Snitch-22

 

When Chris and I shared the house in Lambeth with Westy and Dave Parry, we were occasionally visited by proselytising females from the Jehovah’s Witness and the WRP. The God-squaddies we tolerated because they claimed kith with some of our pals back in Liverpool. In fact, they were quite down-to–earth Scousers - I almost said Judies: one the slender, nervous type who did the talking; the other more of a sidekick - perhaps that’s what they meant by witness? Anyhow, the carrot was dangled from the stick, so to speak. As quite à-la-mode cult-members (a hint of punk in their attires) they didn’t exude the expected fanaticism; and there was never any come-on: at least their conversation was too bland and everyday to be memorable in that way. Well, they didn’t discuss religion or ask about our faith – or lack of it. And given that Westy ultimately buggered off with The Brothers of Charity (a side-cult of Mother Theresa’s), I wonder if they didn’t miss their opportunity with him? They weren’t a far-cry, shall we say, from followers of Moses David, acolytes of Hare Krishna or devotees of the Divine Light Mission. The WRP girl was black and somewhat gorgeous. My brother, who had no girlfriend in those days, would have been a little smitten. And I guess me too, had I not been smugly ensconced by Ms Kappes. So, we nice boys would dole out the quality tea and biscuits, acting the perfect hosts; while that young emissary, though not exactly tumping the thub, had us nodding here and there like potential recruits. Well, we were left-wing, anti-Thatcherites with plenty of common cause.

Back home, our friends who had opted for active politics had simply joined the CP. In those days, The Morning Star was still to be found on newsstands, and being communist did not mean you believed the Revolution was just around the corner. To our mates, it meant you preferred Marx’s analysis of the capitalist Industrial Military Complex. It signaled you were making a long-term stand, seeking to influence the Labour Party (still in power till 1979) while adhering to an Internationalist World View  - albeit, toeing the Moscow line. The WRP (the Workers’ Revolutionary Party) was one of the three main alternative groups to Labour and the CP. We had no time at all for the RCP (the Revolutionary Communist Party), who appeared to us as out-and-out Stalinists. They had short hair, wore ironed jeans and shiny Doc Martens shoes – not boots (hence their rag, The Next Step). The SWP (the Socialist Workers Party) were Trotskitish, and in a perfect world maybe would have got our votes. They were like Labour without the bullshit (or the muscle). But it was far from a perfect world, and hence the reason we wouldn’t be wasting our say on them.

The WRP were a bit shady, even back then. Later on, when I was coordinating the Peace Festival in Liverpool, it came as little surprise to me to learn they were behind the Militant Tendency that took over the City Council. Soon after the WRP girl began her visits, we started to get their daily newspaper delivered (this was before Chris and I became broadsheet addicts – he of the Guardian, me of the Times). We hadn’t taken out a subscription of The News Line, and no money changed hands - at least not from us. Every morning, Monday to Saturday, this semi-professional looking tabloid would plop through the letterbox. At first, it was no bad thing to receive free TV listings, sports reports and alternative views on the issues of the day. You know, Thatcher getting in – followed by Reagan – had us in perpetual shock. What you got from the telly and radio was hardly encouraging, some defiance here and there could only serve to redress the balance a tad. But it was their stance on Palestine that eventually turned my stomach.

I still remembered the Yom Kippur war of 1973. A schoolboy then, the Youth Theatres I belonged to were having a party. A couple of our friends were in the Shirin Foundation as well as The Everyman and Playhouse groups, and they turned up that evening with their faces white. I had never seen anyone physically affected by anything from the world outside – and it really came home to me then that Jewish people were still facing existential threats. So The News Line’s stand on Palestine was hard for me to swallow. I don’t want to trot out the owl some-of-my-best-friends line, but when I thought about Silverleaf, my dad’s pal Ben Goldstone, and those mates of ours in the Shirin, I suppose it was like Manchester had been overrun by Brummies. I’m sorry to say, I’d given no thought to the Arabs. But The News Line’s line on Israel was plain antisemitic. So, after about a year, enough was enough. By this time, we’d understood it was the local newsagent that was the source, so I went round and tried to cancel the order. It actually took two or three visits before they got the message. On further investigation, it turned out the WRP’s rag wasn’t paid for by actress Vanessa Redgrave (whom the girl had cautiously let slip was one of their sponsors) – but Colonel Gaddafi’s regime in Libya was responsible for the funding!

1982’s events in Lebanon were to flip my view of the Middle East Crisis. Jesus wept! “Crisis what Crisis?” we used to joke about everything and anything. On my life, when hasn’t there been a Middle East Crisis? No, the massacre of Palestinian refugees by Ariel Sharon’s proxies – a decade after Yom Kippur – finally opened my eyes. My fellow peace campaigner Caroline Taylor, always a better idealist than me (and with whom I was secretly in love), was soon to marry a Lebanese man. I avoided being enveloped by the exoskeletons of left-wing and religious cults alike. The Marg and the Rajneesh had come for me just as the WRP and the Situationists, but I didn’t have to slough off their skins because I had always fled from them, no matter how desperate my situation. But in ’82, I turned against Israel for its Settlements and, though I still to this day maintain the state of Israel must exist, it can’t go on citing the promises of a god (what arrant nonsense) as the reason for stealing someone’s home. No, I say, end the settlements on the West Bank!

So – in terms of the seventy-year long crisis-what-crisis in the Middle East - I am in broad agreement with much of what Christopher Hitchens has to say in his Memoir, Hitch-22. It’s also fascinating to read how it was the likes of him behind the SWP – though curious how he never mentions China. I’m zooming onto the likes of David Hare and the fashionable, but to me inexplicable, fascination of the middle classes for Fanshen (continuous revolution). Anyhow, whatever his brand of socialist fanaticism was, it started to peter out soon after the Tories got in. There but for the grace of God – as the saying goes. I especially liked the bit where he gets a mock spanking from his new heroine, Margaret Thatcher (well, didn’t he accuse her of being sexy!); and that came even before the great flip-flop he performed when he joined the rebels Stateside. He was a great wordsmith, and – like Marx before him – his analysis of issues (such as torture and religion) is required reading. This was a guy who went from one great cult to another – like Tiresias, I suppose, or Gloucester. He was blind when he had eyes! Great insight. But in this day and age, can you ever really trust a man who speaks of someone - and their lovely wife - (in this case Edward Said; my italics)?

I’ve been suspicious of public friendships since I read Andrew Motion’s biography of Larkin. Larkin’s bezzie mate Kingsley Amis and he spent a year together at Oxford University just before WW2 broke out. After that, apart from long telephone calls and once or twice a decade get-togethers, they were basically penpals who shared a deep love of English bigotry (and poetry, I guess). Amis’s son Martin once (or possibly twice) bumped into Hitchens at Oxford. Thereafter, and as their fan bases slowly but steadily swelled during the 1970s, they were seen genuinely side-by-side at literary lunches most Friday afternoons. Since that time they both fed and nurtured the myth and mysticism of their chumminess, or mutual benefit society. That’s the way the literary world works, like father like son, no man but a damn fool, etc. etc..

Anyhow, this memoir is very largely another volume of old-boy network anecdotes, and therefore scintillating stuff. Heading for Widecombe aboard the grey mare - alongside the Amises Kingsley and Martin - go Ian McEwan, Clive James, Salman Rushdie, James Fenton, Anthony Powell, Edward Said, Susan Sontag (yes, a woman, there’s radical tokenism for all y’all), Gore Vidal, Owl Uncle Tom Cobley et al.

There are some really juicy titbits (sic) here. For example, someone who’s read Martin Amis’s Money will remember John Self’s visit to the New York hand-job parlour. Well, it turns out, Christopher accompanied Martin on the field trip. Which, given how we’d marvelled at the dude’s imaginative powers, takes bum-chummery to new heights of depth. But these are folk who are free to bitch about each other, then close ranks when any of their cohort are attacked from outside. This is the nature of The Beast. Hitchens, for all he’s worth though, was mostly self-made. Having risen to the top of the Oxford Debating Society, capped his poor academic career there (like Lady Thatcher he got a poor Third class degree) with a publicity stunt that made headlines and even the Television News. I always preferred the guys at Durham who suspended a Mini over the river Wear (I naturally gravitate towards Anarchy). Hitchens, as Secretary of the Oxford Debating Union, humiliated UK Foreign Minister Michael Stewart - a guest speaker. This anti-Vietnam War protest earned him the title of Second Most Famous Man at Oxford (the year 1969).

After that, the inevitable round of nice work came his way and whereas a great deal of folk spent a great deal of the 1970s chasing after an ever decreasing supply of dreary jobs, these angry young men never lacked the price of lunch in smart London restaurants. What about the workers, eh?

If Christopher Hitchens ever changed a nappy, did the washing up or took a dog for a walk, he’s not letting on here. He was never seen in jeans, either. When not decked out in a linen suit (à la Our Man in Havana) he’s lounging in slacks and the inevitable slip-on brogues with the metal buckle (now only £175 the pair, Oxfam, 17, Broad St). He wears the sweaty face of an afternoon drinker, dispenses wit with the largesse of a Raymond Chandler character, and keeps his powder as dry as the magazine of a fast cruiser on convoy duty. Well, his father helped sink the Scharnhorst, as we are constantly reminded, in an example of a truly good day’s work. Hitch regretted his lack of language skills, though surely he must have been effluent in Vulgar Latin and Ancient Geek? He never acquired the American lingo, keeping his English accent more or less intact despite spending half his life over there. When the film of his life is made, who will play him? Not some snotty nosed working-class upstart, anyhow.

If it weren’t for his exposure of water boarding by undergoing the torture himself and then writing it up in a famous article, his legacy might have rested on the antitheist (atheist) tract God Ain’t All That, Innit? His use of Occam’s razor to reveal religious faith to be a dangerous delusion borders on the philosophic. But what he offers in its stead – the ‘moderate’ consumption of two bottles of wine per day – is an equally toxic sacrament. Hic. Sorry, Hitch.

N-N-N-Nitch!

Mad, not MAD.

 

Russian TV audiences are treated to a graphic presentation showing how British civilisation will be targeted by the thermo-nuclear warheads of their owl ballistic missiles. Other state-supported broadcasts use AI to merge familiar London scenes with clips of nuclear detonations, demonstrating how the Houses of Parliament, Buck Palace and Trafalgar Square will cease to exist. All of which, of course, is indisputable. Yes, Bloodymire Putin is capable of inflicting enormous damage to the seven UK cities shown on the presentation, including London. A third of the UK’s population will be wiped out in the attack, and a third more will die in the aftermath. The remaining twenty or so million people will face a lifetime of hardships; and for generations, the effects of radioactive fallout, the pollution from those missiles that are shot down or fail to explode - plus the long-term effects of infrastructure damage – will blight the UK archipelago’s inhabitants, probably leading many of them to become refugees. And where on earth will they go?

Though Mr Putin’s assurance that British civilisation will consequently be destroyed is less certain. True, Greece will never get back the marble sculptures that Thomas Bruce (7^th earl of Elgin) hacked and stole from the Parthenon. The hull of HMS Victory (Admiral Nelson’s flagship from the battle of Trafalgar) will be reduced to a cloud of ashes scattered across the Channel. Universities such as Oxford will go unvisited for some time; the grounds of stately homes ploughed up to grow cabbages and potatoes; and the original manuscripts, canvases and celluloid archives of many libraries and museums vanish for ever. Some regional accents will disappear, while others fuse into newfangled mongolots. Will Hay, Bessie Braddock and Agatha Christie – for lack of research and enthusiasm - might be utterly forgotten; and other cultural remnants - such as the rivalries of London, Manchester and Glasgow football teams - may lose all significance. Such will be the shared trauma of the remaining population that differences of race & colour, class & wealth, and North & South could wither far sooner than otherwise. Government as we know it might fizzle on for a long while, while distrust of a UK supra-nationality will have communities reverting to their pre-Celtic, anarcho-feudality. Survival will depend on co-operation in matters of food production, energy, housing and transport on the one hand; and on defences against overseas marauders on the other. The fallout from Putin actually carrying out his mad threat – nuclear, chemical, biological and ephemeral - will persist for centuries.

Meantime, the Royal Navy will have been alerted to the attack and its response will be more or less automatic. I know this. There is no question of some conscience-struck captain of the HMS Stick-It-Up-Your-Jumper-Mate failing to carry out orders. How do I know this? My father was the carpenter who built the captains’ cabins of two nuclear submarines constructed at Camel-Lairds shipyard in Birkenhead in the 1960s: the Polaris sub “Renown” and the hunter-killer “Conqueror”. When prime minister Margaret Thatcher, in a fit of jingoistic rage, ordered Conqueror to sink the Argentinian cruiser “Belgrano” in 1982, the captain didn’t hesitate much. He carried his orders in good faith. My father was sick to his stomach, saying, “That was not what we built those subs for!” He had taken on the job with a bellyful of trepidations; and as he worked away panelling the bulkheads in teak and mahogany, he was doubleplus careful never to leave any irritating fault, no screwhead swarf or unbevelled edge, nor any untoward crossgrains that would disturb the occupant of that tiny, undersea living space. So, when Conqueror sent the young, conscript crew of the Belgrano to the bottom of the South Atlantic, Harold Lee cursed Mrs Thatcher. Having been away to sea himself - his ship the RMS Baltic came to the rescue of the schooner “Northern Lights” in 1929 – he had seen for himself what drowning in such circumstances meant. And then it came as no surprise to him when Argentina responded in kind, sinking six British ships, including “The Atlantic Conveyor” – which was a merchantman with a civilian crew. As a result of Thatcher’s anger, ten times the casualties were suffered in the recovery of those godforsaken islands.

I was a fulltime anti-nuclear campaigner at the time of the Falklands War, and my father and I had discussions about the rights and wrongs of deterrence. On the whole, he agreed with my opposition to the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons, such as the Cruise Missiles at Greenham Common and the Pershing IIs. But, even after the South Atlantic War was long over, he would support the upgrading of Britain’s deterrent to Trident. I still think the UK should have taken a different pathway back then, but realpolitik, ie the reality of world we live in, dictates how these things are played out. Bloodymire should never doubt that the Royal Navy will do its D U T Y.

Oh, you might ask, isn’t there some kind of dual key, here? Won’t Downing Street be on the blower to Donald J Duck, squatting deep in their brickbuilt shitehouse, for a quick consultation? Even if there was time (which there won’t be) between the launch of Russian missiles and the UK’s response, there is nothing a lame US president could do to restrain its number one ally’s response. Nor is there anything the Pentagon could do. Even Musk - with his vast array of satellites – could only warn the Russians of what they were already well aware: that their automated RSVP was safely due to arrive within minutes.

One of the four HMS Vanguard submarines is permanently at sea, and if tensions (as they probably would be) were at a heightened state, probably a second would have been scrambled. One sub, though, is all it takes. And whereas the Russians’ equipment is ageing, and has not been upgraded with the latest technology, Britain’s American supplied missiles are the last word. A Vanguard submarine can launch sixteen rockets that lift their nuclear payload into a low orbit, before each of which re-enters the atmosphere as eight retargetable warheads. You may do the maths on that yourself. But the weapons themselves are not American, they are British designed at AWRE Aldermaston and assembled at nearby ROF Burghfield (both places I have peace-camped at). Let’s say that as with the output of Russia’s rusting, land-based silos (post-Soviet Russia has not been able to maintain a seaworthy fleet of nuclear submarines) - 25% of these miss their targets, and a further 25% are somehow ack-acked. That leaves 100-plus warheads raining down to airburst in clusters of five or ten above Moscow, St Petersburg, Volgograd, Billy-Omsk and Bally-Tomsk (the Ural mountains will not get in their way). Bang, bang, bang.

The UK is a relatively small target, with its cities closely packed on the main island, so the kill-rate will be unspeakable. Russia, however, spans seven time-zones, taking up around a third of the Northern Hemisphere’s circumference. Its Western provinces are where most of the population, industry and infrastructure lie. So, unlike when targeting the UK, there will be vast areas unaffected by the blasts. Possibly, then, only about a fifth of the population will die at first, with another fifth following in the aftermath of the attack. To counter Mr Putin’s threat to destroy a civilisation, however, the upshot of Britain’s response won’t be so very different. The Kremlin will be gone, as will the Winter Palace, the Ballet Rus and the Nevsky Prospekt. The Moscow tocsin will melt into the ground it stands on. Infrastructure - from Arkangel to the Black Sea - will collapse. Most electronic equipment will fail because of the effects of Electro-Magnetic Pulse. No doubt, Putin and his henchmen will be safely ensconced underground. Maybe even a land line or two will remain and, if he chooses, the Russian leader will still be able to call a similarly hold-down Starmer on the phone and take things from there.

Tolstoy and Shakespeare will survive intact - as far as their works are concerned. As will recordings of Benjamin Brittain and Dimitri Shostakovich, copies of images made by Marc Chagall and David Hockney, and the steps of Swan Lake retraced by such UK dancers who take its fancy (and are still on their two feet).

Some people say things like ants or cockroaches will inherit the Earth. I’ve never bought that bogey-man’s tale. Humanity’s self-destructive tendencies, no matter how awesome, are just not effectively targeted at enough of its roots. In fact, I don’t see how such a Final Solution could be managed, without outside (ie Alien) intervention.

Anyhow, I’m talking about Russia attacking the UK and the UK responding, as it certainly will. I’m not counting on Amurrican or even NATO involvement. Perhaps if every single nuclear armed state decided to deploy all its nuclear, chemical, biological and conventional weapons in one fell swoop (as it were), some kind of tipping-point would end humanity’s hold on existence. That does sound a bit stage-managed, doesn’t it?

At the end of the Peloponnesian War when Greeks - having seen off the mighty Persians - turned on fellow Greeks and nearly tore each other apart, Athens must have seemed a pretty desolate place. Most domestic animals had been slaughtered to feed a starving populace, the vineyards burnt, wells poisoned, farms denuded of their workers (ie the slaves had run off), temples desecrated and womenfolk left tearing their hair out at the stupidity of it all. And yet, that era was a high-point for what we call civilisation. Senseless destruction went hand-in-hand with the creation of what we call history. OK, the scale of warfare we are facing now is on an exponential upwards curve. Losing our nerve in the face of ruthless dictatorship on one side and senseless populism on the other, we might be forgiven for cowering underground, crossing our fingers and hoping that the worst will somehow blow over, leaving just a few of our children’s childrens’ children to emerge into a Brave New World. But that is all that’s going to happen. ALL? Isn’t that enough? OK, get yourself a bolt-hole. But don’t cower, it doesn’t suit us.

Putin isn’t Hitler. If he were, he would have used The Bomb by now. Hitler would’ve had no qualms putting nuclear warheads on his Doodle-bugs or V2 Rockets - if he’d had them. Putin is a Stalinist, and Stalin quietly killed far more people than Hitler could boast of. Hitler actually ordered his architect Speer to destroy what was left of Germany as the allies closed in on the Reich. Speer, who masterminded the use of slave labour, was spared the gallows because of this. The point is, who’s going to carry out his last orders? Not the Russian navy, they’ll be too busy saving their own bacon rinds. And there may never be a Nuremburg Trial at which Putin and his gang are arraigned. So what!

Amurrica - ever late to the party - having watched all the lights going off across the UK, will finally step in and finish the job in Russia. Then China and India will rub their hands and grab the territories to their north. The Turks will welcome Bukhara and Alma-Ata back to the fold. The Northwest Frontier will move towards the Arctic Circle. The Global South will heave a sigh of relief. Believe me, you don’t have to be one of those right-wing, populist crazies to realise this. There is no MAD, nothing is assured except a great tide of death and destruction. Ukraine might even come out of it relatively unscathed to annex Belarus; and Finland get back Eastern Karelia. In other words, the world will go mad, not MAD.

No Mad No!

Mumbo-Jumbo Sure Ain't Gibberish

In the fourth year of Secondary School, Form 4b of Alsop Comp for Boys Only were due a lesson in Godknowswhat. A couple of pals and I arrived early, dunno know why, but for some reason I boldly chalked,

..on the squeaky owl blackboard. When the bell went off, we bundled out of the room to queue up with the rest of our mates in the corridor and wait for the Master to show. I don’t remember who he was, fifty-odd years hence, but what has stuck in my mind all this time was that he taught without erasing my words. Whatever he was supposed to be on about, what I’d written on the board was the real subject. Needless to say, I struggled not to laugh and give myself away as the author, and I wasn’t alone, it being one of the few occasions in the five years we were together I earned the title of Class Wag – quite a honour... (another time involved a pair of sliding blackboards with a sausage wedged between). All I can say about the lesson was that the Master ended up teaching - in no uncertain terms - that Mumbo-Jumbo Definitely Was Not Gibberish, even if none of us at the time could tell quite how he had pulled this off, and he musta been blissfully unaware, or maybe superaware as teaching folk sometimes slyly are.

As to the meaning, I wouldn’t mind having a stab at it now, should the Reader permit...

Note that the Leftovers - for whom I was a prominent left back - had the most extreme knockabout games that have ever taken place in or out of Liverpool, far from the watchful gaze of sadistic sport’n’science Masters. Sorry, am I getting sidetracked down the jigger behind Memory’s Cul-de-sac? A-hem! Or, “A-homme!”, as some might cough when a Master entered stage right...

You see, to us school was not a place to learn very much beyond when to duck or dive, if to lie and how not to tell the truth. Oh, you might – if you paid extreme attention – have stuffed some trigonometry or Shakespeare up your sleeve. You may have been versed in the causes of the First World War and the effects of light & humidity on the behaviour of woodlice; you might have parroted a bit of French or Spanish; and if you were exceptionally bright, you could also have shone in the revelation that electricity came in both AC and DC, long before Australia had music that didn’t come in only Rock’n’Rolf. Apart from all that, just the lads who were good at sports excelled in anything that seemed to matter. For sports read football, soccer and togger.

So let us examine this Mumbo-Jumbo - incidentally the title of a surrealist novel by Ishmael Reed, first published in 1972 (2 years after the events related here, see below for link). The term itself suggests mumbled, jumbled-up utterance; not entirely nonsensical, but neither penetrable by much analysis. It is often deployed against pointlessly technical jargon or the bogus dogma of a dubious cult. Hence I think Winston Churchill used it in an early memoir to refer to the creed of the established church. Or maybe that was “rigmarole” – so what? The same difference will apply. Of course, to the initiated (if not the inebriated), Mumbo-Jumbo is not gibberish at all; but to those not in on the lark, this fact might still need pointing out.

The so-called lower primates gibber incorrigibly, and though the sounds thus produced probably make perfect sense to themselves and each other, to most of us Gibberish appears a poor approximation of language as we know it. Human Gibberish is also somewhat imbecilic, and may be punctuated with such delicacies as spittle and drool. Gibbering, then, is not Mumbo-Jumbo in the sense that whatever it expresses, there is little or no meaningful exchange of information.

So, what the hell you may say, chalk sure ain’t cheese, either. But I would say the distinction to a spotty fourteen year old was in itself a revelation on a par with Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity, which I was about to attempt reading... (and to give up on at page 3). The first of many trite remarks, crass impertinences and half-witticisms. Read on, MacDuff... 

*

Click here for Ishmael Reed's Mumbo-Jumbo

*

shallow truths

 

fe’ral judge in document

case has ruled themselves a joint

stick it up your jumper ban

that’s how it works

 

Mr President your right

hand should never know what’s left

wave & smile we’re passing thru

Washington State

 

all the way to Florida

keep a beedy eye out for

somewhere on this road now turn

round one more shot

 

gee it’s hot I mean to say

she but pronouns tend to lie

down just when you need their Please

Please me or Help

 

oh another thing I tried

opening the window but

quite a lot of paperwork

blew the hell out

*

In a note from our spinsters,

“Pardon me, Nuestros Amigos Naughtyamericarnos, but God, Satan & that big feller with the axe will punish you for voting Shyster & Co. back in. (Also, your membership of The Owl Civilisation Mob royally flushed.)”

*

Tolpuddle revisited

 

for a thousand years or so

everything was black & white

rich folks ran the bloody show

god & their right

 

then the colour bar was raised

Winston Churchill voted out

slowly things began to change

still there was doubt

 

agriculture industry’d

pulled the rug from under us

common land which had been free

flogged to the boss

 

common folk with many skills

driven from ancestral homes

put to work in gaslit mills

giants to gnomes

 

little better off than slaves

few retained their heritage

time we started making waves

under the bridge

(verses Excerpted from the forthcoming chapbook, "Dismal Stories")

No Bull Obliged!

dismal stories

with apps. to Js. Gillray

…work in progress…

 

Around twice a year I put out a chapbook of verses, often on topical themes. The next one is due out before Christmas. Called “dismal stories”, here are a few examples of how it’s going…

 

 

MAD girl

 

someone fix my toy pram bomb

please it’s scuffed wobbles & one

wheel’s begun to squeak I mean

what if I scream

 

how much HMX was put

up my dolly’s bum you brute

see her swollen cheeks are red

soon she’ll be dead

 

yes I know revenge is sweet

look at the state of our street

I’d prefer a new arm though

when do we go

 

Ahmet Teacher seemed so glum

told the truth was martyrdom

did he have to use that word

what does he care

 

paradise will be so nice

peaceful there the only price

we shall miss my brother’s birth

day goodbye Earth

 

 

odds are even

 

epicentre crush

forces build below

only so much time

walls gonna blow

 

calculated risks

what insurance tax

free no MoT

car bomb attacks

 

earthquakes hurricanes

rivers burst their banks

meteorites explode

rolling of tanks

 

swordsmen run amock

schools get low on blood

loved celebrities

led out in hoods

 

guess it’s Murphys Law

rich or poor no dice

loaded gun the catch

checking it twice

 

 

birds café

 

waitressing’s a lark but hard

work as watchers we should know

how they keep their cool I dare

say it’s an art

 

earning tips & spurning looks

cheeky buggers throw their way

no the gorgeous dish you see

ain’t à la carte

 

seasonal of course the job

pays but cash in hand one digs

teaches them deportment pride

seconds no dice

 

with misunderstandings like

Tit-Head takes offence & hits

out not on they have to take

steps it’s decide

 

how the greater good is served

learn karate that’s a fair

chop but this young woman gives

twitchers The Stare

 

 

no-brainer

 

finding new

ways to maim

kill outrage

shame

 

dropping old

ways to talk

understand

walk

 

sending young

people home

eye for eye

cloned

 

choosing no

compromise

seconds out

lies

 

ending this

message now

big mistake

wow

Wot No Progress?

A Tale of Three Sisters

A Tale of Three Sisters

It was early in '98, on a job in Riyadh, and I would tune in to BBC Radio’s World Service. One evening, I heard Alistair Cooke of Letter From America fame sarcastically compare US President Bill Clinton's State of the Nation Speech to the utterings of a Christian Knight, Sir Gawain or Sir Galahad, I forget which. Well overnight, the guy’s cheeky denial of having intercourse with that woman (22 year old Monica Lewinsky) had become the biggest political scandal since Watergate. Remember that one? No? Well, anyway - eventually - President Nixon was forced out of office, but somehow Clinton managed to wriggle on. How? A case of cherchez-la-femme? Meanwhile the wife who stood by him, Hillary Rodham Clinton, has ever since been tarred with complicity in that rotten saga of equivocation and tittle-tattle. I think millions of American women – whether feminist or not – could never forgive Hillary for letting the man get off with a sanctimonious warning. Surely she should have divorced him and stood for office as an independent woman? As it was, she did become a New York Senator and Secretary of State, then won the Democratic nomination to stand against one Donald Trump in 2016; and though Master Trump won the election via the Electoral College system, she got 2 million votes more than him. So there! Take that, Populist! Shucks, if only she had dumped the old Bill, she might even have beaten Barack Obama to the Whitehouse, putting women’s rights before those of blacks. Instead, she stood behind that barefaced adulterer; and they have remained together ever since, bucking just about every marital trend in the manual of a Modern Marriage.

Michelle Obama – Robinson, to give her bachelor name – did not want her hubby to become a politician. He was a part-time activist when she met him, but her admiration for his ideals and commitment were part of the reasons - she says – she fell in love. She disliked politics, and knew that with her Barack becoming first a Congressman, then President, she and their children would miss out on his company. But she stuck by him, campaigned alongside him, and put up with the vagaries of being a politician’s partner. As First Lady she, along with Hillary, had enjoyed & endured high office of state without personally being elected. In that sense you could argue both women had a kind of amateur status - until Hillary chose to go professional, as it were. Michelle hasn’t gone back to work in the traditional sense. She is an activist of sorts, lending her name to causes, supporting and advising the next generation of women and black people in the on-going struggle for rights and opportunities. Right on!

Both former First Ladies made the kind of sacrifices radical women were supposed to deplore, and yet both have become feminist icons. When Barack Obama was standing down, people pleaded with Michelle to run for office, as though she were the only hope in town. She wasn’t, though she might have fared better than Hillary… who, having become the hero who stood up to Trump, is now very much the elder statesperson, and – one hopes, when the last of the Ex-President’s stool pigeons are laid to rest and the man himself is brought to justice – will get the last hurrah. It is their younger sister Kamala who is in line to be the first woman president, the first woman of colour to be at the helm.

Is it a curious thing that all three of these women are lawyers? Or that along with Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, the Law has been their route into politics? All five had promising, lucrative legal practices before devoting their lives to full-time politics. Since the 80s, the only career politician in the Democratic camp has been Joe Biden. On the Republican side, it’s mainly been about those who were in business before. Reagan was an actor before slipping into the role of California Governor; George Bush The Younger was a failed oilman, while Donald Trump was a property speculator & television clown. With Blair and now Starmer, there’s been a similar trend this side of the pond, too; the right having been mainly in the hands of finance hounds (Major, Cameron & Sunak) with the odd entertainer thrown in. With the possible exception of Cherie Blair, none of the UK prime ministers have had a very prominent wife or husband.

So far, Kamala Harris is a relatively unknown quantity. Although she has avoided biological motherhood - unlike her aforementioned sisters, becoming instead the step-mother of husband Doug Emhoff’s children from a previous marriage. But let us not go off down that beaten track. Meantime, she has served in the role Obama’s daughters had recommended for their Pa before running for president, i.e. she’s been Joe Biden’s deputy. Now her story will unfold. She was elected Attorney General for the state of California, and in that capacity went after crooked businesses, including educational scams – the like of which Master Trump has been involved in. Unlike Hillary and Michelle, who have natural gravitas in their voices, she’s a little shrill and perhaps short on substance. I mean, what does she stand for, besides adherence to The Law? Maybe that is enough for now, given all the bad guys and corporations that continue to plague US individuals and communities. Let’s just hope that along with the felons, she ain’t forced to prosecute any wars.

Don't Blow It!

All Washed Up

hustings fun

 

smells of fairground food

doughnuts popcorn hot

dogs with onion bread

hamburgers fries

 

orangeade in beer

mugs you gotta try

knickerbocker cor

blimey the size

 

vomitoons aside

Savoy truffle hell

skelters far & wide

there goes the bell

 

now the gloves are off

Elon Musk has stuck

bubblegum in some

Wurlitzer cars

 

yeuch my party dress

ruined I’m concussed

out of pocket just

show me the bus

 

 

solidarity with soft fruit

 

2 bananas hiding in a pair of owl

socks while carrot-tops upturn their owner’s flat

make a solemn pact to fight for yellow fruit

rights with a blood oath

 

skinny suits which started out an olive hue

should they peel connections off to heritage

strings of sage & onion round their pretty necks

promising brave deeds

 

yet they cower while the vegan fascists pull

rifle through & smash the ticky-tacky drawers

toppling wardrobes then defenestrating all

down into Broad Street

 

who or what will rescue them the Food Police

that’s a laugh authority won’t intervene

barring human lifeforms on the line they’ll stand

tittering no joke

 

yes their only hope’s that folks believe in them

cross-bred greens like quasi-tropical legumes

refugees deserving empathy not words

converts to our side

 

 

time for bed Jed

 

half a mo

Jo next time

get a go-

go

 

take the wrong

stuff & back

down the left

track

 

Jack both feet

on the gas

radio

off

 

jumping Jeez

chalk’n’cheese

wars let’s get

home

 

stick your coat

Up Pompeii

dig the ref

Ref

 

 

trump trump trump

 

what’s your object not to rouse

national sentiments or love

but to shatter & fragment

music my nose

 

violins can never right

wrongs against this circus song

stifle trumpets muffle drums

strike down the band

 

fighting music on its own

terms won’t work you gotta like

deconstruct that mass appeal

starting with tunes

 

klaxons gunshots fall of bombs

lorries braking accidents

babies screeching arguments

amplified bums

 

then instead of counterpoint

play the bloody lot at once

don’t repeat at intervals

everything goes

 

 

guilty as hell

 

less than half this height

how a devil would

occupy my head

sorry for that

 

took me umpteen years

countless big mistakes

wrestling for control

still having fits

 

once I burped no words

stomach curdling air

right in someone’s face

what did she think

 

self forgiveness no

difference let the side

down a lifetime’s shame

just for the crack

 

talking grave misdeeds

here I’ve stamped on rats

vegetarian

hypocrite pest

 

 

comment ain’t free

 

lift your tail when letting go

said a horse to anyone

that’d listen but the truth

never came out

 

strict equestrians

smile because it’s true

laughing though’s taboo

actors say corpse

 

while your clever clogs

is the rider who

blinkered deaf & dumb

trots in reverse

 

universal shame

nosebags all they say

meet their Vindaloo

torching of barns

 

veni vidi vici Dick

nuff to make Tom Cobley cry

foul no bloody worries Cock

horses reply

 

 

summer horror

 

stench of rusty iron pipe

bloody come to nuzzle it

damp beneath my hands & knees

crawl to the hall

 

floorboard splinters aging wood

slanted shafts of daylight slit

through a haze of hanging dust

hot as you like

 

dirty broken leaded lights

smoking in the dazzling gloom

let this radiation in

god knows what for

 

try to turn the old brass door

knob it sticks a quarter way

round and so the grown-up way

won’t let me through

 

maybe just as well a loud

buzzing sound strikes up outside

fifty million insects all

sawing as one

Not if I Sawed You First!