month: nor can modern, free-ranging minds even begin to resemble minds shaped by remorseless daily routine of endless fact-acquisition and the parallel threat of serious pain. You can put today's hotel swipe-card into an old mortice lock, and pretend the door will open, but you know it won't. Only the most vapid televisual conceit of 2003 could propose otherwise. The past, you see, was inhabited by Martians; and today's young earthlings imitate us in vain.
“
take his recent piece on idi amin in the sunday telegraph. here he was discussing a dictator but i found myself nearly as aggrieved with his phrasing as the subject. he basically used the piece, as far as one could tell, as an excuse to excoriate western mealy-mouthed leaders (especially post-colonial guilt appeasers, hawkish zionist steyn’s favourite target alongside the canadian government, islamofascists and peaceniks) trying to get out of criticising kleptocratic afro-marxist leaders.
what the hell is wrong with me that i would object to someone criticising a vicious bloodthirsty dictator with near feelings of distaste in my gut about his phrasing and slagging off possibly misguided left-wing internationalism (if you see it that way)? i do know at least one mate of mine, who in the immediate minutes on television (before he stopped being a reprehensible cunt and remembered himself) about watching 9/11 (this was after dinner time in the UK don’t forget) was thinking repulsive thoughts about ‘well, now the americans know what it’s like’. do you remember the guardian letters page in the days after 9/11?
you might disagree with the independent or the times or the telegraph (or a tabloid) but the only time i’ve seen – widescale – in this country, letters to a paper that made me ashamed to be english were the letters page in the guardian in the few days after 9/11. you can probably remember. i ain’t going to paraphrase such morally bankrupt trash anyway.
loads (by far the majority, TBH) of my mates are in the left-wing area, and purely off my personal experience (obviously!) left-social liberal guardianista readers, etc., have this strange compass going on where they’re more likely to slag off tabloid editors etc., over their hard-line solutions than the people ‘causing’ the actual problems. i realise the actual line is that however distasteful we find an individual’s acts, we must protect and safeguard their rights, etc., because we do not wish to disenfranchise anyone cause you never know when it might be you next, etc., but even so it’s still taken for granted that ‘well, of course, we don’t need to state that these offenders are horrible, because our moral compass is pointing in the right direction’ so much (it seems) that, frankly (surely?), rather –too- much energy is expended in shoving rude words in the direction of tabloid editors, etc.?
i don’t know, clearly i don’t.
there again, middle-class (and i mean PROPER middle class) folks that one knows will be all NIMBY about stuff.
i can’t abide indie kids slagging off scallies, that ~really~ pecks my head, it’s the height of (inverse-inverse whateva?) snobbishness and every Yeah Yeah Yeahs/IDM/acid jazz/intelligent dnb/Varese fan trustafarian 19 year old Guardian (hideously offensive generalisation or what?!) reading sort does it, snobbish types, it rilly pecks my head, exceedingly clueless NUMPTIES (especially bad round my way, let me tell you)
there now follows kevin myers : -
“
The next stage in "reality" television starts tomorrow on Channel Four. That'll Teach 'Em will put 30 16-year-old pupils and nine teachers into a "1950s" boarding school for a month. The programme's producer, Simon Rockell, said: "We are creating the whole school world - the religion, the games, the food."
Well, "the whole school world" is precisely what the programme won't be creating, because vital to that world, and without which all the rules and the regulations are quite meaningless, is the teenage culture of that time. To impose rules from over 40 years ago on young minds today is as useful as trying to feed hay to cars. I should know: I caught the last days of the old English public school.
The fons et origo of authority in that system - corporal punishment - will be absent from the series in spite of cane-flexing publicity photographs. This is Hamlet without Prince, Ophelia and Queen Gertrude. For corporal punishment was not only the ultimate sanction in the school: it was also the deciding arbiter of school culture. Boys expected to be beaten, and how one took one's beating was a measure of one's manhood. We certainly didn't think it unfair: quite the reverse. That was the system - arbitrary, incomprehensible, illogical - and fairness had nothing to do with it.
I was beaten only three times - once for reading Biggles in first year Latin class, once for cheekiness, and once for pillow-fighting, and frankly, I would have been ashamed to have left school without having been caned. It was, however, quite astoundingly painful. The only comparable agony in adulthood came when I fell on rocks and broke three ribs.
Corporal punishment not merely established a hierarchy of manhood; it also opened a window into the world of serial abuse, the existence of which all of us at least suspected; and some had experienced. At the prep school to my boarding school, boys were routinely beaten till they bled. One master used to hold boys by their jaws at a single arm's length from the top of the Victorian bell-tower, and boys in my dormitory would wake up screaming in terror at the memory.
With every lash of the cane, we were reminded of the possible existence of a world of totalitarian brutality which could spring into existence with little provocation. And privately, we were all resolved to endure whatever terror and violence came our way in uncomplaining silence. Our determination to keep our home lives and our school lives apart was total. We would have endured just about any privation or abuse rather then undergo parental intrusion or complaint into our school-world. So victims always protected the abuser: that was part of the perverse contract of our times.
That'll Teach 'Em cannot possibly comprehend such aspects of public school life. Instead, it is introducing the anachronistic concept of co-education. This is fatuous. The absence of girls was as much a defining a feature of the culture of English public school as the threat and the reality of institutional violence. Trying to capture that essence with girls and without flogging on "reality" television is like making a series of programmes about apartheid, except with universal suffrage and no townships.
Instead of dealing with the contemporary realities, the programme seems set to deal with current obsessions and prevalent myths, sex being the most obvious. Cassandra Jardine writing of the series in The Telegraph last Friday gave an inadvertent clue. She wondered how the boys (but not the girls) would take to the news that what she quaintly called self-abuse was damaging. This merely reflects the current media obsession with male masturbation, rather than female. If That'll Teach 'Em were to go back another 50 or so years, would a programme maker of 2003 dare to brave modern feminist wrath by relaying Mary Wood-Allen's solemn and public warnings (in What A Young Girl Should Know, 1905) of the dangers of "the solitary vice", which caused girls to eat mustard, vinegar, clay, salt, chalk and charcoal?
Other days, other ways: so when we hear the producer talking American, and referring to the "tough love" of his imagined public school of the past, we should worry. Public school was without "love": it was a power structure, in which violence, obedience and rote-learning became second nature, all of which could none the less result in blinding discoveries. Once one had grasped the beauty of grammar, language opened up like a vast bejewelled warehouse: few discoveries in my entire life equal the revelations which were liberated by that precious key.
That key was not cut in a month: nor can modern, free-ranging minds even begin to resemble minds shaped by remorseless daily routine of endless fact-acquisition and the parallel threat of serious pain. You can put today's hotel swipe-card into an old mortice lock, and pretend the door will open, but you know it won't. Only the most vapid televisual conceit of 2003 could propose otherwise. The past, you see, was inhabited by Martians; and today's young earthlings imitate us in vain.
“
he's quite a cheeky bastard.
the NSPCC donation that never was, escaping to the sun in Marbella, a senior staff member *essentially* dismissing (for all functional intents and purposes) 9/11 as 'every cloud has a silver lining', the serious and troubling allegations of fraud, nah mate, not having ~that~
the NSPCC donation that never was, escaping to the sun in Marbella, a senior staff member *essentially* dismissing (for all functional intents and purposes) 9/11 as 'every cloud has a silver lining', the serious and troubling allegations of fraud, nah mate, not having ~that~
Wednesday, 30 July 2003
Nick Southall over at yon auspicious fish quotes some lad (his mate?) Pete on Dizzee Ras, saying it's rubbish.
there's an odd symmetry there, a late teenaged hip-hopper at work who saw the video for 'fix up, look sharp' on mtv last night said he didn't like it either (we do enjoy discussing biggie and tupac and ludacris, btw, who are all applauded by him).
it's odd that, cause i like uk hip-hop me, i like MSI&Asylum and lots of people from the Grand Central family and phi-life cypher (that reminds me, must get my hands on the new nextmen album) and lots of little ragamuffin mancunian emcees you wouldn't have heard of you can get tapes of (yeah, all the way from here to lytham st. annes, believe it or not) and whatnot, but east london pirate garage-rap collectives, piss all over the likes of these, quite frankly. the nasty crew are some whole next-level stuff in my view.
the '30-something middle-class white critic thing' is a tad disappointing, especially tossed off from such a good blog.
(i write as a 20-something fila wearing whiteboy clerical drone).
there's an odd symmetry there, a late teenaged hip-hopper at work who saw the video for 'fix up, look sharp' on mtv last night said he didn't like it either (we do enjoy discussing biggie and tupac and ludacris, btw, who are all applauded by him).
it's odd that, cause i like uk hip-hop me, i like MSI&Asylum and lots of people from the Grand Central family and phi-life cypher (that reminds me, must get my hands on the new nextmen album) and lots of little ragamuffin mancunian emcees you wouldn't have heard of you can get tapes of (yeah, all the way from here to lytham st. annes, believe it or not) and whatnot, but east london pirate garage-rap collectives, piss all over the likes of these, quite frankly. the nasty crew are some whole next-level stuff in my view.
the '30-something middle-class white critic thing' is a tad disappointing, especially tossed off from such a good blog.
(i write as a 20-something fila wearing whiteboy clerical drone).
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