ON THE LIZARD
Yarder sat on the Lizard enjoying the October sunshine and musing on the benefit of climate change. He looked at the rocks and the cliffs: they were indeed lizard-like, dark and reptilian, muscular. The sky was clear and he had that sense of suspended time and immobility that the sea can bring. A large seal suddenly emerged from the water and appeared to frolic in the sun. Yarder wondered if a seal could feel happy and enjoy rousseauistic moments.
'What are you day-dreaming about?'asked his companion Spike who sat beside him. She had finished her cigarette, her sugared coffee and her daily perusal of The Racing Post.
'I was thinking about perception, rocks and metaphors, seals and happiness.'
'Well, I wonder if you ever actually see anything at all since you are so bloody self-absorbed. For example, Yarder, have you noticed anything odd about the last twenty minutes?'
'If you are referring to the 110 people who wandered past us in the last half-hour, I did notice them'.
'Yes but what did you notice about them?'
'I noticed that a majority of them were very large females with enormous bums, so much so that if you sprayed this attribute with grey paint, they could easily be the back-end of a pantomime elephant without further props or pass for a seal.'
'That is funny, I was thinking about that too. I mean, not the seal or the elephants, but their fat arses. Why did we both think of that?'
'Because of all the recent publicity about the obesity of the Brits. Our perception was coloured by that. All perception is coloured, even that of a happy seal'.
Spike went back to the horses. Yarder surveyed the coastal path: the elephant trail crawled over the Lizard from cove to cove, thundering like dinosaurs of old to the next feeding station. And the rocks of ages seemed to sigh but not sag under the weight and pressure.
PITY THE PALL BEARERS OF BRITAIN
A side-effect of the alarming increase in the obesity of the British is the health and safety threat posed to the poor pall-bearers of our nation whose heavy job it is to carry these giant corpses to their final resting place. At a recent meeting of the Pall-Bearers Co-0perative, it was resolved that enough was enough and a limit of 20 stone per cadaver per 4 bearers was agreed. Over that weight a corpse will have to be cut length ways or centrally agirth and an additional coffin ordered. The Giant Casket Company of America looks poised to break into what is always a vibrant market with a tempting upper limit of 40 stone per six. Over this a crane and pulley service is available for hire.
OF GIANT CASKETS AND HUMAN RIGHTS
America has cabbages and contraceptive sheaths larger than other countries of the world, so much is natural and acceptable for a superpower. It also has a growing population of obese people, making the British look positively sylph-like. The American market is responding to the expansion in the form of companies offering outsize coffins for the corpses. This may help the mammothian dead but there are other problems. There is a growing need for bigger beds and sofas not to mention toilet seats and baths. Culturally the phenomenon is generating demands for larger cinema and theatre seats and the tourist industry is also feeling the pinch as traditional train and aircraft seating cannot cope with the pressures. It come as no surprise that ascetics in the States take a negative view of thick girths and are demanding punitive action against the excessively fat. In England, most people would understand this, for gluttony is a traditional sin and obesity is lived largely in guilt and shame. However the fat of America are anything but supine and are making this a human rights and constitutional issue. They claim discrimination and the right and freedom to be as fat and large as they like. In other words it is not their problem. I find the debate of some interest as it poses the problem of individual freedom in relation to others in a pressing sort of way. Very few things that we do, do not impact on others; in fact I can only think of one and in folklore it causes ocular difficulties. Now where did I put my glasses?
OFF TARGET
Water boils at 100 degrees and at lower temperatures the phenomenon does not occur. The same is true of humour and satire and, of course, metaphor, as Proust once said. You either hit the target and get a laugh or you slide into the faeces of failure. What garbage then is this from the punctured cerebellums of Labour MPs Simon and Watson? To produce such rubbish is already an achievement in the sense that it would be difficult to do worse but to publish it for human consumption is an offence. Exposure to this is akin to sex with cold noodles or coition with a dead cod. Spare us that fate at least and say no more. We need more retirement homes for failed comedians.
TONY ROBINSON SEES RADICAL LIGHT
We give credit to former NEC member, Tony Robinson, who did not need to set off for Damascus to experience revelation: he just watched New Labour in action. Writing in the November 2005 issue of Red Pepper, Robinson encapsulates the depth of the revelation in a stunning iterance
ower tends to corrupt; and follows up thus:In the Labour Party, of course, politicians are so governed by the experience of the Militant Tendency in the 1980s that they are in terror of their own members. They manipulate the membership. They parachute in their own favourites to constituencies as parliamentary candidates. To all intents and purposes they have got rid of the party conference as a policy-making body and replaced it with the national policy forum. This might be potentially a very good idea, except that it is a complete fix and filled with people who are very close to the leadership. Editorial comment: complete the conversion, Tony, and join CLPD.
MEACHER’S WINDOW VISION
Ray Davison reviews Michael Meacher’s The Politics of Conviction, a Catalyst Working Paper, The Catalyst Forum, 2006, pp.(iv)-46. £5. Reprinted from Campaign Briefing 69, Summer Edition, the Newsletter of CLPD.
Michael Meacher straddles the decades from 1970 when he first won Oldham and, like David, the French painter of the revolutionary years, he is a survivor and keeps his head. On the evidence of this pamphlet, it is a head well worth keeping. After the multitudinous mountains of New Labour policy documents, where the classical art of saying the least to mean the most has been put into reverse and we prospect wearily for significance in a sierra madre of verbiage, it is a pleasure to read a text where concision, analytical acuity and astute political judgement blend impressively. This head perceives a window of opportunity as it surveys, like a modern Descartes doing a second meditation, the present state of the world and international power relations. But it is more than a window of opportunity – it is a vision. The sub-title of this paper is ‘Vision of a Socialist or Social Democratic Society. The telescoping of socialist and social democratic is of interest. There is no conflict between them for Meacher, as some might anticipate, for example those who would prefer democratic socialist to social democratic. Meacher’s window vision defines a political space wide enough to build a consensual and pragmatic politics among left radicals and the now disenchanted Blairites of yore. Meacher argues that the political centre of gravity, now entrenched on the right, with its neo-liberal policies driving privatisation, deregulation and vast inequalities of wage and wealth, is about to shift. The contours of international power will be re-configured as American dominance is challenged by the growing strength of China, Russia, India and Brazil. Environmental factors (which figure prominently in the argument) will create unavoidable and extreme challenges for laissez-faire capitalism and ‘we thus face irrevocably an era of fundamental change.’ Meacher wants us to seize this historical moment and his programme for change will be sweet music to many left ears. Domestically, his policies are re-distributive, anti-privatisation and demand a strengthened public sector. He looks to Sweden for his economic model. There is a strong anti-authoritarian and anti-Leviathan element to his thought and he calls for the abolition of the royal prerogative, increased civil rights and indeed for the restoration of the sovereignty of Labour’s Conference. Internationally, our subordination to America must end and the post-1945 IMF/World Bank/WTO settlement must be redrawn. This short review cannot do full justice to a paper which is a really well thought-out and convincing contribution to present political debate. It places Meacher at the centre of attention.
Blog readers please note that two months after the writing of this review, Michael Meacher announced that he would stand in Labour’s leadership election.
END THIS CRUELTY TO CHAMELEONS!
That ‘great clunking fist’ about to land on a flyweight chameleon has roused the wrath of the politically correct banana brains of our time. I know I have extended the metaphor of the boxing ring to include a reference to a camel lion but I felt at liberty to do this as clunking already seems odd when applied to a fist and is no doubt a back formation from hammer blow. The great leader was in fine form that day and the chameleon flushed and blushed, went white, yellow and sickly green, as if he could actually see the fist about to crush him. How predictable that the leader, who mocked bogus love and punched holes in facile utterances, should come under fire for using images of violence and cruelty by pc wonkers (Baroness Kennedy, for example). I know where that clunking fist should go next to fill a hole of inanity.
