Homosexual Frogs (2)

Some people think that "A" level exams are now so easy that an "A" grade is almost without value.

Some people think that office workers should be allowed to stand on a chair to change a light bulb without getting a mate to hold the chair steady first.

Some people think that, in our zeal to protect children from child molesters, we have started to check the criminal records of people whose criminal records don't really need to be checked.

Any one of those things might be true; but it is hard to see what each of them has in common, and what any one of them has to do with the belief that "gay" is a more polite word than "pooftah". Yet they are all routinely brought under the all embracing umbrella of Political Correctness. Kids aren't allowed to fail...elf and safety won't let you do anything...all adults are assumed to be paedophiles...It's Political Correctness Gone Mad.

This is, I think, a relatively new development. When the right first discovered Political Correctness -- in the 1980s -- they didn't really want it to mean much more than "hypersensitivity", especially, hypersensitivity about race. It might be okay to insist that we say "black person" rather than "nigger". It might even be okay to ask us to avoid using "black" in contexts like "accident black spot" or "black day for this country".[1]  But to tell us to call blackboards "chalkboards" and blacksmiths "smiths" -- well, that was Political Correctness. But they've more recently decided that anything from putting frosted glass in swimming pool windows to asking Christmas grottos to conform with fire-regulations are examples of Political Correctness Gone Mad.

So: what are the kinds of people who talk about Political Correctness talking about when they talk about Political Correctness? A rummage around the interweb has left me none the wiser. Mr Google first directed me to a website called Political Correctness: The Awful Truth which lists 25 areas in which Political Correctness has "replaced "British politics". 

For example: In 2004 a football coach was censured for calling a player a "fucking lazy nigger". [2] This was an example of Political Correctness, because (we are assured) the coach would not have been in trouble if he had called the man a "fucking lazy bastard" or a "fucking lazy wanker" -- even though this would have been equally rude.

Mr The Awful Truth thinks it is quite obvious to everyone that some races really do have inherent characteristics: Jews really do like to work in finance, Asians really do like to open corner shops, Chinese really do like to run take-aways. It is only Political Correctness that stops us from saying so. Because obviously, no-one does ever say that Chinese Take-Aways are often run by Chinese families. Only renegades like Mr The Awful Truth dare point this kind of thing out.

He rehearses some standard arguments for thinking that the prohibition of fox hunting was a bad idea: the fact that it was implemented anyway proves that Political Correctness had "made an ass of common sense".

It is obvious, he says, that children nowadays are allowed to do whatever they like -- just go to any supermarket and observe the state of anarchy there -- and it is equally obvious that this is the fault of "PC legislation" against smacking and caning. "I can only assume that the government is going all out for 100% anarchy in the classroom. The consequences for society will now be dire. Anyone with an ounce of common sense can see that." [3]

He concedes that slavery was a Bad Thing, but adds:

"So what I can't understand is why the PC Brigade is making so much fuss about something that happened hundreds of years ago and no one who was involved with it (on either side) is alive today. So who should apologise and to whom and why?...

If we are into apologies for past atrocities, why don't they call on Germany to apologise for two world wars and the slaughter of six million jews? Many of the people involved on both sides are still alive today."

Because Germans are well known for not having any guilt about their Nazi past. And there has been no movement to arrest and punish former Nazis.

Obviously.

Now, you might want to argue in favour of any of these points. Maybe "nigger" can be used as "low abuse" without actually implying that the speaker is racist -- in the same way that "wanker" can be used as low abuse without us inferring anything about the speaker's views on self-manipulation. Maybe you think that retrospective apologies for the slave trade are a bit daft and that it's pretty silly to stop half a dozen rich dudes from chasing foxes through the countryside but allow farmers to keep chickens in horribly cramped conditions. I'd be prepared to defend anyone one of Mr The Awful Truth's positions, apart from the one about inherent racial characteristics. [4]

But what do they all have in common? In what ways are they all examples of a thing called Political Correctness. Fortunately, Mr The Awful Truth tells us:

"the term Political Correctness includes:

1) Doing the reverse of what common sense would suggest

2) Inconveniencing the innocent while making life easier for the wrong do-er

3) Not telling the truth in case it offends

4) Changing the language where you perceive it may offend

5) Doing exactly the opposite of what you preach

6) What you do has the effect of making the problem you were trying to cure far worse

7) Doing ridiculous things just for a political reason

8) Favouring a minority just for a political reason"

Or, in short: Political Correctness is anything which I personally don't agree with. 

This doesn't help very much. But hold on to point 1, "common sense". We may come back to it.

Another website, called Our Civilisation is a little bit more helpful. Although it is couched in comically over-the-top rhetoric ("PC is a communal tyranny that erupted in the 1980s" "Political Correctness is a social dementia") it starts out with a perfectly coherent definition. Political Correctness is about limiting freedom of speech. It claims to be about the avoidance of offence, but in fact, no-one has any right not to be offended. At one point, the writer Mr Civilisation seems to be veering to an actual definition: that Political Correctness is the idea that behaviour which was previously a matter of social convention became a matter of law. We used to say "If you say 'nigger' everyone will think you are an idiot and not want to be your friend" but we now say "If you say 'nigger' you will taken to court and fined."

Political Correctness, according to Mr Civilisation holds that "particular ideas, expressions and behaviour, which were then legal, should be forbidden by law, and people who transgressed should be punished." It's very doubtful if Political Correctness of this kind has ever existed: it is very doubtful that there has ever been a legal requirement backed up with legal sanctions that you should say "woman" rather than "lady" or "visually impaired" rather than "blind" or that anyone ever said there should be. But if there had been they would have been examples of Political Correctness. 

This is quite helpful. As a matter of fact, there is no such thing as a horse with an ivory horn on its forehead. But if there was, it would be called a unicorn: we know what we are talking about when we talk about unicorns, and if we ever saw one, we would recognise it.

The best Mr Civilisation can come up with is a law from Canada which makes it a crime to advocate genocide and another which makes it a crime to "wilfully promote hatred against an identifiable group" ("except in private conversation"). Which rather implies that he thinks that before the social dementia set in, it would have been okay for me to make a public speech stirring up hatred against Ruritanians -- even to stand up and say "I think that we should wipe out all Ruritanians from the face of the earth". Saying that this is no longer okay seems to be a very mild form of social tyranny.

He has, in fact, a very strange theory that since our parents did, in fact, use terms like "nigger", "poof" and "coon" our declaration that such words are not acceptable amounts to a rejection of the values of the generation which won the Second World War. Political Correctness is nothing more than an act of infantile rebellion, in which we deliberately "revere" the people and value that our parents despised, go against tradition, etc etc etc

This slippage seems to happen rather a lot among people who believe in the International Political Correctness Conspiracy. It is never quite clear whether they think that while it may be offensive to call a gay man a poof, it shouldn't be illegal to do so; or that it isn't offensive to call a gay man a poof because the term isn't really all that insulting; or that it doesn't matter if the term is insulting because common sense (i.e my unexamined assumptions) tell me that I ought to hold gay men in contempt. Another version, particularly prevalent in the Nasty Mail, is to say that it may or may not be offensive to call a gay man a poof, but that no-one complains when gay men call straight men -- I don't know --"breeders" or something -- which shows that gay men have got the real power and straight people are the oppressed minority. And that it gives you cancer.

Finally, the disturbing Campaign Against Political Correctness -- the one initially set up by Laura Midgely and her husband to prevent homosexual frogs being given the same rights as heterosexual frogs -- appears to use the term Political Correctness primarily to mean "anti-racist legislation". In its section about "ridiculous" examples of Political Correctness it cites all the usual suspects: bakers shops selling "gingerbread people"; prison officers being asked to call inmates "Mr"; changes to the text of Enid Blyton's books. [5] But the examples of "dangerous" Political Correctness it cites are mainly examples of "positive discrimination" or "affirmative action" -- local councils trying to encourage black people to become police officers or fire fighters, or as the stories put it, "banning white people".

Many of these stories are drawn from the pages of the Nasty Mail and the Nasty Express. Some of them can be very easily debunked: the idea that anyone banned the display of England flags during the World Cup is just. not. true. Many of them contain quotes from concerned citizens. Well, from two concerned citizens, at least.

John Midgely of the Campaign for Politcal Correctness said "What is the world coming to when you are not allowed to put a bit of chocolate sauce on a cone."

John Midgley, co-founder of the Campaign Against Political Correctness, condemned the plans, saying people should be "proud to celebrate" Guy Fawkes night. "This idea is from the same school of thought that says you can't celebrate Christmas or call a chairman 'a chairman'. It undermines our traditions and way of life," he said." [6]

Laura Midgley, of the Campaign Against Political Correctness, added: "It is totally ridiculous political correctness, nobody wants to talk about gingerbread people. They are what they are. It is not just an innocent mistake. Whoever did it, I hope they will think long and hard about it. If these sorts of things go unchallenged, they become the norm." [7]

It would be very interesting to know what relationship the Campaign Against Political Correctness has with these newspapers. Do the Express phone up the Midgleys for a quote whenever they find a sensational breaking story about someone's biscuits being the wrong shape? Or do, perchance, some of these stories originate in press-releases that the CAPC has sent to the papers?

The site reproduces an essay by John Midgley which -- apart from one apocryphal reference to "person hole covers" -- is a rant against the McPherson report into institutional racism in the police force. Amongst the colourful metaphors ("According to the Commission for Racial Equality, there must be an all singing, all dancing plan that stretches like the tentacles of an octopus into all of the other plans, strategies and visions that the law dictates that your school must have")  the claim seems to be that McPherson involved the police, and therefore other institutions, in a lot of un-necessary paper-work and form-filling. For all I know this might be true. But where is the connection between "When the government tried to tackle institutional racism in the police force, they went about it in an unnecessarily bureaucratic way" and "I read in the Nasty Express that some bakers shops now sell biscuits called Gingerbread People"?

The website includes a breathtakingly nasty cartoon which suggests that qualified people are sometimes turned down for jobs because they are white, and "that this is a legal kind of racism, introduced by the politically correct, kind of like what existed during the Nazi era."

Kind of like what existed during the Nazi era.

[1] Not that anyone did try to stop us using terms like "black spot". Or if they did, they didn't try very hard. The 1992 currency crash is universally referred to as Black Wednesday; the day after Thanksgiving is commonly called Black Friday.

[2] He actually called him a "thick, lazy nigger", but one can't worry too much about facts when reading about conspiracy theories.

[3] Smacking has not been banned, although some people think that it should be. It is literally true that the last government removed the defence of "reasonable chastisement" when a parent was accused of cruelty, but this does not mean that it is now illegal to chastise your child reasonably. It means that the law itself now defines what is reasonable and what is unreasonable whereas it used to be decided by juries on a case-by-case basis. So if Mr The Awful Truth is right, then the problem is not that parents aren't allowed to hit their children, but that they aren't allowed to hit their children hard enough. What the law now bans is hitting with sticks, hitting hard enough to leave cuts and bruises, etc.

[4] It might possibly be that first and second generation immigrants are more likely to work in family businesses than people who have lived here for longer, but that doesn't imply a genetic link between the Indian sub-continent and retail. What percentage of Pakistanis do work in retail? What percentage of corner shops are run by Pakistanis? Are we dealing here with actual data, or merely with "common sense" (i.e my unexamined assumptions)?

[5]It seems perfectly sensible to remove unintentional double entendres from books which are going to be read out loud to children: what possible sinister political purpose is served by saying that the diminutives of Frances and Richard had better be Franny and Rick, as opposed to, er, Fanny and Dick? It is interesting to consider that if a modern day Mrs Whitehouse suggested that the lyrics of My Ding-A-Ling" sounded a bit rude or if a modern day Dr Bowdler produced an edition of Shakespeare that omitted the passages that a respectable father wouldn't want to read out in front of his children, they would be regarded, not as slightly silly old fashioned prudes, but as dangerous members of the Political Correctness Brigade bent on destroying the very cock jokes that made this country what it was today.

[6] Need it be said that the "now Bonfire night is banned" story was about one council which had decided to let off fireworks on Nov 5th, but not to have an actual bonfire? (Does anyone have a bonfire on Nov 5th? When we were kids, we called it "Firework Night".) This was partly due to health and safety concerns, and partly because bonfires are bad for the council's carbon footprint. The suggestion that it had something to do with not offending minorities seems to be pure spin.

[7] This is actually worth unpacking a bit. We used to say "policeman": we started to say "police person" because women as well as men can work for the police. We used to say "chairman"; we started to say "chair person" because women as well as men can run meetings. People then started to joke that we would have to say "Personchester": this is funny because the name "Manchester" comes from the Latin "Mamucium" and has nothing to do with men or women. It's a comic example of hyper-correction. Amusing hyper-correction may occasionally happen: there is a story that a US police force found itself referring to a road as an "Accident African-American Spot" or (even better) that someone described Nelson Mandela as "the first African-American president of South Africa." Anyone, then, might laugh at a Gingerbread Person: the sensible rule that you should say "fire-person" and "post-person" has been comically applied to a biscuit. However the Common Sense Brigade think that it's very serious -- not an innocent mistkae, but that sort of thing which must not be allowed to become the norm. And they think that calling a chairman a  "chair" or a "chairperson" undermines our way of life. Its the use of gender-netural language in general -- not this particularly silly example of it -- which is dangerous. The life-changing joke about gay frogs is in the same category: it's only funny if you already think that equal rights for gay humans is a dangerous, left wing, anti-common sense notion.

Homosexual Frogs (1)

In principal, the former Soviet Union claimed not to censor the press. If a senior figure in the Party slipped over on a banana skin, the state media could report that a senior figure in the Party had slipped over on a banana skin. You had to make sure that your facts were correct, but facts were facts. 

However, the one thing the state media could not do was criticise Communism directly. Communism was true, and known to be true. Communism provided all the advantages that Soviet citizens enjoyed compared to the oppressed working class in the West. So of course you couldn't print a news story saying – or implying -- that Communism wasn't true, any more than you could publish a geography text book saying that Barnsley was the capital of the United Kingdom.

The news had to be factually correct: but it also had to be politically correct.

It is not quite clear when the expression Politically Correct made the rhetorical leap into the vocabulary of the British and American far-right. It also isn't clear whether there was an intervening stage when the political left used the expression in a neutral or even positive sense. I went to college in the People's Republic of Sussex at the height of the hated Thatcherist regime. The student Socialist Workers ("copy of this weeks...!") would occasionally complain that someone had used an imperialist codeword like "Falkland Islands" rather than a more neutral term like "Las Malvinas". Someone from the Women's Group might have once moaned that the hated patriarchal administration were perpetuating the phallocentric and indeed aristocratic hegemony by labelling bathrooms "Gentlemen" and "Ladies" (rather than "Male" or "Female"). But I never heard anyone saying that the offending words were Politically Incorrect. Lefties with a sense of humour, if you can imagine such a beast, sometimes complained that something was "ideologically unsound".

But it's perfectly possible that someone somewhere really did think that the Commies had had a point. There really are some ideas that are self-evidently false, and they really do need to be corrected whenever and wherever they occur. Of course you shouldn't publish a book which claims that women are natural home-makers and men are natural bread-winners, any more than you should publish a book that claims that the sun goes round the earth. And if you shouldn't say it outright then you shouldn't assume it or imply it, either.

And it's perfectly possible someone did, as part of this project, deliberately adopt cumbersome terminology in order to draw people's attention to just how many assumptions and implications "ordinary", supposedly "neutral" language contained. There would have been no point in using convenient gender-neutral phrases like "Paramedic" or "Firefighter": hardly anyone would have noticed. But "Ambulanceperson" and "Fireperson" are rather awkward to say. They draw attention to themselves. They force us to notice that we've been saying "Ambulance Man" and "Fire Man" for years. They make us ask ourselves "Is there any special reason why a woman can't carry a stretcher or operate a hose-pipe?"

English Ordinance Survey Maps have a special symbol for churches. Russian Communist maps didn't depict churches at all. It might be entertaining to draw a map which left out post offices and public toilets, but included violin shops and undertakers. Not because it would be helpful or sensible, but because it would force us to notice that maps are not merely neutral diagrams of what's there, but ideological statements about what ought to be there.[*]

But there seems to be precious little evidence that this kind of thing was ever at all widespread. I have heard people saying "differently abled" rather than "disabled", which is silly. There's a shop in Bristol which sells equipment for "less able" people, which is horrid. But what we've mostly done is replaced nasty expressions like "cripple" with neutral ones like ""wheel chair user" or simply "person who can't walk", not cumbersome ones like "ambulatorially challenged". All the really silly examples of Politically Correct Language -- "vertically challenged" and "chemically inconvenienced" and "chronologically superior" -- seem to have been made up by the far-right as a parody of what they saw as a creeping attempt to impose a Soviet style monopoly on public discourse.

A lady -- sorry, a female person -- was once told by a taxi-driver that before long, the Political Correctness Brigade would demanding equal rights for homosexual goldfish. This was a joke : not a very funny one, but a joke, nevertheless. But it was a joke that made the female person very angry indeed: 

"Gay goldfish? Was there such a thing? I had no doubt that if the Political Correctness Brigade could find a gay goldfish, this could become a reality instead of a throwaway line." 

She was so angry that she decided that it was her duty to campaign against any attempt to give equal rights to gay goldfish -- and also against the abolition of competitive sport from schools, the banning of Christmas, and lots of other things which haven't happened. Her name was Laura Midgley, and we shall learn more of her wisdom later.

[*] Come to think of it, the Student Union Guide at York University did say, in so many words (I still have a copy) "There is no Christian Union here", which makes me wonder what meetings I was going to in the chaplaincy building on Thursday evenings.

Jon Boden singing Jingle Bells. What more need be said?

At the moment, I am not very proud of the BBC at all

Some regular readers may have spotted that, in the last couple of years, I have developed a passing interest in English folk music. This is very largely down to a BBC local radio programme called Folkwaves, broadcast in a far away place called the the East Midlands. Two or three years ago, my knowledge of English folk music ran to a handful of Dylan records, a handful of Woody Guthrie records, and possibly a copy of The Big Huge. Stumbling on Folkwaves on what the presenters would doubtless call "t'internet" clued me in to what was out there -- and more importantly, to how many of the acts they played did gigs in small local venues. 

Someone called Spiers and Boden are doing a gig in the pub at the bottom of my street (the Croft) -- aren't they the ones that Mick and Lester interviewed, who sang that clever Robin Hood ballad? Better go along and hear them. Someone called Martin Simpson in a church hall in Southville -- isn't he the one who sings that song about his dad that Mick and Lester keep playing? That song that Mick and Lester keep playing about the guy who won't sell hs cottage to the man from London -- better find out if that singer sings anything else good. And don't Mick and Lester nag me every week to go and find some live music in my area?  Better give it a go.

The show covers the big names, of course, but it is long enough to cover lessor known singers, archive recordings and live perfomances which Mike Harding wouldn't go near. (Absolutely nothing against Mike Harding.) And it has that sort of shambolic intimacy which only local radio ever achieves: Mick and Lester have a nice line in banter, know what's going on in their local area, and are never phased when they accidentally put completely the wrong record on the CD player, or when the special guest doesn't show up because he can't find the studio. And of course, the whole point of radio is that you feel the presenter is talking directly to you; that you feel he's your friend.

So of course, the BBC has cancelled the programme (which has been going for about 25 years and had a worldwide reputation). 

There is apparently no place for "minority" interests like folk music on local radio. 

Bastards.

Folkwaves 13/12/2010

Save Folkwaves (facebook group)


"Without our stories or our songs / how will we know where we came from?"

Winterlude, Winterlude, My Little Daisy

 

We should actively celebrate the Christian basis of Christmas, and not allow politically correct Grinches to marginalise Christianity and the importance of the birth of Christ. The War on Christmas is over, and likes of Winterval, Winter Lights and Luminous deserve to be in the dustbin of history. Mr Pickles explained that the Christian festival has previously been ambushed by those intent on re-branding Christmas as a bland 'Winter festival' [continues]

The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government

In a major victory for common- sense, Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles said local authorities should not introduce politically correct versions such as “Winterval”....Birmingham’s annual Winterval festival was designed to appeal to all cultures, while Lambeth council in London sparked fury when it ordered its Christmas lights to be called “winter” or even “celebrity” lights to avoid upsetting other faiths.

The Nasty Express

Where are all those people who may be offended by calling Christmas, ‘Christmas’? What about the people who offend the Christian community when ‘they’ call it Winterval, again revealing this lack of quality of mind? Why is offence assumed before anything is spoken, written or visualised? Who indeed are the purveyors of PC [continues]

Arts Mentoring

He said: "In Bradford we have celebrated Diwali, then Eid, then Christmas. If you drive through Bradford now, you will see the lights actually name them. We do not have some daft idea like 'Winterval' which nobody wants apart from a few secularists.

Some Archdeacon

Except a leftie Christmas would be called "Winterval" as they would want to offend the oppressed ethnic minorities, despite evidence that many muslims and hindus celebrate Christmas.

Person on Guardian Comment is Free Site

And Birmingham City Council chiefs renamed Christmas as Winterval in 1997 and 1998. The move was heavily criticised by non-Christian and Christian groups alike as PC madness.

The Sun

Christmas is a time to remember what and who Christ came for. In this age of Political Correctness we have people trying to use ‘Xmas’ and ‘Winterval’ for fear of causing offence to others who want to celebrate Christmas without the ‘Jesus’ bit. People who do not even recognise Jesus as their Lord and Saviour are trying to dictate to us how we should celebrate the birth of our Lord. Well we must be resolute in our [continues]

Revival - London and the World For Christ

But it isn’t only the serious world of jobs and work where there have been changes. Some of our most famous holidays and celebrations have also received the PC makeover. Surely there’s nothing offensive about Christmas, you say. Not true. Apparently it might offend some people, so now it should be referred to as “Winterval” (that’s a combination of “winter” and “interval” in case you didn’t realise [or possibly from the word "festival"].) And Easter is now the “Spring Festival”, so that no one feels excluded. So, where’s it going to end? Will we one day be living in “The United Monarchdom” (instead of the “The United Kingdom“) [continues]

Socyberty

The battle in the United States usually concerns crèches on public property or carols in the schools, and is fought in the packed trenches of the federal court system by groups like the ACLU. In the UK the argument is over the replacement of Christmas by “Winter Holiday”, “Winter Festival”, or — worst of all — “Winterval”. 

Gates of Vienna

Anyway, as it's Christmas time, Happy Christmas. Or Happy Winterval, if you'd prefer. I certainly don't prefer it, but that's the PC age we live in now.

Tomjefferies

So, this time next week, we’ll be in December, the festive month of Christmas (or Winterval, if we’re being abhorrently PC about the names of Britain’s festivities — I call it Christmas, and I don’t even like Christmas all that much)....

K.L Kerr

Councils up and down the country would prefer to bury Christmas under a blanket of PC nonsense and relabel it ‘Winterval’ or some other stupid name. We must make sure this does not happen and we can all play our bit in this. If you see signs of this nonsense in your borough you must complain about these quisling fascists. The foreigners that live here and do not celebrate Christmas are especially vocal here and we have to watch them like a hawk [continues]

London Patriot (a fascist site)

A clutch of councils have cancelled Christmas and replaced it with multicultural holidays in a bid to be right-on. Changes have included banning carols and even rebranding the celebrations “Winterval”.

The Nasty Star

YOU MEAN WE CAN A CHRISTMAS WITHOUT ALL THOSE TOUCHY FEELIE PC WORLD MORONS CALLING WINTERVAL?


BRING IT ON...


AND IF IT OFFENDS ANY OTHER CULTURE HERE...

Contributor to the Nasty Mail's forum

Christians too, see their faith denigrated and marginalised. Local councils have banned Nativity plays. Christmas is rebranded by the PC loonies as ‘Winterval’. I understand people are angry. I understand why they fear the loss of their culture and identity. I share those feelings. The Koran is a hate-filled manual for conquering [continues]

Nick Griffin

Follow Me Down

(from Private Eye)

Show of Hands

29 Nov 2010

Colston Hall

"At every trough you stop to feed..." sings Steve Knightley. "WITH WHAT!"

"With you arrogance and ignorance and greed" responds the audience.

"I pray one day we'll all be freed...from your absolute indifference, your avarice incompetence..."he sings.

"Your arrogance and ignorance and greed!" we all sing back.

"A.I.G" sighs Steve, post orgasmically, in case anyone who hadn't heard the song before had somehow missed the point.

"And will you be wearing your jackboots?" said a Certain Person the first time I mentioned that I was going to hear a Show of Hands Concert.

Hmm.

Trying to characterise the group to someone I was chatting to at another gig, I found myself saying "Their concerts can feel a bit like religious revival meetings."

Hmm, again.

I mean, lots of artists allow or encourage the audience to join in their songs. Spiers and Boden always use Bold Sir Rylas a-Hunting Went as a big all-join in set piece; Chris Wood's support guy tried to split the audience in two and get us to sing in harmony; Tom Paxton appeared to take it for granted that we knew all the words of all his songs and were going to go ding when it moved and pop when it stopped whether he told us to or not.

But you feel that Show of Hands numbers are positively written with audience participation in mind. That their studio recordings have an important element missing. That the would be no point in singing Cousin Jack without an audience to bellow along with the chorus. That during the chant bit in Country Life, they're playing the audience like an instrument. That the perfect performance of Roots would be the one where the congregation handled the sea-shanty bit and left the celebrants to do the political argument section by itself. Like I said about the madness which is Bellowhead: you haven't really heard the group unless you've heard them live. Orchastrating some sort of communal experience. The stuff in Roots about singing in pubs and cafes and being buskers true, and even though they're now playing in big venues, there's still something of the pub singer in the way they connect with the audience. "From the Albert Hole to the Albert Hall" as some wiseguy said.

Steve Knightley and Phil Beer fall into an Eric and Ernie routine, with Knightley slipping into the role of the clever, verbose onw whose ego is devastatingly pricked every now and then by the quiet violinist. "Phil is so overwhelmed that he has to leave the stage now" says Steve "Or he would be, if he has bothered to read the set list." This leads into the group's solo spots: Steve does an akapella trad song, the name of which entirely escapes me, about a lady whose sad because her true love has been pressganged; Mirands Sykes puts aside her double bass for a uke and sings something vaudavillish; and Phil does a quite brilliant jaunty fiddle reinvention of Dylans Seven Curses. But not before he's told the story of buisiness consultant who once gave Steve some free advise "Smile once in a while, you miserable bastard."

But there's still something -- uncomfortable? -- about the exercise. After the Bellowhead gig I complained that I wasn't really caught up in the emotion. After Show of Hands, I'm more inclined to complain that I was. Regular readers (Sid and Dorris Bonkers) may remember that after a superlative production of The Valkyrie (an opera), I found myself wondering whether Wagner really was a dangerous man after all: whether this music was literally too powerful to be played. I would hardly go that far about a man with guitar and man with a fiddle and lady with a double bass singing songs about how they once took a wild 16 year old to a festival and wonder what he's doing now, or a lady who won't except a fine silken gown from lovelorn noblemen, even if it does have nine yards drooping and trailing on the ground. I can get as misty eyed as the next man about tin mines and saffron toast: my father was Cornish; I've got ancestors who really did go off and look for gold in South Africa. And as long as you're just howling along, it's a fine song, better than a fine song. "I'm leaving the country behind / and I'm not coming back / so follow me down, Cousin Jack." But there's a nagging feeling: all this emotion is about what, exactly? What am I feeling nostalgic for? The tin mining industry? I heard Bob Fox the other week. His songs were nostalgic for the coal mines and ship yards: but they were real folk songs rooted in real experience written by or for people who had really been down the pits and really knew what it was like. Folk music is always open to the charge of sentimentality; of feeling sad and then feeling sad about the fact your are feeling sad. (So's opera. Wagner especially. So's everything which isn't a Radio 3 masterpiece called Opus 54 in B Sharp Flat.) But isn't there a world of differnece between, say "Whistle of the buzzer/ Time to rise and shine /How I long for Sunday,/When I'm going to the mine." and "Did Joseph once come to St Michaels Mount / Two thousand years pass in a dream/When you're working your way in the darkness,/Deep in the heart of the seam."

But it's an amazing song, and it's an astonishing feeling to be in a packed hall full of people who know the words and the tune. I compromised, this time, and wore the Union Jack tie with the F.A.F badge pinned to it, which hopefully sums up my ambivalnce.

Steve Knightley's son Jack has just ended a course of luekemia treatment at the Bristol Royal Infirmary, maybe five minutes walk from the theater. Of course he pays tribute to the hospital staff; of course he repeats the story of the gig three years ago, just after the diagnosis, where he walked from his son's bedside to the theatre and then back to the hospital. And then he goes into a spirited final encore of "Are we still all right / Are we still strong / We've got one last chance / Lets not get it wrong." Which is another great, fine, song which I happily joined in and sent me out of the theater with a spring in my step tinged with just the right amount of sadness, joy and pain are woven fine, and all that. (Last time I heard him perform in Bristol, he told the same story in the context of "The Dive") God knows one doesn't blame him for referring to his sons illness -- there's probably no singer on earth who wouldn't. But it still makes me uncomfortable. As if I've been manipulated into feeling a certain way about a certain song. Blackmailed, even. And yeah, manipulating feelings is a pretty good definition of what arts all about. Maybe I should shut up.

The support artist was one Rodney Branigan who in between perfectly decent songs in the "heartfelt" mode (a rather intense one about domestic violence stood out) performed guitar riffs which bordered on the tricksy. He finished his act by performing what he described as a song about schizophrenia, in which he started out doing that thang of playing entirely on the fret of the guitar, and ended up playing two guitars at once, swapping them over mid song, even (if what Cliff tells me is right) retuning one of them while playing the other. Clever stuff. Word to the wise, though -- I liked very much the Mexican inspired stuff where you partly use your guitar as percussion instrument, striking it faster and faster with your open hand very much. But describing it as "a song about spanking kids" probably goes down better in Texas than it does it Bristol.

"It doesn't mean he's got talent" says Steve "He just practices a lot".

It's a long time since I can genuinely say that I laughed so much it hurt.

Chris Wood

Colston Hall
Bristol
28 Nov

I don't really have anything to add to what I said about Chris Wood the last time I heard him. He really is on a whole different level to any other performer I've ever heard.

But I've seen no more than that little boy saw,
and I've certainly learned nothing new
The thinker sits on the brink of eureka,
dizzy with deja vue
 
*
 
We never did Shakespeare nor none of that stuff,
so this isn't no honey tongued sonnet
No sugar, no spice, no je ne cest que,
but doggerel with nothing much on it
 
*
 
Two widows talking:
by the strand they tell their story to a sailor
The sun will bleach their grief a little paler
 
*
 
Render unto Ceasar what is Ceasar's
Toss a coin into his moat
He can say anything he likes to try and please us
But don't dare ask for our vote
 
*
 
But sometimes I hear the story told in a voice that's not my own

It's a land of hope and glory voice an Anglo-Claxon overblown

Their's is another England that hides behind the red, white and blue

Rule Britannia no thank you
 

Kathryn Tickell
Bristol Folkhouse
Nov 22nd 2010

Kathryn Tickell plays the Northumbrian Pipes, which are like little bagpipes you hold under your arm and inflate with a bellows. You don't blow down them, so in principle you could sing and play at the same time. She appears in a group with a fiddler (her brother) a squeeze box player and a guitaraist. She sometimes plays the fiddle herself. Together they play tunes, some of which are traditioanl and some of which are new. They are very good indeed and I would like to hear them again some day. However, since I have no knack for dancing about architecture, I propose to not to say anything else.

Fish Custard is now available in cartons....

The Viewer's Tale volume 2 

Andrew Rilstone's collected reviews and digressions about Doctor Who series 5 (The One With The Guy With The Floppy Hair) is now available in book form from those nice people at Lulu.

Still available...

The Viewer's Tale volume 1
Who Sent the Sentinels
Where Dawkins Went Wrong



and while you are there, why not pick up a copy of Andrew Hickey's splendid book about "The Beatles" as well.

You. Could. Not. Make. It. Up.

The timing of the wedding has yet to be fixed. In a bizarre twist, it falls on the same date as Adolf Hitler's macabre marriage to Eva Braun as the Third Reich collapsed. The Nazi dictator married his long-time mistress deep in the Fuehrer's bunker below Berlin as the Russians closed in and the pair committed suicide together the next day. William and Kate are said to be planning a 'very traditional' ceremony to show Britain 'at its best' and intend to have as many people as possible inside the Abbey.

The Daily  Mail

"This is a sad, sad reflection on our times, when people must feed off the carcasses of beloved stories from their youths—just because they can't think of an original idea of their own, like I did with my Avengers idea that I made up myself."

Joss Whedon on the "reboot" of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

"I’ll be a story in your head, but that’s okay, because we’re all stories in the end. Just make it a good one, eh? Because it was, you know. It was the best. A daft old man who stole a magic box and ran away. Did I ever tell you that I stole it? Well, I borrowed it. I always meant to take it back. Oh, that box, Amy, you’ll dream about that box. It’ll never leave you. Big and little at the same time. Brand-new and ancient and the bluest blue ever. And the times we had, eh? Would had… Never had. In your dreams, they’ll still be there. The Doctor and Amy Pond and the days that never came."

A man thinks that Thing-A is Very Bad. He also thinks that Thing-B is Very Bad. He has to admit, however, that Thing-B makes Thing-A Slightly Less Bad. So he has to concede that if you are going to do Thing-A (which you really shouldn't) then you probably ought to do Thing-B (bad as it is) because it reduces the badness of Thing-A. 

So, for example: someone might say "I don't think you ought to eat animals; and since I don't think you ought to eat animals, I certainly don't think you ought to work in a slaughter house. But since some people are going to eat animals anyway, it's better for there to be some very skilled slaughter house workers who ensure that the cattle are killed quickly and efficiently, than for the job to be done by incompetent botchers who make the poor brutes suffer more than they need to. In that sense, the slaughter-man, while doing a 'bad' thing, is also making a bad thing slightly less bad. 'Making a bad thing slightly less bad' could be described as good'." 

Or: "I don't think we ought to have wars, but if we absolutely must have wars, then at least let's have soldiers who follow the laws of chivalry, obey their commanding officer, don't torture captives or civilians (and lets have clever commanders who win battles efficiently so the dreadful thing doesn't drag on too long.) If war is wicked, then it's wicked to be a soldier; but its possible to be a soldier in such a way as to make war less wicked than it would otherwise be, which is, in that limited sense, good." 

If someone came along and chopped your arm off out of the blue, you would probably be quite peeved. But if your arm was riddled with gangrene and you were about to drop dead, then you'd be quite relieved. You'd probably say "thank you" to the surgeon who performed the amputation. But you'd much rather not have had gangrene to begin with. Something can be "good" in itself, like happiness and sunshine and fluffy animals; but it can also be "good" in the sense of being less bad than the alternative. (Occasionally, without being cruel or callous, we can be thankful or relieved when a very sick or very old person died.)

When the Pope says this, it's terribly surprising, hypocritical and controversial, apparently. 

P.S

My taste is apparently sufficiently mainstream that it overlaps substantially with the judges of the Radio 2 folk awards. That makes me feel -- vindicated. Particularly pleased that Nancy Kerr's "Queen of Waters" and Chris Wood's "Hollow Point" are both up for "Best Song", and Andy Irvine's wonderful "Demon Lover" is up for (but won't win) "Best Traditional Song." Chris is more or less bound to win something -- he's up for best singer, best song, and best album. Obviously, I think it would be a travesty if anything other than "Hollow Point" got the best song prize. (But nothing can be taken for granted: last year Martin Simpson got the prize for the perfectly okay "Patrick Spens" but not for the stunning "One Day".) Maybe then it would get some mainstream attention and we could say "in yer face" to the people who think no-one is writing protest songs any more. Not that it matters, of course. I'm backing Norway for next year's Eurovision. 

A Heretic Writes....

Bellowhead
Bristol Old Vic
10 November

Bellowhead are quite good and a bit over the top, in the same way that the Pope is quite religious and a bit Catholic.

Their gig at the Bristol Old Vic sold out practically over night, and an extra one was hastily added, which also appears to have sold out. I get the impression that some fans went to both nights. Possibly in the future we will have to ration Bellowhead tickets, or have a ballot.

All the seating at the Old Vic was in place (last time, the management removed it) but that didn't stop the audience coming to their feet for the first encore ("this is a song about a prostitute") and if not exactly dancing, then at any rate enthusiastically pointing their fingers in the air to indicate that the protagonist was going up to the rigs, down to the jigs, and indeed up to the rigs of London town.

One wonders how much further over the top they can go. The trombonist is, for reasons best known to himself, wearing full clerical robes and a dog collar. The trumpeter keeps standing on his chair. The whole brass section pogo dance at every opportunity. John Spiers (squeeze box) and Sam Sweeny (fiddle and bagpipes) do that thing where they turn and face each other and start to couch down as they play faster and faster. Sam Sweeny wrote his name on my deluxe hard back version of the new CD. He looked about twelve.

Jon Boden is, well, Jon Boden. He finishes "Port of Amsterdam" with legs apart, arms uprasised, having an onstage emotional crisis like a crucified Freddy Mercury. He's wearing a strange sparkly jacket, and has taken to playing some of the percussion. Each time the the viborslap [I looked it up] goes "twang", he looks vaguely surprised.

They maintain their "supergroup" status admirably. For on (or for all I know, several) nights James Fagan (as in "Nancy Kerr and") was at the front with John and Jon. He got to play the banjo in "Cholera Camp". But there's a nagging fear that this has ceased to be about folk music and become about Bellowhead gig. They started out, what, six years ago doing high octane orchestrations of material like Prickly Bush, Slo Gin Set, Haul Away, Horn Fair -- songs that Spiers and Boden had performed to death as a duo. Now they are a fully fledged Phenomenon, the Songs are starting to get lost in the Performance. And the Performance is still wonderful. "Little Sally Racket" is a harmless sea-shanty -- hardly even that, a pub song on the level of Frigging in the Rigging. Jon Boden starts to channel John Lydon screaming the lyrics ("Little Sally Racket / Pawned my best jacket / And the lost the ticket") at the audience so you can't actually hear them -- but then coming to the front of the stage with the other singers and sweetly singing the verse about little Kitty Carson (who ran of with a parson) in close harmony akapella -- if they'd momentary turned back into the Copper Family. It hardly matters if this destroys the song: there wasn't much song there in the first place. But I'm still uneasy about the 1980s ska [check this] brass stings completely taking over "The Two Magicians", which, in the hands of Martin Carthy or Bob Fox, a good story with a good tune. I really felt that they could have been singing anything. The narrative of the "Broomfield Wood" survives the treatment; "The Weaver and the Factory Maid" gets lost completely. Which is why, I guess, they are at their best having a great time in inconsequential shanties and drinking songs. Away you, Santy, my dear honey, oh you New York girls, can't you dance the poker? And why not?

Nothing on their albums or their TV appearances remotely captures just how extreme their stage act as become. Spiers and Boden remain my favourite stage act and I would unhesitatingly drag anyone who thought they didn't like folk music to the Old Vic the next time they pass through Banksyville. If Thursday night hadn't already sold out, I'd have been very tempted to go twice in one week. But I couldn't help thinking of myself crying into my beer during Martin Simpson's Dylan impersonation or being swept away to Otherworlds by Robin Williamson, and wondering is this is really what English folk music is meant to be about. Oh, every got to their feet and jumped in the air in the final final encore of "Frogs Legs and Dragons Teeth"; I jumped up and down as well. But my heart wasn't in it. What was it Mr Wordsworth said?

"....and from the rubble gathered up a stone
And pocketed the relic in the guise
Of an enthusiasts, yet in very truth
I looked for something that I could not find
Affecting more emotion than I felt..."

A word, by the way, for Jonny Kearney and Lucy Farrell, the support act. I heard some people being quite rude about them in the interval. There were a couple of glitches in their performances -- untuned violins and forgotten words and what not. I've never seen an act where this kind of thing didn't happen: but your Steve Tilstons and your Martin Simpsons are confident enough to say "I'm singing that bit again cos I cocked it up." These two were obviously nervous, as might be expected when they are, er, opening for the biggest names in folk, and kept drawing attention to their fairly minor mistakes. ("Our CD is on sale. It costs £5. But there are only six tracks, so it's not a bargain or anything.") But this in no way detracted from the act, which was a mixture of innocent, delicate reworkings of traddy material (a haunting, agonizing "Hares on the Mountain", an American variant of "I wish, I wish") and some quirky stuff they'd written themselves. And it was an inspired pairing. Bellowhead are, as I may have mentioned, a little over the top. Jonny and Lucy are so understated that they practically not there at all....

Blast From The Past

first published Sep 6th 1997


Oh, what a circus....

Both nuns and mothers worship images

But those the candle lights are not as those

That animate a mother's reveries

But keep a marble or a bronze repose

And yet they too break hearts....

W.B Yeats

Karl Marx said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. This became redundant the moment Elton John got up to sing Goodbye to Norma Jean in Westminster Abbey. In the modern age, it seems that tragedy and farce have become the same thing.

That said, I admit to having had to clear my throat a couple of times during the service. But then I cry at the end of Watership Down, so what do I know? While the rest of Airstrip 1 struggles to come to its collective senses, there are a couple of things which I feel need to be said. Anyone passing this page hoping to hear something funny should come back next week.

1: The Royal Family are, like it or not powerful symbols.

Symbols are not irrelevant or meaningless, however much we might wish they were. We may disapprove of it; we may deplore it as a focus for neo Fascism or heritage-nostalgia; we may even want to burn it or stick safety pins through it; but the Union Jack is not simply one more geometrical design. When I look at it, I feel something. When I look at the Stars and Stripes, I feel something different, and less vivid. These feelings have very little to do with my opinions about the Act of Settlement, Scottish devolution, the Fifth Amendment or the electric chair. They have more to do with carrier bags, beefeaters, tourists and ladies knickers--or, in the case of Old Glory, with Superman, themed pancake restaurants and sit-coms set in high schools. But the fact that some coloured stripes can call up such strong and definite mental pictures proves that they have significance.

The Royal Family are symbolic in very much the same way. Killing one of them therefore has a very powerful emotional and psychological effect on me: just as burning the Union Jack, inverting the Crucifix or tearing down Nelson's Column would do. I can be as liberal and republican and anarchist as I want, but the death of Diana Spencer means something.

One occasionally meets professing atheists--usually, of the communist, rather than the scientific, persuasion--who affect not to understand why the art gallery was so full of images of the Roman death penalty. No-one is very convinced.

2: Constitutional monarchy is quite a good idea.

A presidency (unless it is created in the throes of a blood-soaked revolution) feels bureaucratic, empty, artificial. It has no symbolic, emotional, or psychological resonances: one feels nothing when one looks at it. No one could ever feel any affection towards The European Union (though they may think it is a very good idea) because it would be a nation built on filing cabinets, press releases, and directives on headed note paper. Having a King with a real honest-to-goodness palace, golden coach, crown, sceptre and ceremonial guards reminds you that your country is a Very Important Thing. It enables you to feel good about it--and indirectly, to feel good about yourself.

The High Church with their incense, silk cassocks, golden chalices, massive cathedrals and awe-inspiring music, have attached a something to their religion which we non-conformists ('turn to page B5 of the yellow service book') have totally chucked out. A good ceremony hits the congregation in the face with the fact that they are in the presence of something unbelievably important. A good state opening of parliament has much the same effect in a secular sphere. 'Look!' it says 'You belong to something very old, and very spectacular, and very special, and very magnificent--and that makes you a very special person, too!' It really is pretty off the point to complain that the Queen is very rich and very expensive. That is the point of her.

I also must admit that I have a grudging affection for all the silly and vulgar traditions which have grown up around the British Royal Family in particular. This has nothing at all to do with the history of the kings of Britain, much less with the Privet Council or the Royal Pejorative. It has more to do with crepe paper and fruit cake on trestle tables; with village fetes; with good natured crowds squeezing into Hyde Park to look at the Royal Wedding fireworks, with slightly tacky souvenirs.

I asked a friend of mine what he remembered of the Silver Jubilee. 'A lot of mugs', he replied.

We have in England an odd, matey affection for our Royals. We call them 'Charles and Di', 'Andy and Fergie', 'The Queen Mum'. If we actually meet them, we call them 'Ma'am' -- what a parlour maid called her employer, or a schoolboy called the headmistress. We knit little booties for their babies, get personal letters on our Golden Wedding Anniversary, and get invited (with thousands of others) to tea and sandwiches in their back garden.

When I look at the Queen's official residence, I think of the Family waving from the balcony on Jubilee day in 1977. I think of a tear-stained Mrs Thatcher being driven through the gates in her limo, to hand in her official resignation. I think of that footage of the Beatles fans climbing over the fence while their idols were getting their MBEs. But mostly, I think that it was the place to which Cer-ristopher Robin went down with Alice. I can't imagine that the White House or the Supreme Court is mixed up with nursery rhymes in the minds of most Americans. Do you think the Queen knows all about me?

3: The Royal Family on the whole perform this ceremonial function very well, but this does not mean that they are remarkable people.

The Divine Right of Kings is a late heresy. When one of our kings started to believe in it, we very properly chopped his head off. I think the King is but a man and what have kings that paupers have not got save ceremony; once more unto the breach et-cetera, et-cetera, et-cetera.

Being Queen of England is significant in precisely the same way that being Queen of the May is significant. You take someone ordinary. You put them in a pretty dress and pour flowers over them. You dance around them, and you sing silly songs. You pretend that the ceremony is just as it's always been, even though it was only invented in your granny's time. It makes you feel good about yourself, your family, and your village, because it symbolises the continuity of English tradition, or the cuteness and innocence of childhood, or the permanence and rebirth of nature, or some other lie. You hope that the little girl chosen will be well-behaved and not spoil the occasion, but her Queen-of-the-Mayness is not dependent on whether she pinched her baby brother's last jelly baby on Friday night.

I believe Diana Spencer to have been a good person. I had a letter from a reader of my webpage condemning Tony Blair for making such a fuss about someone who was nothing but a 'bed-hopping party girl.' I want to encourage people to condemn Tony Blair as often as possible, but I don't want to associate myself with this sort of speaking ill of the dead. Diana Spencer put in more hours work for charity and more visiting of the sick than her job description required her to. She paid more attention to people--held their hands, smiled at them, remembered their names--than the other stuffy Royals. But this is a sort of goodness which is possessed by tens of thousands of nurses, nuns, vicars, salvation army volunteers, doctors, school teachers, social workers and even the odd human being. It is not grounds for canonisation. In normal life, it would not be grounds for an O.B.E.

4: Idolatry is a bad thing

There is no real harm in putting up a statue of Jesus outside your church. There is no harm in getting the best artist in the village to carve it out of the finest materials. There is no harm in using it as a focus for religious devotion: the mental pictures of God which most of us pray to are theologically pretty stupid. (I admit to occasionally falling back on a rotund sepia monarch which lodged itself in my brain in nursery school: fat, jovial, like the man in the moon, and I think--it is hard to bring the image into focus--with an Elizabethan ruff. When I try to do better, I end up worshipping Robert Powell.) And there is probably very little harm in the more naive church goers starting to think that Jesus really does live in the churchyard (just between the porch and Gladys Winterbotham's grave). Maybe it's stupid of them to walk to church every evening to pray to the statue; but if they are really praying, who is going to stop them?

The trouble starts when you start to attribute divine powers to the statue itself. The trouble starts when you think of it, not as an image which helps you point your mind at God, but as a magic statue. Before very long, people think that touching it, or leaving flowers for it makes sure that God will bless you or heal you or make you win the lottery. People queue for hours and hours to touch it. They scream and cry for just one glance. Or else they chip fragments and splinters from it, and put them in magic amulets, and sell them at huge prices and believe that as long as they are wearing them they can eat economy burgers without catching CJD. People who profess atheism--people who have never even heard of Jesus (Sunday school stopped years ago; the teachers are too busy polishing the statue) start doing scientific studies into whether the amulet can heal the sick.

When that happens you can be absolutely sure that the puritans will be arriving on the next train. They will tell you that the statue--not God--is now your object of devotion. They will march into the churchyard and smash it down and use the fragments to pave the road. They will go into the church, and smash up all the other paintings and statues you happen to have there, and then burn the vicar's holiday snaps for good measure. And they will leave you with a reformed, republican, Protestant religion: one free from idol worship, but with no beautiful statues, no focus for the holy--and one where the naive, pious villagers find it very hard to say their prayers, because all their symbols have been taken from them.

5: Our adulation of Diana Spencer has become idolatrous.

For a week, we have been told that Diana Spencer was Special and Unique, not because of her ceremonial and symbolic role, but because she was such a special, unique, saintly person. ('Born a lady, became a princess, died a saint.' If Diana was a saint, what are people going to say about Mother Theresa?) So we have heard about her wonderful charity work, incredible kindness to the poor and disadvantaged, and how she did amazing things like cuddle her children and send them off to expensive boarding schools like everybody else. Ten years ago, the same papers were praising her for hitting her children, but we'll let that pass.

The reasoning seems to be that since millions and millions of people treat her as if she was special, she must actually have been very special. Her lack of stuffiness is the best candidate for Specialness which we have been able to find. I call this superstition. When little children believe (as quoted on Tuesday's Channel 4 news) that 'She was special because she cared about sick children' then I'm afraid that I turn puritan.

We must smash these icons; purify the alters; and prohibit people from praying to plaster saints. If you aren't old enough to treat monarchy sensibly, then you shouldn't be allowed to have one. Our lives will be poorer without these grand ceremonies and daft traditions, but the superstitious worship of a perfectly ordinary human being is a much greater evil. The 'fitting tribute' to Diana Spencer that the press are so worried about should be the dissolution of her cult.

William can be president for life, if he wants to be; but please let's not cut the throat of any more may-queens

Dear Mr PM

Please note. You should have said "The whole country apart from Andrew wishes them every happiness." Or, in your language "The vastmajority of the country wishes them every happiness." Or possibly the "The vast yes majority of the yes country...." Not that Andrew wishes them any ill, of course. I suppose in that sense you are right: I wish them every happiness to the exact same extent that I wish happiness to any other two people I have never met. Apart from Nick Clegg and Tony Blair, obviously. On my way to Tescos, if it wasn't that I live near Stokes Croft and have to pretend that I don't like Tescos, for reasons I can't remember, I walk past the sorting office. I sometimes drop in and pick up a package from Amazon. There's a big sign outside saying "Royal Mail", with a picture of a crown. It's the most decreptit building you ever saw, it looks like a warehouse. On one side there's a small trading estate which I have never been near, and on the other side there's a small local railway station which I have. (In between there are some reasonably nice looking flats. Years ago I was mugged in the ally between my flat and the Royal Mail sorting office.) If you took away the picture of the crown and the word "Royal" you'd have to put something else there. "The British Mail" sounds white and BNP. "The People's Mail" sounds commie. "The Mail" sounds like a racist newspaper. And then Andrew Lloyd Weber would have to write a new national anthem and we'd have to elect a president. The joke used to be that you could summarize the anti-republican argument in two words: President Thatcher. Then it became President Blair. But that was in the days before the whole celebrity thing had gone completely to cock. These days, we'd (seriously, really) be talking about President Boyle or President Goody. So keep up the silly tradition by all means, at least until you can think of something to put in its place. But don't involve me in the back story. It's a bit like the Olympic Games. I'm not against the Egg and Spoon Race. I don't want the Egg and Spoon Race abolished. I'm not even against us hosting the international Egg and Spoon Race, although if it comes to a straight choice between the Olympics and, say, Universities, I'd go for the Universities. But I do rather get bored with the idea that I should, and indeed do, care who win the gold medal in the egg and spoon race, any more than the guys in the running club do, or should, care whether the 1950s Captain America was an imposter. Ho hum. Eighteen months of the Daily Mail calling for mandatory street parties and compulsory bunting, eighteen months of the Guardian saying that anything the working class are interested in should be abolished, eighteen months of the Express saying that Prince Philip dunnit. I think perhaps I shall hibernate.