Readers
of Esquire
magazine have voted Penelope Cruz the sexiest woman on the planet,
which I consider to be an insult to hundreds, if not thousands, of
other Spanish women. And quite a few British women too. Not that she isn't attractive, of course.
Cataluña:
Who the hell really knows what's going on but it seems some sort of
pro-independence jamboree will certainly take place on Nov 9.
Possibly involving 'informal but legal' voting for something or
other. Perhaps motherhood and apple pie.
Talking
of oddities . . . I can't resist quoting this view from another
Times columnist, Tim Mongomerie, on the EU: The
laboratory case of a project run by elites. Whenever voters use
referendums to object to ever closer union they are ordered to
reconsider. After Denmark and Ireland had the audacity to question
the European project they were sent back to the ballot box. And what
is the result of an EU run as much by bureaucrats, central bankers
and judges as by heads of government? The eurozone and mass youth
unemployment; a climate change regime that has diminished
manufacturing without cutting global emissions; and a system of
agricultural subsidies that transfers wealth from families struggling
to afford the grocery bill to rich hobby farmers in rural France and
Bavaria. As
I frequently say - Welcome to the Age of the Bureaucrats.
Spanish/English:
In a film I saw last night, "For fuck's sake!" was
translated in the subtitles as Por el amor de Diós. Or 'For
the love of God'. A tad ironic, I thought.
This
is a fascinating article on on the validity of certain rules of
English grammar and syntax. It confirms that the less/fewer battle has been lost. By the way - Guardian
comment-makers must be the politest in the world. One of them
provided this gem: "The
record for ending a sentence with prepositions is
5, by a small child whose parent had brought the wrong story book
up at bedtime. She said 'What did you bring that book I didn't want
to be read to out of up for?'
Talking
of English . . . I wonder who the genius was who said "I can't
be arsed with all the genders, noun-adjective agreements and verb
changes in our Teutonic language. Let's do without them. Life will be
a helluva lot easier." We owe him/her an awful lot.
Finally
. . . Politics: Everything's relative: Here's a (justifiable)
moan from David Aaronavitch of The Times about
British politicians: He should be happy he doesn't live here,
where politicians are equally useless but corrupt as well. Roll on
the revolution. Stop that useless pan-clanging and wheel out the
tumbrils!
Instead
of facing up to real challenges, our shabby, short-sighted
politicians fail to offer us any sort of leadership
When
I was a teenager there was a fashion for something called primal
therapy. The main book espousing this, by a man called Arthur Janov,
was entitled The Primal Scream and had the painting by Edvard Munch
on the cover. After this last few months of politics in Britain I
want to let out a primal scream. I need to go down to the woods, roll
around in mud, murder squirrels and yell at the Moon. Instead I have
this column and it will have to do. As you read it, imagine my byline
picture is in Harry Potter’s Daily Prophet and watch it shrieking
and holding its face.
Our
main political parties are so broken and so unable to fix themselves
that you must either weep for them and all the good people in them,
or you must hate them. Perhaps you can do both.
The
world has changed and they have been unable to. The world needs
long-term solutions and proper arguments, and they offer us nothing
but bickering and sticking plasters. Little sticking plasters for big
wounds. The country needs reform and they act, in effect, to block it
or to enact only those changes that have least impact on them.
It
is less than a month since we nearly lost the country we live in, but
this week the issue of how to deal with additional devolved powers
for Scotland, as promised before the referendum, turned into a
jostling for advantage over the implications for England. The
Conservative party has been advised by its election supremo, Lynton
Crosby, that it can make English resentment of Scottish MPs voting on
English questions into an election issue. So where the obvious need
is for a constitutional settlement based on a debate about the
nation’s governance, the Tories want to get a row going for their
election manifesto.
Labour’s
call for a constitutional convention is sensible but can also be read
as a self-interested attempt to delay the moment its Scottish MPs
have to give up influencing English decisions.
Why
did we not tackle our out-of-date and unrepresentative constituency
boundaries? Because backbench Tories blocked reform of the Lords that
would have depleted their own powers and the Lib Dems retaliated by
taking the Conservatives’ candy from them. When the referendum on
the alternative vote was held the Conservatives opposed it and more
Labour people campaigned against than for it. Why? As I wrote at the
time, “to use the old electoral system to shoehorn voters into
propping up a Lab-Con duopoly, which an increasing number simply
don’t want”. Watch that one come home to roost as Ukip candidates
threaten to win on 30-40 per cent of constituency votes, often
despite belonging to the party that most people least want to win.
For
months now political correspondents have been coming back from their
whisperings on the Capitol with tales of how there will be no
televised debates — whatever anyone says in public — before the
next election. Never mind that such debates helped to draw voters
into the discussion in 2010 — Labour and the Tories regard the
involvement of third and fourth parties as threatening and will find
an excuse for getting out of them.
Tearing
your hair out? Are politicians such box office, is politics so
popular, is the public so engaged that we can easily dispense with
what few tools we have? If they took any kind of a longer view the
parties would be banging on broadcasters’ doors demanding more
debates.
Voters
instinctively understand, I think, that politicians are terrified of
them, too terrified to tell them the truth. They watch as some of the
politicos flatter the obsessives among us with their attention to
prejudices. More Tory MPs asked about Europe yesterday in prime
minister’s questions (which was the usual embarrassing bear garden)
than about anything else.
So
everything is easily sorted and easily divided. Labour created the
economic crisis (so what was sub-prime?), the Tories are privatising
the NHS (so who will have to pay?), Lord Freud wants to murder the
disabled, Ed Miliband is a closet Chávista.
The
voters can see the electoral percentages being calculated by people
who make a pretence of caring about good government. What problem in
the United Kingdom today is, for example, solved by a further cut in
inheritance tax for the children of the relatively wealthy? Yet David
Cameron advances the idea as the election approaches and Labour dare
not say that it’s wrong. Why call something a mansion tax when it
mostly will not be levied on anything that looks remotely like a
mansion?
On
immigration neither the Tories nor Labour dare to say what was in the
Times editorial yesterday, that immigration has been a solid benefit
to Britain — although voters know very well that they think it and
also believe that they can’t do anything much about it. Not without
leaving the EU.
In
foreign policy the parties are so spooked by possible reaction to
military involvement in the war against Islamic State that they spend
more time talking about what they won’t do than what they will. Is
that leadership? Shall we devolve foreign policy to local
neighbourhood watch groups?
Despite
the growth of Ukip and the SNP and the ever-more purposeful bumblings
of Boris, people know that the future does not lie in anti-politics
or celeb-politics. As the Lib Dems have discovered (and in their
hearts secretly knew) when you are always going to be in opposition
you can promise a wish with every rub of anyone’s lamp. But who
wants Nigel Farage running our policies on ebola or deciding how to
deal with Vladimir Putin? Or even Boris?
Again,
things have changed. In an ultra-sophisticated media-saturated
society like ours, people know better how to read the claims and
characters of those appealing for their support. What a bizarre
misreading of his listeners was it for Ed Miliband to risk his
pre-election conference speech for the gimmick of reading without
notes. He confused form with content, which is what they do not do.
Lead.
Tell people the truth. Listen, but always argue. No false
reassurances. Offer the voters a vision of the long-term. Cut out the
hack phrases and the alienating point-scoring. And if, after that,
they don’t like you and vote you out, well at least you won’t
have done any bloody harm. Owoooowww!