The Politics of Dancing

A government think tank is drawing up proposals to ensure that anyone unemployed from April 1st will, when required be expected to pay an employer for work experience, the money to be deducted from their benefit and paid direct to the employer. It is envisaged that this scheme will eventually embrace the whole of the unemployed work force, whilst those with disability would also be expected to participate; special envelope licking machines are being constructed for those with more severe mobility problems. The scheme has met with a great deal of enthusiasm from the CBI, IOD,* and several major employers, Only A Quid stores in particular are ready to be first off the block as the scheme comes into operation. Prince Charles too has commended the scheme and plans to use unemployed labour on his estates. Sir Roderick Purloiner, ex head of Shady Asset Management stated that this represented an excellent way to “get the idle working again and boost the economy at the same time.” Lord Cock...

Eliot libelled April when he declared it to be the cruelest month, that dubious honour belongs to January, this really is the month of the bleak mid winter. With the Christmas tinsel all cleared away and in the cold and damp of a London winters morning I must now once again take up the struggle with hideous bureaucratic monstrosities that assail me on all sides. I lump them all together as ‘the beast.’ The beast cannot be sated, its demands grow and evolve, and just as you sever one limb another grows in its place in the form of a little brown envelope labelled HMRC or some other hideous acronym. You can keep the beast at bay but can never destroy it. So it is with just such dismal thoughts pounding like the Cossacks wedding dance in my head I lock the door, drawer the curtains and hold my shotgun at the ready. This is the mid winter blues. I have stopped listening to radio 4* in the bath and now listen to radio 3. The change was organic, as I lay contemplating the fact of life bei...

David Cameron has recently been visiting the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, an Islamic theocratic monarchy, a society with laws and social mores that would not be out of place in the middle Ages. Here he will presumably be talking about the current situation in the Middle East. Will they discuss the situation in Bahrain? Will he raise any concerns about the position of women in Saudi society, or perhaps request a private meeting with the Archbishop of Riyadh…..oops, silly me. In Saudi Arabia it is illegal to openly practice Christianity or any religion other than Islam; bibles are confiscated at the border. Thus the state that has done most to proselytize its own particular extreme brand of Islam, Wahhabism, from the madrassa’s of Northern Pakistan to Muslim Associations, Mosques and ‘faith based’ schools* in the US and here in the UK, would not dream of allowing any degree of reciprocity. Don’t however expect Cameron to press for any changes to this situation, nor press the case for th...

Just before Christmas David Cameron intoned the need for us to return to something called ‘Christian values.’ Mr Cameron proved to be somewhat vague about what these values actually are and, as so often with those making this plea, even vaguer about the precise period in which he feels these values were prevalent. Perhaps the 1950’s, always a popular one this, to the Christian values of the rope and borstal lash, when gay men were imprisoned and wives, still little more than chattels of their husbands could not open a bank account without his permission, a time when catholic priests and care home staff could physically assault and rape the children in their care with impunity; possibly not. What about the Christian values of the 1930’s, of the Jarrow marchers and salvation army soup kitchens, no sickly welfare state here, you feel we might be getting warmer, all that ‘charity,’ big society stuff; for he surely cannot mean the Christian values of the early church, the burning of wit...

Two statements of personal belief:-  1) Believes in the literal gathering of Israel and in the restoration of the Ten Tribes; that Zion (the New Jerusalem) will be built upon the American continent; that Christ will reign personally upon the earth; and, that the earth will be renewed and receive its paradisiacal glory. 2) Believes that ‘Intelligent design’ “is a legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in science classes.” It is possible to be a serious person and it is possible to believe in either of the statements above, it is not possible to do both. Such beliefs would be disconcerting in an aspirant for the post of parish councillor,* however the first statement forms the core belief of Mitt Romney, the second is held by Rick Santorum, both aspiring to be President of The United States, who have, as I write this, tied in the Iowa caucus. Now I am not interested in America bashing, a sport that already boasts an overcrowded field, for the most part filled with...

Browsing among the cluster of book stalls under the Westway on Portobello Road a few weeks back I picked up a copy of The Complete Molesworth, a collection in one volume, ‘How to be Top,’ ‘Down with Skool,’ ‘Wizz for Atoms,’ ‘Back in Jug Agane.’ At this point I have lost anyone under the age of forty five, anyone outside the UK and anyone for whom the humour of the British public school, (read ‘private’ school for those reading this outside the UK), passed them by; the popular fascination of such institutions has long itself been a subject of interest. George Orwell famously explored the world of Boys Weeklies, the world of Greyfriars and Billy Bunter, in so doing incurring the wrath of no lesser person than Frank Richards who actually penned the Greyfriars stories. More recently the emerging phenomenon of Hogwarts has gripped children across the world, Christopher Hitchens observing children in the US arguing over which House they would be placed in. I can certainly testify to...