Bullrushes or Typhaceae

I wasn't able to walk the dogs yesterday because of the rain.

When I took them this evening I saw that bullrushes or Typhaceae had shot up in the ditches alongside the lane.

Apparently used as food in the paleolithic age.

Fracture starring Fiona Shaw, Anthony Hopkins, Rosamund Pike and Ryan Gosling

Have just watched on Film Four the 2007 film Fracture starring Fiona Shaw, Anthony Hopkins, Rosamund Pike and Ryan Gosling.

Ryan Gosling's performance was superb.  He seems to act with his whole self, even with his ears and his eyebrows.  You would think that with so many big RADA names appearing at once they would be very competitive, but everything flowed seamlessly together.

Lots of dark shadows and muted colours.

The director was Gregory Hoblit.

Not as much work as I should have done

Monday

Always Sunday nights are difficult and I seem to sleep badly.

As usual I eventually fell asleep about 2am and then woke again at 7am, feeling reluctant to start another week at work.

But also as usual a sense of duty compelled me to get washed and dressed, a sense of duty watched the time as I drank my morning cup of coffee, and a sense of duty accompanied me as I drove to the office.

The office seemed to be extraordinarily quiet this morning.  A warning from Anglea in the Admin team that IT officer John Johnson had been checking my internet access (she heard this from Kayla in the Admin team who is dating John Johnson).  Why should he monitor me, I wondered.

All the day I worked on a report on competition analysis as an evaluation mechanism.

Tuesday

The weather is rather dirty at the moment, a plethora of mud in the lanes due to the summer rain.

Another quiet day in the office.  I like these days when other managers are away and I can get on with things without being involved in meetings.  I talked to Research Manager Abi Reed about a small telephone campaign following up a mailshot we had done and asking how the information had been received.

Lunchtime I browsed on Amazon - it seems impossible to buy the poetry of Stefan George in a decent translation. 

More work on the competition analysis report, but not as much work as I should have done.

Wednesday

The telephone research carried out by Abi |Reed's team had come in, and I spent the morning putting it into a report.  Abi Reed (short but hefty woman, obese but also muscular) described a row she had had with her partner Warren:  "I tried on some new clothes and he said there was no point me buying them as I still looked fat - I told him I might be fat but he was stupid and at least I could do something about being fat whereas..."

Thursday

Angela brought round a card and a collection for Pat B who leaves tomorrow.  I put in £3 (all the cash I had on me unless I put in £10 and I did not feel like doing that).  "I've had no end of refusals" Angela told me.

Friday

Director Vijay Singh back in the office.  I had a meeting with him to discuss the competition analysis report.  I pressed him to tell me what was happening to the future of the Institute but all he would say was that he was working on something (we are supposed to be merging with Head Office, but that is not in our long-term interest).

Windy and cold at lunchtime.

Not much to do in the afternoon, so I was a little bored.

Joey (a graphic designer we use) rang to invite me to lunch at an Italian restaurant in London next week - this is obviously a freebie bribe to get more work, but I still said yes. 

As soon as 5pm arrived I was out of the office and driving home.

Currently watching Press Preview on Sky News - Zoe Williams from the Guardian and Nigel Nelson from The People.

The discussion is all over the place with so many y'knows and non-sequential remarks and interrupting each other that it is barely comprehensible.

Regarding the Bradley Wiggins call for legislation requiring cyclists to wear helmets, do we really want to have more Health & Safety busybodies policing the roads and arresting miscreants (perhaps even marching them to cash points to pay instant fines there and then as the Labour Party once suggested for "anti social" elements)?

I'm not a keen cyclist myself and would not advise cycling in London.

But I do not want to restrict the right of others to cycle when and where and how they want.

Anyone can see that the real problem is that there are too many cars on the roads and that this is because London and the South East has become too congested.

Eddie Mair introduced Charlotte Leslie MP and Independent journalist Owen Jones

Driving home today I listened to PM on BBC Radio 4.

Eddie Mair introduced Charlotte Leslie MP and Independent journalist Owen Jones and they began discussing whether private or state schools provide better sports education.

Charlotte Leslie was right to identify lack of a competitive ethos in state schools, but I think this is not simply a matter of political correctness (although that is a big factor).  Laziness is also a reason teachers do not make any effort (I am speaking as someone who has experienced the inner city comprehensive system at first hand).  And I think we need to look at the way teaching has become an increasingly female occupation - attitude surveys indicate women tend to have less interest in sport than men.

Owen Jones was right to condemn all governments, both Conservative and Labour, for allowing local authorities to sell off many school playing fields, but he might have found the generosity to praise the work of the Duke of Edinburgh as President of the National Playing Fields Association.

You can listen to the interview: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qskw

Above:  the PM interview was later discussed on Twitter.

Note the condescending way in which Owen Jones refers to "red brick universities" as if they were on a lesser level than Oxbridge.  One cannot blame him of course.  Oxbridge inculcates such arrogance and disparagement - it would not be possible to go through the Oxbridge process and remain unscathed.

Indeed, the whole socialist debate on private education is flawed as it fails to acknowledge that one of the primary reasons parents send their children to public schools is to ultimately get them into Oxbridge, so that they can coast their way into elite positions of power.

Owen Jones might pause to consider that the Oxford University he attended is accorded an elite position on a flawed (indeed, rigged) grading system that aggregates all its constituent colleges.  London University on the other hand has all its colleges and institutes graded individually.  If London was graded on an aggregate basis it would easily outscore Oxbridge and Owen Jones would have no reason to make his snooty remark.

"Red brick" indeed!  Who is he to call other people red brick.  If Friedrich Engels were alive today he would probably have referred to such Oxbridge snobbery with his most famous condemnation.

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.

I am reading, while I wait for Newsnight to come on, the Newsletter of the Egyptian Exploration Society.  It has a wonderful article about the photography of Flinders Petrie and the way in which the images he created filtered through to 1880s London and influenced the way the late-Victorian world thought about Egyptian civilisation.  Inscribed lintels from the Sixth Dynasty tombs at Dendera etc.

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.

It is not true that mutuals are better than commercial banks.

Norwich & Peterborough Building Society have just sent me a letter saying they are reducing my overdraft by £20 a month until it is zero (it is currently £330 - this is an account I only use for a specific purpose).

I have never (in my life) defaulted on any debt and my credit history is as good as you can get.

Pink campion or silene dioica.

Walking on the plain with the dogs I saw that clumps of pink wild flowers filled all the roadside ditches.

I think they are pink campion or silene dioica. 

Apparently a favoured food for moths and butterflies, although I have hardly seen either this summer.

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?

Why the Olympics Opening Ceremony should concern us

Big article by Tim Adams in the Observer today about the Olympic Opening Ceremony.

The near-adulatory coverage throughout the media (with some exceptions) would make anyone hesitate to criticise the production and risk being described as "curmudgeonly" by Tim Adams.

A Member of Parliament who attacked the multi-culturalism of the parade has been so digitally kicked and slapped that we have the irony of a show supposedly celebrating "dissent" not tolerating dissent of any kind.

But as Oscar Wilde reminded us, there is nothing so false as approval of what is approved of.

So for the third day running I am going to write about why the Olympics Opening Ceremony should concern us.

Of course it was spectacular, and the crowds cheered.  But the 1938 Tag der Deutsche Kunst in Munich was spectacular and the crowds cheered.  The great cultural processions in 1950s Moscow were spectacular and the crowds cheered.  Even today spectacular parades in Pyong Yang are capable of being cheered.  The spectacle and the cheering do not validate the content.  The comparison with totalitarian circuses is deliberate - what we saw on Friday was a paen to totalitarian socialism.

Sports pundit Stan Collymore exultantly tells us the ceremony director Danny Boyle "put us ALL there, all of us".

This is not true.

Not everyone was there.

What was missing from the parade was English conservatism (small c, although the big political C variety was also non-existent).

This matters because British identity is, for me, inconceivable without reference to English conservatism.  To airbrush this out of "where Britain is these days" is both chilling and sinister.  Chilling because is illustrates a depth of socio-ethnic hostility seldom so overtly expressed; sinister because it indicates what English people might be in for as the incubus of anti-Englishness gains respectability and goes mainstream.

Of course, you might argue, there is no particular reason why Englishness should have any part in the Danny Boyle production.

Danny Boyle is from a cultural background of Irish socialism.  Writer Frank Boyce is from a cultural background of Irish socialism.  Many of the commentators whooping it up on the night (Newsnight's Paul Mason for example) are from a cultural background of Irish socialism or Scots-Welsh socialism or Indian or West Indian or African socialism.

What do they know of England who do not know anything about England? (as Rudyard Kipling did not say).

And of course I appreciate what a fine joke Danny Boyle has played on the politicians he obviously despises (according to the Observer Sebastian Coe, Boris Johnson and David Cameron could only look at the plans for the ceremony in the presence of, and presumably mediated by, Danny Boyle and his coterie).  

And is it not a grand laugh that so many of the big wigs in the government, overwhelmed by the sensationalism of the night, have already praised the ceremony to the skies so that they cannot now resile without looking stupid.

We were warned that the Labour party intended to rub the noses of "the right" in the policy of multi-culturalism.  I think we saw a manifestation of that on Friday evening.  It makes you wonder what further surprises might be in store.

Surprisingly candid comment by Tristram Hunt MP in today's Observer.  By the evidence of Friday night the Left have indeed won the Culture War.  And since the economy of a society is subservient to the culture of that society this does not bode well for the future.

Is it possible that the left-wing bias of last night's Olympic Opening Ceremony has scuppered any chance Boris Johnson may have had to lead the Conservative Party?

The one event that should have been political neutral

I have thought a great deal about last night's Olympic Opening Ceremony and whether anything can be salvaged from it.  It is intensely depressing that such a global event should have been manipulated to a partisan political cause.  It was subtle (mostly) and done with great skill, but anyone who has worked in advertising will know how the messages have been encoded into the production.

And at times the imagery was not even subtle, but very blatant.

And even while the ceremony was still continuing a member of the Newsnight review panel identified that it was partisan.

One only has to look at the cock-a-hoop reactions among left-wing commentators to see that they are adopting the ceremony as their own:

(on the subject of the flashmob creation of the CND logo, I thought commercial, religious and political logos were banned from the Olympics? - CND is about as political as you can get, and only supported by a small minority of the population).

So all this is depressing because the one event that should have been political neutral has, in the words of Toby Young, become an advertisement for the Labour Party version of history.

Shame on you Danny Boyle.

Did we campaign against Rupert Murdoch's malign manipulation of impressionable minds only to have it replaced by YOUR corruption of one of our biggest media events?

But anyway.  What is the point of complaining when all I have is this disregarded little blog that no-one reads?  What can someone as unimportant and disenfranchised as myself do about any of this?

So although I was looking forward to attending the Olympic Games, and had paid £65 for a ticket to see the men's water polo on 6th August, I think the only realistic reaction I can make to last night's propaganda is to tear the ticket up and have nothing more to do with the 2012 Olympics.

Even though I switched it off over an hour ago I am still cringing at how awful it was.

£27 million!

Personally I want my money back.

Is it unreasonable to ask who signed-off on the Olympic Opening Ceremony?

How much of our money has been spent on this garbage?

Who (who EXACTLY, and if it was a committee let's have the names of the committee members) appointed Danny Boyle?

UPDATE

Danny Boyle was appointed in May 2010 in the last days of the New Labour government.

That explains why it was simultaneously so superficially glitzy and yet intellectually bogus.

The last gasp of Blair's Cool Britannia.

Olympic Opening Ceremony

It was bad.

Bad, bad, bad.

"The Dome" all over again.

Danny Boyle indeed!

What a load of old rubbish.