Attic Fantasist

No sex, please (we're a faith school)!

noreply@blogger.com (Attic Fantasist) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:19:00 +0000

In a way, this story doesn't affect me, since I don't have children. I am not bothered, either way, by the threat of a teenage daughter becoming pregnant well before she should do, wrecking her life because of the selfish actions of an irresponsible male child who in any case absconds the scene when the deed has been done, leaving the poor girl in pieces at the looming magnitude of her future. It's awful that continue to happens, but given my situation, it's beyond my concern.

The issue of sex education in schools, however, does bother me, particularly where the lack of information for gay students is concerned. So when Ed Balls announces that sex education in schools is to be made compulsory, including information for gay kids, then the government is to be congratulated. But then he completely detracts from the potential success of this new policy by allowing parents the option to withdraw their children from such classes, and faith schools the freedom to make ideological statements which conflict with it. All in the name of 'values'.

There are two main problems here. One is the issue of the parents who choose to take their children out of sex education classes, deeming such tuition inappropriate. You only wonder what the more enlightened parents feel about this 'voluntary' action: they couldn't be blamed for saying something like 'So my child learns something vitally important, but you think your child is beyond this? Are they beyond the responsibilities taught by the course as well?'

The second issue has to do with faith schools. The luxury afforded faith schools is that unlike in the case of non-faith schools, they are allowed to step outside government policy as per the 'values' and 'ethos' dictated by the institution's religion. In respect of Roman Catholic faith schools especially, you can see where this one is going in terms of sex education: with contraception, homosexual, before marriage - sex is just not up for discussion.

Teachers in religious schools will still be free to tell pupils that sex outside marriage, homosexuality or using contraception are wrong, because the legislation will include a clause allowing schools to apply their "values" and "ethos" to lessons.

Faith schools will be allowed to deliver the lessons in line with the "context, values and ethos" of their religion, the legislation will say.

So, you might ask, what is the point of this new legislation? If sex education is to be welcomed on the basis of its potential positive effects in reducing early teenage pregnancies, then how do you reckon with the situation of Liverpool, a city whose legendary mix of poverty and Roman Catholicism drastically conspire to keep teenage pregnancies high. Given that a massive amount of Liverpool's children are educated by faith schools, mostly Roman Catholic, then how will Catholic teachings on contraception square with the more urgent need (for society as much as for the individuals concerned) to keep teenage pregnancies low precisely with the use of contraception during sex? Pardon the pun, but it beggars belief.

Then there is the relative invisibility of gay people in the school system. Faith schools enjoy luxuries here, too, by enforcing their ideological teachings on vulnerable young people, which ultimately threaten the human and civil rights of gay students. But then, according to the Liverpool schools that recently rejected homophobic hate crime information packs entitled 'Denial', there are no such things as homosexuals in their schools. (Did they not see the irony of this gesture?) So enforced invisibility, ignorance, and inequality of educational opportunities continue to imbalance the rights of gay people. Or they might, if faith schools persist in failing to acknowledge their gay students unequivocally by teaching what the government is asking them to teach. And equally, in terms of religious teachings on contraception, the rights of female teenagers are also put in the balance. The religious ideology on the issue of contraception serves the power of straight males students, whilst the female students whose lives are destroyed by foolish, ill-judged actions are left to tend to the consequences.

Democracy empowers/dies (delete as applicable)

noreply@blogger.com (Attic Fantasist) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:55:00 +0000

The vote against gay marriage is bad enough. If you think it isn't, then read this little fact:

Gay marriage measures have lost in every state, 31 in all, in which it has been put to a popular vote.

Note: POPULAR VOTE. This is when other people's freedom is put to democracy, and democracy fails in the name of justice. So what we have is a situation in which democracy bolsters discrimination, allows haters the opportunity to limit the freedom of others. Democracy is the freedom to hate. This idea that democracy can work against justice has always been at the back of my mind, but the sentence above says it all. And it makes me feel sick. But more than anything else, I am sorry in particular for the gays and lesbians of Maine, USA, who go about their daily lives today in the encroaching shadow of limited freedom, advancing inequality, and the discrete but threatening knowledge that this has been decided by a number of the people who pass them on the sidewalk. What a society!

Claude Lévi-Strauss 1908-2009

noreply@blogger.com (Attic Fantasist) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:04:00 +0000

The age doesn't matter, it's still a sad - not to mention, remarkable - event. I'd hazard a guess that it's a epochal one too: not in terms of its ramifications, but rather the way in which the death of such colossal intellectuals invites us to reflect on what has passed, and what has passed along with it. Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, Richard Rorty, now Lévi-Strauss: the deaths of thinkers, the very individuals who mine the seam of humanity and present the findings for our illumination and delectation, mark the death of an age. Such is the case with the death of Lévi-Strauss: because of his loss, we really have moved on from the twentieth century. The contribution of Lévi-Strauss's work is immense: he altered whole systems of thought (with structuralist anthropolgy), redirected our propensities (post-colonial before the end of colonialism itself), and reached out to other disciplines by being revolutionary (the bricoleur lends itself so well to the study of literature). And we should fear what he said, because if we're not careful, we really will end civilisation before its time.

Confused rights/rites

noreply@blogger.com (Attic Fantasist) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:20:00 +0000

I wonder how this little situation can be resolved. What does the far-right and fundamentalist Christians have in common? They hate gays and as far as possible wish to remove the new-found rights of gays and lesbians in the workplace and in the arena of public services. Religious fundamentalists are on the same scale as the thugs who threaten gays and lesbians with death. Until they realise this, religious fundamentalists will continue to be complicit with violent homophobia.

"This case is part of a homophobic fight-back by Christian fundamentalists who resent the removal in law of their right to discriminate against lesbian and gay people," said human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell. [. . .]

"Liberty fiercely defends freedom of conscience and religion, including its reasonable expression in the workplace. But other people have rights and freedoms too," said Corinna Ferguson, legal officer at Liberty, which is intervening in the case.

"Ms Ladele is entitled to her views but not to pick and choose who is worthy of public services."

DON'T! DO!

noreply@blogger.com (Attic Fantasist) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:06:00 +0000

I'm loving the fact that the Penguin Classics edition of Daphne du Maurier's Don't Look Now on Amazon exhorts you to "LOOK INSIDE NOW!"

Gays and family life: the eternal incompatitbility

noreply@blogger.com (Attic Fantasist) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:00:00 +0000

First the death of Ian Baynham, now the life-threatening situation facing James Parkes. Both gay, they resisted homophobia on the street by challenging the perpetrator. In doing so, they sustained life-threatening injuries, which in the case of Ian Baynham led to his death, with James Parkes' injuries leaving him in a very critical, though thankfully stable, condition. These attacks are being treated as homophobic hate crimes. The respective police forces have issued strong statements (Liverpool's statement for James Parkes is particularly strong) that convey a similarly strong defensive response to the crimes. Such statements as have been issued offer public assurances that the justice will eventually err on the side of the victim, but as we saw with Michael Causer, justice did not prevail.

Why should justice be left only at the doors of police headquarters and of the courts? Justice should be rooted in the very structures that hold society together; that justice has to occur after criminal acts take place is one indication of society's fragmentation. The wish for justice should be enmeshed in the civil life of families as part of an expanded practice of the responsibilities families have to other families and to individuals who are threatened by the conduct of separate actors in a given situation. Families, of course, demand justice for each other, by interconnecting on specific issues - one example being 'Families for Justice', an organisation established in the wake of a succession of failures by the justice system to punish murderers. The governing paradox of all this is that the family unit proffers both the victims and perpetrators. Perhaps this goes without saying: every individual is a member of a family, but is it this factor alone that determines their behaviour? Families choose to accept the need for justice from within a set of interpretations that relate to certain members of their grouping: in committing this or that crime, that family member was not behaving in the manner in which most members of that family conduct themselves. The criminal stands apart from the family as an aberration, an unfortunate anomaly in the designation of the family name. But what this describes is a family uncommitted to the overarching responsibilities of the family to ensure civility through a coherent system of values that challenges aberrant behaviour in either word or deed. This model of the family is the worst case scenario; the perpetrator tendencies of members of other families is ordered by degrees, not via the convenient binary of absence or presence. In this light, all families can be accused of sustaining aberrant behaviour in the manner in which they attend to the intractable issue of the gay subject being born in their midst and becoming one of their number.

It goes without saying that the variability of responses to a gay subject being born into a family is massive. But the persistence of institutionalised homophobia confirms that the overwhelming response is at best ambivalent, at worst stridently negative. Where the stridently negative response is maintained is in a family setting where the gay subject is viewed and treated as the aberrant, even rogue mishap in the largely patriarchal and/or matriarchal reproducibility of the genetic line. Such families are fastidiously heternormative and spend much time expressing angst over the accidental breeding of the aberrant gay son or daughter. This type of response might be tacitly assumed by the parent(s), but the gay child will undoubtedly sense this perspective on their natural identity. From within this matrix of heternormative assumptions springs the institutionalised homophobia of the family, by which the parent(s) subject their gay child to relentless hectoring or studious ignorance over their sexual identity from a homophobic perspective, thereby adopting the role of proxy oppressor with which the gay subject learns to cope - that is, if they don't commit suicide as a way of escaping such disproportionate levels of scrutiny. In the thwarted, tortured world of the family with a rogue gay in their midst, the gay subject becomes the incompatible link that sullies the heteronormative line. It is not difficult in this light to understand why homophobia is rife in both family life and the expanded notion of 'family' of society at large. None of this should be the case; it is only true to be reminded of its brutal facticity.

An expanded notion of what 'family' means is required if homophobia is to be eradicated. Homophobia is institutionalised because of its origins in the family unit. We return to the idea of the 'aberrant family member': every homophobic word or deed issues from an individual who sullies the coherence of the family unit by threatening a member of another family. By threatening the Other, Another Family is likewise threatened. As the rupture between rationality and instinct engaged by a criminal act demonstrates, the homophobe is truly aberrant. But as a result of the institutionalised homophobia of the family, this homophobic criminal views him/herself less as an aberration and more as an agent in the upholding of family values. The disastrously paradoxical short-circuiting involved in their barbaric behaviour is that Another Family is destroyed in the process. Families crave stability, but normally only for themselves and not for others (for the Other). There lies the germ of catastrophe worming its way through this particular human grouping: the gay subject is targeted in as much as a family's recognition of this sense of terrible destiny allows.

Gay rights must argue for the gay subject's valuable place within the family unit by insisting that threats to gays are by their very nature targeted at the preservation of the 'institution' of the family. And where democratic conditions and individual choice allow, gays should themselves form strong families as a rebuke to the idea that gays are incompatible with family life.

Gold from the archive

noreply@blogger.com (Attic Fantasist) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:21:00 +0000

An elemental performance of the last movement from Respighi's Pines of Rome, given by the Berliner Philharmoniker and the immortal Herbert von Karajan. What a discovery! What playing! Hear the yelp of ecstasy when it's all over.

Pencil, acrylic, graphite, crayon and Indian ink

noreply@blogger.com (Attic Fantasist) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:13:00 +0000

Sitting for Auerbach aligns one with Mornington Crescent. We become territory. He avails himself of our features, much as he summons up the complexions of places. But where outdoors, for convenience and reference, he makes sketches, in the studio he works directly on paintings or drawings. The sitter occupies a kitchen chair, its position fixed in front of the sink and beneath the stairs. The session begins. As in this year’s Self-Portrait (pencil, acrylic, graphite, crayon and Indian ink), the painter narrows his eyes and lifts his chin and grimaces, like Edgar in King Lear, spotting choughs from the clifftop. Usually we talk for the first hour. Then, after a five-second break, he works in a silence interrupted only by grunts and mutterings and the occasional correction of something said in the preceding stream of comment and gossip, literary and otherwise. Whether working in pencil or crayon or in paint alone, there is, throughout, a concentration on the fluidity of appearances and the slow, tantalisingly and frustratingly slow, processes of realisation. In these sittings it happens to be me, but for Julia Auerbach, Jake Auerbach, Catherine Lampert, David Landau (and the predecessors, most notably Gerda, Estella Olive West and Juliet Yardley Mills) – for all of us – the role is practically the same. We are there to enable him to perform. We keep him occupied.

William Feaver on Frank Auerbach in this week's London Review of Books. Feaver has a new book out on Auerbach.

Equivocations, various and nefarious

noreply@blogger.com (Attic Fantasist) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:11:00 +0000

They say (the media says) that the Conservative Party will be in power this time next year. They don't stop droning on about it. They (the media) even bolster the Conservatives by endlessly publishing the results of polls which state that the Conservatives have a lead over everyone else. Why bother doing them anymore? It seems that the decision has been made. I'm a realist; I am apprehensive to the core that the Conservative Party will be in power this time next year. Well, not exactly fearful, more nauseated by the prospect. They will roll back every one of New Labour's achievements, and nobody (well, not exactly nobody, rather most people) do not care one iota. Having been bolstered by a rebranding that mixes Obama and Tony Blair circa 1997, the Conservatives will return to good old reactionary, self-centred form once in power. You betcha!

Nothing new there. What is new (to me, if not to you) is the idea that the Britain is also at risk of being isolated from the United States if the Conservatives are elected. William Hague's Washington visit (see, they are prepping for the inevitable electoral victory) might be slightly uncomfortable for him if Hilary Clinton weighs down on the Conservative's European allies - you know, the fascist ones. Oh but hang on a minute, let's not call Kaminski and Zile - from the alarmingly entitled Fatherland and Freedom Party of Latvia - racists, because at the end of the day we must seek out as much information that contradicts this charge, exonerating their behaviour despite the fact that nobody with an ounce of decency or in their right mind would consider celebrating the Waffen-SS as something constituting a sensible and respectful decision. You have to wonder how a Conservative would answer an enquiry from a teenager who, having visited Auschwitz during a Holocaust education project, reads afterwards that their potential new government has isolated them from the major democratic leaders of Europe and shimmied up to two parties whose ethics are at best conflicted, at worst unapologetically offensive, on the subject of the Holocaust.

So, the Conservatives are at risk of not only isolating Britain from the United States, they are in the process of isolating Britain from the main democratic parties of Europe, too. And in so doing, they are inching closer to the racist party of their own country than the Labour, Green, and Liberal Democrat parties, who are clearly making the right decisions about where Britain needs to be in Europe and the United States.

(For anyone who reads fiction regularly, what readily springs to mind in light of all this is a dystopic vision of Britain in which the Conservative Party's new alliances in Europe and the vile breeding of the BNP result in a brutal authoritarian state, or even a dictatorship.)

Back to reality, it is clear that it is not only the United States that is unhappy about what's happening in Europe between the neo-fascists and the Conservatives; understandably, Britain's Jewish community is not exactly pleased about all of this either. And with good reason: as Jonathan Freedland argues in today’s Guardian, it is astonishing how quickly equivocations over the history of the Holocaust are accumulating as increasingly more survivors are dying. The post-Holocaust survivor era looks to be one of ever-proliferating denials and distortions. It struck me that Freedland admitted to viewing this particular character of the age as one whose existence was not possible in hiw own lifetime, as if forgetting that Holocaust denial has existed in its virulent form since the world was learning of the Nazi genocide itself. I suppose his finer point is that he hadn't expected that politicians as central to Britain's governance as the Conservative Party were likely to promote alliances with fringe parties equivocal about the Holocaust, with the death of the last Holocaust survivor yet to come. Waiting until the survivor community has disappeared does not make such alliances any more acceptable, of course, but that there can be any democratic agreement between far-right European parties and supposedly democratic British ones, with Holocaust survivors still living, is another matter altogether. In any case, the political restructuring of Europe has forced some survivors to confront, yet again, the threat to memory posed by the equivocations of compromised politicians like Kaminski and Zile. The Conservative Party's wading in with these individuals is both distasteful and disgraceful.

Ben Helfgott, 78 year-old Holocaust survivor, has come forward to voice his concerns:

A prominent Holocaust survivor has called on the Conservative party to reconsider its alliance with Michal Kaminski, the Polish MEP who leads the Conservatives in the European parliament, citing his "unacceptable" views.

Helfgott, 78, said Kaminski's attempts to compare the massacre of 1,600 Jews in Jedwabne in 1941 with acts of collaboration with the Soviet army by individual Jews were "not acceptable".

"These views would be anathema to any Jew or any decent person who knows about the Holocaust," he said. "This is not a direct denial of the Holocaust, but in a sense it is accusing the victims of being no different from the perpetrators. There is a line here which must not be crossed."

Sadly, I think a line has been crossed. My hope is that this ground can be recovered, and the history of the Holocaust protected from the sullying that it is currently threatened with.

Definitely a film for the 'Fall'. (Except if you're gay?)

noreply@blogger.com (Attic Fantasist) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:55:00 +0000

Leaves are tumbling from the trees everywhere. Windows are closed for the duration, bar for a few days along the way to air stale rooms. Radiators are waking up after months of rest, the water dripping through the channels, shuddering and giving off the kind of hot iron aroma you forgot all over the summer but which you wished you hadn't now that you're smelling it again. Bring out the candles, the incense, the fairy lights, the rugs, the DVDs, the CDs, the books..it's autumn/winter and there's little else to do but to indulge in reflection and warmth.

The perfect time, in other words, for a film like New York, I Love You, which is released this week in the USA. Following the director's recent Paris, Je t'aime, this new film is a series of vignettes set in the ineluctably cinematic landscape of New York and centred on its diverse populace. I found out about the film's existence from Tablet, which had a small article on Orthodox Jews in films: Natalie Portman plays an Orthodox Jewish woman in this new film. That got me searching for the film, and thinking about whether it will address all aspects of its astonishingly diverse peoples. Given that the theme of 'love' is unavoidably signposted in the title, it appears that it runs through the different sections as well. I'm now wondering whether there's space for gay love in this film. It would be odd if gays weren't given equal status with the other forms of love represented, odder still if they were omitted, but of all the trailers available on the film's website, there was no inkling of any cute gay guys or women loving it up together in the most loved-up city in the world. I have yet to watch the film (when is the UK release?), but how terrible it would be if this turns out to be true. Surely in the wake of the AIDS crisis, which centred on New York, it's the done, progressive thing to show the stability, rather than the tragedy, of gay love in the city. But look closely at the 'representation' of the film in the montage of images with men and women in various situations or unambiguous scenes of hetero-romance: it confirms how there is a straight line between the power of money and advertising as a gay-free zone. (Pun definitely intended.)

Cause and effect, homophobic crime

noreply@blogger.com (Attic Fantasist) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:02:00 +0000

Homophobic crime is on the increase, both in London and elsewhere. This is due to a rise in the reporting of homophobic crimes by the victims. Proof, if proof were needed, of the importance of reporting such crimes: if unreported, the significant presence of homophobic violence is distorted in the minds of people, since it lacks media representation. If unreported, the idea of homophobic violence is viewed by straight people as an exaggerated phenomenon; the picture of it unduly emphasised from the perspective of the severity of single incidents. The argument follows that exaggeration is likely to follow such traumatic experiences. But all homophobic attacks, fatal or otherwise, are of equal significance as indicators of the fundamental hatred of people towards gays, lesbians, and transsexuals. Look at him, in the post below; Edmund White, one of the world's most prominent queer figures: he'll tell you. As will Judith Butler, whose oft-repeated description of a gay American teenager's death at the hands of homophobic killers having resulting from the victim's characteristic walk, always jars, shocks, stuns one in its reminder of the disproportionate nature of totally insubstantial cause and fatal effect: simply, he died because he walked in a certain way. Not a cause at all; should never be an effect.

Ian Baynham, who was attacked in Trafalgar Square in a suspected homophobic attack, died in hospital on Tuesday. The police are still looking for his attackers, who appeared to be hell-bent one night on destroying a life. It has come to light that a passerby unwittingly enabled Baynham's attacker to do the deed by releasing her from the victim's friend, who challenged her language and behaviour and who might have succeeded in preventing the brutal attack from happening. In this terrible misinterpretation by a passerby, the attacker was thought to be the victim.

Read the news. Understand the rapidity of cause and effect.

Remember Ian Baynham and the others who have died like him.

The White Stuff. It's good for you.

noreply@blogger.com (Attic Fantasist) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 10:14:00 +0000

You can find the full Salon article here.

Weekend meetings with American gays and lesbians

noreply@blogger.com (Attic Fantasist) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 15:53:00 +0000

Brilliant piece here by Bill Maher from the Huffington Post on Obama's weekend meeting with gays and lesbians. It's brilliant for many reasons: its style (acid-tongued, appropriately sarcastic), its analysis of the central issue (by mentioning gays should have rights like everyone else, the President would raise the ire of the right-wing lunatics and push them off his health care reform plans), and its portrayal of right-wingers. This last one is very significant for the fact that there doesn't seem to be much wrangling from the left-wing, Democrat-voting Americans with the right-wingers, intent on privileging their white-skinned, homophobic, climate change-denying, xenophobic version of America above the largely unspoken reality of historical and present-day facts, which hide behind their own timidity when the dragon of right-wing melodramatic propaganda jumps out at them. But I suppose that's the point: you can't argue with historical facts, they're ineluctable. The mission of the right-winger is to defecate on this, marshaling as much volume, distortion, and foul-stinking hot-air as much as is possible.

Let's hope something comes of Obama's meeting beyond the language of support. We need action! (That's why you got the Nobel Peace Prize, Mr. Obama.)

[UPDATE: It doesn't seem too promising. It's all language. Surely there's been enough of that. The problem with the United States is the massive raft of hatred and discrimination coming from the right-wingers and religious fundamentalists. That's not going anywhere. How is it possible to deal with that level of backdraft each time progressive ideas are even mooted? The UK - both its political parties and population in general, I think - are much more progressive than the US. They're so far ahead of the game.]

You can't write it

noreply@blogger.com (Attic Fantasist) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:26:00 +0000

If W.G. Sebald's The Emigrants suggested there are still new ways of writing about exile and the Holocaust, The Land of Green Plums suggests similar possibilities for the literature of the Iron Curtain.

Literary Review

This is taken from the back cover of the Granta edition of Müller's novel. It's one of those astonishingly perfect coincidences that have obviously been waiting for you all along. Definitely time for some 'extra-curricular' reading..

More on Müller

noreply@blogger.com (Attic Fantasist) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 13:48:00 +0000

Wherever Michael Hofmann is, I seem to follow. His translations of Alone in Berlin, Joseph Roth, and now, as I've just found out, of this year's Nobel literature prize laureate. (Hofmann is also acerbically critical of Sebald, and yet despite this, I'm able to appreciate Hofmann's work as a translator, and, unusual in the game of translation, I feel I can trust his work on the German originals. [Now there's a thought: Hofmann's translations of Sebald.]) Müller is published by Granta (like Roth), and in some cases, I'm led to believe, by Serpent's Tail. At the moment I'm working on the idea of exile, so it seems that the discovery of Müller could not have timed itself better. But noteworthy are the wide discrepancies between the English and German titles of Müller's works: I wonder how much dialogue there was between Müller and Hofmann during the translation process, because the titles are so very different - semantically and grammatically so.

Herta Müller wins the Nobel prize for literature

noreply@blogger.com (Attic Fantasist) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 13:25:00 +0000

Pete Ayrton, who has published Müller in translation at Serpent's Tail, said he was "absolutely thrilled" at the news. "It's terrific and I think it shows the Nobel prize are doing their job to bring the writings of wonderful, neglected writers, who are underappreciated in the Anglo Saxon world, to our attention" he said. "She is from the German minority in Romania and from that experience, she writes extraordinary accounts of being an ethnic minority in a totalitarian regime. But this is not overtly political writing; it's very poetic and elliptical. She's an extraordinary writer."

A reasonable assessment of the Academy's decision, you would think, as reported in the Guardian's story. But what else do they ask in response to the decision? Whether the Swedish Academy is too 'Euro-centric'. Read Ayrton closely and think long about the implications what he says has for the British writer; how in general (excluding specific individuals) British writers have simply not had to face the tremendous upheavals of their European counterparts. This should never detract from the stature of British writers, but it certainly explains something in terms of a specific intensity in European novels that derives from experiences on the European mainland.

Now I need to read Muller at some point..

Another ring of Saturn

noreply@blogger.com (Attic Fantasist) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 10:45:00 +0000

The rings of Saturn consist of ice crystals and probably meteorite particles describing circular orbits around the planet's equator. In all likelihood these are fragments of former moon that was too close to the planet and was destroyed by its tidal effect (- Roche limit).

Brockhaus Encyclopaedia

(An epigraph from W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn.)

The universe is on my side today.

The Middle, Squeezed

noreply@blogger.com (Attic Fantasist) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 11:50:00 +0000

They are the hard-working peeps of the British suburbs whose weekend decision-making falls on the choice between a £500 and £800 plasma screen TV. They not only forage in Waitrose but tell Waitrose when and how to advertise. But alas, skiing holidays of late have been cut to one rather than two weeks. And being forced to cut back on screen inches on your TV only depreciates the aesthetic value of the images from the £300 Blu-ray player. Now Mummy and Daddy have to confront the reality that most of Britain's poorer people face without much choice: by swapping the purple boater of the local indie for the no doubt truncated Windsor-knotted tie that displays the colours of the local comp, suburban parents now spend most of their time keeping precious away from the nastier of the ASBO crowd.

What a life it is not to choose the best of things in life! The sink estate peeps know best: they scrape along skid row, dragging Netto bags full of under-nourishing food and cheap booze for the minute pleasures of the weekend. Mind you, some of them now have the upper class bounty that is the local Tesco Express or Metro or even better, TESCO EXTRA, all three of them within walking distance. Not Netto ghetto but Tesco ghetto. Things are improving. More expensive under-nourishing food, more low-paid jobs..it's all so convenient. Waking up to the delivery trucks at 6am, all the louder because in the Tesco ghetto, the dolls houses are at close quarter, noise another one of life's luxuries. At least the local council is no longer like a big bad Daddy, standing over the poor people with nodding head and pointing finger. No, the Poppa Council lets Messrs Ladbrokes and Hill open alongside Tesco Express/Metro/Extra, so that the pennies sink faster and quicker down that economic drain. Still, at least there's enough cash for that extra pair of Ugg boots, saved for by cutting back on day clothes and walking the streets in pyjamas.

You see, it's so much better for the sink estate peeps. But the middle peeps are squeezed. Work is valued not by how much you do but what you do, so being a Primarni worker is crap compared to working your way through a Cath Kidston branch, providing your area's snobby enough to have one. You work in a respectable place and your life is so much more respected. That is why the middle peeps are squeezed: it's not so much that they word harder than the sinkies; it's that they have better tastes in where they work. Losing one's dignity through a diminishing disposable income is so much worse than the slow-burning indignity of being a hard-working chav in the Tesco ghetto.

So forget the constant squeezing of the sinkies. Spare a thought for the squeezed middles.

Power beckons for the Labour Party

noreply@blogger.com (Attic Fantasist) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 11:07:00 +0000

Labour has established a ten point lead ahead of the Conservatives in a poll published today. Sources close to Attic Fantasist claim this has caused a massive confidence crisis at Conservative Party headquarters. The major shift in the polls has been linked to the British electorate waking up to the lies and shifty, vacuous promises that the Tories are now believed to have media-managed in the past year or so, buoyed up for no apparent reason by the British media. The poll suggests that voters are sick and tired of being spoon-fed by a media that genuflects before a likely political winner in the interests of high circulation figures.

One pollster, speaking as if stunned into consciousness after sleepwalking loyally for the past six months around Tory spin, said that their change of mind about Labour was prompted by memories of pre-1997 Britain, which had clearly gone to the dogs because of Tory misrule. They also said that the Conservative Party's talk of being madly in love with social justice clearly didn't line up with the party's fundamental hatred of difference of any kind - remembering in particular their pernicious homophobic agenda (Clause 28), and their blatant disconnect with the working class electorate because let's face it, they're mostly Etonians or socially mobile working class men who have betrayed their roots. Their only motivation, in other words, is for the good life that the visceral thrill of being a toff in power brings. Another pollster claimed that the Conservatives' dilly-dallying around the issue of cuts was preparing Britain for the inevitable: a denuded NHS that will end up targeting the poorest and most vulnerable in society. 'And how is it', one angry pollster argued, 'that the Conservatives promise to deal with unemployment whilst threatening brutal cuts to public services?'

Some interviewed expressed concerns about the Conservatives' new allies in Europe, saying that although the party claimed the opposite, they were clearly dodging the pivotal fact that they had snuggled up to a bunch of far-right racists, anti-Semites, and homophobes. 'Again, how is it that they call themselves progressives and then represent Britain in Europe alongside those who threaten civilised values and social cohesion?' Referring to one of the Conservatives' new allies, who roundly denies charges that they have participated in marches celebrating the Waffen-SS, another voter said that: 'Clearly the only thing that identifies the new, fluffy Conservative Party with their right-wing allies is that both are in total denial about their respective pasts.'

Startling

noreply@blogger.com (Attic Fantasist) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:48:00 +0000

Quite possibly one of the most startling, ghostly YouTube videos of all time.

Election by media

noreply@blogger.com (Attic Fantasist) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 21:44:00 +0000

I'm sick and tired of seeing Labour-bashing headlines in the media. You'd think they were disastrous for the country, which they just are not, whatever you think.

I can't pretend to add anything new or insightful to the deluge of commentary on this issue, but Cameron is getting away with murder in the media: whatever he says goes, without a scrap of critical enquiry from virtually any media outlet, apart from the Guardian or New Statesman. And every time he stands there before the camera looking steadfast and unexamined, he is surely preparing himself for a disastrous premiership, should he win, which I sincerely, deeply, yearningly hope he does not.

For example, the big question that should be asked of Cameron, surely one of the first in being in any way a pre-emptive critical strike on the superficiality of his views, would be this: if his party is now progressive, then what is all this talk of support for hunting, clawing back New Labour's historic, though still compromised, achievement on this persistent issue of class division and cruelty to animals? And another thing, has Cameron said anything about what the Conservatives did to minorities, especially gays and lesbians - before you even start on the black community - in their previous incarnations? Has he said anything about upholding New Labour's achievements on equality legislation, which in this modern day and age shouldn't be confined to one political party but be a universal aim of all political parties? (But then how are we to distinguish between political parties these days if it isn't for their respective approaches to equality, with the Conservatives historically and still to this present day trailing far behind the Labour Party and Liberal Democrat Party - not to forget the Green Party?)

This post, as rambling as they get, is a response to News International's dramatic switch to supporting Cameron. In other words, the party that they think the public want to vote for in droves at the new election, thus ensuring high circulation numbers from now until then. I saw a clip of Cameron earlier this evening in which, like Brown, he stood impartial on the issue of newspapers' right to express their opinion, but also like Brown, allowed the relevant emotion glimmer through this impartiality to reveal that, as in Cameron's case, this was certainly good news. The thing that made me laugh uproariously was Cameron's assertion that The Sun was one of the country's most important newspapers. After I threw my head back in hilarious response, I pondered why he should think this, given that The Sun is a pile of shit and is a waste of the paper and ink from which it is made, especially in this carbon-conscious day and age. Ah, that would be it: he wants to snuggle up to the superficially racist and homophobic male electorate, thereby completing the circle of the Conservative Party's core voting base: from the Bullingdon Club to the Working Men's Club, particularly in those dyed-in-the-wool reactionary working-class communities; from the 'scall' to the old pal.

End of ramble.

Something for the weekend

noreply@blogger.com (Attic Fantasist) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:11:00 +0000

Boulez conducts Boulez with the Berliner Philharmoniker.

This is one of the most thrilling, and shortest, pieces written for orchestra. Boulez has been orchestrating his early piano pieces from the 1940s, Notations, for a number of years now, and slowly his devoted audiences are reaping their vast fruits. They are incredible pieces of music, expanding their micro originals into monolithic gems for the orchestra. Notations II is the sharpest example. I've seen Boulez conduct it with the London Symphony, and they were incandescent every time. Boulez's Notations never fail to grip you; they are by turns nocturnal-sounding, aggressive (even violent), beautiful, diaphanous, hugely complex, and most of all physically arresting. This performance, taken from a live concert in Berlin earlier this year, is wonderful to watch not only for the piece, but for images of Boulez's firm, resolute conducting gestures; the way in which he turns the frayed, massive pages of his score; for the sight of an orchestra so large and yet unwaveringly in control of the complexity; and delightfully at the end, Boulez's smile against a backdrop of rapt Bravos! from the devoted audience (London's audience was the same). His smile says it all: his impish glee at having created something so violent, controlled, almost unstoppable if not for the massive stab from the entire orchestra that pulls the breaks on the work, saving it from toppling over into real chaos.

Enjoy the weekend!

Glasgow's modern art gallery supports censorship?

noreply@blogger.com (Attic Fantasist) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:03:00 +0000

Apparently it does.

This pinpoints the dangers of censorship:

[Dani] Marti's work, which included an intimate video conversation with an HIV-positive male, was pulled because CSG believed it would be detrimental to the programme, and could potentially "overshadow" more important issues. Now Marti's pieces, along with some other elements of the programme, will be held at Tramway, a less accessible venue on the south side of the city. Unsurprisingly, the artist wasn't best pleased with the concession, arguing that CSG were "compromising the civil rights of the people in [the] work by refusing to let them speak to a wide audience, as was originally intended".

It looks like the gallery has surrendered to the hate-baiting Daily Mail, too. You can't think of a worse scenario for a modern art gallery in a modern city to have generated, seemingly without any attempt by that gallery to defend itself, its artists, the work, and the principles inherent in the exhibiting and supporting of art work to the public. There is no reason why these works cannot be displayed in the original plan. Have they not heard of signage? What about the gallery assistants and the gallery's other staff, who exist to support the art work and the public simultaneously by being sensitive to the needs of different sections of society; in other words, advising certain people as they enter the gallery spaces. It's quite simple, really. And any adverse feedback should be dealt with in the usual way, either as manifestations of public crankery, or a sensitively-termed letter detailing the need to exhibit such work and the issues that it raises. You might like to call it being modern and civilised.

Invidious and disrespectful

noreply@blogger.com (Attic Fantasist) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 10:16:00 +0000

In its infinite wisdom, The Times has published a poll asking whether Gordon Brown was right to apologise posthumously to Alan Turing for the inhumane treatment he suffered at the hands of the British government up until his death by suicide at the age of 41.

Why are they asking this? Their claim that an apology such as this is misplaced at a time of grave crisis is undermined by the fact that Gordon Brown has not devoted his time totally to the credit crisis since it all kicked off. So why can't this apology be offered at this time? Does it not demonstrate that the government cares, something which it is often accused of not doing? And quite the contrary to what The Times is arguing (if you can call it an argument, that is), this posthumous apology is perfectly well-timed, given the commemorations for the Second World War (and in a week, as Guardian readers will know, that has been dedicated to thinking about the past and the conduct of nation states in the past).

'You can't turn back the clock' is the insubstantial reasoning offered by the No option on The Times' poll. But does offering an apology involve turning back the clock and correcting the past? Isn't it the (symbolic) job of an apology to do precisely that? Correcting the past through the symbolic gesture of an apology is the least that can be offered in memory of those individuals grossly maltreated at the hands of governments and the laws 'at that time'.

If you held by the reasoning of 'You can't turn back the clock', no apologies would ever be offered, in any situation, anywhere, by anyone. Apologies are only offered after the event, which makes 'You can't turn back the clock' a perfectly useless statement to make.

If he had been straight, not only would Turing have lived, he would been given a knighthood at some point after 1945. Some are arguing that the Queen should bestow this honour on him posthumously. This will not happen, of course, because British diplomatic protocol would deem it to be going too far beyond an apology, which should suffice, thank you very much. Well, for me the apology came as a surprise as I read yesterday's Guardian, and also for me, it is perfectly timed and wholly appropriate. A posthumous knighthood would be even better, but perhaps we should be glad the British government has gone this far. No doubt we should be glad whilst Gordon Brown and New Labour are in power, because none of this kind of thing is likely to happen under a Conservative government. Which is exactly why it is that a centre-right paper like The Times that has offered its readers an opportunity to stamp on the memory of one who suffered so much in life - precisely because he was gay. It was invidious and disrespectful of The Times to put this poll up. Given their recent coverage of gay history and measured commentary on current gay issues, it is also a shame. You therefore have to ask about its motivations for doing this: it's like the paper's old-style reactionary instincts kicked in, by which the authoritative past which condemned gay people is ever so slightly let off the hook.

Equivocal nonsense

noreply@blogger.com (Attic Fantasist) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 13:55:00 +0000

In their series of booklets about the Second World War, today the Guardian publishes one on the Holocaust, with a lead essay by Deborah Lipstadt. It seems that unlike El Mundo, some newspapers are capable of effectively controlling their editorial content and maintaining standards of scholarship. And yet, on this day, one is faced with a number of political equivocations that stand as total nonsense, and from which vantage point future historians will write as being at best sheer contradiction and at worst, naive, credulous hand-wringing. This has to do with two news events: the BBC, Question Time, and an appearance on this show of the BNP; and the other being this, as reported by the Guardian, on the related business of a potential ban of BNP members being governors of secondary schools. For me, there is no question but that BNP members, councillors, and the two European MEPs we're saddled with, should not have representation beyond their elected status. At least such a status enables control over their influence in everyday life; but with them creeping into other, more subtle, forms of control, such as schools governing boards and worst of all, teachers, it is much harder for right-minded people to control the extent of influence over the potentially supine minds of the young by pernicious BNP members and supporters.

But authority figures are being equivocal about these matters. Why? What nonsense it is to suggest that BNP members have a right to threaten social stability in our society on the basis of such freedoms as that of expression and franchise. What nonsense it is to be against a total ban of BNP members or outspoken voters teaching our young. And this, against the legal background of equality and incitement to racial and gay hatred laws. How can any school that knowingly employs a BNP teacher conduct themselves without accusations of double-standards when they teach the Holocaust and the Transatlantic Slave Trade? It would not surprise me if, in the absence of a ban, a BNP teacher would end up being employed as a history teacher.

In light of these remarks, and much else besides, one has to question in the strongest terms the wisdom of Judith Bennett, a former chair of the National Governors' Association who has been a school governor for 15 years, and who spoke to the Guardian on the issue of school governing boards and BNP members: "It is a concern that they might be trying to advance racist views, but I wouldn't be in favour of an outright ban." How else can the situation be monitored outside of a formal and legal ban? It doesn't help black, Asian, gay, Jewish, or indeed any schoolchild outside the BNP's racial definition that a concern exists but that nothing affirmative has been done about the situation. Then again, it doesn't help those who do happen to fall within the BNP's racial definition, either, since they would be betrayed by the very system whose responsibility it is to ensure that their minds are not knowingly and directly influenced by manipulative, divisive, morally suspect, and horrible people such as can be found in the cadre of the British National Party.