OF PAXMAN PARTIES AND THE INDUSTRAIL SCALE USE OF CLICHE

Jeremy Paxman: 'Newsnight is made by 13-year-olds (and I’m probably a one-nation Tory at heart)'
  

So Jeremy Paxman has discovered the foolish idealism of the young who are “…are on a fool’s errand trying to change the world,” going on to state that old canard, as fresh and original as old carpet slippers. “The older you get, the more you realise what a fool’s errand much of that is and that the thing to do is to manage the best you can to the advantage of as many people as possible.” Unfortunately here I cannot replicate my own reaction to this statement, a trademark Paxman look of bored indifference and barely concealed scorn.

Jeremy Paxman 
This formula, that the young rebel and the old become conservative is presented as a given. As the old adage goes ‘if you not a socialist at 21 you have no heart, if you are not a conservative by the time you are forty you have no brains.’ It is as effective as pro-right propaganda as it is self-serving and untrue.
A few years back I met a left wing friend of mine. Over coffee I asked, “Are you as much a radical as you used to be?”
He paused for a moment before replying, “Probably more radical, though now I fight in different ways.” I could not have put it better myself.
The older I get the more I am enraged by the way society is organised in the selfish interests of the few. Whilst from the banks to the utility company’s greed and self-interest flourishes. The gap between the very richest and the rest grows ever wider whilst the poor and marginalised are vilified and despised. There is nothing either inevitable or ‘natural’ in this state of affairs and I still believe it must be opposed.
Of course this not to say that my political views have remained unchanged. I am no longer as optimistic as I was when I was young, whilst problems of radical change turn out to be more complex than I thought. The state, an effective instrument of change, can also pose as many problems, and indeed threats, as it solves. All these have proved reasons to sharpen my analysis, not abandon my views. I am not alone, so many of my former comrades have retained their radicalism. Whilst I am constantly meeting people of my own age who share my political sympathies.

Which brings us back to Paxman, who is already being seen, and one suspects is beginning to see himself, as something of a national institution. However stripped of its portentous philosophizing his views are little more than expressions of boorish prejudice, the mirror image of the nihilism of Russell Brand, whom he so recently grilled. Mistaking your prejudices for wisdom may be one of the pitfalls of not having your own views subjected to the kind of ruthless, increasingly cynical  scrutiny that Paxman was so adept at dishing out. 
There are many ‘fools errands’ that one can engage in in this life, trying to change the world for the better is not one of them.


The high comic moment, in an otherwise gloomy week was the Conservative Party party, hosted by the Prime minister to celebrate British culture and creative industries. The star guests appear to have been Cilla Black and Ronnie Corbett. Now whilst I am more than happy to be rude to such folk the guest list to this event was really taking the piss. I mean Cilla Black was cool and creative for around 15 minutes in 1964 when, a friend of the Beatles, she recorded ‘Anyone who had A Heart.’ Whilst Ronnie Corbett, and here I feel compelled to say bless him, is an able comedian with a commendable record in light entertainment but can hardly be said to ever occupied space at the cutting edge of the creative arts.
Cilla Black
At the cutting edge with her teeth in.
Perhaps this great kazoo hoot of a ‘celebration’ was designed to draw attention away from the much more sinister and grizzly affair I wrote about in my last post.




This morning on TV Keith Vaz the Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee of the House of Commons describing the loss of some 130 files from the Home Office, stated that such files had been lost ‘…on an industrial scale.’
 ‘On an industrial scale,’ now firmly part of the lexicon, used to describe any activity undertaken on some considerable scale, e.g. industrial scale phone hacking.
Whilst no one wants cliché ridden sentences, the kind so often found and parodied in football,*there seems to be no escaping the use of cliché, easy metaphor and simile. Pre-packaged clichés that provide lazy ways to communicate are interwoven into our language, we use them without thought, which to some extent describes their ubiquity. Some of course are more alive than others.
 Take ‘hoist by his own petard,’ for example, who the hell now knows what a petard is? Or, ‘fit as a fiddle,’ why would a fiddle be especially fit?
 Other clichés still have a little life left in them, thus ‘the writing was on the wall,’ provides an image of something that was obvious had people only paid attention, whilst describing something as ‘gut wrenching’ clearly implies a strong visceral reaction. I particularly like watching paint dry or like trying to nail jelly to the ceiling, which provide clear visual images that are also comic.

As for all those worn out military metaphors, ‘unsheathe the sword,’ ‘take up the cudgels,’ or Johnathan Aitken’s pompous remarks of a few years back, ‘the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of British fair play...’ it is over 500 hundred years since men fought with swords and shields. A more up to date, if less poetic,metaphor would be ‘the simple Kalashnikov of truth and the trusty body armour of British fair play.’
Sporting metaphors too litter the language, oddly in this country baseball features heavily. I mean how many people in this country talking about a 'curve ball' or ‘a ballpark figure,’ have ever watched a baseball match? Again some live and breathe whilst others have long since expired. So that Ed Miliband ‘missing an open goal’ at Prime Ministers Questions, has some visual life, whilst batting on a sticky wicket is clearly dead.

Like the poor it seems cliché will always be with us, only the next time you find yourself using one make sure it still has a pulse.

*Soccer to my US readers





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