The podgy paddy pasted

I’m delighted that yesterday the appeal court threw out BA’s injunction against Unite’s strike, though sadly only by a two to one majority. Today it was announced that the airline had made its biggest loss since it was privatised. I feel sorry for the shareholders. The only figure that has gone up since the podgy paddy took over is the size of his bonus.

Back to the eighteenth century

“In the trial of persons accused for crimes against the state, the method is much more short and commendable: the judge first sends to sound the disposition of those in power, after which he can easily hang or save a criminal, strictly preserving all due forms of law,” reported Gulliver to his Houyhnhnm master as part of his description of the English legal system in the early 18th century.
Things don’t appear to have changed much. In the preamble to his interview with Unite's joint-General Secretary Derek Simpson, John Humphrys suggested that under Thatcher the politicians had taken the initiative in clipping the Trades Unions’ powers, now it was business undertaking that task. As though there were a distinction. If the Whigs were the political arm of business in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the Tories have long since taken over that role. With the advent of Blairism the Labour Party ceased to be the political wing of the Trades Unions and the necessary counterbalance to the employers’ power was lost. For all practical purposes the state and business are the same, or more accurately the state is the local embodiment of international business.
In March 1933 a coalition government took power in Germany. On May 3rd the unions were dissolved and their leaders arrested. The German Labour Front was set up to replace it. Its leader declared: ‘… I know the exploitation of anonymous capitalism ,… we will build up the protection and the rights of the workers still further.’ Within three weeks a law was introduced to end collective bargaining and, in effect, to outlaw strikes. Our coalition government is more subtle in its approach - the BA strike has been grounded on a technicality - but the effect is the same. Derek Simpson eloquently spells out its absurdity in the link in the previous paragraph.

Misplaced Accents

Russell Crowe has been taking a lot of stick recently for the accent he employs in his latest film, Robin Hood. Though, interestingly, the commentators differ on whether it’s supposed to be a Yorkshire accent, an Irish accent or even in one scribe’s opinion a Salford accent like that of the Gallagher brothers. Not, one notes, one from Nottinghamshire which, according to the version of the legend I was brought up on, is the county from which he hailed. Most, however, dismiss his speech as a mish-mash of regional accents. And that I would have thought is the point. The vast majority of the film’s prospective audience won’t be living in the UK. As long as the actor has an ‘English’ as opposed to an American, Australian, or South African accent that’ll be good enough.
Owing to the Americanisation of British culture, like most English people I can distinguish between, say, an accent from the southern states and one from the Bronx. But I imagine there are as many different accents in Australia as there are in the US or the UK. Am I aware of them? No. Is any non-Australian? I very much doubt it. Having lived in Italy for seven years I notice the difference in the way people sound when we venture out of Marche to Lazio. But before I moved here I thought all Italians spoke like Gordon Richards playing Captain Bertorelli in ‘Allo, ‘Allo.
What do Australia, Italy and the UK have in common? They’re all minor players on the world stage. How do they differ? Australia was never a world power, both Italy and Britain in their day were the most powerful countries in the world. But only the British think they are still of much importance to anyone living outside their foggy little islands. Because its eastern seaboard was once ruled from London for a couple of hundred years, we imagine that we have a special relationship with the US which extends beyond fellating the President of the day. The Italians ruled Britain for twice that length of time; does that entitle them to special consideration by HMG? No merely abuse for being part of ‘the continentals’ conspiracy’ to threaten Britain’s mythical independence. So although the world would think there was something wrong if Tennessee Williams’ Big Daddy were played by an actor speaking with a Californian accent, it’s unaware that Eton educated Bond should sound like Boris Johnson rather than a Scottish milkman. America’s culture has a global reach, Britain’s doesn’t.
A final thought. If Russell Crowe were to use the authentic accent these critics claim he should, he’d be speaking a northern variant of Middle English and no-one apart from English Lit graduates would understand a word he said. Somehow I don’t think: ‘I is ful wight, god waat, as is a raa; By goddes herte he sal nat scape us bathe. Why nadstow pit the capul in the lathe? Il-​hayl, by god, Aleyn, thou is a fonne!’ would pull the punters in.

Labour: ?1; Britain & Europe: 0

Mervyn King predicted before the election that whichever party ended up winning would have to impose such savage cuts that it wouldn’t return to office for a generation. If he’s right, yesterday’s events could prove a double blessing for Labour: both of its competitors may end up shafted. It certainly won’t be one for Britain, or for the already faltering European project which offers the only, if increasingly faint, hope of a secure future for our grandchildren.
I read recently that an Italian baby survived for two days after being aborted. That’s nothing: a British fœtus has survived for almost 50 years and - God help us - has just been appointed foreign secretary. The poisonous abortion, pictured above with puppet-master Ashcroft, is more than the token pleb in the posh-boys’ government. Nor is the worst thing about him the permanent chuckle in his voice which makes you want to hit him. It’s his ghastly Little Englanderism. An ‘independent’ Britain doesn’t have the clout to stand up to globalised business; a federal Europe might. Who forced telecom companies to bring down mobile phone roaming charges? The EU. Who forced Ryan Air to compensate passengers stranded by the ash-cloud? The EU. Who are the principal beneficiaries: Sun and Daily Mail readers or international businessmen travelling on expenses? It’s a no-brainer really. Or would be if the fœtus and his friends didn’t bang the patriotic drum - aptly described by Dr Johnson as ‘the last refuge of a scoundrel' - to drown out the truth.

Fatboy bursts; ranter fined

Last Thursday, the exit polls having shown that Labour had lost, I prepared a post lamenting the fact and linking to a snapshot of what the future would hold under 'compassionate conservatism'. I was going to publish it as soon as the Cameroons and Cleggites had reached an agreement. Late yesterday afternoon, when I received a text from my wife while I was walking the dogs saying ‘Gordon has resigned’, that moment seemed to have arrived. However, by the time I got home everything had changed: Gordon’s resignation was not with immediate effect and it looks as though a Lib-Lab pact is a real rather than a merely theoretical possibility. Unfortunately I’d missed seeing fat-boy Boulton being wound up by Campbell on Sky News: it had reduced my wife to tears of hysterical laughter. However, thanks to the Guardian I was able to read a transcript this morning and, even better, thanks to You Tube I was able to see a recording of the interview.
We watch quite a lot of Sky News and it’s a fairly depressing experience. First there’s the underlying Murdoch agenda: there was a good example the Monday before last. I got home from walking the dogs to find my wife very excited by Gordon’s barnstorming speech at the Methodist Central Hall she’d just watched on Sky. Unfortunately, the next, and every subsequent, time it was reported all we saw was a shot of a heckler. The initial report was at 5pm BST when hardly anyone would have seen it. But this will have allowed Sky to reject any claim of anti-Labour bias: we showed the speech in full - it’s not our fault if no one was watching.
Secondly there are the dismal production values. Thirdly, there’s the collection of weirdos who present it. Martin Stanford, a cross between Mr Pastry and an ineffectual Classics master, is the least objectionable. Jeremy Thompson, perpetually narrowing his eyes as he pauses portentously between syllables is merely amusing. But then there are the zombie lookalikes: Jeff (sic) -pity his parents couldn’t spell - Randall, all synthetic anger, and the genuinely terrifying sports presenter whose name I can’t recall so sparing the reader the traumatic experience of a googled photo.

I don’t normally have much sympathy for people who use Twitter. They have taken narcissism to a whole new level beyond us sad folk who blog. At least we know that our bowel movements and how much marmite we put on our toast today is unlikely to be of interest to anyone. And we have the ability to expand an idea beyond a hundred and forty characters. The only time I’ve ever agreed with Cameron is when he described someone who tweets as a twat, though I suspect despite his expensive education he had no more idea than Browning of the word’s dictionary definition. However, this morning I was astonished to read of some poor bloke getting fined, and consequently losing his job, for sending a tweet saying he’d like to blow up the airport where he was stranded. The nanny state in a good mood is bad enough but when she’s lost her sense of humour she’s a monster. All Paul Chambers was doing was having a very brief rant. Heaven help me if the authorities ever find their way to this site.

Miscellany

Ryanair leads the way.

The Tories berated the government for its ‘slow’ handling of the problem of repatriating British tourists stranded by the Icelandic eruption. Though God knows what Brown could have done other than he did. However we can comfort ourselves that, once the Cameroons have taken over, the market place will handle things so much better than ‘big government’. As a foretaste we have RyanAir initially refusing to reimburse stranded passengers for their living expenses and only backing down because there is an EU law which requires them to honour their commitments. A pity Nick Clegg didn’t raise this during Thursday’s leaders’ debate in Bristol, rather than going along with the eurosceptics' twisted view of Europe and trotting out a story about how long it took the ‘bureaucrats’ to define chocolate. Given that most people loathe Ryanair even more than they do the EU, pointing out this example of EU legislation standing up for the rights of the ordinary person might have won some converts. But I think Ron Liddle has said all that needs to be about the LibDems’ boy wonder.
And it’s not only Ryanair showing the compassionate and caring side of the airline industry. Rather than putting stranded passengers on the first available flight BA is flogging off any spare capacity at hugely inflated prices. Their ‘explanation’ of this extraordinarily callous behaviour was laughable. Yet, to its eternal shame, Radio 4 reported it without comment.

Fictional selves.

In the days when I was paid to bore people about the English novel, I read an interesting article on the relation between real life and fiction. It suggested that novels were popular because we all try to create novels out of our lives: give them a shape, pattern and significance which they lack in reality.
At the time, Walter Mitty wannabes aside, fictionalising one’s life was largely for self-consumption. You told yourself that you were much, nicer, cleverer etc than other people appreciated. In other words you played the implied author - as distinct from either the actual author or the narrator - to the novel of your life. The advent of the net has greatly increased the scope for this activity. Some people create on-line avatars, others write blogs, and some restrict themselves to on-line reviews. The problem is that putting something on-line doesn’t feel real. You’re not speaking to someone face-to-face, there’s no one to argue back. It’s not even like publishing a book which involves meetings with publishers and editors. If you’re writing a blog you’re fairly safe: it’s the twenty-first century equivalent of vanity publishing. Apart from those forming part of an on-line edition of a newspaper or magazine they’re largely unread. On-line reviews, though, as Orlando Figes has discovered to his cost are a different matter. Interestingly he chose the pseudonym ‘Orlando-Birbeck ’ when writing his reviews. Hardly the most cunning way of preserving your anonymity if you’re a professor at Birbeck College. But I don’t think he realised that this was an issue. After all he was writing for the web: and that’s not like writing for the TLS. It’s merely an extension of a private conversation with yourself, part of creating your implied author. As a high-powered academic Figes probably doesn’t read Science Fiction. If he did he’d know that there are certain points where it’s possibly to cross unwittingly from one parallel universe to another. Unfortunately for Orlando he’d stumbled upon just such a point. Unlike Ariosto and Woolf’s eponymous protagonists his creation straddled both the real and the virtual worlds.

Gordon's Ashes

We were due to go to the UK last Saturday, returning today. Thanks to Iceland not only helping to bugger up our banking system but disrupting our travel arrangements, we didn’t. So our daughter was unable to go out with her friends on Saturday evening, have lunch with us and her aunt on Sunday, or a birthday dinner with us and her brother and his wife on Monday.
And, if we’re to believe the Tory shadow minister for transport, it was all Gordon Brown’s fault. A line which will no doubt be taken up by the Sun and the Daily Mail and purveyed to and swallowed by the half-wits who imagine that the Tories - even ‘eccentric’ ones like Samantha Cameron who went to day school - have the common people’s interests at heart.
While the volcanic eruption wasn’t Gordon’s fault, the length of the disruption may have been avoidable. If it were, though, we should look somewhere other than No. 10 for those responsible. To those same airline bosses - the repulsive Willy Walsh pre-eminent amongst them - who have successfully clamoured for the skies to be re-opened. Since 2008 the ICAO has been trying to get the airlines and the manufacturers to agree to what constitutes a safe level of volcanic ash. They wouldn’t because airlines were afraid of the potential damage to their reputation and finances in the event of one of their planes being lost due to dust after an all-clear had been announced, with a fear of legal actions arising from the deaths of all those who had been on board. As one source at the ICAO put it: "The bottom line is that there is a huge liability issue for the industry here, so they have been super cautious on providing information. If they say it is safe, and there is an accident, they will get slaughtered." However, faced with losses running into hundreds of millions as the effect of Eyjafjallajokull spread and lingered into a sixth day, it was the airlines who began to call for the regulators to determine and set such a safe threshold, to avert the severe financial consequences of planes idle across Europe and passengers claiming refunds for cancelled journeys.
In other words, the airlines are interested in passenger safety if a threat to it could affect their profits. If it threatens those profits, they’re not. And fair enough, one might say: they’re commercial enterprises not charities. What sticks in the craw, though, is their hypocrisy, pretending that they’re motivated by concern for their stranded passengers rather than their balance sheets. That the prolonging of the crisis was caused not by that self-same greed, but by the Labour government.
And it’s not just the airlines who peddle a phoney concern for their customers’ well-being. This morning - the 21st April, the day flights are resumed - I received an email from Hertz which, inter alia, read:

Hertz Special Measures to Help Customers Affected by Volcanic Ash Crisis.

As a member of Hertz #1 Club we want to give you an update on the specific
measures we have put in to place to support our customers who are trying to get
home following the closure of air space due to the volcanic ash situation. …

… 100% refund on prepaid rates if customers cancel online or by telephone at
any point prior to the pick-up date, if their travel has been affected by the
volcanic ash disruption (up to 27th April).

However, when I went on to their site last Friday, when the crisis was in full swing, to cancel the car I’d booked I found it would cost me £45 to do so! So when the ban was there and people would have been glad of the saving it wasn’t on offer, now that the emergency’s over and hardly anyone qualifies for the concession it’s available.
But they’ll be able to parade their compassion, and show how they were doing something. Unlike that incompetent in No. 10 who had to be pushed by good old Willy Walsh to get us airborne again.