Layer 331 . . . New Labour, Psychopaths, the Prince of Darkness and Gimme Shelter

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Leading on from yesterday's comments on the mature behaviour of the Coalition's leadership, there was lots of talk on the radio this morning about the childish antics of the New Labour leadership and their disfunctional relationships during the Blair and Brown (and Mandelson) years. Obviously Mandelson has a new book to promote, and he's been advertising the Times' serialisation by playing up to his image as the Prince of Darkness.

The lack of emotional, social and spiritual intelligence shown by Blair and Brown and their ilk certainly ought to be documented. A tale of anger, jealousy, resentment, bullying, plotting, revenge and pettiness. Unprofessional conduct. The opposite of statesmanship and enlightened behaviour.

You can call it childish, or you can see it as extended adolescence, since those people behaved like gang members, playground cliques and sullen, frustrated, egomaniacal, status-seeking, power-crazed prats.

In any organisation the tone is set by the leader - in this instance, Tone - who was clearly psychopathic in his manipulations, his lust for power, his belief in his righteousness & invincibility and his belief that he was doing God's will. All of which is the opposite of a leader who can justify every decision by reference to clearly articulated and agreed ethical and moral aims and goals.

It's been pointed out that New Labour, under both its leaders, was nothing more than a mob that was bent on the aquisition and retention of power, and all its trappings. Hardly better than a mafia, in reality.

In contrast to that we now have a government that has already clearly articulated its negotiated programme for government, and has documented its aims and priorities after a process of internal bargaining and discussion. (See Guardian supplement of 15th May, for instance.) Also a government that has returned to decision-making through respectful cabinet discussion and negotiation, reaching compromises and agreed majority positions. The opposite to a presidential style of government through prime ministerial dictat. The opposite to kitchen cabinet Thatcheresque or Blairesque government. The opposite of scheming and bullying.

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Yet again Mandelson brings up the idea that he and Blair, and New Labour, made the Labour party 'electable'. This is the most detestable bullshit. It was the electorate itself that ejected the Tories, in the hope and expectation that after nearly 20 years of Thatcherism we'd return to a decent form of liberal/social democracy - NOT even MORE neo-conservatism.

After nearly 2 decades of Major and Thatcher the country was desperate to be rid of the Tories, and certainly didn't want a government whose leadership was determined to maintain the economic and financial status quo, arse-licking the City and the power structures of our vastly unequal society - determined to do nothing serious to address inequality - very relaxed about the seriously rich getting even richer.

The country not only wanted better public services - it wanted greater social justice, greater equality, affordable housing, proper living wages, etc. From New Labour it got NONE of those things. It didn't even get better public services, if what you mean by better is the deprofessionalisation of education, social services and health, and staff demoralised by the targets and league tables culture. It got bloated, vindictive and self-serving bureaucracies and children deprived of proper education. It also got war in Iraq and Afghanistan, loss of civil liberties and an insane housing bubble, making even small flats in some areas unaffordable to people on average wages.

How DARE Mandelson boast about making New Labour 'electable'? How come he can't face up to the fact that he helped hi-jack a party that was supposed to be socialist, and in favour of greater equality, and then turn it into Continuity Conservatives - friends of the City and George Bush? The man is completely despicable, and shameless. Not psychopathic - just completely devious, nasty and unprincipled. New Labour personified.

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But talking of psychopaths - the more common or garden varieties - there was a really interesting woman on Desert Island Discs this week - forensic psychotherapist Dr Gwen Adshead.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00syzlf#segments

A consultant at Broadmoor Hospital, it is her job to try to understand the behaviour of some of the most vilified people in our society. The Victorian institution in Berkshire is home to more than two hundred men; all people who have been convicted or accused of the most dangerous violent behaviour.

Her life outside work seems impossibly normal - bringing up her children, singing in a choir and gardening fill her spare time. Of her work, she says: "Other people's minds are so fascinating I can't think of anything more interesting and I can't understand why everyone isn't a psychiatrist."

Obviously I'd never heard of her, and didn't expect anything other than the usual dreary collection of classical crap. Terrible stereotyping, I know, but then so many of these people they have on the programme - even the more colourful ones - have no time for music in their lives, and no feeling for it either.

Not a bit of it. First track - Rolling Stones, Gimme Shelter. Brilliant.

Second Track -   Pablo Casals playing the Prelude to Bach’s Cello Suite No.1 in G Major. Superb.

Third Track -  Ian Dury  — Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick. Magic.

Fourth track - The Weather Girls   — It’s Raining Men. Excellent.

Her favourite track turned out to be James Taylor's "Shower The People". I've never really paid much attention to this particular singer/songwriter, but this track is interesting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjKnHAKtYFA

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/j/james+taylor/shower+the+people_20069201.html

Great programme. What an amazing job, and a very special individual.

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A Final Word on Psychopaths

It seems there's a Facebook tribute page, whatever that is, called "RIP Raoul Moat: You Legend."

In other words, thousands of fucking nutters have signed on to show their admiration for a fucked-up multiple killer. Much love from people who hate the police, all of them, and feel happy to see policemen shot, injured and killed in the course of doing their duty. To say nothing of their support for crims who kill their ex-girlfriends, etc.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/jul/14/david-cameron-raoul-moat
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Layer 330 . . . Goldblum, Joy, Transformation, Cameron, Grace and France

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Thinking about 3-dimensional people, I noticed at the weekend that Lewis Hamilton strums a mean guitar - as a TV programme showed him bashing out the chords to Wonderwall with a roomful of people singing along.

Jeff Goldblum plays jazz piano, according to an article in the Guardian. He also has his own band, called The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra. I think a passion for music and singing is at least a sign that someone might be 3-dimensional.

Goldblum does yoga and meditation.

In his mid-teens, in the late 60s, Goldblum attended summer sessions at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. There he had an introduction to acting that wasn't about "careerist ambition", but something deeper, more important - and apparently more hippyish. Yoga was part of the training, and in acting, Goldblum decided, there was the potential for a "spiritual, humanistic, soulful, magical, mystical journey. Not, hey, love me, love me, I need to be loved. It was about something else."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/jul/12/jeff-goldblum-prisoner-second-avenue

Hippyish?

Never mind acting - what if life itself was about "something deeper", and had the potential for a "spiritual, humanistic, soulful, magical, mystical journey"? At least that's what Zen assumes.

Many people assume that spiritual explorations and quests for greater meaning in life are much easier to do if you're extremely wealthy, as many actors are. But is that really true? Aren't many actors, and wealthy people generally, trapped in strange, unreal worlds by their own egos and by their paranoid fears for their privacy and security? Isn't this what Jesus referred to when he spoke about rich men, camels and eyes of needles?

The article goes on,

"Any objective assessment would be that my life has been wildly abundant, lucky beyond words, and shame on me if I don't easily come to that view every day."

As a child, he says, "even as I felt moments of awkwardness or outsiderness, I also had moments when I felt the seeds of what I feel now – a happy part of something large. I felt that early on, as I walked by myself in the woods near our house. I remember overflowing with joy." Goldblum may just be far weirder than anyone guessed: a genuinely satisified, happy person. As rare, in his way, as a unicorn.

Where Oxzen grew up there was a large bluebell wood right next to our housing estate, with several points of access. Memories of walking in the woods, with shafts of sunlight filtering through to the pathways and the bluebells, feeling alive and free, remain strong.

According to Wikipedia,

In September 2006, it was announced that Goldblum was one of the founding members of a new theater company in New York called The Fire Dept. According to press materials, "The Fire Dept is made up of established and emerging writers, directors, actors and designers who have come together to create and produce work that cannot be replicated inside a television box or on a movie screen...The work of The Fire Dept combines the rigor and structure of great narrative storytelling with the vitality of formal experimentation to immerse audiences in a total experience that leaves them awake, alive and transformed."

"Experiences that leave people awake, alive and transformed . . ." Maybe those experiences could start in schools. Or do we just want kids to stay focused on maximising attainment?

Maybe we all have a duty to ourselves to make sure we keep on having those experiences throughout life, and not just leave it to the likes of Goldblum to hand them to us on a plate, in a theatre.

The qualities that Goldblum looks for in people are clearly those he finds in his co-star in the Old Vic's The Prisoner of Second Avenue:

Mercedes Ruehl, "a genius, brilliant, master actor, not only spectacularly talented and gifted with grace, humour, intelligence, sensitivity, multi-coloured emotional, um, a garden of rich inner life, dynamic, fun to be with . . ." He pauses thoughtfully. "Hmm, you know, it's hard to describe her. BUT! She is an enthusiast."

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Talking about people who are gifted with grace and charm, Martin Kettle, not my favourite journalist, wrote this piece about David Cameron:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/08/david-cameron-best-prime-minister

A man of grace. Cameron has been good for Britain

Like Tony Blair before him, Cameron deploys his courtesy and charm for political purposes.

If you are tempted to think this sort of courtesy across the political divide is mere bourgeois triviality, remember how effective this maturity of style has also been in larger contexts. In the last two months, nothing has become the prime minister more than his Commons statement of regret for the Bloody Sunday killings. The speech was a model, and when Cameron said, "On behalf of our country I am deeply sorry", the applause outside Derry Guildhall almost seemed to wash away 40 years of hurt.

A certain grace has marked Cameron's outings on the international stage, too. He has handled European meetings with a deftness and in a tone which have surprised those who feared an immediate lurch to the right.

Cameron has not just taken to the realities of coalition better than any other Tory. He has also done it infinitely less condescendingly than Brown or any Labour leader would have done. He recognises that he is delivering a deal, not a sell-out. Yet in doing so, he has pulled the Tory party further towards both the centre ground and an acceptance of coalition politics – and pushed Labour off both – than many would have believed possible. His seizure of the opportunities of 6 May to put liberal conservatism at the heart of this government's project has been audacious. Its long-term impact on the Conservative party is not yet clear. Its short-term impact is immense and, in Tory terms, almost wholly desirable. The old right (like the old left) can only gawp and grumble.

The imperatives of coalition have helped cement Cameron's authority in ways that not even he can have foreseen. Like Blair, Cameron came to power outside parliament rather than within it, by climbing the outside of the building, as Bill Rodgers said of Blair. Before the election he was criticised within his own party for ruling through a handpicked oligarchy, again like Blair. The election has changed all that. Coalition requires Cameron to consult, make deals, and actively manage both his party and his government. Necessity has demanded the return of proper cabinet government. The seductions of cliquism and presidentialism to which Blair succumbed are off limits because of the hung parliament. A good thing, too, and Cameron has adapted with an admirably sure touch.

These are still very early days. The coalition has to get through difficult votes on AV and negotiate the most difficult spending round in a generation. The economy may tank. Yet in these first weeks even opponents should concede that Cameron has played a blinder. He is showing himself as potentially the best all-round prime minister of the modern era. Labour's hopefuls should learn from him. No doubt about it, Cameron wins this season's political golden boot.

I agree with all of this, and most of what Kettle wrote in the rest of his piece. If only Blair and Brown had shown a similar style - a similar intelligence, grace and lightness of touch - in all their dealings, then we may not now be dealing with Cameron and co's determination to inflict more neo-conservative economics and more of the Shock Doctrine (privatisations, cutbacks in public services, reductions in benefits to the neediest people) on this country.

I particularly agree about the speech apologising for Bloody Sunday killings being a superb piece of statesmanship. What's more, the words sounded genuine coming from him, which they wouldn't if the psychopathic Blair or the devious Brown had said them.

The nation ought to feel grateful it finally has a leader of the Conservative party who might be considered something of a statesman, and a liberal Tory, at least in his style, if not his economics. Shame he's such a conservative, and his ideological prejudices as well as his ignorance about economics are going to fuck up the country and send us all into even greater recession and depression.

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France

Watching the Tour de France today with its long, lingering helicopter shots of stunningly beautiful scenery in the Isere region of the Rhone Alps, just north of Gap, I suddenly realised without a shadow of doubt that France is easily the most beautiful country in Europe, and possibly the world.

To begin with, Paris is an incredible city. Then there is the amazingly varied topography, from the beaches of Britanny and Normandy, through the wondrous Loire region, down to the stunning landscapes and mountains of the Auvergne and the Massif Central, to the delights of Provence and the Mediterranean. That's to say nothing of the Isle de France, Alsace/Lorraine, the basin of Aquitaine, Burgundy, the Dordogne, the Savoie, Languedoc, the Rhone, and the Somme. And then there are the Alps and the Pyrenees . . .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regions_of_France

http://www.glogster.com/media/3/7/58/34/7583463.gif

For sheer physical beauty and variety, nothing touches France. Whatever one might think about the people, the cuisine, the climate, the culture and the architecture - and I happen to think very highly of them - the country is sheer physical and geographical perfection. And if you want deserts as well - Algeria and North Africa are just a short flight or Mediterranean ferry away.

Germany is too boring. Italy is too . . . narrow. Spain is too parched, too big, and too full of empty plains. Benelux is too small and lacking in variety. Ditto Portugal and the countries of eastern Europe. Austria and Switzerland are too full of huge mountains, and very little else. Scandinavia is too bleak, too empty and too bloody cold. Britain is pretty in parts, but limited and lacking the variety of landscapes that France has. To say nothing of the climate.

Today is Bastille Day. Vive La France! Allez tout le monde!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastille_Day

Liberte! Egalite! Fraternite!

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Footnote on the Isere department -

The president of its General Council is a socialist, and the majority of seats on the Council are socialists, backed up by a collection of leftists, communists and greens. Right wing parties hold less than a third of the seats.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%C3%A8re
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Layer 329 . . . Schools of the Future, Education, Gove, F1, Spiritual Intelligence, The Spirit of Football, the World Cup, and South Africa.

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The government's economic policies are, as expected, so disasterously misguided, ideological and awful it's been necessary for the sake of personal sanity & also stable blood pressure to stay away from all consideration of them for a few weeks, and conveniently take refuge in football, tennis and now the cycling extravaganza - the Tour de France, which this year is particularly intriguing and full of sub-plots and ploys to get the favourites split apart over several difficult stages right at the start of the event. The next two weeks, especially in the Alps and the Pyrenees, should be very watchable.

The politics of education, however, keep sucking me back into the revolting reality of a government determined to pursue its ideological objectives at the expense of real education, the needs of children and of course the teachers and support staff who will now be condemned to work in old, badly designed and under-specified premises - all because The Banana (Gove) wants to build his "free schools".

There's no doubt that the Building Schools of the Future scheme was over-bureaucratic and wasteful, but instead of just instantly scrapping it Gove could have set about modifying and simplifying it, and making it work a lot better.

But no - the man wants his Free Schools. He wants his education "market". He also wants, I presume, new schools to be built as cheaply as possible, using standardised cheapo architecture, and prefabricated structures. If an old building is completely falling apart he'll no doubt reluctantly agree to replace it as long as the replacement is a boring and off-the-shelf design that facilitates maximum speed of construction and minimum standards of space, fixtures and fittings. And he'll argue that this is all the nation can now afford. How convenient.

We have to be thankful that he's at least made a complete prick of himself in the way he's gone about his announcements of the cuts - giving out false and misleading information about which existing projects are for the chop, and which towns and cities will no longer get the excellent schools they've been promised.

He's made it clear the "savings" will be used to fund the Free Schools that will be run by cliques of parents and commercial "providers". Having established a "model" of schools run by pushy parents and their tame business partners, this will no doubt then be imposed on existing schools, along with the abolition of local authorities. Some might see this as not a bad thing, given the cravenness of LAs and their willingness to sacrifice children to the 'Standards Agenda' imposed by central government. Some might say what is their fucking point anyway?

The idea of new smaller "free" schools run by community activists might almost be acceptable if they were to be of real benefit to children by offering a type of education that's not available in the mainstream factory schools (and so-called "Academies") where test and exam results are the be-all and end-all. However, it's all too clear that what's being proposed are merely small "crammers" which will cater for parents who want even more emphasis on academic attainment and "discipline", and more pressure on children to be taught to the tests - sit down, shut the fuck up and memorise even more of this shit if you really want to get to a top university.

Cynical, moi?

If you'd like to read a more balanced and rational appraisal of what Gove's been up to then try this Ed Balls column in the Guardian - http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/08/school-building-michael-gove-balls
This piece could have been written by any number of Balls' unpaid 'interns' and various arse-lickers, but in essence it's all valid.

Me - I'd just like to see Gove kicked to death as publicly as possible. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

The man has zero understanding of children and their educational needs, and zero understanding of - let alone interest in - what a fair and equitable education system might look like - one in which all children have equal access to good teachers, premises fit for purpose, and aims of education that include the development of the whole child, the creation of a love of learning for its own sake, and the development of children's capacity for creativity and imagination.

Government by bananas like Gove, of schools lashed together for relative peanuts, with attainment aims devised by neanderthals, can only result in further generations of under-educated primates, instead of future generations of thinking beings who embrace life and are capable of transforming our stupid society.

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The occasional individual who stands head and shoulders above the sea of mediocrity we see all around us needs to be cherished and applauded.

Ahead of last weekend's British F1 Grand Prix there were several favourable comments about the quality of the two (British) guys who currently lead the drivers' championship.

Oxzen has commented previously on the emotional and spiritual intelligence of Hamilton and Button, and here's Hamilton in a Guardian interview with Donald McRea talking about fame and its consequences,

"It's not the easiest thing in the world to deal with. Over time you learn to accept it and handle it in the best way. You have to be very patient and very polite. And you have to be the least selfish person you possibly can be."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/jul/06/lewis-hamilton-british-grand-prix

In the same paper Button is described as having enormous talent but also a great deal of maturity and a sense of what's real and what isn't. He's also praised for his attitude to his work and his well-balanced personality.

You don't get those things through academic attainment or through attending high-pressure crammers. You get a nation of ego-driven, non-actualised, boring, materialistic, uptight, unspiritual emotional retards, which pretty much sums up the type of people who rule the roost on this little island.

Take our footballers, for example, and also the people who run football in this country. Please.

Harry Pearson commented last week on the fact that the World Cup Final was to be controlled by British officials, since our small team of referees and linesmen have apparently done so well in this World Cup.

"It is surely plain after 60 years of achievement that places us on a par with Sweden and Belgium, that we can't play football properly . . .

"Instead of trying to paper over the negatives of our game, let's for once build on the positives. Stop all the talk of coaching, tactics and formations and simply abandon playing international football altogether to focus all our considerable resources on training the world's finest match officials.

Webb, Cann and their compadre, the as yet unsung hero Mike Mullarkey (who I believe will also give good flag should the opportunity arise) are indeed England's men of the tournament, exuding a professionalism, self-belief and steely determination our footballers could only mumble on about in the squeaky, resentful voices of teenagers who've been caught on the school playing field with a shoplifted bottle of Cyprus sherry and a packet of Lambert & Butler.

For English watchers, the Brazil versus Chile game last week was a pivotal point. During the course of the first 45 minutes it rapidly became obvious that the emphasis of our national game was shifting before our eyes. "Good decision by Howard Webb," warbled Peter Drury with the sort of throaty majesty he normally reserves for calling out "Ronaldo!" moments before the pouty Portuguese lone parent blasts a volley 30 yards over the bar. "Oh, excellent advantage there by the man from Rotherham."

Jim Beglin was quickly in on the act, effusively praising assistant Darren Cann for "a great flag" that denied Chile a possible goal. Back in the studio Gareth Southgate, blinking crazily like somebody trying to transmit an unabridged Morse code version of Anna Karenina using his eyelids, was in total accord with his Irish colleague: "And that's a great flag from Darren Cann," he said after the incident replayed, as Andy Townsend nodded wisely and murmured something about "putting down a marker" for the final.

I was watching the game with a German friend and the sudden excitement about the match officials didn't escape his notice. "Darren Cann is fantastic!" he exclaimed merrily. "He is England's man of the tournament," he added with what I suspect might have been something approaching a chortle. "In fact, with that absolutely super offside decision I believe he has maybe overtaken Wesley Sneijder and Diego Forlán as the most eye-catching individual of the World Cup thus far."

It is one thing for the English to be taught a football lesson by the Germans – some truths we take to be self-evident and all that – but when they start giving us a severe thrashing in the sarcasm department it really is time to consider burning your passport. I suppose I should count my blessings he wasn't in the room when Gary Lineker revealed that Paul the Psychic Octopus was "actually born in Weymouth".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2010/jul/08/world-cup-howard-webb

Jim Beglin, by the way, is the world's most boring "expert" commentator bar none, except maybe for Eurosport's very own drone on the Tour de France, Sean Kelly - though in Kelly's case the boredom comes from the awful monotony of his delivery rather than having sweet fuck all of any interest to say for himself. What a blessing when Beglin was ill and unable to co-commentate on the Spain v Germany game.

That game, incidentally, was terrific - played in exactly the right spirit, especially by Germany, who never succumbed to the temptation of trying to win by kicking the Spanish out of it. In fact the Germans have won huge admiration for their efforts to emulate the Spanish in their style of play - open, fluid, expressive, intelligent, and at times exhilarating. Arguably they have been the most entertaining team of the tournament, with their 4-goal demolitions of Australia, Argentina and England. Most neutrals will surely have relished the Argentines and the English being taught a lesson in how to play properly and empathetically as a team, instead of playing like a bunch of Maradona-style prima donnas.

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In contrast to this, the Dutch were disgusting in the way they spoiled the Final by setting out to clog the Spanish out of the game - to win by any means necessary. The very opposite to playing with grace and with respect for your opponents. This was a truly stupid strategy. By all means compete strongly - but for fuck's sake without cheating and violence, without tripping and shirt-pulling, and a total lack of spiritual intelligence.

Thank goodness for Johan Cruyff - the keeper of the flame as far as intelligent Dutch football is concerned. Cruyff immediately condemned the way the Dutch had played. "They played very dirty. This ugly, vulgar, hard, hermetic, hardly eye-catching, hardly football, style . . . They were playing anti-football."

In the Guardian, Paul Hayward commented,

"Creativity . . . does not mean trickery, though there is some of that. It means orchestral passing. Spain exclude the opposition from the game. They have mastered the art of circulation and space manipulation. At Barcelona's urging the nation's team turned their backs on power and automation in favour of agility and self-expression."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2010/jul/13/spain-world-cup-final-holland

Britain is still a country whose education and training policies are based on the triumph of power over creativity, and turning young people, including young footballers, into automatons who follow orders and who never think for themselves. Obedience to bosses (coaches) and systems is all - as if the best football isn't about the self-expression and the creativity of the 11 individuals out there on the pitch, and their ability to create astonishment and delight in their audience.

Modern English footballers are akin to our world-famous boy bands - creatures of the managers and entrepreneurs who put their teams together for commercial profit above all else. Music and football without spirit - cold, ruthless, cynical, soulless and uncreative.

Meanwhile, let's hope the likes of Spain and Germany continue to rock and roll.

Also South Africa. As Dominic Fifield said in the Guardian, one of the very best and the most heartwarming moments of the entire tournament was watching the South African players joyfully singing and dancing their way into Green Point stadium in Cape Town, "which neatly summed up the colour and exuberance of their approach".

What a pity none of the England team did any of that before they slouched off home. Playing and winning, and even losing, with joy, imagination, grace and dignity. We have so much to learn from South Africa.
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