Modernism

Some people are shocked about the fact that Barrack Obama is proving to be just another American president, perhaps a little better than his predecessors, but not much. The sight of him receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in the same week as he was sending thousands more troops to Afghanistan will probably go down as one of the greatest ironies of the 21st century and may be remembered long after everything else about his presidency is forgotten.

But it was always going to be thus. His great slogan: Yes We Can, is after all just a re-working of that traditional American virtue Can Doism. Anyone who re-brands a national characteristic as a political slogan is deeply suspect. As Samuel Johnson said: "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel."

In Britain we had modernism as political slogan. Modernism appeals to the young and the foolish. They like the idea of change because they see themselves in the vanguard. Change is what youth is all about.

But modernism means something as a school of art. In politics it means nothing. Two millennia ago people like Plato and Socrates were debating many of the most current political ideas. Ever since, political philosophy has been one of the most frequently studied and analysed branches of learning. It is extremely unlikely that much new is going to be discovered in Britain over the next generation or so.

For example, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were part of a war against terror, which as others have pointed out is a non sequitur since you can not fight terror. Terror is the fear occasioned by fighting or the threat of fighting.

In practical terms the war against terror has meant people have had to give up long cherished freedoms, like the right to a jury trial and habeas corpus. There is nothing modern about cowing or subduing a population by threatening them with a big foreign bogeyman. Shakespeare laid out the strategy in Henry V: "To busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels."

One of the ideas of salesmanship is to pitch your offer in a way in which it is made difficult to say no. If someone says should we burden the Foreign Office with enormous costs by getting in a lot of business consultants who will impose a huge number of arbitrary targets (like the number of speeches to be given in a year by an ambassador) rather than let them concentrate on providing first rate information and offering impeccable advice, then it's possible some people may feel this is a bad idea. But pitch the same offer as modernising the Foreign Office by introducing business methods, and who could disagree?

The concept of modernising is all about sweeping away objections; of denying the opportunity for honest debate and unbiased decision making. The idea is that you have thought through the whole thing and know which way history is going.

There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Julius Ceasar

Sometimes it is genuinely obvious which way the historical wind is blowing, but usually it is not. As Harold Macmillan complained the problem with politics is "events, dear boy". No-one knows what will happen tomorrow.

If no one knows what is going to happen, then no-one knows what is modern and what isn't. Nothing illustrates this better than the Government's ridiculous multi billion expenditure on computer systems that were supposed to be inevitable but proved to be White Elephants. When announced we had no choice but to go down that road. It was modern. When cancelled it appeared that there were other options after all.

If someone tells you There Is No Alternative or you have to do this because it's Modern, it's time to politely make your excuses and get as far away as you can. Having a poverty of imagination, the belief that there is only one possible route, one possible future, is not clever. It's rather dangerous.

Photography in public

There was a time when celebrities started to claim that they owned their own image, that their visible persona was something they had created and then became a sort of property.

This is a perfectly reasonable viewpoint, even if it can make life difficult for people who are taking photographs or making videos. In practice such celebrities are rarely encountered and it isn't much of a problem.

What has happened more recently is that many more people have jumped on the band wagon, believing that they have a right to privacy even in a public place. Whilst I am fully in support of privacy legislation that prevents paparazzi style photographers from repeatedly sticking lenses in people's faces, there is no law against taking a photo of a street that happens to contain a few adults, who will probably be unidentifiable in the final image. At least I don't think there is.

Some might argue that the Data Protection Act prevents electronic files, of the kind modern cameras produce, from being collected. But I'm registered under the Data Protection Act, so there is no issue here.

The really difficult issue is religion. Judaism, Christianity and Islam all have injunctions against "graven images", apparently because in ancient times there were religions that worshipped icons and this was regarded as a practice that had to be stamped out. Judaism and Christianity seem to have got over this problem. Islam, it appears, has not.

Despite the fact that Islamic prelates and potentates have images which are instantly recognisable and some have had their photographs published millions of times, many ordinary Islamic people seem to be extremely reluctant to have their photos taken.

This strikes me as very weird. I can understand personal morality: a religion that says my behaviour must be such and such in order to serve some religious need. But a religion that says you mustn't allow someone else to do something is strange.

It is also completely barmy. It is quite impossible to wander around the streets of any major city without getting your photo taken by CCTV systems. That means any Islamic person who wants to avoid conflict with their religious beliefs has to stay home or in some private space.

The difference between public and private space is that you can do things in one that you can not do in the other. It would be wholly wrong to point a camera through a window and take photos (in my view). It is not wrong to photograph a street where people happen to be standing, even though under some circumstances it may be a good idea to ask permission first.

I think this is a libertarian position (though as ever one person's liberty is another's restriction-- since if I have freedom to photograph, people who genuinely do not want to be photographed may have to be more cautious about how they behave in public). But it seems that whilst there are many prepared to go on witch hunts against vanishingly rare pedophiles or stoke up fear about street crime, there are very few campaigning for liberty.

Panto

Derek Elroy as Ma Twanky and Darren Kuppan as Aladdin.

I have been going to Stratford Theatre Royal to see the panto almost every year for 35 years or more, though there have been years when the theatre was closed for refurbishment, I think.

Stratford always pushes the boat out when it comes to panto, producing a first rate show while challenging stereotypes.

This year the principal boy (never a popular character at this theatre) seems to have disappeared completely and the dame is played with conviction, as if this was an attempt to explore transvestitism rather than dressing up in silly clothes. That said, whatever it is that he's doing Derek Elroy certainly makes a magnificent job of it, and commands the stage.

The poor old villian (Michael Bertenshaw as Abanazar) has to play a toned down sort of evil character, more used car salesman than devil. There is little surprise when Darth Vadar like he gets turned to the good side at the end. In fact the biggest element of suspense was whether he was going to wear his stage moustache. Some scenes he did, others he didn't.

Despite the wonderful Derek Elroy, it's probably fair to say that the show is stolen by the colourful costumes and fantastic sets. In particular there is an animated sphinx and a moving tomb wall.

Were the songs better this year than usual? They seemed good and the audience joined in with gusto. Classic panto but I wonder if the era of panto is coming to a close.

Did I dream it?

In the 1960s, I think, (it was black and white!) there was a wonderful tv series in which all the world's astrophysicists cooked up the idea that the Earth was about to be destroyed by a comet or asteroid or some such thing. The whole story was a complete invention, just nonsense (though no doubt one day the Earth is likely to have a devastating collision with some space junk of one kind or another).

The reason they tried to frighten the world like that was they wanted the politicians to work together as a team and stop fighting each other. They saw it as a single stroke to end war, famine and all the other horsemen of the apocalypse.

It was all very noble and it was gripping tv.

A few years earlier than that (1906 to be precise) H G Wells published a book called In The Days Of The Comet. The theme of this was that a collision with a comet causes the Earth's atmosphere to change and everyone on the planet suddenly becomes a better person. The shades are lifted from their eyes and they give up exploiting and killing each other, turning to socialism. Yep HG was a socialist.

Sometimes I wonder if the change in the atmosphere HG was talking about, had anything to do with the level of CO2.

Ridley Scott's Blade Runner

I saw Blade Runner thanks to the miracle that is the BBC's iplayer. It is unquestionably a great film. Ridley Scott (whose Alien I love) creates paintings, images with texture as well as colour. Nearly all the characters are fascinating, the sort of people you'd like to meet in the way that you'd want to spend time with the oddballs in The Maltese Falcon, except the women in the Maltese Falcon are not spectacularly beautiful. Well I don't think so, anyway.

The atmosphere reminds me a lot of Brazil or Alphaville; but it is Alphaville through a set of blue filters, with the addition of the circus performer from One From The Heart.

Whilst the plot has some great features, including one or two very strange hints and an unexpected ending, it has to be admitted that the basic story is very ordinary, perhaps even banal. Retired cop is forced back for one last mission that no-one else can do. That's it really, except it is set a little way into the future and we are in android territory.

One of the strangest things is how dated this vision of 2019 looks. Did they really smoke in bars?

This is utterly wonderful, Saturday morning cinema, made in the most professional way possible. High art, it is not.

It's the bishop

There was a bishop of Limerick

Who made his parishioners feel sick

When asked to resign

He took too much time

That old bishop was just a silly prick

Networking

Networking is in the Zeitgeist. There has probably never been a greater need to network since traditional relationships like family, neighbourhood, village, craft and even class are breaking down or have broken down. The 21st century seems to be all about individuals communicating with computers, the single guy punching out a message on a keyboard (that's me, by the way)!

Most Networking is about forming commercial relationships of one type or another, though there certainly are other types like speed dating and expert groups. Commercial networking is potentially a revolutionary act since it should (for the most part, anyway) be able to replace the managerial capitalism of the 20th century that created huge industries, brands and vast disparity of wealth.

Yet right now when people network they seem to expect that any goods or services they obtain via this system, will be cheaper as well as more convenient.

It is as if being part of the system adds value and being outside it is second rate.

Yet it is the big corporations who sell you second rate coffee at £2 a cup, not your friendly, neighbourhood networker. It is the big corporations who waste millions on advertising, packaging, branding and the psychological control of shopping.

It is time to recognise that it is the commercial system which is shoddy and second rate. Networking lets you deal with real people, who will usually help you when you have a problem and rarely try to sell you something you don't need.

Yojiro Takita's DEPARTURES

Winner of the Best Foreign Film Oscar in 2008, Departures is quite a long film (130 minutes) but it doesn't seem to be. It has been said of Ozu that when you see one of his films you want to go out and buy your mother some flowers. This is that sort of film.

I do not approve of death rituals. Anyone who has read Evelyn Waugh's The Loved Ones would understand why. Death rituals are incredibly expensive, force people to spend a lot of money when they are very vulnerable and have absolutely nothing to do with the dead person (who is blissfully unaware of the whole thing, probably). Yet strangely this film wins you over to the Japanese way of death.

I also do not believe in larded background music, yet this film wins you over and the music helps to build the mood of sentimentality. This is not a film to see unless you have at least one handkerchief.

There are limitations, including some of the silliest looking salmon I have ever seen and an abused octopus who if he was not dead prior to being thrown back in the water certainly died when he hit the water after a five metre drop.

But overall this is a film to see if you possibly can. And don't forget to take the phone number of your local florist so you can order some flowers after you've seen it.