I was at Oxford during the era when sit-ins and student protests were the thing to do. I wasn’t a great enthusiast for it: I didn’t see myself as the sort to save the world. (Well except for the occasional superhero fantasy and even then I didn’t go the whole spandex route.)
And I was particularly annoyed by the use the sitters in and protestors made of the word ‘fascist’. It came too fast to their lips, seemed a bit ill defined and mostly was used to prop up their fantasies of being part of a mighty movement dating back at least as far as George Orwell volunteering to fight Franco.
Recently though, looking back on the course of my life I begin to wonder if they saw something I didn’t. The fact that most of them went on to become respectable civil servants, bankers, teachers and clerical persons didn’t invalidate the insight no matter how much they have changed and perhaps repudiated their adolescent views.
Nowadays, if people point at a right wing pundit or candidate for office and call them ‘fascist’ I am much more likely to take a look at their record of pronouncements and say “Yes, looks like.”
Now my internal definition of ‘fascist’ is, I will admit a bit loose and general. It’s “Anyone who cares more about power in politics than they do about justice.” I find it useful but others may get stuffy about it the way I do about changes in the language that destroy useful words.
So when I try to communicate the conviction I have I have up to know used a medical concept that I’m not at all sure I’m using properly. “Fascism,” I have said, “is a syndrome: it’s a collection of symptoms that often come together and that experienced practioners can use to diagnose the underlying symptoms. Even if they don’t have swastika tatoos or work the number 88 into their every conversation you can still call them fascist if they go the nationalist authoritarian route and say their prejudice is based on culture and not race.”
Useful though I have found this metaphor I’m thinking of replacing it with “Spectrum”. Members of my family may be found to exhibit behaviour on the Autistic Spectrum. And members of Reform UK may be placed somewhere on the Fascist Spectrum.
And look that sort of usage is already in Social Sciences. Which unhappily means my insight isn’t that original but if someone will point me towards actual qualified political science sorts who are using it I will be grateful.
I write this in response to all the spurious “Is T a fascist?” YouTube and Blog posts in which people who are convinced that fascists must all have the particular symptom of the infection that they have fixated on. Start thinking in terms of syndromes and spectrums, matey. It will clear your mind and perhaps your sinuses too.
The picture is Wolfie Smith. I wonder what happened to him.
This is a hard saying.
To speak nothing but good of the dead is partly rooted in superstition about not angering the spirit of the deceased and partly in mannerly consideration of the feelings of their friends and family.
It becomes difficult to follow when examining what you know of the departed leads to a very short list of good points and long lists of things you had best not mention.
When the people who loved the dead one want you to not merely mutter ‘I am sorry for your loss’ or ‘Please let us know if there is any way we can help’ but want a eulogy and a sincere appreciation for the dead and take offence if you give any less well then there comes a point where you are forced to choose between offending someone and lying to comfort them. I feel I’m being forced to attend a funeral of someone I never knew: the poor bloody clergy who attend cremations and deliver standard boilerplate sermons have my deep sympathies.
I have a sincere conviction that I am an awful liar. I not only find it morally repugnant but I believe I would be totally transparent if I tried.
Validating a philosophy that one believes to be dangerous, foolish and wrong is a thing I can’t do and yet if I refrain I may be accused of elitism, of disdain for alternative points of view and other things.
And on the Scylla side of the dilemma there is also the danger of seeming to say that the deceased was the partial cause of their own demise. Just hinting at that is tantamount to encouraging the next goddamn fool with a rifle and a grievance to take matters into their own hands.
It would be nice if I believed that free speech never hurts the people who propagate it. But we do not live in that sort of a universe, do we?
Oh, why do I think Charlie Kirk died? What killed Charlie Kirk?
He died the way he did because America is the way it is. He died because Americans either cannot or will not amend their great creation. I am very much afraid that it will take a terrible crisis to force a change and terrible crises do not ensure wise and thoughtful resolutions. America has form on making heroic efforts and then fluffing the follow through.
I’m watching the Trump inaugural. My doctors would not have advised this.
He’s just declared war on Panama, near as I can tell.
He’s also used the line about the Alien Enemies Act which I may have suggested in my previous post. I really hope I didn’t orginate that idea.
Oh, and the Star & Stripes on the planet Mars. Good grief.
Another speaker could make the terrible cliches work but not Trump. He could be reading Shakespeare or Rudyard Kipling and his voice would kill it.
Oh, the horrendous vanity of the man.
Oh, the hatred and contempt he expresses just by standing there.
“Our golden age has just begun.”
Oh, and he’s going ahead with The Gulf Of America idea.
Bow and tremble before the might of (the President of) America, you cartographers and geographers!
Somebody (preferably my American friends) tell me why this wouldn’t work.
The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 is still in force, the only part of the Alien & Sediton Acts that is. It allows the arrest of non-citizens in time of war. It was part of the legal justification of the round up of Japanese, German and Italian citizens during WW2 and in the case of the Japanese was used to round up American citizens of Japanese descent too.
The War Powers Resolution of 1973 allows the President to send troops overseas without congressional approval of some sort only in emergency circumstances involving an invasion of US territory.
Donald Trump has talked about deporting every last ‘illegal immigrant’ and many people have pointed out this is not going to happen legally without Congress appropriating a lot of money and passing a lot of laws.
Donald Trump likes to trump up trumpery reasons to be angry at people who he thinks aren’t doing enough to stop the flood of immigrants who he claims (and perhaps even actually thinks, who can tell) are coming across the borders in swarms.
So why can’t he declare emergency war on Mexico (maybe even Canada too) and then starting rounding up ‘illegals’ (and even US citizens of Hispanic origin) to start his long term promise to wreck the US economy… Oh, that’s not what he promised was it? Something about stopping the pollution of the blood of real Americans? Or did I hallucinate that?
I sincerly hope I’m not the only one who has thought of this. And if I am I hope nobody in Trump’s transition team reads it…
“As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man-
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began:-
That the Dog returns to his Vomit (1) and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire”
From “The Gods of the Copybook Headings”
― Rudyard Kipling
That I am so shocked, not only by the result but by the enthusiasm that the citizenry has shown for a man and a faction that has only contempt for their welfare and for the laws and the constitution probably indicates how much my own consumption of news has been tailored to my own prejudices.
Still I shall wish the United States well and my dearest wish for them is that in four years time they have another election for President and that Donald Trump isn’t going to try break the 22nd Amendment as he has broken so much else.
(1) See also Proverbs 26:11 & 2 Peter 2:22
This morning I got the first automatically generated communication in a long time, maybe the first ever, that I greeted with joy and astonishment.
It came from those fine (if slowly moving) people at the HMRC telling me that unless my circumstances change they will not be requiring me to send them any more tax returns.
It’s only because I’ve somehow gotten so old that I didn’t jump for joy and roll about on the floor in ecstasy. Let the thought stand for the deeds.
Since I first started trying (and then eventually failing) to make a living as an actor (which would have been in the autumn of 1977 IIRC) I have been obliged once a year to dig out my old bank statements, find all the invoices and pay slips from my acting jobs, tote it all up, deduct any valid expenses (1), inform the Inland Revenue (as it was then) and finally pay them any profits above my annual untaxed allowance. This very rarely happened.
Not never. There was one year of touring in ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD which meant I was earning actual regular money. If the temporary employment I was sometimes forced into had used up my annual allowance then a good film or commercial job could leave me owing something which I would then have to struggle to find.
The only time I felt they treated me unfairly was when I declared to them some agency temp work that had (for some reason) not had tax taken from it. “Will I owe you anything,” I asked. “We’ll get back to you about that,” they said.
Years passed. The money I had put aside got spent. More years passed and I thought no more of it. But apparantly that file was sitting at the back of someone’s filing cabinet at another tax office where it had been sent for a decision. Pointless internal reorganisation of the Inland Revenue probably happened during this period too: politicians like to reorganise things to justify their existence.
And then just short of the seven years passing that would have meant they couldn’t have dunned me for it they sent me a bill for several hundred pounds (which I didn’t have) and when I went in to local tax office frothing at the mouth and demanding to know just what the hell they thought they were playing at the nice young lady behind the desk smiled and said: “Oh, yes. Remember that load of income you reported? We finally got that sorted out!” She was so pleased and bubbly I couldn’t even shout.
I can’t remember how I paid it. I think it was the entire receipts for another acting job I had rather been hoping to spend on myself. I do know two good friends of mine offered to help me out and though it didn’t come to that I remain grateful to this day.
That was the biggest shock I got out of them but there was an annual moment of tension when I had to do a task that strained the limits of my arithmetical talents and required me, it seemed every year, to try to understand again the peculiar English of people who write the instructions on tax forms. They did not seem to mean the same things as me for many common words and could not for the life of them express anything without jargon.
I never employed an accountant: they charge money for their services and though those fees would have been tax deductable in turn I never made enough of a profit to justify dumping the work on them. I would still have to keep the records and worry about having missed anything and only the oppressive consciousness that I really didn’t have any mastery in this area of expertise would have been lifted a little.
That decision did lead to long waits on the phone trying to get through to a human being to ask what must have seemed like very simple questions to them (“Which box do I enter this thing in?” was the level of it) and this was not good for my temper.
Years passed. Things changed. My acting career dwindled into a few small jobs and the annual letters from the BBC and Equity Collecting Service about repeat fees from my glory days (mostly the HITCH-HIKERS GUIDE) which every year were well below the value at which you had give detailed accounts for a self-employed business even if you included (in later years) the profits from the IMPROVISED RADIO THEATRE WITH DICE tip jar. (2)
I retired from my last Civil Service (nearly fifteen years ago now) so that was one less worry and a small pension to supplement the state pension when it finally came. The Inland Revenue became HMRC (not without weeping and gnashing of teeth). I started filling the forms on line and not on paper. Eons passed.
The money I inherited from my mother and my Aunt Kath was in the hands of some nice money management people (recommended by my brother) and I still had to admit to small amounts of capital gains and income from abroad though. This dwindled over the years and this last year they finally reported that all my investments were ‘within the envelope’ of their ISA and therefore they didn’t have to send me a tax summary every year and I didn’t have to send anything about it to HMRC.
So this last week I finally got around to doing my tax returns for the year ending 5th April 2024. I ended up owing them five quid even more than had already been deducted.
And this morning I get the email saying that unless my circumstances change (3) that would be the last tax return they would be needing from me. End of an era. Felt like end of an eon. I note that the email was dated 1st October so perhaps some unknown computer system (or God knows perhaps even a real human being) had already decided that I was to be released from these decades of bondage and was just waiting for me to do the final return before releasing me.
I will probably continue to collect up receipts, statements and what have you as they arrive. They will go into the box marked ‘Current Finance’ and each year I shall take out one of the boxes I keep in my bedroom marked ‘Tax Year ending April 20XX’, the one that is more than seven years old (because like HMRC I know I have seven years before it all becomes irrelevant) and shred the contents, putting the last year’s paperwork in the now empty box and changing the label on the outside. I don’t know how long I shall continue to do this before it all seems too pointless. As long as I can remember I suspect.
I may have bought my last shredder though. I was always rather too heavy handed with them and tended to break them by shovelling too many sheets of paper through them at once. Maybe I can be more patient with them in future. Since my bank statements have gone online there’s less to worry about there.
So there it goes. Just one more relationship I used to have (no, not a happy one but there’s a certain comradeship in shared misery) which has faded away with time. I should feel joyous! I should buy some wine and toast my liberation but the weather outside is looking dour and I shall probably pour myself the last of the brandy I got for last Christmas instead. With supper, not right now.
I wonder if I shall find something useful to do with the leisure time and money I won’t be spending on keeping the taxman happy. I may or may not find life less stressful: we shall have to see.
(1) Which required me to keep a record of
All journeys for business purposes including going up to London for auditions
All purchases of make up and costume
My Equity Subscriptions
My agent’s fees…
And I think that was all actually. There were other things I’m sure but they never applied to me.
(2) Which I spend on games and books, just the way I promise on the podcast.
(3) Just a moment while I go and do the Lotto for today… Back again.
The thing I think is wrong with Donald John Trump is something I sort of recognise in myself.
I’ve a much less severe case of it than him (I hope) but like just about everyone I’m not that good at seeing myself as other see me. I may be a rambling aged bore just like him but… I sort of hope not.
The thing that we share is a conviction that what is going through our minds Right Now is the most important and significant thing in the world. I’ve never been backward about coming forward and I don’t always (ever?) take a moment to assess the wisdom of speaking up about the transient object of my vast intellect’s interest.
I was at Tringcon over the weekend, a fine boardgaming event held twice yearly in a village that is just a little difficult to get to by public transport from where I live in Wycombe so I have to impose on my friends to attend (thanks Pum! Thanks Roger! Thanks Drak for volunteering and I hope your car is better soon). I found myself chatting to a nice young lady about stuff, which went
Her complaining about her bosses not listening to her about which customers were important enough to get a Christmas card.
Me saying that if they were economising on Christmas cards they were probably already in terminal decline.
Me saying that I still got a regular catalogue from a men’s clothing store that I bought some socks from ten years ago and never anything since: mostly because their socks are the only things in the catalogue that would fit me.
And that caused me to say (notice how long it is since she’s been in control of the conversation?) that I had finally found some socks that would cover up my elasticated stockings (I had to tell her about the elasticated stockings here) when wearing shorts in the summer. I indicated that I felt very lucky and this was the satisfactory conclusion of an Epic Quest comparable with the Grail.
And she smiled and nodded and finally said something (I don’t recall what) that wasn’t about me.
It was only when I got home that it occured to me that I might have gone a bit far and made a total idiot of myself and the nice young lady was treating me like the mad old eccentric uncle that I arguably am. I do find myself recalling more and more conversations nowadays and thinking “Did I really say something as stupid as that?”
Difference between me and Donald: I don’t go on as long as he apparantly can, and I have sufficient internal content control to avoid outright telling people how wonderful I am (they’re supposed to be bright enough to deduce that) and not to start rambling about how amazing other people’s genetalia are.
If you haven’t heard about this: Donald was rallying (he likes to rally) at the birthplace of Arnold Palmer, the late and noted golfer, and he began to tell stories about the late Mr Palmer ending with an anectdote about how impressed his fellow golfers were with the size of Mr Palmer’s penis. This wasn’t a sight that Donald was reporting having seen himself, you understand, but something he reported as being notable and entirely to the gentleman’s credit. Something any man would want widely said about himself.
Now, I could go on about what this view says about Mr Trump’s inner psyche but honestly I’d rather not. I too have views about other people’s physical beauty and how they move me but I do try, even in my gathering senesence, to keep them to myself and treasure some of them as a comfort for my old age.
I do not regard them as suitable for inclusion in a political discussion despite what they say about the uses LBJ got out of Jumbo.
If you want to go on listening to Donald telling the world what he thinks important right at this second… Well, you’d probably have to vote for him. If that’s what pleases you. But I would despair being his speech writer and imagine that being his press officer must be a nightmare. (“President Trump was not talking about the Pope’s testicles literally….”)
There’s an earnest young man on YouTube who’s saying very earnestly that he felt compelled to say to everyone “what I thought everybody knew” that there’s no more than a hairsbredth of difference between the two main parties and the third parties will be ignored, And there’s no money in the world that will deliver on all the promises. He’s also very earnest about people ought to vote but he feels even if you’re voting for a revolutionary change you ought to do it in a depressed mood. I suspect him of having revolutionary yearnings.
There is much in what he says.
And yet I am watching Keir Starmer (1) reading his speech (rather than performing it) outside Number 10 and what’s going through my head is:
“Dance your cares away, worries for another day
Let the music play, Down in fraggle rock”
Which is ridiculous.
Keir Starmer cannot orate to save his life. His handlers will have to be careful to rehearse him well and write a lot of sound stuff. He just gives the impression of being someone without any talent at moderating his voice to suit the sense of what he’s saying. He does not give the ghastly impression that the last two female PMs did of being a wind up doll or an animatronic impersonation of a human being.
He in contrast sounds like a sincere human being who is bad at public speaking.
I shall take what joy I can and hope that Sir Keir’s (2) programme can get some traction before whatever wave of ‘events’ that the universe has in preparation makes it all moot. Go for building up the staff at HMRC first, would be my advice. It might unlock the key to getting everything else moving.
I shall try not to feel too much hope: hope can be a corrosive substance if not handled carefully. I shall simply take joy in the fact that for a little while my blood pressure will not automatically spike when I consider my government. (Though I and my doctors would appreciate it if Laura K could be made the BBC’s correspondent in Kuala Lumpaur or somewhere equally distant.)
I’m not looking forward to great things from the new government (though I’m willing to be surprised) but I can confirm that it feels good when you stop banging your head against the wall of Tory intransigence.
I think that’s what I came here to tell you: it feels good when you can stop banging your head against a wall.
This isn’t my dream result (despite the fact that our local Brexiteer MP is no longer representing us). I would have preferred no Reform at all in parliament after they had finished draining the Tories of whoever still yearns for ‘global Britain’ or whatever it was Brexit was supposed to bring. Watching Farage saying he wants to build a ‘mass party’ is not a pretty sight and rather worrying. The Tories have not collapsed as far as the Liberals did in the 1920s which was my deep and sincere hope but there’s still the prospect of a war on the right to fragment them further. But the really worrying thing is the historical knowledge that the collapse of the Liberals was at least partly because the Labour Party was emerging to absorb a lot of their grass roots. The Tories have Reform to do the same favour to them if they’re nt careful.
Still, worries for another day.
(1) Incidentally, I am probably the only person left in the country who is irked by hearing BBC commentators (the bloody BBC for God’s sake: Auntie!) calling his wife ‘Lady Victoria’ when it should be ‘Lady Starmer’. If you’re going to mention the fact he’s got a K (and Laura K I suspect of doing so with hostile intent) then get it right!
(2) Yes, I’m going to use his title but it’s not hostile in my case, take my word for it.
Firstly, the Prime Minister doesn’t know enough to come in from the rain.
I picture the discussion beforehand, if we can assume they still have discussions in Number 10.
“Right! It’s decided! Get the podium set up outside!”
“Excuse me, Prime Minister have you seen the weather?”
“It’s fine!”
“At this moment, yes sir. But it’s been damp all day and the forecast…”
“Don’t be ridiculous! What do experts know…”
I imagine them re-running the dialogue they used about Rwanda. And Eat Out to Spread Diseases…
Bold of him to put his record during the pandemic at the top of his list of boasts.
I do hope the electorate has one of its rushes of brains to the head and remembers who got them into the mess we’re in.
He’s got a point about Starmer’s not saying anything about anything much but that’s because if says anything the Tory press will jump on it, point accusingly and shout a lot. It seems to be the only thing they know how to do in a debate. People still fall for it.
The Tories also accuse him of having no ‘charisma’ and being unexciting. You know I could get use to having a dull PM. (Stupid isn’t the same as dull: stupid often makes your life exciting.) Last time there was a July election was 1945: in my dreams Starmer turns out to be a second Atlee. An aging git can dream.
Labour’s got my vote anyway out of pure spite and a desire to have my revenge on Steve Baker for being an ERG big-wig.
At least we won’t be bored on the Fourth of July.
…. before my brain was going ‘this makes no sense whatsoever’.
Not even artistic sense let alone internal story logic sense. Not even ‘we’ve got a big budget and we’re damn well going to spend it sense.
And you can only do so much of the ‘our characters know they’re in a story’ stuff and I think by episode two it’s maxed out my tolerance for it.
And the Doctor used the word ‘diegetic’ which is just too meta and self aware for words.
And the villain in the second one… Style should define a villain not ranting energy.
Still I like the new Doctor if not all the things he’s being asked to do. I like Ruby though I’m quite sure that the Big Reveal of her origins is going to disappoint me.
I shall try to suppress my Inner Grouch for the rest of the season. I think I know how my players feel when I start to get too fanciful around the gaming table. Yes, it is possible to go over the top when you’re playing made up games about elves and wizards and stuff. I’ve done it and these first two episodes are reminding me of the time I got irritated by Jenny explaining something in her RuneQuest game as ‘an allegory’.
Asleep in Room3b 