JUST BORIS - SEND IN THE CLOWNS

The following piece is by Edward Docx, novelist and journalist, which appeared the the Guardian Newspaper on Thursday 18th March 2021. It is a very good piece of writing and an excellent comment on the current situation in the United Kingdom. I thought I would reproduce it on the blog for those readers in the United States and Eastern Europe . It deserves a much wider readership.  Not that I have that many readers, but I just felt it encapsulates a great many peoples thinking in the United Kingdom and is worth spreading around.

 

Boris Johnson is the archetypal clown, with his antic posturing and his refusal to take anything seriously. So how did he end up in charge?

by Edward Docx

Thu 18 Mar 2021 06.00 GMT

Last modified on Thu 18 Mar 2021 14.06 GMT

The long-running German satirical show Extra 3 recently featured a sketch with the following voiceover: “From the people who brought you The Crown – the epic saga of the Queen – now comes the ridiculous story of this guy, a notorious buffoon at the head of a country … The Clown.”

The word “clown” has often been used in a flippant or dismissive way with regard to Boris Johnson. But the underlying paradox is that it is only as a clown – a fool in the oldest and deepest sense of the word – that his character can truly be understood. What happens when you make the clown king is what we in the UK have been witnessing in real time. With the success of the vaccine, though, a new question emerges: can one archetype transform into the other? Can Johnson creep away from his clownish past altogether?

Clowns, of course, are very serious and important people. At their simplest, they remind us of the silliness of things: that the world we have created is ridiculous. They reassure us in this observation by appealing to our innate understanding of the absurd. They relieve the endless tension and trauma of reality.

At a deeper level, the clown is the mirror image of the priest. Both represent two ancient sides of our nature. Both elucidate what it means to be human. The priest summons, celebrates and interrogates the sacred; the clown does the same with the profane. The one is concerned with the eschatological, the other with the scatological. The priest propounds abstinence and fasting; the clown gluttony and indulgence. The one solemnifies sex, the other carnalises. As David Bridel, founder of the Clown School in Los Angeles, says, clowns are often roundly welcomed because they “remind us that we are as practised in falling over, shitting and humping, as we are in prayer and purification”.

Would-be biographers of Johnson might do worse than to read Paul Bouissac, the leading scholar on the semiotics of clowning. Clowns are “transgressors”, he writes, cultural subversives who enact rituals and dramatic tableaux that “ignore the tacit rules of social games to indulge in symbolic actions that … toy with these norms as if they were arbitrary, dispensable convention.” Clowns “undermine the ground upon which our language and our society rest by revealing their fragility”. They “foreground the tension” between “instinct” and “constraint”. Bouissac could be writing directly of Johnson when he adds: “Their performing identities transcend the rules of propriety.” They are, he says, “improper by essence”.

Observe classic Johnson closely as he arrives at an event. See how his entire being and bearing is bent towards satire, subversion, mockery. The hair is his clown’s disguise. Just as the makeup and the red nose bestow upon the circus clown a form of anonymity and thus freedom to overturn conventions, so Johnson’s candy-floss mop announces his licence. His clothes are often baggy – ill-fitting; a reminder of the clothes of the clown. He walks towards us quizzically, as if to mock the affected “power walking” of other leaders. Absurdity seems to be wrestling with solemnity in every expression and limb. Notice how he sometimes feigns to lose his way as if to suggest the ridiculousness of the event, the ridiculousness of his presence there, the ridiculousness of any human being going in any direction at all.

His weight, meanwhile, invites us to consider that the trouble with the world (if only we’d admit it) is that it’s really all about appetite and greed. (His convoluted affairs and uncountable children whisper the same about sex.) Before he says a word, he has transmitted his core message – that the human conventions of styling hair, fitting clothes and curbing desires are all … ludicrous. And we are encouraged – laughingly – to agree. And, of course, we do. Because, in a sense, they are ludicrous. He goes further, though – pushing the clown’s confetti-stuffed envelope: isn’t pretending you don’t want to eat great trolleys of cake and squire an endless carousel of medieval barmaids … dishonest? Oh, come on, it’s so tiresome trying to be slim, groomed or monogamous – when what you really want is more cake and more sex. Right? I know it. You know it. We all know it. Why lie? Forget the subject under discussion – Europe, social care, Ireland – am I not telling it like it is, deep down? Am I not the most honest politician you’ve ever come across? Herein the clown’s perverse appeal to reason.

Next, witness how, in the company of a journalist, Johnson’s whole demeanour transmits the sense of him saying: “Aha! An interview! How absurd! This is no way to find anything out! But, yes, if you want, I will play ‘prime minister’ and you can reprise my old role – if that’s what the audience is here for.” Notice how often he asks (knowingly) “Are you sure our viewers wouldn’t want to hear … ?” or “You really want to know this?” This is because the clown is always in a deeper relationship with the audience than with his ostensible subject. See how he rocks on his feet as if to lampoon a politician emphasising his words. Hear how his speech is not – in truth – eloquent, but rather a caricature of eloquence. The dominant mode is not fluency, but a kind of stop-start oratio interrupta; hesitancy followed by sudden spasms of effusion. The hesitancy is designed to involve us in the confected drama of his choosing the next word. The sudden effusion that follows can then be marketed as clinching evidence of his oratorical elan.

You do not have to be a dramatist to recognise the clown archetype immediately. Johnson’s impulsiveness. The self-summoned crises. His attitude to truth, to authority, to every construct of law and art and politics, to power and to pleasure. His personal relationships and his relationship to the public. The self-conscious ungainliness. His blithe conjuring of fantasy and fairytale. The way he toys with norms – inverts, switches, tricks, reverses. The collusive warmth oddly symbiotic with a distancing coldness. Anything for a laugh. Everything preposterous. All of it richly articulate of the antic spirit that animates his being. Indeed, Johnson is an apex-clown – capable of the most sophisticated existential mockery while simultaneously maintaining the low moment-by-moment physical comedy of the buffoon.

Recall general election Johnson of 2019. Think of the famous moment where he drove a JCB through a polystyrene wall on which was written the word “Gridlock”. His union jack-painted digger burst through the polystyrene with the legend “Get Brexit Done” written on its loader. His subsequent speech even mentioned custard: “I think it is time,” he said, smirking, “for the whole country – symbolically – to get in the cab of a JCB – of a custard colossus – and remove the current blockage that we have in our parliamentary system.” This scene must surely be as close to the actual circus as politics in the UK has ever come.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Consider what is actually going on here. The wall is a wall that he helped create. Now he wants everyone to join him demolishing it. And he’s the man to lead the charge. Why? Because he’s the only one who can smash through the nonsense that is … the wall. Yet, he built the wall. Most of this nonsense is his doing – figuratively, literally, in the studio, in the country. And why are the hazard lights on? Because, of course, this is an emergency, for the clown must forever be concocting drama. An emergency that he has conjured and staged – to place himself in the cab of the rescue vehicle. Which is not a rescue vehicle. But a JCB. (Paradox inside paradox; is he destroying or rescuing?) A JCB painted as a union jack. Why? To celebrate the flag? Not quite. To mock it, then? Also, not quite. But in order to toy with it – to clown with it – to move back and forth across the borders of the serious and the comic.

“Time for the whole country,” he says, “symbolically – to get in the cab of the JCB.” Symbolically? Was ever a word deployed with so many layers of foolery? What – we thought he might mean we all get in the JCB? Of course, we didn’t. So who is he mocking with that word? He’s mocking everything – the stunt, us, himself – even in the moment of performance, he mocks his own performance. We cannot take him seriously and yet we must take him seriously. And note how that word “symbolically” steps up from the backstage of Johnson’s consciousness when talking of Brexit – which, as he well knows, is an act of symbolism at the expense of everything else.

The JCBs, the polystyrene walls, the stuck-on-a-zipwire-with-two-mini-union-jacks, the hiding in fridges, the waving of fish, the thumbs up, the pants down, this is the realm of the mock heroic – to which Johnson returns again and again. This is where he’s most at home. This is where he’s world-king. And he urges us to join him there. Nudges our elbows. Offers us a drink. Beckons us in. Smirks. Winks.

Johnson’s novel Seventy-Two Virgins is one long tour of the territory. The book is beyond merely bad and into some hitherto unvisited hinterland of anti-art. More or less everything about it is ersatz. Commentators who fall for his self-conjured comparisons to Waugh and Wodehouse miss the point entirely and do both writers an oafish ill-service. Because here again: Johnson is not seriously interested in writing novels at all. It’s not that he’s a fraud. Rather, as ever, he is a jester-dilettante peddling parody and pastiche. In truth, the attentive reader is not invited to take anything seriously about the novel – not its title; not its handling of character, dialogue, plot or point of view; not its dramatic construction, nor its stylistic impersonations. And certainly not its thematic dabbling. In fact, for more than 300 ingenious pages, Johnson manages to commit to nothing in the art of writing a novel so much as the attempt to be entertaining in the act of mocking a commitment to the art of writing of a novel. There is no heroic; it’s all mock.

“To a man like Roger Barlow,” Johnson writes of his clownishly named hero in the book, “the whole world just seemed to be a complicated joke … everything was always up for grabs, capable of dispute; and religion, laws, principle, custom – these were nothing but sticks from the wayside to support our faltering steps.”

---

Clowns have been with us through history. They turn up in Greek drama as sklêro-paiktês – childlike figures. During the Roman festival of Saturnalia, a clown-king was chosen and all commerce was suspended in favour of a wild cavort. (“Fuck business.”) In Norse mythology, the archetype is the figure of Loki – silver-tongued trickster and shape-shifter who turns himself into horse, seal, fly, and fish. (Note the echo of the reference by a close ally of Joe Biden to Johnson as a “shape-shifting creep”.) In the Italian commedia dell’arte, there is the character of Pierrot. There is Badin in France, Bobo in Spain, Hanswurst in Germany. And here in Britain: Shakespeare’s many famous fools.

We need our clever fools, of course. Too much solemnity is sickly. We need the carnival. We need reminders of our absurdity. The culture should be subverted. The sacred should be disparaged. Institutions should be derided when they become sclerotic. We live in an age of posturing and zealotry and never needed our satirists and our clowns more.

But the transgressor is licensed precisely because they are not in power. The satirist ridicules the government – fairly, unfairly – and we smile because (ordinarily) they are not in charge of the hospitals, the schools, our livelihoods or the borders. We laugh and clap at the circus, the theatre and the cinema because we can go home at the end of the evening, confident that the performers are not in charge of the reality in which we must live.

Previously, of course, this was Johnson’s relationship to power. He was the clown-journalist tilting idly at straight bananas, Tony Blair, political correctness gone mad. When he was made mayor of London, he was in effect elevated to quasi-official court jester. There he was stranded on the zipwire (the buffoon parodies the circus trapeze act) but real power still remained elsewhere. Even during the referendum campaign, David Cameron and George Osborne were the government … whereas Johnson was continuing to perform the role of fool – holding up a kipper here, draped in sausages there, arriving in town squares with his red circus bus and a farrago of misdirection and fallacy. He was stoutly devoid of any real idea or concern for what might replace the structures he disparaged. His humour, his glee, his energy, his campaigning brilliance – it delighted and sparkled because he was free of responsibility, free to be himself, free to throw the biggest custard pies yet dreamed of in the UK.

Vanishingly few people had any serious idea of what was involved in leaving the EU; and resoundingly not Johnson. But those who simply wanted to leave because their gut instinct told them it was right to do so would have failed and failed miserably without him. These men and women – the likes of Iain Duncan Smith, David Davis, Steve Baker, Nigel Farage, Mark Francois, John Redwood, Gisela Stuart, Kate Hoey et al – were never more than a dim congregation of rude mechanicals. And what they required to win was someone who instinctively understood how to conduct a form of protracted public masque. Someone who could distract, charm, rouse and delight with mischief and inversion and a thousand airy nothings. (The clown was ever the perfect ambassador of meaninglessness.) But even Puck sends the audience home with an apology and the reassurance that all we have witnessed was but a dream.

We, however, have made our clown a real-world king. And from that moment on, we became a country in which there was only the mock heroic – a “world beating” country that would “strain every sinew” and give “cast-iron guarantees” while bungling its plans and breaking its promises. A country “ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles” and act “as the supercharged champion” of X, Y, Z. A country on stilts – pretending that we had a test and trace system that was head and shoulders above the rest of the world. A country performing U-turns on the teetering unicycle of Johnsonian buffoonery – A-levels, school meals, foreign health workers and more. A country of tumbling catastrophes. Trampolining absurdities. Go to work. Don’t go to work. A country proroguing parliament illegally here, trying to break international law there. Paying its citizens to “eat out to help out” in the midst of a lethal pandemic. A country testing its eyesight in lockdown by driving to distant castles with infant and spouse during a travel ban. A country whose leadership stitched up the NHS in the morning and then clapped for them at night. A country opening schools for a single day, threatening to sue schools, shutting schools. A country on holiday during its own emergency meetings. A country locking down too late; opening up too early. A country sending its elderly to die in care homes. A country unwilling to feed its own children. A country spaffing £37bn up the wall one moment and refusing to pay its own nurses a decent salary the next. A country doing pretend magic tricks with the existence of its own borders – no, there won’t be a border in the sea; oh yes there will; oh no there won’t; it’s behind you …. A country of gimmicks and slapstick and hollow, honking horns.

This is Eastcheap Britain and Falstaff is in charge. It is in the two Henry IV plays that Shakespeare most clearly illuminates the gulf between his great, theatre-filling clown, Falstaff, and the young Prince Hal who will go on to become the archetype of the king – Henry V. At the mock-court of Falstaff’s tavern, we are invited to laugh and drink more ale, pinch barmaid’s bottoms, dance with dead cats and put bedpans on our heads while Falstaff entertains us with stories of his bravery and heroism that we all know are flagrant lies. Says Prince Hal to the portly purveyor of falsehoods: “These lies are like their father that begets them, gross as a mountain, open, palpable.” Meanwhile, the realm falls apart.

Since we have no Hal and have crowned the clown instead, the play we are now watching in the UK asks an ever more pressing question: can Falstaff become Henry V and lead his country with true seriousness and purpose? Or is the vaccine-cloaked transformation now being enacted merely superficial – a shifting of the scenery?

---

The lies themselves are the problem. The kingly archetype embodies at least the ambition of sincerity, meaning and good purpose at the heart of the state. Whereas deceit continues to be the default setting on Johnson’s hard drive. Rory Stewart calls Johnson “the best liar ever to serve as prime minister” but writes that “what makes him unusual in a politician is that his dishonesty has no clear political intent”. But Stewart does not quite see that Johnson is the purest form of clown there is – “improper by essence” – and that truth and lies are like two sides of the argument to him: equally tedious, equally interesting, equally absurd, both a distant second in their service of tricks, drama, distraction, invention, manipulation.

He will write you two columns, four, 10, 100 – pro-Marmite, anti-Marmite; pro-EU, anti-EU. And then he’ll tell you all about them. All about how he couldn’t decide. Because not deciding is where all the drama is to be found and who cares about the arguments anyway? No, what the trickster wants is neither your agreement nor your disagreement. (For he himself agrees and disagrees.) What the trickster wants most of all … is for you to admire his trickery. Heinrich Böll, the German Nobel-prize winner and author of the truly great novel The Clown, answers Stewart’s question when he says: “You go too far in order to know how far you can go.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

The difficulty for the clown is that once truth and seriousness have been merrily shattered, they cannot be put back together and served up anew. Or, to put it another way, the buffoon who has just entertained the audience by smashing all the plates cannot now say that he proposes to use them to serve up a banquet in honour of himself becoming a wise and honest king. Everyone can see: the plates are all in pieces on the floor.

Meanwhile the realm really is still falling apart. Johnson’s predicament could not be more starkly illuminated than by the next existential challenge he faces: to do with the very nature of the union of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The other home nations have long seen him as a pantomime king and they are certainly not going to believe in any kind of transformation of character – vaccine or no. After all the centuries of blood and trauma, the Northern Irish are unusually united in feeling that they have been treated like stooges at his circus. Meanwhile, Scottish nationalists need only plaster their advertising hoardings with Johnson’s picture to swell their ranks with the as-yet-undecided. For too long, the other nations have witnessed the business of the kingdom being conducted clownishly – by bluster, mishap, side-effects, the unforeseen consequences of the last trick but one. How, then, can Johnson now present himself as a conscientious envoy of the union?

The ironies thicken here. Johnson is a lackadaisical student of history and he has entirely misunderstood his own destiny. (His book on Churchill is nothing so much as a plastic clown trumpet masquerading as a bugle.) Instead of uniting his country, he now finds himself facetiously hastening its breakup. And it is the Conservative and unionist parties that have facilitated him. They licensed their comforting fool and told themselves that he could restore a glorious past. But a leader who personifies tomfoolery and nostalgia is eloquent about sharpening decline not renaissance. You send in the clowns when something has gone wrong and you need to distract the audience. Too late, the Conservatives now see that the same transgressive spirit they empowered has been childishly tearing at the very fabric of the kingdom they wish to conserve. In this paradoxical way, Johnson’s very essence summons the end of everything Conservatives most revere – everything that began with the Union of the Crowns in 1603 and the Act of Union in 1707. And, true to his nature, Johnson invites this ending in the slapdash manner of a clown: inadvertently, by accident, as the result of a series of improvisations.

And so, at the last, we come to death. Which even the clown cannot toy with or mock. The figures are stark – 126,000 dead at the time of writing. In terms of total numbers, the four countries above us have much greater populations – the US, Brazil, Mexico and India. We have by far the highest death toll in Europe and the fourth highest death rate per million of the population in the world. There is no serious discussion that does not arrive at the conclusion that the UK has lost tens of thousands of men and women whose death was not inevitable. Not all of the losses are Johnson’s fault, but many of them are the direct result of his calls and his character. Research by Imperial College shows that up to 26,800 deaths could have been prevented had the first lockdown come just one week earlier. Then came the care homes disaster, the premature lifting of the first lockdown, the ignoring of Sage throughout September. And only a clown would begin the October announcement of a second lockdown with the phrase “good evening and apologies for disturbing your Saturday evening with more news of Covid” when the nation was already stiff with the legions of dead and had been waiting all day to hear from its leader. The run-up to Christmas was a catastrophe of mismanagement that all-too-inevitably became the January of 30,000 more people dead. Are we supposed to forget this legacy and “move on”? That is what Johnson is now tacitly suggesting. Like all storytellers, he knows the public remember endings, less so beginnings and seldom the middle. He did all he can, he says. He knows it’s not true, but that is what he is selling.

In dramatic terms, just as death reveals the life of the kingly archetype as noble and purposeful, so the clown is revealed as foolish and meaningless. When Hamlet takes hold of Yorick’s skull (another popular clown) in the graveyard, he asks: “Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning?”

And there’s another moment in Hamlet that’s germane here – the scene where Shakespeare has the prince instruct the visiting actors. Where Hamlet explicitly warns them about clowns. Warns them not to allow the clowns to distract the audience and make them laugh while important issues are being settled. Warns them that there are certain clowns who seek to do this merely to remain in the limelight – with no regard for either the meaning of the play, nor the understanding of the audience.

“Let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them,” Hamlet says. “For there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though, in the meantime, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered: that’s villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.”

Masks change, not archetypes. The fool still holds the stage. And pitiful ambition is precisely what we are watching.

TRYING TO UNDERSTAND WHERE WE'RE AT

I had previously mentioned in a blog that human failings, particularly in respect of violence and abuse, has long been the subject of law. The prohibition of violence, and the punishments which follow from the breach of that rule, were carved in stone as early as 3000 BCE. Civilisation has moved on since then, but the evolution of society has not changed the view that violence and abuse are to be energetically condemned and laws prohibiting such actions are to be vigorously and strictly enforced.  Various “Offences Against the Person Acts” have consolidated and defined the variable forms of behaviour which can cause injury to the person, and in some instances, there are specific types of victims who are singled out for protection from assault.

Nonetheless, there are still certain nation states around the world which are seriously deficient in allowing for human rights, those very rights which are thought to be unalienable. Indeed, despite having their own laws against offences to the person, the state itself resorts to violence and abuse of its citizens in order to maintain its hold on power. Some even claim, for religious reasons in particular, the right to abuse women, although they may not see what they do is abuse.

In the current world, given its geography and topography, no single nation can subsist without interaction with other nations. In order for states to survive, economic and trade links are unavoidable.  Nations are no longer self sufficient, although the size of some gives them the illusion that they can be. Those nations which are more prosperous however, can have some influence on nations with a smaller economy. They can, and do, at times, exert influence. Whether for good or bad, I refrain from giving an opinion.

According to the World Bank, the United States, for instance, has the largest economy with a GDP of $21,433,226 million and the United Kingdom is sixth with $2,829,108 million. You will note that the US has nearly 10 times the GDP of the United Kingdom; however, the UK has over twice the GDP of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates combined, and ten times that of Iran. So both nations, who have a so called special relationship, have some considerable influence over parts of the world where I believe women are subject to considerable difficulties, to put it mildly. (It isn't only the Middle East)

So where are we now?

We now have the British Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs stating that the United Kingdom will trade with states which do not meet human rights standards, all the while claiming that the UK is a ‘force for good’ in the world.

We also have the Prime Minister, ‘Just Boris’ apparently agreeing with the leader of the opposition, Keir Starmer, that the murder of Sarah Everard should be a ‘turning point’ in the fight for safety for women and girls.

Mr Starmer claims it is a ‘watershed moment’ and urged the PM to press ahead with swift legislation to deal with the epidemic of violence faced by women. The Prime Minister agreed, saying he believed that “frankly, unless and until we have a change in our culture that acknowledges and understands that women currently do not feel they are being heard, we will not fix this problem”

According to the Office of National Statistics in 2019 there were 1,394,000 incidents of violent crime reported – that’s 3,819 per day. Which one could be considered a watershed moment in 2019?  How many thousand violent incidents a day, over just the past 50 years, qualify as a watershed moment?

Please explain to me how trading with regimes that condone violence and abuse of women is being a force for good and how that leads to an understanding that women do not feel they are being heard, and please explain to me what swift legislation will be more effective than the legislation against violence that has existed for a millennium?

I really would like to know.

THE POLITICS OF POLICING

The politics of policing has once again hit the headlines and brought about an instant enquiry to be held today with a meeting of the government’s crime and justice taskforce between Ms Patel, Commissioner Cressida and Director of Public Prosecutions, Max Hill, to be chaired by the Prime Minister.  I question what more hypocrisy is in the offing. Politics is not within the remit of the Police Force. I believe Ms Dick’s statement was clear and to the point. What this task force meeting will achieve, I do not know, nor can I fathom what purpose it could have other than to show Just Boris and Violette Elizabeth are taking note and seeking to gain favourable publicity out of the situation. It’s yet another photo op.

Whether or not the vigil should have taken place, given the current rules and regulations in force due to the pandemic, is a matter for one’s own conscience. So far as the law is concerned, such a gathering, on the face of it, would appear to be out of order; however, because of the emotions engendered by the sad death of Ms Everard, it was not specifically forbidden, but neither was it condoned or given legal authority by Police Officials responsible for licencing demonstrations. This was not strictly a demonstration, and was meant to be a vigil to show respect, and for some to pray, for the deceased. It was also for others to assemble as a political protest in support of the cause for the safety of citizens on the streets, in particular women, but in relation to all citizens who should be able to move about without fear of attack. 

 

The organisers had approached the police and discussed the assembly for the vigil and had taken on board the need to conduct maters as Covid safely as possible, including having marshals who could maintain as eye on social distancing. The issues discussed seem not to have proved suitable to the Police Authority, or in any event it was felt not sufficient given the emotional circumstances surrounding the event and the likely numbers attending. The police did not do anything to physically prevent the vigil from taking place, but they were clearly a large presence with a view to upholding the current law relating to such gatherings. It started well, but so far as law enforcers were concerned it got to a stage where it was felt officers had to step in. The vigil had moved from mourning and the laying of flowers to political protest and all the emotive activity that goes with it.  The cry of “Something must be done” carries a lot of emotion with it, as well as speeches and crowds of people moving closer together to hear and applaud. It was inevitable and the Police Officers on the ground reacted accordingly. Some would say according to type. 

Were the police being heavy handed? Arresting someone who does not really want to be arrested, or doesn’t understand why they are being arrested, can sometimes require a strong hand, although it need not necessarily be heavy. That is a matter of careful judgement. No doubt opinions will swing both ways as to how heavy the hand or forceful the arrests. In any event, they were booed and the Politicians weighed in with surprised condemnations and demands for resignation and explanations. The hypocrisy was in full swing. 

The next day’s political demonstration, for it can no longer be named a vigil, as it was now directed at the police and in support of women’s right to feel safe on the streets. It passed off without incident, and the Police, now politically corrected by the Mayor, the Home secretary and various other MP’s, stood further back and monitored the situation at distance. But of course, by now the powers that be, that had been asking for resignations and explanations, were expressing full confidence in the Commissioner Cressida Dick. An overnight turn around. Dare I say it? What a surprise. 

As to the rest of our representatives, to see Labour and Conservative politicians, who would normally cross the street to avoid each other, taking umbrage and congratulating each other for decrying the fact that open air assaults against women are too frequent, and that something must be done, is a bit rich. I agree, enough is enough, but these assaults have been happening around the world for the last 5000 years. The first recorded writing speaks of laws relating to violence against women, as well as laws relating to violence in general. Women are not the only gender to get assaulted on the street. As to that, there are many repressive regimes around the world whose very laws are an abuse of women. These very regimes have done business with and been supported by the British government. 

So politicians should not use the sad death of Sarah Everard as some sort of clarion call that something must be done, as if, all of a sudden, they have now seen the light. They should in fact be hanging their heads in shame, explaining why, having been elected as representatives of the people, they have done nothing to actually deal with the violence on our streets, nor has any previous government going back 5000 years. None of this is new. The half hearted attempts at new penalties and more elaborate repetitive legislation has not succeeded. No lessons have been learned as is claimed after every enquiry. To spout platitudes and sound tough is about all our politicians do. This is a worldwide problem and demands it be tackled with integrity and honesty. This British regime should not be condoning violence and abuse against women in every single country where it happens. There should be an outcry against the violence everywhere, not just with words, but with deeds, sanctions, withdrawal of diplomatic status, refusal to trade, anything to make the world sit up and take notice. That just might, very slightly filter down to the streets of our towns, and more citizens might take notice, and stop themselves, their brothers, sons, husbands, fathers and any other relatives, including females, from doing harm. It’s part of our social contract.

It is not just a matter of re-educating men, there are some pretty dreadful women out there as well. It is not just a matter of what’s happening on British streets, and why aren’t the Police doing something about it. It really is about everywhere. Of all the streets, in all the towns, in all the world, why can’t I walk safely on mine?

 

HAMPSTEAD COOL - BEING WITH IT

Celia, whilst going through various papers found this article which had been copied, apparently in 1963, from the Hampstead and Highgate Express.  It may be difficult to read, but it is worth it for those who were in and about London in the Sixties. It does strike some chords about being "With it" at the time, particularly in North London.

Howard and Blaikley 1960's

The heading of NEW BEARINGS/Alan Blaikley/Ken Howard/Paul Overy seems to indicate these three as authors of, or at least responsible for, the piece. The three of them all attended University College School, which is located on the corner of Frognal and Arkwright Road in Hampstead. 

In their 20’s at the time, between 1962 and 1963, they edited and ran four issues of a magazine Axle Quarterly. They had published early articles by Melvyn Bragg, Roy Gosling and Simon Raven amongst others. Blaikley and Howard went on to become songwriters and wrote a hit song “Have I the Right?” for The Honeycombs. Howard is a writer and director in film and television. Howard and Blaikley have written two West End musicals, Mardi Gras (Prince of Wales Theatre, 1976) and The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole (Wyndham's Theatre, 1984–1986)

They are still working.

Paul Overy died, aged 68, sadly, in August of 2008. He was an art historian and published many works including De Stij, a classic work on the Dutch art movement 1917-1925, and Light, Air and Openness: Modern Architecture Between the Wars (2008. He was appointed Art Critic of the Times in the mid 1970’s.

It takes a bit of concentration to read, but worth the effort. The bottom of page one is "..out than Mykonos these days."

 

 

SOME VERY TEDIOUS THOUGHTS

The facts and figures of this blog will no doubt bore you to tears. Nonetheless it’s just something that has bothered me for a while. 

Of the various forms of government in the world, that which appears to be most favoured involves voting in some form. The idea that the citizen of the state has a right to choose who she/he wishes to have part in the governing body of the state. For the sake of efficiency, inclusion and compromise, a governing group is elected to serve the state. All manner of opinions can be expressed and the citizen is entitled to choose a representative who will look after her/his interests within the governing group. That governing group is usually made up of a head of state or executive in charge of the overall functions of government, a legislative group that creates and amends the rules and regulations of how we live and co-exist, and a judicial body that deals with the application of those rules and regulations. Most states will only have elections for the executive and the legislative groups, allowing the executive and legislative to appoint those thought to best represent the judicial requirements of the state.

The main choice, however, is who do the citizens choose to best represent them and how many representatives are required for the state to function in a comprehensive and efficient manner. How do we find people willing to take on the task of being part of organising the day to day functions of the state to keep us free and secure, in good health, able to work and find time to enjoy the fruits of our individual endeavours? In other words, how to best support and allow the individual citizen to realise their full potential. 

 

Some citizens put themselves forward and actively seek the support of others to give them the opportunity to be part of the governing body, to be their political representative in government. Others are chosen by groups of citizens who have formed parties with a particular point of view as to how best to run and organise the state. Depending on the size of the state and its geography, there will of necessity be various levels of governing groups, again for the sake of inclusion, efficiency and compromise. The size of the overall governing group will be dependent on the evolution of the state and the decisions of the legislator representatives of the citizen. 

In the United Kingdom, there is a Parliament, a Scottish Parliament, a Welsh Parliament, a Northern Ireland Assembly, 404 local authorities (including metropolitan districts) and some local parish councils. There are 20,224 elected representatives to local authorities, 650 elected members of Parliament, 129 members in the Scottish Parliament, 60 elected members in the Welsh Parliament, 90 elected members in the Northern Ireland Assembly, which makes some 21, 931 elected government representatives looking after the interests of a current population of 68,135,845 citizens. Each representative could be said to be responsible for 3106 citizens. (Note that there is a new census being conducted as of 21^st March 2021). 

The average size of the electorate in Constituencies in England is 72,200. In Scotland 67,200, in Northern Ireland 68,300 and in wales 56,000. Also, there will be overlaps in that each parliamentary constituency will contain a number of local authority wards, which will have its own local authority representatives. As an example, there are 8 Lambeth Local Authority wards within the Vauxhall Parliamentary Constituency. Giving the citizens 24 local representatives and 1 Member of Parliament. As of December 2019, there are 88,659 electors in the Vauxhall constituency. Which means some 3500 souls represented by each of the 25 elected representatives for the area.  So even a calculation at a local level comes to roughly the same numbers; some 3500, give or take, citizens are supposedly having their interest looked after by an elected representative of some kind. 

There is however a major distinction to be drawn between the various tiers of representation. Local Authority representatives tend to more closely reflect the citizens they represent and are much closer to the political thinking of their constituents. The larger the sphere of influence of an elected administrative body, the wider the lack of political connectivity. Much of that disconnect depends on the electoral system of the state. This is particularly evident in the United Kingdom, where the disconnect between the general population and the government is akin to the Grand Canyon in Arizona.

The upper tier of the British Government is Parliament. 650 members are elected. The government formed by the political party with the most seats does not reflect the true nature of the electorate. If we assume three candidates are seeking office, Candidate A gets 10 votes, B gets 9 votes and C gets 8 votes, Candidate A with 10 votes is elected, despite the fact that in the constituency 17 electors did not vote for A. As far as policy is concerned, will A support the wishes of the 17 which may be completely opposed by the 10, or will A simply ignore the 17. There is a continual conflict of interests at play.  This is the current situation. The Conservative party have 365 elected members, 40 more than the other parties combined. This is called a majority and the government claims that is a mandate to carry out conservative policy. Yet on the electoral figures only 29.3 % of the entire electorate actually voted for the conservative party. This means that only 20.7 % of the population have decided who should direct and decide the future of the country, and the fate of over 68 million people, 54 million of whom, are effectively unrepresented. That’s four fifths of the population who are left without any real voice in Parliament. There is something very wrong.

It clearly suits those in power to have a system whereby the candidate with the highest number of votes, no matter what the percentage, is declared the elected representative for that constituency. Too much is at stake to allow this state of affairs to continue, that allows power for the few to continue; but, that has been the case in the United Kingdom for centuries. To call oneself a British Subject is very much the case. There have been great philosophical strides and great principles of law established in the United Kingdom, but not without immense struggle. 

It has been 1122 years since Alfred the Great passed on the Crown to Edward the Elder. It is not far off being passed on again. Indeed, Prince Philip is not well, and I believe 2021 will be gearing up to a prolonged wake and hours of media devoted to his life and service. No doubt Harry and Meghan will attend to much ballyhoo and comment of all sorts. All of that will continue to mask the reality that any truly democratic representative government is a long way off.  

LIVING OUTSIDE THE LAW

If people behaved decently, there would be no need for any prohibitive law. Codified laws go back to 2100-2050 BCE and, most likely, even before that to the earliest known form of writing in 3500 BCE some 5520 years ago. The law is on the whole concerned with the preservation of life and property. Both killing and robbing had the penalty of death attached. Codified laws detail the prohibitions expected of individuals. It’s the ‘thou shalt not’ admonition of behaviour. So far as the codes are concerned, the behaviours generally complained of have not changed, indeed some have been added, it is the punishment that keeps changing with the changing times. For the most part damage to property and the taking of life carried the more severe penalties. Injuries to the person or sexual offences against women less so; however, “if a man violates the right of another and deflowers the virgin wife of a young man, they shall kill that male”. Note the presumption of rights by husband over wife, but offenses of rape, excluding virgin wives, could be dealt with by a fine. Things have moved on in the last 5000 years. Not a lot, but moved on.

 

Rules and regulations have existed ever since humans formed into herds or congregations. Indeed, it is clear from scientific observations of a variety of species, that a form of pecking order exists in all kinds of groups. Such rules that were implemented and enforced, were used to keep the rulers in power and maintain order in the general population. As the law developed, in due course, with democratic practices and customs gaining ground, the concept that no one was above the law became the protocol. The rule of law would be paramount. This is the cornerstone of any society. No one can ignore or avoid the fact of its existence. All are subject to it and all are protected by it.  

 

That overriding rule does not change. What can change are the individual proscriptions and the ways they are interpreted, administered and implemented. Do’s and don’ts can vary depending on the prevailing attitudes and desires of the general population at any given time. There was a time when one did not hear or read the word fuck, which is now as common as muck. At one time one could even be prosecuted for its use.

 

Laws are made through our legislature. On the whole, the introduction of new laws, is an attempt to secure and protect the rights of individual citizens. This is done either through entirely new legislation, or, more often, a consolidation and improvement of previous legislation. The legislators do not always get things right and there are times when certain regulations must be repealed, replaced or at least modified to deal with current situations.

 

Laws are pretty much the same everywhere, although some actions or practices may be permitted in some area but not in others. It depends on the prevailing public will.; however, the public will is not always in tune with what is right, and sometimes what appears to be the public will is not at all what the majority want, it’s just being more loudly spoken, which does not make it right. Shouting louder and constant repetition of a falsehood does not make it true. It will always be a lie, but many might still believe.

 

But I digress. The real point of the rule of law is to secure and safeguard the freedom and integrity of the individual citizen. To ensure that the better angels of our nature prevail in all things, that each individual has a duty of care for the other. It is to ensure that the societies highest principles are kept in focus and adhered to. Respect, integrity and equality.

 

The moto of the French Revolution Liberté, Equalité, Fraternité is what it’s all about. So it is against the law to be racist, sexist or homophobic. Certain harmful prejudice is not to be tolerated. Violence and abuse are to be condemned, just as theft and dishonesty of any size or description, from the petty shoplifter to the Ponzi scheme con artist. Contracts, licencing, construction, trade, farming, professions of all sorts are regulated not only to protect the enterprise, but the consumers of these undertakings. Yet, although these laws and regulations are on the books, nefarious activities thrive. Penalties, no matter how severe, intended to deter, have little effect in curbing the offenders from their endeavours. Fear of death, loss of freedom, bankruptcy, shame and condemnation do not even enter into the equation. Is success at treachery, at causing severe loss and pain to others, so alluring? Are the riches gained thereby more pleasurable?

 

Blowing in the wind is not an answer but “to live outside the law you must be honest”.

THE NEW NORMAL - A SORT OF SOCIAL CONTRACT

The current news informing us of the reported success of the vaccines - leading to a reduction overall in new cases of covid 19 and reduction in numbers of reported deaths - is turning minds towards a return to life without the current restrictions, a life beyond the end of the pandemic. Getting back to normal seems to be the order of the day. But just what will be the new normal?

Rousseau

The idea of ‘The Social Contract’ has hardly moved on since Rousseau’s writing of 1762, and the argument that only the people, who are sovereign, have the right to legislate, is still very much in existence. Some monarchs, dictators and authoritarian regimes still have a problem with the concept of democracy, but even within some democratic nations, how legislation is conducted is not always so clearly democratically arrived at. Owing to the conventions historically arrived at in the various nations, leadership often finds it difficult to deal with criticism and opposing views of its performance. 

 

The primary concerns of most groups of humans are still food and shelter and being able to provide or procure those two things in peace and freedom. There are the self evident truths that all people are equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  We have evolved into a complex network of different social groups, living in very varied circumstances. For reasons of health and safety, for the ability to pursue life, liberty and happiness certain basic conditions must be put in place. Given the way we have evolved into rural, urban and nation states, we have also essentially become traders in goods and services, as well as being the consumers of those goods and services.

We expect our rubbish to be collected; our waste products washed away through sewers, treatment and recycling plants; our roads, rails and aircraft to run smoothly and to schedule; our shelters provided with water, decent plumbing, heating and electricity.  On top of that we want our wellbeing and health to be cared for and our safety secured. These are the very basics. In order to achieve this minimum foundation various administrative institutions have evolved to oversee the implementation of the required elements. Educational departments, agricultural departments, health departments, judicial departments, administrative and economic affairs departments, planning and general departments are created to cater for the varieties of goods, services, health and safety required. Within that structure numbers of individuals train in a variety of ways to help supply those necessities by becoming teachers, doctors, lawyers, law enforcement officers, architects, sanitation engineers, farmers, food suppliers, technicians of all sorts and planners. The list is almost endless. This is a world wide enterprise. Every single nation or group of people living together and sharing a space has some form of modus vivendi.

Varieties of individuals then choose which part of the enterprise they want to take part in. How and what they do, provides them with the necessities of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Each individual exchanges whatever it is they have or do for a fee, and uses that fee to exchange for whatever they feel they need from another individual who is willing to exchange what they have or do for that fee, and so on. Fees and exchanges vary, as do individuals. Some save up their fees and others dispense them as soon as they get them. Still others accumulate fees just to accumulate fees. Whatever the exchange there is always a fee, and that fee goes around.

What holds it all together is the civil agreement we have with each other, the social contract that we have a duty of care towards one another, that we do no harm. We have effectively made that the rule of law. That’s what makes and keeps us all equal. Humans however are volatile, inconstant, even whimsical, so there are differences of thought and opinion and it is not always easy to achieve equilibrium. That is why there are judicial departments to see to it that some form of equity is achieved between disputing individuals.  Judgements are given, for a fee, to render parity to a situation which has reached an impasse, to enable the parties concerned to move on. Judgements are sometimes not sufficient to the task on all occasions, which is why individuals from time to time, seek a second or even third opinion, but there is an agreed upon point at which there is a final decision. There are varieties of tribunals within the judicial department of every enterprise, and the members of the enterprise have agreed, through their very membership, to abide by the enterprises’ rule of law.  

This is all very basic stuff. Each nation has its own rules, but the rule of law, that which holds out the duty of care between individuals, and respect for the integrity and equality of every individual is universal. We know this to be self evident. We have been made to know this in particular because of the pandemic and the lockdown. It is a universal problem requiring a world wide solution to bring it to an end.  We all know this to be true.

One of the features of the lockdown is the varying mechanisms by which we have diverted ourselves from melancholy, boredom and tedium. The pleasures of Netflix, Amazon Prime and a variety of devices have given us programs and entertainment from all over the world. We have German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Korean, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Mexican, American, Scandinavian you name it films and television series, all of which demonstrate that Police Officers and serial criminals, lovers and haters, clowns and dramaturges exist in every part of the world and that they all tell the same basic plots which are understood by all, because we are all human.

Living on the street, without a home, or falling in love with a girl or boy, has no geography. It’s as good or bad in London, New York, Mumbai, Shanghai, Tokyo or Seoul.  We are all so much alike and require the same essential necessities, that discrimination of any kind is bewildering. There should be no need for a Civil Rights Act. There should be no need for a Sexual Equality Act. There should be no need for any Anti-discrimination Act of any kind. These are truths that are self-evident; and yet dogma, prejudice and ignorance prowl and infect the earth more virulently than any pandemic. Why is there not a fast tract vaccine program for that? Just what will be the new normal?

TARTUFFERY - A WORD FOR TODAY

Present preoccupations – finances coming out of the pandemic, Scotland’s tribulations and the flagrant political hypocrisy of the conservative party.

As to finances and the proclaimed budget, I put before you a quote from Paul Johnson, Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies:

“Mr Sunak had three challenges in this Budget – to ensure the right level of support for the economy over the next few months, to set about fixing the longer term public finances, and to deal with the longer term consequences of the pandemic, especially its unequal consequences. He has done a decent job of the first, arguably erring on the side of generosity.

He has given us a sense of where he wants to go on the second, but he still has a lot of work to do and his spending plans in particular don’t look deliverable, at least not without considerable pain.

Paul Johnson

On the third he has been silent. No money to deal with post pandemic priorities. No policies to deal with the inequalities that have opened up over the last year between rich and poor, old and young, more and less well educated. This is a big hole in the chancellor’s and the government’s policies, a hole which needs to be filled and soon if we are not to suffer a much worse hangover from this crisis than need be the case.”

As to the current Scottish rigamarole I can only point to Ruth Davidson’s arrogant self righteous calls for Ms Sturgeon’s resignation. She goes on about breaking the code and waste of public funds on litigation. What about Ms Priti Patel who was found by an independent enquiry to have breached the code and behaved as a bully, coupled with a waste of public funds, some £370,000 plus, to settle the legitimate claim for unfair dismissal of Sir Philip Rutnam, and the resignation of another public servant, Sir Alex Allan as result of the failure of the Home Secretary and Prime Minister to follow the code. I do not hear Ms Davidson crying out for the resignation of Ms Patel or the Prime Minister, or does that not matter? Is she aware of what has transpired? I note a particular silence from Just Boris and ‘Violette Elizabeth’ Patel as regards Ms Sturgeon’s future. Too embarrassed to say the least.

As well as the above, it would appear that as regards the £1bn for town funding, the first tranche of the fund is going to 45 designated areas, 39 of which are represented by Conservative MPs. That’ £866 million for conservative voters and £134 million for other voters. I appreciate that the amount for each town may be the same, but the conservatives only had 43% of those who voted which is only about 29% of the actual electorate. Note, we have a government which has been elected by barely 30% of the electorate. How democratic is that?

It is a government prepared to breach ministerial codes at will, breach international treaties in the same cavalier fashion, devote its primary assistance to its own supporters and still expects to occupy the high moral ground. If that is not hypocrisy, what is? Although, tartuffery sounds a more elegant description, but I do not imagine there will be any deus ex machina to save the day.

Again, the sun is out, it is a lovely day, I have been for a walk, a recent test for covid was negative, so what have I to complain about?

WHAT PRICE RECOVERY

On the 1^st February I made the comment

“In the United Kingdom, even although there is a conservative and nationalist government of sorts, there is still the realisation that to survive as a Nation there must be consensus and public support for the activities of the population. That includes health, education, welfare and the economy. Never before has a British Conservative Government borrowed so much money and used the whole of its treasury of taxes in an attempt to support working people, businesses of all sizes, the social services and the national health service. It has not, because of the very size of the task, been entirely successful, and there are many opinions as to how and where to spend that money. But it is being procured by a Conservative Government in ways that would make the ordinary conservative politician throw their hands up in horror. I am sure that many of them are, and cannot imagine how they are going to crawl back from the national debt. The whole premiss of a conservative Government is a small frugal administration that allows the private sector to soar with as little interference as possible. We are a long way from making that happen any time soon, if ever.” (https://fbuffnstuff.blogspot.com/2021/02/an-after-thought.html)

We now have an indication from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, just how he plans to begin clawing back the current National Debt. There is a rather long but interesting (if you’re prepared to take in budgetary talk) analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Their zoom video is on You Tube (see below). It is well worth taking in. It is one of many views being expressed about the current budget, but it is from a purported independent research institute whose stated principal aim is better informing public debate on economics to promote the development of effective fiscal policy. The opening remarks are delivered by the IFS Director Paul Johnson, who concludes his opening remarks with the following:

“Mr Sunak had three challenges in this Budget – to ensure the right level of support for the economy over the next few months, to set about fixing the longer term public finances, and to deal with the longer term consequences of the pandemic, especially its unequal consequences.

He has done a decent job of the first, arguably erring on the side of generosity.

He has given us a sense of where he wants to go on the second, but he still has a lot of work to do and his spending plans in particular don’t look deliverable, at least not without considerable pain.

On the third he has been silent. No money to deal with post pandemic priorities. No policies to deal with the inequalities that have opened up over the last year between rich and poor, old and young, more and less well educated. This is a big hole in the chancellor’s and the government’s policies, a hole which needs to be filled and soon if we are not to suffer a much worse hangover from this crisis than need be the case.”

The highlighting of the last few remarks are mine as I think they are of  particular significance and show that Mr Rishi’s conservative roots are coming into focus.

It should be noted that the talk doesn’t get going until 4 min and 15 second in, so you might move the cursor along to that point to avoid watching 4 mins of title card 

SAD FOR SCOTLAND - A POINT OF VIEW

I was recently asked if I understood what is going on in Scotland at present. On looking into the matter I have formed a view. I thank Oliver Cotton for drawing my attention to something I was trying to avoid looking at or getting into. I quite like Nicola Sturgeon and feel sorry that she is having to go through this nonsense, so here is my view:

Scotland is going through a rather sad episode of public exposure. This has been brought about by the fragile ego of the ex-first minister Alex Salmond. In many ways his conceit is akin to that of Donald Trump. He has made the mistake of assuming that a favourable result in a Court has the effect of completely vindicating his behaviour.

On a close reading of Mr Salmond’s evidence in Court during his criminal trial, he had admitted to certain actions and behaviour that, on many peoples’ view, was completely inappropriate. The Jury found that he was not guilty of criminal behaviour, although that verdict was a majority verdict, so at least two of the jurors must have felt that the behaviour was in fact criminal and not just inappropriate.  In any event, the fact is that he was cleared of criminal acts, and that fact seems to have turned his head.

His past behaviour and demeanour is not dissimilar to the braggadocio comments made by Mr Trump during his recorded conversation with Mr Billy Bush, some years ago:

 “…when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything…grab them by the pussy. You can do anything”.

The disturbing current scenario, has been brought about because Mr Salmond's self-belief has been rekindled by that ‘not guilty’ verdict.   He still does not get it. His behaviour was not and is no longer excusable as locker room banter. Human relations have reached a point where certain actions by men towards women are no longer appropriate, tolerable or acceptable. He on the other hand now believes that he has been excused and that it was all perfectly acceptable to do what he did, even though what he did brought about his arrest and criminal charges.  

His outrage at being charged and investigated, brought into play his calling for assistance from those he saw as friends and supporters. His affront at being under investigation by the Scottish Government correctly initiating an investigation into sexual misconduct was all part and parcel of his arrogance.  The unfortunate fact that the Government officials in charge botched the investigation, for reasons of conflict of interest, gave grist to his mill. The investigation was not wrong, it was just badly done. The Police investigation went ahead without difficulty.

Mr Salmond sued the Government over the botched inquiry and eventually pocketed a substantial sum for costs. This was later viewed as a shameful waste of public funds.

In his storming around for assistance he called upon the new First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. She had been his ally and protégé, he was sure she would come to his rescue and intervene, save the day, and all investigations would disappear. From what I can make out, Ms Sturgeon, out of blindness or kindness, may have had meetings and agreed to intervene. She clearly later realised that it was not in her power, not in her interest and certainly not in the interest of the Scottish Government to have anything to do with anything associated with Mr Salmond’s self-engendered predicament. Things would have to take their course.

During that period of time, Ms Sturgeon may have mistakenly kept silent about matters she perhaps ought to have exposed, but she clearly did so out of some misplaced loyalty to a former colleague. She avoided questions. Her inaction was an affront to the Salmond ego. That must have festered. So we have a man acquitted, a “reputation” supposedly restored, and a lashing out with conspiracy theories about those who would do him down. Now where have we seen that sort of thing recently?

The narcissist turning on friends and supporters appears to be de rigueur these days for party leaders who have lost their seat.

So what we are left with is opposition party leaders chomping at the bit to dislodge a formidable opponent, with phony outrage and claims of breaching the code of conduct. Breaching codes of conduct is all the rage in government these days. Note Ms Priti Patel, she’s allowed all sorts of licence to bully, as are many others in the current Government. It’s all very sad for Scotland.

ANGRY UPSET AND BITTER

Looking at the current state of affairs you can be forgiven, in my view, for not wanting any part of the human race. The behaviour of some of our citizens is beyond understanding. Attempts at fraud and deception permeate the atmosphere at almost every level. I have recently received two scam telephone calls on my mobile from different numbers, but essentially the same type of scam. I checked the numbers on line to find that one of the numbers appeared to emanate from Rostov in Russia, and the other could be either from the UK or Nigeria. There have been numerous reports of telephone scams of all kinds, attempts to defraud the Social Services, attempts both failed and successful to obtain government sponsored grants for alleged businesses and who knows how many other schemes developed to con and steal people’s savings and their taxes paid to governmental bodies in good faith. 

 

I had, for thirty years, been involved in criminal law, and had acted for numbers of people involved, for the most part, in what is termed petty crime. There was usually some element of mitigation behind the offences; unemployment, lack of skills, lack of education and arrested development for the most part. The daily frustrations, caused by the paucity of opportunities resulting from those deficiencies, become unbearable and whatever level of morality a person may have, is set aside, if only for survival. That does not, however, apply to the numbers of organised and technologically enhanced forms of thievery being exploited under the cloak of the current pandemic.  This technological age seems to have ushered in an entire universe of criminal activity over the internet and mobile phone network. The remoteness of the victim seems to override the hurt and pain caused by that activity as well as the shedding of any level of decency the perpetrators may possess.

What is even more disturbing is that those individuals who succeed in these enterprises are admired and lauded, by a great many individuals, for being clever and ‘outwitting the system’. The greater the crime the more admiration and support follows.

(Whilst typing this blog I have just received another scam call from what purports to be the National Crime Agency. This is the third time in two days from three different numbers. I have reported them to the Action Fraud Team. I am assuming some tracing of numbers could lead to something, but probably not. Clearly the prevalence of this activity is becoming overwhelming and any Action Fraud Team is hard pressed to find and deal with the organisers behind the scams.)

This attitude spreads from the very top of our institutions. Representatives who exaggerate their expenses, government officials who accept bribes and open off shore accounts, having the ability to have an off shore account or exclusive numbered accounts. The facilities available for organised thievery to function with impunity, to paraphrase Lady Bracknell, “seem to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution”

The perpetuation of such lies and deceit by the dictators and would be dictators around the world is now apparently unstoppable. That Vlad Putin can get away with murder of his detractors and imprisonment of his opposition has released a flood of Russian hackers involved in interference in other countries political systems and viral banking fraud. That Donald Trump can outrageously declare his office was stolen from him, evade his taxes, openly profit from his office, threaten those who oppose or criticise him and incite deadly riot is open season for any form of questionable morality to flourish, whilst brandishing a gun of course. The gangsters have taken over the asylum. Note as well the military in Myanmar.

The tragedy is that the activities of these supposed world leaders are seen and heard world wide. The perpetrators of outrage used to try to hide their activities, out of some vestige of shame and embarrassment. Not so in the 21^st century. It’s all out in the open and they don’t give a damn. There is no longer any sense of shame or decency. As Messrs Trump, Putin, Burmese Generals and their ilk would have it “Who’s going to stop me? Look at all the supporters behind me”.

Who are the ilk I’m missing out?

If the leaders are arch fraudsters and con men, then much of the general population will feel every justification in indulging in whatever skulduggery is available, either as supporters and workers for the regime, or by setting up an off the book’s fiefdom of their own.   

What we are actually left with is a police force and judiciary that arrests and punishes the many poor, skilless, uneducated, disadvantaged, just trying to survive individuals, who commit crimes of varying degrees of seriousness, but mostly petty, whilst the top racketeers display their perfidy like courting peacocks.  The adage that the rich and powerful get away with it, has never been more apparent than at present. Perhaps during the 1930’s, but it’s a close margin. 

 

Am I upset? Am I angry? Am I bitter? I look to the younger people and to the success of education. Statistically, in the UK at any rate, more people are going into higher education each year, on average. It is a very slow progression, but it is up. Yet again, I am drawn to the prophetic words of Lady Bracknell, ‘The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately, in England at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.’  Some of you may recall the Anti-Vietnamn War demonstrations in Grosvenor Square in May 1968 mostly attended by Students.  Given that those words of Oscar Wilde were written in 1894, clearly education had improved by 1968, hence prophetic. One hopes things will continue to improve.

The cloud and mist of this pandemic is not at all healthy for the mind, so forgive my outburst. I will try to do my exercises with a smile. The sun is out for however long, so enjoy it.