Takfirism

Fred Kagan has published one of the more interesting articles about Iraq from a hawkish perspective I have read for a while. His analysis of Al Quaeda itself and its ideology and the way that it differs from orthodox Islam is the bit in which I have most knowledge to support him and in emphasising the importance of takfir he is entirely right. He might add to that that in orthodox Sunni theology there is a fear of fitna (which we might roughly translate as anarchy) which means that Sunni theologians normally have advocated backing the Islamic government of the day. Al Quaeda's ideology has its roots in Said Qutb's thinking in Nasser's Egypt whose roots lie both as Kagan argues in Leninism and in some aspects of third world post-colonialist thinking but also in the response from the Arabs in the 14th Century to the Mongol invasion.

Kagan's article isn't perfect though. He thinks that violence is falling in Iraq, Juan Cole suggests that actually it is still going up. The argument about the surge isn't one I want to get into here- but Cole's disagreement should make one think about that part of Kagan's article. Having said that his description of what Bin Laden means is interesting and useful- read the article for that, if not necessarily for the analysis of Iraq's situation.

Global Warming

One of the major problems facing the world today is global warming. There is an argument going on at the moment on several blogs- including Matt Sinclair's blog and Vino's blog about how to organise our response to Global Warming. Matt seems keen for example not to take action to forestall global warming- but to take action to deal with the consequences of Global Warming- building flood defences and securing houses. Vino asks the very sensible question- which is that for most of the world the places most likely to suffer are not the places that produce emmissions- if Bangladesh is flooded because of the actions of the United States, why should not the Americans pay for Bangladeshis to be rehoused securely. How can it be fair that they don't?

Ultimately there are two issues here- one which Matt is keen to discuss which is how we deal with global warming- and he may be right that all green policies are redundent and unhelpful. But there is a second major issue which is how we cost global warming and spread that cost from the countries causing the damage to those who will suffer more from it. One way of dealing with this is to proceed as the market and as the power relations in the world today would demand- afterall Bangladeshi farmers don't matter- whereas Chinese or American factory owners do. That is a legitimate argument- and yet like Thrasymachus's argument in the Republic- it contains a basic counterintuitive claim that might makes right. The other way of doing things is to set up some scheme of prices which will internationally redistribute money to help those in vulnerable and poor regions- otherwise the basic inequality will remain.

You see ultimately if you beleive in the science of global warming (and that is another argument- but until someone produces for me a scientific critique of global warming based on peer reviewed papers I'm going to stick with the climate scientists) then either you have to forestall it or you have to deal with the consequences. The first means setting up a global emissions control- as in Kyoto- which would regulate the world's emissions of CO2, but the second also involves international cooperation because it involves setting an international price for CO2 and ultimately an international fund to save flooded areas. Many conservatives fear that the first would bring in unwanted state action- but what is the conservative solution to the problem of Bangladesh because at the moment, and perhaps this is stupidity, I don't see a just way of not having an international transfer of funds to poor and vulnerable countries from large emitters.

Citizen Trump

This interview between Erroll Morris, the documentary maker and Donald Trump about Citizen Kane is fascinating. The only real issue is does what Trump says about the film say more about Trump or Kane?

Tom Lehrer - Wernher von Braun

A great man who didn't broadcast many songs- here live singing of Werner von Braun. A great song as well- take it away Mr Lehrer!

Evolution and the Brain

Dr Stuart Derbyshire writes intelligently in Spiked today about a subject that deserves more attention than it often gets, the way that the brain and the mind are related. He suggests that there is something distinct about the way that the human mind and human brain are related that separates us from animals- the example he gives is cows, but no doubt other examples might be given. He posits that something within the brain registers sensation but then that the division of sensation into experience and the cognitive ability to learn through experience are made up of what he calls inquiry. Dr Derbyshire's line of argument deserves attention- and is interesting and I reccomend a read of the article whose subtleties I have neither the space nor the expertise to probe here- but there are two large chasm like problems that I see emerging should we accept Dr Derbyshire's analysis. The first being what then is inquiry and where is it located- what kind of faculty is this that produces mind out of brain. The second being why should it have been created- the processes of evolution one would think lead to purely biological constraint, why introduce this new factor so called mind into the equation. Why did we get here. It isn't that Dr Derbyshire is neccessarily wrong- but that he needs to explain further how his logic progresses and what he means by inquiry and how that faculty would tie into a coherent account of human evolution.

Holding Fire- The Chartists

Conservatives today are fond of rhapsodising about the dangers of welfare dependency, the abilities of charity and the way that the class structure benefits those at the bottom as much as those at the top. Market forces we are told will bring the rich man in his castle and the poor man at his gate everything they might wish for or need without the interposition of a clumsy and inept state. Should agencies be required, we are informed that charitable inclination will supply that agency. The case against socialism has been made cogently time and time again, in the textbooks of economists and on the stomping grounds of politicians. In the House of Commons, the Inns of Court, the byways of Fleet Street (or should that be Wapping) and the counting houses of the City, the case against welfare dependency is obvious and certain. The case against socialism though wasn't so obvious a hundred years ago when the Chartists ranged through England seeking votes for working men.

Often it takes a play to remind us that the pieties of the free market leave people behind. My first encounter with serious left-wing thought was seeing the play an Inspector Calls which affected me deeply and still does- every time I see Alistair Sim's eyes in the film version bore into the family of industrialists he visits I wonder about myself sitting in their places. Similarly Holding Fire is a biting attack on the world of the early 19th Century. It chronicles two different stories- the first romantic and the second political and the first provides the rationale for the activity of the second. It chronicles them against the backdrop of the hungry forties, a decade in Ireland especially of unmitigated hardship and against the backdrop of the disastrous mid-Victorian state- a state whose treatment of the poor scandalised contemporaries like Charles Dickens and forced gradually a reevaluation of the condition of the working classes, forcing the introduction after fifty years of education services (1870) and health provision and pensions in the early part of the 20th Century.

The first story concerns young Lizzie and her life. Thanks to a fortunate encounter Lizzie is taken up by a kind upper class woman as a member of the deserving poor, deserving of help that is, the upper class woman makes her a servant and Lizzie goes to live in a great country house near Bradford. There she encounters all the abuse that one might expect, her fellow servants treat her with scorn, internalising the values of the system they look down on her as the girl at the bottom of the heap. A neighbourhood pastor, Mr Morgan, makes a pretence of saving her soul, but attempts to rape her. Lizzie meets in the house a manservant with whom she falls in love- however she knows that should she refuse to consent to having sex with Mr Morgan then her place will be lost, her boyfriend is more assertive and kills Mr Morgan on finding him in flagrante delicto with his wife and hence they flee across country.

At the same time as we see this story, we perceive another story develop. The story of the early Chartists, led by William Lovett and Fergus O'Connor, representing the alternative moral force and physical force sides of the movement and their struggles. Essentially those struggles as we see them are about the condition of the working people. In the text of the play, Lovett and O'Connor believed that by giving people the right to vote, workers would be able to access all kinds of benefits and the asocial values of the ruling order would be blown away. Where the two of them differed- and increasingly it becomes revealed differed mightily- was in their strategy. Lovett beleiving in moral persuasion- O'Connor in riots. The play implies that Lovett was incredibly personally brave- and he was, going to prison for a year in 1839- but slightly less fairly that O'Connor was a coward, O'Connor was imprisoned twice though by the end of the 1840s he was becoming mentally unstable.

The two stories are strengthened by their connection. The first without the second would seem mere melodrama, without the second though the first would lack relevance. Because we can see a real poor couple suffering and suffering harshly, because we see the horror of working class life we can appreciate the reasons why the Chartist campaigns were so important- if that is they could ever deliver what they promised.

And that ultimately is the issue. Because today 5 of the Chartist's 6 points have been implemented- all accept for annual elections are the policy of most governments in the West (though equal electoral districts no doubt might be argued about) but what has changed. Well in most of the West people are no longer able to starve on the streets, rape is no longer something that a girl in service need expect without redress, the worst grinding poverty has gone as have the workhouses which promised hungry people food at the price of their liberty. But much still has to be done and there is much that seems to have no possibility of changing. Inequality is high and getting higher. People live in poverty. Healthcare is almost everywhere limited- dental care say to people with the money to afford it in the UK and it is true that birth in certain postcodes means that your life will be shorter, your education worse and your prospects lower than a contemporary born in a more advantageous location.

At two points in Holding Fire, Lovett the great Chartist becomes involved in a fictitious argument with Frederick Engels, Marx's friend in a London pub. The situation is contrived but isn't impossible. Engels presents communism to Lovett and listening to Lovett's response one can hardly feel that Engels has proved anything- and yet, Engels too is right for the charter was achieved but the poor are still with us. The economic structure of the world did not turn on its head as Lovett and O'Connor promised it would, the poor were not saved but are still with us, beggars still inhabit the London streets and like in their day often they are ex soldiers down on their luck. Democracy ended up through the creation of the middle class, becoming a ballast to the establishment- Hillaire Belloc's famous lines, from a later more cynical time, that

The accursed power which stands on Privilege
(And goes with Women, and
Champagne, and Bridge) Broke—
and Democracy resumed her reign:
(Which goes with Bridge, and Women and Champagne).

Never seem truer than when watching Lovett and his allies discourse about how democracy can redeem those at the bottom of the pile. What they never realised was that for many they are too demoralised to vote, and even if they could vote, they might well be outnumbered by the majority in the middle who are fearful of change. Engels was wrong but so was Lovett.

Suffering on the scale of the 1840s hopefully shall never happen in the West, and soon in the rest of the world ever again. Technological change and the development of welfare states hopefully mean that that is true (though economic crisis might put pay to that rude optimism). But if so the hope held out by Chartism for democracy was misplaced- democracy can prevent the worst evils but promises no revolutions in the condition of the poorest. Equality of Opportunity does not exist today. The last century showed that the main alternative to liberal capitalism- state socialism- did not work- that it led as Lovett in this play prophetically says it will lead to, to the destruction of freedom and the human spirit. Isaiah Berlin looks to have been a good historical analyst in this case- he faced us with the dilemma- either freedom or equality and we still have not squared that circle.

Political issues are the very soul of this play- they run through it but the play lends them, as the best drama tends to do, a human context. The hope that democracy might bring is shown as the alternative to a religious faith which at times in the play is shown to be so much bunkum resting upon priest-craft from lecherous old ministers. What the playwright captures as well is the particular intensity of the Chartist and one has to say early Labour rhetoric- the way that it had more Methodism than Marxism about it, the Bible and Biblical promises about the end times, from revelation in particular, crop up again and again. The language of radicalism is the language of the bible, of scripture, of natural right, not the language of socialism.

It might appear apt therefore to refer backwards to the Bible in concluding this piece, this is not really a socialist play, but it is a deeply Christian play. The play is another call, in the tradition of the early Christian writers, to rethink poverty. Moral Force Chartism, much more than physical force Chartism, is the Chartism given voice in this play and it sought to advance through consent the lot of working people. The most obvious way of doing that for the 'moral force' Chartist was to give men the vote- but also it was to change society, change character. Rather than seeking like Engels a development of a beehive, the Lovetts of the world sought to contain freedom together with equality, to bring them into a marriage. That marriage of conscience and community is something that we still struggle with- rightly the West rejected communism, wrongly we have not dealt with equality and the promise of the Sermon of the Mount, that the meek shall inherit the earth, remains even now unfulfilled, the other significant prophecy of Christ, that the poor are those we shall always have with us, looks like being the truest word spoken by either human or divine agency in history.

Because we still have failed to square that circle the end of this play is curiously problematic. One feels as the last character is hung and the last speech is given that the audience will go home, the Chartists failed to bring about the changes in working life, the poor are still with us despite ameliorations in their lives and the dilemma still remains- how do we ultimately give everyone a life worth living and still maintain human dignity and freedom. Is the price of freedom the failure of many to attain it.

Crossposted at Bits of News

Lee Hughes

There is a lot of competition (Neil Clark's archive is always 'interesting' to read) but this article by Lawrence Donegan must rate as one of the most stupid ever published on the Guardian's website. Lee Hughes was a football player who played for West Bromwich Albion and Coventry City over several years- then he was convicted of driving whilst drunk, killing a man and absenting himself from the scene of the accident. Hughes deservedly got a sentence of three years- there may be doubt that he should have got longer but he was given three years and has been released. He has recently been employed by Oldham Athletic as a striker. Donegan argues that Oldham should not have employed him, that his employment is a kick in the teeth for natural justice and that essentially to follow his logic through noone should be employed after committing a crime. Donegan obviously doesn't get the central principle that after one has done one's time one has served one's debt to society. Personally Hughes should never forget what he did- but equally now that he has served his sentence it is not for any of us to stigmatise him. A judge decided he should go for prison for three years as punishment, that is the end of the matter insofar as this case is concerned. If you disagree with that sentence write an article about that- but this principle holds over all sentencing that once the sentence laid down at the time is served- the person is discharged back into society and can earn their way legally as they choose- which is exactly what Mr Hughes is doing.

Russia, rushing to utopia … or not

Ian Appleby has written an excellent post on life in Russia, referring to an issue many of us are talking about over here and what he describes is even more the case here in a bigger population centre:

Sadly, at least in my view, many of these low-profile dwellings, so redolent of the South of Russia, are slated to be demolished, so that shiny new apartment blocks, which could go in any country in the world, can go up in their place. Now, it's easy for me to grumble, I don't have to live in these houses, some of which still have very basic facilities.

Others, though, have been made very comfortable; they are clearly still usable buildings, so why waste their embodied energy by tearing them down? Well, and again this will hardly be news, the land they stand on, close to the centre, has rocketed in value. Developers will get a much better return on the many apartments they can build on the footprint of just one such house.

Another issue is this:

The Russian legislature passed laws forbidding non-Russians to hold market stalls, the vast majority of which were indeed run by other nationalities. The law worked as a sop to the increasingly xenophobic tenor of (ethnic) Russian nationalism, but because there was not, for some reason, a rush of Russians to take up the new business opportunity - indeed, at least in Krasnodar, Russians who made living staffing market stalls for non-Russian employers have been hit quite hard - the law also had the happy side-effect of freeing up a lot of prime real estate.

I can't comment further on this because I'm too close to the process myself here but let's put it obliquely:

I just walked back to the main road to get a car and passed through a huge canopied market of the old kind. Nearly all of these have now been knocked down to make way for centralized mega-marts one has to drive to, to reach. Now this market today, on Pionerskaya, is wondrous - all vegetables and fruits in season are here.

Yesterday, the Min and I were discussing arbuz or watermelon and everyone knows you can get them in late June but they're full of nitrates. The time to buy arbuz is right now. Three weeks from now will be too late.

There's something satisfying in buying in season, rather than the irradiated product all year round. It might be prejudice but the Russian housewife is not a fool when it comes to food and she says that natural tastes better. Everything here was [and this I feel follows the point Ian was making] closer to the earth - you were in touch with reality and lived within your limited means.

It was perfectly fit for purpose. There is a danger of all that being lost.

Crossposted at N.O.

Ingrid Bergman

Ingrid Bergman was born several years ago today in 1915, she died 25 years ago. Slate have got a slate of pictures of Bergman up on their website here. Worth a look at one of the great actresses of all time.

Wisdom from Babes

The Thunderdragon is one of the rising stars of conservative blogging- but being a youngster within blogging tempts one to ask the question upon what basis can one criticise anyone else's views given their more extensive experience of life. The Thunderdragon provides some thoughts as to what those answers should be in a guest post here. His answer is interesting- and basically takes the form of a suggestion that whilst he accepts his limited experience compared to those who are his elders, he still thinks that the perspective of someone young deserves to be heard. As a twenty six year old blogger I am tempted to agree with him: but I think there is something else worth adding to his comments.

It isn't merely the quantity of experience that can furnish someone with an aid to understanding politics, but also the quality of that experience. Knowledge and experience are related but they are not neccessarily equivalent. To take a simple example there are plenty of seventy year olds who have less understanding than I do of economics, the science of a changing situation than I do, partly because they have never studied calculus. There will be plenty of 18 year olds with a better understanding than mine because they studied economics for longer than I did. It is not merely experience but the type of experience that matters as to whether you understand politics.

What kind of experience furnishes you with the ability to understand politics- that is the kind of question that we could spend a thousand years debating. Obviously reading vast numbers of books about history and analyses of the past helps. Obviously working in political organisations furnishes you with another kind of wisdom. Watching films and absorbing culture allows you another kind of valuable perspective, as does understanding the sciences and social sciences like economics furnishes you with another perspective. The problem is that no one of these competing experiences is enough really to sort out the whole of politics- but each allows you to have an understanding. As throughout life the more of those experiences the more you can understand- but it does depend on the type of experience you have. Watching football matches, despite the fact that is what I'm doing right at this moment, won't furnish you with much direct knowledge of politics but there are many activities which will.

Because it isn't the quantity as much as the quantity of quality experience that matters- if like the Thunderdragon, myself, Matt Sinclair or Vino Sangrapillai you have spent a long time thinking about these matters your views matter and you can even teach sometimes those who are older than you. It is also worth remembering that fetishising experience over intelligence is also a failing- a canniness and ability to think logically matters as well- training in various arts and sciences can help in that. In the end, we are all in the position where we are losing and old or young the real moment when you can tell that you have lost the ability to transmit experience into useful knowledge is the moment at which you beleive yourself not to need to learn.

Letter from an Unknown Woman

Letter from an Unknown Woman is as romantic a tearjerker as they come. The movie apparantly concerns the heartbreak of a young girl deceived by a serial seducer, made pregnant by him and then later meeting him as a married woman whilst still in love with him and having an affair with him. The film is told through the means of a letter that she sends to him the night before he is to duel with her husband, as she herself mortally sick is about to die. Tears coat this film, and Ophuls makes the whole impression more emotional through a subtle and thoughtful use of music, suitably for a movie set in Austria the music of Strauss, Mozart and Liszt dominates the entire film- as Alexander Dhoest argues music in this film provides a context to the descriptions of the story.

Tearjerkers are not normally profound, but this is an exception. Ophuls definitely anchors his story in the conventional realities of the early 20th Century- Lisa (our heroine) sleeps with our hero on their first night of meeting- she conceives a child whilst he unaware floats away. Her feelings are those of a young and inexperienced girl, she beleives that when men vow their eternal devotion they mean it. Whereas Stefan (our hero) is remarkably callous: he takes and she gives, she wishes to be the one woman who had never taken anything from him. Her only other passion in life seems to be her son- she loves her son with such devotion that she would marry for him to live a prosperous life. In a sense this is a film that such a luminary as Dennis Prager might find something to find joy in, all the perceptions of men and women are devoutly traditional and all the archetypes are those of the fifties and earlier periods of time. Women seem here to be soft and failing types, always reverting to love and not understanding cynical men, whereas men seem always to be toying with the emotions of women and frivolously seeking to sleep with them.

Of course such a perception is wrong and we now know is wrong, women and men are individuals with different desires and needs. The films of the forties with the figure of the lusting femme fatale was undermining it at just the point that Ophuls made his film and this film too has elements which display that this condition is a condition not of the sex but of the character. For two characters violate the Prager principle that women are innocent and loving and men are vicious and horrible. Fontaine's husband is a caring individual who treats her illegitimate child as though he was his son. Fontaine's mother is cynical and wants to get married to fortify her and her daughter's position. Whatever the truth at the time, what this film does is explore something much more interesting than the confrontation between the sexes, the confrontation between innocence and experience, feeling and frivolity.

Fontaine made a living out of playing girls who looked inexperienced and young- and in a way her performance here is very similar to her performance in Rebecca (reviewed on Bits here). What Fontaine conveys is a continual kind of tentativeness- Hitchcock made that the signature tune of a symmetrical drama of the loss of innocence and gains in power- but Ophuls is more interested in the actual substance of innocence. There is something Jane Eyreish in both Fontaine's character and Jourdain's pianist- he is Rotchester to her Eyre, crushing her with his charisma. The degree to which he has power over her is revealed when he asks her not to leave, and he responds that she will not be the one who leaves him.

The collision between the two realities is controlled by the female character. In reality its the collision between her dreams and his reality- Ophuls here gives the female character the privilege of writing her own story, she actually tells the story, all we see of the male is that he is a cad and a bounder. Lisa imagines that Stefan is truly in love with her, that he truly desires her because of some connection between their characters. Ophuls reinforces this by not letting Lisa age because she is imagining and reconstructing her history from the age of thirty backwards and so its a thirty year old woman who always appears in every shot. Until right at the end she professes that she doesn't see through his foppish exterior to the cad beneath, doesn't see that his feeling is a lie, that his descriptions of true feeling are but a folly. Symbollically at the moment her esteem for Jourdain dies so does her son, the outgrowth of that love dies at the moment that that innocence of love dies and she has to die then herself. She tells him in the letter that her life began with his entry into it and ends with his exit and her son's exit from it.

In this way Ophuls of course is subverting and playing with that notion of innocence- because of course this is Lisa's tale and has a subjective point of view. For Stefan she is one more body- but for Lisa she sees herself as the angel, the woman that is key to him. The point about the madness that Lisa endures is that her act of agression is one of silence- she allows Stefan to beleive that he is a cad- allows him to assume that role because she never says that he isn't. The courtship that she has with an officer is very different to the courtship that she has with Stefan, the one is equal, the other unequal and she seeks the masochistic. In this sense she crafts her own death.

For Jourdain the moment he receives the letter is a moment of realisation of the accuracy of Lisa's impression. It gives him a story. Throughout the film we hear of Stefan's listlessness, his inability to focus himself on music, to focus on a woman, to focus his talent and his brain on things worthy of him. Honour a code is something that he deserts at will. But of course the letter gives him a focus, it gives him a moment and a story to tell someone. Strangely the moment of his emergance into the film is the moment of his emergance into life- the moment of consciousness that Lisa says was marked by Stefan's entrance into her life is marked for Stefan by her exit.

In many ways the film therefore is a description of suicide, a double suicide predicated on strangerhood. Both characters play aggressive roles- one as the aggressive mute (the butler as a signal is a mute)- the other as a seducer who encounters on his voyage through the world a woman with a delusion about the world in which she is a powerless victim, a romantic heroine- a true Jane Eyre (who manages to have a job, snare a rich husband and all the rest).

The interplaying of innocence and experience, overlaid upon each other like interlocking patterns, is crucial to the film. Ultimately its a film written and crafted by a professed innocent, to snare an innocent villain. Ultimately what it reflects is the way that passivity is really aggressive, it attempts to make a calim upon the attention of the world as much as any attempt to wrest that attention to it. Lisa's ultimate death is as much a lunge at Stefan, as if she hd actually lunged at his all too human flesh.

Lisa ultimately is destroyed by Stefan, Stefan is ultimately also destroyed by Lisa- that is the heart of this film- the aggressiveness of innocence something everyone from either sex should heed.

Crossposted at Bits of News.

A good political joke

Ellee Seymour's found a wonderful Jamaican one but it applies to any democracy in the world!

Ashokian Tact and devilry

Ashok wrote a post a while ago about tact in which he presented an unconventional and you might think unsympathetic (to this blogger at least) argument that tact was often less useful in human relationships than one might think. The crux of Ashok's argument is in this passage:

In most cases I have found that stepping back and letting someone have their pride creates a relationship that is mediocre at best. After all, you're the one striving to find common ground, to be nice to others, to give the benefit of the doubt. That you wouldn't be given a similar generosity is a problem: it means that you have to placate someone else's ego to be let in their "lives."

Ashok I am sure like this blogger would say that most relationships are filled with give and take, most relationships between friends, families or lovers are filled with compromise and compromise is all about giving up things that you would like to do for the sake of another- what Ashok's critique seems to be concerned with here is asymmetrical concession particularly at the beggining of a relationship which establishes a pattern.

To demonstrate where I agree entirely with Ashok, I want to turn to one of the most acute things said about relationships ever by one of the most acute observers of human foilibles I have come across. C.S. Lewis was a bad philosopher but a good reader of character- some of his insights- that dieting is a form of gluttony are ones to which I refer all the time. Lewis occasionally said stupid things but some of what he says is very perceptive and particularly this is true about relationships.

One of Lewis's best books concerns the tempting of a human soul by a junior devil who is being advised on how to do it by his uncle a senior devil called Screwtape. At one point the human they are trying to tempt, falls in love with a girl and Screwtape is faced with the mystery of human love, this passion that breaks down all before it in a kind of dew of human kindness. The devil of course is horrified by it: but he has a strategy, he encourages his minion to tempt the man concerned to conceding at every moment, tempting the girl to accept concession as a fact of life. Setting up a scenario which once the first flush of love has departed, will lead to endless conflict between the man who has reverted back somewhat to his selfish self and the girl who expects the norms of their early relationship to survive. Things don't quite go in that direction- but the danger that Lewis points to, that relationships can be corrupted by the expectation of future kindness based on past tact is very valid.

Essentially what Lewis and Ashok are advocating within reason is that to lie that you are kinder than you are upon entering a relationship ends ultimately in tears because it creates an obligation, an expectation in the other parties eyes. That's different from arguing against kindness itself- but its arguing for reciprocality and equality in relationships, there is no point in abandoning one's self in order to serve another if one has no intention (and very few have) of living as a servant for the rest of one's life. When two very conservative (and exceptionally intelligent) writers remind one of the importance of equality and reciprocality in one's relationships its worth listening.

Of Rants and Plays

Alistair Cooke, the late famous BBC reporter from America, once opined that writers and intellectuals should be more cautious about lampooning the political actions of those in government. Cooke understood what so few others have: that government is an art which very few of us have mastered- often there are good reasons for doing what a government does but they involve long research and deep thought that most of us have not the time or inclination for, involved as we are in long research and deep thought within our own specialisms. Cooke's thoughts came to me this weekend.

As some of you may know this weekend I went up to a wedding in Edinburgh- whilst there I managed to see three shows at the Edinburgh Fringe. Two of which (Love's Labours Won and Not in my Name The Trial of Niccolo Machiavelli) were attempting amongst all their other points to make some rather complicated political points. Love's Labours Won was a farce set along Shakespearian lines about relationships and the way that men in particular relate to women, played by an all female cast it was comic and well played, but right in the middle there was an unjustified (in terms of the plot) little riff on the evils of George Bush. The Machiavelli work was really a pretty good historical lecture on the life of Machiavelli- a pretty basic one but even so a good introduction on the way that Machiavelli had lived to my mind- which turned in its last twenty minutes into a prolonged rant about George Bush, how evil he and America was and were and how we should all unite against the 'Great Satan'.

In both plays I consider that the politics either in the case of Machiavelli ruined or in the case of Love's Labours Won spoiled what apart from that was a good performance. In both performances the politics spoiled the integrity of the work of art which had as its focus something else (significantly the third act of the evening was also political but the expansion from a female comic talking about herself to talking about the difficulties of coming out in Tasmania was much more natural than an expansion from a comedy about love to a disquisition in iambic pentameter about Afghanistan.) Ruining a work of art is of course irritating- especially when one can see how without that there would be a whole which would be worth contemplating- but both pieces of art indulged in something else that worryingly some artists tend to mistake for political activism.

Both were a smug rant. There are many things wrong with George Bush, and any reader of this blog will know that I throw up my hands in despair at the Texan every day- but he deserves as does any politician to be treated as a serious individual. Bush did not invade Iraq because he is a demon, neither did Dick Cheney. They beleived possibly wrongly that that course of action was right. That idea has persuaded many intelligent men and women as well- doesn't mean that they can't all be wrong but just to rant in the smug knowledge that everyone righteous is on your side is both wrong and arrogant. It is profoundly arrogant because it assumes a perfection that is not yours to assume. To argue and to express through a work of art say the suffering of Iraqis at the moment is fine, but to tag on a paranoid twenty minute rant against Americans to a lecture on Machiavelli is both wrong and immature. It reveals the idiocy of its writer whilst for this viewer for a moment it concealed the misdeeds of George Bush.

The truth is that art of course can and should be political. But it should recognise that politics is not easy but difficult and complicated, that politicians are human beings who make wrong decisions often for the best of motives, that rants are unattractive and that works of art should retain an integrity, a single or divided vision that doesn't whirl off into a stupid and simplistic attack on a political stance.

Grahame Greene's Work-Life Balance in "Special Duties"

Special Duties is a very complete short story- stretching over only four pages in my edition. It deals though with subjects of a cosmic importance- Greene as was typical of his fiction fills the story with his Catholicism. Here though he ridicules a conception of Catholicism as the faith of exchange, the faith of bartering indulgences for time in purgatory. A businessman, successful in his art business, Mr Ferraro, attempts to employ a secretary to fulfill special duties. This woman, a Miss Saunders is treated in exactly the same way as his other secretaries, questioned as to why she has achieved only limited indulgences for June. Ferraro attempts to quantify and heap up these indulgences so as to preserve his soul in the same way that he seeks to save his estate from death duties. Catholicism for him has become a business proposition!

Ferraro is interesting in this regard because of his obvious lack of compassion towards those who work for him. When he discovers that Saunders has instead of finding indulgences been out finding love for herself with a young man- an exceptionally normal and healthy thing for a young and pretty woman to be doing, Ferraro decides to sack her. In many ways he ressembles in this failure to understand the whole of humanity, the character Professor Openshaw that Chesterton gently mocks in the Father Brown story, The Blast of the Book. Like Openshaw Ferraro practises a craft- in Openshaw's case the investigation of spiritualistic events, in Ferraro's business. But in both cases their craft has driven out all that is not concerned with it. Openshaw can't see because of his fixation that his secretary might be playing a practical joke upon him: Ferraro can't see that he cannot pay someone else to be virtuous for him, the business transaction will not work.

It will not work because ultimately as Greene is at care to illustrate to us the reader the craft of making money conflicts in his view with the ultimate spiritual reality of human existence. To see the world through the nexus of profit is for the Catholic Greene to miss the entire nature of human beings not as movers of commodities but as eternal souls. Miss Saunders is someone with a life and a world outside her essence as Ferraro's secretary. The greater blindness though is Ferraro's about himself- after-all it is the more damaging. Ferraro Greene leaves us in no doubt is a deeply damaged person- his marriage is basically defunct, he keeps to one side of the house with his coin and his wife keeps to the other side with a full range of spiritual confessors and never the twain shall meet. Ferraro is suspicious of every single person he meets- he even has a doctor to check up on the treatments prescribed by his doctor! Further than that of course Ferraro's soul for Greene is in mortal danger. Greene allows him to see this briefly- but in a moment the blindness returns.

Greene allows Ferraro to see this by presenting him with a crisis. Ferraro believes that Saunders has been out getting indulgences for him, whereas actually she has been involved in a romantic situation all of her own. The point is that Ferraro's limited analysis has led to a crisis- as he perceives this crisis suddenly he calculates that all his efforts have been in vain. Greene allows him this moment of distress because in it Ferraro sees his condition clearly, he is teetering on the edge of a moral abyss. His craft has overcome his conscience. The reader of course can see the abyss is an actual abyss, but Ferraro ultimately sees it as a problem capable of solution. Greene presents Ferraro's attitude to this situation which violates his method as a problem to be solved by that same method.

As a critique of experience providing the matter of life, the matter of growth therefore what Greene is saying is that once a craft, a techne, a sense of how problems are solved is created the human mind, like a dog returning to its vomit, returns straight back to that method. So Ferraro faces a real crisis- Saunders has betrayed him and not secured the indulgence he craves- and he solves it by the only method he knows to be possible. Instead of abasing himself before the living God and seeking mercy, he we are told seeks another secretary to solve the problem- a better tool to perform the same function. But we know through Greene's insistant tone of mockery and through the moment of reality that Greene has allowed Ferraro that such consolations will prove illusory, ultimately Ferraro is working against the grain of humanity and will fail again and again.

Catholicism and Christianity are interesting subjects- but I think Greene's analysis has a wider lesson and even makes sense when Catholicism is not taken as the ideal way of interpreting the story. Of course the story is profoundly Catholic- it wouldn't make sense outside of a Catholic set of references- but the point that a craft or a way of doing things can consume the individual who practices it is not particularly Catholic. Its the root for instance of Kant's discussion about enlightenment, that the truly enlightened are those who divest themselves of their proffessions and take on the habit of an educated savant outside of their habitual realm. Similarly here with Greene, salvation flows for Greene out of a whole view of human life reliant not upon the subtleties of one craft or another but upon a view of human complexity that factors in them all. One thinks of Father Brown in Chesterton again, the man of the cloth who yet understands all types of men from all walks of life.

So Greene in this short story has a real point- its a point that in a world filled with work, with more and more people working more and more hours deserves to be made again and again. Those who sacrifice themselves to their craft ultimately understand less of the totality of human experience and leave themselves open to either in Greene's case losing their souls or in Kant's joining the barbarians. Virtue lies for Greene in a rounded comprehension of human kind. Ferraro's gradgrindism leads him to mistake salvation for something dealt with in coin and copper. Ultimately following his craft in all aspects of his life destroys him, just as it in Kant's case destroys the capacity to become enlightened.

It seems that virtue lies in intellectually moving outside the orbit of one's craft for both Catholics and Kantians. Perhaps the most important argument for giving people more leisure therefore is not that it will necessarily make them happier but it will make them better people, better able to judge the world and morally more virtuous.

Crossposted at Bits of News

Murdering Mr Lawrence

The murder of Phillip Lawrence, a school headmaster, shocked the United Kingdom. A family man and a good man, Lawrence was a public servant of the first order and was shot for no apparant reason. Today it appears that his murderer may after twelve years of incarceration be released in the United Kingdom and not be deported back to his native Italy. The full story is laid out here. Hysteria has recently whipped up in the UK over the idea that this murderer Learco Chindoma won a court case against the Home Office over his deportation. There are two issues though that this event raises in my mind and both are worth exploring.

The first is over sentencing. The hysteria about Mr Chindoma no doubt relates to the terrible nature of his crime. Mr Chindoma murdered a man who deserved praise not gunshots for his work. There are no ways of understanding the loss of a father or a husband at an early age, and worse still to lose that person through a callous murder. Sentencing often seems to those who are inexpert quite light for many crimes. Terrorist offenders for instance are in the end let out in the United Kingdom sometimes after sentences as low as two or three years are passed upon them. Mr Chindoma it appears is no further danger to the community but justice is not purely about treatment, it is also a political mechanism by which the vigilante within us all is quieted before the majesty of the law. It seems at least arguable that Mr Chindoma should have been sentenced to a longer time given the horror of the murder that he committed. Obviously one cannot comment on the parole board's assessment of the facts about his capacity to leave prison, I do not have the facts to do so, but I think in this case Mr Chindoma's release furthers the impression that the justice system does not deal fairly with those who commit heinous crimes.

That sense has some fairly disastrous political consequences. It strengthens the route to vigilantiism. It strengthens the argument to relax evidentiary rules, the cornerstone of modern democracy and indeed perhaps more important than the right to vote in sustaining a liberal regime. It also reinforces the conviction that many have that being in favour of incarceration and not the death penalty means being in favour of releasing every criminal eventually no matter how heinous the crime. As an opponent of the death penalty, based on miscarriages of justice like that of the case of Randall Adams, that seems to me to be a dangerous impression to give people and further undermines the case against the death penalty. Ultimately a justice system is about sustaining the political government of justice as much as it is about justice itself- cases like this where a murderer or even in some cases a terrorist are released early don't help those who wish to defend that political government of justice.

The second is over Mr Chindoma's location once he is released. Here the article I quoted above is useful. Mr Chindoma for family reasons carries Italian citizenship, but he does not speak Italian and was last there when he was five and is now my age, twenty six. When he completes his sentence its worth considering whether the court is right, that the country in which he knows people, has friends and family should be the country that receives him, rather than the country that strictly he was born in and also his mother was from. Mr Chindoma is British by everything apart from genetics and nativity, he has spent more time here than anywhere else and even has British qualifications. The question of where he is released to must be separated from the question of whether he is released. The first is an issue about sentencing for all criminals, the second is about Mr Chindoma's true country of origin. Its worth remembering that had Mr Chindoma a British passport nothing about this case would have changed save that his deportation would not even have been a question.

This points to me not to the fact that it is immigration law which is wrong but to the idea that it is sentencing law which in this case was inadequate. Basically Mr Chindoma should be released if the Independent is right in its survey of the case within this country, but whether he should be released now is a different question. I feel a personal deep disquiet that I cannot really justify about him being released now- his crime was awful- and about others who have committed like crimes being released after a similar length of time. The controversy over his deportation reflects the fact that the public shares my disquiet- whereas I feel that the direction of the agitation is wrong, I'm not sure that the agitation itself is wrong. Mr Chindoma should spend more time in prison but should be released within this country.

Gracchi Returns

I am still in Norway having had a wonderful holiday with some exceptionally nice individuals- but have an internet connection- and return to England tommorrow. I must say though thanks to everyone over the last few weeks that has posted again. Many of them have interrupted busy lives including blogging to post words over at this blog and I owe them all a lot. Thank you guys very much and I hope people have enjoyed the rather different voices that have been sounding on this blog recently- I have. Unfortunately you are back to me now, but I'd encourage everyone to visit the other lads as well- their blogs are all on the sidebar and take a look. Thank you again guys and if you need reciprocation you know where I am!

Michelle Obama and the importance of Family

Michelle Obama raised an interesting question recently. As reported by Andrew Sullivan she argued that you should judge a politician by the way that he runs his family, she said that and I am quoting from Sullivan's blog here,

That one of the most important things that we need to know about the next President of the United States is, is he somebody that shares our values? Is he somebody that respects family? Is a good and decent person? So our view was that, if you can't run your own house, you certainly can't run the White House. So, so we''ve adjusted our schedules to make sure that our girls are first, so while he's traveling around, I do day trips. That means I get up in the morning, I get the girls ready, I get them off, I go and do trips, I'm home before bedtime. So the girls know that I was gone somewhere, but they don't care. They just know that I was at home to tuck them in at night, and it keeps them grounded, and, and children, the children in our country have to know that they come first. And our girls do and that's why we're doing this. We're in this race for not just our children, but all of our children.

There are obvious political reasons why she has said this- like Sullivan I tend to think its less about Hillary but more in harmony with Obama's general message. It is worth in this context stepping back a bit and analysing what Michelle Obama is actually saying which to my mind is directed less at Hillary than at her husband's potential Republican opponent in the 2008.

Republicans have for a long time been able to draw on the voters who vote for the person most like them. Both Ronald Reagen and George Bush junior were able to capture voters who thought that the President was their kind of guy. Whether this is a sensible thing to vote for or not is another issue- personally I would remark that anyone seeking to become President of the United States is likely to be an extreme individual in both ambition and hopefully intelligence, extremes which may lead to extremity in other behaviour. Leaving that aside though, the Republicans have fused the appeal of running an ordinary bloke for office with the notion that they are the protectors of ordinary blokedom, they are the protectors of marriage against those hordes of homosexuals who will invade marriage from the outside and bring down the end of civilisation, they are the protectors of America from those hordes of bra burning feminazis who want to rip off every penis they see, the protectors of the American family from liberals of any stripe and stream of thought. However illusory the danger, the Republicans have pursued a two stream strategy on this, promising protection and reminding America of the kinky Kennedys and Clinton's cigar.

Michelle Obama's statement in some ways is part of an attempt to come back on that. To assure voters that Democrats despite their far out beliefs, dangerous faith in the capacity of women to think independently and homosexuals to have stable relationships, are actually just like the American voter in other ways. Democrat after democrat has assured voters that they share their concerns, their values but extend tolerance to those with other values. John Kerry at the last election despite an impecable private life and war record is the exception which proves the rule- Kerry was someone that the American voter felt alienated by, felt estranged from, he looked as one Republican commentator said French. Michelle Obama wants her husband though to seem like any other American disabling she hopes the fears that aid the Republican party and their allies in the press.

Whether it works or not is of course another issue- its been tried before and failed. Against the present Republican field though, the Democrats may stand more of a chance. From the multiple divorcee Rudy Giuliani through divorcees John McCain and Fred Thompson and on to the Mormon Mitt Romney there is enough to suggest that the Republican candidates might fail the barbecue test and that there might be a gap for an Obama to succeed where they fail and allay the fears of the Values voters. Its worth remembering as well that this is about manner- I suspect from what I hear that Thompson would have no problem nor would McCain despite their lives, afterall Ronald Reagen astrology apart didn't, but this might represent a front that the Democrats might open on say a Giuliani. Ultimately if you want to feel like you are voting for virtue, voting for a man who could take marriage counselling from Bill Clinton may present a problem. Michelle Obama may therefore be sniping at a possible Republican contender as well as attempting to soften the blow of her husband's social liberalism.

Its interesting to see because it suggests again how central some issues of personal behaviour are to American politics- in this case family. But it also suggests what an Obama presidential candidacy would attempt with regard to winning enough of the values voters over to succeed where John Kerry failed. It might not work, it might not have the chance to work, but its an interesting indicator of the development of American politics.

Russia - reasons to stay

If you haven't already done so, you might like to get over to Shades, where I have a post up on life in Russia - another in the series. I'm not cross-posting it here but rather continuing it below:


Alina Kabaeva

I don't know how much she'd appreciate it but my former girlfriend is the catalyst for this post. She does appear in my first book called Obsession [and part of the second] and obsession is what I had for her and for some years, she for me.

I came over here some time after meeting her in London and in those days it was still rare for an ordinary Russian to travel overseas but it was even rarer for an Englishman to travel to the fSU much beyond Moscow.

He'd have to have a reason and he did in my case. Her. The story is in the novel which you can get to from the sidebar or profile.

The thing is that the reputation of Russian girls generally has gone through an extraordinary transformation over a decade and not necessarily for the good.

All we'd ever had to go on was deep voiced Leonid or Boris of the Politburo saying Da or Nyet and taking the salute in Red Square as the tanks rolled past or else those ice dancers and gymnasts pictured top left and lower right.

It was a coincidental thing because I'd been watching the Olympics and there'd been a close-up of one of the winners, Oksana Grischuk and beside her the sort of square shaped woman you wouldn't want to mess with - her minder, who kept stroking and "minding" her all the way through.

When OG saw she'd won, she gave a little gasp of joy, so restrained and I knew there and then I'd have to have one of those. It's testimony to the ego that it never crossed my mind that I had neither the means nor the Don Juanishness to do this.

Then, one day in September, she came. Not the dancer but a young lady even better, shy and yet knowing what she wanted and she'd decided what she wanted was proximity to me. Was I complaining?

The rest is history and we became an item.

The western press was initially full of praise for the new kind of Russian girl coming out and though it was a much later story, [from 2003], the tale of Natalia Vodianova sums it up. The press called her hardworking, beautiful, willing to listen and be directed, unlike her western sisters.

No argument there - that's what I was finding too. Then something occurred which changed it all in western eyes - Anna Kournikova. 'Nuff said. I've seen countless pics of her and countless pics of my girl and I still say [and many who know her agree] that mine eclipses AK.

Years passed and I met many Russians - the good and the not so good. There were many females you just couldn't trust. It began to dawn on me that I'd scored one of the better types, capricious though she was and a little too immodestly dressed for my liking but wondrous in the arms.

Around this time, articles began to appear in the western press about Russian women wanting to leave the country and I put it to my girl. Nope - she wasn't averse to a trip or two but to leave permanently - no.

Still the articles appeared and they weren't nice, such as one entitled Reds in Beds, which was so anachronistic I shouldn't have bothered:

The collapse of the Soviet Union has left its people demoralised and poor. Many women are looking for a way out as a whole generation of men is lost to a pernicious cycle of unemployment, alcoholism and despair. Meanwhile, in Australia, men with good jobs lead lonely, unfulfilled lives, complaining that women in their own country are "too pushy, too bossy or too spoilt'.

I took this to university and put it to the girls for discussion, assuring them I didn't accept it but what did they think? They were apoplectic. It's s-o-o-o wrong, they universally said. It suggests we have no brain, no talent, no way to make up our own mind. Is it true about Australian women?

I smiled and didn't reply but stats years later confirmed that part of the article had been correct:

Russian spouse visas to Australia:

1999-2000 64 female and 21 male

2003-2004 443 female and 99 male

The stats on females are one thing but the stats on males are also interesting - they were tending to go overseas to get into businesses and trading.

We saw the new problem on a trip to Cyprus when we went on safari and I found myself in a bar with the Greek driver who asked how long I'd had her [my girl]. He was amazed - he usually changed his after a few weeks. Promise them the earth, put them in a condo, have your way, disappear and they have to go home at the end of their visa stay.

My darling was upset by all this and the whisperings in the hotel and elsewhere that she was only with me because of my money quietly began a rift. A girl's not going to put up with that sort of thing for long.

What she knew though, through her work for the airline, was that many Russian girls did overstay their visas and there was a UK stat at one time that 42% between the ages of 18 and 25 absconded at the end of their stay.

About 2002 the marriage market really got into full swing plus the mafia run Eastern European porn supply and this further cheapened relations between foreign men and Russian girls. I was appalled myself because I was now cast in a light which had palpably not been the case when I'd first come over here.

Part of the problem was the way the Russian girl was portrayed to potential marriage partners - western men of a certain age.

"Aussic men want life after Lycra," says Richard Dennison, who is making a documentary about Russian mail-order brides to be screened later this year. "Women in Australia run around in their tracksuit bottoms with little caps and ponytails," he says. "But men want a life beyond that, and they find the earthy, exotic soul of Russian women very attractive, partly because the Russians have a much more traditional approach to relationships and forming a comfortable home life."

This is garbage. True, North American and Aussie men have just about had it up to here with their feministic women but to think that the new crop of Russian girls are any different is the fallacy peddled by the marriage market.

The "home values" and "obedient girls" may appeal to men but these are the values of the previous generation; this is what the girls have been told to write and they've been told to dress half nakedly the better to score a man, so they think. Truth is they're anything but homebodies and the girls signing up for these things want travel, lots of cash and independence - quite the opposite of what Mr. Dennison was stating.

The result was a huge flood of scams, prompting sites such as this which promise to filter any girl's approach to a western man for possible chantage. Often the "girls" are fat, cigar smoking Russian men in a backroom with a computer, who have a bevy of girls "signed" to scam the west via e-mail.

By 2003, it was becoming near impossible for a Russian girl, independently travelling, to get a visa into Europe in summer, particularly to Spain, as we found to our cost - and the stifled smirks which greeted us whenever we walked into a travel agent were grating.

In the end, [not for that reason necessarily but it certainly didn't help], we broke up and now occasionally meet around town. I think we miss each other.

Crossed posted at N.O.

Palin Into Insignificance

It's said the past is another country; well, they have different cliches, for a start, but that's a cheap gag that risks undermining one of mine host's fundamental themes: that we are mistaken if we try to understand the past solely through modern frames of reference. I'm dipping in and out of Michael Palin's diaries at the moment, and this idea comes through clearly. Take this entry, for almost exactly thirty-one years ago:

The day drags on - the unions are asked to work until eight. Much muttering and sounding. They seem to agree, but no-one can have asked the electricians, who, at seven, pull the plugs out and that's it for the day.

This describes events within my lifetime, and yet after two decades of, first, Thatcherite hostility to organised labour and, subsequently, a refusal to reverse this legacy on the part of an administration that never quite rid itself entirely of the word 'labour', it seems far-fetched to imagined such power on the part of the unions.

In my previous foray as a guest poster, I cited a passage of rustic mysticism, or if you prefer, mystic rusticism, but played hard-to-get with the identity of the author. This seems an opportune moment to out him: it was G. Bramwell Evens, perhaps better known as Romany of the BBC. A little like Somerset Maugham's illiterate verger, if it hadn't been for Evens popularising nature broadcasting, then David Attenborough would have remained most famous for being head of BBC2... Yet I never knew him from his broadcasts, it was reading his books as a child that awakened in me a love for nature. When I was camping in the Yorkshire Dales some months ago, lying in the tent listening to the curlews, it was Romany I thought of. I then found my parents still had the books, and re-reading them showed me that all the natural lore I have - and I'm a city boy at heart - I gleaned from their pages: how the kingfisher builds its nest, why some birds hop while others walk, why some mammals are born naked and blind, whereas others can run within minutes.

But to my now more mature eyes, the theme I opened with also came shining through. Just as my fellow guest poster James Hamilton seems to derive at least as much interest from the incidental detail of the Mitchell and Kenyon films as from their ostensible subject, re-reading Evens' books revealed to me traces of a world long gone. In places, Evens was consciously describing a way of life under threat - he has stout yeoman farmers bemoaning the increased mechanisation of agriculture, and the toll exacted on the variety of wildlife - no such thing as biodiversity in the 1920s - as a result. And yet he is hard-headed enough to also mention the impact on the rural labour force. But elsewhere it is the passing details that contain a wealth of social information.

John Fell - and I defy you to come up with a more solidly English countryman's name - the gamekeeper casually mentions that he will need to keep an eye on a lurcher he spies tethered outside a pub. I live in the Calder Valley, there's no shortage of lurchers around here; indeed, if I didn't have cats, I would like one myself - they have the intelligence and hardiness of cross-breeds. But in the 1930s an enterprising countryman could use a net, a ferret and a lurcher to catch a few rabbits, if he was so inclined, and given the economic conditions, that might not have been so unlikely: that would be a working dog, not a pet. It would be one of the gamekeeper's tasks to make sure that inclination was curbed. Of course, the same three ingredients could do the same for you today, were you inclined to ignore the hunting with dogs act.

Ah yes, hunting; It is a mistake to think that Evens was paving the way for the Countryside Alliance as well as for Mr Attenborough: he is scathing throughout about hunters, as are the rural companions he wanders with: there is a moving passage where he and an angling friend mutely witness the gory denouement of an otter hunt, and the hunt follower's final words "It's been a great day's sport" need no gloss from the narrator to emphasise their hollowness.

Evens could claim to be a genuine Romany on his mother's side, but he himself was clearly a man of letters, which is not a trait so often associated with the popular image of travellers. His persona is that of the city man taking a break from the pressures of urban life - so the past is not so different after all? - with his favourite acquaintances in the countryside. However, his persona is not fixed: in his first book - A Romany in the Country - his country knowledge rivals that of the poacher, the gamekeeper and the farmers with whom he spends his time - he shows them, for instance, how the lapwings eggs are tapered, so that they form a smaller circle with the points faced in, allowing the mother's heat to be better distributed over the clutch.

In later books, his knowledge is downplayed, and he plays the role of Watson to the countrymen's Holmes. Like Conan Doyle realised, or indeed like Jack Aubrey patiently teaching Stephen Maturin the ropes, this mechanism is a much less forced way of imparting knowledge to the reader without sounding overly didactic. Mind you, the final iteration of the books sees a further change in format, whereby the chapters focus on a particular animal or bird as opposed to the insights of a particular character, and it is once again Romany in the role of sage, this time with a young companion to whom he teaches natural history. If ever proof were needed this was a more innocent age, at least as far as the public sphere was concerned, could you imagine a series now which threw together an older man with a young boy?

A final piece of the jigsaw falls into place when we learn what else Evens did apart from his nature broadcasts and writings: he was a methodist preacher. Even first time around, I remember wondering why Jerry the Poacher should be apologising for his "I'm d-----"s [sic] to the narrator, and assuming that the latter was just, well, priggish. There is a distinct subtext of the divine underlying the books, amd the narrator will occasionally make this explicit by re-rendering what other characters call mother nature. And yet, despite this fairly explicit religious undertone, Evens is a fervent supporter of evolution - there is even a discussion of how various birds, especially finches, developed their different beaks, which I find it hard to believe is not in deliberate tribute to Darwin's descriptions of the Galapago Finches' specialities. In these days of devotees of Intelligent Design, we might do well to remember not all religious people are deaf and blind to scientific methodology.

The Romany books are a rich and multi-layered series - I enjoyed reading them as much this year as I had twenty-five years or so ago, when they were already fifty or sixty years old. As I wrote at Nourishing Obscurity, Evens can turn a phrase; to that I would add he knows his natural history, and if you have even a passing interest in social history, then the books are a must: in one chapter, his invocation of the Lord as the ultimate insurance policy serves as corroboration for Brian Cathcart's report stating that free DVDs with your daily paper are nothing very new, just the modern incarnation of bribes to readers that pre-war took the form of free insurance; but the passing detail I enjoyed the most was the discovery that filling stations in the 20s used to advertise "No Bolshevik petrol" (presumably there'd be no red diesel, either). There is much talk of parallels between the Cold War and the supposed War on Terror, but I think that this is one ideological slogan we shan't be seeing any analogue of any time soon.

Homelessness - there but for the Grace of G-d

Whenever I briefly glimpse this topic, I shudder. At the keyboard of my computer now, surely I'm lightyears from it.

But am I?

Father David Holdcroft, refuge organizer, describes the common elements connecting the homeless, as he sees them:

Few had married. Mothers, in the case of the men, sometimes figured strongly in their lives, but fathers were almost universally absent, emotionally distant or violent. Always there were deep feelings of rejection associated with family.

Along with rejection there was always a sense of displacement, a sense that life was not where it should have been, that the normal growth and development of life had been radically interrupted by something or someone. Such interruptions are surely relatively common but, in the case of the homeless, there had been no recovery, no resumption of a "normal" life.

"Normal growth and development of life had been radically interrupted." "A sense of displacement." I've read the stats on mental illness, cost of housing, governmental displacement of populations such as the one coming up in the next five years and so on.

Seems to me that intellect plays a huge part - reasoning power. For example, here in the fSU, everyday can be your last and that's them telling me that. Me - I still have vestiges of that implicit western faith that things can never go suddenly awry in one's station.

It's not so. I can be on the street within a month but, I say to my friend: "We're in demand, you and I; we'd always find a place."

He looks quizzically and murmurs: "Pok'a," meaning "for now".

And he's right. Gradual loss of memory, slight eccentricities starting to appear, a few wrong moves, angry reactions and our word-of-mouth clientele melts away with our reputation. Reputation is everything in this country, my friend says.

If you don't have the extended family, then you need a network of well-placed connections. Not necessarily highly placed but well-placed, according to needs. Every single person here survives only on those connections. Family is dependent. It doesn't save the man and this is still a patriarchal society.

Truth is, I'm dislocated. There are no roots here and my roots in Britain and Australia have withered and died away. There are still a few former friends over there. So here I currently am, enjoying a tenuous status out of proportion to my true state but I only need to annoy one highly placed official and I'm blackballed.

That's the end of food on the table and no family to throw you any crumbs. Suddenly, regulations which once passed you by now crowd in on you and life doesn't bear thinking about. You can't survive on the street here without both intellect and language, the latter equally important .

The beggars you see at the crossroads are mafia run - the cash goes to the man in black and the beggar gets some soup to drink. You do not want to be in that situation, any more than in a London dole queue with a landlord beating on the door every Friday for the exorbitant rent.

The only solution is to trust the promise of the Lord that you'll be looked after but it also helps to think laterally. Instead of descending to the street - fly to Canada or Australia, all documentation in order and the last of the money at the ready. Then you can use your wherewithal, your ability to start up again.

As long as you have that ability of course. Age first kills the resolve, then the health and finally the reasoning power. Then you're gone. Interesting article I read, which challenges:

Define Homeless: 'An inadequate experience of connectedness with family and or community.' This fact is now recognized by Habitat, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme.

When I see the poor unfortunates on the street denied even basic hygiene, Father Holdcroft's view comes home that there can be intellect there, a sort of self-worth, even past achievements but that there is always some sort of dislocation, a missing link.

There, but for the Grace of G-d, go I.

Of course I have another cunning plan ...

[Crossposted at Nourishing Obscurity]