Manufactured outrage

I always think it's bad when po-facedness wins, even when there are cheap points to be made. I'm equally keen on people not taking all this very seriously.

So, well done Jack Straw for this response to a question about the hours worked by his Special Advisors:

As working for me as a Special Adviser is, I am told, pure pleasure and stress free, my Special Advisers work exceptionally long hours, often at weekends and late into the evening without complaint, and have not therefore felt the need which they otherwise might to complete timesheets to show that I was sweating their labour

I thought it was funny (for it is). And poor form for the right in pretending to care.

We're in this together

Anna's furious with George Osbourne's speech at conference for his 'patronising' use of the first person plural in his speech. What really riled her was 'we all borrowed too much'. Amusingly of course, the papers and the Today programme have been highlighting Osbourne's reaching deep into his children's DVD collection for the phrase 'we're in this together', apparently a key policy line from the makers of High School Musical (though as Disney spent a lot of the mid century fighting furiously with various Unions, there is a certain irony about that).

They're both wrong though. HSM cannot take credit for 'we're in this together.' It's a generic phrase. Perhaps Osbourne was really focusing on the Nine inch nails song of the same title (I've heard neither). Equally, A's quite wrong to complain that Osbourne's wealth makes him somehow unqualified to comment. Let's be clear, he's keeping the stupid 50% tax, and imposing a cut on MPs and ministers, as well as exempting the lowest paid public sector workers from the freeze (and the front line military - nice touch).

Crucially, and I cannot stress this enough, he's right because we're fucked. We have no money and a debt with more zeros that High School Musical sales. So of course we need to cut jobs and freeze pay and work harder. Labour has been poor in response claiming:
a) they'd cut harder because they've promised to halve the deficit (just as they promised to abolish boom and bust)
b) the Tories would hit the middle class. It's a long way from Labour when people earning over £50k are the class they worry about

I think it's good stuff. The public sector workers being banned from earning more than the Prime Minister is nonsense, and their caps on pension just absurd. Were they to come into force I'd have to move out of the Public sector, but they won't.

Roll on May.

Bibliography, September 2009

Bought (o)

Read (6)

G. Tremlett, Ghosts of Spain

A. Christie, Murder is easy
M. Druon, Le Roi de fer
J. Lovegrove, The Hope
A. Tabucci, Requiem: a hallucination
A. Trollope, The Duke's Children

I'm far to busy to read much this month. Other than holidays I have barely read anything this month. The best though was Tremlett's (the Guardian's Madrid correspondent) book on post-Francoist Spain, which I have had for some time and never quite got round to reading. It's fascinating, insightful and very well done.

Bibliography, August 2009

Acquired:
still haven't counted

Read (13)

BOTM: A. Burroughs, Dry

J. Binns, Ascetics and ambassadors of Christ
B. Bryson, Made in America
R. Carver, Where I'm calling from
D. Dales, Light to the Isles
R. Grant, Colony
G. Greene, A burnt out case (probably read earlier but not recorded)
G. Haigh, Silent Revolutions
A. Lebor, City of Oranges
G. Morgan, AD 69. The year of four emperors
A. Proulx, Brokeback mountain & other stories
P. Roth, I married a communist
H.H. Scallard, From the Gracci to Nero



Cracking month this - barely a bad book, but Burroughs the best. I was very pleasantly surprised by the honesty and the wicked humour of what is fundamentally a depressing litany of alcohol abuse and terminal illness of one's best friend. Uplifting in the end, but very well written. Couple of honourable mentions worth going to Scallard's excellent textbook on the end of the republic and Gideon Haigh's collected essays. A peerless collection from the best cricket writer active today.

It's an odd boy who doesn't like Sport

In one of their odder tracks, the Bonzos recorded a ditty where they reminisced about sport, more specifically, about the odd boy who doesn't like sport. It's an odd song that cannot quite make up its mind about whether to parody the hale and hearty public school vision of sport or the miserable child who has no desire to play. I always remember school as a time when I didn't like sport, though on calaculating reflection I appear to have done a lot of it - all badly. Then, I rather stopped doing and following it for some years at university, and was rather dismissive of those who saw it as important.


Anyway, I'd meant to do a quick sport round up, but time appears to have caught up with me. So very briefly

• I now do think it's important, and smugly spent two days at the Oval watching us win in glorious fashion, before being very hungover the following day
• I am appalled by what Harlequins have done. It's as bad as football and they should be relegated. They were underservedly not banned.
• Football appears to have started; before then end of the cricket season, and seems to be injuring both their own fans (who cares) and indeed members of the England cricket team (much more serious)

I think the reason I dislike football so much is that they appear to have missed the point. It is always meant to be a game, a game taken seriously, but a game. The serious part is the playing. And football forget that long ago. What saddens me is the rugby looks like doing it now; especially my own team. And then there is no point watching. I loved the fact last year that when Harlequins played Stade Francais, fans mingled, fun was had and everyone went back on the same train. Cheating at blood replacements isn't the beginning of the end, but in some ways it the end of the beginning and we can only hope the gutter doesn't beckon.

For to follow football, that would be anathema indeed.

Books that matter to me

The preamble:

Don't take too long to think about it.

List 15 books you've read that will always stick with you. They should be the first 15 you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Tag 15 friends, including me, because I'm interested in seeing what books you choose:

1. S. Rushdie, Midnight's children
The first really adult book I read and loved. I reread it a few years ago and while it was diminished over time, it's still a great novel.

2. L.N. Tolstoy, War and Peace
I reread this recently too, but found it enhanced. F.R. Leavis called Tolstoy 'transcendentally great.' This is why.

3. G. Elliot, Middlemarch
Another monster, but a magisterial anatomisation of life

4. J.M. Coetzee, The Life and Times of Michael K
Spare and simple, but enourmously powerful. Probably the best modern book I have read in ages

5. J. Gillingham, Richard I
A great retrieval of Richard I from the assaults of the revisionists, pugnaciously and logically argued. For me, it was the defining book of my historical approach, helped by the fact I probably read it at the turning point of my degree

6. H. Chadwick, The Early church
A slight volume, but perfectly formed, which as well as being lucid and comprehensive, gave me an enduring interest in the early church

7. The Bible
Which leads me here. I resent having to put this down, as I don't exactly read it for pleasure, but it is lodged both in the fabric of society as well as my own personal worldview

8. J.J. Rousseau, The Social contract
As is this. I don't agree with it (or not all of it), but it's hugely influential, well argued and - I was delighted to discover when I got round to reading Rawls - still a powerful engine in modern political theory

9. J.J. Norwich, Byzantium (the trilogy)
Modernity - or at least the Byzantine establishment - has been less kind to this, but it's a great book / trilogy. It's wrong on a lot of the detail and lacks sophistication, but it rattles along, and it made me be a Byzantinist.

10. P.L. Fermor, Mani
This on the other hand made me want to read travel literature. PLF's books are generally brilliant, but this is exceptional, being also both travelogue and the capture of a vanishing society at a point before transition. I think it's his defining work

11. G. Grass, The Tin Drum
As is this. It's magical (in both senses) and fizzes with energy and invention in confronting the Nazi era. It's also a fantastic read.

12. A. Trollope, Barchester Towers
Really this should be the whole sequence, but this is the best, and, well, it's Trollope.

13. L.Durrell, The Alexadnria Quartet
I edited this from Lolita, which, though brilliant (and the first half is simply the best passage of writing I have read in fiction) but this is more significant for me - evocative and cleverly done, even if it does get a little silly towards the end

14. G. Greene, Monsignor Quixote
Simply charming, and funny, and the best exposition of the Trinity that I have ever read (with jokes).

15. H.U. Von Balthasar, Dare we hope that all may be saved? (with a short discourse on hell)
Fewer jokes, but I believe this. And the coda to the title is ace.

I looked up previous preferences once I did this, and there are obvious omissions, and I cracked and changed one. (I also may need to do some marrying up of this list with my stated preferences on FB), but I'll stand by it.

Bibliography, July 2009

Books acquired (TBC)
A number of these, but technical issues (the house is a mess) prevents them being logged.


Books read (9)

BOTM: J. Barnes, Cross Channel

J.M. Coetzee, Youth
G.M. Fraser, Flashman & the mountain of light
R.H. Haggard, She

J. Heller, God Knows
A.Miller, The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation society
R.P. Jhabvala, Get ready for Battle
F. Stark, Ionia
A. Wilson, Hemlock and After

One of the problems with reading only the books I already own is that the quality dips. This is inevitable assuming I don't simply read books at random, as I will have read the best options before now. This year's selection has simply not been as good as last years. Nothing disastrous, but simply average. For example, this month, while Cross-channel was a delightful set of short stories, it doesn't really compare For a start I read 20 books last July - though I did go on holiday. Actually, now I look at that list they weren't brilliant, but two, possibly three, were better than Barnes, while some of the other books on this list were a real slog (Does Heller know his books overstay their welcome, I wonder?). I have a feeling that this is going to get worse as I churn through the unread pile*. Time for some throwing out I feel.

By the way, this shouldn't put anyone off reading Barnes, which was a good, if not entirely substantial, book of short stories about France, some of which were delightful. And is an excellent example of the short story writer's craft (now increasingly rare).

*It's not literally a pile. There are over a hundred books in it and they are all on shelves