"Difference is an accident of birth"

Respect for difference
Every human is unique. Every life is different. Every person makes a mark. In recent weeks there has been a video clip doing the social media rounds playing a shortened variation of the longer Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech of the late, great Catholic, John Hume, former leader of the SDLP. He led a party whose policies often dishearten me, but there is no doubt that Hume will be remembered for his tireless work on the Northern Ireland peace process. He remained categorically opposed to violence and promoted cross-community outreach. We have “more in common” than our biases and prejudices suggest. Here are the words from the clip of one of his key philosophies:

Difference is of the essence of humanity
All conflict is about the same thing
No matter where it is
It’s about difference
Whether difference is your religion
Or your race
Or your nationality
And the message that we have to get across
And that we have learned in our part of the world
Is that difference is an accident of birth
None of us chose to be born
And we certainly didn’t choose to be born into any particular community
There’s not two people in this hall who are the same
There’s not two people in the whole world who are the same

Difference is of the essence of humanity
And therefore respect for difference
Should be very very normal and very common
But it is the first and deepest principle
Of real peace.

By a high star our course is set

Good News
In the time of the Covid-19 pandemic, people die but new lives also begin. So it felt wonderful beyond words to receive news of the birth of the newest addition to my extended family, another Grand Niece, daughter of my Leapling niece, Rebecca. Welcome to Charlotte Isabelle Gaunt. She begins her life in 2020 and is surrounded by people who are already in love with her. Blessings be on her forever. The Irish poet Louis Macneice ends his poem Thalassa with the following words that I bequeath to Charlotte Isabelle:

By a high star our course is set,

Our end is Life. Put out to sea.

No Excuses Now

 

I hope Tory Voters are right
I hope the new government will turn the UK into a huge post-Brexit success. WHAT DID THE TORY MANIFESTO PROMISE?

• Get Brexit Done
• Take measures to reverse the climate emergency
• Protect and enhance the NHS
• Boost the Education Service
• Improve the national Criminal Justice and Penal systems
• Develop an immigration service appropriate to the 21st Century
• Build enough social housing
• Protect and enhance the lives of all vulnerable people
• Unleash the potential of the UK’s forgotten towns with major investments
• Improve our transport infrastructure
• Protect jobs and human rights
• Be taken seriously on the World Stage.

THAT’S WHAT THEY’VE PROMISED IN THEIR MANIFESTO. That’s (I hope) why TORY VOTERS voted for them because TORY VOTERS BELIEVE THIS WILL HAPPEN. I hope so too. Really hope so. I love the UK. I love its history, its culture, its countryside. I wish we had voted to remain aligned to Europe in the Referendum back in 2016 but we didn’t, so I have always thought that Brexit in some form should happen, despite my reservations about the honesty of the original exercise.

Well, the Tories have had three-and-a-half years to deliver Brexit. They haven’t – and for two of those years because of their own in-fighting – and NOW the country has voted to give the mendacious Boris Johnson a chance to Get Brexit Done. So, I watch with fascinated interest – and hope the Tory Voters are right – and within months the country regains its pride, strength and stability. Time will tell.

Right Left Divide
My final comfort is that (in the graphic below, with one result left to call):

• the Right of Centre Vote Share (Con + Brx) = 45.6%
• the Left of Centre Vote Share (Lab + LD + SNP + GRN) = 50.3%

with the rest made up of Northern Ireland parties and Independent individuals. If only a New Left Alliance could emerge from the ashes of the 2019 election…. a Rebel Alliance?

Rolled on by a horse....

(Genuinely) Clever Clive and (Genuinely) Buffoonish Boris
The late (clever and funny) Clive James wrote after an early Boris Johnson appearance as (short-lived) Foreign Secretary:

Boris gave an immediate impression of total dishevelment. It’s not his clothes and coiffure, but his personality that makes him look as if he had been rolled on by a horse and then seduced by it.

Clive James’s later poetry, like his TV and cultural criticism disarmed as well as skewered pomposity – he was that rare beast in public life, someone who wore his learning lightly. Unlike our current Prime Minister who likes to obfuscate the truth beneath bluster. Only Boris Johnson could answer a question on the traitorous Fake FactCheck site set up by the Tories with reference to:

“hunting the snark.… Fermat’s last theorem…. the riddle of the Sphinx…. the Bermuda triangle…. croutons….”

(Search for it on the internet if you don’t believe me – Boris Johnson answering question about fact check website.) His answer was designed to provoke laughter and to deflect from the serious accusation in the question. It’s a well-known technique that clever students use in Debating Societies in schools and universities time and again.

A sheep, a shark, a drunk and a lozenge
Check out the Jeremy Vine account admiring Boris Johnson’s apparent genius when Johnson gave what seemed like a spontaneous after-dinner speech…. It’s a clear example of our current Prime Minister’s elusive smoke and mirrors trickery. The winter election next Thursday seems to be framed around the future. Promises, promises…. But I find myself considering the present and the past decade. Do I want more of the same? Do I believe the Tories? Since the imposition of austerity in 2010, has the UK become a stronger, safer, more prosperous, more cultural, more law-abiding, more civilised country? If not, who has been in power since 2010? Answer: the Tories, along with five years of LiberalDemocratEnablers. They have presided over:

• an increase in the national debt (so those austerity measures worked, didn’t they?)

1. £850 billion in 2010 to £1.786 trillion by December 2018
2. £175 billion spend on Emergency Brexit stimulus by Bank of England (Brexit, remember, was initiated by the Tories and they have had over three years to implement it and the first attempts to make it happen were THWARTED by the Tories themselves)
3. 86 million pounds spent on non-existent ferries
4. £1 billion to bribe the DUP into a form of coalition that ended disastrously
5. shameful increase in child poverty (32 - 35% of UK children in this category now)
6. 80% of the 5.3 million self employed live below the poverty line
7. 185,000 deaths attributed to the austerity measures brought in by the Tories and LibDems
8. 150% increase in student debt (student fees up 300%)
9. GDP fallen to -0.1%
10. Sterling against the Euro and the USD fallen by 15%
11. 25 – 30 % cut to all government departments
12. 25 – 30 % cut to local councils, mainly centred on Labour councils

• a degrading of health

1. 2400% increase in the use of food banks
2. 10,000 fewer medical professionals and there is now a dangerous nurse shortage
3. 25,000 fewer bed spaces for mental illness
4. 25% cuts for our disabled community
5. 80% cuts to Mobility allowance
6. increase in teenage suicide by 70%
7. suicide up 12% in the year 2018
8. self harm among young women up 70%
9. life expectancy down 3 years
10. NHS satisfaction level at lowest recorded rate
11. and don't get me started on the current lies about what hospital "buildings" they are currently promising

• education

1. over 1000 Sure Start centres closed
2. over 700 libraries closed
3. eradication of the Education Maintenance Allowance
4. 36,000 teachers have left the profession and there is now a teacher shortage

• crime and justice

1. 25,000 fewer police
2. 20,000 fewer prison officers
3. increase of 50% in hate crimes
4. increase of knife crime by 150% to 22,000 per year

• infrastructure (especially housing and transport)

1. 1000% increase in homelessness
2. 1,200% increase in rough sleeping
3. mass evictions caused by the bedroom tax
4. Zero starter homes built, despite Tory flagship programme
5. Council home building down 90% since 2010
6. 200,000 social homes lost since 2010
7. one million families on council home waiting list
8. 100,000 increase on the council home waiting list since 2010
9. 10,000 fewer firefighters
10. over 650 football pitches closed
11. manufacturing, contruction and auto industries in recession
12. half of local councils are facing bankruptcy
13. Claims of “job creation” are masked by self-employed, ZeroHoursContracts and gig economy causing the OECD to suggest the unemployment rate in the UK is really 13% if you calculate the 3 million hidden unemployed

Voting for more of the same?
We are an entrenched country of foodbanks and multimillionaires. How can that be? And yet it is likely that many people in the UK will still vote for the Tories, the “nasty party.’ The party of the few, not the many. How long, in normal life, would you give someone the benefit of the doubt? Has almost 10 years been long enough to make improvements? 10 years! Are you going to vote for more of the same?

4% African (where birds fly, so can I)

Spot the Finn, the Italian, the Nigerian, the North African, the Englander, the Celt....

Temba Dance Company
At some point in the mid-1980s, in my first teaching job, in the middle of a sweaty, hectic, inspiring dance workshop at Leek’s Westwood High School, an African performer spoke prophetically to me. She was an older, hefty, charismatic woman who was a senior figure in Temba Dance Company (now sadly disbanded I believe). We’d just run through some energetic routine and she had been a circling observer, wandering around the room, encouraging, cajoling, cheering, whooping at the staff and teenagers – all age groups, all abilities – who were being put through their paces. She clasped my hands and, publically and loudly declared as the room felt silent – “My God, My God, Mr Johnson, I swear you have African blood in you.” People laughed. I laughed. We carried on. But it lodged as a significant moment in my life and, yes, I’ve told it as a story many times since, especially at times when my moves on a dance floor have been on the agenda…. and usually as a story to amuse. But I hardly dared tell people that I believed her at the time in a weird supernatural way.

She was telling the true truth
And so to our DNA tests. (I have the right to believe what I want to believe!) I expected to have Scandinavian DNA because of my Viking surname. I thought there might be Celtic in me from an instinctive set of feelings. I romantically hoped there’d be Italian because of my love for that country’s history, food and drink. And what came up? (See above.) 4% African (3.2% North African and 0.9% Nigerian.) The wise Temba dancer was right all along…. I always thought Sally and I were drawn together by our love of Yorkshire, shared political values, sense of humour, instincts for generosity and open-mindedness and desire to build a nest…. but looking at our DNA results, could it have been my ancestral 0.9% Nigerian DNA calling to Sally’s 1.2% Nigerian DNA?

Endeavour and Hadrian’s Wall
There was a great moment in a recent Endeavour on TV at an imagined Oxford Union debate where a black student invited the racist person who was arguing that all people who were not originally in England should be repatriated to their country of origin and the black student delivered the punchline “after you!” Humans are migratory animals. History, archaeology and anthropology have all proved this long ago. Accents and language demonstrate it. Customs and religion colour it. If President Trump were to send all the immigrants in the United States back to their own countries, then only Native Americans would remain. In the UK the earliest people we know about definitively were the Celts and we know they bred with Belgians, Germans and French before the Romans arrived. But Hadrian’s Wall had a massive impact. For over 400 years, troops from all round the Roman Empire manned the Wall (and womaned the settlements around the Wall.) Many bred. Many never left when the Romans retreated. We’ve been a mongrel, immigrant nation from the very earliest times. (Any alt-right readers who want to argue this point should read this hyperlinked article first which has its own links to supporting evidence.) So I’m proud of my African ancestry. It shows I belong. Here on planet Earth. Where boundaries and borders are imaginary human constructs. Where birds fly, so can I.

Celtic/English woods (at Bolton Abbey), candles imported from Scandinavia, vinegar and oil and wine from various parts of Europe and textiles and table mats from Africa....?

To Infinity and Beyond

Boldly going....

Bradford’s National Science + Media Museum
Guess what’s on display at the Science + Media Museum in Bradford? It’s the final parachute and the small (savagely-burned) Soyuz capsule that brought Tim Peake back to Earth in June 2016 after his six month mission to the International Space Station. The capsule is remarkable – it looks ancient, it looks small, it contained three crew members! You can take a selfie in an astronaut suit and (book to) experience a Virtual Reality descent to Earth wearing goggles, guided by Major Peake. The display has already been to London and will be going to York, Manchester, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast. If you can’t make it to Bradford (between now and November 19th), then try and catch it elsewhere. It didn’t take long to see everything in the display but it filled up my imagination for many days.

"The smells of Earth are just so strong"
Tim Peake’s mission covered a distance of over 100 million kilometres and orbited Earth around 3,000 times. The pictures he sent back for publication were incredible and made a mockery of the ephemeral political intricacies of the human race. Asked how he felt after landing, Maj Peake said: "Truly elated, the smells of Earth are just so strong, just so good to be back on Earth. I'll look forward to seeing the family."


Into the stars
I’m still on a breathing space break from writing my YA trilogy after finishing Book One Draft One but, if I haven’t mentioned it before, I’ll reveal that it’s set on another planet – over a thousand years into the future when Earth has had to be abandoned. I feel confident that I’m writing speculative fiction rather than fantasy because the Tim Peake/Soyuz display and follow up research convinces me that humans could survive on a number of planets in the universe. If we rechannelled the money we spent on arms and weapons of mass destruction to the exploration of outer space we would soon be giving our future destinations names. Maybe one could be called Rhenium like the planet in my book…

Summer of discontent

Time will tell
And so one year on from the (dishonest) EU referendum:

• the Brexit negotiations have begun with a weakened Tory PM who has yet to agree a “confidence and supply” deal with the DUP
• traumatic terrorist events in Manchester and London have tested the stretched NHS and the cut police forces and depleted emergency services
• the burnt tomb of the Grenfell Tower stands as a metaphorical testament to government and council priorities
• the gulf between rich and poor in the UK remains wide and is getting wider

Déjà Vu
These days feel like the late 1970s and the “winter of discontent” and I have an abiding feeling that we are heading towards social riots like the ones in the early 1980s. The government needs to restore all the public services to a positive footing where they are not constantly pressured by overwork and diminishing resources. Otherwise, even the heroic emergency services and police forces will struggle if the country descends into riotous anarchy. England has a long history of outbreaks of anarchy. This (potential) summer of discontent contains all the requisite ingredients. Maybe everything will settle down….

Nil desperandum (don’t despair)
I’m finding it hard to maintain my Glass Half Full approach to life at the moment. I need to remember that the sun (sometimes) shines, gardens grow, water runs, food is delicious, wine beckons at the weekend, beer goes well with barbecues, books can be read, pianos can be played, culture continues to entertain and provoke…. I’ll write some non-political blogs after this one…. for a while at least…. Nil desperandum.

 

Strong and stable

1974
It's very hard to make sense of Tory leaders over the years - holding elections or referenda thinking they know exactly what the outcome will be. I remember as a teenager being very muddled in 1974 with three day weeks, IRA bombings, a general strike in Northern Ireland and in February Ted Heath called a "Who Governs?" General Election. Mind you, Ringo Starr and Barbara Streisand had been at Number One (You're Sixteen and The Way We Were) so no wonder I was muddled (Terry Jacks's Seasons in the Sun, anyone?)
78.7%
Wouldja believe the turnout was nearly 79%? I don't know if that was a record but it certainly felt like all the adults around me were engaged in the arguments, eventually concluding that Ted Heath had asked the wrong question. And duly gave Harold Wilson the Labour keys to Number Ten, albeit with a minority but firmed up the following October with a majority. Wrong question, Ted: the people want you to lead, invest, care and secure not to play party-boosting games. You can't use the electorate to shore up your popularity within the party! The same mistake made by diddy David Cameron, friend of the porcine population, when he called the EU referendum; he hadn't a clue what the British people were thinking. Just as evil clown, Theresa May did, believing the country had only one thing on their mind - Brexit and "strong and stable" leadership. Never mind Education, Health - Physical and Mental, Social Care, Austerity, Cuts to Public Services like Police, Fire Stations and Ambulance Crews. There may not be a money tree, but that money comes flying out of somewhere when the banks need bailing out....and isn't it time someone took tax evasion seriously? And explained the true meaning of tax and what it does for a civilised country....

I'm worried about Theresa May's ability to hold it together with the DUP, particularly when I drill down to their policies, many of their members' attitudes to universal human rights and their approach to the border with Ireland. I've read about their robust negotiating tactics. At least Cameron's answer to a hung parliament was to climb under the covers with the benign Liberal Democrats. And May's weak and wobbly record (no matter how often you pretend to be strong and stable) reveals she is likely to cave in as soon as The Daily Mail says "Boo!". Maybe not. Time will tell.
Another General Election, anyone? Those pesky kids might turn out in even more force next time - and maybe we could get to the level of 1974 - 78.7% turnout! What a wonderful world that would be.

England, bound in with the triumphant sea

I hope the 52% are right and, along with the other 48%, I’m wrong

Nothing lasts forever. Everything changes. Change – whether slow and gradual or sudden and violent – is an unstoppable natural force. In every local council election I’ve ever voted I’ve been quite content with the outcome – I’ve always seen a Labour or Green Councillor elected where I’ve been living. In the nine General Elections where I’ve had a vote (1979, 1983, 1987, 1992, 1997, 2001, 2005, 2010, 2015) I’ve only been happy twice: yes, that’s you, Tony Blair (or at least Chris Leslie who was the young Labour MP who ousted long-standing Conservative Marcus Fox from Shipley in 1997 and then kept the seat in 2001.)

Tony Blair, Chris Leslie, Marcus Fox and Philip Davies

The AV Referendum in 2011

Now I’ve had the experience of two national referenda (one on AV in 2011 and the EU In/Out vote in 2016) and in both cases I have experienced a disappointing outcome. In the first referendum I think the wrong question had been asked for what the majority of people polled wanted (instead of “Should the ‘Alternative Vote’ system be used instead of ‘first past the post’?” the politically actively-engaged wanted something like “Should parliament debate and implement a system different to ‘first past the post’?” The choice in the referendum was between the status quo and a choice that was not a popular alternative. And there was a low turn-out and very many young people were angry with Nick Clegg for climbing into a coalition with the Conservative party.

 

 

The EU Referendum in 2016

The recent EU referendum was called primarily to put an end to in-fighting within the Conservative party. The result turned out to be, in my opinion

• a protest against the Labour and Conservative governments’ inability to manage the consequences of immigration
• a class revolt against the perception of globalisation
• an inability of the Remain campaign to counter the oft-repeated (mythical) Brexit slogan of “Take back control”

Sadly the Brexit campaign persuaded the electorate to Vote Leave on a series of advertising promises and slogans that were misleading or impossible to achieve so, even in the space of two days after the result, key Brexit figures were admitting that

• £350 million per week cannot be put back into the NHS
• immigration levels will not be changing very soon
• economic conditions are likely to be unstable for an unspecified time
• Cornwall and South Wales will not be receiving UK funding equivalent to their EU grants

and, within hours of the decision sinking in

• The Prime Minister resigned
• Scotland announced its intention to reopen Scottish Independence plans
• Northern Ireland’s fragile peace settlement stirred up sectarian arguments about the border with Ireland
• Brexiters were publically wishing they hadn’t voted leave
• Donald Trump and Marine le Pen congratulated Brexiters
• Other far-right organizations throughout Europe rejoiced
• Racist attacks increased in public throughout the UK according to social media postings
• The pound dropped to its lowest level against the dollar in 31 years
• £122bn pound was wiped from the FTSE 100 within minutes of the result
• Europe made it clear that they wanted Brexit sooner rather than later to end uncertainty
• France is pressing for Britain to take charge of its own border instead of processing migrants in Calais

  

  Dangerous politicans and ordinary people who have been hoodwinked, imho

The big statistics

• 17,410,742 voted to leave 
• 16,141,241 voted to remain 
• 13,047,993 could have voted but didn’t (72% of people voted)

One way of looking at the overall figures is that 29 million didn’t vote to leave and 17 million have voted to leave. I know that is not the way democracy works but, if we decide to an adopt an Australian-style points system for immigration (which incidentally increased the number of immigrants settling in Australia….) I hope we can also adopt their voting policy which says that if you are eligible to vote it is mandatory and you get penalties for refusing to vote (you can spoil your ballot paper if you want to protest about the voting choices.)

The age statistics (the saddest statistics of all)

• 18 – 24 year olds: 27% Leave; 73% Remain 
• 25 – 34 year olds: 38% Leave; 62% Remain 
• 35 – 44 year olds: 48% Leave; 52% Remain 
• 45 – 54 year olds: 56% Leave; 44% Remain 
• 55 – 64 year olds: 57% Leave; 43% Remain 
• 65 – 99 year olds: 60% Leave; 40% Remain

In other words, people over 45 (who won’t live with the long-term consequences) voted to deny people under 45 (who WILL live with the consequences) what they wanted. And don’t get me started on the fact that 16 and 17 year olds can join the army, give blood and pay taxes but still don’t get a vote….

Pyrrhic Victory

A pyrrhic victory is one where even the commanders wish they hadn’t won because the costs have been too great. The term is used as an analogy in fields such as business, politics, and sports to describe struggles that end up ruining the victor. There are already signs that the Brexit leaders are unsettled because David Cameron has unexpectedly resigned without triggering Article 50 - and they are hurriedly meeting to formulate the Brexit plans, speculating about who would be brave enough (anyone?) to trigger Article 50. In the case of King Pyrrhus of Epirus, he defeated the Romans at Heraclea in 280BC and Asculum in 279BC but his army suffered irreplaceable casualties. And the Romans kept coming. And coming. And coming. In Plutarch’s account he cries:

“If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined.”

The Romans kept coming. One anxiety I have is that the people who voted Brexit will gradually realise that the country is not suddenly Ye Olde Merrie England and

• Immigration will continue much as before (unless there is a proper overhaul of tax evasion, zero hours contracts, minimum wages, working tax credits, back-to-work programmes, the education system, the entire welfare system including pensions – all of which could have politically happened whilst still being a member of the European Union)
• Laws will continue much as before (unless there is an erosion of workers’ rights, health and safety recommendations, extra laws to try to get the same rights as we currently have for trading as part of the European bloc)
• All the changes to the law, to trade agreements, to infrastructural and cultural investment will take many years, a lot of money (I wonder where that will come from?) and, oh yes, a great many bureaucrats to work it out. Who has the skills to do this sort of work? (People working for the European Union…. Or, more worryingly, Brexiters who don’t have a clue….?)

  

  In a few years time....

I hope the 52% are right and, along with the other 48%, I’m wrong

I started with the above sub-heading and it is worth repeating. I find it very easy to admit when I’m wrong and I always apologise if that happens. I hope the dreams of the Brexiteers are realised, as long as that doesn’t mean England becomes a mean-spirited, inward-looking, isolated land that gets stuck in the past. Past blogs have outlined

• My main arguments for Voting Remain (“Remain or Brexit pursued by a (Russian) bear?”)
• Why England is genetically European (“If you prick us, do we not bleed?”)
• Shakespeare’s attitude to refugees and migrants (“The sea hath cast me on the rocks”)
• Why some older people who fought in Europe support Remain (“Harry’s Last Stand”)
• Shakespeare’s pan-European world view (“Would Shakespeare want us to leave Europe?”)
• Myths about how Europe controls us (“Europe and the “Tampon Tax””)

I'm not traumatised by being on the “losing side” (I like being in a minority and an underdog) although, quoting from my blog about "Amsterdam, City of Sin":

“It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.” (Anne Frank)

Financial Times reader Nicholas Barrett's viral post

What have we done? (John of Gaunt in Richard II says)

This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Fear'd by their breed and famous by their birth,
Renowned for their deeds as far from home,
For Christian service and true chivalry….
This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leased out….
Like to a tenement or pelting farm:
England, bound in with the triumphant sea
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds:
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.

The United Kingdom, Great Britain, Little England (and Wales) - what does the future hold?

If you prick us, do we not bleed?

Shakespeare’s humanity
We are all the same under the sun. Britons, Europeans, Asians, Americans, Africans. We have all arrived by meandering means in the countries of our birth through migration, intermarriage and emigration. The descendants of “true Brits” are now largely in Cornwall, Wales, Cumbria, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The rest of us in England are the mixed-race children of Celts, Romans, Frisians, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Vikings, Normans, Flemings, Africans, Jews, Huguenots, Poles and Indians – all in significant groups of invaders or immigrants before 1960. Barabas in Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, Donald Trump-like, rejects compassion, love and hope. Shylock in The Merchant of Venice reminds us, Eddie Izzard-like, that we are all “healed by the same means.” I’ll be Voting Remain because that’s what Shakespeare would have voted and because I’m persuaded by History, Culture and my Hope for the Future of Mankind, never mind Europe.

The Jew of Malta by Christopher Marlowe

Be moved at nothing

Christopher Marlowe’s main character in The Jew of Malta is Barabas. What actions does Barabas take during the play, that make him such a villain?:

• he murders his own daughter, Abigail, along with a whole convent of nuns
• he engineers the deaths of two young friends in a duel
• he murders two friars, two prostitutes and his own servant
• he burns alive a Turkish troop of soldiers and galley-slaves
• and he delights in his evil plots and is unambiguously hateful.

The only thing you can say in Barabas’s defence is that everyone around him is equally corrupt. (Maybe not the poisoned nuns or the incinerated galley-slaves….) His overall message is pitiless:

First, be thou void of these affections,
Compassion, love, vain hope, and heartless fear;
Be moved at nothing, see thou pity none,
But to thyself smile when the Christians moan.

Shylock, the sympathetic villain in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice

If you tickle us, do we not laugh?

Comparing Shakespeare’s dramatic treatment of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice with Marlowe’s treatment of Barabas in The Jew of Malta seems to me one of best illustrations of why Shakespeare has risen so far beyond his contemporary writers. Marlowe has created a character whose villainy would directly feed into the prejudices of the Elizabethan audience against Jewish people. Shylock, though villainous in some of his behaviours, elicits genuine sympathy both from the story, the structure and the language of The Merchant of Venice. On the one hand he pursues a bloody revenge course by insisting on cutting away a pound of a man’s flesh and he treats his daughter like a possession equating her to his gold; but on the other hand he provokes audience sympathy because he is spat upon, is insulted openly and, in the famous “merciful” trial scene he is brutally forced to renounce his faith and lose all his possessions in a verdict far more punitive than he deserves. Shakespeare gives him the most powerful speech about how all humans are the same under the sun:

I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.

Probably the brainiest man in Europe Votes Remain! - good enough for me!

Vote Remain!

England, Scotland, Yorkshire, Surrey

Geographical Identity….

Living in England has always been a source of pride to me. Shakespeare was born here and worked here. I've loved visiting Scotland, Wales and Ireland (I've yet to visit Northern Ireland) and have no problems identifying with the UK, Great Britain, Europe or the Globe. But I speak English. I think in English. I dream in English. Watching a film like Wadjda at the National Media Museum in Bradford reconfirmed for me that humans in every country share the same hopes and troubles. But, if I dig deep and deeper, and tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, my true geographical identity, first and foremost, now and forever, is not English in my heart and soul. I am a Yorkshireman.

Yorkshire

After the bloody fray at Wakefield fought
Where your brave father breathed his latest gasp

and where your brothers and sister live and your cousins and some childhood friends and where your brave mother also breathed her last and where your schools were and your first ventures into earning money and playing sport and acting on the stage and canoodling with other humans.... What does it mean to be from Yorkshire?

• A sense that the outdoors is better than indoors?
• That dry stone walls mean that boundaries are not rigid but the boundaries are there and can be helpful?
• That you say what you mean and you don't say much if you don't have much to say?
• That a Yorkshireman is a Scotsman with all the generosity squeezed out of him?
• That you are stubborn?
• Dour?
• Strong?
• Loyal to the point of death?
• That you would defend the land – the north first, of course, then the north-east, then Scotland and then across the Pennines and the Midlands and everywhere beneath Birmingham after that?

If I joined the army I would want to be in a Yorkshire Regiment.

Images of Yorkshire

Surrey

Since retiring I've been living in Surrey spending time with close family. Yorkshire tugs me back but I know it will wait patiently for my return.... could I ever learn to love Surrey as much as I love Yorkshire? It is interesting that the more you spend time in a place the more you see its strengths. At first I could see only impolite Southerners with invasive driving habits, insanely chintzy shops with inflated prices and towns whose souls were being slowly sucked out by the monolithic monster juggernaut named London. But gradually I've begun to appreciate Surrey’s ancient woodlands, the hills and downs, the people who are people being people wherever they live, the resistant strain of old-world market fairs doggedly refusing to dance attendance on London. There is regional identity here too.

Surrey countryside and Dorking High Street

Scottish Independence

In a few weeks Scotland will be voting whether or not to remain part of the UK. Either result (Yes or No) will be fascinating. I know enough history to know that nothing needs to be forever and for most of our island history the UK was not a recognisable concept. Family-based tribes were the norm for centuries before the Normans invaded. Globalisation makes many places in the world seem indistinguishable. Costa Coffee in Dorking feels the same as Costa Coffee in Bradford.

Not in Kansas

My instinct is that differences should be preserved and celebrated, as long as they are not threatening any other group. So does that mean I am in favour of Scottish independence? If Scotland votes to become independent, shouldn’t Yorkshire do the same? When holidaying in Scotland (Skye, Mull) I felt more kinship in Scotland as a Yorkshireman than I felt when I first arrived in Surrey.... though, now, after a few months, Surrey is also starting to feel a bit like “home” too. I’m not in Kansas, Toto, but Kansas is in me…. Are we all ultimately adaptable? Chameleons in fact?

Polesden Lacey in Surrey

Looking for a new retirement identity

As I begin retirement I suppose I’m having all those thoughts about who I am, where I belong, where I’m going and what it’s all about….. regional and national identity have emerged as a part of that. But I think I’ve concluded that home is where the heart is – but the heart migrates to wherever your loved ones are, so home migrates too.

I to the world am like a drop of water
That in the ocean seeks another drop
Who, falling there to find his fellow forth,
Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself….

England? Scotland? Yorkshire? Surrey? The readiness is all. Let be.

Ribblehead Viaduct and a drop of water....