The Politics of Dancing

 Well the shortlist for the Orwell prize is out again:- ‘ The prize is awarded annually to the book that comes closest to George Orwell's ambition "to make political writing into an art". Prize director Jean Seaton said they were looking for "writing that was measured and calm not simply angry." The BBC Website March 2013. I should have given up by now on the Orwell prize, but something, I think it is the name Orwell, keeps me engaged. Like most literary prizes it has now become completely subservient to fashion and the mores of political correctness; both of course anathema to Orwell himself. As I have written before Orwell would not win The Orwell Prize.  I can think of no writer as angry as Orwell was after he returned from Spain in 1938. Out of this he produced Homage to Catalonia, not only one of the greatest books of war reportage ever written but also a scathing assault on Stalinism and the Stalinist mindset that then grippe...

Yesterday was a day to be cheerful for anyone concerned with freedom of speech. ‘Laws that led to London being dubbed "the libel capital of the world" will be reformed after peers in the Lords voted to pass the defamation bill, ending a three-year campaign led by Liberal Democrat peers Lord McNally and Lord Lester.' Amongst other things. 'The new law will also stop cases being taken in London against journalists, academics or individuals who live outside the country, denting the libel tourism industry, but not ending it altogether, as foreigners will still be able to lodge claims in the high court. [1]   This measure would not have been passed without the continuing pressure from the Campaign for Libel Law Reform and marks a significant victory in the ongoing struggle against the censors and gaggers, a significant victory for free speech. There is however a sting in the tail:- ‘…the failure of a bid to bar private companies contracted to run schools, prisons or h...

'Hundreds of penniless benefit claimants who qualify for a short-term financial loan to tide them over until their first payment arrives are being told by jobcentre officials to ask for food parcels at local council welfare offices.' The Guardian 21/04/2013 The man behind the desk said to me, “We cannot help, outside official regulations you see.” I looked across the desk and made it clear “I think you’ll find you can, it’s under section 3.” He shuffles papers with poison in his eyes Then with a paper smile “Of course I was about to say…,” he lies. This is the land you learn to live in When you cross the border into sin Each day the malign bureaucrat The official with a grudge or target You are now the enemy within.     Having visited this page I would be grateful for your feedback, either tick one of the boxes below or make a comment via the comments button.

ERIC SCHMIDT HEAD OF GOOGLE http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/apr/22/google-eric-schmidt-tax-avoidance Once upon a time businessmen did bad things, unethical things, and criminal things. Of course they kept these things hidden, even felt shame that they were engaging in such practices. If caught they expected to face the consequences, public humiliation, opprobrium and in some instances the full force of the law. Not so today. If caught, say avoiding paying tax, they simply brazen it out, they not only insist that they have done no wrong, they declare themselves to be the wronged party. With a degree of chutzpah that would make a pickpocket blush they shout back at the enraged citizens “we are the good guys here.” What is more, for the sake of their own self esteem they seem to need to believe it; such days indeed. Having visited this page I would be grateful for your feedback, either tick one of the boxes below or make a comment via the comments button.

‘A poet is before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.’ W H Auden The 1930’s for me will always be the poets decade. Many fine novels were written in the thirties but the commanding heights were occupied by the poets, Cecil Day Lewis, Stephen Spender, Louis Macneice, and of course W H Auden.[1]T S Eliot and Ezra Pound were both still dominant figures, though both had been supernova’s in the 1920’s and Eliot’s concerns were not those of ‘the thirties poets.’ These concerns, politics, particularly communism, social conditions and the struggle against fascism. The thirties poets tend often to be characterised as Auden and co, and it was Auden who shone brightest and there is still a wide audience for his work “Poetry” Alan Bennett remarked, “ has the power to do magic.[2]This seems to me to be unquestionably true and no more so than in the case of Auden. The first Auden poem I ever read ‘What is That Sound’ with it chilling repetition, growing sens...

An obsession with the narrow politics of the political class is not only a trap, one that I can sometimes fall into, - as it distorts perspective. It is only a tiny minority who care what goes on in the Beltway or Westminster Village, such an obsession leaves out the reality of peoples lives. It also, given the crudity and vitriol in which debates are often conducted, it can also coarsen you. I thought of this often during the past week as Margaret Thatcher was physically, if not intellectually, buried. Don't get me wrong I have no intention of issuing a mea culpa, even if the virulent rough and tumble of week just gone made my language cruder, even crueller than normal. I may later regret some of the things I said, though I doubt it, and believe that I have fully explained my position in previous blogs with some clarity. Still it is worth watching oneself in the heat of battle. Whilst it is important to keep the rapier, and indeed the cudgel, to hand one must avoid...

I saw that Thatcher was dead on a newspaper hoarding from the top deck of a London bus, not far from the Ritz in fact where she died. I felt nothing much, curiosity at how the media would handle her death and a sense that I should have been expecting it and surprise that I was surprised. I felt neither the jubilation that some felt, nor anger at the memories that her death provoked. My first response to the jubilation that her death provoked was that it was in poor taste. In the week that passed after her death this changed. As the scale of the Thatcherfest has grown, as the stream of eulogising claptrap as vomited out, as the conscious and unconscious re-writing of history has flowered and as the cost of the whole affair, both culturally and financially, have grown, I grew angrier. The results can be seen in some of the preceding posts. I understand that all the vitriol towards Thatcher seems to have surprised, and possibly even shocked people in the US . This sort of inco...

YOU MOURN IF YOU WANT TOO, THE BLOGGER'S NOT FOR MOURNING ON THE VANITY OF MARGARET THATCHER   Margaret Thatcher is carried to rest, through the streets of London town. Her perfumed corpse a stiff rebuke To a land that let her down.   All now are bade to pay respects To speak her name in whispered tones To watch her cortege pass us by Upon a road of broken bones. To doff our caps our voices still The chimes of Gothic Big Ben Kill Pretend that this malignant soul was as great as Winston Churchill. For my self I’ve had enough of sickly sanctimonious guff So bury her body and bend your knee So at last all can breathe free.         Maggie Thatcher Laid to rest         Her son got all the money         Some think this a sad and mordant tale         For my self I think i...

At the Funeral this Wednesday for Mrs Thatcher Mr Cameron, The Prime Minister will be delivering a biblical reading, [1] all the time knowing in his heart that the woman that he is eulogising despised him. [2] As her shadow falls over the contemporary political scene he is also aware that old wounds have been re-opened and as the followers of the Thatcher Cult look around for a human sacrifice, he is aware that he is falling increasingly into their sights. The man who has never won an election must stand in the shadows of the vitriolic ideologue who won three. It is all such a long way from huskies in the Antarctic, hug a hoodie and “call me Dave.” He must sigh and look back on those days with increasing fondness; simpler happier times, when his enemy was Gordon Brown and an increasingly unpopular Labour Party. Now he has to confront, not a flesh and blood political opponent, but a myth, with the added impediment of not appearing to fight. The days when he could appear in soft...

http://alextalbotdancingonthinice.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/goodbye-banana.html 'For a fleeting moment Billy was caught up imagining whether a courgette or cucumber would have done his career less damage, courgette not having the same alliterative impact as banana. The papers had a field day linking Billy with banana and bum. But he found this line of thought so absurd, so surreal that it began to frighten him and as an antidote he forced himself to listen to Derek with increased intensity.' This post now moved to Dancing on Thin Ice, follow link above. 

History is written by the victors, justice too becomes the preserve of those who win. The struggle   in free societies between those who have, and wish to keep it, and those fighting for change is a constant propaganda war, albeit grotesquely lopsided in terms of resources; a struggle to establish the prevailing narrative, the story of who and what we are. Shopping in the local supermarket, as I was this morning, I was drawn to the Newspaper stand. For it is here that you witness the propaganda war in full flow. The Sun, The Daily Mail, The Express, all pour out a rancid and bitter tale, a story of the clean and upright, the respectable and law abiding, pitted against the lazy and unwashed, the pathologically dishonest and criminally inclined. It is a story of the moral correctness of Capitalism and the ascendancy of money and things. They alone convey the true shape, smell and feel of ‘reality.’ Like a child with a ball of play dough they mould the world in their own narro...

THE SECOND RATE MIND When watching people celebrate the death of Margaret Thatcher the word macabre comes to mind, but I think it goes deeper than that. I think it speaks to something very deep in the human psyche. The giveaway to this deeper and darker element is the use of the word ‘witch.’ ‘Demonise’ has become so overused as to have become cliché, yet this is a true example of the demonization of a human being, i.e. to imbue them with supernatural powers.   This process which began during Thatcher’s lifetime seems destined to flourish after her death. This form of inflation not only serves to produce an enemy that is larger than life it also correspondingly reduces your own feelings of power and control, what hope can mere mortals have when fighting against a witch. The truth of course is both simpler and more complex. When I used to watch Thatcher holding forth in some TV studio what struck me most forcefully was the banality of her mind. [1] Looking through the...

“Her legacy is public division, private selfishness and a cult of greed that together shackle the human spirit.” Guardian editorial 09.04.13   Thatcher with Pinochet My mother always said you should not speak ill of the dead. For my part I always thought the dead indifferent to criticism, the living on the other hand can sometimes receive psychic wounding. So should anyone experience offence at what I am about to write they can go take refuge in the page after page of eulogies in the newspapers feeding the Thatcher legend, or simply not read on. Some basic facts:- The financial crash of 2008 was a direct result of the Thatcher legacy of deregulation of the financial market, an ideology swallowed whole by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, this created casino capitalism, with an inbuilt assurance from the government that no matter how irresponsible the market behaved it would be protected. We all live with the consequences The assault on the trade union movemen...

I recently exchanged e-mails with someone representing the Tory administration respecting The Bedroom Tax. Although this exchange was essentially private in nature it covers an important area of public policy, so I am reproducing it here. I have omitted real names and have deleted aspects concerning some areas of my private circumstances All deletions are indicated. Ellipses indicate where names have been removed. Dear A Tory, I am an infrequent protester, am a poor demonstrator, a lousy marcher and even worse shouter of political slogans, no matter how good. But on Saturday I stirred my self, [DELETED] and I travelled to Trafalgar Square and joined the assembled crowd to protest at the ‘Bedroom Tax.’[1] I have been following politics since the late 1960’s but have never come across a crueller or more grotesque measure; even the poll tax trails a poor second to this vile legislation. Underlying it is a deep contempt for the tenants of Social Housing and an attempt to de-legitim...