tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-202744372024-03-23T18:06:40.612+00:00Eaten by missionariesMutterings of a contrarian Liberal.
The title comes from a phrase attributed to William Spooner: 'Her late husband, you know, a very sad death - eaten by missionaries - poor soul.' Although it was a slip of the tongue, its sense of people doing the unexpected is an intermittent theme of this blog.Iain Sharpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07249331216466329232noreply@blogger.comBlogger384125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274437.post-12593066918897816512024-01-16T23:16:00.002+00:002024-01-16T23:20:05.262+00:00Hoodwinked by experts? My belated twopenceworth on the Post Office scandal<p>WHEN you write an obscure blog as an occasional self-indulgent hobby, the world is not waiting for your take on the big issues. That much I have learned. So in reactivating this site I resolved to remember that and stick to rambling on about my own inconsequential nonsense.</p><p>So on the Post Office miscarriages of justice scandal, I was simply going to nod along with Jonathan Calder's judgement that '<a href="https://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2024/01/ed-davey-should-go-easy-on-calling-for.html" target="_blank">Ed Davey should go easy on calling for people to resign</a>' and ponder quietly why it is that after reading intermittently about this case over several years, muttering that it did seem like a miscarriage of justice, being pleased to learn of the TV series and watching it in a single evening, I felt uncomfortable about its aftermath.</p><p>A degree of enlightenment comes from reading David Aaronovitch's Substack post <a href="https://davidaaronovitch.substack.com/p/the-fatal-flaw-in-mr-bates-vs-the">The fatal flaw in Mr Bates vs The Post Office</a>', which has flown into my inbox as I am a non-paying subscriber to his newsletter. I haven't always been an Aaronovitch fan, and still often disagree with him, but I came to a grudging admiration through reading his (sadly now discontinued) <i>Times </i>column, in particular because he is willing to make difficult arguments rather than simply write to please his readers. This is a case in point.</p><p>The fatal flaw he identifies with <i>Mr Bates vs The Post Office</i> is not simply that it is full of familiar good-guy underdog and heartless-bureaucrat-villain tropes, but that while it is clear why the former do what they do it displays no interest in and doesn't attempt to understand the latter: the Post Office CEO Paula Vennells or her sidekick or their Fujitsu contractors. 'But what about the baddies?' he asks, arguing that their motivation is what we really need to know.</p><p>Weirdly I could have a stab at that one, paradoxically because my experience of holding public office, even if only at the lowly level of district councillor, gave me enough understanding of the perils and pitfalls of power that I resolved not to attempt to climb any higher up the ladder. Even dealing with such matters as controversial planning applications, rows about allotments, taxi regulation, market relocations and hospital redevelopments was daunting enough to make me think this may have parallels on a grander stage. At the very least when I read or watch abuse-of-power stories, I pause and wonder whether I would have done any better before getting on my high horse. So, based on my maybe slightly relevant experience, here are my best guesses as to how they may have gone wrong without having malign motives. </p><p>When I was a relatively new councillor a more experienced opponent advised me: 'The secret in this game is knowing when you're being bullshitted by so-called experts'. But that's not as easy as it sounds. Experts can be quite good at bullshitting. At the very least they have more specialist knowledge than we generalists/lay people/elected representatives do. You end up having to take some things on trust, unless you happen to have knowledge that contradicts what you are being told or have access to other experts with other opinions. </p><p>There can be moments when it feels you have troubles and stresses enough and privately hope to be reassured not burdened with yet another woe. And then there's the risk of appearing too stupid to understand. On the latter point, I'm sure that among the reasons for my <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/11/harry-potter-watford-englands-longest-serving-women-mayor-local-democracy">dear wife's longevity as Elected Mayor of Watford</a> was a willingness to keep asking questions until she got an answer she understood and a sixth sense for when someone's story wasn't stacking up, the latter skill perhaps deriving from her previous career as a schoolteacher.</p><p>Another, perhaps opposite, challenge was that over my 30 years in the foothills of public office, a regular flow of strange stories came to my ears, of varying levels of plausibility. Some of them I knew to be untrue because they were about me (land I supposedly owned, but in fact didn't, where planning permission had just been granted.) Indeed to read comments on newspaper websites one might imagine that every controversial planning application was only granted permission due to 'brown envelopes'. We could have paralysed the entire council if we had investigated every such spurious allegation or rumour.</p><p>Sometimes serious, specific and public accusations were made that went beyond hearsay yet fell apart almost as soon as an investigation got underway. Yet just occasionally an issue was raised that initially sounded improbable, but on closer inspection proved absolutely accurate – there was something wrong that needed putting right. Knowing which was which was never straightforward - more art than science. And while one may be aware of cases that proved either spurious or true, one never knows if there were other things one should have followed up but didn't because they seemed too implausible.</p><p>All of which is to say I can at least imagine how the Post Office ended up in denial and why ministers believed their assurances. I can even read <i>Mr Bates and the Post Office</i> against the grain to see why they might have done so. Before the emergence of a whistleblower what specific evidence did they have to show Fujitsu could change individual postmasters' records? Even if they knew it was possible why would they think Fujitsu staff were deliberately falsifying records to postmasters' detriment? There seemed no evidence of any gain to the company or of fraud by individual employees. While the line that no one else was having problems was clearly false, might fraud by postmasters not have appeared at first sight the most plausible explanation - fraud does happen? If Horizon had gone haywire why was it still only a small proportion that was affected (at least that was my impression from the series) and why was what was being thrown up was all in one direction - unexplained losses not unexplained surpluses? Maybe these points have been answered, but such initial reactions might not have been unreasonable.</p><p>None of which is to let Paula Vennells, other Post Office officials or government ministers, even Lib Dem ones, off the hook. The job of public officials to judge when we are being hoodwinked or bullshitted by experts and which of the many unlikely stories one may hear has the ring of truth and needs further investigation. Praise is due to those who have exposed miscarriages of justice, whether James Arbuthnott, or back in the day Chris Mullin, and serially <i>Private Eye. </i>Likewise, brickbats, and even withdrawn honours, are the price of misjudgement. But amid the justified condemnation perhaps there is room for a little understanding of why those with responsibility can get such things badly wrong.</p>Iain Sharpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07249331216466329232noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274437.post-56062591528338080462024-01-13T17:11:00.001+00:002024-01-13T17:11:18.646+00:00Two BentleysStrongly partisan though I am for Watford, and keen to proclaim the town's merits, I can't really argue it is full of architectural gems. Indeed on that point it is probably most famous for a building it lost, James Wyatt's <a href="http://www.lostheritage.org.uk/houses/lh_hertfordshire_cassioburyhouse.html">Cassiobury House</a>, described by Pevsner as 'one of [Hertfordshire's] major architectural losses of the C20'. Its <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/197338">famous staircase</a>, which is often attributed to Grinling Gibbons, but which I've just read isn't, is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York where, unlike last time I looked this up, it does at least appear to be on display.<p></p><p>
So it is always a pleasure to visit one of the town's undoubted architectural masterpieces, Holy Rood Roman Catholic Church, although my attendances at Mass are rare these days and even the current Pope would probably regard my religious views as more heretical than merely heterodox.</p><p></p><p>
</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYcwmQEt6FIHSYUsRLel6XQUg0fGxOuhxXz5N0dby3TFAnGF9ljziz_JVQjYMSNMSlZr8f0CQMZqDfNkIQLSP-I2YQsqLCsqVzLzk6i2MNi08jcg3NFIWGQYuXxnuEOj3LTlkNuJCdgAtMGwOaJbX9yNB9-W6bSHWlFMLz3cCNz0rQNU2McszV/s1420/HolyRood.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1317" data-original-width="1420" height="297" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYcwmQEt6FIHSYUsRLel6XQUg0fGxOuhxXz5N0dby3TFAnGF9ljziz_JVQjYMSNMSlZr8f0CQMZqDfNkIQLSP-I2YQsqLCsqVzLzk6i2MNi08jcg3NFIWGQYuXxnuEOj3LTlkNuJCdgAtMGwOaJbX9yNB9-W6bSHWlFMLz3cCNz0rQNU2McszV/s320/HolyRood.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Holy Rood, Watford</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Holy Rood was part of the great programme of Catholic church building in England during the nineteenth century as anti-Catholic laws were repealed and worship no longer needed to be quite so furtive. It was designed by John Francis Bentley, regarded as one of the great architects of the gothic revival and this is his only complete church. Hence it is sometimes referred to as 'Bentley's Gem'.<p></p><p></p><p>
With its wide nave, crossing and series of side chapels, and highly decorated chancel, it feels like a kind of mini-cathedral rather than a mere parish church. Its <a href="https://www.britannica.com/technology/rood-loft">Rood loft</a>, unusually without a screen below, is a highly distinctive feature. One can feel the sense of exuberance at the Catholic Church putting itself back on the map, both literally and metaphorically.</p><p></p><p>
</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwax4Zpdl8cFjqRU29ScKU51bsSrPPDT6LLw1xVYJkiLt3lApREBI4tIOs1pESEn1GsOqwY6VPcpEojk7Meb7umXD-FF7fnX14rnnN8EgsUZjGIyFlFC5RAlqX2KlGqzrCrzpf-_EZjuzLTbLZHquCTsaUqcAvBEQOPGJIa3pQ7v3r68PoWWLA/s1374/WestminsterCathedral.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1329" data-original-width="1374" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwax4Zpdl8cFjqRU29ScKU51bsSrPPDT6LLw1xVYJkiLt3lApREBI4tIOs1pESEn1GsOqwY6VPcpEojk7Meb7umXD-FF7fnX14rnnN8EgsUZjGIyFlFC5RAlqX2KlGqzrCrzpf-_EZjuzLTbLZHquCTsaUqcAvBEQOPGJIa3pQ7v3r68PoWWLA/s320/WestminsterCathedral.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Westminster Cathedral</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Bentley's most famous work, by contrast, is anything but complete. Distinctive outside for its striking red brick and Portland stone stripes, inside Westminster Cathedral is a riot of colour and decoration in its bottom third, but above that it's all bare brickwork turned black from candle smoke. It creates a rather eerie sensation, <a href="https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/the-amazingly-gloomy-interior-of-westminster-cathedral-5270/">one commentator</a> likening the upper parts of the cathedral to railway tunnels. I had always assumed that at some point the money had run out and plans to decorate the rest of the building had been abandoned. But the late Gavin Stamp in a <a href="https://www.apollo-magazine.com/westminster-cathedrals-mosaic-skies/">2016 article</a> refers to it always having been known that it would take a century to complete the interior. It even seems that <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/let-there-be-light-20-august-2011/">plans to complete the work remain in progress</a>.<div><br /></div><div>Unusually, I had occasion just before Christmas to attend services in both Holy Rood and Westminster Cathedral giving me a chance to compare and contrast. As well as their relative levels of completrness, the striking difference between the two is their contrasting styles, the one Gothic Revival the other Byzantine. The one thing that does unite them visually is that each has a dramatic Rood cross dominating the nave.<p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p></div><div>I am curious as to whether that is a common theme in Bentley's churches. And I wonder too why Bentley, who seems to be considered an important gothic revival architect designed so few complete churches, and why his most famous one is in a completely different style.</div><div><br /></div><div>Answers to such questions can be hard to find, but I see that since I last pondered them at all, Historic England and Liverpool University Press have published a <a href="https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/john-francis-bentley/">biography of Bentley</a> by Peter Howell, which might enlighten me. Yet it's just after Christmas, when more books that remain unread came into my possession. And its price of over £30 is that little bit more than I like to pay for a book I don't actually need. So it will have to wait while I monitor its price on various websites and hope I can swoop in for a bargain. In the meantime I will have to remain curious and wait for my answers.</div>Iain Sharpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07249331216466329232noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274437.post-27111018609506679362023-12-29T16:08:00.006+00:002023-12-29T21:00:59.800+00:00My December listening: 'Albion' by Harp<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe class="BLOG_video_class" allowfullscreen="" youtube-src-id="9yklnBIfUzc" width="320" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9yklnBIfUzc"></iframe></div>
</b>
<p></p><p>I became a supporter of the Texan retro-folk-prog-rock band Midlake about the time of their 2006 breakthrough album<i><a href="https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-trials-of-van-occupanther-mw0000777979"> The trials of Van Occupanther</a></i> when one of its tracks was included in one of the sampler CDs that came with the much-missed <a href="https://wholehoggblog.wordpress.com/about/">Word</a> magazine.</b>
<p></p><p>
It was described as drawing on 1970s soft-rock, but it to me it felt more a Fairport Convention/Strawbs/Stackridge kind of thing. So I was a little surprised when reviewers commented that their follow-up <i>The courage of others</i> was a move in the direction of British folk-rock. While there had been a certain evolution, it seemed to me they had always been there or thereabouts.</b>
<p></p><p>
Then a strange thing happened - as they were recording their next album the lead singer Tim Smith announced he was leaving. Strange because one sort-of assumed that Smith essentially was Midlake, or at least the band was a vehicle for his songs and would consist of the musicians he chose to play with. After all he wrote and sang all the material with no other member getting so much as a co-writer credit. While other groups have continued after the departure of a leading creative force, it's almost unheard of when the force is quite this dominant. It would be rather as though Mark rather than David Knopfler had left Dire Straits after Making Movies and the band had carried on without him. Or perhaps, more appositely given the nature of Midlake's oeuvre like Jethro Tull minus Ian Anderson.
</b>
<p></p><p>
So it was a surprise to learn back in 2013 that the residual members were carrying on and intending to release a new album. How could this be the same band. Couldn't they be done under trades descriptions legislation. Three seemed to be three possibilities, none of them good: that they would be little more than a tribute band rehashing or reworking old material; that they would be a pastiche act, with new material that was an uninspired imitation of their former leader; or that they would sound nothing like the old Midlake but a different band altogether.
</b>
<p></p><p>
So when the fourth Midlake album <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/nov/03/midlake-antiphon-review">Antiphon</a> appeared in 2013 I approached it with no great hopes. And yet it was a mini-triumph. Guitarist Eric Pulido, who stepped up to the lead singer's microphone, sounded enough like Tim Smith that his voice was not jarring, but also he didn't sound like he was going an impersonation. The sound had clearly evolved to a heavier prog-rock style, but this wasn't the band's first sonic evolution and they still sounded like Midlake. And there were a clutch of decent songs that were sufficiently in the Tim Smith mould (tender, wistful lyrics with bucolic imagery), and it followed the first three Midlake albums in having a very strong first half, but a few longeurs towards the end.
</b>
<p></p><p>
In the intervening decade the members of Midlake embarked on various creditable side projects before the band last year with an excellent fifth offering For the sake of Bethel Woods - a reference to the site of the original Woodstock festival. So well done chaps!
</b>
<p></p><p>
Meanwhile we waited to see what Tim Smith had to offer. Soon after leaving Midlake he announced a new project <a href="https://harpband.com/albioninfo/">Harp</a>, whose website was updated occasionally over the next decade usually with apologies for the continuing delay in producing new music. I had almost given up but when checking the site earlier this year saw the debut Harp album <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/sep/15/instant-80s-midlake-tim-smith-harp-william-blake-cure#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20most%20crucial,Pinocchio%20and%20Netflix%27s%20Wendell%20%26%20Wylde.">Albion</a> was due for released at the start of December.
</b>
<p></p><p>
As the title suggests it has a very British (specifically English) feel, with song titles such as <i>Daughters of Albion</i>, <i>Herstmonceux</i> (a village and castle near Eastbourne) and <i>Shining spires</i>. Paradoxically it manages to go further in the folky direction than the last Tim Smith led Midlake album but the listener can't help but notice the presence of electronic drums, presumably a contribution of Smith's wife and collaborator Kathi Zung, who is credited as co-writer of the album.
</b>
<p></p><p>
Given the long wait I hoped it would be the epic statement that Smith could only make by having full creative control. Instead it is lovely but slight, the songs averaging around three-and-a-half minutes, the vocals a little too low down in the mix for the lyrics to make an impact. While the Guardian reviewer says it 'plants the hopeful seeds of something yet to bloom', I thought this might be the great blossoming, but like previous Midlake and related albums it falls a little short. Still, with its wintery atmosphere, it has been a pleasing accompaniment to December.Iain Sharpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07249331216466329232noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274437.post-58104081065132561652023-12-13T21:38:00.007+00:002024-01-28T21:17:22.617+00:00Wonder Boys: a little-known gem<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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</div>
<b>Who is the only person to have won both an Oscar and the Nobel Prize for
Literature?
</b>
<p></p><p>
Many years ago I remember preening myself on having answered this question
correctly in a quiz. I didn't know the answer, but worked out that George
Bernard Shaw was a likely choice. He had definitely won the Nobel Prize and it
seemed at least plausible that one of his plays had become a film script or even
that he had written a screenplay. (And indeed it was for adopting
<i>Pygmalion</i> for the silver screen so a bit of both.)
</p><p></p><p>Pride comes before a fall though, and on a visit to <a href="https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/essex-bedfordshire-hertfordshire/shaws-corner">Shaw's Corner</a> a few years ago I came a cropper
trying to impress one of the National Trust volunteers by offering up this piece
of arcane knowledge. 'No longer true' he said and I racked my brains trying to
work out who else had managed this feat. The embarrassment was complete when I
was told the answer 'Bob Dylan' as I am a diehard fan of His Bobness. I knew he
had won an Oscar for
<i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9EKqQWPjyo">Things have changed</a></i>
and could hardly have missed the <a href="https://www.thecollector.com/bob-dylan-nobel-prize-literature/">controversy over his 2026 Nobel Literature
Prize Award</a>, indeed even going so far as to
<a href="https://nicktyrone.com/scale-one-ten-ridiculous-bob-dylan-winning-nobel-prize-literature/">respond to a blog post</a>
on the subject. But I hadn't quite put the two things together.</p><p></p><p>
Ever curious about the minutiae of Dylan's career, I recently found myself wondering why,
despite regarding <i>Things have changed</i> as one of Dylan's best ever songs
(and his Oscar as well deserved as his Nobel Prize), I knew nothing about the
film he had won it for, maybe not even the title. So I looked it up and
discovered why. <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonder_Boys_%28film%29">Wonder Boys</a><i></i></i>, which starred Michael Douglas,
Frances McDormand, Robert Downey Jr and Tobey Maguire, was praised by critics
but was a box office failure. It is referred to by various bloggers and the like as
a
<a href="https://www.the-back-row.com/blog/2011/12/09/robins-underrated-gems-wonder-boys-2000/">hidden gem</a>.
</p><p></p><p>Douglas is cast in an untypical (unlikely even) role of a professor of
creative writing who is struggling to follow up his successful first novel,
while attempting to mentor a troubled student and (inevitably) having a complicated private life. It was described as an amusing
and realistic portrayal of campus life. In our household's not always
straightforward search for films we might both enjoy watching, this
comedy drama of campus life seemed to fit the bill. There's also always
something enjoyable about discovering and championing a film (or indeed any
artistic creation) that didn't quite get its due.
</p><p></p><p>It proved a good choice, although one can see exactly why it pleased the critics but did not attract the
punters. It is maybe a little too low key. The plot, with its redemptive theme,
trots along nicely, the characters well-drawn and convincing, the jokes and
humorous scenes consistently funny. Yet it is touching rather than seriously
emotionally affecting and gently amusing rather than outright hilarious. </p><p></p><p>
As I've
mentioned before, one of my current hobbies is tracking down cultural
experiences of one kind or another that I've missed and <i>Wonder Boys</i> was
certainly worth seeking out.
</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p>Iain Sharpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07249331216466329232noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274437.post-23239464419020360202023-12-01T21:53:00.001+00:002023-12-13T20:34:47.062+00:00Hello Yellow Brick Road<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFXfothHQFK2Vg9VfRDnsQC_cWDg889X9QMIZk8j6R1Mjv8RJ8O6nmFA2FvaMT2Fi0jyGHVczxNbUvKIEN6AdR7l5n-FOV1ee9zgvqst5ylbY4cdFhE0Goq0pv8ogzFdh8q2oq3cnQvTo3S4wl8PnOtcFjvkf7C8NloQhCoSj2Q8gj3_ZYxCvM/s720/Yellow%20Brick%20Road.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="720" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFXfothHQFK2Vg9VfRDnsQC_cWDg889X9QMIZk8j6R1Mjv8RJ8O6nmFA2FvaMT2Fi0jyGHVczxNbUvKIEN6AdR7l5n-FOV1ee9zgvqst5ylbY4cdFhE0Goq0pv8ogzFdh8q2oq3cnQvTo3S4wl8PnOtcFjvkf7C8NloQhCoSj2Q8gj3_ZYxCvM/s400/Yellow%20Brick%20Road.jpg"/></a></div>
Continuing the Watford FC theme, I <a href="https://www.watford.gov.uk/news/article/505/elton-john-honoured-with-new-street-name-in-watford#:~:text=In%20another%20local%20tribute%20to,been%20renamed%20Yellow%20Brick%20Road.">see</a> that following a campaign by Hornets supporter Roy Moore, Mayor Peter Taylor has arranged for Watford Council to agree the renaming of Occupation Road, which runs alongside the Elton John stand at Vicarage Road stadiums, as the Yellow Brick RoadIain Sharpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07249331216466329232noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274437.post-70565998372629434242023-11-30T18:05:00.001+00:002023-11-30T18:08:01.082+00:00Watford forever: 'Rock’n’roll flamboyance meets suburban sobriety'<p>Despite the Warner Studios and Harry Potter World being a leading local attraction, Watford itself has not often featured as a setting for major motion pictures and the like.</p><p>But maybe that is about to change! I see that in a recent book review in <i>The Times</i>, Robert Crampton commented:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/watford-forever-by-john-preston-review-ch62f0dtn"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">If John Preston hasn’t already sold the film rights to this book, he surely will soon. </span><i style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Watford Forever</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"> is the heartwarming story of the collaboration and friendship between English football’s oddest couple, Elton John and Graham Taylor: rock’n’roll flamboyance meets suburban sobriety in the bad old days of the 1970s.</span></a> (£)</span></p></blockquote><p>Given the public appetite for dramas based on unlikely friendships, it's a wonder no one thought of this before. </p><p>Certainly, those of us who lived in Watford during the Graham Taylor-Elton John era could hardly help but feel that the club was achieving something special that reflected positively on the town and helped change the image of football for the better.</p>Iain Sharpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07249331216466329232noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274437.post-74251998460401359202023-11-29T20:44:00.006+00:002023-11-29T22:30:58.961+00:00Is that a Benskins pub or am I seeing things?<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf3psWBN706S9e7XQwVP2I-bPugYWLTPT1OjM374NEnwp_Rmbq0s2VcdCbIhKkNGtmjKITFHvcW8-Dk9l6g34hj7LIgA_5M8YaRRYsft_nWrxvIRd2-ESTOJxhYVr25Ox9FsehYnPjzIbUnOwo6q2yxZe9SL8GmaxN71Ud-Guzkv098Lv5EGdD/s1052/Sun%20Inn%20Markyate.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1052" data-original-width="1041" height="325" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf3psWBN706S9e7XQwVP2I-bPugYWLTPT1OjM374NEnwp_Rmbq0s2VcdCbIhKkNGtmjKITFHvcW8-Dk9l6g34hj7LIgA_5M8YaRRYsft_nWrxvIRd2-ESTOJxhYVr25Ox9FsehYnPjzIbUnOwo6q2yxZe9SL8GmaxN71Ud-Guzkv098Lv5EGdD/w322-h325/Sun%20Inn%20Markyate.jpg" width="322" /></a></div>Stopping in the village of Markyate just south of Dunstable at the weekend I spotted something I never thought I would see again – a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benskins_Brewery">Benskins</a> pub sign.<p></p><p>Back in the 1980s when I first started frequenting hostelries, nearly all the pubs in Watford and indeed a wider area of Hertfordshire, where the company had bought out smaller brewers, bore the red and gold insignia of the Benskins brand. Although Benskins had been a Watford brewery, it had been taken over by Ind Coope in the 1950s, the brewery closed in 1972 and demolished in the late 1970s.</p><p>Indeed the name had already been phased out and brought back, presumably as a sop to the growth of the Campaign for Real Alea and the demand for greater choice. What passed for Benskins Best Bitter, though, was brewed in Romford not Watford and was what would now be called a session ale. It was a pretty indifferent pint, outshone by Ind Coope's stronger cask beer, Burton Ale. Unless one deliberately sought out one of the town's few Greene King or Courage pubs, or the area's only Free House up in Bushey, going out for a pint in this neck of the woods meant a limited choice of beer (Burton Ale, if you were lucky, Benskins Best, John Bull, Skol lager).</p><p>Then in the 1990s everything changed. CAMRA and beer enthusiasts generally had long lamented the way the pub trade was dominated by six big brewers who controlled what beer they could sell and at what price, freezing smaller breweries out of the marked and restricting choice for consumers. Breaking up the tied house system by restricting the number of pubs a brewery could own and permitting landlords to stock guest beers looked to be a rare positive reform from the Thatcher government.</p><p>Yet as beer writer Roger Protz <a href="https://protzonbeer.co.uk/comments/2014/12/27/tied-hand-and-foot-the-sad-and-sorry-saga-of-the-rise-of-britain-s-giant-pubcos">explains</a>, it didn't work out like that. In the end, new 'pubcos' took over breweries' pub portfolios, acted in just as restrictive a way and, lacking the paternalism of the breweries who at least wanted to sell beer, sold off many perfectly good pubs.</p><p></p><div style="text-align: left;">Anyway, the Benskins brand disappeared, beer and pubs alike, so it was a bit like seeing a ghost to spot the Benskins name under the sign of the Sun Inn, Markyate. I even thought for nostalgia's sake I might pop in for a pint. But it was not to be. The pub, a 16th-century listed building is now a private house, although apparently <a href="https://www.hertsad.co.uk/lifestyle/21834240.markyate-pub-turned-fabulous-family-home/">open until 2013</a>. Even then the sign would have been the only link to Benskins, but seeing it at all was strangely pleasing.</div><p></p><p><br /></p>Iain Sharpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07249331216466329232noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274437.post-23715383603967689112023-11-27T21:34:00.002+00:002023-11-27T21:34:43.971+00:00'Big demands on our services... less and less money' Watford Mayor Peter Taylor defends local government on GB News<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDqPKYMe97VrpcnSlNTO9Dnkt2PDF5UGi1deagGH0pZCmmdkM7nddE7FHyR2qdkdW0wSYdUBu-2SlrTjwFliGluFD0f00yYucU_-AkvglPafs8cgQt30Wq1gXcjf72mxotzTPqSJJuhPQKCLDNYJdh2ZCMqpx5jbq795nbF8oaxpSXzVaARosJ/s1014/Screenshot%202023-11-27%20212634.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="622" data-original-width="1014" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDqPKYMe97VrpcnSlNTO9Dnkt2PDF5UGi1deagGH0pZCmmdkM7nddE7FHyR2qdkdW0wSYdUBu-2SlrTjwFliGluFD0f00yYucU_-AkvglPafs8cgQt30Wq1gXcjf72mxotzTPqSJJuhPQKCLDNYJdh2ZCMqpx5jbq795nbF8oaxpSXzVaARosJ/s320/Screenshot%202023-11-27%20212634.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p><br /></p>I suspect not many Liberal Democrat blog readers watch GB news, so although this is now nearly a week old it's still worth posting a <a href="https://www.gbnews.com/shows/breakfast-with-eamonn-and-isabel/2023-11-21">link</a> to Watford's excellent Elected Mayor Peter Taylor's interview on the channel from last Tuesday. This blog makes no claim to topicality anyway.<p></p><p>Peter rightly highlights the slashing of funding to local government at a time when its services have never been more needed. It was against the background of <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-67412641">local authorities facing effective bankruptcy</a>.</p><p>For what it's worth, although GB News has a terrible reputation among those outside the political right, the interviewing here - admittedly from professional broadcasters Eamonn Holmes and Isabel Webster, not any of their more controversial presenters - seemed fair-minded enough.</p><p>The item starts at 1 hour 21 minutes.<br /></p><p><br /></p>Iain Sharpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07249331216466329232noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274437.post-64733217161345668202023-11-21T21:29:00.002+00:002023-11-21T21:41:53.975+00:00Coventry Rugby Club's 150th anniversary<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Hxr64uoK1z0" width="320" youtube-src-id="Hxr64uoK1z0"></iframe></div><br />To labour a point from my previous posts, last weekend saw me too heading on a train to a midlands city to watch a sporting event, albeit a different sport and a different city.<p></p><p>In the last few years, Coventry Rugby Club, under the energetic leadership of Chairman Jon Sharp, have been undergoing something of a renaissance after three decades of decline punctuated by crisis that on more than one occasion threatened to <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/rugby/rugby-union/club-rugby/crisishit-coventry-face-closure-1832104.html">put the club out of business altogether</a>.</p><p>The problem they face in any attempt to get back to the top of English rugby is the obstacles put in the way by the RFU and Premiership Rugby in terms of massive disparities of funding between the two leagues, unequal financial arrangements for any club that does go up, restrictive ground criteria and ever-changing rules about who is promoted. </p><p>This cartel approach appears to continue despite the contraction of top level rugby to just 10 clubs after the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/london-irish-suspended-english-premiership-530d72394cd6a713dee36c62786138a9">collapse of Worcester, Wasps and London Irish</a>. It seems a strange approach for a governing body to put every barrier in the way of a sport's expansion as a spectator attraction and effectively to insist that fully professional rugby should only take place at five venues in England each weekend, but there you go.</p><p>This year Coventry celebrate their 150th anniversary and doing so positively. Rather than lament the fact that the central funding has been slashed by the rugby authorities in recent years, Cov have set out their own route to sustainable professional rugby with an <a href="https://www.coventryrugby.co.uk/autumn-2023-statement-from-executive-chairman-jon-sharp/">ambitious statement by the Chairman about the club's future</a>, launch of a <a href="https://www.coventryrugby.co.uk/cov-target-wider-community-with-150-legacy-club/">fundraising campaign</a> to widen access to sport in the city and the rather moving video (link above) which includes footage of past club achievements and historic images of the city. The club has also taken a leading role in ensuring Championship clubs are <a href="https://www.coventryrugby.co.uk/championship-clubs-statement-17th-november-2023/">increasingly speaking up for themselves</a> rather than suffering in silence.</p><p>I was one of 3,417 spectators watching Cov's<a href="https://www.coventryrugby.co.uk/match-report-coventry-rugby-51-7-doncaster-knights/"> impressive win over Doncaster Knights</a> on Saturday. It is more fun now being a Cov supporter than it has been for an awful long time. But more than that I hope this may be the start of clubs below the Premiership shaping their own future.</p>Iain Sharpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07249331216466329232noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274437.post-17273115292121410202023-11-16T21:59:00.002+00:002023-11-16T21:59:28.296+00:00'Deep in my heart I know I love chips'<p>To conclude my BS Johnson experience, and for the benefit of anyone wanting to discover his work, here are a few more things, particularly about <i>The unfortunates</i>, which I did find a haunting and powerful book. If it becomes available online at something less than the lowest price I've so far found online of £46.11, I'll buy a copy.</p><p style="text-align: left;">1. It is one of the novels featured on BBC Sounds' Exploding Library series, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001s53w">the half-hour episode<i> </i>presented by the comedian Rob Auton</a><i>. </i>A bit self-consciously wacky for me maybe, but still was an interesting and enjoyable listen. The series also features another of my favourite novels <i><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001ry46">Nights at the circus</a> </i>by Angela Carter. </p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="197" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/d4ZLKd3krJw" width="236" youtube-src-id="d4ZLKd3krJw"></iframe></div><br />2. On Youtube there is Johnson's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4ZLKd3krJw" target="_blank">film about the novel</a>, originally broadcast in 1969 as part of BBC Arts' Release series. It includes footage of him vising Nottingham and showing the orginal book in a box. If the book is timeless the film is very much of its time.<br /><p></p><p style="text-align: left;">3. Out of curiosity, I have tried to use football scores to track down the date of Johnson's original Nottingham visit that inspired the novel. There is a reference to checking the West Brom v Chelsea score, a match also taking place that day, and to Chelsea having won 3-1 at 'The Bridge' that season. The only season I could find with this result was <a href="https://globalsportsarchive.com/competition/soccer/first-division-1963-1964/regular-season/60/">1963-64</a>, which seems about right. But Nottingham Forest weren't playing at home on the day of the West Brom v Chelsea game that season, while Chelsea's home match against West Brom was later than the away one. Surely Johnson, that stickler for truth, can't have invented football scores? At the very least, mystery unresolved.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">4. <i>The unfortunates</i> includes a lament about the inadequacies of English football stadiums: '...so piecemeal... never designed as a whole' and commenting that 'the directors and owners... let the men on the terraces, their chief supporters, the sixpences of the masses, stand out in all weathers' and charge extra for 'corrugated iron sheds'. Myself, I used to have a soft spot for piecemeal grounds with corrugated iron sheds, but in the light of the tragedies at football grounds that happened in the subsequent quarter century, one must conclude that Johnson was ahead of his time on that point.<br /><br />5. Lastly, whatever the challenges of reading BS Johnson, one line in <i>The unfortunates</i> I can definitely identify with. Contemplating what to order for lunch the protagonist muses: 'Deep in my heart I know I love chips.' He surely wasn't making that up.</p>Iain Sharpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07249331216466329232noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274437.post-49374192107413952202023-11-12T23:32:00.009+00:002024-01-18T12:53:32.931+00:00Chased by the ghost of BS Johnson?<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjob8tAqfYRRq53-VrGRjJ-Dp0YSWHsRrA8r0rrrEAe9XkWOcNmGZ683L0aeRRUq-fXYtnSL20UFjg_xC2Py_6xJcDntCEprqgXKimAXoBRUhAU2Vja7s2ymS1CNPys0wA-no7XeDMG7qz1UMxv6H4OlTKtmmlKCSHZ6FdI1DhQZ281eRT8dCn1/s1024/b_s_johnson-1024x672.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="1024" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjob8tAqfYRRq53-VrGRjJ-Dp0YSWHsRrA8r0rrrEAe9XkWOcNmGZ683L0aeRRUq-fXYtnSL20UFjg_xC2Py_6xJcDntCEprqgXKimAXoBRUhAU2Vja7s2ymS1CNPys0wA-no7XeDMG7qz1UMxv6H4OlTKtmmlKCSHZ6FdI1DhQZ281eRT8dCn1/s320/b_s_johnson-1024x672.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>AS I POST this, tomorrow<br /> marks the 50th anniversary of the tragic suicide
at the age of 40 of the novelist, poet and filmmaker <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._S._Johnson">BS Johnson</a>, perhaps best
known today for his darkly humorous novel <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christie_Malry%27s_Own_Double-Entry_(film)">Christie
Malry’s own double entry</a></i>, published a few months before his death.<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In this long and no doubt self-indulgent post, which I hope
one or two people may fight their way through, I describe how he has kept
cropping up in my own life, leading to a curiosity about his work that only in
the last few weeks have I satisfied by reading any of it.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">For a short but intense period of a few months in the
mid-1980s <a href="https://www.hertfordshire.gov.uk/services/libraries-and-archives/library-opening-hours/watford-library.aspx">Watford
Central Library</a> became something of a home from home for me. I had reached
the age of 18 and messed up my schooling leading to an enforced gap year while
I tried to get life and education back on track. It felt as though I had
squandered my opportunities. So added to an already difficult home situation was a sense of being in disgrace. The library was a refuge.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">While trying to sort myself out, I had discovered that other
people, the kind that passed their exams and went to university, read proper
books, novels and the like. Until then my own reading had consisted mainly of
the following: books about rugby; books about pop music; true crime books
(influenced by my grandmother) and humorous compilations that were often
spin-offs from TV and radio programmes, often received by one family member or
another as Christmas presents.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I was trying to get away from these and read some real
literature, of which there was much to be found in Watford Central Library. So
when I discovered a volume in there entitled <i>Aren’t you rather young to be
writing your memoirs?</i> I didn’t even take it down from the shelf, let alone
note the name of the author. Its seemingly whimsical title smacked of
light-hearted Radio 4 programmes. I could imagine someone like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Robinson_(broadcaster)">Robert
Robinson</a> asking the question in a jovial way of someone like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Rees">Nigel Rees</a>. It sounded like
the sort of thing I might once have devoured but now wanted to escape.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It took a couple of years to realise my mistake. Having had
some success at my educational rehabilitation, I found myself spending a lot of
time in the <a href="https://le.ac.uk/library/events/library-centenary">University
of Leicester Library</a>, occasionally reading books for my course, more often
enjoying the other treasures to be found there. These included bound volumes of
back copies of the <i>New Statesman</i> in which I found the columns of Auberon
Waugh written during his brief sojourn at the Staggers between 1973 and 1975.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In one untypically poignant column, Waugh described how
three times that year he had had to recall articles he had submitted to
different publications because the person they were written about had suddenly
died. The third of these, BS Johnson, he described as ‘by far the saddest’. It
turned out that Waugh had been writing about Johnson’s collection <i>Aren’t you
rather young to be writing your memoirs?</i>, which he described as a ‘serious
tract’ containing an ‘impassioned plea for the experimental novelist’. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So the author of <i>Aren’t you rather young</i>…<i>?</i>’ was
not a lesser known panel game host but a SERIOUS PERSON. Apparently Johnson
argued that film and television could tell stories better than print so novels
should ‘concentrate on thought processes.’ In the light of the conclusion I had
jumped to, it seemed almost spooky that Waugh owned to having included a review
of the book in a list of ‘Christmas “funnies”’ encouraging Johnson to
‘recognise his genius as primarily humorous’, hence why he needed to recall the
article on learning of his subject’s suicide.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Waugh tended to disparage any literature that took itself
too seriously. Yet amid his negative remarks about experimental literature, he
described Johnson’s novel <i>Christie Malry’s own double entry</i> as a
masterpiece and suggested that he had been a witting or unwitting influence on
Martin Amis’s first novel, which had been published that year. So, curiosity piqued,
I added BS Johnson to my ever-growing mental list of authors to read.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Yet it could wait. Looking him up in reference books I
discovered a bit more. Coming from an upper-working/lower-middle class
background in West London, Johnson had done a variety of jobs before studying
English Literature at King’s College London and becoming a writer. In line with
his belief that the narrative function of the novel had been eclipsed, he
experimented with its form, including its physical characteristics. His second <i>Albert
Angelo</i> set out parts of the text in columns with holes cut out in the pages
readers to see what happens later in the story. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unfortunates">The<span style="font-style: normal;"> </span>Unfortunates</a></i> was published in 27
loose sections that could be read in any order. In<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Mother_Normal"> <i>House Mother
Normal</i> </a>several elderly residents of a sheltered home, with differing
levels of lucidity, related an evening’s events each from a different
perspective. The protagonist of <i>Christie Malry’s own double entry</i> applied
the principles of double-entry bookkeeping to his own life, finding ever more
extreme ways of exacting recompense for perceived wrongs done to him,
culminating in poisoning the London water supply.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">For me the problem was that reading such stuff seemed too
much like hard work. If I was going to turn my attention to books that required
work, then I should go for ones that actually were – those required for my
studies. Other reading should be for pleasure and BS Johnson’s oeuvre didn't sound
like it would be that.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So he dropped down my list, but from time to time kept
calling. Some years later I discovered that a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christie_Malry%27s_Own_Double-Entry_(film)">film</a>
had been released of <i>Christie Malry’s own double entry</i> with a soundtrack
by one of my favourite artistes, <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/luke-haines-mn0000266165">Luke Haines</a>,
former leader of The Auteurs. I bought the CD and could maybe have watched the film.
But in a busy life my wife and I try to make watching movies a joint activity
and this requires compromise. Strangely, the moment for saying ‘Let’s spend our
Saturday evening together watching a film about a man who murders thousands of
people by poisoning the water supply, based on a novel by an author who
committed suicide a few months after publishing it’ never arrived.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Then I noticed that the novelist Jonathan Coe had written a
biography of Johnson, <i><a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/luke-haines-mn0000266165">Like a fiery
elephant</a></i> (he being a notoriously big and volatile man) and I read the
usually <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/may/30/biography.jonathancoe">glowing
reviews</a> with a certain smug self-satisfaction that I had at least heard of
this ‘forgotten’ writer and knew something about him. But it would have felt odd
to read a biography of a literary figure whose work I hadn’t ever opened so I
let that go by. At the time I was combining work with serving as a councillor
and studying for a research degree. Reading books I didn’t need to was a
pleasure that had to be deferred.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A couple of years later I downloaded (legally of course) an
album by indie-rock band the <a href="https://www.pernicebrothers.com/">Pernice
Brothers</a> and was surprised to see it included a song called <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bexd18r6ZSU"><i>BS Johnson</i></a>, which in two-and-a-half
minutes summed up pretty well the author’s life and oeuvre:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1cm;">Write a book of leaves shuffled by
the wind<br />
Two unbound lives, orderless and grim…<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1cm;">…You were dead by forty-two<br />
There'd be no rigid form for you<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">For the reasons mentioned above, for many years, and indeed
decades, reading BS Johnson seemed to be something to be done sometime in the
future.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Recently, though, I have begun to feel that future has
arrived. I’m in my late 50s. When my father, a fellow bibliophile, died three
years ago I worked out that if I live to be the same age as him and manage to
read on average a book a week, that would mean 1,000 more books, which will be
a fraction of those I would like to read. I’m already falling well behind
target.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So now is the time to start reading the books I’ve always
said I’d read and the sad anniversary of Johnson’s death brought him to mind.
So in the last few weeks I have read:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1cm;">• <i>The unfortunates</i> (the ‘book
of leaves shuffled by the wind’)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1cm;">• <i>Christie Malry’s own double
entry</i><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1cm;">• <i>Aren’t you rather young to be
writing your memoirs?</i> (at least the ‘impassioned’ introduction and the
short story from which the volume gets its title and one or two of the other
pieces inlcuded)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1cm;">• <i>Like a fiery elephant: the
story of BS Johnson</i> by Jonathan Coe<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What have I made of it? I’m no Eng. Lit. critic so I don’t
attempt any detailed exegesis, merely the observations of a casual reader, but
here goes. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Like so many things in life, it was not as hard as I feared.
No long, opaque, incomprehensible passages. Johnson wanted to see authors
‘writing like it mattered, as though they meant it, and as though they meant it
to matter’ and his own work certainly demonstrates that. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In <i>The unfortunates</i> the protagonist visits a midlands
city (clearly Nottingham) to report on a football match and while doing so remembers
the illness and death of a friend who had lived there. By any standards it is a
powerful piece of writing, the events of the journey interspersed with a portrayal
of the effects of cancer on the sufferer and their family and friends. Johnson
was also a keen student of architecture and this shows in his descriptive
writing, whether of <a href="https://www.southwellminster.org/theme/virtual-tours/">Southwell Minster</a>
or the <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/gwoodward/49899071872">lions </a>in
Nottingham’s Old Market Square, all together with a funny account of the main
character composing a match report of a rather dull football match.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The book’s presentation in loose leaf sections contained in
a box may seem like a gimmick, but was justified by Johnson as demonstrating
the randomness of memory. Which may be logical enough, but leaves the reader
(or at least this one) fretting after borrowing the book from the library as to
whether all the sections are there at the start, whether they are all still
there or if one has gone astray, does the introduction by Jonathan Coe count as
one of the sections or is that extra and if I’ve lost one how much will it cost
to buy the library a replacement copy? And in the end, couldn’t he have just
published it as one book with an instruction that all but the first and last
bits can be read in any order the reader chooses? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Although more novella than novel (23,000 words) <i>Christie
Malry’s own double entry</i> has been hailed as a masterpiece and deserves this
status. It’s a very funny book, its humour very dark, and with a vivid
portrayal of London in the 1970s. The story is of an accountancy worker
applying the principles of double-entry bookkeeping to his own life, a series
of slights against him by individuals or society requiring ever more extreme
ways of exacting payback, culminating in the aforementioned mass poisoning. The
use of graphic features, in this case mocked-up ‘moral’ double entry ledgers to
illustrate the plot was another innovation even if I can’t suppress a scowl at
the largest debit owed being £311,398 for ‘Socialism not given a chance’. How
long have socialists been saying that no real-life government, however much it proclaims its socialism, is ‘truly socialist’ and why has it proved impossible for nominally socialist
governments to give socialism a chance? But I digress.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It's a bit sad though to say that the best thing I’ve read
on my BS Johnson adventure has not been one of his own books but <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/may/30/biography.jonathancoe">Jonathan
Coe’s biography</a>. I see from the cover it was shortlisted for the 2005
Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction and in my view it should have won, an
argument I might be better qualified to make if only I had read <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baillie_Gifford_Prize">any of the other
shortlisted books</a>.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">While Johnson might turn in his grave (if he hadn’t been
cremated) at being biographised by a conventional narrative storyteller
novelist, what really makes <i>Like a fiery elephant </i>such a success is that
it nods to Johnson by putting his writings at the centre of the narrative (each
section starts with a passage of Johnson’s writing) with an ongoing thread of
authorial intrusion so that it’s not just a biography but a book about writing a
biography. It is very much a warts-and-all portrait that gives a clear sense of
this brilliant, tortured, misguided and ultimately tragic figure. I would go so
far as to say that this is Coe’s best book, if only I had managed to read the
others (they are on my list).<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">To me the tragedy of BS Johnson is the way he stubbornly channelled
his remarkable talent up an obvious dead end (‘telling stories is telling lies’).
Among the observations from Coe’s interviewees is that Johnson managed to
emerge from a humanities degree having learned not how to think, as is supposed
to be the point, but rather having adopted one particular thought about the nature
of writing that he would never let go of. Another comments that while he wanted
to be the greatest novelist of his era, he was intimidated by the Oxbridge
varsity novel tradition and so tried to redefine the rules so as to compete on
a non-narrative, ultra-realist field where he could be the champion.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As well as the two novels described above, I also read <i>Aren’t
you rather young to be writing your memoirs?</i> or at least parts of this
collection of his shorter writings. The eponymous short story, with its gunfight-but-not-quite
narrative is rather funny. The ‘impassioned’ introduction less so, but worth
reading because it prompted me to think about why Johnson was wrong, why
narrative novels still sell and his own belief about the future of fiction was
a cul-de-sac. Jonathan Coe comments that Johnson did not see himself as a niche
writer but could not understand why his approach was not seen as mainstream. Indeed
his regular firing of literary agents and fights with publishers demonstrated
an unshakeably conviction that his books should be bestsellers and it was only
their ineptitude and laziness that prevented this.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">On this point Auberon Waugh’s comment seems most perceptive:
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1cm;">He argued convincingly enough that
the narrative function of the novel has been overtaken by cinema and television;
that the novel should therefore concentrate on thought processes; nothing could
be more relevant than the thought processes of a novelist in sitting down to
write a novel; how puzzling it is that few people want to read the product of such
correct reasoning.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Jonathan Coe’s point in rebuttal of the notion that ‘telling
stories is telling lies’ is that fiction involves a compact between author and
reader – both parties know what is going on so no lies involved.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">For my own part, back in the day when I was supposing
Johnson to be a humorous lightweight, I was pondering whether to study History
or Eng Lit. at university, opting in the end for the former, lest the latter spoil
my enjoyment of reading fiction.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I learned that writing history too involves making choices
about how to present a particular event or theme, selections as to what
material to include and what to omit. Indeed in the year of Johnson’s death the
American historian Hayden White wrote his seminal book <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metahistory:_The_Historical_Imagination_in_Nineteenth-century_Europe">Metahistory:
The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-century Europe</a></i> about how historians organise
their narration events into a coherent story. One doesn’t have to be a total
relativist to be aware that even when relating true events one may be
telling a story.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Reading two of Johnson’s books more than 50 years after they
were published, I didn’t find them that innovative or experimental. The use,
for example, of authorial intervention to make clear this was a work of fiction
not real life, were used by Johnson’s contemporaries David Lodge and Malcolm Bradbury
even as they wrote conventional, narrative, varsity (albeit non-Oxbridge) novels.
Yet they did this in a playful, postmodern way rather than with Johnson’s
gritty deference to Beckett and Joyce.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">One wishes he had thought better of his desperate choice,
made 50 years ago now to this day. To have achieved the acceptance he craved he
would have surely had to shift his thinking and emerged from a dead channel into
the mainstream. I was struck by reading that Johnson rejected the cultural
changes of the 1960s, flower power and hippiedom not being for him. It put me
in mind of another Johnson, Paul, the former <i>New Statesman </i>editor, who
while still a socialist wrote of ‘The menace of Beatlism’ before going over to
full-blooded Thatcherism. Might BSJ have followed that route too?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We can’t know about that nor how he might have developed as
a novelist had he lived. My own BS Johnson odyssey is at an end. There are so
many books to read, I’ve done my bit in turning from more pressing things to read
a novelist whose works are now mostly out of print and who killed himself 50
years ago. So I’m not doing <i><a href="https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/b-s-johnson/trawl/9781447200369">Trawl
</a></i>or <i>House mother normal. </i>Yet it has been a rewarding experience,
enough to make me write this excessively long blog post. It shares with Johnson’s
work one thing: that rather fewer people will read it than the effort put in
feels like it warrants. I hope you are the person who reached the end and
decided to read one of BS Johnson’s books as a result.<o:p></o:p></p>Iain Sharpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07249331216466329232noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274437.post-40194063970850809522023-11-05T16:24:00.005+00:002023-11-29T20:46:31.438+00:00At the Old Crows' show<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7iKTk8pHxWw" width="320" youtube-src-id="7iKTk8pHxWw"></iframe></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /><span><br /></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>When I first started listening to music anything that could be called country was deemed beyond the pale by turns atavistic, insincere, schmaltzy. Exceptions might be made for Bob Dylan’s </span><i>Nashville Skyline</i><span> or The Byrds’ </span><i>Sweetheart of the Rodeo</i><span> but that was rock musicians doing country not the dreaded country music itself.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 19.26px;">Despite successive attempts over the decades to make country cool through labels such as <a href="https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,967976,00.html">new country</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowpunk">cowpunk</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_country">alt-country</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americana_(music)">Americana </a>or whatever, and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20201204-how-dolly-parton-became-the-worlds-best-loved-celebrity">Dolly Parton becoming an international treasure</a>, I still feel that to tell someone I’m going to a concert by a country artist is to invite an expression on face somewhere between puzzlement and disapproval.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 19.26px;">This could be even more so with Old Crow Medicine Show, who are best described as a modern version of an old-time string band and are often cited as an inspiration for the much-derided Mumford and Sons.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 19.26px;">In reality they are miles away from any twee version of country music, the dark lyrical themes of many of their songs being very much of the present day, even though the reverence for traditional forms is very real.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 19.26px;">The Old Crows were in fine fettle last Monday, and having expanded to a seven-piece band with drummer and keyboardist, have evolved beyond their initial neo-traditionalist style.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 19.26px;">They also epitomised something I have noticed more and more in recent years that bands are no longer too cool to recognise that they are providing entertainment and putting on a show. Back in the day niceties like speaking to the audience and thanking them at the end were the exception rather than the rule, perhaps because tours were done under sufferance to promote records rather than now as the main way of making a living by playing music.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 19.26px;">So today it’s not uncommon to have jokes, anecdotes and banter, and the Old Crows’ leader Ketch Secor is a natural frontman, regaling the audience with stories about the band’s previous visits to the United Kingdon. As one for whom the Eventim Apollo will always be the Hammersmith Odeon I was pleased to hear him refer to it as such also.</span></p>Iain Sharpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07249331216466329232noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274437.post-34531175065817431432023-11-05T12:48:00.002+00:002023-11-19T00:29:45.158+00:00So farewell then, Worthington White Shield<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXXjfht-qJzvYl128yOQQIKlZopAiUWG1U3YDszaH_Rjq1gaFpX-UVHDCr405MXxA7r17Ox2U6iI5Wt3BnGXfXyf7KOO8oh1MGG7cLC9flvPvPwy6x4AEY_AJyNwoJnO-8P1etTcNyKKrVCzNDCSdKqpWvMbuo4agPZZvnTcbUOMQEsSCskZ5Q/s1390/worthington-white-shield-bottle-car-at-the-national-brewery-centre-FP5KD1.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1390" data-original-width="975" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXXjfht-qJzvYl128yOQQIKlZopAiUWG1U3YDszaH_Rjq1gaFpX-UVHDCr405MXxA7r17Ox2U6iI5Wt3BnGXfXyf7KOO8oh1MGG7cLC9flvPvPwy6x4AEY_AJyNwoJnO-8P1etTcNyKKrVCzNDCSdKqpWvMbuo4agPZZvnTcbUOMQEsSCskZ5Q/s320/worthington-white-shield-bottle-car-at-the-national-brewery-centre-FP5KD1.jpg" width="224" /></a></div>Despite being
a cask beer drinker since the 1980s, until very recently I have held off joining
the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA). There are a few reasons for this, but the
main one was disagreement with certain of CAMRA’s policy positions, including a
sense it that was overly purist and that it was silly to make a fetish of the
means of dispense rather than the quality of the beer.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">With hindsight
this wasn’t very logical. If disagreement with some of an organisation’s policies
was an impediment to joining, I would never have signed up to the Liberal party
back in the day nor have spent much of the last four decades campaigning for
the Lib Dems and serving as a councillor.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Anyway,
having gathered that CAMRA had adopted a more broadminded approach, this year I
did join and have received the first copy of the excellent <i>Beer</i> magazine
that is a benefit of membership.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">It brings
the <a href="https://wb.camra.org.uk/2023/08/11/bottled-classic-under-threat">sad
news</a>, however, that the famous Worthington White Shield pale ale is being
discontinued by its owner Molson Coors.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Back in the
day, White Shield was celebrated as the one bottle-conditioned beer on general
sale – even if it was not easy to find. I learned about it because it had been
adopted as a favoured beer by the rugby club where my dad played. On one occasion
he turned up just as the delivery driver arrived and was told that the club was
the largest customer in the country for White Shield. The second biggest was a hotel
in Devon where club’s players stayed on their Easter tour.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Over the
years whenever I’ve seen White Shield on sale, I’ve never failed to buy a
bottle or two. Yet in truth it was more its uniqueness as real ale in a bottle
that made me buy rather than anything exceptional about the taste – nice enough
though it was. It was always a rare find, never properly promoted, each time it
seemed to have been brewed at a different location and its specialness was reduced
with the explosion of craft and micro breweries, many of which sell live beer
in bottles.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Still, it
is sad to see it go and if it really is not to be revived the CAMRA article is
a worthy obituary.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Iain Sharpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07249331216466329232noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274437.post-64074632309871264482023-11-01T20:43:00.005+00:002023-11-03T22:45:22.848+00:00I still love the moment when the floodlights come on<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQeizM0GeUykD3z2vVE-EEv7xHWAPHpuhs_5lU4fsmEByE785n2EHquhb9URLGN5HOEyIXRHJLkVtK3s95J_qG9UoIIbeezWSuJgXxcOQCv99axWph2AprzTL2ztQi3O1s0zXQls611f7gU6YlU9ISZb8GAJvikY4UUhs_gt-YD7wncQ56YM6d/s2016/Butts%20Park%20arena.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1512" data-original-width="2016" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQeizM0GeUykD3z2vVE-EEv7xHWAPHpuhs_5lU4fsmEByE785n2EHquhb9URLGN5HOEyIXRHJLkVtK3s95J_qG9UoIIbeezWSuJgXxcOQCv99axWph2AprzTL2ztQi3O1s0zXQls611f7gU6YlU9ISZb8GAJvikY4UUhs_gt-YD7wncQ56YM6d/s320/Butts%20Park%20arena.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Action from Coventry's Butts Park Arena <br />on Saturday.</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br />Despite my lack of enthusiasm about the Rugby World Cup final, there was no shortage of sport to interest me over the weekend.<p></p><div>Indeed there was a rare treat on offer. When we lived in Kincardineshire in the 1970s my father used to take me to see Montrose FC, our nearest professional football club - usually evening matches because he played rugby on a Saturday afternoon. I look back fondly on winter nights standing on the terrace with the ground illuminated by floodlights.</div><div><br /></div><div>While I always look out for their results on a Saturday and often watch match highlights on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1BFCOKjUJTtTxWtiK-TFUw">Montrose FCTV</a>, I have been deprived of opportunities to see them in the last 47 years since we moved to Hertfordshire. Admittedly when Rangers hit a spot of bother a few years ago and were demoted to Division Two, both their away games at Links Park were shown on Sky TV. I feared, though, that the day might never come again. Yet there, on the BBC Alba schedule for last Saturday, was Montrose v Hamilton Academical. </div><div><br /></div><div>This would normally have been the highlight of my sporting weekend, indeed maybe my sporting year. But I had tickets to be elsewhere, in the city of my birth, watching Coventry Rugby Club v Caldy. 'Cov' were my second great sporting enthusiasm - when we visited my grandparents in Coventry I would occasionally get to see a game at their old Coundon Road ground. Cov were one of a relatively small number of rugby clubs with floodlights installed at their ground and I always looked forward to that moment in an afternoon game in winter when the lights came on in the gloaming.</div><div><br /></div><div>Back in those days both Cov and Montrose were on something of a high, the former one of the giants of the game with a team full of internationals, the latter for all that they were a part-time club in a small town finished <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975%E2%80%9376_Scottish_First_Division">one spot off promotion</a> to the Scottish Premier League in 1976.</div><div><br /></div><div>I've always had this worry that it was when I started supporting them that things began to go wrong. Since then both have endured more lows than highs, Cov nearly going out of business twice and having a long stint in the third tier of English rugby, Montrose coming within 90 minutes of dropping out of the Scottish leagues altogether.</div><div><br /></div><div>For both clubs, though, things have been going better in recent seasons. Montrose have climbed back up to Scottish League One. Cov finished third in the English Championship and even <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pec-20-YSJ8">beat the mighty Saracens</a> (albeit shorn of their star internationals) in a cup game earlier this season.</div><div><br /></div><div>In the end, it was no bad thing to be at Coventry's Butts Park Arena on Saturday rather than in front of the TV. After a sluggish start, Cov went on to an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFG_KnO5Fg8">impressive win</a>, whereas Montrose lost out 3-0 to a full-time professional Hamilton side.</div><div><br /></div><div>A 4pm kick-off for the Cov game meant this was the first weekend of the season where the floodlights were switched on at half-time and somehow for me this remains a magical moment. It also brings back memories of my father and maternal grandfather who first took me to see live sport, but who are no longer here.</div>Iain Sharpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07249331216466329232noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274437.post-41721381104011541782023-10-26T22:11:00.003+01:002023-10-26T22:11:38.242+01:00Rugby World Cup: déjà vu encore une fois<p>On the last occasion when one of my bouts of blogging
coincided with the Rugby World Cup, back in 2011, I <a href="https://eatenbymissionaries.blogspot.com/2011/09/problem-with-rugby-world-cup.html">lamented the predictability of it all</a> and
commented that for me the tournament held little excitement, even though I’m a keen
rugby fan.</p><p>At that stage only four teams had ever won, only one more had appeared in a final, and a total of just eight had ever reached the semi-final in the six World Cups that had happened to that point. And four World Cups later, that statistic still holds good. Saturday's final will be contested by two teams who between them have won the last four tournaments.</p><p>For only a handful of games in the pool stages could it be said that the result was in doubt before the kick-off and the result mattered in deciding who qualified for the next stage. While it was good that Fiji beat Australia such meaningful contests were relatively few.</p><p>The contrast with football is stark. In the last 10 FIFA World Cups, seven teams have been champions, two more have appeared in the final without winning and 10 more have reached semi-finals. There is a sense that any game could spring a surprise and help decide who goes through to the next round.</p><p>This year's Rugby World Cup was supposed to be different. Ireland, who had never previously got beyond the quarter-finals, were ranked number one in the world. The hosts France seemed genuine challengers too. More teams than ever before seemed to be in with a real chance of progressing to the later stages, even if the lopsided draw put meant only two of the top five teams could reach the semi-final.</p><p>At first it seemed this change to the traditional order was a reality. Ireland and France beat South Africa and New Zealand respectively in the pool stages. But with these fixtures reversed for the quarter-finals the traditional giants of the southern hemisphere edged out the northern pretenders.</p><p>So now we have a final where I don't really want either team to win. I suppose we can draw some comfort between an apparent narrowing of the gap between the traditional top dogs and the historic also-rans and have to hope that this will continue so that the 2027 tournament is the one that sees the traditional order overturned.</p><p><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>Iain Sharpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07249331216466329232noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274437.post-15294271429142286742023-10-25T20:33:00.004+01:002023-11-17T09:49:26.722+00:00That's my story and I'm sticking to it<p>At an academic conference some years ago, I heard a speaker say that the good thing about being a historian is that one's role is to interpret the past not to predict the future - a comment I found useful to remember when rereading my last post on this blog, a mere 11-and-a-bit years ago. </p><p>I remember some people took it as an argument that the Liberal Democrats' prospects in the 2015 general election were not as bleak as was generally thought. But that wasn't my point.</p><p>It was intended as a challenge to a misinterpretation of history - namely that the smaller party in a coalition always get blamed and punished electorally. I pointed out that there hadn't been a coalition in Britain without an electoral pact between the partners, so there was no precedent here on which to base such a conclusion. I cited a couple of precedents in the Republic of Ireland where the smaller coalition partner had fared reasonably well – even gained support. So my post wasn't intended as a prediction – or at least that's my story and I'm sticking to it.</p><p>With hindsight, I would say that junior coalition partners seem to get punished by the electorate if they do something that goes against the grain of what voters might have expected. The Irish Labour party did spectacularly well in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Irish_general_election">1992 general election</a>, and it was widely assumed that it would enter some some kind of rainbow coalition with the opposition Fine Gael and minor parties. </p><p>Instead, it put the seemingly discredited Fianna Fáil party back in power, despite the latter receiving its worst result in over 60 years. Then midway through the Dáil term Labour switched sides and put Fine Gael in. So it antagonised supporters of both main parties and appeared shifting and unprincipled. It paid the price at the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Irish_general_election">1997</a> general election, when it barely retained half its seats.</p><p>Between <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Irish_general_election">2011 </a>and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Irish_general_election">2016 </a>its performance mirrored the Liberal Democrats in many ways. Reaching a high point in the first election it entered a coalition with Fine Gael and found itself in the uncomfortable position of being a leftish party forced to make public spending cuts. Result: catastrophe at the next election. The Irish Labour party has never quite recovered and, like the British Liberal Democrats, is no longer even the country's third party.</p><p>Much of the debate after 2015 was over whether the Liberal Democrats were doomed by going into coalition in the first place or by mistakes made while in government. I suppose the foregoing comments push me to the first of these options. In entering government the party did three things that seemed contrary to what everyone would have reasonably expected: got into bed with a right-of-centre party after years of trying to outflank Labour on the left; appeared to cave in on the immediate issue of how soon to cut public spending; and abandoned its best-known policy of not increasing tuition fees.</p><p>Occasionally in politics circumstances will force a party into an unexpected volte-face. But if this is one the two main parties it will have a bedrock of support to fall back on and at least some friendly allies in the media telling its story. For the Liberal Democrats, who at the best of times found it hard to get their message across, were never going to get a hearing to explain choices that seemed so contrary to what people would have expected - however justified they might have felt these decisions to be. </p><p>It may be unlikely that the party will end up in coalition after the next election, but if it does then it can only really be with Labour, which will be what everyone expects and therefore the story will be easier to tell. We shall see.</p><p>One reason why this blog ground to a halt back in 2012 is that I was finding it more and more difficult to find anything to say that might interest even my small band of readers. As I was trying to make sure that the Liberal Democrats held their ground in Watford and at least retained the mayoralty and control of the council, I felt this cause was not helped by adding my voice to public criticism of the party leadership. And yet uncritical boosterism held little appeal either. So there was nothing much to say.</p><p>At local government level at least we have continued to prosper, my dear wife being succeeded as mayor by the excellent Peter Taylor. And after 30 years as a councillor, I stood down in 2021. In theory I should have had more time for writing but have lacked an outlet and my keyboard has remained idle. So I will give this blogging thing another bash. No longer holding elected office I have more freedom to express myself, yet at the same time I have become more detached from politics. But that is not the only thing to write about. I hope it won't be 11 years until the next post.</p>Iain Sharpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07249331216466329232noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274437.post-19695404590054500052012-07-20T21:28:00.003+01:002022-09-15T22:57:10.154+01:00Does history show that junior coalition partners are doomed?I wrote this post several months ago in response to an article on the Daily Telegraph website. I never quite got round to finishing and publishing it before going on a longer than anticipated hiatus. But, still, I might as well post rather than delete it, and the general issue it addresses is still relevant. <br />
<br />
Peter Oborne has <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/peter-oborne/9128789/This-fine-Coalition-government-wont-see-out-2013-what-a-shame-for-Britain.html">written</a> that the coalition won't see out 2013 and agrees with Mark Oaten's view that<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
coalitions are always disastrous for
the smaller party. It gets swallowed up, blamed for the failures and only
rarely credited with the successes, and then not nearly enough. </blockquote>
<br />
This is by no means the first time I've heard such a view expressed. Indeed shortly after the last general election, I attended a seminar where the constitutional expert Vernon Bogdanor
predicted a grim future for the Lib Dems as a result of their
participation in coalition. It seems to me that the view that junior coalition partners are necessarily doomed has become almost a received wisdom, an assertion one hears people make in political conversation with an air of authority.<br />
<br />
My purpose is not to come over all Panglossian about how the Liberal Democrats will perform at the next election, but rather to challenge how far history offers us a guide to the electoral prospects of a junior coalition partner. It seems to me that since the formalisation of party organisations in the nineteenth century, there has been no equivalent of what we have now: a peacetime coalition of two parties who continue to compete against one another in elections.<br />
<br />
The main examples of peacetime coalitions in Britain have involved not an independent junior partner but a schism from an established party (usually the Liberals) which then entered into an electoral pact with the Conservatives. In the case of the Liberal Unionists (junior coalition partners from 1895-1905) and the Liberal Nationals (from 1931 onwards) this new alliance proved permanent. In the case of the Lloyd George coalition, it fell apart and both sides returned to their previous affiliations.<br />
<br />
In each of these cases there remained an independent Liberal party outside the coalition (other than the brief participation of the Samuelite Liberals in the National Government between 1931 and 1932). Both the Liberal Unionists and the National Liberals were indeed swallowed up, but each clearly had an impact on their Conservative partners. Each helped broaden the Conservative party's appeal and they did receive credit for this from their new allies. And while the Lloyd George coalition ended in tears, the Conservatives clearly understood Lloyd George's usefulness to them while it lasted (and they ditched him when he became a liability). The key thing, though, is that in none of these cases was the coalition partner truly independent of its larger ally - indeed it was dependent on an electoral alliance for its very existence in parliament.<br />
<br />
History does perhaps suggest that holding the balance of power, while at one level the Liberals' dream, has meant bad news for the party at the subsequent election. It's almost inevitable that this will be the case. If Liberals put Labour in then their centre-right supporters will be angry and if they back the Tories then this will antagonise its centre-left voters. So when the Liberals installed a Labour government after the 1923 general election delivered a hung parliament, it lost support to the Conservatives at the 1924 election. After1929 when the Liberals again backed a Labour government, the party split, and had the subsequent election in 1931 been fought on conventional party lines, the Liberals would doubtless have done very badly.<br />
<br />
Yet in neither case was the party in coalition. And in the 1920s the Liberals party was atrophying at constituency level so arguably holding the balance of power merely hastened rather than caused its decline. A better comparison with today's situation would be the Lib-Lab pact in the 1970s where the Liberals sustained in power an unpopular and discredited Labour government. But by this stage the party had reversed its long-term decline, particularly at local level, and had developed a community politics strategy that (sometimes) went hand in hand with winning parliamentary seats by promoting Liberal MPs as local heroes. As a result, although the Liberals lost ground in 1979, its parliamentary representation fell only marginally, from 13 to 11, compared with the previous election. If the Lib Dems lost 15% of their MPs at the next election it will still leave the party in a much stronger position then it was before 1997.<br />
<br />
Another argument that junior coalition partners always fare badly comes from Ireland. The fate of the Progressive Democrats, who lost most of their seats in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_general_election,_2007">2007 general election</a> and then went out of existence following a coalition with Fianna Fail, is often cited. Yet the history of the PDs is rather more complex. The party actually twice increased its Dail representation after periods in coalition: at the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_general_election,_1992">1992</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_general_election,_2002">2002</a> elections. For a while it developed a reputation for keeping Fianna Fail honest and in many ways had an impact on policy beyond its slim electoral support base. By contrast, its representation fell dramatically each time it was in opposition. The final disaster was probably more to do with bad tactics - appearing too close to Fianna Fail, picking the wrong fights when it sought to differentiate itself, and obvious friction among its leaders - than with the fact of being in coalition.<br />
<br />
Similarly the electoral performance of the Irish Labour party in government does not justify a wholly pessimistic reading of the fate of junior coalition partners. In <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_general_election,_1977">1977</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_general_election,_1987">1987</a> it lost proportionately fewer seats than its larger coalition partner, Fine Gael. It did suffer a disastrous result in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_general_election,_1997">1997</a>, but that was after it had first sustained in power an unpopular Fianna Fail party, then switched horses midway through the parliament and gone into coalition with Fine Gael and others. It was punished for inconsistency and opportunism rather than the fact of going into coalition.<br />
<br />
So while I don't dispute the self-evident truth that being a junior coalition partner is far from a bed of roses and the next general election a tough challenge for the Liberal Democrats, there is really no historical evidence from either Britain or Ireland to justify a conclusion that 'coalitions are always disastrous for
the smaller party'.Iain Sharpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07249331216466329232noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274437.post-27921140966759240102012-05-30T23:19:00.008+01:002023-11-03T23:00:10.613+00:00London Welsh should go up<a href="http://answers.bettor.com/images/Articles/thumbs/extralarge/Ben-Stevenson,-James-Tideswell-and-Greg-Bateman-sign-with-London-Welsh-Rugby-news-72528.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="278" src="http://answers.bettor.com/images/Articles/thumbs/extralarge/Ben-Stevenson,-James-Tideswell-and-Greg-Bateman-sign-with-London-Welsh-Rugby-news-72528.jpg" width="400" /></a>London Welsh deserve congratulations for winning rugby union's championship (the second tier of club rugby) tonight. Given that in principle there is automatic promotion to the premiership for the champions, they should now be looking forward to a season in the top flight.<br />
<br />
But in a sport presided over by the Rugby Football Union, things were never going to be quite that straightforward. In fact the situation is truly bizarre. London Welsh <a href="http://www.rugbyworld.com/news/london-welsh-denied-chance-of-promotion-to-the-premiership-%E2%80%8E/">were only told last week</a> that they don't meet the stadium eligibility criteria for joining the premiership. This is despite existing premiership sides being in exactly the same position that London Welsh propose for next season, ground sharing with football clubs, and at least one (Bath) not meeting other criteria. But they are given special dispensation because they were already in the premiership when the rules were set.<br />
<br />
Indeed, only three of the championship clubs meet the ground eligibility criteria for promotion, meaning that the rest are playing only for pride. How did this state of affairs come about? When rugby union went professional in the mid-1990s, some clubs were quicker off the mark than others to adapt to the new situation. They then wanted to protect their investment (or pull up the ladder after them) by abolishing promotion and relegation from the new club premiership so that other clubs would not be able to follow in their footsteps.<br />
<br />
But they were never quite able to force this through, so with the acquiescence of the Rugby Football Union, did the next best thing, namely to allow promotion and relegation, but to set criteria that made it as hard as possible for clubs not already in the premiership to get there. The key rules were about stadium capacity and, if a ground was shared with another sport, whether the club had 'primacy of tenure', in other words that they had first call on the ground if required to stage a match at a particular time to comply with TV schedules. (This latter rule has been slightly modified since then.)<br />
<br />
Those who argued that unnecessary barriers should not be put in the way of clubs reaching the top tended to be dubbed 'romantics', as if the idea that success on the rugby field should determine a club's fortunes was a throwback to the sport's amateur days. In fact, what premiership clubs wanted, and have to some extent achieved, is special privileges that shield them from the harsh business and sporting realities.<br />
<br />
Using the stadium criteria to do this is a neat way of avoiding exposure to competition. Until rugby union went professional, only a handful of rugby clubs had a proper stadium, as opposed to a pitch with a stand along one side. Those that were fortunate enough to have a football club nearby whose stadium they could share, or to have a ground that could be expanded without falling foul of the planning system, or who like Leicester or Gloucester already had a proper stadium, were sitting pretty.<br />
<br />
But London Welsh, who are one of the great names in club rugby, have a picturesque ground in a historic park in the shadow of the pergola at Kew Gardens. They wouldn't be allowed to put up huge grandstands on the three undeveloped sides of the ground. Other championship clubs face other problems,for example Cornish Pirates and Bedford are pretty much tied by their name to a particular location but sadly lack a large enough soccer stadium nearby.<br />
<br />
London Welsh now have to appeal to the RFU against the refusal of promotion and if unsuccessful take legal action to resolve which league they play in next season. And even if they do go up they will have hardly any time to recruit a premiership standard team, making relegation a virtual certainty.<br />
<br />
It ought to be possible for all championship teams to be promoted to the premiership. Unlike soccer, rugby union does not require rival supporters to be segregated at stadiums, rugby supporters are a hardy bunch who can take a bit of wind and rain, and no club will want to have a stadium with a low capacity and poor facilities if they can find a better alternative. So, in my view, London Welsh should be able to play in the premiership at Old Deer Park if they wish, rather than having to ground share with Oxford United FC (and still apparently not meet the premiership criteria). Or perhaps clubs could be promoted provided they achieve premiership criteria within three years (these defined as having to match rather than exceed the stadium standards achieved by existing clubs).<br />
<br />
If artificial barriers to promotion are removed, it might create a healthier sense of competition within club rugby, and less of a sense that being relegated to the championship (currently unsponsored and largely unreported by press and broadcasters) is like being cast into outer darkness, because at any given time it will contain a handful of big-name clubs.<br />
<br />
I fear that the premiership clubs and RFU will do all they can to protect the cosy cartel and shut London Welsh out. But I hope they are unsuccessful, because if they win it really will make a laughing stock of a great sport - and deter other ambitious clubs from investing.Iain Sharpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07249331216466329232noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274437.post-75373963022902280932012-03-16T09:12:00.000+00:002012-03-16T09:12:39.630+00:00Arguing over AmritsarLondon University's <a href="http://www.history.ac.uk/">Institute of Historical Research</a>, where I was until recently a seemingly perpetual student, runs the excellent Reviews in History resources on its website.<br />
<br />
This provides an opportunity for longer discussions of new history books than can be included even in specialist academic journals and also for the book's author to respond to the review.<br />
<br />
Normally it is fairly well mannered<span style="font-family: inherit;"> stuff with measured reviews being met with grateful thanks for constructive comments on the book in question. But just occasionally it is handbags at dawn, as in the case of Kim Wagner's <a href="http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1224">review</a> of Nick Lloyd's recent </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><em>The Amritsar Massacre: The Untold Story of One Fateful Day</em> and Dr Lloyd's <a href="http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1224#author-response">response</a>.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><em><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></em></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">I haven't read the book, but it's fair to say in general I have little sympathy with the new strain of 'British empire was a good thing and much misunderstood' historical writing, of which the book would appear to be an example. At any rate it seems rather odd that Lloyd should take Wagner to task for having 'absolutely nothing to say about the violence directed against the Indian people by the successor state since 1947' when he was reviewing a book about the 1919 Amritsar massacre</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> carried out by representatives of the British Raj.</span>Iain Sharpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07249331216466329232noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274437.post-72925580397991507272012-03-09T20:02:00.001+00:002012-03-09T21:10:42.411+00:00Health bill supporters need to tell us what good they think it will doI have never been a great fan of the Lib Dem Spring conference - it is always a long journey and by the time you have got into the swing of things it's time to go home again. So I am down here in Watford not up in Gateshead. This spares me the dilemma of how to vote in any debate on the health bill.<br />
<br />
Although I should perhaps be reassured by the recent articles by <a href="http://www.libdemvoice.org/baroness-shirley-williams-writes-27501.html">Shirley Williams</a> and <a href="http://www.libdemvoice.org/opinion-save-the-nhs-bill-27445.html">David Boyle</a>, for me their arguments for the bill highlight a problem. This is that the points made by Lib Dems in favour of the bill are couched in negative not positive terms. We are told that it is now much less bad than it was and a vindication of our participation in government - what wouldn't those horrid Tories have done left to their own devices? But given the importance of the NHS, in particular to Lib Dems, this on its own won't do. The bill's supporters need to explain why they think it will lead to a better NHS for patients, one that Liberals can be proud of. Making a bad bill less bad may be commendable of itself but that doesn't make it good. And if it is a good bill we need to hear exactly what is good about it.<br />
<br />
Not being an expert on health policy myself I have no obvious way of getting beneath the rhetoric and deciding whether the bill is worthy of support or an outrageous sell out to the private sector. I could have a go at reasoning it out, as follows. In the past 20 years government of all stripes (Yes, Labour too) have introduced reforms that broadly embrace some sort of market principles and private sector involvement in NHS services. There may be many reasons for this, but the most obvious one is that a exclusive reliance on direct in-house service provision will inevitably lead either to high costs/inefficiency or to long waiting lists and poor service, or quite possibly all of these.<br />
<br />
This is because the NHS is a huge organisation, providing a wide range of services, the demand for which is unlikely to be steady and predictable, and which is at the same time virtually limitless. If it is maintained as a lean and efficient machine with no slack in the system then it is going to be unable to cope with any sudden increased demands on its services, leading to long waiting lists and times. And if provision is made to cope with all eventualities then there are likely to be long periods when services are not operating at full capacity, thus creating huge financial waste. Given the size of the NHS both things are likely to happen. So private sector provision is a way of adding flexibility and coping with the unexpected - all the more necessary if patients are to be treated as human beings not numbers on a waiting list.<br />
<br />
So far so good, but beyond that I'm a bit stumped. I have no real way of calculating the precise level at which private sector involvement and competition among NHS providers ceases to be what is necessary for high quality services to patients and starts to be a surrender to greedy capitalists. Nor can I really say whether this is all best organised by the PCTs (as at present) or GP commissioning (as proposed).<br />
<br />
I could simply make my mind up on the basis of who is on which side. If David Boyle and Shirley Williams support the bill then perhaps it is a good thing. I could let myself be swayed in favour of the bill by the <a href="http://www.libdemvoice.org/a-letter-from-andy-burnham-to-liberal-democrat-members-27498.html">obvious humbug of Labour's Andy Burnham</a>, who was health secretary in a government which introduced market-orientated reforms and greater private sector involvement, but who now seems to be a born-again Clause 4 supporter.<br />
<br />
The opposition of organisations representing NHS professionals isn't necessarily a reason to oppose the bill - professional bodies usually resist change and we should be guided by what is best for patients. At the same I am willing to believe that the level of ignorance that central government demonstrates about local government when introducing its various exciting reforms might well be replicated in its dealings with the NHS. <br />
<br />
So I am relieved to be spared the ordeal of voting on this at conference. Even if Lib Dem delegates do vote against the government's proposals, even as amended, this won't necessarily kill the bill. But if Lib Dem ministers do wish to pass it, and not have every future problem that the NHS faces blamed on it, then they need to do more to explain what they believe are its merits and how it will benefit patients.Iain Sharpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07249331216466329232noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274437.post-20117080058309264032012-03-06T14:09:00.000+00:002012-03-06T14:09:16.653+00:00In praise of Eugene McCabeWhen I saw that the Slugger O'Toole blog contained a tribute to <a href="http://sluggerotoole.com/2012/02/29/a-tribute-to-eugene-mccabe/">Eugene McCabe</a> I assumed that the octogenerian Irish author must have died.<br />
<br />
Happily this appears not to be the case and whatever has triggered it Andy Pollak's article draws welcome attention to McCabe's work.<br />
<br />
Eugene McCabe is not as well-known on this side of the Irish Sea as he ought to be, perhaps because he is hardly prolific, perhaps because he apparently lives a quiet life on his Monaghan farm and is not part of any literary media circuit.<br />
<br />
Nonetheless he is one of the most powerful and insightful writers about Ulster's divided community. His one novel, 1992's <em><a href="http://english.slss.ie/deathandnightingales.html">Death and nightingales</a>,</em> which portrays the troubled relationship between a Protestant stepfather and his Catholic stepdaughter, is a masterpiece that works both as a story in itself and as political allegory. <br />
<br />
Likewise the short stories collected in the volume <em><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/jan/15/featuresreviews.guardianreview15">Heaven lies about u</a>s</em> highlight the complexities of a situation where members of both communities live side by side with historical hatreds never far from the surface.<br />
<br />
Anyone looking for the great literature of the Northern Ireland troubles (as opposed to the self-serving literary productions of its politicians) should check out McCabe's work.Iain Sharpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07249331216466329232noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274437.post-5555086441159610672012-03-06T13:39:00.000+00:002012-03-06T13:39:49.810+00:00On Norman St John Stevas and Chelmsford<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/mar/05/lord-st-john-of-fawsley">Norman St John Stevas</a>, who died on Friday, represented Chelmsford in parliament, a constituency that for much of the 1970s and 80s was a top Liberal target seat. The Liberal candidate there was Stuart Mole, speechwriter to David Steel and one of the party's rising stars.<br />
<br />
However much one wished for a Liberal victory there, I remember thinking it a pity that, of all the Tory MPs we might be glad to see the back of, we were trying to oust one of the few who seemed quite a good egg. When St John Stevas announced his retirement at the 1987 general election I assumed that his semi-celebrity status had helped the Tories retain the seat in the past and it would now fall into our hands.<br />
<br />
Then someone who knew the constituency told me that whatever St John Stevas's positive qualities he was a less-than-assiduous constituency MP and that much of the Liberal momentum in the seat had come from pointing this out. Such a view seemed confirmed by the Conservative majority increasing in 1987 from three figures to more than 8,000.<br />
<br />
Thereafter the Lib Dem challenge in Chelmsford faded, although one hopes that our improved result there in 2010 means that we may yet one day take the seat.Iain Sharpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07249331216466329232noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274437.post-54945166484080854152012-03-02T22:33:00.004+00:002012-03-03T18:39:33.114+00:00Rediscovering Al Stewart<object class="BLOGGER-youtube-video" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" data-thumbnail-src="http://1.gvt0.com/vi/jCX9Nn_PNr0/0.jpg" height="266" style="clear: right; float: right;" width="320"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/jCX9Nn_PNr0&fs=1&source=uds" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><embed width="320" height="266" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/jCX9Nn_PNr0&fs=1&source=uds" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed></object>With musical artists as with authors, there are some that one follows and buys their every work, others who one likes for a while before moving on to other things.<br />
<br />
So while I loved Al Stewart's <i>Year of the Cat</i> album, its successor <i>Time Passages</i> wasn't nearly as good, and I didn't bother with any of his other releases. And while it seems rather shallow of me, back in the 80s, I was aware that it was a bit uncool to like an artist who mainly wrote and performed songs on historical themes. It had overtones of the then much derided Prog Rock.<br />
<br />
But recently I found Stewart's most recent studio album <i>Sparks of ancient light</i> on <a href="http://www.emusic.com/listen/#/">eMusic</a> and downloaded it out of curiosity, half expecting it to be an even paler imitation of <i>Year of the Cat</i> than <i>Time Passages</i> had been. In fact it is a little gem, reminding me of what made Stewart an interesting songwriter in the first place<br />
<br />
Although his songs do often deal with historical subjects rather than the familiar confessional themes of singer-songwriters, he avoids the twin evils of Spinal Tap Stonehenge bombasm or Steeleye Span morris-dancing twee-ness. Instead he milks historical topics for their human angle. So <i>Like William McKinley</i> is not an ode to an American president but rather a meditation on lost love with a historical analogy somewhere in there. Anyway the link is to a live performance of my favourite song on the album 'Hanno the Navigator' - and the album title is also taken from the lyric of this track.<br />
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I may now even explore the rest of Stewart's oeuvre.Iain Sharpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07249331216466329232noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274437.post-1524395006385135972012-03-02T13:42:00.002+00:002012-03-02T20:56:05.343+00:00Jenny Tonge - a case of not being able to have it both waysThe late Conor Cruise O'Brien used to refer to the sense of liberation he felt once he was no longer involved in party politics. It enabled him express his views freely without being bound by any collective responsibility. On the issues that interested him, such as Northern Ireland and the Middle East conflict, his views were at odds with the political mainstream. As a party politician he was fettered by the need to express the predictable well-meaning banalities that are expected on such topics. As a writer free of party ties he was free to follow the logic of his own arguments even if his views caused offence.<br />
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Jenny Tonge is hardly a thinker in O'Brien's class (and he had rather different views on Israel), but similar considerations apply. The Israel/Palestine conflict is an issue on which mainstream politicians in the West watch their words and strive for balance because what they say reflects more widely on their party and even on their country. It is hard to combine holding public office as a respresentative of a political party with expressing controversial opinions on issues like this. So Baroness Tonge has had to choose between resigning the Lib Dem whip or apologising for comments which the party leadership found embarrassing and offensive.<br />
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Tonge's defenders will doubtless say that there is nothing terribly controversial about saying Israel won't <a href="http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/64305/police-probe-tonges-israel-apartheid-week-rant">'last forever'</a> because it is true of any political entity. But this won't quite do. In such matters context is all important. If a well-known politician were to say with reference to Scotland becoming independent that the United Kingdom may not last in its present form then it would be relatively uncontroversial. Every expectation is that if such an eventuality arises it will happen peacefully and by mutual consent. If they made a similar comment with regard to Northern Ireland, with its recent history of politial violence, it would immediately raise the spectre of a United Ireland and the hackles of the Ulster Unionists. In the case of Israel, the existence of which has been controversial from its inception, saying it will not last forever is clearly going to be read as a thinly-veiled threat.<br />
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A similar point can be made about Tonge's previous <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2004/jan/23/israel.liberaldemocrats">faux pas</a> in saying that had she lived in Occupied Palestine she might have considered becoming a suicide bomber. At one level this is such a statement of the bleeding obvious as to be hardly worth saying. Similarly had I grown up in one of the world's major conflict zones rather than in Watford I might not have arrived at the warm cuddly Liberal opinions that I hold. Who knows what any of us might do if we lived somewhere that was beset by persistent violent conflict. So the purpose of Tonge's comments could only have been to express some kind of identification with Palestinian suicide bombers.<br />
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There are good reasons why blandness tends to prevail on such subjects from the mouths and pens of those holding public office. Apart from anything else, the British government might reasonably expect to play some sort of role in a future peace process and it doesn't really help if it (or the parties comprising it) are seen by one side as so partisan that they cannot play the role of honest broker.<br />
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So it is right that if Jenny Tonge wishes to continue making the sort of comments on Israel/Palestine that have become her trademark she does so from a position where she is clearly not a representative of the Liberal Democrats.Iain Sharpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07249331216466329232noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274437.post-91314899808981202702012-02-10T09:48:00.000+00:002012-07-21T09:34:35.163+01:00Left Liberalism's intellectual cringe towards LabourIt always irritates me when fellow Lib Dems bang on about conspiracies by 'the right' of the party, or accuse colleagues of being crpyto-Tories. To be consistent I should apply similar standards when uncomradely sentiments are expressed by those I agree with. So it is a rather over the top, if typically er... forthright for <a href="http://livingonwords.blogspot.com/2012/02/oxymoronic-liberal-left.html">Dan Falchikov</a> to accuse the members of ginger group <a href="http://www.liberalleft.org.uk/">Liberal Left</a> of 'seeking to work their passage into the Labour party'.<br />
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Yet on the substance of the issue, Dan is surely right (and <a href="http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2012/02/liberal-left-is-not-radical-but.html">Jonathan Calder</a> makes a similar critique of Liberal Left here). What frustrates me about the Lib Dem left is that it seems to me guilty of an intellecual cringe towards socialism/the Labour party and their unquestioning belief in the benificence of state action. Rather than define a clear Liberal worldview, it effectively allows Labour to define our attitude to public spending - we have to support (or promise to exceed) Labour's spending commitments unless we want to be thought right-wing. We may disagree with Labour about constitutional reform, civil liberties or overseas wars, but apparently not on the core of government business.<br />
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Back in my dim distant youth, I joined the Lib Dems precisely because I held caring/compassionate/centre-left/Guardian reading Liberal values but doubted whether greater state intervention was always the best means of putting such beliefs into practice. In my years of party activism one of the things I have found most frustrating is that way that whenever anyone seeks to explore and define the differences between Labour/socialist and Liberal values and policies, there will always be someone on the left of the party ready to label this right-wing.Iain Sharpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07249331216466329232noreply@blogger.com0