Not what I wanted to blog about

I was thinking all night of the post I’d write about a clock, an 18th century clock. It started with the clock, anyway, and ended up being more about a mother and daughter.

It was going to be a post about self-isolation and self-improvement, about reason and tolerance defeating ignorance and greed, about women’s fight for equality and independence; about jealousy and love, egos and guillotines; about rebellion and restraint; about philosophy, education and religion; about gaiety, satire and burlesque – lyrics from Gypsy were going to be included (“Sing out, Louise”) – it was a mess, less than the sum of its parts.

The object still exists for you to look at. All you need from me is a link. No words. Everything has been said before. No more blogging, I say.

Instead, I’m copying and pasting a Tweet from the journalist John Crace, about today’s cause célèbre, the latest gobsmacking hypocrisy of the Vote Leave coup leaders who are turning the ancient democracy of Great Britain into a shoddy dictatorship, a tax haven for corrupt, nihilist capitalists, while the rest of us, if we survive the plague, will die from poverty and bitterness, and malnutrition from lowered food standards.

We will be deprived of freedom of movement to work and live and love where we want in Europe, our continent. For some of us, that freedom and that love are the meaning of life itself. We have been dispossessed. We are aliens in our own country.

Tick tock.

The rich will still be able to do what they want, just as Cummings, Great Britain’s eminence grise, did during lockdown, when, knowing he and his wife had COVID-19, he flouted government restrictions by travelling 260 miles to visit his elderly parents with his four year-old child.

Cummings, in his own mind the child of Machiavelli and Nietzsche, doesn’t care; the pastiche prime minister/world king manqué and his equally over-entitled, even creepier associates (who can’t wait to stab him in the back) don’t care; they know there will be no consequences for the shameless. They are unaccountable. They have called democracy’s bluff.

They prey on human frailty. They play on the ordinary person being as selfish and venal as they are. They taunt and tempt like the sleazy admen and dodgy goods’ salesmen they are.

Everything they offer you has fallen off the back of a lorry. They know most of us know. They don’t care. Look how we can spin! Aren’t we funny! More entertaining than the Opposition. Razzamatazz! (Theatre is dead, due to Coronavirus, showing off isn’t.) Bragging how you have twisted the truth impresses more, nowadays, than telling the truth.

If you weren’t as bad as them before, you will be soon.

Tick tock.

John Crace on Twitter:

According to @michaelgove
and other cabinet ministers,
those of us who didn’t break government guidelines
to drive 250 miles just didn’t love
our families and friends enough

Another Tweet, from Aditya Chakrabortty, sums up the depth of this government’s betrayal of a nation:

If only Number 10 had acted as quickly and forcefully on the pandemic in March as it has to save Dominic Cummings

And, because I can’t bear to leave you without something old and pretty, here’s the link to a relic from the Age of Enlightenment and Reason, a neoclassical feminist clock illustrating the power of solitude:

Mantel clock c. 1768 made for Madame Geoffrin (1699-1777) The Wallace Collection

“One must work with time and not against it.”
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed

The White Cliffs of Dover

Image  Led by Donkeys @ByDonkeys (April 3)

PROJECTION ON THE WHITE CLIFFS OF DOVER DURING BREXIT CRISIS

“This precious stone set in a silver sea…this England” has been defaced by nationalism, lies and misinformation. Some of us are still fighting to Stop Brexit, Save Britain.
Please support us.

Battle and Booty

Unknown Woman with Spear by Antoine Trouvain, French engraving late 17th Century
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

 

Dagger of Henry IV of France c. 1599 on permanent display at The Wallace Collection and one of the ancient global artifacts displayed in Sir Richard Wallace: The Collector, gleaming in an atmospheric new exhibition space which is like a sacred temple of riches, just off tacky Oxford Street. Entry is free, because Sir Richard wasn’t just a rich collector in the Imperial British tradition, or schmoozing art dealer eyeing his chance, he was a cosmopolitan Europhile philanthropist, whose legacy was bequeathed to the nation by his French wife. Photo © Martin Hübscher Photography

 

Running the Gauntlet of the Arts London, 2018

The ultimate measure of a hero

Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul. Michel de Montaigne

Memory is the mother of all wisdom. Aeschylus

We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.  Marcel Proust

Bravery never goes out of fashion. W.M. Thackeray

The ultimate measure of a man is…where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. Martin Luther King Jr.

I am 96 years old and I hope that you will join us on this march on 23rd June for the future of Britain.
Stephen Goodall

Reunite or Self-Destruct

Second Brexit referendum has 16-point lead as half of Britons back new vote, opinion poll shows

Orpheus and Euridice by G.F. Watts c. 1890

Humans are selfish by instinct, like all animals. We are narcissistic, like no other animal. We reason, like no other animal. We squander our natural gifts, like no other animal. We are cruel, like no other animal. We have more regrets than any other animal. We cannot bring the people we love back to life but we can make at least one sensible decision for the common good before we die. (Noelle Mackay)

We, the people, must demand another chance to let our true voice be heard, not the one manipulated last year by a reactionary, zenophobic, racist coup d’état.

We must be able to accept or reject the deal being negotiated to Leave the EU.

And, we must be able to reject Brexit entirely. No reasonable person could claim that the EU is perfect; no reasonable person could claim that leaving the EU under the present conditions is anything but catastrophic.

It is time to stop separating personal from universal destiny. We are all implicated.

Whether you voted Leave or Remain, this Brexit is a mess. I’d have written “a dog’s breakfast” for a cheap laugh if it wasn’t an insult to dogs. There are too many cheap laughs in this world at the expense of things we should value.   “Only connect”.

Gainsborough, Pomeranian Bitch and Puppy c 1777. © Tate Gallery.
Is there nothing else than the love of cute animals that can unite people?
Does humanity loathe itself so much that it will extinguish itself?

Only the delusional, or right-wing billionaires planning to turn Great Britain into Little Englanders’ Tax-Haven Ltd, could still want it. The hopes of idealistic Leavers have been betrayed, the worst fears of Remainers have been exceeded by reality.

It is still legally possible to reverse Brexit. Common sense and self-preservation demand it. “In a healthy political culture, this would be a moment for reappraisal” Ian Dunt.”

The present Prime Minister has been too weak so far to turn us back from a suicidal Charge of the Light Brigade on a national scale.

Horse Frightened by a Storm, watercolour by Eugene Delacroix, 1824. Image source: WGA

Our democracy should serve the national interest, not destroy it. If our representatives in Parliament don’t have the guts to revoke Article 50 themselves, we must advise them ourselves through another Referendum – not a second referendum, but the third since 1975.

Last year’s referendum was advisory. A responsible government would never have allowed the public a vote on an unfeasible option. No government is infallible. Nobody is infallible. History will condemn the political leadership of our times – that doesn’t let the rest of us off the hook.

If history is about ordinary people, not who and what kings and queens had for breakfast, ordinary people must show the future what a human being should be.

Sovereignty lies in Parliament, not the “Will of the People”, a meaningless slogan unless it includes the right to change our minds. If anyone insists that the 2016 Referendum was binding, then they should consider that the 1975 Referendum to stay in the EU was also binding.

Never again should an elected representative of the people have to say, as Margaret Beckett did, “I believe this will be catastrophic for my constituents, but nonetheless I feel duty‑bound to vote for it.”

Nuts.

In future, recanting MPs might have to put one of their hands in the fire before they betray the interests of the people.

Our generation is seeing the British dream turned into a nightmare created by ourselves. STOP IT.  Brexit will be the worst mistake ever made by a modern democratic nation.

Let’s stop Brexit. 

Bored with Brexit? Tough. I’d have given up this blog, ranting at an audience of two, if it wasn’t for the biggest cause of in our lifetimes. It’s not just British lives that Brexit will ruin. The fate of nations is in our hands.

Stop Brexit, I’ll stop boring you.

Rippl-Rónai, Girl with Cage 1892 Oil on canvas
Magyar Nemzeti Galéria, Budapest.
Image: WGA

Blame Projection

“They don’t have enough guilt or shame about what they’re doing to change course. …..when they blame others for their wrongful acts, it’s simply an attempt to justify their stance by casting themselves as being in a position where they simply had no choice but to respond the way they did. In this way, they simultaneously evade responsibility as well as manipulate and manage the impressions of others.” Dr George Simon Playing the Blame Game

David Davis, Secretary of State for Exiting the EU, warned other European nations that “putting politics above prosperity is never a smart choice.”

Detail of The Hypocrites by Gustave Doré, 1860.
Illustration of Canto XXIII of The Divine Comedy: The Inferno in which Virgil and Dante reach the valley of the hooded hypocrites.

Putting politics above prosperity is the definition of the Conservative Government’s decision to hold the EU Referendum and to pursue a hard Brexit. The right wingers’ vision of Brexit is of prosperity for themselves, not the country at large which is threatened with extreme impoverishment.

Davis’s snide one upmanship, delivered with the demeanour of a car salesman fresh from his negotiating seminar, is the substitute for British diplomacy in Europe.

Brexit is a betrayal of the British people. The Government does not feel guilt or shame to change course, our parliamentary representatives are failing us, and if we do not act to stop the rot ourselves we will all be complicit in national decline and the ruin of many lives.

Monstrous, Humiliating, Painful National Crisis

“This is a national crisis. There is an aspect of national humiliation associated with what is going on. The triggering of article 50 was so monstrously premature. We’re sitting on a grenade with the pin pulled out. I don’t see any rainbow at the end of this. The truth is that the EU is a civilising force in international life. Jacques Delors’s great achievement was to make sure that the only kind of Europe was a social Europe. That’s why I’m increasingly clear that the only kind of Brexit is a hard Brexit. What Brexit means is creating divergence from European standards. That process can only be hard, and it will be most painful for many of the people I used to represent….”
David Miliband, The Guardian

John Martin, The Destruction Of Sodom And Gomorrah 1852. Laing Art Gallery.
Image: Wikipedia

The off-shore betrayal of populism

GIVE BACK THEIR FUTURE: The New Cosette, Marching to Keep Britain in Europe, 25 March 2017
Photo by MHP © 2017

The latest evidence that Brexit, like Trump, is not supporting the interests of ordinary people is clear from the number of prominent Brexiteers in the list of off-shore investors found in the “Paradise Papers“. (Click here to read THE GUARDIAN article).

It is a capitalist movement, preying on fears, prejudices and ideals, just as Thatcherism did in the Eighties, when greed and selfishness were blessed under cover of individualism and private enterprise.

Brexit is not a popular, patriotic revolution, it’s an ugly aberration that anyone who loves Britain and cares about human destiny can still stop, as Lord Kerr clarified yesterday

Jan Swart van Groningen, Woman Lamenting by a Burning City 1550-55
Pen in black, brush in brown,
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Image: WGA

No longer the country

“It’s no longer the country they understood it to be their whole lives.”

William Blake, Jerusalem Plate 51. Image: Wikipedia

It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are,
especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good heart
whatever they might have to say.
Mahatma Gandhi

Britain is a “hollowed-out country,”

“ill at ease with itself,”

“deeply provincial,”

engaged in a “controlled suicide.”

Calais Cat

La Vierge au chat (Madonna of the Cat)
Marble relief by Jacques du Broeucq  (c 1505 – 1584)
Cathédrale Notre-Dame, Saint-Omer, Pas-de-Calais, France.
Image source: WGA