THE BUREAU - your indispensable news digest
8 Sept 2015
Migration Special
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| Helpless women and children asylum seekers terrorised by Greek police |
The Bureau says: where, oh where, is our compassion? When will this nightmare end?
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Reaction to That Picture:
Tony Blair
"I met that child’s father when I was in Syria as Grand High Officer for the Middle East. He was one of the small team of KSIs – knicker starchers and ironers – that the UN keep available for me there and I was enormously impressed by his dedication. A tragedy."
Fergus Keane, conscience of the BBC
"Something inside us all died that day."
Paloma Faith, musician
"Ola. It’s our duty to prevent something like this ever happening in Gibraltar again."
Charles Bronson, Britain's longest serving violent prisoner
"Of course I know where fucking Syria is but I was in denial about human pain until I saw that terrible picture. Something inside me changed forever and I am now giving up violence and have volunteered to accept a refugee in my cell. Join with me."
Orla Guerin, angry BBC elocution expert
"Som Tan changed for heifer today. [gathers density] Daybydayhellplus Vic Timms sale abhorredpactvassals. Buttdare tautsofabettor fuchsia now lie in descend. [pause] All Occurring, Grease."
Will Self
"The eleemosynary stands shiveringly helpless when confronted with the hubristic penumbri of evil. Just as the body in the swimming pool seen spayed from above at the conclusion of Wilder's Sunset Boulevard signifies the imminent draining away of all true emotion in the illusionistic Hollywood bowl, an epicene epitaph forewarning us of the impending aridity of emotion in the theatre of dreams just as climate change now turns the maudlin suburbs of the Angelic City to a literal desert.
The body, the sand, the maternal sea, that briny amniotic fluid that breaks and deposits us, gasping and wailing, upon the doomed littoral. As Thomas a Beckett sermonized we are all born astride the grave. A single fleck of spume detached itself from the surf, flowed massless and quantum through our shared and tentacled cyberspace to end up running down my cheek towards my formicated nasal hairs. Ecce homo. Life changed for ever that day."
Nigel Farage
"No, no, I’m not falling for that one. No comment."
Other News
Burning Issue
"Matthew Charles Tearle, 35, pleaded
not guilty at Stafford Crown Court to causing grievous bodily harm and
possessing a fireman. He is due to stand trial on 25 January." BBC website, September 2015.
This was, no doubt, a pre-trial hearing with neither the accused nor the jury present.
Mr Justice Oats: Possessing what?
Clerk: A fireman sir.
Defence counsel: My lord I request that this charge should be withdrawn without proceeding.
Oats: I'm sure you do, Mr Ferrari, I'm sure you do. But life isn't that simple, is it? What are your grounds?
Defence: There is no record of any complaint by the fireman, my lord.
Oats: Is that it?
Defence: That is the chief ground, my lord.
Oats: If that were grounds for dismissal Mr Ferrari we wouldn't have any murder trials, would we? What time is it?
Clerk: Twelve noon, sir.
Defence: With respect, my lord -
Oats: It must be luncheon soon. [loudly] And thousands of murderers would be prowling the streets, wouldn't they?
Defence: -
Oats: No, I think you are being premature Mr Ferrari. The crown has not yet opened its case and here you are asking for a dismissal! The question of the fireman's consent is not an issue until the circumstances are outlined. If, and I say if, because none of us yet know, it is a case of unlawful sexual activity under duress, or if the victim has been abducted, then the question of consent might arise. But that isn't yet the case, is it?
Defence: No, my lord.
Oats: It might well be that the possession referred to is in the context of an offensive weapon.
Defence: [long pause] With respect, my lord, [searches for correct tone] I can see that his axe or his hose could be construed, ipsus glutus maximus, as an offensive weapon, but surely not the fireman himself?
Oats: Why not? I am quicker than you, Mr Ferrari, since I can think immediately of an example, that of a German fireman wearing the old Pickelhaube, the one with the spike on top. Clearly if the fireman was very small and the accused were very large the latter could wield the former like a lance, couldn't he?
Defence: I think that takes us into the realm of the hypothetical, my lord.
Oats: Very well, I stand corrected Mr Ferrari. [Glares] Have you considered that the fireman might himself be a banned substance?
Defence: Frankly, my lord, I haven't. I cannot see how that could be the case.
Oats: It not only could be but probably is! The fireman, through contamination or tissue damage or otherwise in the course of his duties such as fighting a fire in a drug company warehouse could become, however innocently, capable of being partially consumed, or even, ahem, snorted, as a recreational but illegal substance. Have you considered that?
Defence: To be honest, my lord, no. It is difficult to conceive of a fireman being snorted -
Oats: For you, Mr Oats, yes. Not for me. [takes flight, as judges do] When the prosecution outlines its case we may well hear that this unfortunate fireman was involved in a fearsome blaze which led to the escape of fumes and substances that covered the poor man in white powder from head to foot. Now, suppose, Mr Oats, just suppose, that a colleague's hose thoroughly soaked him and a secondary blaze, a flash-fire as we call it, turned the powder into a viscous syrup. What about breaking wind?
[stunned silence in court]
Defence: I beg your pardon, my lord?
Oats: Breaking Bad.
Defence: [relieved] Ah.
Oats: A fine film. A very fine film. In that context of criminality this fireman of ours could be very much in demand. I presume this fire took place in winter and when the fireman encountered fresh air immediate crystallisation took place rendering the man a sort of chemical Goldfinger, ha, ha, ha.
[ uneasy laughter]
Oats: - capable of corrupting thousands, nay, millions of young minds, despite the complete absence of mens rea. Do you see my drift, Mr Ferrari?
Defence: [submits] Certainly, my lord -
Oats: Good. Let's have some luncheon.
[all rise]
Culture
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| Clever? Absolutely Brilliant |
The fourth volume of the letters of the matchless Isaiah Berlin has now been published (reviewed here ).
For decades the impressionable young men who were captivated by his Oxford lectures have tried by every means possible to pass his magic on to a wider public. At every attempt the yawns increase in volume and duration.
All very frustrating for the ageing media darlings who still carry the flame, like John Gray, for example, or erstwhile politician and television sex bomb Michael Ignatieff. Why, they ask themselves bitterly, won't the British give public intellectuals and "philosophers" like Berlin the respect they deserve? There are, after all, others living who justify such respect like, well, John Gray, that powerhouse of the third way who has just reviewed the letters, or Michael Ignatieff, thinker supreme. After all, doesn't Paris name its Metro stations after Thinkers?
It never happens and it never will. Decades ago the Hungarian George Mikes pointed out in his little classic How To Be an Alien that when the English describe someone as "clever" it is recognised as a terminal insult by everyone except the poor victim.
How to Be an Alien. Nicholas Bentley drew the pictures
But there is another reason why Berlin hasn't taken off. Selling him as a thinker is misconceived but as perhaps the greatest comic creation of the last century Izzy is miles ahead of Russell Brand, something the latest letters confirm on almost every page. Berlin was a chancer, a liar and a bluffer on a titanic scale who bottom-licked his way to the top - but as he aged the fibs caught up with him and this volume is filled with his hilarious attempts to talk himself out of tight corners.
He spread vicious and bitchy stories about almost anyone he considered a rival - that's everybody - and many of them got back to the victims whose complaining responses fill this volume. Perhaps the finest letter is the dense and lengthy epistle in which Berlin, who was happy to act as court jester to Princess Margaret and whose letters to the Prince of Wales here are described by one reviewer as "excruciating", explains in thudding but unconvincing detail how he is not in any sense a snob, let alone a loathsome social climber and incessant intriguer.
No, only when another Dickens comes along and places him squarely alongside Mr Pickwick will Izzy gain a true memorial: until then we'll have to make do with the unintentional absurdities that pursued him throughout his life - our favourite being the time that he was invited to a Winston Churchill lunch party. Churchill was anxious to hear his opinions but conversation was limited since there had been a mix-up, the wrong Berlin - American composer Irving - had somehow turned up and nobody was willing to tell Churchill that someone had blundered. One of the great cross-purposes chats of all time ended when Churchill asked his guest what he considered his greatest work. "White Christmas," was the answer.
The Arts
There is only one musical work of the last fifty-five years that we are absolutely certain is a classic for all time - the strange and wondrous 1968 Astral Weeks by the now knighted Van Morrison. The man himself followed up with Moondance, which Rolling Stone magazine thought might be its equal, but that fine album consisted of delightfully grounded rhythm and blues based material, like most of his other works, and sung of the pains and pleasures of everyday life; Astral Weeks, in contrast, exists in some space of its own, outside the decade in which it was produced, outside almost every convention of Anglo-American music, black or white and, at times, almost outside Morrison himself, so floating and tenuous are its connections with the concrete present.
Enough said. In a fitting and rather beautiful manner Van was granted the freedom of a concert to celebrate his seventieth birthday in the streets of Belfast - the city of Sandy Row, Madame George and pennies thrown from train carriages, a city which haunts Astral Weeks. They invited him to sing on Cyprus Avenue itself.
It was a lovely affair, burly Van in shades and pork pie hat sounding in good voice and - characteristically - not singing Cyprus Avenue, the old spoilsport. The band was tight and grown up. The audience, old and young, were entranced.
A treat.
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Advertisement
AJS writes: Julie Burchill, reviewing a novel about rock and roll and the music biz recently, noted that in over sixty years r&r and the biz had never produced a really good work of fiction.
Really? I thought it had, in the shape of No Stone Unturned, a book which is simultaneously a comedy whodunit, a brief history of the essence of rock and roll itself, a hymn of hate against the monsters who've always run the biz, and a strange tribute to the native Hopi who spend their weekends chanting to purify the evil of Los Angeles. And a search - No Stone Unturned - for the jewel which somehow survives, untouched by the monsters surrounding it, at the music's centre.
But then I wrote it, so I would, wouldn't I?
Van Morrison doesn't feature but the knowledgeable reader should be able to guess a few possible identities, the magical Peter Green (does he speak for the author?) among them.
Just go to Kindle http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=no+stone+unturned&rh=n%3A341677031%2Ck%3Ano+stone+unturned and find out for yourself that Julie has missed something.
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posted by john blacksmith # 2:23 pm
