Nail, meet head.

Following the recent election, Vaclav Klaus will be succeeded as Czech president by Milos Zeman, a former prime minister and head of the Citizens' Rights Party. I had a bit of soft spot for old Vaclav, as he seemed to be one of those rare politicians who understood -and could readily articulate- concerns about the yawning chasm that has opened up between those who are elected to govern and those who do the electing.

Klaus, who had direct and bitter experience of an earlier European form of totalitarianism, had very firm views on recent developments within the EU. He summed it up thus:

"The manifestations of transnational progressivism—global governance and the European Union—are supplanting liberal democracy and nation-states and driving us into the stage of post-democracy. The EU wants to replace the project that is malfunctioning today by even bigger doses of the same. That is entirely absurd. In contrast to Marx, supporters of global governance do not believe that salvation will arise via the proletariat: they humbly suggest that it will come from themselves."

Nanny knows best

It has been reported that Labour would like the government to introduce legal limits on the sugar, salt and fat content in food. Judging by their reaction, it would appear that the government is not exactly hostile to this idea.
Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham claimed that current voluntary agreements with the food industry were “not working” and that the obesity problem was “worsening”, while Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said that: "This is not a problem we can just wish away. If we don't meet our targets and continue to make the progress that we have to make, then we would consider legislation.”
The comments made by these two politicians contain several telling phrases. Mr Burnham said that the "time has come for new thinking" particularly when it comes to foods aimed at children. He said: "I think parents need more help to make healthier choices for their children.” I’m not sure how Mr Burnham defines ‘help’, but I know now that he spells it l-e-g-i-s-l-a-t-i-o-n. Imposing further limits on food manufacturers does not ‘help’ parents; it merely imposes more conditions on food manufacturers. Legislation, in this case, can only be defined as helpful if you think that it is your responsibility is to remove choices from people who are unable to act rationally and who might otherwise damage themselves. Legislation only counts as help if you believe that people are not capable of helping themselves, not capable of making informed decisions in their own interests.

Most of us would concede that it would be appropriate for a parent to remove the ‘choice’ of a 10-year old child to have unlimited internet access, unlimited fast food or unlimited late-night leisure time during school term, because the parent is best-placed to decide what is and what isn’t good for the child. But that is not the kind of relationship that should prevail between the state and the citizen. The very notion of legislating to 'help’ people make more ‘responsible’ choices –that is, the choices you want them to make- is a perfect illustration of how the political class view those they are elected to represent.

It simply does not occur to our politicians that most parents are capable of saying: “No Johnny, you can't have another triple-decker bacon cheeseburger with extra chunky fries." They’d much rather introduce a law that ‘helps’ those hapless parents avoid the awkwardness of having to make an actual decision, like perhaps having to say ‘no’ to their child.

Health secretary Hunt said that the government was "making very good progress" in tackling childhood obesity, but added that “the reality is that supermarkets and the food manufacturers need to understand that we do reserve the right to legislate. This is not a problem we can just wish away ... if we don't get agreement, let's be absolutely clear, we will look at legislation.”

In case you didn’t pick up the subtlety of that message, I’ll translate. "If we don’t get agreement" means: "If you do not do as you’re told".

It is quite clear that for the professional political class, the answer to every perceived issue, problem or situation is always: more government action. Left unchecked and unchallenged, there is simply no area of private life into which they will not attempt to intrude. The more we acquiesce in this process, the greater our loss of personal freedoms.

Sadly, it seems that a lot of folk have come to accept that government legislation can somehow take the place of common sense. They argue that legislation is required because the food industry can’t be trusted to act responsibly. The darker and less palatable truth is that this legislation is being proposed because the politicians don’t trust us, the people, to act responsibly.

Shehan Karunatilaka - 'Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew'

W. G. Karunasena is a drunken old sports journalist who has been informed by his doctor that, if he doesn’t change his drinking habits, he won’t have much time left on the planet. Mindful of this deadline, he has an idea for a documentary and a book that will tell the story of the man he considers to have been the greatest-ever Sri Lankan cricketer: the brilliantly wayward and eccentric (but now largely forgotten) left-arm spinner Pradeep Mathew. One of W.G.’s problems is that he can’t quite give up the sauce, so it becomes a race against time to complete the work before his liver finally gives out. Another problem is that Pradeep Mathew’s details have been erased from the records and virtually no one in Sri Lanka will publicly acknowledge that he ever played for the national team. Having witnessed the spinner’s finest hour in a mysteriously-abandoned test match in which he took 10 for 51 against New Zealand, W.G. is determined to see this project through.

As he tries to complete the research before his own physical collapse, W.G. starts to unravel an unlikely tale of sporting genius, political corruption, match-fixing and organised crime. Strange as it may seem, but the ramblings of some drunk old men really do provide an insight into the four C’s at the heart of this book: cricket, corruption, conflict and colonialism.
The story features actual characters from Sri Lankan cricket and politics, along with composite characters like ‘Graham Snow’, the tough old English pro turned media pundit. Most of the cricket matches mentioned in the book are real, as are their protagonists, but the lines are skilfully blurred between fact, fiction and something that lurks somewhere between the two. If you google ‘Pradeep Mathew’, you’ll find that Karunatilaka has cleverly created an online presence for the character, including a cricinfo profile and crikipedia entry.

You don’t have to be a lover of cricket to be enchanted by this novel. Along with its many observations on Sri Lankan life, ‘Chinaman’ somehow manages to be a history book, a detective novel, a sports biography and, latterly, a moving treatise on the relationship between fathers and sons.

W.G. believes that most of our lives won’t amount to a hill of beans, but, as he puts it: "in a hundred years, Bulgarians will still talk of Letchkov and how he expelled the mighty Germans from the 1994 World Cup with a simple header”. Like most folk who read newspapers from the back page to the front, he thinks that “Sport can unite worlds, tear down walls and transcend race, the past, and all probability. Unlike life, sport matters.”

Rage against the Christmas number 1

It’s quite a big deal to get the Christmas number one slot in the UK pop charts. Over the years, lots of major artists have had a go at writing something specifically for the Christmas market and no office party is complete unless it’s had a blast of some the classic seasonal tracks by the likes of Wizzard, Slade, Elton John or Wham.

For the best part of a decade, the Christmas top spot has been more or less the property of the winning act from the X-Factor. The show is cunningly planned to climax just before Christmas, leaving just enough time to announce the result, press a few million copies of the winner’s debut single and then line up a series of media opportunities designed to push the ‘cash-in’ product over the finishing line. It is almost impossible for any other recording artist to compete with the massive level of exposure experienced by the X-Factor winner in the run-up to Christmas. Not since the Spice Girls’ reign of terror in the mid-nineties has such a stronghold been exerted on the festive chart.

In recent years, some folk have managed tried to prevent the Lord of Darkness (a.k.a. Simon Cowell) from pushing his latest 15-minute superstar to the top of the charts; last year, a charity record by the choir ensemble 'Military Wives' managed to foil his evil plans. In 2009, some really bright people on Facebook ran a successful campaign to get the American rap metal band Rage Against the Machine to number one. Their plan to reclaim the chart for the people worked brilliantly; they managed to stop one Sony BMG act from getting to number one and, instead, put an entirely different Sony BMG act at the top of charts. Now that’s what I call sticking it to the man.

A day or two before the Christmas chart was announced, I heard ‘the Rage’ on Radio Five’s breakfast show promoting their song. The presenters of the show informed us that they had agreed to do a live version of the track, minus the unsavoury language so that folk could make up their own minds about it.

During the interview, they came across as a rather dim and unpleasant bunch of spoiled brats. Their song, if memory serves, was called something like ‘Fuck you mom, I’m not going to tidy my room’. One of them said something about it being a more worthy number one because it was "written in an industrial slum", while X-factor winner Joe McElderry’s track was written by "overpaid professional songwriters". So much for solidarity among the musical fraternity; presumably the Rage thought that the labours of mere industry hacks who write for singers like Joe McElderry should not have the same market value as the labours of rock dudes in their forties who dress like teenagers and write their songs in ‘industrial slums’.

After the interview, the Rage launched into their song with some gusto; in fact, rather too much gusto, because the producer of the breakfast show had to cut them off after a couple of minutes because, in spite of a pre-interview agreement to tone down the language, those crazy guys in the Rage started swearing anyway.

I suppose they were making the point that they were like, TOTALLY FUCKING CRAZY ART TERRORISTS who were, like, out to bring the whole shitty music industry TOTALLY CRASHING DOWN with the AWESOME POWER of their music and swearing.

After hearing this performance, I felt like buying some copies of the Joe McElderry single to give to friends and relatives as presents. The behaviour of the Rage had achieved something that I thought would have been impossible; by dint of their sheer buffoonery, they had forced me into the arms of Simon Cowell and his forces of darkness. But sadly, I suspect my last-minute intervention would not have stopped ‘Fuck you mom, I’m not going to tidy my room’ from becoming the Christmas number one.

This year’s big attempt to derail the X-factor juggernaut is again focused on a charity single, with the Justice Collective tipped to claim the top spot with their cover of 'He ain't heavy (he's my brother)'. With all proceeds going towards supporting families involved in the Hillsborough disaster, the track has an impressive cast list that includes Sir Paul McCartney, Robbie Williams, Gary Barlow, Mel C, Holly Johnson and Gerry Marsden. It's hard to see how it can fail.

And, as far as I know, it hasn’t got any swearing in it.

Song of the Week - 'Gathering Dust'

This track is lifted from the second Eisenhowers album. Musically, it is heavily influenced by great British pop, specifically the Kinks and XTC. The rhythm section – Ross Morgan and Fraser Sneddon- is solid throughout, with Ross also providing some nifty percussion work. Emma Jane’s chirpy backing vocals contrast nicely with the rather caustic tone of the lyric.   

The song dwells on cynicism and self-regard, inspired by an ugly conversation held at a party in the wee small hours of the morning. The central character is a person who has become so cynical and jaded that he has all but ceased to engage with the world. He’s the kind of guy who creeps around Facebook hoping to find that his former friends and acquaintances are now divorced, bankrupt and selling the Big Issue.   

You might well conclude that the moral of the story is that you shouldn’t get involved in late-night conversations with miserable singer-songwriters. Not unless, that is, you have no problem with your drunken remarks being woven into songs that literally quite a few people might hear.  

Gathering Dust

  

 

Someone Keeps Moving My Chair

There are several rock and pop artists who have been hailed by critics as ‘great’ lyricists.  Dylan is often quoted, as are Costello, Morrissey and one or two others. Talented as these writers may be, I’d suggest that none of them can match the genius of John Flansburgh and John Linnell of They Might Be Giants. A deeply intellectual and philosophical strand runs through their work and, in their many splendid releases since their formation in 1982, they have tackled most of the big issues of the day with songs like ‘Why did you grow a beard?’, ‘Bastard wants to hit me’, ‘I am a grocery bag’ and ‘Where do they make balloons?’

Like many great writers, such is the clarity of their vision that they can encapsulate complex notions in ostensibly simple lines. My own favourite couplet is from the magnificent 'Someone keeps moving my chair', where they somehow, within two brief lines, manage to distill the existential crisis of urban alienated post-industrial liberal atheist humankind:

"Do you mind if we balance this glass of milk
where your visiting friend accidentally was killed?"

On first reading, the lyric might appear to suggest that anything is permitted, appealing to our sense of the absurd; but -if not read in a frivolous sense- it can be interpreted either as an outburst of relief or of joy, or perhaps even as a bitter acknowledgment of a metaphysical fact. The fact -or to be more accurate, the ‘fact’- is actually a tenuous certainty of the absence of God, represented in this case by the 'glass of milk'. In that sense, the balancing of this ‘glass of milk’ somehow gives a meaning to our lives that far surpasses mere existential joy in the ability to behave as truly free beings, that is, without fear of consequence or judgement. Echoing Kant, Flansburgh and Linnell argue that moral principles are simply the products of reason. The incorporation, therefore, of the consequences for ‘balancing’ this ‘glass of milk’ into their moral deliberations would be deeply flawed, since it would deny the necessity of practical maxims in governing the working of the will. They ask the question ‘Do you mind if we balance this glass of milk?’ when they already know the answer.  

But, in order to 'balance' our hypothetical glass with impunity, we must first have accepted John Stuart Mill’s qualitative account of happiness, wherein utility is to be conceived in relation to humanity as a “progressive being", one possessed of, and capable of exercising, truly rational capacities. And yet, in this technological age, these rational capacities incapacitate us through the dilemma of almost limitless choice. If the choice was just about the ‘glass of milk’, it would not be hard to make; but there is, of course, no real choice worth making. The 'glass of milk' does not, in fact, liberate us; it binds us. In the absence of ‘God’, it does not authorize our actions. Yes, the song seems to suggest, we are permitted to balance our 'glass of milk', but what has become of our 'visiting friend'?

'The Map and the Territory' by Michel Houellebecq

This starts off reading like a satire of the contemporary art world, but then turns into something of a mystery thriller. Like some of Houellebecq’s previous work, it is set in the near future but addresses the concerns of the present. France is recovering after a major financial crisis and has become almost totally dependent on tourism and, once again, agriculture. We follow the career of the artist Jed Martin as he pursues his life’s work "to give an objective description of the world."
Single-minded, somewhat naïve, but completely focused on his work, he wins international acclaim through various projects, before his painting starts to bring him incredible wealth. When he decides to paint the famous writer 'Michel Houellebecq', we are treated to a comic and self-deprecating portrait of a reclusive and world-weary man who, we are told, "smells bad, but less bad than a corpse".

As one would expect, there are extended riffs on a variety of topics –France and the French, euthanasia, socialism, art and commerce- but when the fictional 'Houellebecq' exits stage left (I won’t tell you how that happens, but it isn’t pretty), the novel seems to lose some momentum as it starts to follow a police investigation into the ‘Houellebecq’ case and also the final, introspective phase of Jed's career. Having spent much of his artistic life focusing on human labour (his most famous painting is called 'Bill Gates and Steve Jobs Discussing the Future of Information Technology: The Conversation at Palo Alto') Jed becomes a recluse and spends decades making films celebrating the triumph of vegetation over industrial objects. His work suggests that, in spite of all this human endeavour, plants and vegetation will endure to reclaim the world from humankind.

Houellebecq has been described as French literature's JG Ballard and it's probably fair to say that his key themes are existential ennui and the decline of the liberal west. He is at his best when he goes off on one and his forensic cynicism can be quite intoxicating; this, however, is probably his most mainstream work and not at all likely to scare the horses. 'The Map and the Territory' makes you think about the nature and purpose of work; Jed Martin's career is presented as an ideal and noble pursuit, a route to personal identity and fulfillment much more rewarding than travel, consumerism, love or parenthood. Other opinions, as they say, are available.