The Politics of Dancing

IN DEFENCE OF TONY BLAIR  Tony Blair is now the most excoriated British politician since Neville Chamberlain. Chamberlain reviled, particularly on the left, for his policy of appeasing Nazi Germany. Tony Blair is reviled, particularly on the left, for altogether different reasons. Appeasement of fascist style regimes such as Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbia and Saddam Hussein’s Baathist state, nor the Islamacist fanatics of Al Qaida, held no appeal for Blair. Which makes the visceral hatred that Blair produces on the far left a particularly interesting case study. Perhaps a little throat clearing is required here. I have my own reasons for disliking Tony Blair, particularly what he did to the Labour Party, turning it into something closer to the American Democrats than part of the British democratic socialist tradition. In embracing the Thatcherite mantra of public/bad private/good he did irreparable damage to the provision of education, health and social care and provided a te...

‘O where are you going? Stay with me here! Were the vows you swore deceiving, deceiving? No, I promised to love you, dear, But I must be leaving.’ What is that Sound? W H AUDEN The smells that poison me now were then sweet perfume; That fragrant moment, the smell of blossom, and the scent of fresh mown lawns,  Polish and green leather,  red box excitement. The exultant whispers of Office. As we exchanged our vows in the garden, Flirtatious virgins in power. The jokes the winks the silent ascent that promised so much. Now folded and crumpled, a soiled photograph, Mere memory. What became of those promises?  Of the pact we made? Now in the sheet rain I see only the bitter wasteland of lost dreams Broken fragments of things once concrete, solid, whole, Gained, it’s true, for nothing more substantial than a weak man’s  soul.

As I write this a 27 year old woman, Mariam Ibrahim, has just had a baby in a Sudanese prison, ‘the condition of the mother and baby is not known as Ibrahim's lawyer and her husband, a US citizen, had been denied access to her. Omdurman women's prison has a basic clinic, where the child is thought to have been born. Ibrahim has been shackled since being imprisoned.’ [1]   Mariam also has an 18 month old child who is also being held in prison with her. The ‘crime’ for which she is imprisoned is apostasy, for which she has received the death sentence. She has also been sentenced to 100 lashes, for the additional crime of having sex with her Christian husband. Although she has been a lifelong Christian her father was a Muslim, Sudanese sharia law forbids women to marry outside the Muslim faith, men needless to say can do as they please in these matters. Mariam Ibrahim and her husband.  Nineteen countries punish their citizens for apostasy, and in 12 of those countries...

Theresa May Despite the local and EU elections dominating the past week’s political coverage the real political moment of the week had nothing to do with the elections. I am speaking of Theresa May’s speech to the Police confederation. This is the first time in my lifetime that a Home secretary has stood up to the once all powerful police lobby. It may represent a turning point in our political culture much more significant than UKIP’s success in the polls. [1] The Police Federation has previously bullied, intimidated and savaged a string of former Home Secretaries who have failed to see the world their way. Now a Home Secretary has finally outfaced them and called their bluff. It took a Conservative to do it. The Labour Party has always been afraid of standing up to the police, frightened of being seen weak on law and order, of lacking a commitment to uphold the established order. Afraid too of the literal power of the police and security services. That said Labour Home Secre...

Prince Charles 'compared Russian action to Nazi's' BBC  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-27497899 I think I have already made clear my view about comparing Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler, see http://alextalbot.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/russia-and-crimea-danzig-of-ukrainian.html . Hitler was a psychopath who having gained supreme power in Germany set about exterminating Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and the mentally ill. He invaded Poland, Ukraine and Russia with the sole aim of depopulating the region by starvation and mass murder to create ‘lebensraum,’ i.e. living space for the German population who would rule this vast colony, keeping a few Slavs as slave/servants. Whatever the similarities there are between Putin’s annexation of Crimea and his attempts to destabilise Ukraine and Hitler’s behaviour in 1938-39, and there are some, Putin is no Hitler. Which leads me to the Idiot Prince.   The Prince it seems wants to make the monarchy more active in publ...

I have always been rather snobbish about the short story, short stories being all very well but the novel being the real deal. This is possibly an Anglo Saxon prejudice, in Russia, for example, the short story is celebrated as an art form in its own right. In Chekhov the Russians possess arguably the greatest short story writer of all time. Indeed in Russia he is more celebrated as a short story writer than playwright. My prejudice however is also a consequence of not being able to completely fall into a short story, the relationship being too brief. What I want from fiction is to become wholly absorbed in another reality and there have been only two short stories that have managed that, Death in Venice and The Great Gatsby, though the latter is more of a novella than short story. Death in Venice must surely rank as one of the greatest short stories ever written, though now is overshadowed by the film. If you have seen the film I challenge you to read the story withou...

“You can see how far the termites have spread and how long and how well they have dined.” [1] The words are Christopher Hitchens and they are directed at the liberal left apologists of Islamism. They sprung to mind yesterday when reading a piece in the Guardian by Jumoke Balogun, respecting the more than two hundred teenage schoolgirls captured and enslaved by the Islamist group Boko Harem. Balogun, who is described at the end of the article as Nigerian-American, which I presume means she is a US citizen, begins by asking:- “Simple question. Are you Nigerian? Do you have constitutional rights accorded to Nigerians to participate in their democratic process? If not, I have news for you. You can’t do anything about the girls missing in Nigeria. You can’t. Your insistence on urging American power, specifically American military power, to address this issue will ultimately hurt the people of Nigeria.’’ [2] Therein lies the heart of the argument, the real problem is not the abductio...