Splish splash

Posted on February 9, 2010

“We want everyone to enjoy free swimming by 2012.” - A policy goal of the present Labour government.

France and national pride, UK and multiculturalism

Posted on February 8, 2010

This is not a polemic.

I am going to point to one assumption in the proposals announced today. For those who have not read through them, the idea is to require new migrants to sign up to a contract that outlines their rights and responsibilities as a French citizen. This process will also be required of long-term migrants to France when they renew particular documents.

Colouring these proposals is the fact that they are announced alongside other measures that might rightly be termed examples of ‘gesture politics’ - each French school child will be required to sing La Marselliase at least once a year (presumably in French), and the national flag is to be flown over more public buildings.

Okay. Here is my primary problem with the signing of a contract for migrants - that this very idea contains an assumption, that the integration into French life is the responsibility solely of migrants. If integration is the goal, perhaps every French citizen should be forced into a public acknowledgment of the changing nature of French society, and to sign a contract that recognises that those who take the path of naturalisation are in every sense as full a citizen of the Republic as those who have lived in France for centuries. Of course, that would reveal the opposition to the process of social integration, and so it is expedient that it is simply not mentioned.

Turning back to the UK, on a related theme, I’ve been listening to some thoughts on multiculturalism that explore similar ground. Firstly, it is rather clear that the multicultural ideal flows out of liberalism, and, as such, presents itself with some basic problems, such as, what do you do when the people you are tolerant of are not tolerant of you. This problem seems to reveal a paternalism, with the answer being that, finally, society will be better when everybody, of every cultural hue, subscribes to the tenets of liberalism. How handy! That the route to this is considered to be education, well, that just about says it all.

Anyway, what I was wondering is why, if Britain is a ‘multicultural society’, that I have never come across any politician or mainstream media commentary on how successful components of the lives of specific cultural groups might be used to improve the behaviour, for example, of white people. If Indian kids do better in schools than white kids, then what reason is there to not permit them to educate us as to how this success is achieved? If we, in turn, find out that the white child is simply not as gifted as its Indian counterpart, it would still be a valuable lesson! This is what is missing from the liberal conception of multiculturalism, it seems to me, that it does not feel that it has anything to learn, (but has plenty to share) and that simply living aside Westerners will have some miraculous civilising effect, as if there are not all sorts of existing social problems of the ‘native’ population. In that respect, multiculturalism appears to be an inverted form of colonialism, only this time around, it is a section of the UK population that feels itself being displaced from its own land and its own culture and reacts by embracing a narrow vision of what it means to be British, along with a siege mentality.

As a Times survey states today - “Nearly three fifths of voters say that they hardly recognise the country they are living in, while 42 per cent say they would emigrate if they could.” Perhaps we could find Jamaicans, Indians, Nigerians, etc, saying much the same thing when the white man arrived on their shores a few centuries ago.

The question is - genuinely - is Britain under siege? The figures show that 2m people have come to reside in the UK over the last 10 years. Now the parties are seeking to gain from this :

“With 85% of voters worried about the population reaching 70m by the end of the next decade, the poll indicates that Cameron’s pledge to cut net migration to ensure the population remains below that figure could reap benefits.”

Work out for yourself how this 70m figure has magically come to represent something terrible, I’d never heard of it until today. It is no coincidence that racism and nationalism make good bedfellows, and it is certainly no irony that the time of the British Empire is the reference point for those angry about the changing face of British society. What complicates things further is that Gordon Brown has made repeated use of appeals to just this same stock of nationalism, arguing for an Armed Forces Day, for example, and suggesting the revocation of migrants citizenship should they engage in activities that are considered somehow ‘un-British’, such as exercising their freedom to protest.

And, with all the mainstream parties committed to war, the need to maintain the brand strength of the UK armed forces remains a pressing concern. Today’s Independent outlines one entertaining prospect, in the wake of the police proposal to monitor people using the same drone technology as is used in Iraq, military patrols:

Britain’s armed forces could be used on a regular basis on the streets of Britain to confront the threat of terrorism, under the terms of a strategic defence review announced yesterday.

[link]

I feel safer already.

Image of the English intellectual

Posted on February 5, 2010

“The Archbishop of Canterbury, while a self-confessed fan of Father Ted and the Muppet Christmas Carol, is one of Britain’s foremost public intellectuals and an authority on the author of The Brothers Karamazov, The Devils and The Idiot.”

For some reason, an intellectual is not supposed to enjoy Father Ted or the Muppets. I suppose my own liking for Carry On… movies, the work of The Two Ronnies and the Roadrunner cartoons disqualifies me also… yet, if they said he enjoys fine wine or the best Havana cigars, perhaps this would not trouble the definition of an intellectual, but rather reinforce it, how so…

x

Secondly, the idea that Father Ted is somehow anti-intellecutal or that intellectuals have no sense of humour, there is a rich seam here to mine. I just went and had a coffee and considered the English notion of an intellectual, and the character type that jumped out at me was that it is an image centred on the monk - that it involves sacrifice of sensuality, a constant seriousness, the riding of penny farthing bicycles (this is a joke), perhaps a despising of worldly things (with the exception of the aforementioned bicycles), etc.

x

A good book idea would be a study of how the English image of the intellectual was formed, how it has developed and of how it is maintained.

Okay, who is going to confess to their favoured ‘non-intellectual’ pleasures. Or would somebody advance the idea that for an intellectual, all pleasures are necessarily intellectual…

Hernán Cortés

Posted on February 3, 2010

I am practicing for the history degree.

Having completed a large history of Mexico, Fire & Blood, the most interesting section was 1519-1521, the conquering of Tenochtitlan (Mexico City) by Hernán Cortés.

X

The writer of that book contrasted the fatalism of the Aztecs with the belief in Divine Providence of the conquistadores as being instrumental in the relatively swift defeat of Montezuma, though having large guns certainly played its part.

“Francisco Niño de Guelva, who was the pilot, didn’t know he should steer the ship, and in the end they realised they no longer knew their position. The other sailors were astonished, the pilot was sad, and the passengers cried, and nobody knew the right course or what to do. The captain blamed the steersman, and the steersman blamed the captain; and so they fought. Food ran short, there was no more water on board, and they started to drink what little rain fell from the sky, and everybody confessed. Some cursed the entire venture, others begged for mercy, hoping for a swift death that would swallow them whole, and not to go to the land of the caribes, who cook their victims. And thus, they were in a state of tribulation, when there came to the boat a pigeon on Good Friday, that placed itself in the sun, sitting up in the rigging. All of them considered this a great sign; it seemed a miracle, they cried again, with pleasure now: some said it had come to console them, others that land must be nearby; and so, they gave thanks to God, and corrected the ship’s course to where the bird had come from. The bird disappeared, causing fresh anguish; but nobody lost hope of seeing land soon; and so, later that same pascua, they sighted the island of Española (what today is Haiti/Dominican Republic); and Cristobal Zorzo, who was on watch, shouted, “Land! Land!”; in a joyful voice that comforted the sailors.” (my translation, from Chapter II)

One observation that occurred to me, from the entire sweep of Mexican history, was, more generally, how often a conflict is only resolved by a definitive act of public cruelty. Once this cruelty is perpetrated, a newer, stronger order is affirmed, until pressures build up once more and a repeat ensues. A good example of this is the execution of Maximilan I, Emperor of Mexico, whose death was, on the one hand, needless, but was insisted upon by Benito Juarez, leader of the successful revolution. By executing by firing squad a member of the Hapsburg house, an unmistakable message was sent to Mexican conservatives who pined for the past glories of the Spanish Empire, and to the royal houses of Europe, a new order asserted itself, one that would not be beholden to any foreign power.

Here is one of Manet’s five paintings of the execution of Maximilian, painted in the 1860s. It is said that the wall and the people staring over it were taken from another canvas, of a bullfighting scene, so Maximilian becomes a slaughtered animal, an object of ritual sacrifice, I suppose, make of that what you will.

X

I am now reading, in the original, Francisco López de Gómara, and his Historia de la conquista de Mexico, first published in 1552, by a cleric who never actually set foot in the New World. This book is somewhat notorious for its unconcealed worship of Cortés, but is a necessary point of reference before studying Bernal Diaz de Castillo and his The True History of the Conquest of New Spain.

I apologise that I am not doing anything more exciting.

Nature as a thing for all

Posted on January 30, 2010

But ought a Clown, with like Companion, rude,
On Scenes, so sacred, daringly intrude?
Shall vulgar Ignorance dare those haunts invade
For Knowledge—Learning—Wit—and Wisdom—made?
Shall beastly Boors those hallowed paths explore
Which Taste, and Genius, trod but just before?
Shall Ignorant Penury trace the tracks where Wealth
E’er paced for pleasure, or patroled for Health?
Loath’d Rustics’ footsteps thus presume to tread
Where Fame and Fashion, Lords and Ladies led?
Such swinish nostrils seek to snuff the scent,
Solely for noble Births and Noses meant?

- James Woodhouse

Says it all, really

Posted on January 29, 2010

His voice fading, Mr Blair insisted that Britain – especially its armed forces – should feel an “immense sense of pride” over the Iraq war.

And not only this, he also despoiled the occasion by carrying a lot of water for the US/Israel, repeatedly urging a war against Iran. He also disclosed that the Israelis were there, in the shadows, (where, naturally, it’s anti-Semitic to suggest they might be) at the Crawford, Texas summit with Bush.

However, I feel there were enough slips here to reward a forensic analysis and cross-checking of what Blair said, to pinpoint the elisions, for example, from being sure that Saddam Hussein had WMD, to minutes later being sure that he had what was necessary to reconstitute his WMD programs.

That was far too obvious a substitution, but unfortunately, the deferential questioners engaged in no cross-questioning of any kind in the two and a half-hours I managed to stay awake for.

To the claim that the 45 minutes-claim has become overstated after the fact, Blair should have been asked to consider this, for example:

X

I’ll leave you with Baha, who remains firmly committed to staying the course in Iraq, and is happy to have played his part in ridding the world of that monster, Saddam Hussein. Yes, he was only a lowly hotel receptionist, kicked and stomped to his death by patriotic brave British tommies, but men like Baha know that it is the smallest of gestures that can make all the difference, and that no man, no matter how seemingly insignificant, should be spared the glorious chance to advance the cause of freedom and international brotherhood.

Torygraph

Posted on January 29, 2010

Love the preparation here, with a lie detector! For believers in Lizard/Human hybrid, note the eyebrows, looks like Blair is going to have a tough time not shapeshifting this morning.

Hypotaxis or Parataxis?

Posted on January 29, 2010

I prefer parataxis, it jumps and I am jumpy.

Criminal Types

Posted on January 27, 2010

Ruffler
A returned soldier who refuses to beg, but bullies, robs and steals.

Upright-man
Previously a servant, who is “skilful in picking, rifling, and filching,” and who will bully lesser vagabonds. They are too proud to travel with their women (”morts”).

Hooker or Angler
Carries a pole with a hook on the end, to snatch items through windows when people are asleep.

Rogue
Less skilled than the hooker, and more timid, the rogue is a more conventional thief.

Prigger
A horse thief.

Abram-man
Pretends to be mad, and to have been in the hospital for the insane, Bedlam.

Counterfeit crank
Pretends to have the “falling sickness,” epilepsy.

Dummerer
Pretends to be dumb, if not deaf. According to Harman, “the most part of these are Welshmen.”

Then (lower in status than the men) there are the female beggars:

Bawdy-basket
Carries a basket with trinkets, and uses it to get on good terms with the maidservants in a gentleman’s house, from which they then steal.

Autem-mort
Actually married , often to an upright-man; she will take her children with her.

Walking mort
Not married, and therefore vulnerable to other beggars, especially men: “Many of these had, and have children. When they get caught, either with begging, bitchery, or bribery, they are quickly shaken out of all by the upright-men.”

Doxy
“These doxies be broken and spoiled of their maidenheads by the upright-men,” and then become prostitutes.

Dell
“[A] young wench, able for generation, and not yet known or broken by the upright-man.”

Kinchin mort and kinchin co
The kinchin mort is a girl, the kinchin co a boy. Even for these Harman has no pity, for he comments,”soon ripe, soon rotten.”

Despicable

Posted on January 27, 2010

This is supposedly the reason to seal material relating to the death of Dr David Kelly for 70 years.

“I requested that the postmortem report should not be disclosed for 70 years as I was concerned that the publication of that report would cause [Kelly's] daughters and his wife further and unnecessary distress,” Hutton said.

Absolutely despicable. People are ready to denounce ‘conspiracy theorists’ at every turn, and here we have clear evidence of material being deliberately buried. Oh well, it joins the Dunblane massacre, where 106 documents were sealed for 100 years…

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