LONDON DIARY MAY 2013
This week the Queen’s
Speech, i.e. The Coalition’s legislative programme, was drowned out by the
resignation of a football manager, Alex Ferguson. The increasingly tabloid BBC
chose to lead with this item, not once but three times. The Government should
be grateful; it turned out to be a good day to bury a tawdry, superficial, mean
spirited and largely irrelevant legislative package. It should be labelled the
scapegoat programme. This time immigrant labour being the government’s primary
target. Just when you thought the government could sink no lower, like a
demented limbo dancer they manage ever greater feats of athleticism in dipping below the
bar of the morally defensible.
When I think of the young Bulgarians I have met,
intelligent, hard working, eager to get on, full of generosity of spirit and
with a great deal of enthusiasm for British music and popular culture, being
characterised as all a bunch of potential welfare scroungers or NHS leeches I
feel a deep combination of anger and disgust. It makes me want, metaphorically,
to throw up; I would do it literally if it could be aimed into the lap of Mr
Cameron.
The government’s other
scapegoat, the unemployed are now being forced to undertake a wholly bogus
test, designed to establish exactly what sort of personality type they are. Regardless
of how you complete the test the same predominantly positive set of attributes
appear. This has been created by a small government department, called ‘The
Nudge Unit,’ which is soon to be privatised. [You couldn’t make this up, I
mean it is beyond satire, though seems to have escaped from a script of Yes
Prime Minister].
Incidentally I have also
created a basic typology test which you automatically complete by reading this
blog. It has established that you are discerning, intelligent, astute and have
a great ability to recognise quality prose: congratulations.
A row has broken out over
remarks made by Niall Ferguson respecting the economist John Maynard Keynes.
This has turned into a full blown ‘punch-up,’ which I must confess I do
sometimes enjoy. The dispute has spilled over onto the pages of The Spectator,
you can read Ferguson
Nick Cohen provides a
wonderful response in the same edition of the magazine.
Mr Ferguson’s ‘apology’
for his remarks has about it all the grace of a drunk in a bar room discussion,
who suddenly recognises that he has overstepped the mark. Crass, self serving,
pompous, riddled with self importance and the kind of inflated grandiosity
given to academics. Whilst pretending to apologise he continues to spit poison
in Keynes’s direction. Whilst I do not
think for a moment that Mr Ferguson is a racist,[1]
his comment of, I paraphrase ‘how can I be, I married a Somalia Thailand
‘The
charge of homophobia is equally easy to refute. If I really were a ‘gay-basher’,
as some headline writers so crassly suggested, why would I have asked Andrew
Sullivan, of all people, to be the godfather of one of my sons, or to give one
of the readings at my wedding?’
Does rather smack of, some
of my best friends are gay.
As a historian he should
be ashamed to write such passages as:-
‘In
that particular context, [the
hyper inflation of 1923] Keynes’s sexual orientation did have historical
significance. The strong attraction he felt for the German banker Carl Melchior
undoubtedly played a part in shaping Keynes’s views on the Treaty of Versailles
and its aftermath.’
‘Undoubtedly,’ beyond doubt, what superpower does Mr Ferguson
possess that enables him to plumb the depths of the psyche of the long dead
Keynes? If I as an undergraduate had written such a sentence my professor would
have, correctly, landed on me like the proverbial ton of bricks.
This non apology is riddled
with constant reference to books he has written, no doubt reasonably priced and
available at all good bookstores, and is infused with vanity and self
importance.[2]
He ends by inserting
quotes from Keynes that all right thinking liberal intellectuals will abhor. He
then performs a neat little manoeuvre to place himself on the same level as
Keynes, pointing out that all, ‘professors do [make mistakes] and so do most
students.’
He and Keynes both flawed
human beings in a world where people are apt to make mistakes. Well to
paraphrase a famous exchange, ‘I never knew John Maynard Keynes, however Mr
Ferguson, you are no John Maynard Keynes.’
The government is fighting
desperately in the courts to avoid e-mail exchanges between Charlie Fruitcake
and the government, from being released and read by the peasant population. The
extraordinary argument being put forward by the government is that to release
this information into the public domain would destroy the myth of Royal impartiality;
we are not supposed to be aware that Charlie lobbies on behalf of quackery such
as homeopathy, and more importantly to advance his own commercial interests. If
the government has its way we will be denied knowledge of the full extent of
Charlie’s meddling and the extent of which the heir apparent abuses his
position to advance his own interests and various other pet projects. The only
positive to emerge so far from this affair is that Charlie’s contempt for the
proper boundaries of his role may be exposed and in so doing fully reveal the
role of the monarch in vetoing legislation which it feels to be against its
interests.
As a slight sub text,
whenever items of great public interest are exposed by Freedom of information
legislation I am reminded that Tony Blair felt the introduction of such laws
represented his greatest mistake. Indeed he watered down the
legislation to allow for exactly the kind of veto that the government is now
seeking to exercise. This tells you all you need to know about the man.
It is now approaching mid
May and the year advances at a disturbing pace, as indeed all years now seem so
to do; I was going to say at my age, and indeed now have done. I am cutting
back on a number of voluntary activities to create more space for serious
writing, which I hope does not prove to be the kiss of death to my occasionally
reticent muse.
[1] Or indeed a homophobe.
[2] This seems to be a disease
that particularly infects British academics who have carved out a career for
themselves in the US
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