Sorry?

Yesterday's unedifying show trial of four 'leading bankers' proved once again that Sorry is actually the easiest word to say. This is because it has a double meaning, expressing either remorse/repentance for one's actions, or regret at the way things turned out. Clearly the bankers were using it in its second sense. We could do with a new word that is less weasely.

Mutual Respect

Yesterday Ahmadinejad declared that Iran was open to the idea of talks with the US, provided there was 'mutual respect'. His audience continued their well-drilled chants of 'Death to America!'.
Clearly, to demonstrate full mutuality, Obama should deliver his response in front of an audience chanting 'Death to Iran!' Or is there perhaps a double standard at work here?

Beware the Expert...

Bryan is already onto the tergiversation of the 'experts' on eggs and related matters. As ever, it's mildly agreeable when 'expert scientific advice' finally catches up with one's own commonsensical view - but the tyranny of supposed expertise continues unchecked, and there are some who would insist that the 'independent' views of the 'expert scientists' must take precedence over all other considerations in policy making. Prof Colin Blakemore is one of them, making his point this morning in a discussion stirred by a government drug adviser recommending - on scientific grounds - the downgrading of Ecstasy. I wonder if the likes of Blakemore ever pause to think what the world would be like if the viewsof the 'experts' were translated directly into policy. These same experts, remember, assured us confidently that by now hundreds of thousands of us, in this country, would be dead from an Aids pandemic. A little later, they were assuring us with equal confidence that similar numbers would be dead from a BSE pandemic. (They also, on a smaller scale, assured us that we'd all get Salmonella if we dared to eat an egg - the ghastly Edwina Currie made the mistake of taking them seriously on that, and lost her job.) The only mass death that occurred in this country was in the event the unnecessary panic slaughter of millions of healthy cattle - on the orders of the 'scientific experts'. I really shouldn't mention 'global warming', but it does fit the familiar pattern of 'experts' forming a consensus and talking up a panic, and I'd at least suggest that governments should think very hard (that'll be the day) before taking their 'independent scientific advice' on board... When 'experts' hold forth, have plenty of salt at hand. And when eating an egg.

New Meanings: Racism?

It seems we've now reached a level of public insanity where 'inclusiveness' (usually thought of as anti-racist) can be labelled 'racist' and be used as a weapon to hound a well-intentioned person out of a job. This is, of course, straightforward bullying, the word 'racist' used as a blunt weapon. In yesterday's Start the Week, there was a long and convoluted discussion of the Satanic Verses affair and its legacy, in the course of which Andrew Marr asked one question that made all the rest of the argument pretty irrelevant: Isn't it just that we're scared of offending Muslims because they're uniquely likely to resort to violence? This question (and its implied answer) remained hovering in the air.
What, then, is racism? I would suggest it goes something like this. I wonder if he'll lose his job. I wonder also at the quality of advice the boy Milliband is getting....

Pictures from a (very small) Exhibition

I've just paid a quick visit to Tate Britain - not, I need hardly tell you, for the delights of the Altermodern Tate triennial exhibit (shouty Waldemar Januszczak is surely right that the Tate-based 'modern art' racket of today is the equivalent of the Salon in 1860s Paris - over-intellectualised, self-referring, self-serving, inward-looking and irrelevant - and must soon be blown away by a healthy blast of real art). I was there for a mooch, and to have a look at this tiny exhibition - just 35 pictures in one small room. I'm glad I went - there are at least half a dozen works there which are worth the trip. The Francis Towne is of course wonderful, as is a large Constable drawing of fir trees in Hampstead, but there's also a tiny, gemlike Holman Hunt watercolour of Fishing Boats by Moonlight; a fresh-as-a-daisy Eric Ravilious of an observation post in rural Essex in 1939 (he was dead a couple of years later, lost on an RAF air-sea rescue operation); a meticulous watercoloured pen-and-ink by Charles Ginner of A London Back Garden; a gloriously intense watercolour (plus body colour, gum arabic, the works) of The Bellman, an illustration to Il Penseroso, from the last year of Samuel Palmer's life; and a quite beautiful pastel of Women on the Quay at La Rochelle by William Nicholson - as good as a Degas, which is about as good as pastel gets. Then, in a display case in the middle of the room, there's a colour study for a mural of Country Life which Edward Bawden did for the Festival of Britain. The watercolour study is on card, pleated like a screen, immaculately drawn and designed - and, like so much of Bawden's work, it puts a smile on your face. All in all, then, a gem of an exhibition - cheering, rewarding and refreshing rather than (like so many gallery shows) exhausting. It's in Gallery 5, but you'll have to hurry - it ends on Sunday.

Stoatally Bonkers

I wonder what is going on here. Perhaps the stoat is kicking itself for not having changed into its ermine coat of near-invisibility...

Nothing that is not there...

Looking at the sad remnants of half-melted snowmen in the parks, it occurred to me that I had somehow got through the recent 'snow event' without once referring to this... There, the omission is repaired.