A voice of sanity

Amidst the mess and the nonsense, there are a few people thinking clearly and - usuallu - talking sense. Owen Jones, Ha-Joon Chang and, today especially, John Harris. He's made sense all through the various campaigns, ducking the hysteria and the generalisations to talk to actual people. In today's Guardian he has a terrific piece about EU nationals coming to Peterborough in search of a better life. they work hard, they move from being casual to full time, employees to employers.

Which raises a question, that Harris phrases with impeccable calm:   "Most of the EU citizens i have spoken to in Peterborough do not have a left-wing thought in their heads; they believe in a credo of self-reliance, hard work and home ownership. In a British context, these ideas are as Tory as they come. So how come so many Conservatives now want to slam the door on their most devout adherents?"

NHS staffing

"NHS England to spend £100m recruiting GPs from overseas." Hang on a minute. Back in October, in the heady days of the Tory Party Conference, I swore I heard Jeremy Hunt promise delegates that we'd have an NHS staffed entirely with pure white Brits. It wasn't right to be taking other country's doctors away from where they were needed (even though it is actually cheaper than training them ourselves), so the new post-Brexit Britain would be treated by a medical workforce that was 100 per cent Brit. Yeah, right.

We should be used to it, but they have no shame. They will say whatever it takes, for today's headlines, to solve this week's crisis. If they have to say the opposite a month later that's fine. Nobody remembers, nobody cares. It's just a game.  

Partition

There's been a ton of programmes about the India/Pakistan partition of 1947, almost all of them excellent. I feel substantially wiser, and grateful to all the people who've clearly taken this as an opportunity to invest time, thought and money in public education. Lord Reith, for once, might be smiling. Gurinder Chadha's "India's Partition:The Forgotten Story" was possibly the best of the lot, coming towards the end of the sequence, but offering a stunningly clear account of how different elements combined to produce this exceptionally bloody result. There was a lot of rather silly (apparent) toing and froing, from the UK to India, back to the UK and then to a different part of India, as though Chadha,, was jumping on and off various buses around London. But the quality of the programme was the expert witnesses it gathered to explain precisely what was going on, at each stage of the process, and from them we got the sense of how impersonal forces combined with individual personalities (Nehru, Gandhi and Jinna in particular, but also the Brits involved) to produce a toxic juggernaut which by the end was unstoppable - though it could certainly have been handled more wisely - i.e. by taking time, calculating likely consequences, rather than staying out of violent clashes and getting the hell out as fast as possible. There may be parts of our colonial record we should celebrate, but this isn't one of them. 

The State

You can't please some people any of the time. Peter Kosminsky spends a lot of time researching and then making the state, a drama in four parts, one hour each, shown on four successive nights. It's about Brits going to Syria in support of Isis. I thought it was fascinating, and really well done. A bit formulaic, heavily constricted by the need to get in tons of useful information that had been gathered, but not stupid or preachy, and light years ahead of most of the thinking that we get about Isis from politicians or the TV news. you could begin to understand why people like these could initially be attracted by some of what they hear, even if that - inevitably? - leads to later disillusion as they taste the grim and complex reality of what's involved. The Daily Mail was predictably scathing. Kosminsky was a white, middle-aged Oxbridge graduate - he hadn't actually been to Raqqa to find out for himself. Stuart Jeffies in The Guadrian wasn't much better: "Isis Drama fails to offer any answers on radicalisation." Oh right. That's why we watch plays, is it? So they'll give us the answers. Some days I think that if I could speak another language I'd emigrate.  

Hate and the Beautiful Game

It took me a while, but I finally caught up with Gareth Thomas' TV documentary about homophobia in English football. And it is that specific - there's a prominent gay American soccer player who's happy to have come out there, but wouldn't have done so here. And Thomas' own experience in British rugby (backed up by referee Nigel Owens) indicates that that's a much more civilised world in this respect. So Thomas goes looking for answers. He trawls through trolling on line, and listens to the abuse in the stands. He sees how some clubs are much better geared than others to combat it - Cardiff, for instance, have a well-trained team who will identify, remove and then ban fans who abuse black players - but would they be as vigilant about homophobic chants? As with Thomas' own case, it needs prominent players with the nerve to come out - and once that happens, they'll get backing from sponsors (great positive story) and some of the press. But before that happens, the powers that be need to get their act together, produce and then enforce a common pattern of resistance to open homophobia. Thomas tries. He really does. He works out a possible code of practice, with a supportive lawyer. He tries, endlessly, to make an appointment with one top official. He talks to another, gets a load of platitudes and good intentions, and comes out shaking his head "I don't know whether to laugh or cry." As a record of intelligence and determination confronting stupidity and inertia this is a wonderful programme; as an indication of the state of football, it's deeply depressing. 

Simple Solutions

And yes, it's Trump again. Sorry about that, but it's hard to resist, when the man just keeps on throwing up tasty little nuggets of controversy. (There's also the sense that this can't possibly last, that any minute now all the toys will go out of the pram and he'll stump back to Trump Tower, to gaze at his gold reflection.) 

This is a tiny scrap, which most media haven't picked up, but I think it's significant. After a reasonably conventional quote regretting the latest terrorist outrage (in Barcelona) Trump gets to musing about "what General Pershing did to terrorists when caught. There was no more Radical Islamic Terror for 35 years!"

What Pershing did (or may not have done - there are serious doubts about this story's  authenticity) was to dip bullets in pig's blood, shoot 49 of the terrorists, and then instruct the 50th to go back to his mates and report what he'd just seen. Could anyone seriously believe that such an action would simply cancel out the impulses behind the current wave of terrorist attacks? Trump, apparently. Just as he believed it was simple to "drain the swamp", easy to lock up Hillary and build the wall, no problem to simple scrub out Obamacare. But look where we are now on each of those innocent childish dreams. Government actually is much harder than it looks.    

Right-wing violence

Ivanka Trump is smart enough to see that there's no justification for the aggression and violence shown by right-wing demonstrators at Charlottesville. Some issues can be fudged or evaded, but racism as crude and destructive as that doesn't leave any room for equivocation. Unless, of course, you're her dad. Yet again, Trump insists on the right to define his own universe, to pretend that the killing of a paralegal resulted from evenly distributed extremism from left as well as right, rather than being the very specific result of cultivated hatred. Partly, of course, because he's one of the ones who's been doing the cultivating, and his presence in the White House depends on the vehement support of white supremacists. Whether he'll see the need for a more mature, detached view, which doesn't relate to his own immediate self-interest, only time will tell. But don't hold your breath.   

Al Gore

Got a last minute e-mail warning me of a showing of Al Gore's latest film, at the Telford Odeon cinema. (For some reason, the only places in Shropshire which got this gig were the two cinemas in Telford). the film doesn't go on general circulation till next week, but there was a bonus of a streamed interview from a big London cinema, featuring Al Gore, responding to a range from questions which varied from the profound to the trivial. He dealt with them all with economy and grace, never stuck for a word, hugely equipped to produce relevant information. He is phenomenal, determined, relaxed and very warm, heartened by the commitment and idealism of young activists, who have - as he was keen to point out - always powered large movements which achieved radical change - civil rights, feminism, gay liberation. It's a big, tough challenge, but in his company there's no question of simply ducking it or giving up. His wheeler-dealing at the Paris summit, finding the right contacts and clout to help India choose solar power over coal-fired energy, was really impressive. Perhaps, despite Trump, we still have a chance.  

American Werewolf in Dudley Castle

Not a movie you've heard of, but that's because it was an unique and unforgettable night. Flatpack Festival is a terrific Birmingham even, annually in April, but they also run occasional one-offs. (I will admit an interest: it was set up and is run by my son Ian). On Friday we went to the grounds of Dudley Castle, with camping chairs and lots of warm clothing, to camp round the illuminated grounds of Dudley Castle, and watch an evening showing of the John Landis film American Werewolf in London. a freaky choice, maybe, but it worked brilliantly, with the added taster of a short filmed intro from Landis, who looked faintly amused by the idea of us watching his movie alongside animals in the zoo, but he wished us a good night nonetheless.

We were walking back afterwards, my wife carrying our chairs, when a couple of girls offered to help her with them. she thanked them but said she was fine, and they then were very keen to know if we'd enjoyed the film. We assured them we had, and they were delighted. They'd gone because it was one of their mum's favourite films. A gorgeous, warm little cameo to end a fabulous evening. 

http://flatpackfestival.org.uk/2017/08/beware-the-moon/

Ha-Joon Chang

As valued gurus age and die (Stuart Hall, Tony Judt) so it's good to discover new intellectual heroes. One of my current favourites is Ha-joon chang, a Korean economist currently based in the UK, who writes occasional articles in The Guardian. He's always clear, patient and constructive, never full of himself or showboating, but the careful accumulation of argument and evidence is devastating. He's run a tireless campaign - much more courageously and consistently than the Labour Party - to expose the Cameron/Osborne myth that "Labour spent it all", and I've just finished "Bad Samaritans", a thorough analysis of what's wrong with the IMF/World Bank approach to third world development. He gets an intricate situation and two hundred years of history down to a couple of hundred pages; there's no way I'm reducing that to a paragraph, but I do feel clearer, wiser, more positive. Go out and get hold of it for yourself.  

Binge TV

It's all changed. Back in the day, I'd make a note of what I wanted to watch when, see in advance when commitments clashed with things I wanted to watch, and carefully set the video to record. Oh boy. those were the days.

Saturday night, I have the house - and the TV set - to myself. so I have four hours of solid viewing. an hour of Ozark, courtesy of Netflix. An hour of Top of the Lake:China Girl, which has just been launched, but launched with all six episodes available from the start, courtesy of iplayer. And then there's two episodes, back to back, of I Know Who You Are, thoughtfully transmitted on BBC 4.

Sheer luxury. and, sadly, all foreign. One American, one Australian, one Spanish. None of them perfect, but all stylish and compulsive, and streets ahead of recent Brit series I've sampled in hope and then given up on in despair - Fearless, In the Dark. Interesting ideas, promising starts, but  then they collapse in a tangle of implausible situations and ramped up hysteria.  

The mind of Trump

You're right. don't even go there. But it's tempting, reading account of Trump addressing the boy Scouts jamboree, to wonder what on earth he's thinking. He is bright enough to know that this isn't just another Trump rally. So he starts by making all the right noises;

"Tonight we put aside all the policy fights in Washington DC you've been hearing about. Who the hell wants to speak about politics?"

Well he does, apparently. He goes on a long riff about the mainstream news media getting the size of the crowd wrong, like they always do if it's his crowd. And then he rants on about Obamacare, and invites the 40,000 scouts plus families to boo Hillary Clinton and Obama. Is there just a chance he'll wake up next day and wonder "Maybe that was a mistake?"

Humphrys harrumphing again

I don't listen to Today. Can't stand the sound of Humphreys and Naughtie, assuring us that they know how the world works. but I was glad to see newspaper reports of John Humphrys coming unstuck, as he seeks to put Johanna Konta in her place. "I seem to remember" he says, acting casual, "that the Australian high commissioner, when you won the quarter-final, said 'Great to see an Aussie win.' " (HEAVY HINT so you're not really British, are you?)

She laughs (I like that bit.) "I was actually born in Australia to Hungarian parents. But I've lived half my life here now, almost, so I'm a British citizen and I'm incredibly proud to represent Great Britain."

Could he graciously accept that he got it wrong, and back down? Of course he couldn't. He has to have another go. "You were, so I read, the 388th best junior in Australia. Now, normally, people wouldn't look at you and say "Ah, she is a future champion."

She laughs again. "That's not entirely accurate as well because, actually, I won the under-12s nationals in Australia when i was a youngster, so I was definitely one of the best in the country." All right, John? Had enough? You're so lucky she's relaxed enough to be amused by your rudeness, instead of smacking you in the face as you deserve.   

The fantasy world of SATs

Are you ready? Try this:

“The comma element of the semicolon should be correct in relation to the point of origin, height, depth and orientation. Where the separation of the semicolon is excessive, neither element of the semicolon should start higher than the letter ‘I’. The dot of the semi colon must not be lower than the letter ‘w’ in the word ‘tomorrow’.”   ( Guardian 11.7.17)

Not a far-fetched satire, but actual advice offered to markers of SATs for ten-year olds. Gove, in his infinite wisdom, decides it's crucial to get ten-year olds to spot where the semi-colon should go in an artifically constructed sentence. But just pinning the tail on the donkey isn't enough; the tail has to fit in with tight requirements, and must definitely face the right way. So tons of students who actually know where the semi-colon should go will end up not getting the mark, because their semi-colon doesn't match the examiner's ideal. if we were talking about monks illuminating manuscripts it would almost make sense, but every ten-year old in the country? 

The Final Test

So that's it. All over. And nobody wins. But you can't complain, after three rugby matches of that intensity. I'm not a Sky subscriber, never have been, and probably never will be. But in a crisis I'm prepared to cadge, and my friendly neighbour Gary's been happy to oblige. that was for tests 1 and 2. For 3, as it happens, he's committed to a stall in Wenlock, and i'm collecting for amnesty in Newport, on the 11.00 am shift. So there's nothing for it - I'm driving to Newport at 7.30 am, so that I can be settled in the Pheasant before kick off at 8.30, can watch the whole game, and then go and rattle my tin on the streets.

What a game. Yes, the All Blacks had the chance, fluffed three tries and missed two very easy kicks. We didn't really get close to scoring - apart from an intercepted pass that nearly gave them a try - but we kicked our kicks, we made our tackles, and we held out the best team in the world. The two tries the all Blacks did score were truly clinical - they just see what needs to happen, and then do it, very fast - but the Lions didn't collapse, did hold together, and this was pure drama - all of us held together, daring to sustain the dream that we could - despite the odds, against all probability - survive. And thanks to canny Sam Warburton inviting the ref to look at the TMO, and eccentric Roman Poite reckoning that maybe it's accidental offside rather than the other kind, the Lions do scrape through. (See The Luck of the Draw in Poems from the News).   

Triolet Workshop

A triolet (variously pronounced triolette, or triolay, according to taste) is an eight-line form, where one line is repeated once, and another repeated twice. so that's five of the eight taken care of, as soon as you've written two lines. Not a lot of room for manoeuvre. At Ledbury on Sunday an American poet, A.E.Stallings was running a two-workshop on this eight-line verse form. Well, I thought, that’s got to be either rubbish or brilliant. It was brilliant. Totally riveting.  For 45 minutes she took us through a range of examples – Wendy Cope has a great one about poets being Byronic – offering little gems of insight, poems memorised off by heart, and occasional shafts of dry wit – “villanelles are generally much more fun to write than they are to read.”  And then we had 15 minutes in which to write our own. and then she worked around the group, us reading our poems, her commenting on rhythm, punctuation, rhymes – and possible other rhymes. I’ve never heard another poet so hooked on the beauty and variety of rhymes - sheer heaven. This is one of the few verse forms I've never attempted - just didn't think it was worth it. but on Sunday I managed three in a a day, and they won't be the last.  

Letters from Baghdad

I usually manage to get to Ludlow Assembly rooms cinema, because they have a good programme. In May and June I've been seven times, often for exotic stuff which has attrracted an audience of single figures, but while they keep doing it i'll keep going, because the reqwards are so great. Last night, for instance, was Letters from Baghdad. I heard someone in the foyer describe it as “a little gem” and that’s about right. Based on Gertrude Bell’s letters about her travels and work in Iraq, it mixes the letters, read by Tilda Swinton, real-life comments from friends and enemies (using actors in costume), her own still black and white photos, and film footage from the time (1910 – 20s), in a seamless mixture which feels like a contemporary documentary. Utterly wonderful.    

Keeping Families Together

The Brexit negotiations keep throwing up these tasty little ironies. Theresa May, in Brussels, reassuring worried Europeans: "I want all those EU citizens who have made their lives and homes in our country to know that no one will have to leave. We won't be seeing families split apart; people will be able to go on living their lives as before."

And she says all that with a straight face. For those of us who've been reading the papers over the last twelve months, there's never been a time when foreign residents in this country have been less secure. Lunatic deportations and threats, often involving people who've lived here for years and caused no kind of threat or trouble, and all because May thinks that the Leave vote was not only about immigration (rather than, say, money for the NHS), but was an endorsement of Nigel Farage rather than Michael Gove or Boris Johnson. One of the pleasures of watching her floundering about is the hope that her ludicrously punitive approach to immigration may get modified.    

Poetry Day

Well, it was for me. This afternoon we had the Great Get Together, on the church green in Much Wenlock, in memory of Jo Cox. a random assortment of Labour Party supporters, friends and progressive sympathisers had this bright idea of a picnic, sandwiching an hour of very assorted entertainment - belly dancing, a sixth-form girl singing, and me doing my poems - including the ballad of Jo Cox. it wasn't slick, but it was varied, positive and enjoyable, and brilliant weather showed Wenlock at its finest - a real pleasure just to be sitting around in the sun.

And in the evening, I was off into Shrewsbury to hear Luke Wright perform at the St. Nicholas Bar, which fancies itself and charges £4.00 for a bottle of beer. but that didn't really matter, since he was the reason, the main act and a totally sufficient excuse for putting up with almost anything. He's always entertaining, witty in his chat as well as in his poems, but there's areal technical interest in there - I loved his affection for the broadside ballads, his recognition of the value of what they were doing alongside an honesty that concedes their poetic failings. I don't like everything he does equally - the liopgrams seem to me artificial, clever but a bit pointless, and my fogeydom doesn't settle for some of his looser rhymes - but he has enormous energy and a real feel for words, and has the whole programme totally memorised - unbelievable.

So that was it. A beautiful, enjoyable day, with wall-to-wall poetry. More, please.   

Reservoir 13

i nearly always have at least one library book on the go, a request drawn from systematic trawling of reviews at the weekend. But my current choice is utterly stunning - Reservoir 13, by Jon McGregor. I've read most of his other stuff, and it's always interesting - original without being tricksy or flashy. This again is different, as it should be - hey, he's an intelligent writer -but I find it rivetting. It looks as though it's going to be routine thriller territory, as girl in rural community vanishes, police and volunteers comb the area, friends and family wonder where she's gone. But she doesn't show up, and we never know. What we do get is a close, careful tracing of this rural community as time goes by, responding to the seasons, changes, time passing - but including wild life, crops and weather along with the human stories with which they are intertwined. within a paragraph you can move from an estranged couple to birds migrating south. that may sound off putting rather than enticing, in which case I apologise. don't take my word for it; go out and get it.