The Politics of Dancing

Cocooned in alien smells the sofa and the cigarettes the coffee cup half empty feeling nothing only a rolling emptiness like the dull grey sky. These are the none days postscript to a life already lived. The Newspaper speaks of a world full of busy the energy of activity, anger laughter and the solemn laying on of hands giving life and liberty to objects the work of living the filling out of hours. Here there is only empty silence and the crumpled boredom of dead leaves.

The BBC seems intent on inflicting the unpleasant Mr David Starkey, representing the Dr Strangelove wing of the Tory party upon us. Question Time last week, Any Questions this week, Mr Starkey a television historian of somewhat limited range, obsessed as he is with narrative, the lives of ‘the great people,’ of the larger historical canvas he is not interested. His emotional range is however even more limited, a man wholly devoid of empathy, taken up with his own self importance, falling over himself to make ever more pompous statements. His current obsession is the poor or has he would say ‘the pour.’ The pour you see need to be put in their place, certainly disabused of the notion that they can live in the same vicinity as the middle classes or the rich, (Mr Starkey informs us that he has many friends who fall into the latter category, well bully for him!) Now, as the Americans say, I have a dog in this fight, I live in Notting Hill and have recently ceased to live on a good middle c

Travel as much as you can, see the world. Read books, real travel is an inside job. Dance if you can, dance if you can’t. Sing if you can, sing if you can’t. Drink, but never let drink be your master, it is a great servant but a monster as a master. Learn poetry, some lines of poetry by heart, lines that have resonance for you. Remember the golden rule; do unto others as you would have done to you. Engage with the world, this means politics, but do not confuse politics with narrow partisan party politics, politics is everything and if you wish to live with others you cannot duck political engagement. And when you love, love not too well nor wisely but with reckless abandon, remember that a broken heart is the only one worth having. Finally learn to accept loss and failure, for they will come your way and success can be as great a disaster as failure

I heard that the Prime Minister Mr Cameron felt sorry that the decisions made respecting child benefit were not contained in the Conservative manifesto. Had they been contained of course, along with the increases in vat, this would have caused the loss of millions of votes and who knows how many seats. At the same time as I read this statement I witnessed a squadron of up to thirty pigs flying over Westminster bridge, all singing the hallelujah chorus at the top of their voice range.

‘ Sinemoretz, a tiny, picture postcard, village of 400 inhabitants only 10km north of Turkey, maintains Bulgaria's most beautiful beach, nestled below a high grassy buff. ’* *Let ’ s Go Eastern Europe 2002 Edition. The days in Sinemoritz are long. It is now a little after nine thirty and already an age has passed since the first stirrings of five o clock. Morning is the most wonderful time here. The sunrise can match anything the Aegean has to offer. If sufficiently awake it is well worth a visit to the beach. When the sun catches the sea on fire, when a mellow wind brushes against your cheeks, you know both that you are alive and that life holds the possibility of a certain kind of happiness. Here you are as likely to be awoken by a crowing cock and the chuckling of chickens as by the rays of sunlight that pierce thin curtains and illuminate the quite little village with it nameless streets. Streets, if the dusty little tracks can be so dignified, that sur

Pope Benedict XVI sent an uncompromising message to the people of Britain at the start of the first papal state visit to the UK since the Reformation.But he urged Britain to maintain its respect for traditional values and cultural expressions that more aggressive forms of secularism no longer valued or even tolerated.’ [1] Aggressive secularism, excuse me, I cannot remember the last time I saw someone carrying a placard bearing the legend Behead all those who insult Voltaire, or militant secularist’s murdering anti abortion doctors in the US, protesting outside cinemas showing Mel Gibson’s Life of Christ, whilst burning copies of the bible. This is simply pernicious nonsense, the desperate cries of a church loosing it’s influence, not least because of the proclivity of its priest to indulge in the sexual assault of young children. Even in catholic Ireland and Spain its influence is on the wane and it is this that it cannot stomach, hence this pathetic whinge as it seeks to hold on t

So now we are to be ruled by a firm of undertakers, Cameron, Clegg and Osborne, men of little genuine compassion, who know the price of everything and the value of nothing, whose windy empty rhetoric speaks only of a sour prejudice, the disdain of those who do not need the state, for the state. A government without a mandate. I listened yesterday to Nick Robinson, the BBC’s political correspondent as he smugly dismissed the prospect of widespread unrest as a consequence of the government’s draconian spending cuts. At the same time a senior policeman was warning that cutting police numbers could threaten their ability to handle the consequent unrest resulting from the government’s spending cuts, (incidentally how disgusting is this latter statement at so many levels.). Cameron, Mr nice guy, all teeth, oozing good looks and sincerity, the face of this Condemn trick, represents all that is most unpleasant in contemporary politics, the victory of PR over anything resembling substance, the

“I had a dream,” I said. “Oh yes,” he sat up and took up an interested pose, “tell me about it.” “Well I was having breakfast a rather large English breakfast with toast and fresh coffee. It was Sunday; I know it was Sunday as I could hear the sound of a church bell tolling in the distance. All of a sudden a strange man appeared. He asked if he could sit at my table. I could see no reason to refuse him and I invited him to join me. He was very well dressed; in his early sixties I would guess, perhaps a little old fashioned in his three piece suite and soft felt hat, which he laid to one side. He was handsome for his age with a slight goatee beard and piercing blue eyes. We talked about how fine the weather was, about the pleasures of a full English breakfast and quite Sunday mornings. He then said “I am going to have a Brandy, care to join me?" “Well it’s a little early for me. Excuse me but aren’t you the Devil?" “Yes I am as a matter of fact,” he smiled a soft reassuring s

3 Line Poem. Sometimes I Laugh and when I laugh I laugh Sometimes I cry and when I cry I cry, But in between there is only the silence of the drum weary heart. Collapse When men collapse they collapse like buildings, the implosion of the inner skyscraper descending to leave a cloud of snowy dust like nuclear fallout covering the apartment of a life.

The Words of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf who is attempting to construct a Multi-faith Centre on the site of the Trade World centre. ‘Rauf said he intends to go ahead with the "multifaith" centre near the site where Islamic terrorists killed nearly 2,800 people because not doing so would unleash fury abroad. "If we move from that location, the story will be that the radicals have taken over the discourse," Rauf told CNN. "The headlines in the Muslim world will be that Islam is under attack. "There is a certain anger here [in America ], no doubt," he said later in the interview. "But if we don't do this right, anger will explode in the Muslim world. If we don't do things correctly, this crisis could become much bigger than the Danish cartoon crisis [over images depicting the Prophet Mohammed], which resulted in attacks on Danish embassies in various parts of the Muslim world. And we have a much bigger footprint in the Muslim world." ABC Ne

As I write this there now seems some doubt about whether the so called Burn The Koran day due to take place tomorrow will take place. There is something grotesquely atavistic about burning books, it is a form of violence, an attack on the life of the mind. Any society in which the burning of books is seen as acceptable erodes its own cultural life and as Heinrich Heine famously remarked, 'where books are burned they will eventually burn people.' There is however something rather ironic about the outrage amongst Muslim communities throughout the world given recent history, the tendency in many Muslim communities to burn effigies and flags as well as books. Burning an effigy is incidentally of course a demonstration of a desire to burn real people.

In the 1960’s and 70’s if you moved in left wing circles the word liberal was often spat out like a profanity, liberals representing all that was worst in bourgeoisie culture, wanting to have their cake and eat it, to enjoy the feeling of being ‘good,’ without any personal commitment or engagement, turning a blind eye to the realities and implications of inequality. I was never completely at ease with this view; liberal minded my self respecting civil liberties, free speech and pluralism in political discourse. I distanced my self. However when I see Nick Clegg I am minded of this older characterisation and boy does it hit home. Even before the coalition agreement he always left me feeling uneasy, positively queasy, all that smug middle of the road, ‘a plague on both your houses,’ platitudinising claptrap. We use to shout ‘Take the politics out of politics vote SDP.’ For the first time in my life, since February 1974 I did note vote in the last general election. I could not vote for th

Cookery at its best, along with gardening, represents the most creative of practical activities, combining as they do both utility and imaginative flair. Both however require commitment in terms of time, concentrated mental application, perspiration and emotional engagement, in both activities constant practice is required. Practice if not quite making perfect makes for increasingly satisfying results. Living in a top floor flat in central London I have no access to a garden and possess neither the time nor inclination to obtain an allotment. This has not always been the case and I once enjoyed the satisfaction of growing my own potatoes, onions, carrots and radish. Incidentally whilst understanding the aesthetic I have never been attracted to the idea of growing flowers. For me gardening was always about utility and few things are quite as satisfying as cooking food that you have grown, which leads me to another passion, the passion for cooking. Cooking is the most accessible of cr

Blood on Their Hands It is Mr Churchill, Prime Minister Atlee and President Truman, (President Roosevelt having escaped justice through the happy coincidence of his death), who should be on trial in Nuremberg . It is they who have blood on their hands. Despite no threat or attacks on Great Britain or France they conspired to launch an illegal war in defiance of the principles of the League Of Nations . Then despite being offered reasonable peace terms by Chancellor Hitler Britain continued to wage aggressive war, leading to the mass slaughter of Europe ’s Jewish population. Along with the imperialist American military, intent on world wide hegemony, we have invaded and destabilised Western Europe and devastated Germany , leaving a heap of rubble in which its starving citizens seek to eke out an existence. We say that there must be a full public enquiry and the war mongers put on trial!

In 1970 John Lennon wrote a song that was pretty much 80% bullshit, Working Class Hero. Lennon was brought up in a middle class area of Liverpool by his aunt Mimi, however at the time I did feel both the strength of the song and the power of the message. In a week that has seen the burial of Jimmy Reid, a genuine hero of working class origin it has brought back memories of other heroes of mine, Jack Jones, Aneurin Bevan, James Connolly. I also was minded of an occasion when I heard Jack Jones speak of his involement in the Spanish Civil War and knew that of this generation we would never see their like again.

Buckingham Palace confirmed details today of the first official visit to Britain of a pope, which will see Benedict XVI celebrate two public masses, meet the Queen and move a 19th century theologian closer to sainthood in a ceremony at Coventry airport. Non-policing costs amount to £15m, a sum to be met by the state and the Catholic churches of England Scotland and Wales. Policing costs will depend on the venue for each engagement and will draw on existing budgets for the forces involved ‑ Strathclyde police, the Metropolitan police and West Midlands police.’ [1] So we are expected to fork out for the visit of this appalling man with a track record, form as they say in the police fraternity, of covering up the sexual manipulation, rape and molestation of children, thus making him guilty of being an accessory after the fact. If this represents the worst aspect of this man's sordid career of obfuscation, denial and outright obstruction of justice there is more. The man is an

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Footballers are overpaid prima donnas, mercenary in the extreme and for the most part having about as much loyalty to their club as the size of their pay package and the transfer market can command. I know all of this and yet must confess to being a ‘fan’, which of course, quite appropriately is shorthand for fanatic. Admitting to loyalty to a football club in middle age feels a little like admitting to a love of toy train sets or cheap children’s sweets, the latter also being a weakness of mine. A passion, a life long love affair with a football club is beyond the rational, indeed may represent some sort of ‘disease’ in rather the same way that alcoholism is a disease, once infected there is no cure, you learn to live with it. The idea that being a supporter of a team involves some kind of pleasurable leisure activity is to completely misunderstand the nature of the beast, for the most part it involves constant anxiety, despondency at miserable results, anger at poor performances or s

"We were the junior partner in 1940 when we were fighting the Nazis." David Cameron speaking in the US this week. This cringe making statement, replete with its multi layered levels of historical ignorance produces in me both contempt and the cliché I don’t know whether to laugh or cry!

I was, I thought, prepared for this budget; however the depth of its mean spiritedness, malice and sheer naked chutzpah take the breath away. The pain, we are informed is to be spread equally!(Incidentally how is it ‘fair’ for the pain to be spread equally, surely fairness would dictate that those who have should be asked to pay more). This from a man with an estimated fortune in excess of £4 million ponds who spends his holidays in Corfu rubbing shoulders with Russian oligarchs, whom you can be sure do not charge him for the use for the use of his swimming pool. [1] We are already being indoctrinated with the twin mantras that these savage cuts, with there savage impact on the lives of the most disadvantaged, are inevitable and that ‘there is no alternative.’ Now where have I heard that before? Of course both these statements are nonsense, this is an ideologically driven budget with the primary aim of reducing welfare provision and more widely the provision of services by the state. P

I have been putting off writing this blog, a follow up to my manifesto of May 18 th , primarily because I do not enjoy writing about my daily life, it is not what I started blogging for. Yet to ignore my current experience and write about political and social developments in the wider world seems both incongruous and lacking in authenticity. The process of falling out of the world of ‘gainful employment,’ out of the world of a salaried income, of direct debits, standing orders, cash machine slips, mobile phone gadgetry, the world of credit cards and conspicuous consumption can be traumatic, but it can also be interesting and enlightening and more importantly it can be liberating. The important thing is to stay engaged with the process, which given the level of stress involved can be difficult. I am now attempting to live on less in one month than I used to earn in a week. The first lesson is that less can be more, I am now spending 50% less on food than I did before, yet I am eating be

Liam Fox the defence secretary, said he wanted troops out "as soon as possible" and insisted that British soldiers were not there "for the sake of the education policy in a broken 13th- century country" [1] I hope the so called Stop the War Coalition are happy with their new comrade. [1] Guardian 23/o5/10

17/05/2010 With the threat of serious cuts in government spending it seems likely that unemployment, particularly in the public sector will rise. Others will find themselves in the same position as me. This is my manifesto of how I intend to survive. 1) Never become a victim, by accident or design you have now become a ‘resistant.’ You will now need to learn how to fight back. 2) Never allow yourself to be guilt tripped by the banks, utilities or other services like Vodophone. The banks make their money out of debt, in some cases from whole countries or regions keeping millions in continued poverty. More locally free banking is only possible because of the money they make from those in debt, in this way the poorer customers subsidise the better off. They are avaricious, mean spirited and lacking in anything resembling empathy. As for the utilities they constantly charge poorer customers more. For all its soft voiced commercials Vodophone cut me off without any prior war

For reasons both too complicated and too private I have literally suddenly found myself in poverty and in debt. The thing about being poor is that you do not only suffer the depredations of loss of services and the continual humiliation inflicted upon you, the impertinent, patronising and threatening tone adopted by the banks and utilities, the continual telephone harassment, but you are also punished in numerous ways, if you cannot pay by direct debit you pay more for your gas and electricity, there are a range of services you simply cannot access.You pay more for train travel since you cannot pay by credit or debit card, the list goes on.Of course becoming non-productive, ceasing to be a consumer you have committed the ultimate crime against capitalism itself. .

Two reoccurring themes on Islamacist websites, one holds that 9/11 and 7/7 are conspiracies of MI5/CIA/Zionists, you take your pick, the other is that 9/11 and 7/7 are a direct consequence of US/UK foreign policy and we had better mend our ways. These opinions appear to be held by the same people at the same time!

Simon Seebag Montefiore ‘The Young Stalin’, ‘Stalin 1878 -1939’, ‘Stalin 1939 -1953.’ Phoenix Books There were protests in Germany a couple of years ago concerning the portrayal of Hitler in the film ‘Downfall.’ Amongst other things in one scene he is seen demonstrating considerable kindness to his nervous new secretarial assistant, Trudy Lange. The problem being that these scenes demonstrated a palpable humanity, something which he was not supposed to possess. In short he is shown to be human. I never understood the protests; it always seemed to me important in attempting to understand a mass murderer such as Hitler to explore all the complexities of his character, even discovering that; ‘Love made him weep his pints like you and me.’ All added to greater knowledge, representing a struggle, an attempt, albeit probably doomed, to gain an understanding of what motivates such monstrous individuals. Having just finished reading Simon Seebag Montefiore’s three volume biography of Stalin I

The panic fluttering of wings as they struggle enclosed inside a fist, The battering ram of a heartbeat. Is this the way life comes to an end? The sky drags something from the room Some expectation? It is this hint of tomorrow that keeps me breathing.

Mr Wole Soyinka the Nobel laureate recently described this country as a ‘cesspit,’ in respect of the growth of Islamic fanaticism. Reading this book one can only but agree that he has hit the mark. It is clear that during the 1990’s Britain in general and London in particular became the sanctuary for and the breeding ground of persons holding the vilest and virulent ideologies that ultimately culminated in mass murder in New York, Madrid and London itself. What makes this story so exasperating is the role of the security services, who did not turn a blind eye upon those who were conspiring to commit mass murder, no they looked on indulgently. For the murders to be committed were to be committed overseas, for the most part in far off places of which we know little. [1] The truly disgusting Mr Hamza was allowed at every stage to firstly strong-arm himself into control of the Mosque then to commit multiple offences as he allowed the mosque to become the centre for Social security and cr

Tomorrow Tony Blair will appear before the Chilcot enquiry. In his particular case the hearing is being characterised as a trial. However Mr Blair has already been found guilty, by an unholy alliance of the majority of the print media, the liberal left, the stop the war coalition crowd and the far right. It is now axiomatic that a) Tony Blair Lied to get Britain into the war and b) The real cause of the war was oil. To even question these statements one is greeted by a sneering incredulity, particularly if you suggest that Mr Blair had good motives for his actions. No amount of evidence to the contrary will ever convince this crowd and so we get the ugly baying that Blair is a ‘war criminal’ who should face trial. This in a week when a very real war criminal Ali Hassan al-Majid, known to the world as "Chemical Ali" after he ordered the gassing of thousands of Kurds in the town of Halabja , has been hanged in Iraq . An event made possible by the actions of Mr Tony Blair.