In 18th century Italy there was an acknowledged division between opera buffa and opera seria. I have been thinking of this because a year ago two of my children were in their school production of Les Miserables, and I have become reluctantly familiar with its mixture of revolutionary chanting and grand sweeping mush.
We all went to watch the film last week. Hugh Jackman is fantastic, Anne Hathers not bad either and Russell Crowe - more on him in a moment - not as bad as you think he's going to be. Even Eddie Redmayne, whilst departing not one whit from the blubber-lips public schoolboy stereotype, did his Eddie Redmayne thing as well as I've seen him.
I didn't cry, though clearly I was meant to and when Jackman does "Bring Him Home" (or whatever it's called) mid-way through the film, I could see that crying was perfectly possible. Quite a lot of it was going on either side of me. I was palpably moved, although less so when Jackman attempted the climactic top A, an unforgiving note sung softly for any tenor, and an ugly one in Jackman's heroic but grating attempt.
Les Mis is really an opera, so why people think of it as a musical I don't know. If it isn't an opera it's because the music is too sentimental and exploitative. But these are adjectives that could very well be applied to Puccini. Perhaps it's an operetta then. But operetta is meant to be light in subject, which The Glums definitely isn't.
In homage to the old Italian tradition then, I have devised a new category for Les Mis alone - depressing and trashy at the same time, it is an operetta seria.
But back to Russell Crowe. It isn't that he sings badly. It's that his voice is wrong for the part. Javer, the policeman ultimately undone by his corset-tight sense of righteousness, needs to have a voice fit for the day of judgement. Instead Russell Crowe sings him like a traffic-warden.
£60 fixed penalty please Monsieur Valjean!
Wednesday 23 January 2013
Monday 21 January 2013
Avalanches and being lucky
I have climbed Bidean nam Bian, scene of the weekend's avalanche tragedy, only once, alone on a glorious spring morning in 1990. I climbed up the Dinner-Time Buttress, a low grade rock climb, to a gap in the north ridge of Stob Coire nan Lochan, where the snow began. Then I worked my way round the east side of the Stob, wading through snow already rotted by the strong sunshine, to the foot of a gully, in deep shadow and still therefore solid. It was my first proper snow and ice climb, Grade I, the easiest; but nevertheless a lonely feeling, cutting steps as the drop beneath deepened and Glen Coe came into sight far below, cars crawling along the road like beetles. From the top of the Stob I walked, jelly-legged now, along the short connecting ridge, pitted with the steps of my predecessors, to the top of Bidean.
Bidean is a very steep mountain on all sides, and, for those wishing to return Glen Coe but not wanting to go back the same way they came up, options are limited. The safest way in heavy snow is out north north west to An-t-Sron; but this leads climbers away from their car, and in any case it's a tedious way down, as I discovered many years later with a friend in summer conditions. That first time I went a little way out along this ridge, over the subsidiary top of Stob Coire nam Beith, and then down a shallow coire to the north. The first few feet of snow slope were steep, but it was old hard snow, not unstable wind-slab, and the angle soon eased.
By descending north at the side of the Church Door Buttress, the climbers took themselves into an area that will have been full of drifted fresh snow. It's a more interesting way down than via An-t-Sron, but in the wrong conditions a dangerous one. These poor people were very unlucky - they could have descended a hundred times and not been caught in an avalanche. But if they had stuck to the ridge they could have come down a hundred thousand times without catastrophe - the wind tends to blow snow off the exposed shoulders and ridges and deposit it in hollows and coires, where it can be dangerous until the freeze-thaw cycle cements it to underlying layers.
If it's tempting to say the victims made a mistake, looking back to my own ascent, I did a rock climb unroped; then a snow and ice climb unroped; then descended a steep snow slope, probably glissading part of the way down. If anything had gone wrong, would my family and friends have said, "He died doing what he loved"? Or would they said, "He was a stupid idiot"? I was vindicated by events; last weekend's victim's weren't. As I said, they were unlucky.
If there is a moral, it is that no-one is an experienced mountaineer at 25. Or indeed at 54.
Bidean is a very steep mountain on all sides, and, for those wishing to return Glen Coe but not wanting to go back the same way they came up, options are limited. The safest way in heavy snow is out north north west to An-t-Sron; but this leads climbers away from their car, and in any case it's a tedious way down, as I discovered many years later with a friend in summer conditions. That first time I went a little way out along this ridge, over the subsidiary top of Stob Coire nam Beith, and then down a shallow coire to the north. The first few feet of snow slope were steep, but it was old hard snow, not unstable wind-slab, and the angle soon eased.
By descending north at the side of the Church Door Buttress, the climbers took themselves into an area that will have been full of drifted fresh snow. It's a more interesting way down than via An-t-Sron, but in the wrong conditions a dangerous one. These poor people were very unlucky - they could have descended a hundred times and not been caught in an avalanche. But if they had stuck to the ridge they could have come down a hundred thousand times without catastrophe - the wind tends to blow snow off the exposed shoulders and ridges and deposit it in hollows and coires, where it can be dangerous until the freeze-thaw cycle cements it to underlying layers.
If it's tempting to say the victims made a mistake, looking back to my own ascent, I did a rock climb unroped; then a snow and ice climb unroped; then descended a steep snow slope, probably glissading part of the way down. If anything had gone wrong, would my family and friends have said, "He died doing what he loved"? Or would they said, "He was a stupid idiot"? I was vindicated by events; last weekend's victim's weren't. As I said, they were unlucky.
If there is a moral, it is that no-one is an experienced mountaineer at 25. Or indeed at 54.
Friday 18 January 2013
The Rest is Noise - Two Men and a Dog?
Ivan Hewitt has written an interesting piece in the Torygraph today - Why Challenging Modern Music Demands to be Heard. This is my reply to him.
Look Ivan, it's very simple. We don't submit ourselves to the artistic experience in the way we do, oh I don't know, an enema or a barium meal. We do those things because we know there will be a medical benefit. But art we go looking for because we enjoy it. The brain is a pleasure-seeking organ after all.
Look Ivan, it's very simple. We don't submit ourselves to the artistic experience in the way we do, oh I don't know, an enema or a barium meal. We do those things because we know there will be a medical benefit. But art we go looking for because we enjoy it. The brain is a pleasure-seeking organ after all.
Now pleasure can be quite broadly defined, and even some Mozart is rather harrowing (Idomineo springs to mind); but broadly speaking, we like our art to be enjoyable. God knows there's plenty other stuff in life that isn't.
The public, taken as a whole, doesn't enjoy modern music very much. That's why they don't go to see it much. Have you ever actually been to the Huddersfield Festival and looked at the audience (such as it is)? The audience for modern music is a minority within the audience for classical music, which is a minority in itself. It is two men and a dog, without the dog. In diplomatic parlance, those are facts on the ground.
What about the word "modern"? In so far as the word implies "recent" or "contemporary", Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra are over a hundred years old. And most people still don't like it. So whatever else you can say, it's not modern any more, at least not in that sense. The Rite of Spring on the other hand, that last death-roar of Russian barbarism, got into the repertoire quite quickly because people liked it. Well done, Igor!
What about the word "modern"? In so far as the word implies "recent" or "contemporary", Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra are over a hundred years old. And most people still don't like it. So whatever else you can say, it's not modern any more, at least not in that sense. The Rite of Spring on the other hand, that last death-roar of Russian barbarism, got into the repertoire quite quickly because people liked it. Well done, Igor!
You would have thought the idea that if we just kept getting modernist music spoon fed to us long enough we'd suddenly start liking it had lost all traction. But no. Enthusiasts for modern music are a bit like experimental chefs. We don't like their combination of snails, engine oil and PVA glue? That's our fault. It's staying on the menu until we discover that we do like it. In fact, since we're paying for it, the argument goes, we might as well learn to enjoy it.
Well no. Tastes vary, and it's fatuous to suggest that no-one likes Boulez - some people do. Good luck to them. But don't tell me I'm a Luddite because I don't. And please don't patronise me by telling me that if only I listened to it more I would. I have listened to it, and I still don't like it. And please don't insult me by suggesting that because I don't like modernism much that's somehow my fault. Or that your tastes are somehow better than mine or - and here's the crucial point - more worthy of public subsidy.
Well no. Tastes vary, and it's fatuous to suggest that no-one likes Boulez - some people do. Good luck to them. But don't tell me I'm a Luddite because I don't. And please don't patronise me by telling me that if only I listened to it more I would. I have listened to it, and I still don't like it. And please don't insult me by suggesting that because I don't like modernism much that's somehow my fault. Or that your tastes are somehow better than mine or - and here's the crucial point - more worthy of public subsidy.
No doubt The Rest is Noise fest will be a well-attended success. There are plenty of people in London who like modernist music. The festival will have been paid for by a mixture of corporate sponsorship and tax-payers' money. Alex Ross's book is engaging and well-written, even if it falls into the usual musicologists' trap of mistaking the influential (Varese gets several pages) with the essential (Carl Nielsen, writer of two of the century's greatest symphonies, gets two sentences).
But don't be fooled. Classical music is losing its audience because the oldies don't like squeaky-gate stuff and the young prefer pop. Enjoy your job while you've still got it, Ivan. In a world of indefinite austerity, budgets are going to be squeezed and institutions closed. In case you doubt me, here is Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle, writing in the same edition of the Torygraph - "The Arts Council is a body set up to ignore the public's wishes and provide an income to organisations that they would not receive through the free choices made by consumers." That gives a flavour of the times we live in.
In the face of such attitudes, I doubt classical music commands the affection and respect needed to put bums on seats and mount a tigrish defence of state subsidy.
Why not? There are many reasons, but one of them, unforgivably, is that its practitioners forgot that we the audience were meant to enjoy it.
In the face of such attitudes, I doubt classical music commands the affection and respect needed to put bums on seats and mount a tigrish defence of state subsidy.
Why not? There are many reasons, but one of them, unforgivably, is that its practitioners forgot that we the audience were meant to enjoy it.
The Observer - transexuals and controversialists
No blog with pretensions to finger/pulse proximity can afford to let the Suzanne Moore / Julie Burchill furore go by without comment. Particularly when it has in the past railed against the iniquities of legislation restricting the right to offend.
In a Guardian article, Suzanne Moore used the image of a Brazilian transsexual as a simile. She was then smothered in hostile comment in the Twittersphere. Julie Burchill wrote an article in the Observer supporting Moore, an article so rancid in its tone that even I found it quite offensive; if I had actually been a transsexual, Brazilian or otherwise, I would have been pretty cross.
But that's tough isn't it? There is no right not to be offended. Even if there were, what's more important - the transgendered's freedom from abuse, or the right to free speech? I know which I would value most.
The tide of stupidity does at last seem to be turning on this. The government is going to remove the word "insulting" from s.5 of the Public Order Act. OK, this is only where a potential victim cannot be identified, but it's a start. The other day I read Roy Greenslade, ex Mirror editor and now journalism professor, saying that being offensive should only attract criminal sanction where to do so might incite violence. That seems fair enough, and it was where the law stood for a century until politicians started fiddling with it recently.
The equivalent section in the Malicious Communications Act could go too, since it has led to such triumphs of cretinousness as the prosecution of a boy who posted a photo of a burning poppy on the net with the caption "take that you squadey (sic) c$%*s", or similar.
So how did the Observer react to the hoo-ha? It was obviously too late to recall the print edition, so it removed Burchill's piece from its website instead.
I find it hard to overstate how contemptible this is. And not just because a newspaper that purports to be liberal should not be in the business of suppressing free comment.
Burchill has been hired by editors of British newspapers for thirty years because she opens a bottle of wine when she begins writing her column and finishes both wine and column at the same time. No-one knows, least of all Burchill, what's going to come out during the intervening hour or so. Only that it will be sparklingly well written.
Who could possibly imagine that someone hired as a controversialist would, well, write something controversial? Well apparently it surprised the Observer's editor. He or she should grow up fast.
As a final rancid cherry on top of this teetering pile of dung, in steps the Liberal Democrat MP Lynne Featherstone, calling for Burchill to be sacked. Yes, that's an elected politician in a democracy calling for a journalist to lose her job for writing something she didn't like.
I hope I remember this next time I consider voting Lib Dem.
Throughout this saga support for Burchill has come, surprisingly, from the Torygraph, which first republished the offending article and now prints a sympathetic piece by Allison Pearson. "This is a free country", she writes, "and the price we pay for that freedom is letting silly insults or harmless asides roll off us". When the Torygraph can effortlessly occupy the moral high ground on freedom of speech, the liberal press needs to look to its laurels.
In a Guardian article, Suzanne Moore used the image of a Brazilian transsexual as a simile. She was then smothered in hostile comment in the Twittersphere. Julie Burchill wrote an article in the Observer supporting Moore, an article so rancid in its tone that even I found it quite offensive; if I had actually been a transsexual, Brazilian or otherwise, I would have been pretty cross.
But that's tough isn't it? There is no right not to be offended. Even if there were, what's more important - the transgendered's freedom from abuse, or the right to free speech? I know which I would value most.
The tide of stupidity does at last seem to be turning on this. The government is going to remove the word "insulting" from s.5 of the Public Order Act. OK, this is only where a potential victim cannot be identified, but it's a start. The other day I read Roy Greenslade, ex Mirror editor and now journalism professor, saying that being offensive should only attract criminal sanction where to do so might incite violence. That seems fair enough, and it was where the law stood for a century until politicians started fiddling with it recently.
The equivalent section in the Malicious Communications Act could go too, since it has led to such triumphs of cretinousness as the prosecution of a boy who posted a photo of a burning poppy on the net with the caption "take that you squadey (sic) c$%*s", or similar.
So how did the Observer react to the hoo-ha? It was obviously too late to recall the print edition, so it removed Burchill's piece from its website instead.
I find it hard to overstate how contemptible this is. And not just because a newspaper that purports to be liberal should not be in the business of suppressing free comment.
Burchill has been hired by editors of British newspapers for thirty years because she opens a bottle of wine when she begins writing her column and finishes both wine and column at the same time. No-one knows, least of all Burchill, what's going to come out during the intervening hour or so. Only that it will be sparklingly well written.
Who could possibly imagine that someone hired as a controversialist would, well, write something controversial? Well apparently it surprised the Observer's editor. He or she should grow up fast.
As a final rancid cherry on top of this teetering pile of dung, in steps the Liberal Democrat MP Lynne Featherstone, calling for Burchill to be sacked. Yes, that's an elected politician in a democracy calling for a journalist to lose her job for writing something she didn't like.
I hope I remember this next time I consider voting Lib Dem.
Throughout this saga support for Burchill has come, surprisingly, from the Torygraph, which first republished the offending article and now prints a sympathetic piece by Allison Pearson. "This is a free country", she writes, "and the price we pay for that freedom is letting silly insults or harmless asides roll off us". When the Torygraph can effortlessly occupy the moral high ground on freedom of speech, the liberal press needs to look to its laurels.
Thursday 17 January 2013
Why I love . . . #5 Big Bang Theory
The obvious reason is, because it's funny. But more on that in a minute.
For those who've never seen it, Big Bang Theory charts the misadventures of four young blokes, staffers of some American university's science faculty. Leonard is the most obviously normal one; Howard wears unfeasibly tight trousers and imagines himself a Lothario; Raj is the Indian one who is too shy to talk to girls (unless drunk); and Sheldon - but where to start? Sheldon is half-human, half-Klingon, the most brilliant, the most self-centred, the most eccentric, effete, dysfunctional and dislikeable.
Howard lives at home with his Jewish mother; Leonard and Sheldon share a flat. Across the hall lives Penny, the blonde wannabe actress with whom Leonard eventually develops an on-off relationship.
Amongst the many likeable things about BBT is the revelation that Penny, for all her lack of education and brains, is in some respects the most intelligent character on display. Whilst the others try and fail with girls, vie with each other intellectual kudos, argue about Star Trek episodes or merely disparage Howard for only being an engineer (the other three are physicists), Penny calmly gets on with her life, working as a waitress between auditions.
Some specific things: first, it is one of the few American TV programmes where the characters look like ordinary people. Actually, quite weird ordinary people, but you get the picture. Even Penny is more girl-next-door than professional blonde.
Two, whilst mocking its characters' nerdiness and pretensions, BBT allows them dignity and humanity in the same way - go on, laugh - Shakespeare does Falstaff. As well as being laughed at, we love them for being the sources of laughter.
Three, the show offers legitimacy for a sort of masculinity - not often celebrated by Hollywood or TV - that is without a trace of machismo. These men may be weedy and ineffectual, but observe their ardour for women!
But back to funny. There's no surer way to kill humour than to try and pin it down, but here is a typical BBT set-up.
Sheldon, Spock's less empathetic nephew, has made friends with a fellow-scientist, the hatchet-faced Amy. In a bar Amy has seen a hunk with whom she feels a powerful physical chemistry. She thinks if she touched him electricity would flow between them. Determined to strike up a conversation with the hunk, she returns to the bar with Sheldon as chaperone. However it turns out the hunk is a brain-dead goon. Disappointed, Amy leaves. As they walk home, she experimentally takes Sheldon's hand. He recoils: "Amy, what are you doing?" She withdraws her hand. "No, thought not", she says.
Did you laugh? No, thought not. Oh well.
I got into BBT because when my wife's away and domestic standards fall, tea is often eaten in front of the TV instead of at the kitchen table. The children look on in amazement as I laugh uproariously at the antics of Leonard, Sheldon and co. "I know why Dad likes it", said one of them the other day. "It's because he's just like them".
For those who've never seen it, Big Bang Theory charts the misadventures of four young blokes, staffers of some American university's science faculty. Leonard is the most obviously normal one; Howard wears unfeasibly tight trousers and imagines himself a Lothario; Raj is the Indian one who is too shy to talk to girls (unless drunk); and Sheldon - but where to start? Sheldon is half-human, half-Klingon, the most brilliant, the most self-centred, the most eccentric, effete, dysfunctional and dislikeable.
Howard lives at home with his Jewish mother; Leonard and Sheldon share a flat. Across the hall lives Penny, the blonde wannabe actress with whom Leonard eventually develops an on-off relationship.
Amongst the many likeable things about BBT is the revelation that Penny, for all her lack of education and brains, is in some respects the most intelligent character on display. Whilst the others try and fail with girls, vie with each other intellectual kudos, argue about Star Trek episodes or merely disparage Howard for only being an engineer (the other three are physicists), Penny calmly gets on with her life, working as a waitress between auditions.
Some specific things: first, it is one of the few American TV programmes where the characters look like ordinary people. Actually, quite weird ordinary people, but you get the picture. Even Penny is more girl-next-door than professional blonde.
Two, whilst mocking its characters' nerdiness and pretensions, BBT allows them dignity and humanity in the same way - go on, laugh - Shakespeare does Falstaff. As well as being laughed at, we love them for being the sources of laughter.
Three, the show offers legitimacy for a sort of masculinity - not often celebrated by Hollywood or TV - that is without a trace of machismo. These men may be weedy and ineffectual, but observe their ardour for women!
But back to funny. There's no surer way to kill humour than to try and pin it down, but here is a typical BBT set-up.
Sheldon, Spock's less empathetic nephew, has made friends with a fellow-scientist, the hatchet-faced Amy. In a bar Amy has seen a hunk with whom she feels a powerful physical chemistry. She thinks if she touched him electricity would flow between them. Determined to strike up a conversation with the hunk, she returns to the bar with Sheldon as chaperone. However it turns out the hunk is a brain-dead goon. Disappointed, Amy leaves. As they walk home, she experimentally takes Sheldon's hand. He recoils: "Amy, what are you doing?" She withdraws her hand. "No, thought not", she says.
Did you laugh? No, thought not. Oh well.
I got into BBT because when my wife's away and domestic standards fall, tea is often eaten in front of the TV instead of at the kitchen table. The children look on in amazement as I laugh uproariously at the antics of Leonard, Sheldon and co. "I know why Dad likes it", said one of them the other day. "It's because he's just like them".
Tuesday 15 January 2013
The EU and the democratic deficit
Poll after poll shows that, after the economy, the subject British voters are most exercised about is immigration. Thankfully Gordon Brown kept us out of the Euro, and so HMG can still pull the economic levers of interest rates, tax and QE without asking Brussels first. But what about border controls?
On 25th April 2005 a Treaty of Accession was signed by EU countries at the Neumuenster Abbey in Luxembourg. It provided that Bulgaria and Romania would join the EU on 1 January 2007. By 2005 New Labour was beginning to realise that its earlier prediction of 20,000 Polish and other East European migrants was way short of the reality (in fact ONS figures show that more than 600,000 were working here in 2012). Alarmed by the prospect of the 2007-accession countries' nationals coming to Britain in large numbers, the Blair government, along with seven other countries, secured an opt-out whereby the right to work would be deferred until 1 January 2014. It seemed a long way off at the time, but in fact it's now next year.
Now obviously if you have 600,000 extra people in your country, that is going to mean extra economic activity: it is idle to pretend there are no advantages at all to immigration. On the other hand, the extra pool of willing labour means that employers don't have to compete for staff by raising wages, thus increasing inequality as the middle-class forge ahead. It also makes it harder for those at the bottom end of society - including a disproportionate percentage of black and asian Britons - to find work . There are consequences for the environment, in terms of housing demand and strain on public services; but I have rehearsed these points many times on this blog.
No, the point of writing this is a larger one about politics generally. If I were a person unhappy at the possibility of several hundred thousand people coming to Britain to compete with me for housing, jobs or services (and if I were a British black or asian person I would be mightily unhappy), how would I express my feelings politically? Unfortunately the issue of who comes to Britain, whether they can work here and what benefits they claim, has like many others been exported to Brussels. We are in the bizarre situation that the issue which concerns voters more than almost any other is no longer something domestic politicians can actually do something about.
Renegotiating treaties, the only option short of outright withdrawal from the EU, is likely to be fractious, divisive and time-consuming. It is very easy to give these powers away, but very very difficult to reclaim them.
If you think we are badly off, spare a thought for the poor Southern European citizen. If you wanted to see interest rates lowered, or a touch of QE to bail out your banks, which political party can offer these things? None of them. Because your country no longer has the power to do any of them. The powers have been given away.
If you wanted a reflationary budget to borrow your way back into growth, no political party could offer that option. That's because countries in receipt of Eurozone largesse have to get their budgets passed by Brussels.
These countries are powerless to pull the levers of their economies because they gave most of the powers to the ECB, either when they joined the Eurozone or when they got into trouble. As a result there is mass unemployment and rioting in the streets.
It's hard to imagine anything more corrosive to the democratic process than the creeping irrelevance which this erosion of power from national governments (and thus their citizens) entails. The damage this powerlessness does to politics, slow and insidious, is playing out across Europe in a big way.
On 25th April 2005 a Treaty of Accession was signed by EU countries at the Neumuenster Abbey in Luxembourg. It provided that Bulgaria and Romania would join the EU on 1 January 2007. By 2005 New Labour was beginning to realise that its earlier prediction of 20,000 Polish and other East European migrants was way short of the reality (in fact ONS figures show that more than 600,000 were working here in 2012). Alarmed by the prospect of the 2007-accession countries' nationals coming to Britain in large numbers, the Blair government, along with seven other countries, secured an opt-out whereby the right to work would be deferred until 1 January 2014. It seemed a long way off at the time, but in fact it's now next year.
Now obviously if you have 600,000 extra people in your country, that is going to mean extra economic activity: it is idle to pretend there are no advantages at all to immigration. On the other hand, the extra pool of willing labour means that employers don't have to compete for staff by raising wages, thus increasing inequality as the middle-class forge ahead. It also makes it harder for those at the bottom end of society - including a disproportionate percentage of black and asian Britons - to find work . There are consequences for the environment, in terms of housing demand and strain on public services; but I have rehearsed these points many times on this blog.
No, the point of writing this is a larger one about politics generally. If I were a person unhappy at the possibility of several hundred thousand people coming to Britain to compete with me for housing, jobs or services (and if I were a British black or asian person I would be mightily unhappy), how would I express my feelings politically? Unfortunately the issue of who comes to Britain, whether they can work here and what benefits they claim, has like many others been exported to Brussels. We are in the bizarre situation that the issue which concerns voters more than almost any other is no longer something domestic politicians can actually do something about.
Renegotiating treaties, the only option short of outright withdrawal from the EU, is likely to be fractious, divisive and time-consuming. It is very easy to give these powers away, but very very difficult to reclaim them.
If you think we are badly off, spare a thought for the poor Southern European citizen. If you wanted to see interest rates lowered, or a touch of QE to bail out your banks, which political party can offer these things? None of them. Because your country no longer has the power to do any of them. The powers have been given away.
If you wanted a reflationary budget to borrow your way back into growth, no political party could offer that option. That's because countries in receipt of Eurozone largesse have to get their budgets passed by Brussels.
These countries are powerless to pull the levers of their economies because they gave most of the powers to the ECB, either when they joined the Eurozone or when they got into trouble. As a result there is mass unemployment and rioting in the streets.
It's hard to imagine anything more corrosive to the democratic process than the creeping irrelevance which this erosion of power from national governments (and thus their citizens) entails. The damage this powerlessness does to politics, slow and insidious, is playing out across Europe in a big way.
Monday 14 January 2013
Richard Williams and the Dinner Ladies
In my piece on the Guardian's Aditya Chakrabortty the other day I wondered aloud why the paper should keep its hapless chief economic leader writer yet get rid of the wonderful Martin Kelner, author of a weekly semi-humorous column on TV sport. After all the Graun's readers couldn't care less about economics, but they do love their darts, in a post-modernist kind of way.
I now learn that another Guardian journo has taken the redundancy cheque and walked, namely Chief Sportswriter Richard Williams. I have mixed feelings about this. Leaving aside the sinking ship aspect of much relating to the Graun these days, Williams was one of its better writers, an intelligent guy in the long tradition of Neville Cardus and Hugh McIlvanney who recognised that sport was something worth taking seriously.
The flip side of this was that Williams was occasionally prone to taking himself too seriously. He once described, without irony, fellow hack Paddy Barclay as a "football critic". You could see in this something of Williams' view of himself: not the E.I.Addio of Private Eye fame, the reporter in the Ford Fiesta with a Yorkie bar and copy of Readers Wives, but an Albert Camus of the terraces, well-thumbed copy of Derrida in one pocket, When Saturday Comes in the other and Stone Roses T-shirt underneath his leather jacket.
There's taking it seriously, and taking it pretentiously. This ghastly tendency to try and think of fancy names for things to try and make them seem more important is not unique to Williams, and is I think one of the curses of modern society. A composer I know of describes on his website a favourite band - The Killers, let's say - as "cultural artists".
No they're not. They're a pop group. Anyway, can anyone think of an artist who isn't cultural in some way? The arts being, well, part of culture generally? No, thought not.
Our local primary school has Lunchtime Co-Ordinators now instead of Dinner Ladies. If he's looking for a job, Richard Williams would feel right at home.
I now learn that another Guardian journo has taken the redundancy cheque and walked, namely Chief Sportswriter Richard Williams. I have mixed feelings about this. Leaving aside the sinking ship aspect of much relating to the Graun these days, Williams was one of its better writers, an intelligent guy in the long tradition of Neville Cardus and Hugh McIlvanney who recognised that sport was something worth taking seriously.
The flip side of this was that Williams was occasionally prone to taking himself too seriously. He once described, without irony, fellow hack Paddy Barclay as a "football critic". You could see in this something of Williams' view of himself: not the E.I.Addio of Private Eye fame, the reporter in the Ford Fiesta with a Yorkie bar and copy of Readers Wives, but an Albert Camus of the terraces, well-thumbed copy of Derrida in one pocket, When Saturday Comes in the other and Stone Roses T-shirt underneath his leather jacket.
There's taking it seriously, and taking it pretentiously. This ghastly tendency to try and think of fancy names for things to try and make them seem more important is not unique to Williams, and is I think one of the curses of modern society. A composer I know of describes on his website a favourite band - The Killers, let's say - as "cultural artists".
No they're not. They're a pop group. Anyway, can anyone think of an artist who isn't cultural in some way? The arts being, well, part of culture generally? No, thought not.
Our local primary school has Lunchtime Co-Ordinators now instead of Dinner Ladies. If he's looking for a job, Richard Williams would feel right at home.
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