Stumbling and Mumbling

For mid-life "crises"

One thing that peeves me is this advert for the VW Passat. Its selling point seems to be that the car is for men who don't have mid-life crises. It says: "when all around are losing their heads, keep yours."
Why the hell should we? I reckon its the men in the ad who fancy 22-year-olds, play guitar and cheat on their wives - men who have sold the Passat - who have found wisdom.
Many of us, in our youth, were men "whom heaven in its anger had visited with ambition", to use Smith's great phrase. We chased money rather than birds, and didn't have time for the guitar.
It's only now that we've grown older that we've learned that "wealth and greatness are mere trinkets of frivolous utility" (Theory of Moral Sentiments, IV.1.8). What matters is shagging and guitars.
"Mid-life crises" aren't to be laughed at - they are the beginnings of true knowledge. And being "sensible" is just a way of winning meaningless respect from no-marks in authority.

Bring back class

Like all good revolutionaries, I'm deeply conservative. So, I welcome Shilpa's victory for a reason that hasn't  gotten the attention it deserves - it shows that the public wants its celebrities to have style, talent and elegance, rather than be attention-crazed ladettes.
This - I hope - represents a return to the 1950s, when sex symbols were real women like Grace Kelly or Julie London, rather than plastic monsters like Jordan or talentless wannabees like Lindsay Lohan.
This is not an appeal for a return to female modesty and chastity. Exactly the opposite. Grace Kelly banged like a privy door in a strong wind. And Jolie Holland or Gillian Anderson are not only more talented than, say, Christina Aguilera or Lindsay Lohan, but much sexier too.
Is it too much to hope that the manufacturers of "celebrity" will get the message?

The M-word redux

On the latest album by the Be Good Tanyas is a sticker endorsing them thus:

A confident modern approach to a very traditional sound - The Guardian.

Only the Groan could be so moronic as to think "modern" is any kind of compliment. And only a record company could be so stupid as to agree.
I'm glad to report that - barring a couple of cover versions - there's little about the album that's modern; here's the (representative) opening track. And here's their idea of modernity, a video of an earlier song.
This was co-written by Jolie Holland (pbuh). Here she is, unburdened of modernity, or any other imperfection.

Challenging my prejudices

Last night I went to see Mary Gauthier at the Roundhouse. She got on stage accompanied by a bloke in baseball cap and long ponytail, looking like a strong contender for a twat of the year competition.
Turns out, he - Tom Utz - played guitar (both leccy and proper) quite fantastically. This clip doesn't do him full justice, but Manc readers can see for themselves next Saturday.
My prejudice - that men in ponytails should be shot on sight - took a beating. Which raises the question. In what other respects might my prejudices be wrong? I invite you to correct them. Here are three to get you started:
1. Immigration is a good thing. I'm pretty sure it is economically. But are the economic benefits offset by social costs, for example a loss of social cohesion and sense of community? Gimme evidence. Don't talk about terrorism - I don't like drawing inferences from the far end of the bell curve.
2. Hierarchical organizations are inefficient. Gimme examples to the contrary. What conditions make hierarchy work? How common are they?
3. I don't like Bob Dylan - even though I love most singer-songwriters like him. So, direct me to some of his music that'll change my mind. I've a strong preference for acoustic guitar, intelligent but not tub-thumping lyrics, and a voice that doesn't sound like something made by Black and Decker; I don't want cheap Woody Guthrie covers.
OK readers - what have you got?

Despairing of bloggers

Not only do I despair of democracy sometimes, I also despair of bloggers. You've all linked to this. But none of you have done the obvious, and cross-referenced with this.
It's a good job one of us is on the ball. The results show that there are no Americans called Amanda Hugenkiss, Hugh Jass or Al Coholic. There's not even a Mike Rotch - though 180 answer to Mike Hunt.
There is though - wait for it, wait for it - precisely one called Seymour Butts.

Corrie's truths, Campbell's cretinism

Iain Dale proves that Ming Campbell is an utterly contemptible figure - because he doesn't watch Coronation Street.
In this great piece, Johann Hari said that he could never love anyone who didn't love Corrie. I can't even respect someone who doesn't - especially if they're a politician.
Corrie demonstrates the greatest political wisdom of all - that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he.
In Corrie, people are not simple ciphers, to be boxed, stamped, labelled and managed as managerialists think. They are real, multi-dimensional people. Take Roy Cropper, the mocked and bullied geeky, autistic loner, with his Christ-like humility. Or his wife Hayley, who has done more than almost anyone to show that trans-sexuals are not freaks. Or Eileen, showing that single parents aren't feckless scroungers, but battlers against adversity. Or the sadly-departed Sunita, showing that the mousy Asian shopgirl has an intelligence and sensuality beyond the cultural stereotype. Or Steve MacDonald, showing that ex-cons can come good.
What's more,  Corrie, more than any TV programme, embodies a tradition. It's hinted at by that prominent but never discussed poster in the Rovers advertising Wilfred Pickles, the homage to Donald McGill within Jack and Vera and Les and Cilla, and the distinctively Northern character types represented in different ways by Emily, Ken, Norris and Blanche. In all this we see an embodiment of a part of English - Northern - history, a history we are in danger of losing.
Being non-political, Corrie also contains an important political message - that politics, or at least managerialist party politics, isn't that important. People try, and often fail, to control their own lives - and no-one, not even Les and Cilla, looks to the state very much.
And then, of course, there is the peerless writing. Here's an exchange from a few months ago:

Sally: "Sophie - eat your breakfast. There are children starving in Africa."
Sophie: "Name one."

Was ever such truth spoken in Westminster?
All of this should reveal just how contemptible Campbell and his like are. They think the petty manoeverings of the Westminster village - a soap with all the characters, wisdom and dignity removed - are more interesting than Corrie.

Roy Keane, Jolie Holland and two cultures

Last night I saw the divine Jolie Holland. This morning I read this interview with Roy Keane. Despite appearances to the contrary, the two have much in common. Both embody a culture, a morality even, we are losing. It's a culture which prizes the pursuit of excellence over the cultivation of the ego and.
Keane regards the fame and celebrity associated with footballing success with contempt:

"When I see young players doing deals for five books, I scratch my head"....
He moves effortlessly into anti-celebrity mode; for here was the man who preferred not to attend the celebrity wedding of his friend David Beckham, who now says he would rather be back drinking cider behind the school wall than sell photographs of his wife and children to OK! or Hello! magazines...
He didn’t find the Wags amusing. “What kind of person wants to be pictured going out for a meal? They were annoying me, and they’re not even my wife.”

Similarly, Jolie last night was awkward and embarrassed by having an audience. You got the impression she'd be as brilliant playing on her own as in front of 10,000 people.
Both Keane and Jolie think internal goods - musical and footballing excellence - are more important than the promotion of ego*.
This dichotomy between ego and excellence is closely related to other dichotomies:
1. The goods of excellence (or internal goods, such as expertise at a practice) versus the goods of effectiveness (or external goods such as money, fame and power).
2. Managerialism versus technocracy. The managerialist thinks he can succeed by imposing his ego onto the world. The technocrat tries to master specific skills.
3. The morality of virtues versus moralities of rules or consequences. The virtuous man is courageous, noble and generous not because rules compel him to be, or because good things will follow, but because virtues constitute what it means to be a good man. They are internal goods.
The tragedy here is that ego, effectiveness, managerialism and consequentialism have almost completely triumphed over excellence, technique and virtue.
This is certainly true in the dead tree industry, which is staffed almost entirely by egomaniacs uninterested in internal goods.
We seen this when they obsess about who'll become PM and when, but are uninterested in the content of policy. We see it also when they criticize Arsenal for wanting to score the perfect goal. In both cases, the dead trees favour extrinsic goods over internal ones - power over good policy, a temporary victory over good football.
Even bloggers - who should be freer to pursue excellence - have fallen for the crass pursuit of external goods; we see this when they tout for advertizing business by boasting of the "opinion-formers" (read: no-mark egomaniacs) who visit their sites. 
There's something almost as bad as the triumph of egomania and mediocre effectiveness. It's that too many people don't realize that there is a higher alternative. But as Jolie said, "culture is the things you don't notice."
* Maybe I'm idealizing here. No-one's motives are wholly clear, even to themselves. But I think my key point survives.

It's the banjolele, stupid

In this week's Spectator, Paul Johnson perpetuates a howling error, one that has disfigured English culture for decades. He says:

Each day I would walk on the front [in Lytham], often meeting George Formby, the great, sad comedian who played the ukelele plaintively.

This is wrong. George did not play the ukulele. He played the banjolele, or banjo ukulele. The ukulele is a different thing altogether - it's a small four-stringed guitar. The pictures illustrate the difference. In this respect, of course, George was at one with another of the Greatest Englishmen Who Ever Lived.

 

...and heaven

On a day when we remember the worst that life has to offer, let's also remember the best. Here are two beautiful pieces.

England, not Britain

We should celebrate Englishness, not Britishness. That's my reaction to difficulty raised by the proposal that we use the anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta to celebrate Britishness:

"The problem with a Magna Carta day is that this was originally very much an English, not a British significant event," said Linda Colley, Professor of history at Princeton University.

Good for England.
Yes, I know all nations are "imagined communities." The question is: which imagined community do you prefer? For me, it's England over Britain.
It's revealing that the other popular days chosen in the BBC poll to celebrate Britishness - D-Day, VE Day, Trafalgar Day - celebrate military victories. Great victories over tyranny, granted. But military events nonethless. 
The contrast shows that Britain is more militaristic than England. It was, remember, always the British Empire, never the English Empire.
And we sing "Rule, Britannia", but of building Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land.
Whereas Britain pursues overseas expansion, England stays at home. The great statements asserting the rights and the dignity of the ordinary man - and it was the Englishman G.K. Chesterton who said there's nothing ordinary about the ordinary man - are all English: Magna Carta, the Putney debates, Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard.
England is about cultivation, improvement and the assertion of liberty. Britain is about conquest, albeit often in a good cause.
There's another contrast. "Britain" is a manufactured term, used by the ruling class for political ends:

After the old English period, Britain was used only as a historical term, until about the time of Henry VIII and Edward VI, when it came again into practical politics in connexion with the efforts made to unite England and Scotland.

Says the OED.
So, England stands for freedom, Britain for conquest. England stands for quiet dignity, Britain for glory. England is grown and natural, Britain is imposed by  the ruling class.
Is it any surprise, therefore, than New Labour prefers to celebrate Britishness?