Apocalyptic Visions

My kids love going to the fairground. I do not share this love with them.

A trip to the fair inevitability concludes in:

1) A large wad of cash wasted – one leaves either with nothing at all to show or with something that is actually worse than nothing, such as a dart gun or a squeaky inflatable dolphin.

2) A screaming tantrum from one or both of the boys, who do not realise that there are precisely zero ways for them to have fun at a fair when the cash reserves have been exhausted.

For them to have fun, I say.  There is one thing I take pleasure in at funfairs – and best of all, it’s free.

I am, of course, talking about admiring the astonishing artwork on display.

Now, I like charmingly amateurish unlicensed renderings of popular cartoon characters as much as the next man. But what I really like are epic-scale depictions of beautiful people having KERRRAY-ZEE PARTY TIME!

In hyperreal colours!

Via airbrush!

This, for example, appears to be Amanda Palmer, with the words “Energy Dome” exploding out of her ears. Perhaps this fairground owner is a massive Dresden Dolls fan.

Actually, that’s quite a good one.

What I really like are the ones that defy the laws of perspective; which look like superficially skilful renderings of the human form (or of Porsches), but which have disturbing, subliminal inaccuracies which leave the viewer uneasy for reasons they cannot describe.

You can’t tell me that is not a disturbing image.

If Hieronymous Bosch was alive today, I think this is what his last judgments and visions of hell would look like. 

Makes you proud to be British

Hot on the heels of the “racist vans” telling illegal immigrants to go home, our government has today deployed troops of paramilitaries at transport hubs across the country to round up anyone non-white.

The SS-wannabes in question are the UK Border Agency, not – please take note – the police.

And they do not have the authority to do what they are doing by law. 

You should read this, which cites, chapter and verse, what the powers of immigration officers are and makes it very clear that racial profiling just anybody they don’t like the look of on the streets ain’t one of them.

Yes, illegal immigrants should not be in the country, and yes, action to deter illegal immigration is necessary. But this is state terrorism, unsanctioned by law.

A lot of people think this sort of shit is ok because they don’t like illegal immigrants. It’s not – and I remind you of the words of Martin Niemöller:

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Catholic.
Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.

The photo came from here.

Toddler Strategies for Business Success

It’s every parent’s biggest worry: am I responsible for spawning the antichrist?

The period when your conviction that your little darling is not - in fact - the Beast of Revelation come to bring about a reign of terrible darkness across the world is really put to the test is commonly known as the “Terrible Twos”.

A more accurate description would of course be “childhood, taken as a whole”.

This may be overstating things. I speak not from personal experience here – the eldest of my own brood is but a fiveling – but from that tried-and-tested mix of bigoted exaggeration, wilful blindness to nuance and deliberate trolling which is the hallmark of blogging.

As Marx said in his Theses on Feuerbach:

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.

From a philosophical point of view, I am pretty sure that I have got the whole of toddler psychology worked out.

Unfortunately, I have yet to ascertain how put the crucial insight - “they always work out what will wind you up the most, and then do it” - into action.

Toddler reasoning is essentially unanswerable. There is no reasonable response to hyperventilation, uncontrollable crying or just shouting "BUT I WANT IT!"

I am surprised then that, given their mastery in manipulating human behaviour, no one seems to have seized on the business strategy applications of leading successful toddlers.

Why go through a long and delicate negotiation when a public tantrum has been proven time and time again to get you what you want?

Or suppose you have botched a big client presentation – why not blame your sibling?

Remember, there is no question or challenge that can’t be answered with “but he did x, y, z first ” once you have given up on the idea that you are inhibited by:

• The need for things to be true; or
• The need for parts of your overall argument to have any relation to one another or the point you are defending.

I can’t believe that more toddlers are not leading FTSE 100 companies, given that like most CEOs they are, at heart, innumerate psychopaths.

Boris the Baptist

As you could tell from the London Olympic opening ceremony, we now have a post-modern public culture. We are ironical, eclectic, genre-subverting, fusion-cooking, mixing up Chelsea Pensioners and lesbian kisses. We are high-brow and low-brow at the same time. The only politician who ‘gets’ any of this is Boris. He can mix Virgil and James Bond, a posh accent and street cred, conservative politics and a liberal spirit. Mr Cameron is the moderniser, but Boris is the post-moderniser.

So sayeth Charles Moore in the Telegraph this weekend.

There are many people who understand post-modernism better than me; people who have written whole books about it. And to them I say “Big Mac and fries please”. HA HA.

Whatever it means, Moore is right. For example, the generation which includes the prime minister has its idea of the 1980s defined as much by Five Star as by Margaret Thatcher, and as much by Five Star being called “fucking crap” on Going Live as by System Addict.

And every generation younger than that is similarly drenched in post-modern irony.

We are barely able to take listen to someone making a political or moral argument without writing them off as a fanatic or a hypocrite because relativism has become such a thoroughly ingrained habit.

Can you take seriously someone who sets themselves up as infallible, motivated only by noble desires, dedicated to nothing but public service and bettering the lot of their fellow men?

No, me neither. I am too silly, too overwhelmed by schadenfreude, too lazy – too post-modern – to regard that kind of a template for a human being with anything other than contempt.

Celebrities, on the other hand, are human - all too human.

So along comes Boris, the celebrity politician, and he is literally able to have a crowd of thousands chanting his name, surrounded by flags and flames – like the 20^th Century NEVER HAPPENED!

If everyone didn’t think Boris wasn’t serious, that would have been terrifying. So what was is he?

Boris Johnson is not a “one-off” or someone to whom the political rulebook doesn’t apply - he is a mutated virus. Along with Louise Mensch, he is the prototype of the next generation of celebrity politicians - he's John the Baptist for whatever kind of Jesus is coming next. By approaching us as celebrities, they are penetrating the defences we have put up against “politicians”.

They are reframing the terms of political discourse. The political parties are surely watching their apparently unique charisma at work and attempting to work out how to bottle it and routinise it. The question is, when the medium changes, what messages will we suddenly become susceptible to all over again?

Bradford: Symbol vs Reality

Here in Yorkshire, there are two Bradfords. There are two places co-terminous in space but miles apart in other respects (or Respects, if you prefer) going by that name.

The first, which has been flung back into the public imagination in recent weeks, is “Bradford the Symbol” – Bradford, the illustration of whatever lesson the (inevitably London-based voice) you are listening to wishes to preach.

As long as that lesson revolves around (i) decline and stagnation or (ii) ethnic segregation, I should add.

So, we have the Bradford that proves David Cameron is out of touch – not something that requires a great deal of proving. We have the Bradford that proves Labour is finished in the north of England. And of course now we have Bradford the symbol of George Galloway’s spectacular victory/opportunism/ego (delete as your prejudices dictate).

We have the Bradford that proves that white working class people are awful. The Bradford that proves that poor people are all racists, and the Bradford that proves that they aren’t as well. British Bradford and not-British Bradford – take your pick, but just don’t come so close that you get your hands dirty with context!

I have particularly enjoyed the colourful depictions of “Bradree” or clan politics as if Bradford were in another world entirely.

I must confess to never having come across this myself, but hey I live in Bradford East not Bradford West and we have a nice, cost Lib Dem for an MP where we are. I’ve even heard we’re going to be made part of Leeds in the Boundary Review, so how’s about that for moving up in the world? Bradford won’t be my problem soon...

In contrast to symbolic Bradford, we have Bradford the reality. The reality of the lives of nearly three hundred thousand people, persistently made out to be victims or manipulated pawns with their individuality subsumed into their “group”.

It's supposed to look like this. 

Of course, Bradford has its problems and the pictures recently painted of symbolic Bradford are not false as such.

But they all just use Bradford to make another point, because nobody really wants to think about Bradford the reality for too long.  

Bradford may have the national attention for the moment, but if all we can’t rise above being just a sad example of what went wrong with (i) the cotton industry, (ii) Thatcherism, (iii) immigration, (iv) local politics or (v) methods of rhubarb cultivation, then it will be long forgotten before the public has finished picking the remnants of that pasty out of its teeth.

Westfield is not the only gaping hole in the centre of Bradford. The city can’t sit around waiting for London to rescue it. It’s not going to happen, with Galloway or without. While Bradford is a symbol of victimhood and a byword for awfulness it’s going to remain the way it is. 

Only if some dynamic local energy and motive force comes from within this city – or any city that isn’t London – can we hope to stop the relentless decline.

And that’s why, if you live in Bradford, you should REGISTER TO VOTE and then VOTE FOR an elected mayor on May 3^rd! Stop waiting for handouts and let’s start solving the problems ourselves!

Goats and penguins

So, I just read an hilarious article by Marina Hyde in the Guardian, which suggested that – amongst other things - the role of England football captain was "marginally less important than that of a regimental goat".

I like goats. They have a lot of personality (for ungulates), but they seem unfairly to be tarred with the "Satanic" brush – dating back at least as far as the New Testament:

"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left." 

Meaning that all goats go to hell – presumably because they're stubborn and wilful rather than good little followers. Well, I'd rather see a goat standing on a roof than watch a flock of sheep herded into a pen any day of the week – and if that puts me among the Damned, so be it.

The great thing about the internet is that it gives you a guidebook for when your mind is wandering. So, having sniggered at the comparison of John Terry to a regimental goat my capricious (GOAT LIKE) brain asked itself where the tradition of goats in the military came from. And Google and Wikipedia, like over-indulgent parents who cannot deny anything no matter how stupid or inappropriate to their little darlings, duly led me here to William Windsor the goat, lance corporal in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers.

You MUST read the article because it's utterly hysterical – the story of the goat's demotion being just one highlight.

The previous William Windsor was demoted to fusilier in 2006 after being court-martialled on charges of "unacceptable behaviour", "lack of decorum" and "disobeying a direct order" at the Queen's 80^th birthday celebrations in 2006.

That meant that the rank and file no longer had to stand to attention when he walked past. He was subsequently reinstated after three months, regaining his membership of the corporals' mess - much to the chagrin, no doubt, of the various humans who had been seeking promotion. 

The latest William Windsor the goat (appointed 2009) is still in training, and only has the rank of fusilier. As part of his package, he gets two cigarettes a day to eat – although he is too young as yet for his ration of Guinness.

But if you thought that was tapping gently at the window of insanity, you have presumably never heard of Colonel-in-Chief Sir Nils Olav of the Norwegian Kings Guard. Who is a penguin, resident at Edinburgh Zoo.

In 2008, accompanied by 130 members of his guard, King Harald V of Norway went to the zoo to knight the Antarctic seabird, whom he described as:

"In every way qualified to receive the honour and dignity of knighthood".

Of course he is your majesty. And have you remembered to take your special tablets today?

Who do you think? The Libyans!

So, goodbye then Colonel Gaddaffi, you crazy old bastard.

It may not have all been over by April at a cost of a few hundred quid, and it may have required a little more force from NATO than was strictly mandated by the UN, but what is it they say?...ah, yes...the ends justify the means.

That's the moral authority and military hegemony of the West re-established then. No longer can it be said that democratic states will tolerate tyrants; even ones who pose no harm to anyone anymore except their own citizens; even ones who make themselves useful from time to time.

Let that be a warning to all you other dictators out there. You hear that? That's the Clash of Civilisations in the distance! Put a foot wrong and BANG, we will mess you up real bad. Are you listening Hu Jintao? No, I didn't think so.

Anyway, now the brave people of Libya can elect a modern, secular, centre-left (or even centre-right! It really is up to you!) liberal democratic government of their own - just like the people of Egypt did earlier in the year.

Hooray for democracy.

By which I mean "fingers crossed, but not getting my hopes up for democracy".

In the meantime, remember the good old days?

PS – The image above is a John Yates classic.

A riot of my own

It would undoubtedly be far too cynical to suggest that the London riots came at just the right time for the Metropolitan Police.

In the wake of the phone hacking scandal – and its subsidiary, rather more important corollary, the "exposure of massive corruption in public authorities" scandal – the Met's reputation was not so much in the toilet as round the U-bend, through the pipes and gently pullulating in a big circular tank somewhere in the countryside.

And yet, just a couple of weeks later, the country is united behind it, thanks to the capital's very own tracksuit-clad lumpenproletariat. There's nothing like a threat to property to remind you who your friends are, eh?

Still, at least the London rioters had some vague notion of a pretext (the shooting of Mark Duggan by Met officers).

Their provincial brethren haven't even bothered, unless you are still accepting "errr...the cuts?" as a remotely valid or remotely sincere excuse for any and every kind of nihilistic stupidity.

You know how I plan on showing my opposition to the closure of local libraries? By stealing luxury luggage from Louis Vuitton and burning a bus. You know why I pooed in my pants, rubbed it on my face and threw what was left at a passer-by? The cuts. Oh, and no one listens to me.

Pleasingly, not even the Guardian seems to maintain that what's been going on for the last few nights is in any sense a "protest" – although there are plenty still plugging away with "root causes" explanations out there. Oh, it's all because the poor dears get stop-and-searched a bit. Boo hoo. It's all because that nasty posh man wants to take away their table tennis club. My heart bleeds. I prefer this explanation.

Bradford has been remarkably quiet throughout the current events so far – probably for reasons implied in the photo above. After all, where's the profit in looting a pound shop?

Like Berlin 1930

Anyone who thinks that identifying the beginning of the rise of the next wave of neo-fascism in Europe will be as simple as keeping an eye out for bulk purchases of Matalan's discount black shirts is going to be disappointed and surprised.

1930s fascism was totally discredited – more than any other ideology, ever – by the comprehensive defeat of all of its exponents in the Second World War. The trouble is, the stresses and urges that created it haven't gone away. In fact, I'm worried that they are back big time and that an inability to stop obsessing about the superficial exterior forms of 1930s fascism – specifically the Nazis – is blinding us to this.

OK, I completely accept that it would be utterly ridiculous to suggest that there has been any catastrophic dislocation remotely comparable to the First World War and its aftermath in recent times.

I don't think it would be crazy to suggest, though, that the Afghanistan and Iraq wars have altered the nature of the relationship between the government, the military and the public in this country.

Eight years of unsuccessful war and a steady drip-drip of casualties have directed public sentiment against the government's conduct of the war, while boosting sympathy for the "betrayed" armed forces. The meteoric rise of very new groups like Help for Heroes is evidence of this.

At the same time, the wars have, if not themselves created, then cemented and reinforced the position of a visible enemy without and within – "radical Islam".

The Cuts, meanwhile, are shortly going to be putting thousands of demobilised ex-military personnel onto the streets without much hope of getting jobs. Many of them will have been fighting overseas, ostensibly for their country against radical Islamism, and they will find themselves out of work, back in a country that – in their eyes – is being infiltrated by the very people they've been trying to kill for nearly a decade. The government and the political class, they will quickly conclude, have given up on them and on the cause they were fighting for.

So, we will soon have a whole lot of trained fighters who are anti-Islamist and very pissed off at being stabbed in the back by the political class on our streets.

Enter groups like the BNP and, I think more significantly here, the English Defence League. "Political militias" were at the heart of the rise of 1930s fascism – alleged patriots defending their nation from communist conspiracies, by going out and kicking the shit out of their enemies.

Of course the EDL don't dress up like a bunch of South American paramilitaries and give Hitler salutes to one another (not officially, at least). Expecting them to do that is to fall into the trap of imaging that fascism is all about appearances. That's like expecting Nick Griffin to sprout a toothbrush moustache overnight. They probably won't use as much BrylCream or have such good posture as Oswald Mosley either.

Surveillance technology today means that thugs – political and apolitical – go around hooded and masked, not wearing their medals.

Ah, surveillance technology... don't forget that most European fascist movements never actually came to power, but instead created atmospheres of disorder and subversion where the governments moved further and further to the authoritarian right, on the one hand to co-opt them against the communists and on the other to suppress them. Again, the uniqueness of the Nazi example blinds us to the perhaps more relevant examples of Romania, Hungary and indeed Italy where battling crazies on the streets led to governments turning to dictatorship in the name of "order".

Civil liberties in this country are being eroded as we speak, thanks to the "enemy within" trope (maybe with Iran playing the role of the Soviet Union).

At the same time, what have we got? Collapse of faith in the political class as a whole and "conventional" political institutions? Check. Unfocussed anger against "international finance"? Check. Unemployment AND inflation? Check. A whole load of newly-democratic East European countries under massive economic and social strain? Check. Popular anti-science sentiments, belief in social decadence and growing millenarianism (only this time environmental rather than "biological")? Check.

Gosh, it does look remarkably like history is repeating itself. Just don't expect them to come wearing tell-tale "baddie" uniforms this time.

'King Boring

It is simply not good enough in these times that the monarchy carries on with its dreary rules on naming kings and queens.

Look at them all (up there). If they ever get a crack of the whip, Prince Charles will be King Charles the Third and Prince William will be King William the Fifth. YAWN.

Were you even aware there was a William the Fourth (1830-1837)? I think the sole evidence of his existence is in pub names.

Way back when, monarchs had much better titles than they do today – and I think that reviving some of these traditions is essential if the Royals are to have continuing relevance after we the public have forgotten about Pippa Middleton's arse.

Broadly, there are two alternatives to the tedious, backward-looking numerical sequence.

• The Viking approach – giving your monarch a (not always complimentary) nickname on the basis of some characteristic. For example, Harald Bluetooth and multiple Sven Forkbeards.
• The "the" approach – much more common throughout history, you've got [First name] the [What are they like?]. Hence, William the Conqueror, Charles the Bald, William the Silent, Pepin the Short, August the Strong, Joanna the Mad and my personal favourite (and a Viking exception to the breakdown suggested, no less) Ivar the Boneless.

A short digression on August the Strong. He was – amongst other things - King of Poland in the late 17^th and early 18^th century.

Back then, the King of Poland was "elected" – which meant in practice that it was a runners-up prize offered by other rulers to aristocratic Europeans unlikely to get to the Big Chair in their own countries.

Managing director of the IMF anyone? PARP PARP.

And "the Saxon Hercules" allegedly fathered 365 children in his time, so "the rutting chimpanzee" has a bit of catching up to do.

Anyway, back to our own unimpeachably admirable Saxe-Coburg-Gothas.

Sometimes, you have to go backwards to go forwards.

And I think that the public could really learn to love King Charles the Big-Eared or King Charles the Tedious.

Indeed, I am normally of a fairly republican frame of mind, but even I would be glad to get behind the monarchy if we were looking at King William Horseface or – better yet - King Harold Gingernuts.

To the shores of Tripoli

So Boy George reckons the Libya war (we might as well get used to calling it that) is going to cost £2 million a day, and that it will all be over by April.

Bargain!

Unless, of course anything at all goes wrong. When you consider that one Eurofighter Typhoon costs 90 million euros, that figure could quite easily prove to be a little on the conservative side.

Intervention in Libya is bonkers. The UK, apparently, can't afford hospitals, schools etc, but it can afford to play soldiers in the desert all over again.

And for what? At the risk of being an armchair general, surely the best that an aerial campaign can hope for is exactly what it achieved in Kosovo – ie de facto partition that lasts precisely as long as the West sticks around to protect Free Benghazi from revenge.

The West missed its chance to topple Gadaffi during the couple of weeks he was in Venezuela (or "resting" at a mental hospital or whatever), before the repression started. He's not going to step down politely now, is he?

And it's been clear that regime change is not part of the mission - so he'll sit there like a malevolent toad eyeballing his former eastern provinces and waiting for his chance. I suppose the hope is that there will be a mutiny and a military coup. Well, hope springs eternal, eh?

But here this country goes again, imagining that it's a global power all over again. Why won't any governments accept that the 20^th century happened? Let's adjust our ambitions to our budgets, not our budgets to our ambitions.