This weekend's Telegraph Books gives a rich yield.
+Alan Judd reviews Hitler's Scientists by
John Cornwell.
Judd is a definite good egg, see his article on Blair's
speech to the 'National Food Service'. On the German
scientists, see this
picture of a man having his nose calibrated.
+Christopher Ricks's book on Bob Dylan is reviewed. Ricks is such a man of letters, and, like Judd, carries the JW Good Egg sign. I had no idea he studied Dylan, and guess this would please Chris Smith and Jon Revell, who rank Dylan with Keats. (I don't suppose some of you ignorant buggers know what a Keat is).
Will our brave EuroTroops give up now the Swedes have had their say? Had the margin been smaller, no doubt they would have been made to vote again, like the Irish. But now their Prime Minister says he wants to resign and become a forestry worker. Good luck with their forests I say, let's get our pine from the gloomy Baltic, and chop down the infestation in our own country.
What is it about the euro, and the EU in general? If someone would tell us plainly why it's a good thing; instead of vague warnings. Maybe they think we're too stupid to understand the issues; well, maybe we are, but if the truth were stated we could always get a clever friend to go over it for us. For my part, I can see it's maybe a good thing for the newly-invented countries (Germany, Italy, Belgium etc.), and for France, as they're always at each other's throats. But do we really want political union with countries who in living memory have happily lived under arbitrary and cruel dictatorships? Happy to trade I say, unhappy to submit to their law, or what passes for it.
On the front page, we see a photo. What have the following got in common?
Well, I'm sorry to say that if I see any of their faces pictured in the paper I am obliged to cover up the picture, maybe with an apple, while I read that page. Today we saw Cherie Blair on the front page, doing something with her 'lifestyle consultant' I suppose, and also Trevor Mac topping his regular mini-column on the leader page, where he chooses bits of poetry.
When the unfortunate Diana was killed, I thought we'd be spared any further pictures, but damme they keep coming; though at least not today, which would have made a rogue's full house. Watch out for four-of-a-kind.
And Andrew Marr - well. First came to attention when he ousted +Robin Oakley as Political Correspondent of the BBC. Oakley didn't fit the culture (as no good egg can), but was snapped up by CNN (a better source of news). Then Marr took over Start The Week, and the dark powers organised a sycophantic Feedback saying how good he was - although most people thought he was hopeless. Then damme just the other day he was the arch-villain in the ruination of the Globe Richard II broadcast. This was advertised to start at 7:30, and the first few seconds looked good, stirring brass over a picture of the Globe. Then, groan, Marr appeared, in smart casual, and half an hour was spent in grim chit-chat before the play started. Those of us who recorded it were spared, but my recording was ruined by a red spot saying 'interactive' at the top of the screen all the time.
When will some broadcaster have the wit to show events without all this flim flam? What could be better than a camera giving us the same privileged view as the buyer of a good seat? No idiots to 'set the scene' or interrupt with banal comments. To be fair, the technology has been used to offer this. Last summer we were able to tune out the tennis commentary and just hear the sounds of the event itself. One day, this will be the default. Concerts too are spoiled; even the idiots don't actually comment during the performance, but there's always a long rigmarole before the start, and, after each piece, as the applause starts, the idiot positively shouts his banalities. On radio, you need commentary for sports, but certainly not for music. Same sound as the best seat please, and nothing else.
On the old BBC, before World War Two, when it
was time for the news, the announcer would sometimes say
"There is no news today".
Nationally, all that's stirred me
is that David Bradley is to play Titus Andronicus in a 1st XI
production at Stratford:
The National Trust has been in the news, once again selling off stuff with which it was enTrusted. Protests produced the usual smooth denial from a functionary:
Sir - your article on the National Trust's plans for Cliveden (Sep 17) perplexed us. We have no "Disney-type" plans ... Every pound we raise from the development will be spent on restoring ... etc. etc.
See my general observations on the BBC and the National Trust.
A local issue for the last few weeks has been helicopters flying over Farnham. They come from RAF Odiham and criss-cross backward and forwards all day over Farnham and its park.
The grim local paper, the Herald, opened its correspondence pages to the issue, and published many letters, mostly on the silly but catchy issue of safety. The real point is that it's an infernal nuisance; the noise is loud enough to stop conversation, and occurs typically ten times a day in Farnham.
There is no reason for Farnham to be singled out for this nuisance. When I lived in Farnborough we accepted plane noise because that was where they had to land. But helicopters! They must of course practise their low flying, but they must recognise that people do not like noise, and explain to us how many planes there are, where they go each day, and why any particular area suffers unduly.
No such information is published.
The CO would instinctively cite 'Security' as the reason for secrecy - but
how ridiculous. Any BushyBeard with his Stingray has only to lurk in
Farnham Park for endless opportunities.
Only the Commanding Officer at Odiham can tell us why we are chosen; let us hope it is not surveillance in support of the Civil Power. There was a mock-patriotic side to the issue, where the pro-nuisance faction, including my soldier friend Roger, represented the antis as little better than traitors, and at best people who would not suffer a bit of a nuisance for their country's sake.
Interestingly, while the correspondence was at its height, the helicopters went elsewhere. But now, the CO, being heartened by the 'loyal' faction, has started again and indeed increased the frequency of the flights.
Yesterday we saw an
article about the Germans filming the fall of Berlin - not
in Berlin, which was too smart, but in St Petersburg.
Local feeling was doubly stirred: "Our city is shabby eh?" and "The bastards
dare to show their faces after 1941".
The latter point refers to the battle for Leningrad, in which a million
civilian inhabitants died. (Compare our total of 300,000, military and
civil, for the whole war).
Julius Strauss in his article refers to "memories of the Nazi siege" and "when the Nazis blockaded the city". Now, the troops involved in this operation were in fact the German army. It does no service to them to portray them all as Nazis. Also, it is the case that Germany as a whole bears responsibility for the grim events of the Nazi era. It has been hard for the Germans to face up to this, but they are getting there, and another fifty years or so will see it done. In the meantime, we insult them by indulging the pretence that all nasty things were done by a mysterious extinct race of 'Nazis'.
Today we see a curious example of the BBC bias in favour of the European Union, and all its works, and all its pomps. (We do renounce them). In the web news this morning, CNN leads with the Eurostat scandal (itself only the start of a new scandal) and its effect on Prodi. As far as the BBC is concerned, the story just doesn't exist.
Yesterday we saw a good photo of the
German Leader, puffing the dull news that
his other book was to be published at last in a reliable English translation. Dull
because it's been available in German for years, and no-one wants to read it.
The article gave the meaning of a few German words, but of course not "Mein Kampf".
No-one in England knows what it means, but the title still has an iconic resonance.
Reader, it means "My Struggle". Just as the harmless noun 'Fuehrer' means 'guide'
or 'leader'.
The NAM is doing a Crimea exhibition, free (I do wish exhibition reviewers would always give the price), starting October 3rd.
Objects include the original of Raglan's letter.
Here's a detail of
The Alma, from the Tyrrell I recently sold.
Yesterday we saw a letter from the guy who runs the grim quango CRE, the "Commission for Racial Equality". He was objecting to a letter from Ludo Kennedy (maybe not quite unimpeachable good egg status, but rather fine, and married Moira Shearer). LK saw how odd it was that black people featured in advertisements in much greater proportion than in the population. The CRE, in full confidence of his bien-pensant, unassailable by leftists, BBC-Guardian-Polly-Toynbee-confirmed, position, suggested LK was "out of touch with the reality of multi-racial Britain".
How dreadful it is that the CRE exists at all. Could we not say next time in the manifesto that "The Council for Racial Equality will be abolished, and with it its distorted view of British society. We stand for a Britain in which all subjects, regardless of physical attributes, are equal before the law." This would be a first blow in the long fight to dismantle the false 'racist' apparatus that is poisoning our country.
In the Books this weekend we see that the superannuated Paul Johnson (one of the many writin-fightin
Johnsons) has produced another turgid. Groan. And Sukhdev Sandhu, our film critic, reviews a book by the coloured
South American writer Wilson Harris.
My friend Mr BlindBigot says "look at that bloody Sandhu, he's black himself and only bothers to review
stuff by blacks".
And then he complains about Trevor MacDonald: "who does he think he is, coming over here and writing about
our poets".
Mark Urban's Rifles is reviewed, with clichéd references to Sharpe.
Here he focuses on six men of the 95th in 1809.
Urban is a BBC big beast, and attracts criticism from the GuardiaToyneBeeste for his
championing of Israel.
And he writes these cracking books about the Peninsula.
Maybe you can have a good egg at the heart of the BBC? hmmm.
Or maybe there are two Mark Urbans, like the nice Richard Holmes the biographer and the
nasty Richard Holmes who struts mustachioed to the camera.
The Booker candidate Astonishing Splashes... is reviewed. Might be worth a flutter,
still a 10-1 shot with Ladbrokes.
[Or not actually, (22Oct03)]
Alexander Chancellor used his column yesterday to tell us how beautiful his daughter had been, and how beautiful his grandchildren still are.
Why is it that this sort of thing is so irritating? It's because his job is to be interesting, and a mere recitation of facts about his family is boring. To think otherwise is to puff oneself, and thus AC has joined my list of irritating bores, which includes Paul Johnson. These unfortunates are not in the apple-over-face class, but their writing is hastily skipped. Maybe it's former editors of intellectual weeklies - PJ did the NS for a bit, and AC the Spectator.
The Police Force is attracting comment again. We see the grim tale of the Hampshire solicitor hounded to death on a phony charge. And some sycophantic toad said that the police did not have 'the public they deserve'. They've certainly stopped being my friends, the only ones I see are smirking functionaries whose aim is to use the power delegated to them, to extract money from the law-abiding for trivial 'offences'.
Good to see Gordon Brown
sweating
for the comrades. He led the howl against the denial of a Cambridge place,
a couple of years ago, to a bright working class girl; rallied the class warriors, then became oddly
quiet when the truth came out.
I remember being inspired by Kinnock years ago, and Brown is the same type: charismatic, fiercely committed to fairness, hating privilege, craving power. Here's a future: Blair crosses the floor & leads the Tories; Brown becomes Labour leader, an election loser, and a luxury-loving windbag.
The German psyche figures in the Case of the East German Shirt. A woman put on a Stasi shirt, and thereby broke the law. Another German said it was "as bad as donning Hitler Youth uniform to portray the Third Reich". The thing is, friends, neither of these should be against the law. Such law is the enemy of freedom. Another example is the 'offence' of 'holocaust denial'. And, again, a popular vote is being taken to pick historically great Germans - but people are forbidden to choose Nazi figures. Let the people speak, my friends, and if they do choose Hitler, then there is work to be done; but in fact they wouldn't, and healing would flow from that free choice. Petty denial of freedom holds us back. And another thing - in Germany, even if a constituency voted unanimously for a candidate, he would not go to Parliament if he did not belong to an approved party. In Britain the man is elected if he gets the most votes, regardless of party. In practice the successful candidate is a party man, so neither system is democratic - but it is most important that the constitution allows the election of anyone who can win the votes.
The Labour conference yesterday saw the famous Blair Trembling Lip deployed in the Fight Against Gordon. Shame on him for doing it at all, but double shame for using the grief of the families of fallen soldiers.
Speaking again of democracy and Labour, it seems that people deemed to be 'extreme' are to be banned from seeking office in Trades Unions. This is promised by some minister or other at the Conference, and is monstrous. We can decide, and demand the right to decide, for ourselves, whether a candidate is unsavoury. Interference by bosses or ministers is otiose.
The Police Force (or Police Service as they like to call it, though they are entrusted with the use of Force to any degree) again features in the news of the Nottingham jewellery murder. A 64-year old man and his daughter are bludgeoned, his wife is shot to death. He says: "...the law has vanished from the streets of Nottingham. It has become a completely lawless city, and there are shootings every week now. The police on the beat are completely demoralised. Thirty years ago, when we came to Arnold, there were two officers always walking up and down the street and the crime rate was nil. Now there are hardly any. People know they can walk into a shop with a gun and no one will stop them."
The Police response is: "We need the help of the local community to help us crack this one. This is an amateurish armed robbery gone wrong. I think it will be local people - young lads committing crime that is out of their depth."
No hint of any regret at the Force's failure, or at the loss of life, or at the ready availability of firearms (to criminals that is, not to the law-abiding).
The time may be coming when people will take responsibility for their own protection. Had that jeweller been armed, the cowardly louts would never have dared their armed robbery, and two lives (for his too is finished) would have been saved.
On the footballers rape issue, the following snippet is from the google cache of a page that is 'not available'...
MR XXX [09-30-2003 16:53] Very reliable source has confirmed 2 me the player who had consented sex with the girl was Chelsea's Carlton Cole. The Newcastle players involved were; Aron Hughes, Lumano Lua Lua, Craig Bellamy, Kireon Dyer and Jermaine Jenas. These have been the only players confirmed to me.
Duncan Smith is warming up for the conference. He is starting to say exactly the right things in exactly the right way. Dangling the earnings-link is perfect. Hunting, Europe, and CRE-abolition will have to wait for a second term; but he's nailed the tax and public services issue, and that silly jibe "which services would you cut?".
You heard it here first.
Gloucester is in the news again, hoping to close their good schools. Not long ago they were caught using their police money to plant officers in plain clothes in restaurants in the hope they would overhear 'racist' remarks.
Well, after all my misgivings about the BBC, could anyone else have put on Eroica? This was a play about the first performance, or rehearsal, in 1804. We see the workmanlike musicians, the beautiful aristocratic women dreamily wandering about, and we hear a lot of the music. We are forced to see what a precious thing a musical performance was before the gramophone.
I have given the play the ultimate compliment of prising out the protection tab from the tape. The only hint of the nasty (dominant) side of the BBC comes, not in the play, but in the description linked above. The writer has the impertinence to compare the shock of Beethoven's impact with that of the grim Birtwhistles of today, who in fact are to music what the plain white squares and dirty knickers are to painting - a load of Pollocks, as that cheerful Australian said in the lager commercial.
The party conference has begun. Clarke is still a big beast, but wounded, and bellowing. Will he and Heseltine ever redeem themselves? NOW is the time for loyal support.
Mr Duncan Smith's conference speech is a grave disappointment. He's lost us the ground gained - he's lost it by overdoing the ad hominem on Blair, and by responding to some sort of rubbishy coaching in how to act. The conference cheered, as they did the hanger & flogger, but it just won't do. In my game of fantasy politics I say to my friend Iain "All you have to do is be yourself. You know what you want, and we want it too, and will follow you". People are not fools, and do not want a bad actor as Prime Minister. IDS rightly discerned that honesty would strike a chord after the Blampbell years, but today's performance was not honest. And of course he know that.
IDS is doomed, I the fantasy master now say, never mind the tipping point above. I've seen him on television for the first time, and it's horrible. And the enemy within is puffing the wife's employment scandal. Will it be the New Pink Portillo, or Shaggy Clarke?
Picture of Changi prison in Singapore at the weekend, with wartime picture of our troops on being freed. I went along to it in 1978 or so, it was just being run by the locals as a prison, and of course you couldn't go in. But it seemed bad that such an icon was not preserved as a memorial. And now it's all being knocked down.
The paper has been carrying the story, at great length, of the boy who escaped from kidnappers in South America somewhere. Are we losing our grip? Is anyone really that interested? And today the lead story was on 'plugging the loophole' in property sale stamp duty. Is it time to return to The Times & support the digger?
The arrogance of our present Government is again illustrated by some woman quoted today in the paper as saying
"The starting point for getting it right is to make clear we value and will reward time spent with families as well as time spent at work"
This is a clear revelation of this Government's view that they are our masters, and that all our lives are to be spent responding to their carrots & sticks, while their job is to 'reward' whatever behaviour strikes them from time to time as correct.We should show clearly that this is not at all the proper business of government. Education subsidy and policing, on the other hand, is. Government could leaven the lump, set the yeast to work, (as begun in the 40s and 50s), by paying for bright working class children to attend first-class schools. They realise that the Crosland-Williams tragedy was wrong, but cannot quite bring themselves to start on the long road back.
A less well-recognised tragedy happened with the police, when local stations were closed down, and those officers left drove around in cars, and street crime rose. Here too the Government has realised what's wrong, but has not started reform.
Well, I think it's time to desert the Mighty Telegraph. Not that we don't want to give the new Editor a fair crack (he had an article today), but to see the so-called England so-called Rugby Star on the **front page**, bearing the emblem of commercial rubbish, is just too much, a crap too far. I mean, the debased grimness that now passes for 'sport' (and what could be grimmer than those louts getting on the plane with 'England' blazers) has its own special part of the paper that we can chuck out without looking at. So why let it spill onto the proper pages?
So it's a trial run of the Indie, once Albert Valentine's Births announcement is in (tomorrow).
