"How Britain has changed"

Have just listened to Eddie Mair's PM show on BBC Radio 4 (just the first fifteen minutes or so, then I had to get on with some work).

The initial report covered the Olympic Parade that took place in London earlier today.

The reporter (can't remember his name) was trying to get athletes and others to say "how Britain has changed" and with palpable eagerness hinting at "diversity" and "ethnicity".

Would it be impolite for me to ask how many of the British medallists were from the white working class?  We know (because the Guardian told us) that the privately-educated 7% sector of the population won about 30% of the medals; and also we know (because Sunder Katwala's report told us) that the Afro-Caribbean 2% of the population produced another 30% of the medals.  So are we saying that the remaining 91% of the population only produced 40% of the medals?

I can understand the multi-cultural enthusiasm for the winners, but should we not also think a little about those who were left behind and why they got left behind?

As Bonnie Greer (and others) have pointed out, it was Ken Livingstone who "got" these Games for London, and did the initial planning.  And the one thing we know about Ken Livingstone is that he was a completely unscrupulous godfather to the BME communities, knowing that they were more reliable voting-fodder than the ordinary white working class.  As Deepthroat would advise us:  follow the money.

Difficult but necessary question

Today is the penultimate day of the Paralympic Games.

If you recall, the Olympic Games spurred Toby Helm and Sunder Katwala and others to tell us "At least a third of Britain's 65 medals reflected the positive contribution of immigration and integration to Britain over the last three generations."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/aug/19/olympic-poll-positive-britain?CMP=twt_fd

Therefore it is somewhat puzzling to see that the overwhelming ethnicity of the Paralympic British gold medal winners is not due to "immigration and integration".  In fact they are overwhelmingly white.  Whiter than Greg Dyke's BBC. 

All sorts of questions arise:

Is the selection process for Paralympic athletes so mired in racism that almost no Black & Minority Ethnic athletes were selected to represent the United Kingdom?

Or does it mean the Black & Minority Ethnic communities so despise the status of people with disabilities that for cultural reasons they have entirely shunned participation in the Games?

Or (difficult but necessary question this one) does it mean that the participation of Black & Minority Ethnic athletes in the mainstream Olympic Games was artificially inflated for political reasons? (and if so who authorised this and for what motive).

Toby Helm and Sunder Katwala and all the other commentators who have lectured us on the multi-cultural multi-ethnic Olympic Games (one thinks of Paul Mason, incontinent with left-wing excitement as he read out The Sun's editorial verbatim on Newsnight) - all these people have some explaining to do.

Ceremony

In retrospect one has to say that both the opening ceremony and the closing ceremony were superfluous to the London Olympics, and you might almost say they were irrelevant.

Both seemed to have been "conceptualised" by PR company Perfect Curve.

Olympian poem by Carol Ann Duffy

It is a matter of course that a poem written by the official Poet Laureate immediately enters the canon of twenty-first century English literature.

Therefore the Olympian poem by Carol Ann Duffy, appearing on the front page of today's Guardian, deserves serious study (you might need to click on the image to enlarge it).

The last line quotes the Chancellor George Osborne. 

The poem needs to be read several times before the meanings become apparent - and they will not be the immediate conclusions that this is about government spending.

Nick Cohen on his Twitter site is indulging in sniggering:

Some strange alliances

Following Paul Mason's endorsement of The Sun on Newsnight yesterday the same newspaper was quoted approving by Hugh Muir in the Guardian today (above).

You might say that Hugh Muir's regular column in the Guardian is just as bigoted and biased as anything you might find in The Sun (but in a different way and for a different audience) so it could be a case of like calling to like.

But it would seem that the mood of hyper-nationalism generated by the Olympic Games (traditional nationalism in The Sun and what you might call social nationalism among the Left) is making for some strange alliances.

I draw comfort from the fact that the Church of England has today announced that it is unethical even to hold News International shares.

One cannot touch pitch and not be defiled (as they say).

What is happening to the BRIC countries?

Can I ask vis a vis the London 2012 Olympics what is happening to the BRIC countries?

China is currently heading the medals table but Brazil, Russia and India are languishing far far behind the United Kingdom (maybe Russia is technically just behind, but when you consider the disparity in population this is not saying much)

Of course I am only too aware that pride goes before a fall.  "We" could easily slip from our position close to the top.  And in any case the achievement is due to individual British athletes not collective national endeavour (despite the Olympics being a form of war without tears). 

But what has happened to all those dire warnings about how power, wealth and prestige were passing from the West to the East?  Nick Clegg's dismissal of the United Kingdom as a "pygmy nation" (insulting as that was to both pygmies and British people)?  Of all the scoffing and sneering of RT television and Agnes Poirier and Mr Ahmadinejad etc etc?

That exciting moment in Orwell's 1984

Above:  a couple of days ago the Guardian, in its official editorial, tells us that British success in the Olympics was disproportionately reliant on the United Kingdom's private schools.

Above:  today the Guardian, in its official editorial, tells us that British success in the Olympics is reliant on the state schools (this argument further developed in articles by John Harris and Jackie Ashley).

I was reminded of that exciting moment in Orwell's 1984 when Winston Smith holds two official statements from the Ministry of Truth that directly contradict each other.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/05/london-2012-olympic-gold-lesson-politics?INTCMP=SRCH

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/05/ennis-farah-murray-state-school-myth?INTCMP=SRCH 

In this respect, if no other, London 2012 resembles Berlin 1936

Half-way through the Olympic Games and the United Kingdom seems to have given itself over to a cathartic expression of collective nationalism (presumably related to the fact that "we" are currently third in the medals table).

That the Olympic Games represents the most naked celebration of nationalism (short of actual war) is an axiomatic statement.

That a large section of the British population enjoys this Olympic-themed nationalism at four-yearly intervals is well known.

What is unusual is that this time the Left has felt able to join in.

Even Miranda Sawyer, in her Observer column today, indulged in a sort of right-on nationalism, describing how it is "all Team GB" in her house, how she took her six-year-old son to see Great Britain "beat" Brazil at women's football, and how her mood matches the "celebratory madness" that has taken over British radio.

What is happening here?

Possibly Danny Boyle's Opening Ceremony, with it's left-leaning imagery (Shadow Minister Andy Burnham is reported to have burst into tears at the socialist beauty of the pageant) has given left-wing people permission to love their country.

In a half-page article in the Guardian yesterday writer Stuart Jeffries talked about the emotional impact that Danny Boyle's Opening Ceremony had on him.

But before we accord these Olympics the title "the People's Games" (as Blair would have done) there is an inconvenient fact to be explained.

Despite the way the Opening Ceremony lauded socialism "British sporting success is once again disproportionately reliant on the private schools" (to quote the Guardian's editorial).

In this respect, if no other, London 2012 resembles Berlin 1936.  Both Opening Ceremonies presented an ideological vision of the host country, breathtaking in ambition and compelling in spectacle.  In both cases the hubris of propaganda found itself undermined by the achievements of the athletes (the Nazi vision undermined by Jesse Owens; the Danny Boyle State-Is-Good vision undermined by the achievements of the privately-educated athletes).

This is not to defend private education per se.  Often when I meet public school educated people I find myself disliking them.  But for showing up the limitations of totalitarian socialist education policy one has to be thankful they exist.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/london-2012-olympics-blog/2012/aug/03/london-2012-olympics-blubbing-emotion

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2182328/London-2012-opening-ceremony-Danny-Boyles-genius-taken-Marxist-propaganda.html

PS so there should be no misunderstanding I am not attacking the Olympics as a whole or the British athletes or indeed the validity of nationalism - my objective it to examine the behaviour of the Left in all this.

Not the sort of Games "legacy" I was expecting

Listening to the Today programme this morning it was reported that Rupert Murdoch in his Twitter microblog was bigging-up "Boris" as the organiser of the Olympic Games, presumably endorsing him as a replacement for David Cameron.

This is not the sort of Games "legacy" I was expecting.

I thought we had got rid of the Murdoch interference in politics, or is the Leveson inquiry to count for nothing?

And although I have no problem with one Old Etonian Prime Minister every fifty years or so, I think two in a row would be asking a bit much of the electorate.

It was not dignified

Editorial (editorial!) that appeared in the Guardian on Monday praising The Queen's involvement in the Olympic Opening Ceremony.

Praise for The Queen by the Guardian newspaper is a clue that something is not quite right.

When I saw the James Bond sequence in the opening ceremony I found myself for the first time in my life being critical of The Queen's behaviour - to my mind it was not dignified.

I am sure that the way the idea was suggested and outlined would have seemed very plausible.  And the great secrecy that surrounded the episode would presumably have prevented any contrary advice getting through.  But the monarchy is a semi-mystical institution of great antiquity and with a serious constitutional role - it should not be associated, even obliquely, with fantasy flim-flam.

If we wanted a showbiz head of state we might as well give the job to Niall Horan.

Friday night was an ecstatic triumphalist moment

The writer of the Olympic Opening Ceremony, Frank Cotterill Boyce, appeared on Newsnight yesterday, interviewed by Emily Maitlis: 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01ll3cc/Newsnight_30_07_2012/

When asked whether there was a political message encoded in the ceremony he smirked and waved his hands and talked about the volunteers.  Unusually Emily Maitlis did not make him reply to the question.  I have tried to capture his smirking in the above screen print, but this has proved impossible - although he smirked frequently, he did it so quickly that by the time my finger had been depressed on the SysRq button he had closed his eyes.

The idea that the production was just a chaotic unstructured mish-mash thrown together in a few brain-storming sessions and that in any case the "volunteers" made all the running on deciding content is, to my view, highly expert dissembling.

Perhaps I am being over-suspicious in all this?

Perhaps I am, in the sweeping words of the Prime Minister, being "idiotic" in identifying a covert subliminal layer of messages when everyone (almost everyone) is saying how wonderful the ceremony was, how there was no political agenda, and that we should all just chill out and enjoy the rest of the show.

And there is, of course, a risk of appearing obsessed in revisiting an event most people have already begun to forget with their conscious minds.  Of becoming just another on-line nutter chuntering on about things that are completely unimportant.  Of not being able to let things go.

But the reason I am fascinated (as well as appalled) by what happened on Friday night is because it was, on a technical level, so good (and I realise now my first shocked reaction of "it's bad" seems ridiculous in retrospect - it was not bad at all, but in its own terms very very good, although in my judgement also profoundly disturbing, perhaps even evil).

For a few hours on Friday evening Danny Boyle and Frank Cotterill Boyce convinced almost the entire population of the United Kingdom of several key concepts:

• That multi-culturalism is an established and accepted national policy.
• That mass immigration is a popular, uncontroversial and on-going national benefit.
• That society means socialism.

Of course many people sincerely hold these views, and to them Friday night was an ecstatic triumphalist moment.

True socialists believe that capitalist society cannot be reformed, it has to be destroyed and rebuilt again (destroyed by bloody revolution or destroyed by gentle imperceptible degrees, but ultimately destroyed).

In the United Kingdom in the post-war period one of the main agencies of this destruction is multi-culturalism.

Multi-culturalism has become a policy that is impossible to oppose without being pilloried as a "racist" (as Aidan Burley can no doubt assure you).

So you see the genius of what was done on Friday evening.

A great advance for socialism has been made. 

And even the two main leaders of the Conservative Party are on message. 

The 2012 Olympic Closing Ceremony

After the (strenuously denied) left-wing imagery of the Olympic Opening Ceremony one wonders what the 2012 Olympic Closing Ceremony is going to be like.

The director is Kim Gavin, and he has already said that he wants it to be as "inclusive" as possible.

As perhaps you have already realised, use of the word "inclusive" is an Orwellian code.  Everyone will be included who matches the criteria.  No-one will be included who doesn't.

And as a sop to the stupid they will play the Eton Boating Song.

I used to think that Boris Johnson was extremely clever

On the politics.co.uk site Ian Dunt writes about Boris Johnson's denials that the Olympic Opening Ceremony was left-wing http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2012/07/30/boris-olympic-opening-ceremony-wasn-t-left-wing

I used to think that Boris Johnson was extremely clever to hide his tactical cunning and political guile under the pretence of being a bumbling fumbling buffoon.

I now realise that it is not a pretence.

The man IS a buffoon.

And a lazy one at that.

Eton Boating Song indeed!  How is that of any relevance to the English conservative-voting working class?  Are there not rather too many Old Etonians filling places in the elite?

Awareness of "the Games" is currently overwhelming

Less than an hour until the Olympic opening ceremony (which I am apprehensive about, since it is promising us a "vision of what it means to be British today" - presumably thousands of choreographed Heath & Safety officers).

Awareness of "the Games" is currently overwhelming.

Some examples:

Above:  this e-mail pinged into my computer today, with lots of "must have" merchandise.  The style of the Games is deliberately kitsch, and no attempt has been made to achieve timelessness.  I don't mind kitsch, but whoever did the logo has produced something so horrible it is beyond comment.

I am not being anti-Games.  I want them to go well.  But whoever did the logo needs to go in the stocks and have rotten fruit pelted in their direction.

Above:  in Asda this evening the staff were in Team GB t-shirts, and Olympic-themed items were everywhere.  Everyone seemed to be rushing, presumably because they wanted to get back in time to watch the Opening Ceremony.  On impulse I bought these Olympic caramel shortcakes - I guess they are own-brand as there is no logo on them (apart from the 2012 logo).

 


















Above:  I was intrigued by this e-mail campaign for Damart.  Their customers tend to be elderly and price-conscious, so you would think they would be the last people to spend discretionary income on souvenirs.  What possible motives might they have to allocate some of their pension money on these items?  Elderly people tend to be isolated and lonely so possibly they will respond to an invitation to "join in".  They also have low self-esteem, so the idea that being British is fabulous will make them feel good.  It is also nostalgic in style, which again would appeal to this demographic (no trace of the Olympic logo - this is a "Jubilympics" range).

Body fascism

The London Olympics are due to start this Friday.

This is an opportunity to ask a before and after question:  how will the United Kingdom be changed by the Games?

From an advertising point of view I think we are about to enter (have already entered) a sustained period of body fascism in which models with unattainable physiques are used to sell products, places, things.

Above:  for instance, a near-naked Adam Senn has been featured for some months to advertise the Dolce & Gabbana Sport fragrance.  Everything about this ad is heroic - full page, full colour, colossal creative impact.  The subliminal message of the ad is that you only have to splash on some of the magic liquid and you will also be transformed into a perfect physical form (without the tedium of doing any exercise).

There was something about the composition of this image that seemed familiar.  And then I realised that this is an updated version of Guido Reni's St Sebastian.  Considering this appeared on the back page of the Observer (one of our most atheist newspapers) this is a very seditious campaign.

Above:  Guido Reni's St Sebastian.  One of the most complex and influential paintings of the Rennaissance.  Not just a religious image, but also claimed by others (see http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/arrows-of-desire-how-did-st-sebastian-become-an-enduring-homoerotic-icon-779388.html).

Above:  the Guido Reni painting has inspired artists as varied as Yukio Mishima (left) and Pierre et Gilles (right).

The subject deserves more serious analysis

Yesterday's Newsnight also had one of Steve Smith's quirky-humourous items.  Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't.  Last night he was looking at how the Diamond Jubilee has been reported around the world, concentrating on satirical coverage rather than the ubiquitous adulation (the satire was a bit thin, and he was reduced to quoting Russian state propaganda from the RT channel - also known as SMERSH TV).

The subject deserves more serious analysis than a Steve Smith slot.

The reaction of people throughout the world to the Diamond Jubilee was more than just unthinking patriotism, royalist enthusiasm, or clever PR by an office in the Royal Household.  Even Barak Obama felt obliged to make an effusive video tribute and post it (perhaps a little belatedly) on the White House website - and he is not someone who would fall for PR spin or feel any affinity with "Britishness".  So what can politicians learn from the four-day Jubilee event?

I think the main message to emerge from the statements of ordinary people is the importance of longevity and permanence.  The near-universal exaltation (I could almost write adoration) of the British monarch and the institution of the British monarchy represents a subconscious longing for stability.  People are tired of uncontrolable economic turmoil, continuous "reform" of state provisions (including Blair's fatuous constitutional reforms), endless "globalised" lecturing about becoming more competitive, unstoppable expansion and rebuilding of towns and cities, incessant flows of migrants, eternal Orwellian wars etc.

You might dismiss this as just backward-looking conservativism (small "c").

But I think the message is plain for those willing to see it.

People want institutions that don't change from decade to decade, represent qualities of high-minded service and duty, do not contain corrupt individuals, do not become partisan, are not monetised, have a very long-term outlook.

"Dozens"

The Guardian newspaper on its website reports a demonstration against the monarchy in which "dozens" of protesters waved placards.

Use of the word "dozens" presumably means the protesters were less than a hundred.

This is such a tiny proportion of the people lining the Thames this afternoon that statistically the demonstration did not take place in any meaningful way.

In which case we should question the Guardian's decision to run it as a news story.

Are they not concerned at the Guardian that they may look just a little bit silly?

Does it not undermine their claim to be taken seriously as a news organisation?

If the demonstration had mustered a thousand or so it might just rate as a counter-point to the huge crowds who stood for hours in the rain to cheer the Royal Family.

But "dozens"?

News on Sky which included a discussion about the monarchy

During a rushed lunch I watched the news on Sky which included a discussion about the monarchy.

Polly Toynbee was saying that social mobility in the United Kingdom is held back by the symbolism of the monarchy.

No acknowledgement that Polly Toynbee only has a position as a commentator because she is her father's daughter, and grandfather's grand-daughter.

And how did she get into St Anne's College Oxford with only one A-level if the family name did not magically open doors?

Almost all the complaints about "undeserved" privilege Polly Toynbee makes about the Royal Family in her Guardian article today (which I have skim read on the web - I will read it more carefully tonight) could be made about the Toynbee family.

But double standards and double speak are not really the issue.

We are all human and we are all hypocrites because to be human includes being hypocritical to a greater or lesser extent.

To understand the hostility of the "left" towards the Royal Family we need to understand that socialism is a totalitarian system encompassing every single facet of life (cradle to grave).  No institution, however popular, can survive socialist scrutiny unless it subscribes to socialist ideals.  Therefore ultimately there is no place in socialism for monarchy, religion, private capital, private property, even distinction by merit or individual expression.

This is one of the great dividing lines in British politics - Socialism as a philosophical system depends entirely on logic; Conservatism and Liberalism both rely on common sense.

Therefore logic tells us an hereditary monarchy is indefensible whereas common sense tells us it works (and works superbly well).

That is why on the approach to the Jubilee holiday (2nd to 5th June) this blog is enthusiastically royalist, the Jubilee bells are metaphorically ringing, and the Jubilee beacons are being metaphorically lit up.

Marmite

When I opened up one of my e-mail accounts this morning I saw this ad for Marmite.

On a golden throne the Marmite product displays the Union Jack while the national anthem "plays" in the background.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown might dismiss this as mere sycophancy, but brands do not change themselves in this way (even the product name has been changed!) unless there are sound commercial reasons to do so.  This creative would have been tested and retested against a range of alternatives - including, possibly, some "stuff the Jubilee" versions.  The number of people involved, on both the client side and the agency side, in a campaign of this kind is huge.

18 million pots of Marmite are sold each year.

Marmite tends to be purchased by C2 families with children.

Working class Co-Op customers plan to celebrate the Royal event

Over the summer I thought I would keep a digital scrapbook of the way the Diamond Jubilee and the Olympics are being used in the media.

I will label these "Jubilympics" (from one of the funniest episodes of the comedy Twenty-Twelve).

Above:  today I am going to look at the latest Co-Op magazine which features bunting on the cover, a promise of recipes for the "Jubilee party feast" and, in the lower left-hand corner, an illustration of "fun Union Jack cupcakes".

Note the subtle red white and blue colours of the cover - very subliminal.

The Co-Op is, as the name implies, a working-class co-operative.  More than just a retail organisation it is a social force with fair-trade policies, cradle to grave services (including farms, banks and undertakers), significant donations to charities.  It is also a political movement, sponsoring 29 Members of Parliament (they sit on the Labour benches although they are not obliged to).

So you would think that the Co-Op would join the republican miserablists in boycotting the Diamond Jubilee (Miranda Sawyer sneered at bunting in today's Observer; there are plans for a "significant" anti-monarchy demonstration on the side of the Thames next Sunday as the Queen sails past; teachers are reported to be disapproving about children bringing flags to school etc).

Like any major retail organisation the Co-Op must have tested its customers on attitudes to the Diamond Jubilee.  And presumably they have received back data that shows the working class Co-Op customers plan to celebrate the Royal event.  Hence this celebratory issue of the Co-Op magazine.

Above:  double-page spread in the magazine.  Look carefully at the right-hand page (you may need to click on the image to enlarge it).  It makes a number of assumptions about Co-Op customers.  In a fortnight when former Sunday Mirror columnist Carole Malone said that benefits claimants deserve to be burned alive, and Kerry McCarthy MP joked that chav-people should be exterminated, the Co-Op is showing us that working-class families will have access to embroidered table-cloths, cake stands and souvenir Coronation mugs (these mugs are often sneered at by the middle classes).  Photoshoots like this are not just thrown together, they are carefully researched and the details matched to the lifestyles of the target audience.  Co-Op stores are often located near council estates or in deprived areas - but even the most deprived families will often have items "kept for best" such as a hand-embroidered tablecloth or a Coronation mug kept since 1953.

Above:  I have to admit to being rather mystified by the KitKat (or "BritKat" advertisement).  The ad tells us it is exclusive to the Co-Op.  You would think that if they wanted an exclusive tie-in they would go with one of the big four supermarket chains which would offer them much more sales (does their research tell them they will sell more "royal" chocolate through the C2 and D Co-Op than through the C1 and B Tescos?).  Also I was not aware that Nestle used Fairtrade chocolate.  Nor was I aware that KitKat held a Royal Warrant, which presumably means the Queen likes them.  I would love to see the brief for this ad.

Above:  page 20 of the Co-Op magazine caused me a little shock of recognition.  Alongside a recipe for Jubilee jam tarts was an illustration of the tarts in a 1953 Coronation biscuit tin.  The sight made me go upstairs to a cupboard and bring down our own identical 1953 Coronation tin.

And although my present income takes me way outside the C2 category, not for the first time I thought about the Co-Op:  these people are my people.

Sixty years the tin has been in my family, representing sixty years of working-class royalism.

Socialists assume that the working classes are foolish dupes to celebrate the "class and privilege" of the Royal Family.  What they overlook is that families living in poverty are often starving.  Perhaps not literally starving (although in the early 1950s food was still rationed).  But starved of romance, starved of colour, starved of kindly words and gestures and fellow feelings that come from frivolous communal events.  Starved of belonging to a wider community.  And perhaps overwhelmed that anyone in the elite should promise to devote their whole life to the service of the ordinary people.