The Politics of Dancing

Listened yesterday to a discussion on Woman’s Hour examining the role women have played in the ‘Arab spring’ and the ongoing struggle for women's rights in the Middle East. However no mention, aside from a brief reference to sharia law, of the role of Islam, obviously considered too hot a topic. This kind of creeping censorship needs close watching, it has now become almost impossible to have a discussion in the broadcast media on the regressive role played by Islam in every society in which it is entrenched. Now Islam is far from being the only rampantly misogynistic religion, it does however manage to outdo both Christianity and Judaism in this respect, quite an achievement! Meanwhile across the Islamic world women continue to experience grotesque levels of violence, discrimination and open hatred whilst their erstwhile liberal comrades in the west are silenced by the fear of being labled ‘Islamaphobic’ or of being a ‘cultural imperialist.’ On yesterday’s Today programme Sham

‘Recep Tayyip Erdogan recalls ambassador after Paris's decision to prosecute people who deny killing of Armenians was genocide………he [Erdogan]said this was just the start and "gradually" but "decisively" other retaliation measures would be taken against France. He warned of heavy diplomatic "wounds" that would be "difficult to heal".’* It is difficult to know what is the most sinister and the most absurd element of this asininity. Is it the attempt to create an element of thought crime into French Jurisprudence, a mirror image of the thought crime current in Turkey, i.e. of declaiming the Armenian Holocaust? Alternatively is it the grotesque overreaction of Mr Erdogan. This reaction provides a further illustration, if one were needed, of the complete unsuitability of Turkey for EU membership; perhaps this was the intention of the French MP’s, in which case, from their point of view, Mr Erdogan played a blinder. As to Holocaust denial, alr

The death of any public figure impacts on the lives of millions of individuals, particularly a public intellectual of the stature of Christopher Hitchens, so I do not think it too presumptuous or overly solipsistic for me to reflect on the impact that he had on my own life. Though long expected, his death came as a sudden unpleasant reality; he is gone, though his presence remains like the ghostly rustling of the wind in the trees. I grew up in the shadow of giants, working class heroes like Jack Jones and Jimmy Reid, intellectuals like Michael Foot and Alan Taylor, with George Orwell always a constant presence in the background. I worried how my own generation would match up; well Christopher certainly stepped up to the mark. My own political journey over the last fifteen years or so has been sometimes little more than an ongoing engagement with The Hitch. Sometimes I disagreed, or winced at his tone, whilst he often made me feel uncomfortable as he excoriated the feebleness of m

Watching the Leveson enquiry interrogate former News of The World reporters reminded me of an old Monty Python sketch, The Piranha Brothers which included the following exchange:- Interviewer: I've been told Dinsdale Piranha nailed your head to the floor. Stig: No. Never. He was a smashing bloke. He used to buy his mother flowers and that. He was like a brother to me. Interviewer: But the police have film of Dinsdale actually nailing your head to the floor. Stig: (pause) Oh yeah, he did that. Thus Neville Thurbeck, currently on police bail, "the NoW journalists were extremely talented, able, diligent and honest individuals." When confronted by the threats he made to the girls in the Max Mosley case:- Thurbeck: “Others have interpreted this as blackmail; nobody at the NoW accused me of blackmail. I saw it as giving the girls a choice.”

There was a rather hysterical piece recently in the Guardian* under the extraordinary title ‘Pakistan Has Had Enough,’ this following the inevitable confrontation between Pakistani troops and troops representing the NATO Alliance; the idea that the Pakistan government had finally reached the end of its tether representing the most extraordinary example, elephantine in proportions, of Chutzpah. This very same government, in all manifestations has been consistently double crossing western governments ever since 9/11, as recently shown on a BBC documentary. ** Its as if a friend, who steals from you, lies about you behind your back and consistently works against your best interests, caught in the act declares oh this is too much, enough already and threatens to end the ‘friendship.’ This in itself would insulting enough but add to this that you are also bankrolling your friend to the tune of thousands of pounds.# Is not the ‘friendship’ an illusion and a dangerous one at that. The subse

The protesters on the streets of Moscow, St Petersburg and other Russian cities seem to have seriously discomforted the Putin establishment. There they were steadily shepherding the Russia people towards dictatorship and suddenly significant numbers come out on the streets making a nuisance of themselves, the nerve! The people turn out not to be slumbering quite as soundly as the ex KGB man believed. Putin’s reaction is well worth watching, we are already seeing the default response of repression, if the slow slide to authoritarian is to be halted now may well be the best moment before Putin settles himself once more onto the Presidential throne to complete the work he has begun. The protesters on the street in the meantime deserve all our solidarity and moral support. *Russia without Putin slogan of the street protesters.

In Cockney rhyming slang telling lies is rendered as pork pies, shortened in everyday use to ‘porkies’ or slightly more innocent sounding ‘little piggy’s.’ In Animal farm the most memorable scene, at least the quote that everybody knows is when the pigs unveil the new slogan at Animal Farm, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." The road to the unveiling of this slogan has been a slow but steady one, at every stage the pigs reassuring the other animals to trust them, incrementally eroding the work of liberation. I think of this process a great deal when I hear that, despite the recent sale of an NHS hospital to a private company, despite a GP surgery touting its own private business amongst its NHS patients, there is no intention of privatising the NHS. Trust us, go back to work, go back to sleep.

At the end of October the Guardian broke the following story:- ‘Prince Charles has been offered a veto over 12 government bills since 2005 Ministers sought prince's consent under secretive constitutional loophole on bills covering issues from gambling to the Olympics’* In the subsequent episode of BBC’s Question Time the panel made light of the affair, an extremely wealthy unelected individual having a veto over the legislation of a democratically elected government apparantly exiting little concern. I have heard nothing of this matter since. Last June the Prince delivered a lecture at The Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford** on the topic of ‘Islam and the Environment.' The lecture was organised by the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, of which the Prince is patron, to celebrate its 25th anniversary. Amongst the targets of the lecture, the theme of which was ‘that the current economic and environmental crisis is the result of a deeper crisis of the soul, ** was Galileo, whom th

I was brought up on a council estate, a council estate in which we had a comparatively large garden, in which the streets were lined with wide grass verges and trees, across the road at the centre of the estate was the church hall. It was a place in which people knew one another, where the kids mixed and played football, either on the grass verges, the concrete area around the garages or on the local playing field, our goalkeeper incidentally was a girl. It was an estate in which neighbours talked to one another, knew one another’s business and eventually watched and waved as the wedding parties departed and occasionally the funeral corteges moved off toward the nearby crematorium. In short it was a place in which people lived their lives and who, in the privacy of their own homes, digested the large disappointments and small successes that go to make up a life. There are many unpleasant and even sinister elements in Tory ideology but few more unpleasant and indeed sinister than the

One Art ‘The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster, Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn't hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother's watch And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three beloved houses went. The art of losing isn't hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster. -- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident the art of losing's not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.’ Elizabeth Bishop Yesterday I lost my leather fur lined cap. Took it off in the library then wo

A short time ago feeling a sense of despair at the response of 'progressive' forces in the UK I asked who stood with the Syrian opposition, see blog 27/04/2011.  Well it turns out that Amnesty International does. http://vimeo.com/31547994

Yesterday was the first that felt like winter had truly arrived, cold slightly misty in the morning and with Christmas edging toward you from every direction. I have always enjoyed the Christmas period which might seem paradoxical or even hypocritical for a non-believer such as myself, but on the contrary it is the Christians who have hijacked a wonderful winter festival, as they do making 'captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.’* It has always seemed to me eminently sensible in the midst of winter to have a celebration of light and colour and fire to keep the surrounding bleakness at bay. The shelves within the local stores are already stocked with Christmas wrapping paper, tinsel, lights and the range of foodstuffs associated with the Christmas holiday. Soon the Christmas lights will go on and the stores will exude Christmas music, which I for one must admit I find somewhat wearing. Walking down Portobello at any time of year you are soon swimming in a river of

‘David Cameron has called the ban on England's footballers wearing poppies on their kit "outrageous".’ BBC News 09/11/11 Mr Cameron’s in a froth And the Sun is seething hot And they curse the foreign crowd Who say the Poppy’s not allowed. The dead don’t care, The dead don’t care. The Radio pundit can’t believe it Who can possibly conceive it? No Englishman can hide From this blow to English pride. The dead don’t care, The dead don’t care. So we summon up our Shakespeare Stand our ground and make it clear That our courageous footballers Will wear the poppy here. The dead don’t care, The dead don’t care. http://alextalbot2024.blogspot.com/

I have now uploaded my novel, The Last Revolutionary onto my new Blogspot Alex Talbot 2024 so please follow the link. http://alextalbot2024.blogspot.com/ I intend to use 2024 to upload both longer and shorter fiction, some longer poetry and prose. So if you are intending so to do, thank you for reading me. Alex T

The farcical way in which the Church of England has responded to the ‘anti-capitalism’ camp outside Saint Paul’s has provided me with hours of amusement, this is the plot of a great comic novel, you could choose your favourite writer, I would plump for ‘plum,’ P G Woodhouse, ‘Psmith and the Archbishop’ perhaps, or then again going downmarket a Carry On film, Carry on Choristers? However perhaps the most dismal aspect of the whole affair has been the quality of the spokesperson put up by the protesters. Ideologically incoherent and politically inarticulate they present an extraordinarily dispiriting portrait of the quality of contemporary protest, certainly when set against their forebears of 1968. Their dispute with capitalism seems to boil down to a desire to see it become more humane and responsible and their ideological stance a distrust of all politics. How do you respond to this other than with a sigh and ‘yes but………………..’ Still better I suppose than nothing and the Tories have

I enjoy a good soak but am not a great ‘wallower,’ I am too impatient to be getting on with whatever it is that I am getting on with, bath times, invariably in the morning are time for listening to the news, radio 4, the Today programme. The BBC is one of the joys of living in England, though with the Internet I have, rather surreally, listened to the Today programme in south eastern Bulgaria. With its lack of political affiliation and heavy cultural punch, all for next to nothing, it is hated by all its commercial rivals in general and by the Murdoch press in particular, the latter having launched, through its allies in the Tory party, an attempt, with some success, to nobble the organisation financially. The news is dominated by the Euro zone crisis a by product of the crisis of the banking system in particular and of capitalism in general, this is followed by the sports news. I am struck by the example set by the Premier League, for if you wanted an example of the consequences cre

From the Stop the War website:- ‘The killing of Muammar Gadaffi in Sirte has been marked by a round of celebration by western governments over their intervention in Libya. As with the capture of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, it will be described as a turning point and a further victory in the seemingly endless 'war on terror'. There is little reason for the triumphal. Nato's war on Libya was not a 'humanitarian intervention' but a war for regime change -- illegal under international law. It was about the western powers attempting to regain control of the region in the face of the Arab uprisings across the Middle East. Yet despite its overthrow of the regime in Libya imperialism faces many problems in the region. In Libya itself it is already clear that there are many divisions between the different elements in the new government, and not at all clear that a stable regime will emerge. Even if it does, th

I keep a regular watch on my stats and though my readership is not large it is not insignificant, more gratifying it international and widespread, though the majority of visitors are from the UK, closely followed by the US, i have received 'hits' from as far afield as China, Iran, Australia and Iran, to name but a few. However what I do not get is comments. So wherever you are reading this please make a comment, if only to say hi, since it is always gratifying to get some feedback.  

A gathering of the comrades We peek into a meeting between Muslims Against Crusades and Aids, Respectu and the Socialist Workers Alliance, this is being held at The Centre for the Propagation of Jihad, otherwise known as Mustafa’s flat. The meeting is to agree a joint strategy prior to the forthcoming Block the War Coalition rally. Those Present:- Mustafa Stoning. Muslims against Crusades and Aids. (Mustafa is a new convert to Islam). Anita B Correct. Respectu, (Anita B to her friends). Les Ruck .Socialist Workers Alliance. Mustafa is holding forth. “There must be no platform for blasphemers and apostates.” “Yes”…..Anita hesitates, and then regains her confidence, “certainly no platform for Christian bigots, misogynists and homophobes.” She stops in her tracks, and then nervously turns to Mustafa, “though unlike the cultural imperialists and Christian bigots we understand the cultural sensitivities of the Muslim communities.” Mustafa remains stone faced; Les sensing the u

A few days ago a package arrived from Amazon containing a huge doorstop of a book, ‘ Arguably ,’ by Christopher Hitchens. Any new book by Hitchens is a treat, but this, meaty doesn’t quite do it justice, tome surpassed expectations, though I confess I received it with strong feelings of sadness, for ‘the Hitch’ is dying. News of his diagnosis with oesophageal cancer last year hit me as a form of personal tragedy, made all the more poignant by the timing of the news, just as I was finishing his autobiography Hitch 22. We needed the Hitch. I have tried to write about Christopher Hitchens before but gave up on every occasion, somehow I could never get the tone right, either too fawning or too coldly detached. Christopher Hitchens is not only the public intellectual for whom I have the greatest admiration but also someone who has time and time again warmed my spirit with his passion, commitment, pugnacity and his life affirming engagement with the enemies of free speech, democracy and

I n 2003 I set out to write a novel, initially under the working title Bulgaria but which later became Nostalgia for Darkness an unfinished and possibly un-finishable work. Re-reading the introduction it now feels grandiose and inflated. 'What follows represents an attempt to tell the truth; that most difficult, most improbable, of all tasks. However there are a few things I need to clarify. Call these the facts if you like. Firstly I do not intend to write about Bulgaria, this adventure is set in Bulgaria, but it is not the Bulgaria, it is an inner Bulgaria, a Bulgaria, if you will, of the heart. If you try to seek out this country, you will not find it. Secondly the people, about whom I write, including of course my self, all exist or have existed, which, given that these are my reflections alone, is to say they are all essentially fictional. The events I describe all happened; which, given that they are my memories of things now passed are therefore all fundamentally invent

The weather is now more seasonal; though still mild, light sweater weather. I walk to Portobello and find that my old candle shop has closed. I call it my candle shop but it sold a mass of other items, bric-a-brac, masses of rugs and cushions, multi coloured wraps and incense, which gave the shop a wonderful aroma, rather like I imagine Aladdin’s cave to have smelt. And it sold candles, candles in a multitude of colours, shapes and sizes, along with a similarly exotic display of candle holders. I always purchased my candles from here and now it has gone. I don’t think I can stand any more loss at this rate. These stores are invariably owned by the Indian or Pakistani community, whose contribution to this city in particular and the country in general is inestimable. The mass immigration from the 1950’s onwards, despite some of the problems it created has undoubtedly resulted in a richer and much more vibrant culture and I for one continue to rejoice in this reality. The political conf

I have been walking to Portobello in shorts and T shirt in temperatures hovering around 28 degrees centigrade, today it is forecast to reach 29 degrees, as I write this the sun is rising over the city, a great orange ball, this at the end of September! There is something rather wonderful about all this, a sudden surprise package, a defiant dying burst from a summer that did little to entertain during the summer months. It has stirred in me memories of an Indian summer long ago, producing in me, leaving to one side joy and certain kinds of happiness, one of my favourite emotions, always accessible in autumn, a reflective melancholy. Melancholy a wonderful old English word, possibly popularised by Robert Burton in his wonderful book ‘The Anatomy of Melancholy’ published in 1621. Despite numerous attempts to capture it for the pseudo sciences of psychology and psychotherapy melancholy continues to exist, free and independent despite the best efforts of the DSM IV.* Melancholy is not to

Pretty girl up upon the roof           smokes Crouches like some strange bird Unaware of my gaze and the insolence of distance.

The decision announced on Saturday that Vladimir Putin intends to run again for the Russian presidency, though hardly a surprise sends chills down the spine. It felt as if Russian Democracy for so long in intensive care had finally been pronounced dead. Whilst Putin may be the grave digger of Russian democracy he was handed the spade by Boris Yeltsin. It was the drunken buffoon Yeltsin, with the American ideologues pushing and shoving from the sidelines, who unleashed the disaster of unfettered free market capitalism upon the Russian people leaving them bitter and impoverished, its only ‘achievement’ being the creation of a small coterie of billionaire oligarchs, often, like Putin ex KGB holding Russia’s wealth in the shape of its natural resources, for ever after democracy was always tainted within the Russian imagination with this period of unfettered greed. Putin presented himself as the knight in shining armour come to clean up the mess and put the Oligarchs in their place, from no

Now I don't mind that I can't sleep and I don't mind that I can't rest, although this means I've failed the test. The test at which each night I play to make the demons go away. The demons now sit on my bed, and they play havoc with my head. And so with heavy heart I sigh and chat with them to make time fly.

I remember it being an extremely pleasant autumn day, at two that afternoon I was due to meet an extremely attractive woman called Petronella to discuss some joint training we were due to undertake, which gave the day a certain frisson. After an extremely tedious meeting in the morning I took the tube to Earls Court and in my memory became cocooned from the world for about an hour and a half. The planning went extraordinarily smoothly, enhanced by the pleasure I was deriving from her company. I do remember that during a short break she was endlessly playing with her mobile phone. I thought she was playing some sort of game and said so, but no she was in fact text messaging, my first experience of the phenomenon. I am not sure what time I emerged out into the afternoon, sometime around three I think. It was a fine day and I was in no hurry to get back to the office and so took a bus along the Kings Road. In those days my Job title was Clinical Services Manager and I was working for a

“What possible good can come of any day that commences with getting out of bed?” So once observed an Austrian wit and there are days when you know what he is talking about. As it happens I am a morning person, always an early riser I start to fade as the evening settles in, though this has not made me immune from the occasional bouts of fear and loathing on waking. The correct response to this state of affairs is a ‘good cup of tea.’ This should ideally be made in a pot, loose tea is better, however living in a top floor flat not very practicable respecting disposal,* so tea bags. For me the tea has to be strong so I opt for Assam. Pot must be warmed and water poured onto the tea bags the second it boils and then left for at least five minutes to brew. Mug, not cup, tea in first then add milk, for me no sugar, which I think destroys the drink, though I am aware of contrary arguments. ** The first mug should be ‘nursed’ that is drunk slowly and reflectively, this is a moment for con

Having spent a week in the Shropshire countryside I returned to a very autumnal London, positively cold. The streets smelling of post carnival debris recently sprayed with power hoses, rather like a grubby kitchen sprinkled liberally with disinfectant. In Shropshire I watched the liberation of Tripoli from the perspective of a number of satellite news channels, Sky, BBC, CNN, Aljazeera, Iranian Press TV and the Russia service RTN. Unsurprisingly Press TV provided undiluted Iranian propaganda, though RTN was little better and the accounts it provided of the Syrian uprising coming straight from the Russian foreign ministry, libelling the Syrian protestors in the process. Aljazeera provided amongst the best coverage, its reports nuanced and making real attempts at objectivity. The channel was on the hate list of the Bush administration and indeed if you believed everything said about the channel from those quarters you would think it the TV arm of Al-Qaeda, which many on the right in t

I watched the recent riots from hospital, through the medium of the BBC. Thus events occurring just a few miles away from me might just as well have been occurring in Tripoli, Tehran or Tunis. Even if I had not been in hospital it is likely that this would have been the case, though I am told that there were disturbances in my own street, unreported by the BBC. This it is how it is now, you live in Cairo, Damascus or Bahrain, momentous events occur a matter of kilometres away and yet you watch these events mediated by the BBC, CNN or Aljazeera. One of the more erroneous features of the reporting, particularly from abroad is the idea that the riot is somehow un-British, this ignoring the recent protests against the cuts, the student revolts last year, the Poll Tax riots, Orgreave, which was in effect a police riot in the tradition of Peterloo, the battle of Grosvenor Square during the Vietnam war, The battle of Cable Street, the tradition goes back generations through the nineteenth and

Last month saw explosions in Mumbai, one of the most vibrant and cosmopolitan cities in India. As reported in the Guardian, ‘The coordinated rush-hour explosions, which killed at least 21 and wounded more than 100, were smaller and less sophisticated than the meticulously planned strike on Mumbai in November 2008. During that three-day rampage by the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, ten gunmen targeted westerners and Jews, killed 166 people and left India and Pakistan on the brink of war. Testimony at a recent trial in Chicago revealed that officers of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) helped Lashkar fund and plan that maritime assault on Mumbai. Commando-style raids are Lashkar's signature.’* Pakistan is a country where journalists are routinely murdered, either by agents of the state, like Syed Saleem Shahzad almost certainly killed by the same Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), or by the Pakistani Taliban or other Islamacist groups. In which university

The other morning I watched Mr White goes to Westminster, a channel Four film featuring Ben Patterson from 1997, it is available to view on the Channel Four website. As a satirical expose of the Tabloid press it is incredibly prescient and I recommend it. I watched it after reading of the apology given by Mrs Mensch to Piers Morgan following her accusations about him made under the cloak of parliamentary privilege, (see below). Mrs Mensch’s apology followed on from an attempt to blackmail her by a tabloid journalist, a disgusting man hiding under the cloak of anonymity.* To her eternal credit Mrs Mensch owned up to the accusations and replied that she was not going to be cowed in her campaign against phone hacking, publish and be damned! Well she may be a rampant self publicist, though not on the scale of Mr Morgan, but she turns out to be a ballsy one. She has redeemed herself with some considerable credit. As for the execrable Mr Morgan who has re-launched himself in the US as a ta

Inside the bus station, a large muddy outdoor car park damp with anticipation, framed by ticket booths run by the variety of competing bus companies and a number of small café’s, I sat drinking coffee waiting for the Body Valley bus for Tsarevo in the warm dark shadows breathing in the petrol fumes, warm coffee and the anticipation of a journey to the coast. The Bus eases its way into the humid bus station, Царево, ‘Tsaravo’ in printed Cyrillic stuck to the screen, this is my bus. I grip ticket and wheel my luggage toward the driver. I feel damp in the sultry heat of the Sofia evening, exited too by the smells and the prospect of the journey. I find my seat and sink into the prospect feeling for my bottled water and MP3 player, Soon the bus weaves its way through a busy night time Sofia, groups of people joked and talked outside a restaurant, splashed by the street lights, as the bus was held by the traffic lights. A babushka begged for money, her sad face a passing comment, as the