Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Man

Set against the post below, I suggest, slightly whimsically, that the Roman Catholic global marketing strategy might be most ably assisted by the election of Tony Blair to the position of first EU Council President

Being a recent convert to Catholicism one could argue that Blair should become the first Holy Roman Emperor since Francis II lost it all to Napoleon.

Many regard Charlemagne as the father of European unity and Charlemagne was the first Holy Roman Emperor to be inaugurated by Papal blessing. If he were to pull of his power putsch, would it not be fitting that Blair should bend his knee to Benedict, in Rome, the capital city of Tony’s mate Berlusconi.

With Merkel up for it (in a manner of speaking) and Sarkozy diminutively supportive, Blair would slip seductively into the role graphically depicted above

What God Wants

As an ex Roman Catholic and a person who believes in human beings seeking solutions through a broadly existential philosophy I should be mildly amused at the hostile bid made by Rome based Christianity for the Anglican Church.

The week long spat which has seen people from Frank Skinner for the Catholics to Lord Carey, retired Archbishop of Canterbury for the C of E and the Anglicans, swapping polite, but slightly acerbic  verbals  should be food and drink to us non-believers . But it remains very worrying that the Rome based brand of Christianity is globally in a marketing push carrying with it, views which have long been dismissed by most decent people in the developed world  on the various issues  of human rights including contraception, homosexuality and gender equality.

It should be noted, so soon after the Nick Griffin Show, that Mr Griffin is as one with Rome on blokes snogging in public

In today’s Times (26/10) The Bishop of Fulham, the Right Rev. John Broadhurst, campaigner against women priests and head man for the conservative  Forward with Faith group supports the alignment with Rome and says “that’s what God wants”. He doesn’t say how he found out it was, what God wants and indeed how frequently he has discussed the issue with God or if God might be available for comment. But of course, as an ex Catholic I should remember that the Pope is God’s infallible spokesman on earth and he should know unequivocally what God wants.  Infallibility does somewhat throttle debate. Among my dictionary definitions of infallible is “trustworthy”

Some new pals of John Broadhurst, collectively the Diocese of Wilmington, Delaware, recently filed for bankruptcy on the eve of a trial concerning  sexual abuse by Catholic priests thereby delaying the  claims of more than 140 victims  (link here) and (here).  The trial was to have been the first of 8 trials. The attorney for the claimants described the bankruptcy filing as a “desperate effort to hide the truth from the public and conceal thousands of pages of scandalous documents” from being aired in court. I wonder if bankruptcy for the diocese of Wilmington was what God wants

Richard Holloway, ex Bishop of Edinburgh and a man of faith I respect  and whose books I have read, most courageously, I felt, chose part of a quote from a rather controversial and radical Russian Christian philosopher, Vasily Rosanov, as the title for an excellent and broad minded book entitled Looking in the Distance

“All religions will pass, but this will remain: simply sitting in a chair and looking in the distance”, Rosanov wrote.

Pope Benedict, The Right Reverend John Broadhurst and the Right Reverend Francis Mulooly of Wilmington Diocese have yet to spend enough time looking in the distance

Another blast at the Bankers – by way of the Great Gatsby!

While Mark Lawson of Radio 4’s Front Row was interviewing writer Susan Hill
(Woman in Black along with about 40 other novels) he said that he read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby every year.

Having just finished it I know why. It is an immense little work (184 pages) of extraordinary story-telling, stuffed full with wisdom but above all it is a book that one lives in. Two other books had a similar effect this year. Mr Golightly’s Holiday by Sally Vickers and Flaubert’s Madame Bovary.

The Great Gatsby is set in the Jazz Age, The Roaring 20s, and there is no doubt that there exists in this novel a salutary lesson for the early part of our new millenium. Extreme yet utltimately fragile prosperity, for some, to be followed by utter despair and poverty for many – The Great Depression

F.Scott Fitgerald enjoyed the high life and he sure knew how to commentate and find the right metaphor for that life style at speed. Driving provided him with this idea in response to the notion that it is safer to be a bad driver. I have to paraphrase – eventually you will meet another person who is just as bad a driver and that person is your nemesis

Finally I quote precisely from F Scott Fitzgerald towards the end of the novel

“I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy-they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clear up the mess”

In line two replace “Tom and Daisy” with “The Bankers”.

Politics Before Banks

During a week when the media has been wetting itself with excitement at seeing supplicant (or otherwise) MPs explaining their largely trivial expenses, bankers are now back at the trough gorging themselves, with evident impunity, on the swill of their global endeavours. Tonight Goldman Sachs anticipate a big bonus year for their big hitters.


Earlier this week the Telegraph (link here) reminded us of the unfinished business from the Lehmann Brothers affair and bankers who brought it about. Only 12 months ago the rapacity of these unconscionable denizens of dystopia brought the global community to the brink of social and political meltdown. Democratic government across the globe with an unusual collective resolve, headed off a collapse that may well be about to visit us again if left to the laughably inept money movers


On Monday I learned that Riccardo Banchetti, former European Joint Chief executive of Lehmann, one of many Lehmann claimants, was pitching for £16 million despite having only a few weeks service leading up to the collapse. He is joined by several other claimants who filed recently for a total of £70 million and included, Kieran Higgins, Georges Assi, David Bizer, Harsh Shah and Giancarlo Saronney. The two latter being UK based. I write these names because it gives me pleasure to make a small contribution to the exposure of such astonishing disregard for the wider community.


Anyone reading the Telegraph editorial to its conclusion will learn also that claims are being sold on to ambulance chasing lawyers saving the bankers time and money as they pursue further illusory pots of gold


Bertrand Russell, in a memorable essay from many years ago, ridiculed the ludicrously fragile idea of digging up gold in South Africa only to re-bury it in the vaults of the Bank of England. Now we don’t even bother with anything of such substance!


“Two Jags” Prescott will be missed set against the multi Ferrari-ied Sir Fred Goodwin who accidentally dropped £28 Billion on behalf of RBS in the greatest corporate loss in British history. Politicians may be silly enough to claim for bath plugs, duck houses and moat cleaning but at least we ordinary citizens have a say in the matter at elections and we should all remember that, next year, when we have the opportunity to exercise our greatest freedom

Arise!! Dame Grayson Perry

Occasionally one can become rooted in humanity, and joyful about our potential as a result of seeing a great play or film or reading a very good book. Just recently a transvestite, known as Claire, re-arranged my mood.

When Grayson Perry is offered his inevitable knighthood for servcies to the arts he deserves to have the ultimate accolade of choosing between being a Sir or a Dame. He doesn’t seem like a person who would care much for the status but his artistic achievements set alongside the deeply interesting philisophical observation on gender , the transendence of stereotypical male and female norms, the penetrating investigation and dissembling of the bigotry of English traditional life whether it be religous, political or social, delivered with an acerbic and yet charming wit are in the manner of our country’s greatest social commentators; a group of extraordinarily talented men and women who are revered yet ultimately dismissed by a shallow religous/politcial moral stance which permeates our country at times. Grayson’s presence centre stage at the outset of this millenium is encouraging. He is so English, so eccentric and so essential for our sensibilities.

Last Saturday, at the Towner Gallery Eastbourne, Grayson Perry, with no evidence of self-consciousness, addressed an enchanted audience, dressed as a Panto Dame; as though to wear a patchwork frock of brightly coloured material, hung with bells, a floral headress and heavily rouged cheeks, is actually the way a bloke should be in Eastbourne on a Saturday night. High heeled boots with curley toes, tipped with more bells, were of the Morris Dancer mode. There could not have been a woman in the house who would not have lusted after the capacious handbag.

Yet the seriousness about his artistic journey was never in doubt. The psychology, the search, the discovery was explicitly and freely given to an audience not drawn from the inner suburbs of London but from a seaside town which is renowned for its conservatism. And it was immnesely appreciated.

Thank you Dame Grayson Perry. Thank you for the empty pedestals where parents, over-ambitiously expect to stand. Thankyou for the witty euphemism for masturbation – self dating. Thanks for the "Map of Nowhere", a copy of which now hangs at the Towner and deserves some regular reference. Thanks for the pots, the like of which we may not have seen since Pompeii was suffocated. And above all thank for your honesty about life, art, imitation, humility and the onward journey

Paine at the Globe

Visiting The Globe in October is a bit daunting but luck was with us. A New World: A Life of Thomas Paine, by Trevor Griffiths was an ideal production for the Globe space. What I wonder is why the extraordinary life of this revolutionary man of the people has never reached the cinema.
The Globe production is a film script which found its way to the stage having been ignored by the film industry. Am I being overly suspicious or a conspiracy theorist in suggesting that it was politically expedient for George Washington to ignore Paine’s imprisonment in revolutionary Paris and near appointment with Mme Guillotine. And that an attempt to dramatically record the life of a man who openly fought with and criticed both Franklin and Washington might not meet with public approval in the USA.
In fairness I now learn that Obama quoted Paine in his inaugural address but only this week Obama is under fire from the Right over his Nobel Peace Prize. The President may well be the heir to the Paine principals but will Barrack Obama be hounded into compromise and relative obscurity.

Sold Out at the Tate

The contributing artists to Pop Life, the new show at the Tate Modern, clearly got their way in changing the show’s name from Sold Out and if it was Tracey and Damian et al who were responsible for the name change then they clearly lack a sense of humour and an appreciation of irony. Or did they, all along think their work was witty and wonderful
Pop Life is a trawl across the bottom of what became an ocean of egotism as various overpaid and creatively under-nourished patrons and aficionados handed out bucket loads of money for work which was very evidently mediocre and existed entirely on the back of the spurious claim that it might be, at least, satirising the excess.
Unfortunately there is something quite engaging about what is a historic commentary on the “getting away with it” years spanning the late 1980s to the early part of the millennium. One of the real achievers of that period was Jeff Koons who got away with it well and had it away with La Cicciolina and recorded it in a series of pictures which are execrable. The marble bust of Koons and Ilona Staller (La Cicciolina) is bloody awful. In one of last weekend’s papers a reviewer described Koons’ inflatable bunny as “horrifying yet inanely reflective”. With acolytes making remarks like that one understands how they got away with it for years. Koons went to art school but honed his trade as a Commodities Broker on Wall Street, went back into the studio and continued as a commodities broker. The Koons room at Pop Life bears an adults only warning. It should read “Adults Only if Accompanied by Children” so that children could see how utterly dim grown-ups can be
Damian and Tracey, with one or two other luninaries of YBA, have a section and oddly it ain’t bad as an historic representation of art and life in Blair’s Britain. Some artist’s probably deserve a more contemplative approach but in this environment it’s just a gig but a gig worth seeing.
The timing of the opening of Pop Life could not be better with Hirst having a Pauline experience and returning to painting and Tracy Emin hopefully bound for France with its more lenient tax system and intuitive recognition of great art. I can’t wait to see her alongside Carla Brunni and Nicolas Sarkozy;the kind of people that Tracy is used to and who will presumably inspire her to great works.
My favourite part of Pop Life was a corridor of porn recording a show at the ICA in the 1970s. Tate Modern has assiduously searched press archives for the righteous responses by various sections of the press and the Sun’s ironic 1976 assault on the Guardian for being purveyors of porn is a gem of Sun journalism.
Overall Pop Life is a good visit. But is it art? Nobody seemed to really care one way or another. Thankfully after this show at Tate Modern one only has to walk a very short distance to see Miro, Matisse, Monet, Rothko and Picasso – all for nothing. And the latter is somthing Ms Emin would do well to remember in this creatively barbarous society