Seamus Heaney for Protestants Too

Poets produce work that speaks not only for themselves but also give voice through which others can find articulation. Seamus Heaney does this for Protestant and Catholic alike. Fintan O'Toole commented on Heaney's conflicting impulses and how he gave expression to them.

"He was drawn to both Irish and English poetic traditions. He also lived through the death of the ancient rural world into which he was born and the emergence of a globalised modern Ireland. He struggled with contradictions, paradoxes, conflicting impulses. 

His genius lay in his ability to hover between them, to give each side of a political or emotional equation its full weight and proper due without becoming the prisoner of either. WB Yeats, the poet whose influence he both absorbed and transcended, wrote in a time of Irish violence that “we are closed in and the key is turned/ On our uncertainty” . 

Heaney humanised uncertainty, made ambiguity rich with possibilities. As he put it in the beautifully homely metaphor of Terminus: 

“Two buckets were easier carried than one./I grew up in between.”"

Fintan continued: "He was not, in that sense, a national poet. He knew too much about the dangers of tribalism and the foolishness of slogans to ever want to be a spokesman for the collective. He would have agreed with Yeats’s dictum that “We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.”

Nick Cohen - Censorship is at its most effective when no one admits it exists

Nick Cohen wrote in The Spectator here:

"Censorship is at its most effective when no one admits it exists."

He continued: "The first step to freeing yourself from oppressive power is to find the courage to admit that you are afraid. The more people confess to being afraid, the less reason there is to fear and the easier it is to isolate repressive forces."

People in Northern Ireland have long been bullied, menaced, threatened, terrified and intimidated by hostile, hysterical and sinister gangs and sweaty politicians, and by extension have opted-out and silenced themselves from the process. This needs to end.

Day of Doodling with the Arts Council NI

  

On Wednesday 6 November 2013 I had the eminent pleasure and privilege to attend the Arts Council Northern Ireland staff and client day out to W5 at the Odyssey in Belfast as the rapportage illustrator. My brief was to capture events and to produce a cascade of illustrative candour. It still fascinates me, that we have the most unimaginable photographic and camera technology at our finger tips, yet men, women and children are awe-struck by the artist that can translate the fluid moment into a material object. It was this irresistible draw and awe to the almost-magical that first drew me into this area of cartooning people. 

What was extra special was that I was given the opportunity to showcase my drawings from the morning during the afternoon session. They say that imitation is the surest form of flattery. For me as a cartoonist, laughter if the finest form of compliment, because then you know you've captured the person and added a humorous extra. So let it be said, there were plenty of laughs. Taking to the podium also gave me the chance to talk about my morning's work and to also share my journey or "pilgrimage", as Grayson Perry calls it, from being an aspiring lawyer to artist.

Below you will see a selection of cartoons which I produced during the event of the various speakers. Hope you enjoy and please contact me on brianjohnspencr@gmail.com if you would like me to come to your event!

Fintan O'Toole on Arthur Griffiths

In 1992 Fintan O'Toole wrote of the founder of Sinn Fein, Arthur Griffiths as a racist, an anti-Semite and a reverse imperialist. In the Irish Times of August 15 1992 he wrote:

"Griffith is many of the things Mr [Brian] Mae says he is - patriotic, far-thinking, personally honest. But he is also in many ways a repugnant figure, the progenitor of a particularly nasty strain of far right-wing Irish nationalism. If anything, he is the classic example of selfish patriotism, claiming for his own country rights which he was not prepared to extend to others among the oppressed."

Fintan O'Toole continued and explained Griffiths as a racist and reverse imperialist:

One of the reasons for remembering Griffiths now is that he stands, at this time of virulent and destructive nationalism in Europe, as a great example of how nationalist ideals can become detached from their origins in the Englightenment principles of equality, tolerance, and humanity. Whereas a great tradition of Irish political thinking from Swift through O'Connell to James Connolly understood that Ireland's rights are inseparable from the rights of despised races around the world and from the rights of the oppressed withing Ireland, Griffith tried to break that connection. To the extent that he succeeded, his memory should be a bitter one. 

Griffith strongest antecedent in Irish nationalism is not O'Connell's democratic populism, but John Mitchell's peculiar brand of reverse imperialism which could encompass both a passionate denunciation of English savagery in Ireland and a passionate support for slavery in America. The mind-set is not one which challenges the assumptions of Victorian and racial imperialism but merely one which wants the Irish to be given their rightful places among the master races."

Fintan O'Toole explained that Griffiths' racist nationalism came from his time in the latter half of the 1890s in the Transvaal "as a propagandist for Boer nationalism." Fintan O'Toole also explained Griffiths' hard-line anti-semitism:

"Griffith in the midst of the 1913 Lockout, in which he was strongly on the side of the employers, wrote and instructive afterword to a re-issue of Mitchell's 'Jail Journal'. In it, he makes plain his support for Mitchell's contempt for the anti-slavery movement in America... Mitchell, wrote Griffiths, needed no excuse for 'refusing to hold the negro his peer'... To [the race nationalism in Transvaal (where Griffiths spent the later half of the 1890s)] he added the worst of the influences of the worst of the modernising right-wing movements of the Europe of his day, drawing heavily on both Bismarckian Germany and anti-Dreyfusard France. 

The latter influence allowed him to add anti-semitism to racism in his political thinking. In the United Irishman he thundered against those newspapers which supported Dreyfus as 'the impotent ravings of a disreputable minority which is universally regarded as a community  of thieves and traitors.' 

When the Jewish people of Limerick were under attack in the pogrom of 1904s, Griffith, the great defender of Irish rights, weighed in against them, and even attacked the great nationalist Michael Davitt for his defence of them. His language is a remarkable foreshadowing of that used a little later by Adolf Hitler in 'Mein Kempf'."

As I wrote on the blog previously, Christopher Hitchens has made it clear that anti-semitism is a prejudice held by the mentally and morally unwell. Christopher Hitchens explained this of Billy Graham here. We can exchange the name Billy Graham with Arthur Griffiths and get a very clear picture and image of the nature and character of the founder of Sinn Fein. As Hitchens said:

"The evidence is that Billy Graham [in this instance, Arthur Griffiths] suffers from a very horrible disease, a version of paranoia that's known colloquially as anti-Semitism. It's impossible to be mentally or morally healthy if you suffer from this disorder. [He was] sick with this conspiratorial, infantile nonsense and that's not pardonable." 

On a side note, in 1904 Arthur Griffith suggested the idea of a dual-monarchy between Ireland and Great Britain in his book The Resurrection of Hungary. Griffith explained how in 1867 Hungary went from being part of the Austrian Empire to a separate co-equal kingdom in Austria-Hungary. Griffiths' was not a monarchist but supported the concept for the Anglo-Irish relationship. It was rejected by other Irish political leaders.

Grayson Perry - "How do we become a contemporary artist?"

Grayson Perry's fourth and final lecture in the Reith series was went by the title, I Found Myself in the Art World. This fourth lecture was directed by one question, as Grayson asked himself and the audience rhetorically: "how do we become a contemporary artist?"

Firstly. We need to work with an almost unconscious awareness. A "relaxed fluency". For as Grayson Perry said, "self-consciousness is crippling." As he said:

"Pablo Picasso said, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” And I think what he’s trying to say is that you know a child has this unselfconscious joy of creativity and they’re always playing and painting and making things without a thought in the world, and then as we get older of course we become aware of art history and that what we’re not doing might not be very good and so it makes it harder and harder and harder as we get older."

The irony is that art education is an education in self-awareness. As Grayson Perry said:

"And one of the things that is very troubling, of course, is that art education in many ways is an advanced course in self-consciousness because you have to become very aware of the business you’re going into. A central irony is that the very enemy of expression - that is being very ‘oh my god, am I doing the right thing?’ - is tortuous necessity to enter the art world."

You need the "carefree joy of a child". That require's work. You need to kindle the child's flame of creativity and "keep that sort of burning, precious, childlike glimmer of creativity burning."

Secondly. Artists who've faced hardship and difficulty in their upbringing can find themselves using and transforming this experience, through an amazing process in the mind, into gold and into marvellous masterpieces that everyone can all appreciate. As Grayson said:

"The clinical scientist Raymond Tallis, he said, “Art is expressing one’s universal wound - the wound of living a finite life of incomplete meanings.” And I like that idea - that you know it’s quite a sort of noble journey we’re on."

It's the artist's mythologizing story.

Thirdly. Art is a "very primitive creative urge." As Grayson said:

"Art is not some sort of fun add-on. But if you go back to the Ice Age, the artists then, they still made art and yet they were constantly under threat from cold and starvation and from predators, and yet they still set aside hours and hours and hours to make art. It’s very, very deep - this need to express."

Fourthly. Outside artists can make great mainsteam artists because they can often operate free of the crippling self-consciousness. Grayson said:

"Outsider art is art done by people who haven’t been to art school, probably don’t even have much knowledge about the art world or the market or they’ve maybe not even been doing it for other people; they just do it for themselves and never show anybody."

Fifthly. It takes time. He said:

"It does of course exist and that shock of pleasure is one of the you know greatest things that anybody who’s interested in art can experience, but the best artists, they take quite a while to find their voice. It takes a long time. I mean an art career is a marathon, it’s not a sprint."

He further explained: "And I think one of the best descriptions of that process is by a guy called Arno Minkkinen, a Finnish photographer, and he had this thing called - The Helsinki Bus Station Theory, he said. And when you’re leaving art college, he said, and you choose your style and what path in the art world you’re going to take, it’s like going to Helsinki bus station. There’s about twenty platforms and each platform, maybe ten buses leave from it, and you choose your bus and you get on the bus. And each stop is a year in your career. And maybe after about three stops, you get off and you kind of walk into a gallery and you show them your work and the people look at it and they go, “Oh very nice, very nice. Reminds me a bit of Martin Parr though.” (LAUGHTER) And you go, uurrrgh!! (exasperated sound) I’m not original, I’m not unique, and you get really cross. And you get a taxi back to the bus station and you get on a different bus. And of course what happens is the same thing - you get off at three years and the same thing happens. What you need to do, says Arno Minkkinen, is stay on the effing bus!"
Sixth. Crossing the boundary from student into the realm of the artist. He said:

"And then there’s that boundary, you know the boundary between being a student and becoming an artist. And I think that moment often happens to you at a party. You’re at a party and someone says to you, “Oh what do you do?” and you go, “Errrr …” and you have to summon up the courage to say it and you go, “I…. I’m an artist.” And I think that’s quite a poignant moment. You know you’ve crossed that boundary, you’ve started out on that hazardous path."

Seventh. It's a privilege.

"I think it’s a very noble thing to be an artist. You’re a pilgrim on the road to meaning."

Eight. Be careful of the "Picasso Napkin Syndrome". He said:

"It started to get into this sort of airy-fairy whatever anybody will pay for it kind of arena, and that’s a very strange moment. And at that moment, you start getting what I call “Picasso Napkin Syndrome” (LAUGHTER) and this is after the mythological power of that famous artist. He could sort of pay for an expensive meal by just doodling on the table linen. And it’s a very dangerous blessing that an artist can get - that Picasso Napkin Syndrome - because it’s like the Midas touch. You’re suddenly tempted to churn out your signature works because there’s a big collector demand for it and anything you sign is worth money! I mean literally artists like Andy Warhol literally did that. He would just sign you know a dollar bill and then suddenly it would be worth a hundred dollars. And that temptation to churn it out is very dangerous."

Nine. Be wary of the art world. He said:

"It’s a delicate organism and the art world can be very corrosive. Caustic atmosphere. I protect my ball of creative energy, I protect it with a shield made of jaded irony. (LAUGHTER) A helmet of mischief and a breast plate of facetiousness. And I wield my carefully crafted blade of cynicism.

Lastly. As Grayson Perry said:

"There’s no recipe for being an artist. That’s what’s good about it nowadays - you can be any sort of artist."

Grayson Perry - Outside Artists

In the fourth lecture of his Reith Lecture series on BBC Radio 4, Grayson Perry said that, for artists, "self-consciousness is crippling." He suggested that non-trained artists are more unfettered, more unencumbered and freer from this concern. He said: 

"One of the groups of artists perhaps who don’t suffer from self-consciousness as much as others are outsider artists. Since I was a teenager, I’ve loved outsider art. Outsider art is art done by people who haven’t been to art school, probably don’t even have much knowledge about the art world or the market or they’ve maybe not even been doing it for other people; they just do it for themselves and never show anybody."

He continued:

"But becoming an artist is not just a process of having low impulse control or a burning unconscious desire to express yourself. There is a point, a fixed rung if you like, on the greasy pole of becoming an artist; and it does feel - many artists here will probably say - it does feel like a greasy pole. There is a fixed rung and that is going to art college because anybody can become an artist without going to art college - I mean outsider artists are a fantastic example of it - but it’s very difficult to make a career as an artist."

Grayson Perry made another interesting observation on the returns made by those who have invested time and money on going to university. He said:

"I mean on page thirty-one of the Department of Innovation and Skills Report, The Returns of Higher Education 2011, there’s a rather stark graph. I feel quite bad almost bringing this up in an art college, but I thought I have to confront this situation, which is that compared to someone who’s never been to university at all, the average art student will make just 6.3 per cent more money than that person. Women though will make 11.7 per cent more; men 1 per cent less than if you never go to art college. And that’s quite a shocker. But in many ways, I find it almost heartening because I think people still want to go to art college! And we’re always talking about arts, not about money or anything like that. So if these people, they still want to go to art college even though statistics staring them in the face are telling them they’re probably perpetuating their poverty by doing it, (LAUGHTER) I think that’s lovely. I think that’s a good thing. We almost need to celebrate it. But for an individual, there is no guarantee of making money in the art world." 

Giles Coren - Does education stifle your creative spark?

Giles Coren thinks so. Writing in The Times he said:

"It is more and more widely recognised that education cripples you, strips you of your originality and wit and spark."

He continued: "According to Jaron Lanier’s book Who Owns the Future?, the big tech companies are even now paying the brightest and best at Harvard and Yale to leave university and work for them while they are still fresh, uncorrupted and full of ideas. It is a given at the cutting edge that dropping out of college — like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg — is the mark of worth, not graduating.

He made an interesting observation on British universities, the democratisation of third level education, its effects and fees. He said:

"And if the internet were not enough to kill universities, then the determination of successive British governments to send every feckless dolt in the land into tertiary education, regardless of aptitude, has finished the job by necessitating the introduction of fees that will increasingly drive any genuinely bright candidate away from dusty halls full of dunderheads and straight into the workplace."

The similarities between Muslim and Irish anti-British language and feeling

Dr Usama Hasan of the Quilliam Foundation

Dr Usama Hasan is a senior researcher at the Quilliam Foundation (profile here) and part-time imam. He appeared on BBC Radio 4's PM show with Eddie Mair on Monday November4 2013 to talk about anti-British sentiment among young muslim men. He said:

"This is a wider problem within British Islam. There are many young people who feel alienated. They are sometimes subjected to extremist teaching which says they cannot be a friend or loyal to the west. That their identity has to be with Muslims only abroad, that's the Islamist idea with Muslims worldwide, global ummah. And the ultimate result of that is young men that want to fight and die for a cause. They won't fight and die for their own country - certainly not a European of western country - but they will go and join a militant group like the Taliban or al-shabab or al-Qaeda and go and fight in Syria or Somalia or Afghanistan. We have to understand that and grapple with it openly.

He was then asked by Eddie Mair: "How do we counter it?" He responded:

"The best way to deal with it is to bring the debate into the open and challenge the extremist ideas with better ideas rather than drive it under ground... Young people holding extremist views should be listened to and debated with calmly, to show them that Britain is actually a very tolerant and inclusive society which will give them the opportunity to participate in this society. 

There is a paranoid and conspiratorial mindset that everyone is against them and that the west is against Islam. As long as they're fed that kind of mentality then they will continue to operate in dubious ways.

There is no absolute parallel between the anti-British sentiment held by muslims and more hardline Irish nationalists and republican; but the parallels are very much there. Joe Brolly explained how Britain was regarded as he was growing up. He said:

"If I’d announced thirty years ago I was intending to play rugby and arrived home from school with a drawing of the Queen, they would have been sending for the men in white coats."

This is still a mindset and regard held by many Irish nationalists and republicans to this day. Brolly's plane of regard has, frankly, broadened and matured and taken in the context of the 21st Century. (Much like the west-Belfast, Ardoyne Catholic, British soldier here.) . As Alan in Belfast reported, "Joe Brolly’s son plays rugby for Malone and goes to the Cubs (coming home recently with a drawing of the Queen) [and] Joe finds himself standing for the [British] national anthem if he’s at a Cubs service to pick up his son."

The anti-Imperialism, anti-colonialism language employed by Muslims and directed against America is so similar in tone, mode and demeanour as that used by Irish republicans against Britain. Take the language used by the deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guard, who said:

"The crimes of US leaders and international Zionism in dealing with Iran's great nation will never be erased from public memories and minds."

Like in Iran, Belfast and Northern Ireland has a class of young people who are participants of the emerging world culture, but they also have an angry, hostile and hysterical class who are lovers of medievalism and haters of modernity.

We in Northern Ireland, like Quilliam, need to calmly and openly debate those who hold extremist views and challenge those extremist ideas with better ideas. People in Belfast and across Northern Ireland are being fed and actively hold a paranoid and conspiratorial mindset that Britain is bad, that Britain is the cause of all ill in Ireland and that Britain is the transcendent issue even above the economy, jobs, education and healthcare (the same for loyalists of course). People will continue to be fed this perverse philoshophy and they will continue to act in dubious ways and so we must counter this with reasoned, considered argument. We cannot allow these superstitious ideas to fester under the surface.

Modernity versus History in Tehran and Belfast

Christina Lamb wrote in the Sunday Times from Tehran describing how the young people live. She said:

"It is Friday evening in the Lorca cafe in downtown Tehran. Norah Jones is crooning over the speakers and the tables are packed with young people drinking lattes and smoothies, smoking and texting on their iPhones as they plan their night out. 

The boys are in jeans, T-shirts and leather jackets; the girls in tight jeans and colourful trainers or boots, headscarves so far back on their heads as to be barely a gesture. Later some of them will go to a friend’s loft-style apartment to watch Modern Family or Top Gear on satellite television, while eating pomegranate pips or pistachio nougat, and surfing the internet. One leaves to head to a rock concert." 

However there's an important qualification. Christina Lamb quoted a 21 year old chemical engineering student called Sohail who said: 

"You might look at our lives and think what's the problem? We're doing all these things but it's behind closed doors. We've no freedom. We'd just like to be normal like the rest of the world."

Christina Lamb then reported how just down the road from the cafe is a former American embassy known as the "Den of Espionage", taken by Islamic students in November 1979 and now used as a base for the Basji militia. November 4 2013 was the anniversary of the takeover and was celebrated by a group called the Death to the US Committee in an event called a "Grand Day of Death to America." A deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guard said:

"The crimes of US leaders and international Zionism in dealing with Iran's great nation will never be erased from public memories and minds."

YouGov finds that graduates aren't "work-ready"

YouGov has found that half of the regular graduate employers in Britain are finding their recruits without the basic skills to cope under pressure. The polling of company leaders found that just under one in five businesses believe that graduates are "work-ready". Only 19% of business leaders said all or most graduate recruits were "work-ready". Read more in The Telegraph here.

Libby Purves in The Times then piled on the pressure when writing in The Times. She said:

"Two years ago a poll of big graduate recruiters such as HSBC, KPMG and Procter & Gamble also lamented a shortage of “employability skills”. Specific grumbles concerned lack of punctuality, commercial awareness and willingness to work within a system and a team."

She the concluded: "One way or another, we should ease that gap between education and the hard-nosed workplace." Another point: Figures from earlier in  2013 showed that almost one in 10 students – 26,000 – were left without a job or a further education course after graduating in summer 2012. Data showed that the unemployment rate jumped much higher at some universities, with 22.6 per cent of graduates without a job after leaving London South Bank university.

Christianism versus Christianity, Ctd

Andrew Sullivan explains christianism, he says here: 

"I do not believe that adherence to doctrinal lines makes one a Christianist. A Christianist, like an Islamist, cannot rest until his view of the world is enforced by law on others through political action. A Christian can be a rigid doctrinal enforcer in his own faith community without being a Christianist. Let me give Rod an example of a doctrinal line I would not cross: the Incarnation. Or, in fact, the entire Nicene Creed, which I recite at Mass with conviction. But I have no desire at all to impose that view of the meaning of the universe on anyone else whatsoever – let alone backed by the coercion of the state.That is where I differ from Christianists."

In full here. Previous post in the series here.

Linda Irvine - Being a Protestant and being Irish

Linda Irvine explained to William Crawley on the BBC programme It's a Blas, which followed William's journey to learn Irish, how she viewed Irish identity and the language. She said:

"I feel I'm British, but I'm Irish. I feel that as Protestants from Northern Ireland we are the other Irish. We are the ignored, forgotten Irish that have been over looked. Because when people think of Irish identity they think of catholic, they think of nationalist and they think of republican. And that's not who I am. That's not my identity. So I think that is why people from my community have rejected that idea of an Irish identity and what goes along with that - Irish dancing, Irish language. So for them that is something that is alien to them. Yet for me I see actually now that that identity is mine as well."

Being a woman in Iran

Christina Lamb spoke with Iranian physics student and talented pianist Sepideh, 25, who was arrested two years ago for being improperly dressed with her coat was above her knee. Sepideh explained:

"The police bundled me into their van, then drove around and picked up other women until it was full. They took photos of us as if we were criminals and we were held for about five hours. Some of the women were crying and pleading but I was angry and determined to stay calm. Finally they called our parents to bring ‘proper clothes’. After that I wore shorter clothes, I just became careful to look out for the Ershad. I felt insulted." 

Khaterah of Tehran University suggested things have started to change under Rouhani. She said: "At Tehran University we are all dressing and speaking more freely."

Press Regulation - Prior restraint and self-censorship

The problem with the libel and speech/press-control laws is not necessarily the active litigating against journalists and bloggers but the fear of litigation. A journalist or citizen-blogger may want to pursue a line of inquiry but exercise prior restraint and self-censorship against the self in the fear that they themselves could be pursued for legal damages. The Sunday Times editorial of November 2013 said of this:

"When a reporter drops a particular line of inquiry, or decides not to risk writing about certain establishment figures, press freedom shrinks - and with it what the public is allowed to know." 

The editorial continued: "It is the job of the press to keep the politicians honest. It is not the job if politicians to decide what the press can print."

George Orwell on Celtic Nationalism

George Orwell writes here on Celtic nationalism:

"Its motive force is a belief in the past and future greatness of the Celtic peoples, and it has a strong tinge of racialism. The Celt is supposed to be spiritually superior to the Saxon — simpler, more creative, less vulgar, less snobbish, etc. — but the usual power hunger is there under the surface. One symptom of it is the delusion that Eire, Scotland or even Wales could preserve its independence unaided and owes nothing to British protection. Among writers, good examples of this school of thought are Hugh McDiarmid and Sean O'Casey. No modern Irish writer, even of the stature of Yeats or Joyce, is completely free from traces of nationalism."

Bureaucracy - The rule by Nobody

Steve Hilton, former director of strategy for David Cameron, left Downing Street in 2012 exasperated at the schlerosis, rolling tedium and near-impossibleness of getting anything done under the Niagra of Whitehall bureaucracy. As he said, "the bureaucracy masters the politicians."

An American friend recently recounted his experience of trying to negotiate an Irish passport out of the joint Irish-American bureaucracy. By his testimony, the process was a vapid and satanic mill of tunnels, u-turns, closed doors and no-men. It overthrows the senses and almost breaks the person. Hannah Arendt wrote fluently on the blunt awfulness of bureaucracy in her book On Violence. She also explained the bureaucracy's inherent leaning towards fostering unrest. She said:

"In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one could argue, to whom one could present grievances, on whom the pressures of power could be exerted. Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless we have a tyranny without a tyrant."

She continued: "Bureaucracy, or the rule by an intricate system of bureaux in which no men, neither one nor the best, neither the few nor the many, can be held responsible, and which could be properly called the rule by Nobody. Indeed, if we identify tyranny as the government that is not held to give account of itself, rule by Nobody is clearly the most tyrannical of all, since there is no one left who could even be asked to answer for what is being done. It is this state of affairs which is among the most potent causes for the current world-wide rebellious unrest."

Hannah Arendt comes via Maria Popova here.

Christopher Hitchens on Opinion Polls

Christopher Hitchens lances the polling habit here:

"What we've done with democracy is to assume it's a measurement of public opinion. When I was young there was quite an argumnet as to whether newspapers should even publish opinion polls, because they were thought to be unscientific and probably too easy to skew. Now newspapers commission expensive opinion polls usually in concert with a television or broadcasting organisation. Commission their own polls and then print their own findings as news on the front page when they've got nothing else to do. This is a parody of democracy. It's not even populism really. It's pseudo-science for one thing and it's anti-democratic for another. 

No I fear people have got so attached to it, they've forgotten what it means, that word now. So it's quite possible we're now due for a new word and I'll brood on that. And popular sovereignty, no." 

Video (at 26 minutes) in full, Christopher Hitchens explains here. He also talks about polling in the video here and further below:

"Pollster originally meant huckster. Basically somebody making a living out of something that's vaguely fraudulent. It used to be that newspapers would wonder if they should print opinion poll results at all, let along commission them. Now they commission them and wonder if they should use them for their own background information or whether they should themselves print them. Now the Washington Post, Newsweek and ABC will combine to produce a front page story and lead story on the network. Bought and paid for themselves.

He continued:

"Absolutely economises on work, thought and reflection... it does itself. It doesn't require any work, any thought."

Christopher Hitchens on Obama's Nobel Peace Prize

"We thus find ourselves in a rather peculiar universe where good intentions are rewarded before they have undergone the strenuous metamorphosis of being translated into good deeds or hard facts and it becomes increasingly difficult to entertain the suspicion that there is something explicitly political in the underlying process of Nobelista decision making."

Richard Haass - Majority in Northern Ireland want compromise

"My own sense from the bulk of the submissions is that the vast majority of people here are ready for compromise, are ready for progress, are ready to move on."

Richard Hass in full here. You can submit your submissions to the Panel of Parties in the NI Executive here.

The First Amendment and Britain

When I made the point that Northern Ireland needs the same liberty to express ideas and opinions as in the US I was rebuffed on the point that the First Amendment allows channels such as Fox News and the ideas it disseminates to flourish. Fair point. And I took it without much of a response, although I knew it was a matter that needed more exploration. I think Nick Cohen writing in The Spectator is onto something. He said here:

"The left blames the failure of the masses to embrace its ideas on the malign influence of Murdoch and Dacre. If attacking freedom of the press will help their cause, they will do it. The left wants right wing journalists silenced, the right want left wing journalists silenced, and everybody wants to tell the BBC what it can and can’t broadcast. 

In the United States, Fox News and the New York Times fight like cat and dog. But when James Risen, the White House correspondent of Fox News, was being threatened by the Obama administration, the New York Times and liberal journalists across America defended him steadfastly. Whatever their political differences, they believed in the greater importance of the first amendment to the American constitution. 

It reads: 

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances" 

If you ever become a temporary dictator, and have the chance to enact just one law, make it a British first amendment. As each day passes, the need for it grows ever more urgent."

Being Irish is about more than being an uber-Gael

There is no such thing a model Irish person. Cultural nationalism may have created an mono-type set ideal, but these notions are incredibly dangerous. As Conor Cruise O'Brien said, it's "recklessly idiosyncratic." Fintan O'Toole has said that Irish cultural nationalism has created "a prison for the Irish people which [has] crippled their true identity. To be Irish was not enough. To be Irish you had to be not British."

This is the status quo. A perverse ideal that seeks a prelapsarian Irishness. And if you can't reach this, you're denounced as a "west Brit." You can't win. As Fintan O'Toole said, "the choice was to hate England or to be a West Brit." The supreme irony Anglo-Irish relation is, as Michael Kirke said, that "The Irish constitute Britain’s biggest ethnic group and vice-versa."

Going forward, said Fintan O'Toole, "[A] new identity has to be positive rather than negative. But it also has to find a way to include Britishness." As Brian O'Connor said: "Being Irish involves a lot more than some uber-Gael, Provo-lite, pub-patriot wet-dream. It always has."

Lindsay Allen on the 11-plus

Lindsay Allen said in a November 2009 episode of BBC Hearts and Minds:

"I’m nothing exceptional. I grew up in a working class housing estate in East Belfast. My father was a storeman in the Aircraft Factory, my mother was a part time school dinner lady. I went to the primary school which was literally at the bottom of our street. 

So forgive me if I appear sceptical when I hear the 11 plus described as a socially divisive mechanism for ensuring that the privileged sons and daughters of the middle classes are given an unfair advantage in life! None of the guys I went to school with felt that they had been born with a silver spoon in their mouth. Maybe some of the homes they came from, didn’t have spoons! 

On the contrary, it gave working class kids of my generation a real shot at the sort of careers that up to that point had only been open to the sons and daughters of the middle classes, and what was wrong with that? 

There is a problem with the 11 plus, but it’s not that it is attempting to assess the academic potential of children.  

It’s that politicians with an ideology to grind have convinced parents and children that the “Transfer Test” is their child’s once in a lifetime shot at success, “miss the boat at eleven and you’ve missed it for life”! And this scaremongering exerts enormous pressure on both parents and children who are terrified of being branded as failures! 

Ms. Ruane’s answer, is to slam the door of opportunity in the child’s face! This Left Wing commitment to mediocrity in education means that in order to achieve an equality of performance across all schools, you not only have to try and lift the worst schools up, you also have drag the best schools down!  

The result of this misguided ideology is the sort of scandalous and shambolic debacle we have at present where last Saturday anxious children and worried parents jumped through multiple hoops in an attempt to get into a school with a reputation for academic excellence.  

And I ask again, “What’s wrong with wanting that?"

Andrew Sullivan, editor of the Dish and esteemed political blogging attributed the destruction of the grammar school in England and Wales as the reason for him becoming a conservative. He said:

"When the left destroyed this unique avenue of social mobility, in favour of the cult of equality of outcomes, it made me a conservative"

A protestant party for a protestant people

In a previous post here ('A catholic party for a catholic people') we covered Patrick Murphy's critique of Sinn Fein in The Irish News - a party that operates to the exclusion of the protestant people of Northern Ireland. The DUP are the opposite side of the same medieval coin. As Alex Kane said:

"The DUP (along with the UUP) regards its primary task as the protection, promotion and preservation of unionist interests. Put bluntly, that means doing everything possible to undermine the republican, united-Ireland agenda. Meanwhile, Sinn Fein (with the SDLP) sees its primary task as continuing to erase, or at least blur, the signs, symbols, touchstones and benchmarks which sharply define Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom."

And as we said in the previous post here, the Assembly cannot stand if parties cannot come to realize that they owe a duty and responsibility to those people who are perceived to be on the other side.

The West-Belfast British Soldier

Colum is standing with his prosthetics in the background.

Colum McGeown, a west-Belfast Catholic joined the British army at 23 and by doing so he broke the west-Belfast rules. He said:

"Ok, how about I follow the west-Belfast rules and live in that hostel for the next 50 years of my life and do f**k all, or break the rules, see the world, have a meaningful life, decent job, have some wonderful and challenging experiences and get paid and start a family. You obviously know what one I went for."

Colum said also: "For me, to develop hatred in my heart for something that happened 15 years before I was even though of would be an ignorant stance to take." And here's the important bit: "I can only be influenced by what happens in my life." And that's why Brian Walker was very very right when he said that "Obsessing over history and identity won't educate our kids or bring them closer together."

Emperor’s New Clothes syndrome

Felix Salmon via Andrew Sullivan explains why expensive win tastes better:

"Emperor’s New Clothes syndrome... what you see on the price tag... is important information which can tell you a lot about what you’re drinking. And the key to any kind of connoisseurship is informed appreciation of something beautiful."

A protestant party for a protestant people

In a previous post here ('A catholic party for a catholic people') we covered Patrick Murphy's critique of Sinn Fein in The Irish News - a party that operates to the exclusion of the protestant people of Northern Ireland. The DUP are the opposite side of the same medieval coin. As Alex Kane said:

"The DUP (along with the UUP) regards its primary task as the protection, promotion and preservation of unionist interests. Put bluntly, that means doing everything possible to undermine the republican, united-Ireland agenda. Meanwhile, Sinn Fein (with the SDLP) sees its primary task as continuing to erase, or at least blur, the signs, symbols, touchstones and benchmarks which sharply define Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom."

And as we said in the previous post here, the Assembly cannot stand if parties cannot come to realize that they owe a duty and responsibility to those people who are perceived to be on the other side.

An Open Letter from Northern Ireland

I'm contacting you about the continuing unrest and uncertainty in Northern Ireland.

The context is this. The most cynical and sinister elements in NI society have been very violent and vocal over the last year, at huge cost to the local economy and at huge damage to the reputation of the province. The future looks bleak: squalid sectarian bickering among politicians, a rise in dissident republican activity and loyalist unrest on the streets with a 10,000 person march planned for Belfast city center on November 30 2013 (the busiest shopping day of the year). The march has been organised by a hysterical, hostile and intimidating group. A democratic decision to restrict the flying of the Union flag has been taken. Nothing can be changed. While the grievance is understandable, the march has no legitimate purpose other than the fomentation of tensions.

The problem is this. Sectarian politicians have stood shoulder to shoulder with these most extremist fringe elements of society, pandering and entertaining their most outlandish and outrageous claims. Claims that come straight out of a BNP or EDL press release. The media has also puffed up their cause. This contrasts with a civil and plural Northern Ireland society that has simply chosen to ignore, put up and get on with life.

My reason for reaching out is this. Where in the UK and America, anti-fascist/extremist groups have been established to counter-balance and undermine extremism and the lovers of medievalism, in Northern Ireland no material effort has been made whatsoever to represent, spread and push forward the interests of civil, moderate, plural society.

Violent republicans and loyalists who make intransigence a virtue are exercising arbitrary power over a civilised majority. Apologised on the behalf of and indulged and nurtured by politicians. This can't continue. No power can go on unchecked. It must be resisted. I fear for the young people of Northern Ireland. I feel the fierce urgency of now. It's urgent that we tackle extremism, lest another generation be lost to instability, delinquency and conflict.

If you can provide any advice or suggest how efforts can be made to address extremism in politics and on the streets and how we can create a movement, all help would be appreciated.

Yours sincerely,

Brian

De Valera - Rejecting Irish Unity

In 1940 the nations of Europe were caught in a squalid world war. In the face of a fearsome German military and the axis forces, Churchill knew that in order to protect the convoys in the Atlantic the allied forces would need access to the Irish ports. Churchill had only one bargaining chip - Northern Ireland. And an offer was made. Fintan O'Toole said:

"I think that the offers of unity that were made at the beginning of the Second World War by the British were probably reasonably serious. You have to remember that if Churchill was prepared to deal with Stalin, he was certainly prepared to deal with de Valera. The war was the absolutely central aim that Churchill had and I think his loyalty to Northern Ireland protestants would not have been particularly strong in these circumstances." 

It seemed even some unionists were open to the idea. Professor Paul Bew said, "There's even evidence that some of the younger members of the Ulster Unionist Party cabinet took the view that if Irish neutrality was ended, the great priority was to defeat Hitler and that they would simply have to accept Irish unity in such a context."

Fintan O'Toole also said: "It's very striking that de Valera didn't take those offers very seriously or explore them at any level. Because what it told you was that ultimately de Valera was a southern Irish Catholic leader representing the southern Irish state."

Giving Northern Ireland to Ireland meant de Valera would have to take more than 800,000 northern Protestants into the electorate. In that context he would have found that his party - with its Catholic, gaelic and rural values - would see its political majority obliterated. Dr John Bowman, author of De Valera and The Ulster Question said:

"I think de Valera certainly wanted a united Ireland, but whether he was ready to pay the price for it, which would have been a much more pluralist, much less catholic, less Catholic state, whether he was prepared to pay that price for it is another question. And in a way he wasn't. So to that extent he can be faulted. But I'll tell you above all, he wanted the custody of the aspiration to unity. Because he knew there were much more dangerous forces potentially at work, northern republicans among them. He had to maintain the custody of the aspiration to Irish unity. One might say he rendered that into a permanently postponable aspiration."

Fintan O'Toole wrote in the Irish Times in October 2013: "Ireland is our dream - if it didn't have any Protestants in it."

A catholic party for catholic people

Patrick Murphy wrote in the Irish News:

"By representing only nationlists, you [Sinn Fein] have abandoned the Protestant people to unionism - which is more Daniel O'Connell than Wolfe Tone. You speak of a lack of leadership among unionists - but your lack of leadership towards what should be your own Protestant people is even more marked. (Critics of the newly formed republicans - they were just Catholics with guns. The same argument today would suggest that they are now just Catholics.)"

He continued: "An Ireland united, not by a common concept of nationhood, but by deprivation. That's why we thought you might like to reconsider your position in Irish politics." As Dr Cillian McGrattan said elsewhere, "Sinn Fein reaching out to unionism strategy is a nonsense."

The same can be said for the status quo unionist parties. Alex Kane has written of the political dangers of apathy and indifference to non-traditional voters. He said: "The Assembly cannot survive if unionist/nationalist parties refuse to accept that they have responsibilities to both sides - not just their own."

Maria Popova - Our current definition of success needs serious retuning

Maria Popova said:

"The myth of the overnight success is just that – a myth – as well as a reminder that our present definition of success needs serious retuning. As I've reflected elsewhere, the flower doesn’t go from bud to blossom in one spritely burst and yet, as a culture, we're disinterested in the tedium of the blossoming. But that’s where all the real magic unfolds in the making of one’s character and destiny."

This very much follows on from my earlier post on Matthew Syed who spoke on Radio 4 about the need to promote grit and resilience over the cult of immediacy and overnight success. He said:

When you speak to young people, it is striking just how often they blame their innate deficiencies when they are struggling with a subject such as, say, maths. “I don’t have a brain for numbers” is a phrase heard up and down the country. This may sound trifling, but it has deep effects. After all, if I lack the mental equipment to understand maths, what is the point of persevering? Surely it is as pointless as someone without hands trying to master origami. In effect, the belief destroys the grit that is essential to success.

Sometimes you don’t know what the right thing is for you until you start to do it

Paul Bernal is a lecturer in IT, IP and media law at the University of East Anglia, blogging at Paul Bernal's Blog. In an interview with legal tabloid Legal Cheek he explained how practical doing can bear more professional fruit than abstractive reflection. He said:

"Now, I would say I’m closer to doing what I really want to do than I have been at any stage in my life — and I’ve found it without a plan. At first I thought I needed one. Now I’m quite clear that even if I had had a plan, it would have been important to be able to break with it, to follow my nose — and not to be afraid to change plans."

The key part: "Sometimes you don’t know what the right thing is for you until you start to do it. The thing I’ve learned, more than anything else, is that that’s OK. In fact, it’s great."

 

As Picasso said, "Inspiration exists, but it must find you working." English political philosopher Michael Oakeshott wrote to the same effect: "the greatest achievements are accomplished in the mental fog of practical experience."

 

 

The Law's long arc towards equality

Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York said on the issue of civil rights:

"In the whole history of the United States, no law limiting the rights of a particular class of people has ever stood the test of time, and neither will [laws like the Defense of Marriage Act]." 

He then said: “Marriage equality is the civil rights issue of our time." Andrew Sullivan echoed this position, who said: "When a government is upholding a position not just different from the people, but in a different universe, it’s only a matter of time before the dam bursts." Time after time lawmakers yield to the people; then suddenly past bigotries, prejudices and discriminations no longer exist in the public forum. As Alexis de Toqueville said:

 

"As long as the majority is still undecided, discussion is carried on; but as soon as its decision is irrevocably pronounced, everyone is silent, and the friends as well as the opponents of the measure unite in assenting to its propriety."

 

That's the story we need to tell in the debate, that, as Christopher Hitchens said, "At every turn they [the religious] try to make the public forget about their earlier obscurantism, in order that their present obscurantism may not be seen for what it really is."

Between the Tory far right and the BNP

Sometimes it's refreshing to speak plain English. To just say what everyone is thinking. Daniel Finn in the London Review of Books confronted the DUP political ideology and practice, one that is out of step with life in the 21st Century, Catholics in Northern Ireland and progressive Protestants. Daniel Finn said:

"In British political terms, the DUP slots in between the right of the Tory Party and the BNP, with a generous side-helping of fundamentalist Christianity. The party’s environment minister, Sammy Wilson, recently vetoed a government global warming campaign on the grounds that global warming isn’t caused by human activity, while another DUP stalwart, Mervyn Storey, who chairs the Stormont education committee, is trying to have intelligent design included in the school biology curriculum."

Art is theft, Ctd

Austin Kleon put it in especially fluent terms: "Nothing is completely original. All artists’ work builds on what came before. Every new idea is just a remix or a mashup of two previous ideas." As designer Paula Scher said: "You are a mashup of what you let into your life."

Via Maria Popova on Brain Pickings here. 

Christianism versus Christianity

Andrew Sullivan explains here:

"And when Francis says ideology, he means (I think) both a neurotic and public fixation on a set of truths or doctrines – and also a fusion of religion and politics. This is the distinction I have tried to make between Christianism (an ideology) and Christianity (a faith). Ridding the latter of the former could do a huge amount to improve public life – and politics – in America."

How well this translates to affairs in Northern Ireland where religious certainty and absolutism drives political debate and street protests. As Rod Liddle said in the Sunday Times of October 27 2013, mutual loathing is a great way to help foster a sense of community, and thus contentment (as per Northern Ireland people being so content according to the recent survey): "Marching up and down wearing bowler hats and occasional knee-capping are enjoyable activities that help to foster a sense of community, and hence contentment. So, too, does mutual loathing based on ill-conceived religious and political certitudes. There is nothing quite so life-affirming as knowing you are utterly right and those people over there are utterly wrong… It is doubt that fosters unhappiness."

Writing is hard, Ctd

"Writing beats baling hay or going door-to-door for a living, but it’s still shockingly unenjoyable work."

By Tim Kreider on not giving your work away for free via Austin Kleon here.

Michel Serres wants the French to oppose "l’invasion de l’anglais"

The French philosopher Michel Serres wants the French to boycott places and products in France that use English words. What he calls "l’invasion de l’anglais dans le langage de tous les jours." The French edition of Slate Magazine has it:

"Il est tellement énervé, Michel Serres, qu’il veut inviter les Français à faire la grève de la langue de Shakespeare, ou plutôt celle de Ronald McDonald. «Chaque fois qu’une publicité sera en anglais on n’achète pas le produit, chaque fois qu’un film ne sera pas traduit dans le titre, on ne rentrera pas dans la salle de cinéma. On ne rentre pas dans un shop, on entrera dans une boutique. Et dès lors que les publicitaires et les commerçants auront 10 % de moins de chiffre d’affaires, ne vous en faites pas, ils reviendront au Français"."

Irish republicanism needs more self analysis of what self-determination looks like

Professor of modern Irish history at UCD Diarmaid Ferriter wrote an article in the Irish Times by the title 'A Mission Statement for Ireland' and explained how after independence there was an almost total absence of vision and strategy for the new Free State beyond the base desire to secure absolute separation from Britain. He said:

"Those who propelled the Irish revolution were more focused on the idea of seperation from Britain."

As opposed to, (quoting fellow historian Charles Townsend):

"Implementing and concrete political programme... The new nationalist leaders did not see it as necessary to analyse the 'self' that was to exercise self-determination."

This exists to this day. And so, as Alan Hynes said, "surely [Irish republicanism] should mean more than ‘Brits Out'?" Indeed. Irish republicans need to create a more realistic vision of Ireland to place beside the unreal "official" version. For too many republicans, and often the most vocal and passionate, Irish independence is driven almost entirely by grievances: anti-British, anti-English, anti-unionist, anti-history, anti-broadmindedness. It needs to be more than a definition of Irishness defined by what you're not. As Seán Ó Faoláin said in Eire and the Commonwealth:

"It is essential for the mental health of Ireland that we should as quickly as possible get to the stage where we do not give a damn about Britain... we shall never expand the contours of life, expand our horizons, get room to breathe mentally.'

Ernest A. Boyd landed a hard critique against what he called Gaelic jingoism. He said:

"Whatever social evils affect the Irish people are understood to be simply by products of an alien regime. The social and industrial problems which engage the minds of modern thinkers weigh little with the Gaelic idealists. Blind optimism and habit for ignoring unpleasant facts."

He asked: "Have Gaels any proposals which will enable Irishmen to live more freely than is possible in other countries?" And that's why we're back to professor Diarmaid Ferriter and Charles Townsend, we need more hard solutions, answers, programmes to what a united Ireland could look like and less idealism of what Ireland should be.

 

Being a Loyalist and Irish

The well known loyalist and Protestant from Northern Ireland Billy Mitchell explained in an interview how he held himself as Irish and further regarded being Irish and British as wholly compatible. He said: 

"Identity transcends the boxes, you know? For instance in cultural stuff I was brought up in an era where Irish culture had absolutely no problems for me – I would regard myself in that respect as an Irish unionist. I’ve no problems with Irish culture; I’ve problems with the provisionalisation of it. I have some affinity with spoken Ulster Scots but I have very little time for the politicisation of it. We grew up with the hamely tongue or the language of the hearth – it was bate out of us at school. My musical taste…I have no problem with Irish music whether its ‘diddly-dee’ music or traditional Scottish music. Basically if you’re talking about culture, my culture in music is blues! Blues, and strangely enough classics – the like of Katherine Jenkins. I have a problem with people talking about your cultural identity…I have problems with people trying to piegeonhole me; because I’m as comfortable playing the bodhran…as I am playing ‘The Sash’."

Martin Rowson on political cartoons

Martin Rowson said of drawing politicians on the BBC One Show:

"The one thing worse for a politician than being drawn in a political cartoon is not being drawn in a political cartoon. Because it means, first of all that nobody has heard of them and also that they're not recognizable." 

In my previous post here, Gerald Scarfe said:

"The sad final truth is that it doesn’t matter how hard you hit politicians — most are so arrogant, they would rather be drawn as a warthog than not drawn at all."

Gerald Scarfe on live drawing here. And Scarfe's influence, here.

Art is hard, Ctd

Juliette Aristides said in her book on drawing, 'Leasons in Classical Drawing':

"In my atelier, students routinely struggle for the first few months of their training, seemingly making no progress at all. And then, all of a sudden, they make a drawing that is a major breakthrough. This is often followed by a disheartening slide back for a week or so. But before long they have a baseline of solid technical skill; this rock-solid start becomes the norm rather than the exception. Expect this cycle. If you know it is coming, you will find it easier to wait it out."

She continued: "Each hard-won drawing allows you to bring a new skill to your next one. You will soon learn to take shortcuts and streamline the process. My experience has shown me time and time again that the students who can hang in there and keep focus gain ownership of the material very quickly."

Art is theft, Ctd Jack Vettriano

The self-taught Scottish painter Jack Vettriano was asked by Terri Eaton of the Artists and Illistrators magazine of November 2013, 'how did you learn to paint?' He said:

"I copied the techniques of lots of artists to see how they managed to get the paint down."

Asked what the best advice ever given to him he said: "The art critic W Gordon Smith advised me not to be sidelined by other people's opinions and to follow my own ideas." Asked for his inspiration he said: "Caravaggio for creating atmosphere and Francis Bacon for his imagination - though I'm probably intrigued by his lifestyle more than his work."

Dilberate, offensive, stupid

Loyalist rioters on Friday in Belfast. IRA celebrants in Castlederg on Sunday. Both stupid. Both offensive. And both deliberate. Depressing.
— Alex.Kane (@AlexKane221b) August 11, 2013

Britain's hereditocracy, Ctd

France is the home of nepotism, the very term is a throw-off from Napoleon Bonaparte who employed a host of family members. Now it turns out that a high profile Paris politician is doing the same. The Times of London recently reported that the leader of the Front National, Marine Le Pen, has employed a number of family members. It said:

"The commission approved subsidies to cover the cost of hiring Yann Maréchal, Ms Le Pen’s sister, as her “campaign strategy director” on a salary of €3884 a month, and Louis Aliot, her partner, as “political adviser’ on €5381 a month. Although the practice of hiring family members is common in French politics, Ms Le Pen could be damaged by the disclosure that she has adopted them, too."

Planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man's laws, not God's

Below is an excerpt from 'Man For All Seasons' writen by Robert Bolt which explains the primacy of man's law, over God's.

William Roper: So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law! 

Thomas More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil? 

William Roper: I'd cut down every law in England to do that! 

Thomas More:

"Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you — where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man's laws, not God's — and if you cut them down — and you're just the man to do it — d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake."

Gerald Scarfe on drawing politicians

Gerald Scarfe said of drawing politicians:

"The sad final truth is that it doesn’t matter how hard you hit politicians — most are so arrogant, they would rather be drawn as a warthog than not drawn at all."

Reforming Law School

Following the publication of the American Bar Association report on the future of US legal education, Lisa Needham of lawyerist.com said:

"Perhaps most radical and most important, it could reintegrate the legal profession with legal education and require that practitioners become stewards of the profession, committed to creating opportunities and mentorship for the newly graduate."

 

Dilbert and Why I draw

The creator of Dilbert, Scott Adams started to cartoon while on the job at Pacific Bell Telephone Company (now acquired by AT&T), after he was repeatedly passed over for promotion. He said of the lesson this experience taught him:

"The day you realize that your efforts and rewards are not related, it really frees up your calendar. I had time for hobbies."

This is the lesson I learnt. Read the Harvard Business Review blog feature on Scott Adams and his creation Dilbert here.

Gerald Scarfe on live drawing

Gerald Scarfe said of Honoré Daumier and the importance of working with your subject in real-time:

"Drawing was forbidden in the French parliament, so Honoré Daumier would take pieces of clay into the building, sit in the gallery and mould maquettes while watching the characters below. They serve to remind the cartoonist there is no substitute for observing your subject live. I have drawn enough politicians at party conferences to understand that well."

Art is theft, Ctd Gerald Scarfe

Gerald Scarfe said of the French political cartoonist Honoré Daumier:

"At times, his influence on me has been almost palpable. In 1834 he did a drawing called The Legislative Belly: rows of plump and senescent parliamentarians gossiping, sleeping, scribbling on bits of paper, all looking entirely unsuited to governing the country. I used it as the direct inspiration for a large theatre backdrop I painted for a production of Orpheus in the Underworld in 1988." 

And this was a fascinating comment from Scarfe: "I wonder whether Daumier’s portrayal of the pear-shaped king might have been an unconscious influence on me recently when I drew David Cameron as a lightbulb."

Paul Krugman - You don't need to be an academic to be taken seriously online

Paul Krugman explains on his New York Times that you don't need fancy academic letters behind your name to be taken as a serious, credible and authoritative voice online and on the blogosphere. He said: 

"But academic credentials are neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for having your ideas taken seriously. If a famous professor repeatedly says stupid things, then tries to claim he never said them, there’s no rule against calling him a mendacious idiot — and no special qualifications required to make that pronouncement other than doing your own homework.

Conversely, if someone without formal credentials consistently makes trenchant, insightful observations, he or she has earned the right to be taken seriously, regardless of background.

One of the great things about the blogosphere is that it has made it possible for a number of people meeting that second condition to gain an audience. I don’t care whether they’re PhDs, professors, or just some guy with a blog — it’s the work that matters."

Read in full here. 

 

Britain's hereditocracy, Ctd Carola Binney

Carola Binney, a first year history student at some school at Oxford is a house writer at both the Spectator and The Telegraph. She made an interesting observation here on the role of privilege, proximity, provenance and patronage when it comes to young people finding work experience and a career. I should also note that at the age of, I presume 18, Carola has already enjoyed 6 work placements. Anyways, she gave a little background first and underlined the importance of work experience:

"In June, my friends and I left school. With the final trill of the four o’clock bell came the realisation that in three short years we’re going to have to start looking for jobs, and it’s not going to be easy. As it slowly dawns on my contemporaries that “Certificate of participation in the Year 6 swimming gala” isn’t going to get you on to the Goldman Sachs graduate scheme, everyone is duly trudging off to marketing firms, accountants and hospitals in the hope of making their CVs slightly less resemble Ed Miliband’s policy agenda."

Carola then explained how her milieu tend to acquire and come about work experience:

When it's cool to be dumb, Ctd

Sian Griffiths wrote in the Sunday Times, 'The Lessons our Schools must Learn':

"Some of the worst miscreants come from white working-class families who failed at their own schools are passing on a contempt for education to their children."

Richard Cairns, head of the independent Brighton College said:

"The problem is not immigrants but white working-class kids in areas where there are relatively few jobs and their parents have not worked."

Taking back being Irish from the little Irelanders

@brianjohnspencr Absolutely. An unfortunate consequence of our history is the Catholicism and gaelicisation of Irishness. Should be more plural
— Colin Reid (@Colin_W_Reid) October 16, 2013

Deporting unionists, Ctd

In an earlier post here I outlined how Sean Lemass proposed the removal of unionists from the island of Ireland. How very pleasant, plural, tolerant and non-discriminatory. Below is another suggestion to remove unionists from the island, this time from de Valera in 1964.

Writing for free, Ctd Michael Hyatt

http://michaelhyatt.com/do-it-for-the-money.html

Grayson Perry - Who decides what makes good art?

Ahead of the Reith lectures Grayson Perry recently asked, who decides what makes good art? 

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/c37b1b6a-3017-11e3-9eec-00144feab7de.html

Elise Andrew and "I Fucking Love Science"

This is how the Guardian presented the Internet phenomenon here:

"I Fucking Love Science was born, in March 2012, out of mischief and frustration. The page is a mixture: of meme-style science illustrations (an image of floating, sleeping otters overlaid with the words: "Sea otters hold hands when they sleep so they don't drift away from each other… they also rape baby seals to death"); of plain-speaking summaries of the latest research ("Researchers have discovered how and where imagination originates in the brain"); and of links to oddities such as a video of a student singing an explanation of string theory to the tune of Bohemian Rhapsody. These have helped her accrue 10,000-15,000 new followers a day."