BEATLES SONGS AT CHRISTMAS

..and John (no Santa hat for him)

Paul - the cover of his Xmas song 

I am posting this on Christmas Eve rather than New Year's Eve, writing in my dining room in peace and quiet as the sun reluctantly comes up on a dark December morning.  After I step outside, I will have to hear Christmas songs by Slade, King Christmas or Bing Crosby over various public PA systems.  (Enough of the Scrooge.)  This year I have particularly noticed two songs, both of them written by former Beatles: Happy Christmas, War is Over by John Lennon and Wonderful Christmastime by Paul McCartney. Which is better?

Now, I can bore on the Beatles for hours and have conducted tours and given talks on them, but these mainly concentrate on the time they were together, rather than after they split up.  The Beatles fit neatly into the 1960s, arriving in 1960 out of John's Quarrymen and going their separate ways in 1970 after which they led more or less successful solo careers.

The Quarrymen were John's group and he brought in his friend Stuart Sutcliffe, who was more interested in painting and who died at twenty one of a brain haemorrhage, but who is credited with thinking up the Beatle name.  Later John invited Ringo to join them on drums in place of Pete Best, their manager Brian Epstein being given the job of breaking the news to Best that he would miss out on probably the biggest payday in pop history.  Paul became more important as the band progressed and bought a house near the Abbey Road studio, from where he could manage their music more effectively.  John felt his control of the group slipping away and moved to New York with Yoko where he took a long break from music.

There was never any question of Paul taking a sabbatical.  Music just poured out of him and he recorded his solo Christmas song, making a video for it at the Fountain Inn in Sussex, which I know well.  A catchy tune, a fireside in an English country pub, warm wishes for friends and family in the festive season - you could hardly get more sugary.  The song has made Paul about £10 million since 1979 so he has done very well out of his cosy Christmas.

John, whose own father left when he was little and who walked out of his marriage to Cynthia after he met Yoko, was not so good at family.  He wishes peace for everyone as he tells them that war is over with the proviso "if they want it".  Sadly, many people do not and war is definitely not over for many around the world.  John was good at big themes, Paul at little ones. Paul is the family man, John the saviour of society, painting a bigger picture. 

Thackeray said that the job of the artist was to make the new familiar and the familiar new, which I always think is a good summary of the difference between Lennon and McCartney.  it is Paul who can bring the everyday to life, either with pathos in She's Leaving Home about an unhappy girl leaving home at five in the morning "meeting a man from the motor trade" (What a brilliant phrase, both banal and suggestive - you just know that she will have her heart broken.) or with humour as in Back in the USSR, surely still the wittiest pop song ever written.  Meanwhile John is looking for new directions in psychedelic trips, newspaper articles and even circus posters such as Being for the Benefit of Mister Kite on Sgt Pepper.

I am more of a Paul man myself never having been much into drugs or tripping into new realms of consciousness.  I love his simple pop songs of true love And I Love Her or Things We Said Today (both on the Hard Day's Night album) or Blackbird, which sounds like a song about a little bird, but has an underlying symbolism relating to civil rights. John could never have written a song as simple and as symbolic as this, being more concerned with the demons inside him.  After he lost the discipline of working with Paul, his music could be pretty self-indulgent.  Try listening to Revolution Number Nine on The Beatles, usually known as the White Album, more than once.  It will drive you up the wall.  

John realised that, in his words, you have to “coat the message with a little bit of honey” so he used his ability to make a decent pop song to get his message over.  Happy Christmas (War is Over) is surprisingly hypnotic and stays with you without cloying in the way that Wonderful Christmastime does not.  Too much honey and you are in danger of getting sick of the stuff.

No group could make a three minute pop song like the Beatles when they were at the height of their power.  John and Paul, much like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge 200 years ago, were young motherless men with very different personalities and backgrounds who struck sparks off each other, achieving more together than they would have done separately.  John was struck down by a random and meaningless act of violence - itself as good an argument as any for chaining America's gun laws - while Paul is still making music and will headline Glastonbury next summer.  If I had to choose which one to be stuck on a desert island with, it would be Paul, but I have to admit that John wrote the better Christmas song.

Merry Christmas everybody - and a Happy New Year to all, family and society.

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My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com

Edwin Lerner

FAIRNESS VERSUS FREEDOM

A cuddly looking Ken Loach - one of our great film makers

I was wondering why I am so reluctant to go and see Ken Loach’s latest film Sorry We Missed You, which is about the evils of working on zero hours contracts, just as I did not bother with the last I, Daniel Blake about the iniquities of the benefits system.  I used to love Ken Loach films but the last one I liked was The Angel’s Share, a comedy about stealing some super-expensive whisky which nevertheless had a riveting and disturbing scene near the beginning about the damage caused by the hero committing a violent crime.

It is probably the word ‘enjoy’ which contains the reason.  I expect to enjoy the experience of sitting in a darkened room for a couple of hours and watching some other version of real life.  It is almost always real life, incidentally, as I do not care for cartoons, obviously unrealistic superhero movies or those heavy on CGI effects which I never find realistic.  The story and the characters in it have to be believable for me to feel that the whole exercise is worthwhile.

Loach is nothing if not down to earth.  There are no fancy special effects, no unrealistic shoot outs or superpowers, just ordinary people getting on with their lives, often beaten down by a system which is too strong for them.  This is the sort of stuff I normally like but I cannot bring myself to fork out the best part of ten pounds to watch some poor bloke’s life going to ruin because he works as a van driver on a zero hours contract that strangles him.  And I do not like being battered about the head being told what to think while at the cinema.

For years I worked on what was effectively a zero hours contract for a company that offered me work when it needed me but did not provide any guarantees that it would employ me when it did not.  That was fine by me: a couple of years working in an office for the government was quite enough of job security and so I developed the skills which meant I had enough work to pay the bills and support my family while the children grew up. 

The point was that the company needed people like me to be willing, ready and able to work for them.  They did not provide guarantees or benefits like pensions, maternity or sickness pay and only reluctantly did they eventually fork out holiday pay.  This did not worry me in the least.  Like many other people I actually preferred the freedom/insecurity of freelancing.

The system worked in balance because it suited both parties – freedom for the employee (contractor if you prefer) and low overheads for the company.  I enjoyed being part of this system and thought that it showed how capitalism should work.  The company looked after those who worked for it because it was in their interest to do so.  They needed good people on the ground to keep their customers happy while we liked the money we could make without being tied too closely to a company ethos.  When the company identity became all-important, I simply moved on.  I could afford to, having made enough already to slow down.

Ken Loach is having none of that.  His film is about the evils of capitalism and the misery it causes.  He said in a Big Issue interview that the scenario he portrays is how capitalism is supposed to work, periodically throwing people on the scrapheap and then bringing on some other sucker to take their place.  The state can then clear up the mess while the company prospers in its irresponsible way and the victim of its ruthlessness is simply thrown aside.

But capitalism is more complicated than that.  The company I worked for was not morally better than the one the van driver worked for.  It just had a need for committed and loyal people who, in the modern jargon, interfaced with their customers.  They knew that word of mouth recommendation and repeat business were an important part of their success and the people they employed could help to generate that.  As most people only have fleeting contact with the driver who delivers their parcels, this is not a major factor for a delivery company.  Keeping costs down and scheduling issues are more important for them so they tend to be more ruthless and less invested in employee loyalty than the one I worked for.

The case of the Scottish plumber shows how loyalty to and care for your employees can backfire.  Murray Menzies paid into a pension scheme for the small number of employees he had in his plumbing business and now, having retired and looking forward to a comfortable old age, he suddenly finds himself with a bill for over a million pounds. The problem was that some other companies had either defaulted on their commitments or gone bust and he is being made liable for a part of the pensions of employees of these other companies.

Menzies had no idea he could be liable for this debt until he found himself presented with the bill when he himself retired.  The rules had been tightened because people like Robert Maxwell had been plundering the pension funds of their employees to cover debts caused by their own poor management.  Menzies cannot afford to pay the bill, even if he sold his house, and he is not alone. Over 500 small firms and their owners face these kind of debts.

The big problem in our society is gaining a balance between freedom and fairness: allowing successful and enterprising people the right to make money whilst guaranteeing the less fortunate a decent standard of living, of combining the innovation of capitalism with the safety net of socialism.  This is obviously not an easy task but we might start by acknowledging that the unfairness extends to people in business, like Mr Menzies, who tried to do the right thing for his employees and now finds himself crippled by rules which were designed to increase fairness.  It is hardly surprising that companies use zero hours contracts when you see what happened to Murray Menzies.  I wonder if Ken Loach intends making a film about him.  

For more on the Scottish plumber and his problem go to: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-50157515

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Apologies for the slightly late posting of this piece caused by some last minute tourist guiding work

You can read about this on my other blog: diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com.

BAD BOYS OF ART

Paul Gauguin self portrait 

Lucian Freud self-portrait

One had between fourteen and forty children. No-one - probably least of all the man himself - knows  exactly how many. The other approached double figures but nobody is quite certain and DNA has been used by those who claim descent from him. Both men regarded the bringing up of their children as being the job of their mothers and both have exhibitions this autumn in London, which demand to be seen.  Your eyes cannot avoid being drawn to their paintings when you see them in an art gallery.

Lucian Freud was a grandson of Sigmund and brother of the politician Clement (with whom he did not get along). He had little time for family loyalty and the concept of fidelity to one woman became increasingly alien as his life went on. There were two marriages, numerous mistresses and several short liaisons, some of which produced children as he eschewed any form of contraception, which he considered ‘sordid’.  He gave little if any financial support to his offspring yet he seems to have been a half-decent father, who was even something of a fun figure for some of his children, although he could never be mistaken for a reliable bread-winner.

Paul Gauguin did make an attempt at being a responsible husband and father but art took precedence and his inability to make it pay cost him the affection of his strong-minded Danish wife Mette and, eventually, contact with the five children he had with her. He probably reached double figures through various mistresses he lived with when he went to live in Tahiti and there are those who today quite proudly trace their lineage back to him.

Why do I seem to be spending so much time on their domestic arrangements when it is their art that both are known for? If it was not for that they would both be forgotten by all except their families and remembered by them as a feckless if occasionally entertaining presence.

Not being a creator myself (except in writing occasional pieces like these) I overcompensate by taking my parental responsibilities seriously, making sure I provide for my children (now grandchildren as well) and spend some but not too much time with them. You can swamp your kids if you do not set them free to lead independent lives, which can be as bad as ignoring and neglecting them. This is not entirely unselfish on my part. I have a ridiculous need to see some grandchildren to continue the line – something my brothers have not yet produced – and need the first generation to find their own feet so that they can establish and continue the line on their own without me. Safe to say, that did not occur to these two artists, who live on more through their paintings than their progeny (which was plentiful).

It is a mistake to confuse creativity and goodness. You think that having a clear eye might help you to avoid mistakes, but it just means you see them and the people who make them more clearly, not that you avoid the mistakes or selfishness. And both Gauguin and Freud were very selfish. We can disapprove of their cavalier treatment of the women and children in their lives but you cannot walk through an art gallery without being grabbed by the portraits they produced, often of naked women they had just had sex with - or were about to.

Graham Greene said that there was a splinter of ice in the heart of all great writers – and the same is true of other types of artists. Greene left his own wife and children after about twenty years of marriage and spent the rest of his life with various women, having little contact with the family he deserted, although he did provide financial support for them. Despite, or maybe because of this selfishness, he continued to produce brilliant melancholy novels for the rest of his life. His heroes are fallible men who fail at family life, just as he did.

For people like me, who will never produce great works of art, being half successful at parenthood is important. I have said before that you can only offer your children three things – time, money and love – and you can give them too much as well as too little of all three. Neither Gauguin nor Freud gave much to their children except their genes and their name, which they doggedly held onto, and neither was much use as a day-to-day father. In a sense their paintings are their descendants, just as Greene said that his books were his children.

Which would I prefer to produce – books I would be remembered by or children who would remember me with fondness. Children, certainly. But then, it is unlikely I will be remembered for my writing, while my children – and hopefully grandchildren - will go on remembering me.

A late self-portrait of Freud. He turned the
 same unflinching eye on himself as others

Gauguin's strong-minded wife Mette -
still a touch of sensuality in this picture

The Gauguin exhibition is at the National Gallery (up to 26th January 2020).

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/exhibitions/the-credit-suisse-exhibition-gauguin-portraits

The Freud self-portraits can be seen at the Royal Academy (until the same date).

https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/lucian-freud-self-portraits

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My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com

Edwin Lerner

THE THREE RS

A good man but a bad idea - Clive Stafford-Smith

A little test for those who advocate getting rid of prisons; do you lock the front door of your house when you leave it empty? If so, then you are effectively voting in favour of a criminal justice system. You are saying, ‘This is the space I hold for myself. It is my property and it provides shelter and safety for the people I hold dear.’ The vast majority of the human race have such a space, usually one they share with fellow members of their family. In fact, one of the worst aspects of locking people into prisons is that we are depriving them of a home of their own.

If you leave the front door of your house open when you go out, you are saying to the world, ‘Help yourself: I do not care for property or possessions and you can take what you want.’  Only then you can argue that it is wrong to imprison people for their misdeeds. You might also be putting your loved ones in danger because, as well as protecting your possessions, you are creating a safe spacer for the people you love and

The death row advocate Clive Stafford Smith – a man I have a lot of admiration for – argues that, if you compare the worst thing you have done in your life with what we lock most people up for you will almost certainly find that your misdeed was worse than his. This, however, is to confuse the concepts of sin and crime. Prisons are there to protect us from the latter not the former. I am sure Clive is very caring towards his family and that he takes good care of them. That is why he almost certainly locks his front door when he goes out.

One of the main reasons that people want to abolish prisons is that they do not do what they are meant to, which is to turn criminals into citizens. The recidivism rate in our prisons in frankly terrible: around forty per cent. People (men usually) come out of prison with few skills, often no home to go to, a family they have lost and no chance of making a living except by turning back to crime. The rates of reoffending are, interestingly, lowest for murderers and rapists: once is enough for the great majority of violent offenders. It is highest for thieves who tend to return to their former way of making a living having learned new tricks while inside. Prisons are sometimes cynically described as ‘universities of crime’.

A film I once saw had a lawman say to some prisoners he was locking up that, if you divided the amount of time most prisoners spent in jail by the amount of money they stole, then you would find that they made less than minimum wage from their lives of crime. I have no idea if this is true but it had the ring of truth to it. Crime often does not pay, least of all for the criminal.

Why then do we lock them up? There are three reasons, what I call the three Rs:

Restriction: some people have to be kept away from society for our (and their) protection. A man like Peter Sutcliffe, who murdered thirteen women in Yorkshire, can never be let out onto the streets. Neither could moors murderer Ian Brady. Whatever the doctors say their state of mind, the risk that they will kill again is simply too great to contemplate their release. There are a small but significant number of people who are simply to dangerous to allow out.

Retribution: whatever we say about the evils of locking people up, for society to function properly, we need a criminal justice system. People tempted to commit crimes (virtually everybody) must know that, if they get caught, they face punishment if they are to resist this temptation.  The fear of the humiliation of being punished is often worse than the punishment itself. This is why we lock our doors when we leave the house. If someone breaks in, we dial 999 and hope that the perpetrator is caught. However down on their luck we think the criminal is, our need to protect our home is paramount. 

Reform (or rehabilitation):  virtually everyone who is locked up will eventually be released and we want them to not go back inside again. For this to happen they need help. Most criminals suffer from low self-esteem and a lot of good work can be done by people dedicated to restoring this. Unfortunately, this last R is the one which is both the least popular and the most necessary.  

A lot of people think that those in prison have to suffer, so that they can learn the error of their ways. In their eyes money spent on reforming prisoners is immoral because it might make their lives better. People become irrationally furious at attempts to turn criminals into good citizens and tend to be dismissive and cynical about the effectiveness of expenditure on it. 

To them I would say look on prisons as you would look on a washing machine. We put our dirty washing into one and take it out an hour or two later expecting it to be clean. If the machine only worked half the time they were used, we would soon want our money back. In the same way, we put people into prisons with the expectation that they will turn out better. We will even use the same language, hoping they will ‘clean up their act’ or ‘go clean’.

Yet all too often, prisons are treated like dustbins, where we throw the rubbish of society sending it off and then forgetting about it. But you cannot forget about people – unless you give every one of them a whole life sentence, a solution both heartless and impractical. Stalin tried it with the gulags while Hitler used the death sentence more liberally simply eliminating those he regarded as a burden on society. Look where that got them – and the perfect societies they tried to create. So let us keep the necessary evils of prison but work on them so that they do their job more effectively.

Edwin Lerner

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com

DESELECTION - DEMOCRACY VS DECENCY

Helen Hayes - our local MP is under threat

Many people do not know the name of their local Member of Parliament, let alone what he or she looks like. They tend to vote for a party and are often more influenced by the character of the leader of that party than that of its local representative, saying things like I voted for ‘Maggie’ (Thatcher), Blair or Cameron rather than for who actually represents them. I suspect this is particularly true for that all-important group, floating voters in marginal seats.

As it happens, I am engaged enough to know the name of my MP, who is Helen Hayes and, being a member of the Labour Party, actually took part in the selection process of choosing her. I was not allowed to vote for a man in this process as the shortlist was made up entirely of women, an attempt by Labour to increase the number of female MPs – even if the party has never chosen a female leader. Meanwhile the Conservatives have twice been led by a woman (three times if you count the recently departed Scottish leader Ruth Davidson). Both of them became Prime Minister: Margaret Thatcher, with the longest run of the modern era at Downing Street, and Theresa May with a rather shorter, less successful spell. Even the Liberal Democrats are now led by a woman, Jo Swinson. While Labour introduced all-women shortlists, it has never entrusted a woman to run the party, let alone the country. 

Yet it now appears that being female is not enough to guarantee that Helen, as I will refer to her, remains as an MP. She faces deselection as the party is now attempting to increase the number of BAME (black and minority ethnic) and working-class MPs – which I suspect is shorthand for left-wing people who can be relied upon to support Jeremy Corbyn.

It is certainly ironic that, having benefited from her gender, my MP now faces the chop because she does not tick certain other boxes. I would be the first to admit that I am not a very active member of the party and hardly ever go to meetings or knock on doors at election time. I joined Labour in the same way that in the USA you can register to vote as a Republican or Democrat. This gives you the right to vote for both a local candidate and a national leader, a right I use. Apart from that, well, let’s say that I have a life beyond Labour.

What sort of MP is Helen Hayes? There is little doubt she is hard-working and conscientious. She always replies to my queries and represents the people of our constituency very well but she may prove to be not left-wing enough to satisfy the activists who increasingly run the party because, unlike me, they show up for meetings and take part in the selection process. 

Or the deselection process as it might become for Helen. Legally a local party is perfectly entitled to remove an MP if it thinks they are not doing their job properly. This is an important safeguard against people who are lazy, incompetent or corrupt. But should it apply to people who do not satisfy the prevailing ideology of the activists?

It is important to remember how you are viewed by the electorate as a whole before you toss out someone as your choice of MP.  If a commercial business or public service organisation got rid of a loyal employee simply because their face did not fit any more, Labour supporters would be rightly outraged and would back that person up if they chose to fight their firing through employment protection legislation. Why should the same standards not apply to the party? 

Any organisation, whether it is political or profit-driven, is judged by the way it treats people who work for it. This, incidentally, is why Dominic Cummings is such a dangerous figure for the Conservatives. He regards himself as being above common decency, a kind of unelected king who can - and does - get rid of people like Sonia Khan simply because he does not like them.

The need to act decently applies especially to organisations which appeal to idealism rather than to self-interest. What does it say about Labour if it pushes out someone who has been loyal and hard-working simply because of who they are, not because of what they have done? Frankly it makes us look terrible in the eyes of those whom we want (and need) to vote Labour.

I say ‘us’ because I am still a member of the Labour Party despite my misgivings about the way it is going. A political party should be there for everyone not just the better-off: for the many not the few as Jeremy Corbyn says. I was unenthusiastic about all-women shortlists but could see that they would at least increase the number of women MPs and might eventually lead to a woman leading the party and perhaps even becoming Prime Minister. 

Sadly, there is little likelihood of Labour entering Downing Street for at present. That does not mean we should not be trying to win the election which will probably arrive before the end of the year. Labour should be looking outwards, not inwards, to be challenging Boris Johnson on the £350 million a week he said would be available for the NHS once we had left the EU, rather than fighting a civil war on which candidates are chosen as potential MPs. 

Democracy might allow you to deselect sitting MPs. Decency surely says you should only do so if they have manifestly failed to do their job properly. Which Helen Hayes has certainly not done.

Edwin Lerner

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com 

GENDER BENDERS

Coward was definitely but discreetly gay

Shakespeare loved men but was not

Twice recently I have been to the theatre and thought, “Hang on, something is not right here…”  The first was at the Old Vic where I saw a new version of Noel Coward’s play Present Laughter with Andrew Scott playing a version of Coward himself, a handsome and successful actor besieged by various lovers who give him no peace. The second was Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Bridge Theatre.

In both instances the gender of one of the characters had been changed to give the play a gay dimension. In Present Laughter one of the lovers who attaches himself to the main character is male rather than female. This is understandable because Coward was discreetly gay while Scott is openly so and you could argue that they were merely doing what the playwright wanted to a semi-autobiographical work. In the Shakespeare play, it is Oberon, king of the fairies, rather than his wife Titania, who is made to fall in love with Bottom, which is a far more fundamental change to the plot and involved having characters speak lines written for someone else.

I actually far preferred the Shakespeare play to the Coward one, which was full of self-absorbed and, to my eyes, uninteresting characters. I soon grew fed up with Coward’s one-liners which were meant to be witty but ended up being merely tiresome. The theatre was packed, however, despite the high price of tickets and the audience applauded enthusiastically so I was in a small minority.

Coward was definitely but discreetly gay. He never announced the fact, not least because homosexuality was illegal for much of his life until it was decriminalised around five years before his death, by which time there was not much point. Some old lady in Worthing thinks I am straight, so let’s not disillusion her was his attitude. In any case, despite (or because of) his barbed wit he was instinctively reserved about such matters. ‘Coming out’ would have seemed a trifle vulgar to the elegant Coward and, therefore, unthinkable.

Was Shakesepare gay? In some ways it is a pointless question because the concept did not exist in his day. Men did sleep together quite often - and openly - in a supposedly platonic way and they may have had sexual relations, although performing the male homosexual act was punishable by death in Tudor times. He was married to and had three children with an older woman, although they lived apart for much of his working life. This might indicate a tendency towards being gay, although I doubt if he slept with other men.

However, Shakespeare certainly had some kind of obsession with the young man for whom he wrote the sonnets and, although he fulfilled his brief of encouraging him to marry and produce heirs, there was in the near worship of his subject a homo-erotic undercurrent. The two men later fell out over the same woman – the dark lady of the sonnets – and this gives their relationship an added element, albeit a less mysterious one, of sexual jealousy. He had sex with women but strong emotional feelings towards and bonds with certain men is my guess.

Who was the man in question? It has always been assumed that the subject of the sonnets was Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton, and Ian McKellen portrays him as an elderly man of fading beauty in Ben Elton’s story All Is True with Kenneth Branagh doubling up as Shakespeare and director. However, William Boyd put a strong case for the handsome youth being the Earl of Pembroke in his underrated tv play A Waste of Shame. Pembroke lived at wilton House, where Shakespeare almost certainly stayed and, as William Herbert, had the mysterious initials W H. We will never know the answer unless and until someone discovers Shakespeare’s private diaries. Which they won't. Shakespeare wrote for money and fame, not to reveal his inner feelings.

Are directors and theatre companies entitled to switch around the stories to suit a modern audience? We are far more accepting of gay relationships now than when these plays were written and, watching in heaven, Coward would probably give an amused shrug, indicating that Scott’s portrayal was closer to the truth than Coward himself could hope to be. Shakespeare would probably be bemused at the changes in his Dream, although I doubt he would be frothing at the mouth. In a way this production, with audience and actors rubbing shoulders and a highly acrobatic Puck making speeches and distributing fairy dust while hanging upside down, was truer to the spirit of Shakespeare than a more conventional one.

That is not to say that you can always hijack Shakespeare – or other writers – to support a particular point of view. In 1943 Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels authorised a version of The Merchant of Venice which was openly anti-Semitic and seemed to support the Nazi view that it was ok to eliminate the Jews. However, Shakespeare may have started writing the play with Shylock as a conventional villain but he finished it by showing that he had good reason to be embittered after the treatment he received.

One of the most vivid memories of my childhood is my English schoolteacher saying that an audience member shouted out at the end of the play, “This man has been wronged!” I have always found that a moving story and Shylock’s tribulations are what bring tears to my eyes, rather than the triumph of Portia and her complacent friends. This is surely the genius of Shakespeare: he does not let you settle. It also, incidentally, why his plays could not possible have been written by Christopher Marlowe (who definitely had sex with men, women and boys). Just read or watch The Jew of Malta and then turn to The Merchant of Venice. The titles of the two plays may be similar but there is no way on earth (or Heaven) that they could have been written by the same author. 

Edwin Lerner

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com

NOISY NEIGHBOURS

Boris Johnson - clown or contender?

The flat where it all took place is quite close to where I live - about a mile away, I would guess. It belongs to Carris Symonds, who works for the Conservative party and which she shares (or shared, we are not quite sure) with Boris Johnson who was set to be the party's next leader and consequently Prime Minister until they had a noisy row and their neighbours called the police and, more significantly, The Guardian, which gave the story about the Tories publicity.

Of course, if Johnson had been a left-wing figure the Brexit-supporting newspapers would have milked it mercilessly to run him down. As it was, they sided more with him and The Daily Mail indulged in its usual habit of messenger-shooting by criticising the neighbours who recorded the row and broke the story as being left-wing troublemakers.

Which they are. But this does not make them liars or fantasists, which Boris increasingly seem like. Both are Remain supporters and could have let the whole issue die after the police assured them that no-one had been hurt in the incident. Instead they sent the recording of the row to the Guardian which publicised it and may have done real damage to Johnson's attempt to become Prime Minister. Obviously there was a bit of political opportunism in what they did - but that does not alter the fact of Johnson's behaviour and Symonds' reaction to it. She may even have ended the relationship but Johnson refuses to talk about the incident.

Does Johnson’s row with his partner/girlfriend matter? In the grand scheme of things, not much, but in leadership contest, character is obviously important. Johnson can hardly complain about this. If anyone has made a career out of personality rather than policy it is him. He plays the clown and has a good turn of phrase but it is well known that he only committed to the Leave cause at the last minute and had actually drafted an article in support of Remain before he decided to ditch it as he felt the wind was blowing in the other direction. He is far more calculating than he likes to appear and, if Leave would help him get to Number 10, then he would back it. And it did – so he did. It seemed to be working - until the row broke.

I had thought Jeremy Hunt might be next leader of the Conservatives after Theresa May without realising how the party felt they needed someone who could defeat Nigel Farage. There is no chance that Hunt would have a very public row with his wife (although he did manage to get her nationality wrong not long ago). He would be a safer pair of hands than Johnson and he must be rubbing his hands at how clumsy his opponent has been. Not only has he had this toxic row with his partner but he refused to answer questions it, acting as if it is beneath him to talk about such matters. I am going to be Prime Minister and am answerable to nobody he seems to say.

No-one forced Johnson and Symonds to have this fight and to disturb their neighbours. Why could Johnson not just apologise for making an almighty racket, laugh it off and say that the two of them had a row and apologised for any upset they caused? Yet there is something about Johnson which finds it impossible to admit to making a mistake and this makes me mistrust him. Most of us – myself included – have done things which we regret and are embarrassed by later on. Why not just come out and admit it? The story would die soon enough and a little humility might even help Johnson in the long run. He could make a joke about it and even turn the event to his advantage.

Instead he seems to think he is beyond apologising and, for this reason, I do not trust him to be our next Prime Minister. Most of those who have worked with Johnson do not trust him either. He repeatedly cheated on his wife and had numerous children outside his marriage. No-one is quite sure how many and it is astonishing that the party of the family seems so keen to embrace him as its leader and Prime Minister. Are they really saying that this is a private matter and should be ignored? They can only be desperate for someone who can defeat Nigel Farage at the polls.

Johnson's rival for the leadership Michael Gove has admitted to a misdemeanour and admitted taking cocaine. At the same time he was writing articles condemning middle-class drug-takers. It is not taking drugs which is wrong and writing articles saying you should be punished for taking them is common enough. It is the combination of the two which condemns Gove. Don't do what I do, do what I say seems to be the moral.

I hate what Brexit has done to Britain. When we went to Spain recently, we were waved through customs and passport control and made to feel welcome. Why are we breaking away from these countries? Why is it ok to hate foreigners now when they have done so little to damage our country? And why cannot we concentrate on things which are really important - like eliminating poverty and tackling climate change?

A no-deal Brexit now seems the most likely option simply by default and it will probably be a disaster. Especially with Boris Johnson, who has always had a shaky relationship with the truth, in charge.

Edwin Lerner

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com

MAKING MONEY, PRESERVING FREEDOM

George Monbiot (from Wikipedia)

I was intrigued by a column in the Guardian newspaper recently by the environmental correspondent and in-house favourite George Monbiot challenging us to declare that capitalism is dead. It has long been accepted thinking on the left to say that capitalism is wicked, out of date and incapable of saving us from disaster. And yet, curiously, it seems to go on and on. The system is both resilient and adaptable and has long outlived socialism organised by the state or communism, as it was once known. I think that the death of communism has removed the brake on the acquisition of excessive personal riches which is such a blight on the system and on the lives of those who have accrued great wealth and seem none the happier for it. Having loads of dosh does not seem a good way to live.

Actually, I do not care that much about capitalism in itself. It is the democracy and freedom which come with it that I value. I agree with Winston Churchill who said that democracy was the worst system of government ever invented - except for all the others. The world is full of people who offer cheap and easy solutions to our problems. Just put me in charge for a while and everything will be ok, they say. I don't believe a word of it. These people often used to be on the left but are now mainly found on the right - Trump, Farage, Erdogan et al. 

At least with a consitutional democracy you can vote out those who are in charge every four or five years. Nobody lasts forever in a democracy and sometimes they last a pretty short time, as Theresa May has found out recently. I actually feel sorry for her and think she got dealt a bad hand in trying to sort out Brexit, one which she did not play very well in the end. Once I feel sorry for a leader their time is usually up. Pity does not play well in politics.

Monbiot's argument is that capitalism is failing us because it uses up resources more quickly than they can be created and this will inevitably lead to disaster. I think this underestimates the adaptability of the wealth creation process. Everybody in the country is aware of the potential dangers of climate change and global warming and so single use plastic, hybrid and electric cars and renewable energy are all making headway, not because this is ordered from above but because it is demanded from below. We still want to travel, turn on our computers and heat or cool our homes but at least we are going about these activities in a slightly more responsible way. Most people can buy into a system which takes account of the need to change our ways but are not keen to go back to the Stone Age.

Take tax for example. I can remember the days when tax rates were far higher than they are now, notoriously ninety eight per cent at the top end of the scale for 'unearned' income - ie investments. This led to two things, first the creation of so-called tax exiles, who chose (but were not forced) to live abroad on the advice of their accountants to avoid punitively high taxes. Secondly, inflated transfers fees for soccer players, which could be written off against corporation tax, and creation of entities such as Apple corps which was started by the Beatles who, faced with enormously high tax bills, could squander their wealth on schemes like these which could also be written off. Irresponsible short termism and lack of involvement in your country's long-term future were actually encouraged by high taxes.

Now personal taxes have been reduced to the levels that have been maintained for some time - a tax free allowance of roughy what you would earn on minimum wage, then twenty per cent until you get to around double the national average, forty per cent above that and forty five per cent for the top earners. Some people claim to like paying tax, others hate it and most of us cough up and have a good moan while acknowledging that they are needed to pay for schools, health, roads and agencies which protect us like the police and army. 

I think capitalism works better in a free society where innovation is encouraged. The example of China shows, however, that it can also flourish in repressive societies. Nominally communist, China long ago embraced free enterprise while retaining a high level of state control and offering little in the way of political freedom. In fact, China has a highly repressive and controlling society and has also has experienced terrible environmental problems and high emissions of greenhouse gasses, problems which more flexible western societies have been quicker to address, not because business is concerned with the long-term future of the planet but because the consumer is and demands better ways of protecting it. 

In short, capitalism does not need freedom but freedom needs capitalism. if we are going to save the planet we will have to do so from the bottom up not the top down and this requires the preservation of capitalism and the freedoms that go with it.

How can we individually make a difference as individuals? To find out go to:

https://savingourplanet.net/12-solutions-can-limit-global-warming/

To read George Monbiot's article go to: 
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/25/capitalism-economic-system-survival-earth . 

Edwin Lerner    My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com