Brown: 'I Screwed Up'

'I screwed up,' declared a visibly distraught Gordon Brown at a hastily convened press conference. 'I am here to tell you that I screwed up. I screwed up the economy, I screwed up the country, I might very well have screwed up the world.' His jaw set and his eyes glinting, Brown continued, 'I am to blame. Nobody else. It is all my fault. I take full responsibility. Someone might be able to sort out this mess, but it sure as heck isn't me. I, gentlemen, have screwed up.' With which words, he strode manfully from the platform...
No, wait a moment, actually it was this guy.

The High Life

It seems that Aeroflot still keeps up the best traditions of Soviet-era aviation, with a strong emphasis on customer relations and health and safety. The story is reminiscent of life aboard Air Scotia in the camper-than-camp aviation sitcom from the 90s, The High Life - which, by happy chance, BBC4 is currently repeating.

BBC Aims for the Foot Again

We all know, do we not, that the BBC is working tirelessly night and day to find new ways to foul up - but this one is a real jawdropper. Despite careful spinning to make it appear that Miss T was being 'racist' about a black player, it's now becoming apparent that she was referring to the bizarre spectacle presented at times of stress by Andy Murray's hair. In a private conversation, what's more. The only conclusion we can draw is that the word 'golliwog' itself is, in any context - even off-air - offensive as far as the BBC is concerned. Meanwhile, the charmless lout Chris Moyles (a Radio 1 'disc jockey', m'lud) is repeatedly complained against, often on grounds of racism, and generally escapes uncensured. And smirking middle-aged teenager Jonathan Ross, having made obscene, probably criminal prank calls to an old man - on air - returns to his absurdly lucrative BBC work after a mere suspension. The BBC regards the likes of Moyles and Ross as 'the Talent', and therefore largely immune, whereas small fry like Carol Thatcher they will come down on like a ton of bricks. Well, more fools them - especially as, with their unerring instinct for crisis mismanagement, they've clearly gone and shot themelves in the foot yet again.

Monotheism News

Monotheism has opened a new front in its war on, er... what? Polytheism? Secularism? The wrong kind of monotheism (i.e. Judaism and Christianity)? Still, this satellite throws in Peace and Justice as well, so who can complain? If Woody Guthrie's guitar could kill fascists, surely an Iranian satellite can do its bit for monotheism and the rest. He seems such a nice man too, that Ahmadinejad...

I suppose we can't allow James Joyce's birthday to pass unmarked - 127 today.
'The demand I make of my reader,' he remarked modestly, 'is that he should devote his whole life to reading my works.' I fear most of us have let him down badly there, though for myself I've given him quite a lot of time, having read the Portrait several times, Ulysses twice (parts of it more - what stamina I once had!) and Dubliners several times - and have even managed bits of Finnegans Wake, but feel no urge to repeat the experience. The Wake seems a sad dead end, a hermetic experiment, closing in on itself where Ulysses reaches out to embrace a whole world - its sheer exuberance is astounding (and perhaps exhausted Joyce, leaving him nowhere to go). I'd say the best quick reminder of what a great writer Joyce could be is that wonderful, sad, perfect short story, The Dead. For that alone - even if he'd done nothing else - he'd deserve to be remembered.

Snowbound

Well here I am, snowbound in Suburbia. I am tempted, as ever, to blame global warming - but, being a true sceptic, I shan't, even though I know very well that at the next heatwave the media will be alive with warmist pundits telling us that this is how it's going to be, etc. Where are they now? Strangely silent. I just hope no gardeners took any notice of all that earnest advice over the past couple of years about switching to Mediterranean-style plants - they'll have an awful lot of dead vegetation on their hands now...
Here's Hardy on Snow in the Suburbs. As so often, he somehow achieves greatness while teetering on the brink of extreme badness.

Here's One I Painted Earlier

So now we know: Brown sees himself as very much a
Titian kind of chap - a tirelessly productive genius coming to the end of a career encompassing the macroeconomic equivalent of 'nearly 100 brilliant paintings' and, as he prepares to lay down his fiscal brush for the last time, realising that only now, at the end, is he beginning to learn how to do it. This can be taken as a frank admission that up till now he hasn't had a clue - but I rather doubt that was the intent. Or - which he surely did intend - it can be taken as an effort to align himself with greatness, with the wisdom of experience, with a reborn gusto for the conquest of new worlds. Unfortunately for Gordon, it seems to have been almost universally read as yet another symptom of his increasingly delusional state. It takes more than mere nerve, more than chutzpah, more than hubris for a busted PM who has bankrupted his country and is clinging to power by his fingernails to liken himself to one of the greatest artists the world has ever seen or is ever likely to see - and one whose late works in particular are wonders that transcend even his earlier triumphs. As the man said to T. Danforth Quayle - I knew Jack Titian, Jack Titian was a friend of mine. You, Mr Brown, are no Titian.
But enough of this sad mad man and his quest to lead us all into perdition. There is good news on the Titian front too - Diana and Actaeon has been saved, Diana and Calisto will surely follow. This suggests that we might be, after all and despite the best efforts of our masters, a civilised nation.