What..?
We are currently having an outbreak of female crane flies at school, otherwise known as daddy-longlegs. And no, I don't know why the female is called after the male either, but the patriarchally-oppressed insect is a right little nuisance. Hopefully it's just the crane fly season.
One advantage of living in a boarding school is that my laundry is done and returned, neatly folded. The disadvantage if this is that all my clothes have got nametags. If ever I go out on the pull, I must remember not to wear any tagged clothes. The possible embarrassment would be like Bridget Jones, only worse. I can get away with wearing socks that have my name on, but any would-be boyfriend would surely be slightly alarmed at any supposedly mature and sophisticated guy apparently living in imminent peril of mislaying his boxers.
Amongst all this has been a sudden raft of nonsense, and not only from the Lower Fourth. A letter to today's Telegraph from Dr Nick Brooks of the UEA actually stated:
'The advent of civilisation was not entirely positive, associated as it was with increased inequality.'
Damn the trilobite with aspirations! If the ambitious plankton had known that millennia of evolution would result in such a desperate asseveration, he would have turned his back and floated quietly away.
And then there's Ashley Cole. To be ruthlessly fair-minded, I have no real problem with footballers' wages; Cole is one of the world's finest left-backs and he's entitled to ask for a market salary. I can also appreciate that a relatively small amount (of anything) can assume vastly inflated importance on principle.
But.
How far removed from reality do you have to be to reject £55,000 per week as derisory? You or I or the next person in the street is lucky to make that in a year; and even if that isn't the point, would anybody notice the difference between £55,000 and £60,000 per week?
Maybe if you're that rich you do notice. After all, it does add up to £250,000 pa. But it reminds me of Father Brown's comment (I paraphrase): 'to be clever enough to make all that money, you have to be stupid enough to want it.'
Finally, I'm beginning to lose all hope in David Cameron. And as if his speech on reconfiguring the US-UK alliance wasn't bad enough, along comes Andrew O'Hagen in the Telegraph to reinforce the suspicion that Cameron looks increasingly like a bien pensant poseur.
O'Hagen is a writer and commentator for whom I have a great liking, but his column struck the most cringeworthy chord in British informed opinion, that which treats America like an embarrassing relative.
For one thing, as I've said before, it's sheer posturing to treat Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, however disgusting, as equivalent with suicide bombers. For another, O'Hagen seriously seems to be suggesting that Britain should oppose for the sake of opposition, an absurd position even if you call it 'independence' (O'Hagen is far from alone in promoting this fallacy, sadly). For another, the US cannot be seriously accused of 'misunderstanding whole cultures and creeds'; at least, not if my three years in the country are any guide.
Most disturbing are two of O'Hagen's final comments. First, he describes President Bush's remark that 'you're either with us, or with the terrorists' as 'playground bravado.' Bush was much sharper than - to be fair - that comment might at first appear. The President's point was that there is no neutral ground here, no point of triangulation, and to make the attempt is to create a vacuum that will not be respected.
Second, he writes that 'Cameron has said he is 'sceptical of grand schemes to remake the world', and that, to any truly open ear, is a statesman speaking. It should be beneath a writer of O'Hagen's quality to use the sly assertion that anybody who doesn't agree is an idiot, but use it he does. And although Cameron would be cheered by traditional Tories - Lord Salisbury springs to mind - this may be why, on politicalcompass.org, I wound up on the Authoritarian Left. Even if chary of grand schemes, the little details should have a grand end in view, or else why enter politics?
Cameron seems to be pushing cosy pragmatism as a vote-winning technique. It may well work: yet for all I'm an Augustinian, and therefore sceptical of Utopian visions, the traces of Tony Blair's idealism will, like the Cheshire Cat's grin, linger long after the man himself. It is a sad irony that he was actually doing the work of the United Nations...but that is another blog entirely. Iraq was a far more justifiable war than the Falklands; but then, I think we can safely assume that David Cameron would not have fought that war either.
I think we can also safely assume that if David Cameron had been an MP in the 1830s, he would have scorned Wilberforce on the grounds that he was 'sceptical of grand schemes to remake the world.'
One advantage of living in a boarding school is that my laundry is done and returned, neatly folded. The disadvantage if this is that all my clothes have got nametags. If ever I go out on the pull, I must remember not to wear any tagged clothes. The possible embarrassment would be like Bridget Jones, only worse. I can get away with wearing socks that have my name on, but any would-be boyfriend would surely be slightly alarmed at any supposedly mature and sophisticated guy apparently living in imminent peril of mislaying his boxers.
Amongst all this has been a sudden raft of nonsense, and not only from the Lower Fourth. A letter to today's Telegraph from Dr Nick Brooks of the UEA actually stated:
'The advent of civilisation was not entirely positive, associated as it was with increased inequality.'
Damn the trilobite with aspirations! If the ambitious plankton had known that millennia of evolution would result in such a desperate asseveration, he would have turned his back and floated quietly away.
And then there's Ashley Cole. To be ruthlessly fair-minded, I have no real problem with footballers' wages; Cole is one of the world's finest left-backs and he's entitled to ask for a market salary. I can also appreciate that a relatively small amount (of anything) can assume vastly inflated importance on principle.
But.
How far removed from reality do you have to be to reject £55,000 per week as derisory? You or I or the next person in the street is lucky to make that in a year; and even if that isn't the point, would anybody notice the difference between £55,000 and £60,000 per week?
Maybe if you're that rich you do notice. After all, it does add up to £250,000 pa. But it reminds me of Father Brown's comment (I paraphrase): 'to be clever enough to make all that money, you have to be stupid enough to want it.'
Finally, I'm beginning to lose all hope in David Cameron. And as if his speech on reconfiguring the US-UK alliance wasn't bad enough, along comes Andrew O'Hagen in the Telegraph to reinforce the suspicion that Cameron looks increasingly like a bien pensant poseur.
O'Hagen is a writer and commentator for whom I have a great liking, but his column struck the most cringeworthy chord in British informed opinion, that which treats America like an embarrassing relative.
For one thing, as I've said before, it's sheer posturing to treat Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, however disgusting, as equivalent with suicide bombers. For another, O'Hagen seriously seems to be suggesting that Britain should oppose for the sake of opposition, an absurd position even if you call it 'independence' (O'Hagen is far from alone in promoting this fallacy, sadly). For another, the US cannot be seriously accused of 'misunderstanding whole cultures and creeds'; at least, not if my three years in the country are any guide.
Most disturbing are two of O'Hagen's final comments. First, he describes President Bush's remark that 'you're either with us, or with the terrorists' as 'playground bravado.' Bush was much sharper than - to be fair - that comment might at first appear. The President's point was that there is no neutral ground here, no point of triangulation, and to make the attempt is to create a vacuum that will not be respected.
Second, he writes that 'Cameron has said he is 'sceptical of grand schemes to remake the world', and that, to any truly open ear, is a statesman speaking. It should be beneath a writer of O'Hagen's quality to use the sly assertion that anybody who doesn't agree is an idiot, but use it he does. And although Cameron would be cheered by traditional Tories - Lord Salisbury springs to mind - this may be why, on politicalcompass.org, I wound up on the Authoritarian Left. Even if chary of grand schemes, the little details should have a grand end in view, or else why enter politics?
Cameron seems to be pushing cosy pragmatism as a vote-winning technique. It may well work: yet for all I'm an Augustinian, and therefore sceptical of Utopian visions, the traces of Tony Blair's idealism will, like the Cheshire Cat's grin, linger long after the man himself. It is a sad irony that he was actually doing the work of the United Nations...but that is another blog entirely. Iraq was a far more justifiable war than the Falklands; but then, I think we can safely assume that David Cameron would not have fought that war either.
I think we can also safely assume that if David Cameron had been an MP in the 1830s, he would have scorned Wilberforce on the grounds that he was 'sceptical of grand schemes to remake the world.'
posted by BoB at 2:54 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home