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Snooker, concluded
Well, not concluded actually. But concluded for me because I go back to Hull tomorrow.
And this afternoon, in spite of my support, Judd Trump lost to Marco Fu. I got the impression that Judd’s “naughty snooker” has become less “naughty”, less spontaneous, less dangerous. Marco played a good, disciplined, consistent “straight” kind of game. And it was great. It works for him, and he won. It may not work for Judd. His spontaneity, and risk-taking, his flashiness, seemed to work. I suspect he gets talked to about the necessary “maturing” of his game, where “maturing” has a strong component of “growing up” in its meaning. This is a bit of a theme in snooker, I think. Marco was introduced today by a number of people who paid tribute to him, but I was slightly worried by one of them who seemed to be saying his game will go fine now because “he’s married now, he’s settled down.”
Maybe. But to Judd I sort of want to say, Don’t lose your spontaneity, or the unpredictability and danger in your game. Keep a bit of flashy.
One of the nice things John Virgo had to say about Marco today as part of the introduction was that “he always has time for everybody. And he never says no if someone wants an autograph.” As I left the auditorium this afternoon he was proving John Virgo right: there he was, surrounded by a great crowd holding autograph books, programmes and pieces of paper, and he seemed completely unable to say no to any of them.
Ally Pally, snooker and fast and slow food
I played in Alexandra Park (as in children’s play, not snooker) when I was nine. When I was a bit older I went roller skating there. Nobody came to watch, it was too embarrassing! But hundreds have come this week to watch the Masters snooker.
I always watch snooker on TV but this is the first time I have been to a tournament. Perhaps it’s the Ally Pally connection. And some libido, of course – there always is.
In which case I couldn’t have had a better start this afternoon: Mark Selby versus Mark Davis. Selby won – I nearly said “of course”, but it was in fact a close thing. Davis fought back in the last couple of frames, to the last frame in fact. Selby did one of his typical humorous jousts with the audience, offering his cue to a heckler after he missed a shot. Much laughter, much clapping, and then he went on to win. So I was happy. No one as sharp, stylish, skilled and just all-round nice as he is should lose – especially as it would have sent this particular admirer miserable into the drizzly rain of North London.
Tomorrow afternoon it’s Judd Trump, playing what he calls “naughty snooker”, in his clever, dangerous and electrifyingly sexy way. More of him tomorrow. He will be playing the quiet, calm, methodical, dignified Marco Fu from Hong Kong. Good luck to both of them. My money is on Judd, though.
Who do I want to see in the final? At the moment, Mark Selby and the great courageous character Ronnie O’Sullivan. Let’s see.
And the fast and slow food? Don’t ask. Nothing but hot dogs at lunchtime. And in the evening in the bar a 30-minute wait for food after you order. That meant, at 6.15, that it was too late to order if you wanted to eat and get into the evening session on time. The reason for all this: cutting staffing costs probably. Capitalism knows how to spoil our pleasures, even as it provides them.
If you’re deaf, don’t believe all you read
To use TV subtitles or not to use them? With my digital hearing aids my ears deal with most everyday situations pretty well. But I find some TV a bit difficult and often use the subtitles as a back-up. This is fine for most programmes, but for live programmes (such as the news) the subtitles are pretty hopeless because they’re not synchronised and seem to be spontaneously produced, buggered up and (sometimes) corrected as the programme unfolds. I watched the BBC News channel at 1pm today. At one point, the presenter was giving some background to a story about former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon. He was explaining how long Sharon had been in a coma. The subtitles, however, told a puzzling story: “Mr Sharon”, they said, “has been in e-commerce since 2006.”
Bet you didn’t know that!
Against war, French style
The French singer Renaud wrote this song in 1994.
The translation which follows the French text is mine.
LA MÉDAILLE
Un pigeon s’est posé‚
Sur l’épaule galonnée
Du Maréchal de France
Et il a décoré
La statue dressée
D’une gastrique offense
Maréchaux assassins
Sur vos bustes d’airain
Vos poitrines superbes
Vos médailles ne sont
Que fiente de pigeon
De la merde
Un enfant est venu
Aux pieds de la statue
Du Maréchal de France
Une envie naturelle
L’a fait pisser contre elle
Mais en toute innocence
Maréchaux assassins
Le môme mine de rien
A joliment vengé
Les enfants et les mères
Que dans vos sales guerres
Vous avez massacrés
Un clodo s’est couché
Une nuit juste aux pieds
Du Maréchal de France
Ivre mort au matin
Il a vomi son vin
Dans une gerbe immense
Maréchaux assassins
Vous méritez rien
De mieux pour vos méfaits
Que cet hommage immonde
Pour tout le sang du monde
Par vos sabres versés
Un couple d’amoureux
S’embrasse sous les yeux
Du Maréchal de France
Muet comme un vieux bonze
Il restera de bronze
Raide comme une lance
Maréchaux assassins
L’amour ne vous dit rien
A part bien sur celui
De la Patrie hélas
Cette idée dégueulasse
Qu’à mon tour je conchie
Renaud Séchan
THE MEDAL
A pigeon perched
On the braided shoulder
Of the Marshal of France
And he decorated the upright statue
With a gastric offense
Marshals – assassins –
On your busts of bronze
Your superb chests
Your medals are
Nothing but pigeon’s droppings
Nothing but shit
A child came
To the feet of the statue
Of the Marshal of France
A natural need
Made him piss against it
But in all innocence
Marshals – assassins –
This unthinking child
Has nicely avenged
The children and mothers
You have massacred
In your dirty wars
A tramp slept
One night at the feet
Of the Marshal of France
In the morning, dead drunk,
He vomited his wine
Like an enormous fountain
Marshals – assassins –
You deserve nothing better
For your misdeeds
Than this filthy homage
For all the blood of the world
Shed by your swords
Two lovers are kissing
Under the gaze
Of the Marshal of France
Dumb as an old priest
He will stay set in bronze
Stiff as a lance
Marshals – assassins –
Love means nothing to you
Except, alas, patriotic love
That disgusting idea
That I, in my turn, abhor.
Renaud Séchan
The First World War: a soldier’s declaration
Unlike Wilfred Owen (see previous blog), Siegfried Sassoon survived the war. But in July 1917 he made the following statement against it:
“I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.
I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this War, on which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purpose for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them, and that, had this been done, the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.
I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust.
I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.
On behalf of those who are suffering now I make this protest against the deception which is being practised on them; also I believe that I may help to destroy the callous complacency with which the majority of those at home regard the contrivance of agonies which they do not, and which they have not sufficient imagination to realize.”
The statement was read out in the House of Commons on 30 July and reported in The Times on the 31st. He remained in the army, was wounded in the head on 30 July 1918, was sent home and put on indefinite sick leave. He officially retired from the army on 12 March 1919. He continued to write prose and verse.He died in 1967.
Pat Barker’s novel Regeneration has at its centre the real-life encounter between Sassoon and army psychologist W.H.R. Rivers at Craiglochart in 1917 (Penguin Books, 1992, and no doubt reprinted subsequently).
The Old Lie
If I understood the BBC correctly yesterday, we are in for four whole years of centenary celebrations of the First World War. I won’t be celebrating.
After gas was used for the first time on 22 April 1915, Wilfred Owen wrote this poem against the idea that Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori – it is noble and fitting to die for one’s country:
DULCE ET DECORUM EST
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
A Christmas message to Amazon
You heard about Amazon in an earlier blog (see Amazon undercover). Please sign this petition, which demands the “Living Wage” for Amazon workers. I know the petition describes the “Living Wage” as a living wage, which you may find, as I do, very annoying indeed. But sign the petition anyway – Amazon deserves it. It also deserves to find its warehouses and offices occupied by its own workforce, who, if left to themselves, could run the whole show better than the current owners. But I suspect that’s not going to happen before Christmas!
So SIGN THE PETITION: https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/amazonuk-this-christmas-pay-the-living-wage-across-uk-operations
Immigration, the family & the archbishop
In the UK the right to family life (Art. 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights) has been increasingly refused through all sorts of rules and bureaucratic delays, refused even to refugees and other immigrants who have already gone through enough hoops to achieve British nationality status. “You don’t earn enough”, says the Home Office, “so your spouse will be a drain on the state.” “Your wife must do an English course,” it says, “even if she has to travel through dangerous areas of Afghanistan to Kabul for the classes.” “Your wife must go from Afghanistan to Islamabad for an interview,” it says. And on, and on, and on. People wait years for their applications to be processed, and it takes even longer when the UK Border Agency + the Consulate + the private companies (the last, of course, are “our partners”) who are part of the process lose the application, and then have the cheek to ask the applicants to start again.
It looks as if these refusals will be hardening up in future, according to legislation before parliament. One result is that Vincent Nichols, the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, has written an article in today’s Guardian criticising the government’s policy on these matters. Before he wrote he did his homework, including talking to many of the victims of the policy. As a result, he says that the regulations now in place are anti-family, unsavoury and a scandal. He asks:
“… is it the government’s intention to penalise British citizens? To undermine marriages and to split up families? Other EU citizens are free to come and live in the UK with spouses from outside the EU. And yet British citizens do not enjoy the same rights. The feeling of being victimised by one’s own government is a bitter pill to swallow.”
Strong words from an Archbishop, and his article should be read in full. As might be expected of an archbishop, he ends with a pious hope: “I hope that parliament, in considering the current immigration bill, will take the opportunity to correct this clear injustice.” Amen to that, Archbishop, although snowflakes’ chances in Hell (if you’ll pardon the expression) do spring to mind.
But to help the process along, let’s all write to our MPs expressing our disgust at the government’s unsavoury, scandalous (and, not least, cruel), policies.
Here’s the archbishop: http://gu.com/p/3y7nx
Here’s some research suggesting that government statistics trying to justify the policy have been – er, well, cooked:
http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2013/07/09/revealed-the-financial-cost-of-theresa-may-s-immigrationl
Right in it with George: making the poor pay
I see George Osborne is preparing to make the poorest people pay even more for the mess capitalism has got us into. He told the Treasury select committee that “many billions” would need to be “shaved” from welfare to avoid deeper cuts in Whitehall.
Many billions? That doesn’t sound like a shave, George. That sounds like a major operation needing a general anaesthetic.
George wants us to know he finds some of these decisions “difficult”. The decisions only seem to be difficult, however, when it comes to cutting the Whitehall bureaucracy. In the case of cutting welfare, he can just go ahead and do it. Not that he mentions the bureaucracy. He indicates that any further cuts in Whitehall would endanger education and science. Well, that’s sliced-bread territory for sure – can’t touch them. So what to do? Let George explain:
“I don’t think all the savings need and should be made within the departments. I think we should make a balanced judgment about where government spends its money and, yes, we have got to make difficult decisions to save money further in Whitehall, but we should accompany that with savings in the welfare budget.”
So what are the results of these “accompanying” savings in welfare? They sound a bit like a piano in the background, soothing, encouraging, comforting. But it’s not quite like that. Just one example will do – and it affects some of George and Dave’s favourite people: the “strivers”, the people who are allegedly happy to work for low pay rather than claim benefits because, again allegedly, “they know it is the right thing to do”. Hidden away in two sentences in Osborne’s autumn statement are £600m worth of cuts to Universal Credit. The Guardian explains that the cut comes
“because Universal Credit work allowances will now be maintained at their current cash level for three years from 2013. The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts inflation (CPI) of 8.7% over this period, meaning that the value of universal credit work allowances is set to fall significantly in real terms. During last year’s autumn statement it was announced that most working-age benefits and tax credits were to be uprated by 1% a year for three years from 2013. Taken together, the 1% uprating and the reduction in work allowances mean that by 2017 a single-parent household will be up to £420 per year worse off and a couple with children up to £230 a year worse off.”
No wonder Gavin Kelly of the Resolution Foundation calls it “a real blow to the working poor”. “It’s the sort of stealthy measure”, he says, “that often attracts little attention but still has a real impact.”
“Little attention” was George’s aim, of course when he hid this lot away in two sentences. The question for us all is: should someone as tricky as this be in charge of the public purse? Or, indeed, our welfare?
Some of the detail: see http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/dec/12/osborne-working-families-reduced-allowances-2017
Bob Mouncer's blog 