Fabian Society conference

At the last minute, I decided to try the Fabian Society conference for interest. I took the train to Waterloo and then the Northern line to Euston, came past the bus station and across the Euston Road. There, with a patch of garden to one side, was the Friends' Meeting House, an excellent venue for the purpose. The first meeting was in the "Light" - a square lecture theatre with a square roof light, with an interesting aperture leading to it, diminishing in size as it went up.

Although I was five or ten minutes late, the Keynote speaker wasn't speaking as I went in. There was a great hubbub and some booing and shouting. The Fabians' meeting had been interrupted by Right wing extremists, an old bald chap, and about 6 younger men, all white, in their twenties. The old bald chap was in a right old lather and kept shouting and showing us the American flag. He was offended, I think, that we are not to be visited by Donald Trump, the President of the United States, and thought quite rightly that Sadiq Khan (the Mayor of London) is in some way to blame for this. Sadiq Khan did not respond to him, and the chair of the meeting (a dignified Scotswoman) stayed quite calm (even witty) and waited for the police to come and take him and the supporters away, because they were causing a breach of the peace or whatever. I thought that the Fabians have something in common with the Quakers in that although the Fabians were about a thousand strong they didn't resort to rounding them up and putting them outside themselves, but waited for the police to come. We just booed and shouted "Get out". We all wished that the press had not been there giving the demonstrators publicity - there were far more press men and women than activists. There were about 25 press personnel and two camera crews - they were acting on the hope and expectation that there would be a demonstration. So after about half an hour the demonstrators were ejected, but it was a great nuisance and made us feel very unsettled.
Film of this interruption is supplied by the Telegraph

The Mayor - this is quicker than writing his name - said that in this, the centenary of women finally getting the vote in this country, absolute gender equality is far from our grasp. Change has happened too slowly. Only from 1994 has there been such a thing as rape of a wife by a husband.  He said that there has been zero progress in the last decade and there are even signs of progress eroding. An anti-feminist movement is on the rise. "Feminist" is being made to sound pejorative. "Social justice warriors" is being used as an insult. (How can it be an insult?) S. Khan says we must fight back. He, personally, is trying to make City Hall a model workplace for women. He says men must challenge the culture in pubs, and workplaces. He says the policies in the election manifesto must be studied carefully for their impact on women. This is something that the Labour Party didn't do well at the last election. (The Fabian Society analysed their manifesto promises and judged that they would not improve life for the people they aimed to help.)

Throughout the conference the chair of the meeting asked for questions and took the first question from a woman, because it has been found scientifically that if the first question is asked by a woman, other women will ask questions, but if the first question is asked by a man, more men than women ask the questions. However, in the case of the Fabian conference woman were given the floor many more times than the men. I think this unfair. They were also careful to chose people of ethnic minorities.  This is fair enough.

There were ideas about misogyny being included as a category of "hate crime" and what to do about online hate crime.

The Mayor wanted much more funding for child services, parenting classes and youth services. I agree. I think cutting all of these is a false economy.

The Mayor himself goes and visits schools in order to raise the aspirations of the children, and especially primary schools. He is interested in what schools are doing about equality and self-esteem in all the children, girls and boys and different races. Tells children his father was an immigrant bus driver but he became a lawyer - mainly because one of his teachers told him he enjoyed arguing so much, he should be a lawyer.

He also thinks schools have gone too far promoting Science, Technology and Maths, and should be encouraging students into the arts. The arts are strong in the UK and make a huge impact worldwide - we should do more to encourage them.

My impression of Sadiq Khan is that he is intelligent enough to do his job well, and that he even has a sense of humour at times, but he has a lot to put up with. In short, I liked him.

Sadiq Khan wore an expensive-looking black suit with some sort of white trainers and a collared shirt buttoned up to the top. This may be a fashionable look but I absolutely didn't like it and spent some time trying to decide what would suit him! In particular, I didn't like the buttoned-up neck but no tie look. On the other hand, ties signal a very conformist attitude these days. I think maybe a thin jumper in a subtle colour under the suit, but the suit was too black for my taste - it looked like funeral wear. I looked up his Google images and found he usually wears a blue suit and often wears a tie. I hope he has some brogues.

He didn't mention terrorism. Trump said Khan was complacent for saying that all big cities are prone to terrorist attacks and the risk of them is a part of living in one these days. I think Londoners would agree with him. They know that there are loads of people working in security to prevent and deal with terrorist attacks, because we all know someone who does. We have all seen the huge barriers in place to protect areas that would be vulnerable. Nobody thinks the Mayor isn't providing what is needed in the way of security or prevention.


Bethnal Green

Yesterday I went to another comedy recording; and although it will be broadcast on Radio 4 I think it was not an "in house" production because it was recorded in a comedy club in Bethnal Green. Bethnal Green is in the East End of London, at one time it was a Jewish area and as I have never been there I though I would go early and see what it is like.

I think I was expecting towering council flats, and I didn't see them although they may be there. I saw streets of shops and small businesses, some buildings and pubs unimproved since Victorian times. I saw a high street of betting shops and pawn shops and the shops that unlock mobile phones and sell the accessories for them, and I went to Macdonald's. In Macdonald's I saw black schoolboys and girls in their early teens hanging out after school, dressed in blazers and school uniforms, speaking in English. Their parents may have come from many different places (Bangladesh and Somalia, among the mix) and English may be their second language, but altogether they speak English and they are not unmannerly. Seeing me waiting for the counter they moved out of my way, and I am sure if I had asked any of them for help with the self-service screen they would have helped. There were also mums of small children in MacD's; their toddlers in push-chairs and their older ones tearing around banging on the seats. Probably this is somewhere cheap where they can come and be warm and safe and well-lit for the price of a cup of tea. I imagine that most of these families are in pretty poor housing. There were also grandparents (white) minding grandchildren with a bit of "effing and blinding". There were also students coming in - very obviously students and not just people of the area. They were white, mainly, long-haired, in pairs. I found a few agencies for student rooms and a block of bedsits purpose-built for students. It reminded me of Selly Oak when I was a student. The trouble is that there is money in building student rooms and none in building good housing for immigrant families. But the immigrant families want to be there. A bad area of London is full of possibility for new immigrants to find work. Historically, this is the place. These children in their school uniforms and hefty shoes are the reason that the parents came to this country. I give credit to the teachers of Bethnal Green - they are doing a hard job, and not badly, I think. I also thought it was good for the students to live there amongst the poor. They need to know.

At my comedy show the audience was largely middle-aged, middle class and white, but not entirely. There were some quite eccentric looking people and some who looked as though they didn't get out much, as well as some worldly types showing off a bit. We enjoyed the show with John Finnemore's Teenage Diary although the humour felt a bit "bolted on" (a spy theme) which might be straightened out in the editing. He talked about going to work in Krakow as a teacher of English before he had even been to university - in short, he had nothing except intelligence on his side, and lacked a lot of training and subject knowledge.  But hey! this doesn't always hamper progress! It felt right to give John Finnemore a good big round of applause because his writing has given me so much delight and is always fun and good-humoured.

And look, he's got excellent teeth, too!

H G Wells - A Modern Utopia

Wells' Utopia is an alternative world but serves as an imagined future for our world. I have reached the chapter where his Utopian counterpart takes him to London. I was in the same part of London last week (Millbank) and I am able to compare what Wells wanted with what we have.

We have pleasant avenues by the sides of the Thames, but we have too many cars, and Wells didn't mention those.

London's air is dirty, which would have disappointed Wells, but the river is clean and the streets are fairly clean. We would disappoint Wells by our propensity to wear black instead of gay colours. Although you don't generally see people who are ragged or dirty, you do see some. Busking on the bridge, for example. He imagined we would wear woollen robes. It would be lovely to have woollen robes, but few people wear wool at all. Clothes now are very cheaply produced and not expected to last, so making them of wool would be a terrible waste. He imagined that in the clean air, people would often wear white.

Wells imagined that Utopian London would be heated by electricity, which is largely true, although there are also gas boilers, and the roads are sealed, which they are, and there are hardly any dogs or horses, which again is true. So he thought the city would be clean - where did he think the electricity would come from? Had he not seen a power station, burning coal?  No.

He thought everyone would be healthy, walk well, and have clear eyes and shapely bodies. Ah, well, they're not too bad, the Londoners, and in winter many of the office workers go running about in their lunch break displaying fit bodies. (In summer there are too many tourists in the way.)  However, they are all shapes and sizes, and I can't say that Londoners have good complexions, but they are not too noticeably spotty either. He thought that the Utopians would put off the years of decay. Well, that is true, in that some lucky people remain healthy until very old age, but I am beginning to see that as a matter of luck. It is true that we have learned to look after our teeth, on the whole, but having said that I heard something awful on the radio this morning  about children's teeth. - From today's Guardian -

The number of tooth extractions on children aged four and under in English hospitals has risen by almost a quarter over the past decade.

NHS data obtained by the faculty of dental surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) shows there were 9,206 extractions within the age group in 2015-16 compared with 7,444 in 2006-07 – a 24% rise.

He said 90% of tooth decay is preventable through reducing sugar consumption, regular brushing with fluoride toothpaste and routine dental visits, but that 42% of children did not see a dentist in 2015-16 despite treatment being free for under-18s.

 So 42% of children have parents who neglect their well-being. Not much of a Utopia, is it?

Wells says - "they have extended the level years far into the seventies, and age, when it comes, comes swiftly and easily." Hahaha. Old age never comes swiftly and easily. The quicker it comes, I would judge, the more of a shock it is.

However, he does talk about "a ripe, prolonged maturity. .. a grave deliberation, to a fuller and more powerful emotion, to a broader handling of life. " This is not the case at all. The drive for novelties is something Wells never anticipated.

He says that education and training in Utopia lasts until the student is twenty years old - 18 is normal in this country although some of the courses are of questionable value. He predicts the Gap year - "then comes the travel year" "and many are still students until 24 or 25." But he concedes that at this stage young adults need to take some responsibility for themselves, but says that their lives don't start in good earnest until the age of 30.  He sees the Utopians settling down to marry at about this time, and before that they fool around with love "play", he calls it.

This is nice - "my eye is caught at once by a young negro, carrying books in his hand, a prosperous-looking, self-respecting young negro, in a trimly-cut coat of purple-blue and silver." Wells was really very unusual for his time in that he wasn't a racist but an internationalist who believed that all races would work together in one world.

He really fulminates against all the nonsense of racism, but is very longwinded.
Then he asks what other alternatives there are to his idea of synthesis of all nations to the World State. "Synthesis... does not necessarily mean fusion, nor does it mean uniformity." As one of his ironically outlined alternatives he predicts mass killings of foreign races, "race-destroying fumigations". He points out the process could go on over and over again.

Memorials in London: Charles Sargeant Jagger

I have probably been thinking too much about World War 1 recently, but I was glad, anyway, to see some war memorials on our walk in London at the weekend. We have a ridiculous number of memorials and plaques in London, but hey, it's an old place, and interesting if you have some knowledge of history.

Recently, on a programme about Great Lives, a sculptor called Martin Jennings (I wonder if he is related to the Jennings family of Ampleforth?) suggesting another sculptor called Charles Sargeant Jagger, who made a great sculpture in memoriam to the Royal Artillery after the war. It was "direct and honest about the horrors of war". There's an anonymity about the soldiers. He wanted to make a sculpture for the people like himself who had survived the war, and knew the truth of it. It was a new form of art.

 

 

Tens of thousands of people went to see the unveiling of the memorial after the war.

Platform 1 of Paddington station.

A soldier reading a letter from home.

Jagger's father apprenticed him as a silver engraver for Mappin and Webb. In the evenings he studied drawing and modelling.

Then the war started and Jagger went to fight in Gallipoli; it was a terrible, terrible experience. He spent two days digging a trench with his hands in very hard ground. His platoon sergeant was shot and died in his arms. He was wounded soon afterwards and shipped to Malta. He soon went back to the western front and fought until the end of the war.

Later, he could be very intolerant of those who had not contributed to the war effort.

He went back to sculpture immediately after the war, even though he had not been able to practise his art for all the years of the war. He produced one large sculpture every three months or so for about six years. (1919-25) Once he ceased to make war memorials his work became less interesting (according to Martin Jennings).

The design for this memorial had to be approved by various committees and by the King, because of course it changed Hyde Park corner, an important landmark.

Jagger was perhaps disappointed that he didn't get more letters of admiration. He had critics. Lord Curzon hated the Artillery memorial and called it a "hideous" and "a toad".

Jagger died at the age of 48. In the war he had been shot twice and gassed. His very hard work had perhaps weakened his lungs with dust, and he died of pneumonia.

Voting reform

Lately – on Saturday: I went to my first demo in London. It was a very small demo, which took place in Old Palace Yard - not a large patch of ground, so just as well.... It was to campaign for Proportional Representation. I am very keen on this. As you know, possibly, Philip Hammond the Foreign Secretary is my MP, and he is very involved in the Industrial Military complex; he represents millionaires doing very well out of the industrial –military complex, and when I write to him about education or the NHS he sends cut and paste replies that don’t answer any of my questions and don’t make sense, because of course, he doesn’t read them himself, he gets some Sophie fresh out of Uni to do it for him and she has no clue. So I can’t vote for someone who will represent me – no-one will overturn that particular majority – and I can’t get my MP to listen to me, so of course I want PR. It is my only (slim) hope.

 

This government has a majority, and got 39 percent of the vote. How is that a majority? Yet Cameron will go on about his “mandate”.  Urrgh. Of course, the PR demo was not covered by the press because the country has already had a campaign for AV PR and the country voted against it – by a substantial majority. Idiot Nick Clegg, for not making the most of this opportunity! He just didn’t organise a proper campaign.

 

Many people argued that the PR system was too complicated. But in the recent elections for the English and Welsh assemblies there was a PR system that seems to have worked very well. So these nations are clever enough to have PR and we, the English, are not? Anyway the demo was good. We had speakers from all the parties including the Tories (a very good speaker!), my leader, Natalie Bennett, spoke, and a UKIP woman spoke. Owen Jones failed to show up which was slightly disappointing but hey, one can see him on Youtube, and I'm sure whatever he was doing, it was a good use of his time.

Klina Jordan

John E Strafford: a great speaker for a rally

 a good conservative: more info here

We have Suffragette colours! We are the new Suffragists!

 Equality for women
 

Oh woe is me.

I have got a cold. Oh, I am so not well I am writing this from my bed even thought it is a lovely day and I could be doing things in the garden and buying Christmas cards and sending said cards, and it is all because of my nose. My head is fine but not at all sensible. Yesterday in London I kept initiating conversations with complete strangers about their backpacks and their travel plans, or their country of origins (Romanians are begging in hordes in London, just as we had been warned before they joined the EU) or admiring their babies. I had a lovely time with my friend Sarah and fended off the cold with Strepsils and alcohol - a sherry in Gordon's wine bar, a mulled wine on the South Bank and when I got home, another glass of red because it was Friday.

Today I was meant to go to London with Amanda to sing carols and I just couldn't. It's a real shame. Every one has to keep well away from me. They have to keep well, away from me.

About Time: a Richard Curtis film

Time Travel is a great motif in a film. It makes whatever it's about into a fairy tale of transformation and possibility. Supposing your life is privileged but not grand, full of ordinary family happiness, and time travel seems to be giving you the ability to make it even better: and then ... but I don't want to spoil it. Because the theme is love and loss.

It makes London look such fun! And London is fun if you can cope with it, so that's true. We went to our friend Amanda's to watch this film because F is going soon, so Amanda invited us for a bon voyage dinner. My contribution was a Victoria sponge (I'm not very good at them) but I filled it with blackcurrant curd, cream and raspberries. Loulou and Maddie and Stan were there, but A was not there because he was at an AGM. It was a shame that he wasn't there because the film was a bonding experience - S & F wanted to share it - and it was about (to tell the truth) loving one's dad. If you love your dad, it's a must-see. If you're not sure, it's still a must-see.

In Richard Curtis films the pretty girl always seems to be American! Why is this? Are British girls not interesting enough - and what's wrong with European girls, or far Eastern girls, hey?

When we went home A. was in bed but not asleep. I couldn't relax at all and then the storm started! It was the noisiest thunder I have ever heard - it sounded like jet engines and it went on and on, and the rain was fierce. And I left the washing out.

The children said they too couldn't sleep after they first watched this Richard Curtis film. Interesting.

Sir John Betjeman

You would never think that Sir John B could become a fashionable enthusiasm. He is such a parochial poet, stuck to his narrow island, Victorian churches, London, Cornwall, his class consciousness that always prompted him, out of good manners, to be good company; to talk, to share, to be sweet. And yet Suggs has chosen him on Cultural Exchange, and Jarvis Cocker once said he was listening to Betjeman on his ipod. You listen to Betjeman's voice to be comforted and charmed, rocked by the steady rhythm and inevitable rhymes, but also to be moved by the subtleties of emotion, the message of the huge Cornwall seas roaring and breaking, and to come face to face with fear of death or faith in Christianity - one of my favourites is called Before the Anaesthetic. There is something of the English Hymnal and the Book of Common Prayer about Betjeman's work, something that we have in the backs of our minds as part of the common culture and the dimly-remembered shared relationship with our English God, which these days only the Queen seems to fully comprehend.

But there are also the feelings that people develop for places - the love of home, of some small corner of this little island. I think this poem is little-celebrated but it reminds me of my hut on the island.

Eunice

With her latest roses happily encumbered
Tunbridge Wells Central takes her from the night,
Sweet second bloomings frost has faintly umbered
and some double dahlias waxy red and white.

Shut again till April stands her little hutment
Peeping over daisies Michaelmas and mauve
Lock'd is the Elsan in its brick abutment
Lock'd the little pantry, dead the little stove.

Keys with Mr Groombridge, but nobody will take them
To her lonely cottage by the lonely oak,
Potatoes in the garden but nobody to bake them,
Fungus in the living room and water in the coke.

I can see her waiting on the chilly Sunday
For the five forty (twenty minutes late)
One of many hundreds to dread the coming Monday
To fight with influenza and battle with her weight

Tweed coat and skirt that with such anticipation
On a merry spring time a friend had trimm'd with fur
Now the friend is married and, oh desolation,
Married to the man who might have married her.

High in Onslow Gardens where the soot flakes settle
An empty flat is waiting her struggle up the stair
And when she puts the wireless on, the heater and the kettle
It's cream and green and cosy, but home is never there.

Home's here in Kent and how many morning coffees
And hurried little lunch times of planning will be spent
Through the busy months of typing in the office
Until the days are warm enough to take her back to Kent.

Betjeman did sometimes go abroad - Vienna, perhaps? - and felt very singular, as we see in the following poem.

In the Public Gardens

In the Public Gardens,
To the airs of Strauss,
Eingang we're in love again
When ausgang we were aus.

The waltz was played, the songs were sung,
The night resolved our fears;
From bunchy boughs the lime trees hung
their gold electroliers.

Among the loud Americans
Zwei Englander were we,
You so white and frail and pale
And me so deeply me;

I bought for you a dark red rose,
I saw your grey-green eyes,
As high above the floodlights,
The true moon sailed the skies.

In the Public Gardens,
Ended things begin;
Ausgang we were out of love
Und eingang we are in.

Lucky me, I have a recording of Betjeman reading these poems and you can't get them on Youtube. They sound better than you would guess from reading them inwardly.

My Autobiography, by Charles Chaplin

I thought that this book would be long-forgotten, perhaps even out of print, but being very nosy, and having found out that Chaplin's story would be a very interesting one, I was determined to read it.

It's a Penguin Modern Classic! It's a wonderful read! I recommend it for the vivid account of Chaplin's early years and how he felt on his sudden rise to fame.  In the early part of the book a vanished London - small, horse-drawn and grimy - comes to life. The neglect of children in those days would astound nearly anyone. Charlie was homeless when his mother was taken to an asylum for the insane, and then a bullied workhouse boy. He had only his talent for dancing to save him, and thank God, it did save him.

Then there are the very early years of Hollywood when there was plenty of space and building a new studio was quite affordable. The fun and adventure of creating a new art form with lively-minded people in a great climate, with money coming in in an unprecedented fashion, feels as miraculous now as it must have been at the time.

I feel as though I have read hundreds of books of 20th century anecdotes of famous people meeting each other, so was not so interested in those, and they take up a lot of the middle part of the book. I find W R Hearst particularly boring, but I suppose you have to take him as an example of a big shot American, for whom all things were possible.

The difficulties of Chaplin's later years make the book interesting again. He had developed hugely since his slapstick clown days, when he worked without a script partly because he was "unlettered". Chaplin read voraciously in an effort to understand the world - including economics - and hold his own with anyone he met, and he clearly managed to do so. He wrote a script to a later film called Monsieur Verdoux which sounds very black and very modern.  The American film censors had a field day with it - and Chaplin's account of their efforts to change it both amuse and appall.

He was often a lonely soul, having been wounded in childhood by hardship and by loneliness he could not quickly recover, and spent a lot of time alone. Only in older age did he achieve personal happiness, and with a much younger woman.

Chaplin loved to learn new words, and in this book he displays his wide vocabulary, and the effect is sometimes too self-conscious. Oooh look, there's another posh word, you think. In the Reader's Digest, in the 60s and 70s, there was a new vocabulary section called It Pays to Increase Your Word Power, which was for the millions of people like Chaplin who wanted to make up for a poor education, or for being an immigrant with a different mother tongue.. I'm not sure you meet people with such aspirations very much these days and lack of aspiration is a problem. If I am wrong I hope someone will tell me so.

Recently I read an article about groups of London children who spend the nights on night buses. All they need is an Oyster card and they can ride all night, legit, and that's what they do, because their homes aren't safe to go home to. It would be great to think that things are better for children than they were, but we'd be deluding ourselves.

Please see further information in Modern Times

Capital by John Lanchester

I was very surprised by reviews that criticize this book for a lack of 'plot'.

The reader is introduced to a cast of characters who live in or work in one street, and they represent the global character of London. London attracts the world, because in London there is a chance to make a living - even for an illegal immigrant. And apart from the old lady who has lived there all her life, all the characters have a greed for money, for business, or for better chances, and a number of them are sick with envy.

The plot asks us to consider our relationships with money and with each other. The two people who end up with the happiest prospects are tested with a huge suitcase of money, (funnily enough, just like the people in The Hundred Year Old Man who Climbed Out of the Window) but their decision sets them up for happiness.

In the banking world we are introduced to people who are neurotic about making money, and we glimpse where this leads in terms of shaping a warped personality and the far-reaching effects of neurotic reasoning.

On the domestic front there is one character who is not properly drawn, is a stereotypical rich man's selfish wife who has no inner life at all. Is this possible? She seems to have a kind of charm, but her sense of what she deserves in material terms has gone through the roof, for no reason at all. Yet such people exist, and we only need to look at pics of Victoria Beckham to get the general idea, and know that our reaction to such pics are what fuels the whole ghastly circus.

But in London there is also love, courage, resilience, family loyalty and decent behaviour.

I felt that the book did an injustice to Banksy. I think people look at the commercial items with Banksy's work on them and imagine that he makes money from them. He doesn't - he does try to make it clear to the world that these items are nothing to do with him - the whole point of his work is that it is political and provocative, not commercial. There is a character in the book who is sufficiently like Banksy to constitute a kind of libel. Also, Banksy is far funnier and more intelligent than the pseudo-Banksy in this novel.

 Banksy's works have dealt with an array of political and social themes, including anti-War, anti-capitalism, anti-fascism, anti-imperialism, anti-authoritarianism, anarchism, nihilism, and existentialism. Additionally, the components of the human condition that his works commonly critique are greed, poverty, hypocrisy, boredom, despair, absurdity, and alienation.^[110] 

 Although Banksy's works usually rely on visual imagery and iconography to put forth his message, he has made several politically related comments in his various books. In summarising his list of "people who should be shot," he listed "Fascist thugs, religious fundamentalists, (and) people who write lists telling you who should be shot."^[111] While facetiously describing his political nature, Banksy declared that "Sometimes I feel so sick at the state of the world, I can't even finish my second apple pie."

I found all the characters hard-going to start with but by a third of the way through I was drawn in and thoroughly enjoyed the book after that. I am sorry to finish it.