Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…
One of the bloggers that I make a habit of reading is Norman Geras. That is, until last Friday, when I found an entry on his blog from Jenny Geras (his daughter) saying that Norm had died that day.
Another voice of reason stilled. Here’s his obituary. It’s worth reading to get a sense of the man, and of course you can still read his writings on his blog.
Kenan Malik sums up the real consequences of the terrible conflict in Syria. It makes for depressing reading. The posturing of Putin in particular is pure politics. However, as Malik says, none of the players come out of this well. Meanwhile, the slaughter and the flood of refugees continue.
It’s been something of a week for drawing breath, what with the announcements of the deaths of first Seamus Heaney, and now David Frost. Both were 74, and both, in very different ways, contributed to the cultural lives of many.
Much as it pains me to say it; if I’m honest, then Frost’s influence on my life has been much greater than that of Heaney’s. I was transfixed, at an impressionable age, like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car, by That Was The Week That Was on BBC TV.
Devised by Ned Sherrin, fronted by Frost, but with sterling support from many others, TW3 was a satirical landmark in British Television. We shall not see its like again.
It only ran in 1962 and 1963, when I was just 13 and 14. It was a late-night show, live, and ran each week for as long as it took to get through the material, often into the small hours. Looking back, I am slightly surprised that my parents allowed me to watch it at all.
As is quoted on TW3’s Wikipedia page:
“TW3…did its research, thought its arguments through and seemed unafraid of anything or anyone… Every hypocrisy was highlighted and each contradiction was held up for sardonic inspection. No target was deemed out of bounds: royalty was reviewed by republicans; rival religions were subjected to no-nonsense ‘consumer reports’; pompous priests were symbolically defrocked; corrupt businessmen, closet bigots and chronic plagiarists were exposed; and topical ideologies were treated to swingeing critiques.”
So thank you, David Frost (not forgetting Ned Sherrin, Timothy Birdsall, Bernard Levin, Lance Percival, Kenneth Cope, Roy Kinnear, Willie Rushton, Al Mancini, Robert Lang, Frankie Howerd, David Kernan, Millicent Martin, John Albery, John Antrobus, John Betjeman, John Bird, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Peter Cook, Roald Dahl, Richard Ingrams, Lyndon Irving, Gerald Kaufman, Frank Muir, David Nobbs, Denis Norden, Bill Oddie, Dennis Potter, Eric Sykes, Kenneth Tynan, and Keith Waterhouse). You helped form me into the person I am today.
The New Statesman’s Caroline Crampton lists 18 arguments voiced today in the UK’s House of Lords against same-sex marriage.
All the usual suspects are there, including the new Archbishop of Canterbury. I can’t say that I’m surprised by his stance. Religion poisons pretty much everything.
I suspect that very similar arguments were once made against the abolition of slavery.
It’s been a momentous day here in the small country of The Netherlands. This morning, at 10:10, Queen Beatrix signed the document that confirmed that she has abdicated in favour of her eldest son, Willem-Alexander, who has now become King. The first Dutch King since the 19th Century.
This signing took place in the Dam Palace, which started out life as the Amsterdam City Hall in the Dutch Golden Age of the 17th Century.
Now, I’m no monarchist, but I was moved by the day’s events. Right from the moment that Queen Beatrix announced she welcomed everyone to the ceremony, and the roar of approval from the crowd outside in the Dam Square brought a smile to her face as she realised that the Dutch people were watching and supporting this move.
Not that Beatrix has been a bad Queen. Far from it. She has become beloved by us in a way that could only have been dreamed of when she became Queen in 1980. Then, there were protests and smoke bombs in the Dam.
Following the signing of the Abdication document, this afternoon was the inauguration of the new King. I found it almost astonishing.
I grew up in the United Kingdom, where the British Monarchy is seen as something established by God. There is a Coronation, where the crown is placed on the head of the new monarch by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Religion and Monarchy are completely intertwined.
In stark contrast, here in The Netherlands, the Monarch is not crowned. Instead, King Willem-Alexander was inaugurated in a ceremony that involved the State – not the Church.
The King pledged his allegiance to the democratic process, and affirmed his responsibilities to the citizens. He made a good, and thoughtful speech, honouring the service of his mother, and promising that he would do his best for the Dutch citizens and the State. In return, the State, in the form of the members of the Dutch parliament, signalled their assent to his assumption of the role of king. And they did that individually – each standing when their name was called, and either swearing by God, or a simple “I promise”. It was interesting to see how many members did not invoke God. Another indication of how secular the Netherlands is, and how the United Kingdom still is not.
King Willem-Alexander pledged his allegiance in front of symbols of the State – the books of the Law of the Land – as well as symbols of his own status, the crown, sceptre and orb. He also had five representatives of the Dutch people present to bear witness, and to bear symbols of the importance of the citizen to Dutch society. They were his “Koningwapenen”, or Kings of Arms. One of them was André Kuipers, Dutch physician and astronaut.
As I say, I was moved. The importance of ritual to humans is unmissable, and touches something deep within us.
I wish Willem-Alexander, and his very impressive wife, Máxima, all the best in their new roles as King and Queen of the Netherlands. I think that they will both do well.
Adam Curtis makes amazing documentaries. Here’s one he did earlier – The Attic. A cautionary tale.
So, she’s dead. She certainly changed our world, but, personally speaking, I’m not convinced she improved it. For me, Elvis Costello’s song: Shipbuilding is the perfect summary of that time.
Craig Murray, while he personally found her quite likeable, sums her up rather well:
…she was a terrible, terrible disaster to this country. The utter devastation of heavy industry, the writing off of countless billions worth of tooling and equipment, the near total loss of the world’s greatest concentrated manufacturing skills base, the horrible political division of society and tearing of the bonds within our community. She was a complete, utter disaster.
The Guardian’s editorial, while praising her, also damns her:
She was an exceptionally consequential leader, in many ways a very great woman. There should be no dancing on her grave but it is right there is no state funeral either. Her legacy is of public division, private selfishness and a cult of greed, which together shackle far more of the human spirit than they ever set free.
Her legacy lives on.
Addendum. Norman Geras makes my feelings succint,
Lucy Mangan poses the question about Ian Duncan Smith. It’s a valid question.
I propose the answer is that he is at least two out of the three, and that he isn’t a fool. Unfortunately, he’s far from the only person in power who thinks that way.
Last night, BBC Two showed “The Challenger” – a film dramatisation of the public inquiry (the Rogers Commission) that investigated the causes of the catastrophic accident that befell the space shuttle Challenger. The film has the title Feynman and the Challenger in the US.
It was riveting. Amidst the political manoeuvering, and the attempts by NASA officials to mislead the inquiry at the time, Richard Feynman ploughed a course that uncovered the true cause of the disaster. He was played in this dramatisation by William Hurt, who delivered a completely believable portrait of Feynman, culminating in the scene where Feynman destroys the testimony of the NASA officials with a glass of iced water. I remember seeing the actual event on TV at the time, and thinking how extraordinary it was.
The dramatisation was based on Feynman’s experience on the Rogers Commission, as documented in his book What Do You Care What Other People Think? As wikipedia has it:
Feynman’s account reveals a disconnect between NASA‘s engineers and executives that was far more striking than he expected. His interviews of NASA’s high-ranking managers revealed startling misunderstandings of elementary concepts. For instance, NASA managers claimed that there was a 1 in 100,000 chance of a catastrophic failure aboard the shuttle, but Feynman discovered that NASA’s own engineers estimated the chance of a catastrophe at closer to 1 in 100. He concluded that the space shuttle reliability estimate by NASA management was fantastically unrealistic, and he was particularly angered that NASA used these figures to recruit Christa McAuliffe into the Teacher-in-Space program. He warned in his appendix to the commission’s report (which was included only after he threatened not to sign the report), “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
That statement closed the film. It’s a film worth seeing.
…instead of making asinine comments on media storms in teacups?
Honestly, I despair about David Cameron’s ability to discern what is important and what is not.
Hilary Mantel’s piece about Royal Bodies was a forensic analysis, flensing the media spin from the actuality. It’s a pity that Cameron could not comprehend this, and does not bode well for his governance.
Hadley Freeman has a better eye than David Cameron for what is going on.
It’s a word that I use a lot in my blog posts: “Clearly”.
I use it where others might deploy “Obviously” or “Without a shadow of a doubt” or “It must be patently obvious to all people with more than one brain cell to rub together that…”
And today I read that Tory MP David Jones, the Welsh Secretary, no less, has used the same word in an interview. He said:
“I regard marriage as an institution that has developed over many centuries, essentially for the provision of a warm and safe environment for the upbringing of children, which is clearly something that two same-sex partners can’t do”.
Clearly, David Jones is a fuckwit. Clearly, some people voted for him to represent them. Clearly, they should be regretting that they ever thought that he had any ability to think things through. Clearly, if ever I happened to find myself in his constituency, I would not be voting for either him or his idiotic ideas.
Clearly.
And so the British Parliament finally decided to see sense. Not without the usual grumblings from the bigots and homophobes. Even Jesus and Mo seem surprised at the lack of divine retribution. Welcome to the 21st century. Meanwhile, we’re heading towards our 15th wedding anniversary.
Stop Press: the Queen is abdicating in favour of her middle-aged son.
Nope, this is not Betty handing over the reins of the monarchy to Charlie (god forbid); it’s Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands handing the reins over to Prince Willem-Alexander.
A well-timed and sensible choice.
The Prince and Princess Maxima are well-equipped to pick up the reins and carry on. They are, like Beatrix herself, not unintelligent, understand both business and society and are well-liked by their subjects. I’m no monarchist, but I have a lot of respect for them.
I admit, when I first read of Lord Carey’s performance at the Coalition for Marriage rally at the recent Conservative Party Conference in the UK, I rolled my eyes, sighed deeply, and thought I should just ignore it. While it was yet more evidence that he, and his fellow travellers, such as Anne Widdicombe, are simply bigots, it gets tiresome pointing this out every time.
But then I read Martin Robbins’ response, and I thought, yes, if Lord Carey wants to play the victim card by likening himself and his supporters to the Jews in Nazi Germany, then he fully deserves the fury of Martin Robbins’ response.
So I call your attention to what Martin Robbins wrote. In particular, I echo the sentiments he expressed in two paragraphs in the piece:
I have no words powerful enough to describe the disgrace, the ignorance, the self-absorbed vileness of a man who believes that being called a bigot by Nick Clegg is even remotely comparable to the experiences of men like Pierre Seel, or thousands of others who were slaughtered by the Nazi regime…
But perhaps Carey’s most disturbing remark was that eerily familiar question he posed: “Why does it feel to us that our cultural homeland and identity is being plundered?” The answer, Lord Carey, is that it is not your homeland, it is our homeland; and homosexuals are just as much a part of our identity as anyone else. The day we allow bigots to deny that, or to suggest that the emotions felt by certain people are somehow not on the ‘same level’ as other human beings, is the day we start heading back down a dark and dangerous path.
There was an odd article in yesterday’s Guardian. It was by Max Hastings writing on the reasons why Boris Johnson is unfit to be the UK’s next Prime Minister.
I didn’t disagree with a single word of Hasting’s argument.
What struck as odd is that the article first appeared in the Daily Mail – normally a newspaper with which I will have no truck. For the article to then be picked up and syndicated in the Guardian, a newspaper at the opposite end of both the political and journalistic spectra, only goes to show how far Boris Johnson is capable of distorting reality…
It’s polling day here in the Netherlands. It’s our chance to exercise our democratic right to choose the members of the Tweede Kamer (Second Chamber), and, indirectly, the makeup of the next Dutch Government. With twenty political parties to choose from, the next government will almost certainly be a coalition, as usual.
There’s a chance that we might see a swing to the left, but it seems that it will be a close run thing.
At least I should get some respite from the last few weeks of a constant barrage of web ads urging me to vote for the VVD. Their crude slogans – Meer straf en minder begrijp voor criminelen (more punishment and less understanding for criminals) – have merely confirmed me in my belief that I am doing the right thing by voting for the PVdA.
Reading the reactions to Danny Boyle’s Olympic Opening Ceremony is something of a litmus test, gauging where the commentator resides on the spectrum from left to right, or from heartfelt to disingenuous.
I have to say that I loved it, although it was so full of cultural references that I will need a second or third viewing to appreciate them all. As Marina Hyde wrote,
…as deliciously indigestible to global tastes as Marmite or jellied eels. I loved it.
Just to make it clear, I am on the opposite end of the spectrum to the tweets from Aidan Burley, and from the blindness of those who did not see the Windrush reference (Ranga Mberi, I’m looking at you).
Overall, I find myself in agreement with Al Weiwei, who compared the machine-like opening of the Beijing games (impressive as it was) with the gentler, more human-scale vision of the London Olympics.
But I have to doff my hat at Marina Hyde’s invention of the term “the global arseoisie”, and her description of them:
For while it was the best of folks, it was also the worst of folks. Gazing stonily down on a parade of athletes, about whose dreams and sacrifices this entire extravaganza is supposed to be, were some absolute shockers. Taking gold in the Biggest Scumbag in the Stadium event was probably the Bahraini prince, on whose directives athletes are reportedly tortured, flanked on the podium by Rwanda’s Paul Kagame and Prince Andrew’s brutal mate from Azerbaijan.
That’s humanity – the best and the worst; thrown together, with mostly the worst in charge…
I’ve written a couple of times before over my worries that the Dutch government will make it illegal to hold dual nationality.
We seem to be getting close to that position. Last Friday, the Dutch Cabinet decided to go ahead with legislation aimed at reducing the number of people with dual nationality.
The idiotic thing is that it will not affect those who are presumably the real targets of this xenophobic drive. The real targets (in the sights of the “Little Hollander” view of the PVV and its supporters) are the Turks and Moroccans who settle here. Unfortunately (from the PVV’s perspective), they are required, by their country of birth, to hold onto their original nationality. So the proposed law cannot apply to them. Meanwhile, others, whose country of birth is more relaxed about the holding of dual nationality, will be required to renounce their birth nationality, simply because the Dutch government can make it so.
So I’ll be forced to renounce my British and Manx nationalities, merely to satisfy the xenophobia of the Dutch government and the PVV. A plague on them both.
Meanwhile, in other news, Geert Wilders, leader of the PVV, announced today that the Netherlands should leave the Euro and return to the Guilder.
The drawbridge is being raised a little further every day…
The recent pronouncements on “militant” secularisation by Baroness Warsi have triggered a flurry of comments, both pro- and anti- in the media. I found this piece by Julian Baggini came close to summarising my own thoughts on the matter. But then today I found this comment by Norman Geras on Baggini’s piece introduced two important qualifications that brought things into focus for me.
Baggini’s central point is something that both Geras and I wholeheartedly support:
Secularism, in the political sense, is not a comprehensive project to sweep religion out of public life altogether… Rather it is – or should be – a beautifully simple way of bringing people of all faiths and none together, not a means of pitting them against each other.
It all goes back to how we understand the core secularist principle of neutrality in the public square. Neutrality means just that: neither standing for or against religion or any other comprehensive world-view.
Geras then states two reservations with Baggini’s thesis: first, concerning Baggini’s claim that ‘we are obliged to talk to each other in terms we can share and understand, not in ways that are tied to our specific “comprehensive doctrines”‘. Geras thinks that no such obligation exists; we may not be persuasive if we do not use terms that we can share and understand, but that is not the same as making it an obligation.
Geras’ second point concerns the tenor of Baggini’s last paragraphs, where he (Baggini) is asking “us secularists that we be more relaxed towards religion, not acting as its enemy. It’s a plea for a more tolerant attitude than some militant atheists today display”. I think Geras puts it very well when he says:
Though (once again) I know what motivates his saying what he does, and share his feelings about a certain kind of relentless discourse of hostility towards religious belief and religious practice, I also think the plea for tolerance in this matter ought to be bounded by clear limits. There are believers who, in the name of religion, act to silence, harm and sometimes indeed kill others, and there is, unfortunately, a lot of this sort of thing about. No secularist is obliged to adopt a relaxed attitude towards it. On the contrary, in defence of freedom of belief, they should be intolerant of it. Secularism, just like genuine liberalism, does not entail tolerance of the appeal to religion to justify intolerant, cruel or murderous ends.
Exactly.
It is one of life’s ironies that at a time when Baroness Warsi frets about the rise of “militant secularisation”, she is ignoring the very real danger of militant religion. Just one example:
Hamza Kashgari is under threat of execution by the Saudi authorities for blasphemy.
There’s been a petition set up calling for his release. Please sign it.
Apparently, there’s also been a Facebook page set up to support him. I don’t do Facebook out of principle, but I understand that it has something like 2,500 signatures. I note in passing that at the same time that the Baroness talks about a rise in secular intolerance of religion, the rival Facebook page set up calling for retribution against Kashgari for tweeting about Mohammad has 22,500 signatures.
The Baroness chooses to ignore examples of the real intolerance of freedom of expression (and human rights) by religions and speaks instead of chimeras. Phrases such as motes and beams spring to mind. Perhaps she should pause for a moment and give some thought to the plight of a fellow Muslim.
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