Sunday, December 31, 2017

Olivia de Havilland, Angela Lansbury and Glynis Johns: Celebrities of Stage and Screen (29)


Inevitably most artistes simply fade away as the years overtake them, but I here celebrate three redoubtable old lady troupers of British origin who are now of advanced age but happily are still with us. They were all bringers of pleasure in their time and their famous roles are often re-run on television or available on other media, for the enjoyment of the present generation.

Olivia de Havilland as Maid Marion
                      
   
Angela Lansbury
                 
                                           Glynis Johns                                  

                                                                       
Olivia de Havilland was born in 1916 and is now a truly venerable 101. She was born in Tokyo, where her father Walter, of Channel Islands (Guernsey) origin, worked first as a university professor and then as a patent attorney; his brother Geoffrey founded the famous de Havilland aircraft company. Her RADA-trained mother, Lilian Fontaine, was an actress and Olivia had a younger sister, who became the celebrated actress Joan Fontaine. Returning to England, Olivia’s parents divorced when she was only 3 and she soon moved with her mother and sister to California, settling in Saratoga, South of San Francisco.


I will not describe her distinguished career in detail but concentrate on highlights. An apprenticeship in provincial US theatre blossomed as she was talent-spotted by Warner Brothers and she made her first film with Errol Flynn, Captain Blood in 1935 – they were to make nine films together. Their best was The Adventures of Robin Hood of 1938 with Olivia never prettier as Maid Marion, nor Flynn more athletic as Robin in the Technicolor classic graced also by Claude Rains, Basil Rathbone, Eugene Palette and Alan Hales. Olivia then landed the important supporting role of Melanie Hamilton in the 1939 epic and blockbuster Gone with the Wind. The film really belonged to Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh and was showered with honours, but Olivia, though nominated for an Oscar, lost out to her colleague Hattie McDaniel.


In her career Olivia made 49 films – she acted in Hollywood’s “Golden Age” of the late 1930s and 40s when the studios churned out product at an amazing rate and stars were treated as chattels. In 1943 when her contract with Warner Brothers expired, the studio insisted she worked for them for another 6 months to cover a period she had been suspended by them. Olivia sued, a brave decision in the industry climate of the time, and she won in a landmark case, ushering in what is still known as “the de Havilland clause”, whereby an artiste’s contract can be no longer than 7 years and studio suspension time counts towards the term of the contract. Olivia was still black-listed by the studios until 1946.
         
Olivia in The Heiress

Olivia made Westerns, notably with Errol Flynn, and some of her most memorable work was in melodrama. In 1946 she made Dark Mirror, a psychological thriller turning on the real nature of two identical twins, which I much enjoyed, and two years later came The Snake Pit an alarming indictment of the poor standards of mental health therapy in the US at that time. Perhaps her best post-war film was The Heiress, based on Henry James’ “Washington Square”, with plain-Jane Olivia beset by her abusive father, Dr Sloper (an excellent Ralph Richardson) and wooed by fortune-hunter Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift). Her final revenge on faithless Morris, locked out by Olivia and screaming her name, is a searing scene. Both Olivia and Richardson won Oscars for their performances.


Olivia appeared in TV series and cameo roles for some years but her great days were over. While she had her amours, James Stewart and John Huston for example, (but not Errol Flynn), she married twice, the second to French writer Pierre Galante. She has lived in Paris since 1955. Just 2 weeks before her 100th birthday she was honoured as a Dame Commander of the British Empire – a fine actress indeed.
---------------


By contrast, Angela Lansbury, born in 1925, is a mere stripling of 92. She was born in Regents Park, London, the daughter of Edgar Lansbury, a then prosperous timber merchant and erstwhile Communist councillor for Poplar, East London. Edgar was the son of George Lansbury, Leader of the Labour Party (1932-35), a street orator, pacifist and wholly ineffective Leader, rather in the image of today’s Jeremy Corbyn.

George Lansbury

  
Jeremy Corbyn
                      
Angela’s mother was the Ulster-born actress Moyna Macgill, well-known on the London stage, who encouraged her theatrical interests. Edgar died in 1935 and Moyna’s second husband proved to be a tyrant. In 1942 Moyna arranged for the family to avoid the dangers of wartime London and they settled in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles.


With her talent and connections, Angela quickly achieved success in Hollywood. Before she reached the age of 20 she had earned two Academy Award nominations for supporting roles in Gaslight (1944) and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945). Contracted to MGM she made many film appearances, often playing a villainess as in The Court Jester (1955) with Danny Kaye or as a sinister mother as in political thriller The Manchurian Candidate (1962) with Lawrence Harvey and Frank Sinatra, one of her best roles.

Angela with  Lawrence Harvey in The Manchurian Candidate

Angela is a versatile artiste and had much success on the US stage in Mame, becoming in the process a gay icon, and later in Gypsy. In the public mind Angela is much identified with the role of writer/sleuth Jessica Fletcher in the TV series Murder, She Wrote (1984-96) whose 264 episodes are endlessly repeated. She had an earlier hit as a witch in Disney’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) and trod the boards as Madame Arcati in Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit in both New York and London.

Angela as Great-Aunt Adelaide in Nanny McPhee

Angela is indefatigable, appearing in cameo roles in Nanny McPhee as great-aunt Adelaide (2005), filling in with some Shakespeare, then she pops up again as Aunt March in TV’s Little Women (2017); she even has a part in Mary Poppins Returns, already in the can and due for release in 2018. What a dame - indeed she was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 2014 – Angela is a phenomenon.
                                                                                --------------


Glynis Johns, now 94, was born in South Africa where her actor father Mervyn Johns and concert pianist mother Alys Steele were touring. But both were Welsh and Glynis remains proudly Welsh. Glynis was a child actress and appeared in many minor roles in the early 1940s. Her breakthrough came with the 1948 film Miranda where she played a coquettish mermaid.
   
Glynis Johns as Miranda

Mervyn Johns as Bob Cratchit in A Christmas Carol
                            
















Glynis had a notable stage success in 1956 with Major Barbara in London and New York and in the same year blossomed in The Court Jester with Danny Kaye and Angela Lansbury.

Glynis with Kaye and Lansbury in The Court Jester

Glynis had a diet of comedies and swashbucklers and was admired in the Australian-set The Sundowners (1960) with Robert Mitchum. She shared in the triumph of Mary Poppins (1964) as the suffragette Mrs Banks but a more solid achievement was her role as Desirée Armfeldt in the Sondheim Broadway musical A Little Night Music in 1973 where the song “Send in the Clowns” was composed for her. Her husky voice and seductive eyes were always distinctive. She worked on and one of her last film parts was in the Sandra Bullock – Bill Pullman vehicle While you were Sleeping in 1995.


Now retired, Glynis brought glamour and vivacity to stage and screen.


These 3 ladies of the entertainment industry will have tumultuous memories of their careers and give hope to those following that success will not burn them out and that longevity brings many opportunities.



SMD
31.12.17

Text Copyright ©Sidney Donald 2017

Saturday, December 9, 2017

BREXIT BRINKSMANSHIP



We have just had a torrid period for Brexit, beset by knotty problems of debatable financial obligations, rights of residence, the limits of EU jurisdiction and the openness or otherwise of the South-North Irish border. The EU imposed deadlines and made no concessions, true to its imperialist mind-set, our Remainers gloated and sowed discord, while we Brexiteers were disturbed by the less than sparkling performance of the government and wondered whether a hard Brexit on WTO terms was the only way forward. Yet we did not despair; any moderately competent politician can find the re-assuring words to satisfy the Irish while the Brexit exit bill and the judicial turf-wars were more or less sorted. On Friday gallantly persistent Theresa May popped over to Brussels, endured a pawing and slobbering Juncker, and signed up a Brexit divorce agreement. Progression to trade talks, likely to be equally fraught, will now bore and upset us for the next 12 months. But at least a first step to the exit door has been achieved.

Relief all round as Theresa May pulls off a deal

It is impossible to tell currently whether an acceptable trade deal can be delivered. Any deal emanating from Brussels is likely to be unfavourable to the UK – maybe a free trade arrangement for manufactured goods but nothing for services – attacking Brussels’ bête noire, the City of London, a vital earner for Britain. Nor will the EU easily agree to repatriate our fishing rights (a hot issue in Scotland) and some university research funding will be withdrawn to the synthetic horror of many academics. The EU itches to punish the UK for its temerity in seeking to quit its control and wants to discourage any other leavers. But its malignity will have its prudential limits; already Mrs Merkel is seeing the collapse of German car sales in the UK, a trend which can only increase as the EU’s popularity here evaporates.


Recent events underline the wisdom of Brexit. Juncker was singing the praises of a European Army in his September “State of the Union” message and Germany and France are pressing on with plans for centralised training, weapon procurement and command – functions already provided by NATO. They have no democratic mandate for such policies. Martin Schultz, German Social Democrat leader and would-be Chancellor, proclaimed yesterday his aim to create a United States of Europe by 2025. Many European countries may favour this aim, good luck to them, but it was certainly never on the UK’s agenda, and the wide differences between North and South Europe and Eastern and Western Europe are likely to doom this grandiose idea to a forgotten corner of a cobwebbed vault in downtown Berlin.

Martin Schultz, unrealistic Eurofanatic

Staying inside the EU is like being locked in a runaway train with careless unqualified drivers mowing down the views of national electorates. The EU rushes on with “forward” policies – viz. the ill-starred attempt to rope in Ukraine to its sphere of influence – and do not be surprised if a future UK government paraphrases Bismarck on the Balkans and opines “ Eastern Europe is not worth the bones of a single British Grenadier”.


For the next stage of negotiation, the UK needs to sharpen up her act. David Davis is a solid citizen but our overstretched civil service sometimes briefs him inadequately and his competence is challenged. I would like to see a greater role for incisive Michael Gove and Boris should be ruffling more feathers in Europe’s chancelleries. Theresa May can take much credit for the reasonably satisfactory outcome of Phase 1, but progress has been crab-like and at times the UK dithered. Mind you, with all the conflicting pressures and her weak parliamentary position, not to mention her daily private fight with type 1 diabetes, Theresa has overall battled through admirably. Her cabinet, her party and indeed the UK parliament sadly does not have an embarrassment of talent at this crucial juncture.

The UK Parliament, repository of great historic talent

The UK does hold a few high cards. Her £39bn conditional pledge makes a large difference to the EU’s finances, and Angela Merkel is particularly influenced by budgetary considerations. Europe badly needs a cooperative UK for defence and security purposes and the size of her economy makes the open UK a highly desirable trade partner to almost anyone.


Can a final deal be reached? We Brexiteers have to concentrate on the essentials – access to global markets, effective independence judicially, sensible concurrence with the EU when useful – no doubt with compromises at the edges. Theresa May needs and deserves to collect more parliamentary support, 10 or so Labour or Lib-Dem defectors would make a huge difference. On balance I believe she can lead us out into the sunlight of our Promised Land, flowing with milk and honey.



SMD
9.12.17

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2017

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

A PRINCESS ON PARADE



On Monday we heard the long-awaited announcement that Prince Harry was engaged to marry  Meghan Markle, the American TV actress, divorced, of mixed American-African origin and, at 36, 3 years older than highly eligible Harry. Harry and Meghan appeared at a photo-call and then were interviewed by the BBC. Both performed well, talking in a relaxed fashion, clearly in love and Meghan was articulate, pretty and unsurprisingly complimentary about the Royal Family. Having already admitted relatively plebeian Kate Middleton, mixed race Meghan adds to the inclusive reach of the modern British monarchy. Good luck to them!


Prince Harry and Meghan Markle interviewed on their engagement

Meghan has the makings of a popular princess, poised and intelligent, but being a princess is not an easy job. Much of the historic problem lies with royal princesses being under-employed and limited in their social circle. A case in point was Princess Margaret (1930-2002), an attractive, if haughty, woman in her prime. She had a very protective childhood but was bright and musical. An unsuitable love for aide-de-camp Peter Townsend, an unwise marriage to bohemian Tony Armstrong-Jones and a foolish liaison with Roddy Llewellyn put paid to her popularity and after too many cigarettes and too much drink she died a sad liability to the Windsors.


Princess Margaret in 1960

It could have been different. Princess Alexandra has lived the life of a minor royal, for many years happily married, performing public duties with dignity. Princess Anne has displayed her real equestrian skills and is a busy, if rather dull, patron of charities, honorary colonel of regiments and opener of new hospital wings. Less dull is Princess Michael of Kent, of high birth from the German-Hungarian aristocracy, who champions Catholicism but whose indiscreet statements have earned her the epithet Princess Pushy. Our princesses are certainly a mixed bunch.

Princess Michael of Kent

Of course the great icon among British Princesses was Princess Diana who died 20 years ago. Born into the leading aristocratic Spencer family, her marriage to Prince Charles seemed to be a dream come true. But the marriage fell apart with dire faults on both sides, despite two fine sons. Diana was pretty enough to become a popular super-star, warmly outgoing to the sick and the under-privileged. She was erratic in many ways but her sudden death sparked off a tsunami of grief, which underlined the sentimentality bubbling in many British hearts.

Princess Di

A minority of the British are indifferent to, if not positively inimical to the Monarchy. Certainly the popularity of the Monarchy ebbs and flows as controversies arise, but at least at present its stock stands high. The cynical ones talk of the “royal soap-opera” and they moan and groan unconvincingly about the alleged high cost. The anti-monarchists are egged on by the Murdoch Press including the Times, the Guardian and the Independent, stalwarts too of the anti-Brexit clique.


There is of course an element of fantasy-fulfilment about our monarchy. It is truly extraordinary that a middle class student like Kate Middleton (aka Princess William of Cambridge) can capture the next-but-one heir to the throne – and make a good job of it. She will be joined by equally extraordinary Meghan Markle (soon aka Princess Harry of Sussex) who has captured a very senior royal and will radiate Californian sunshine. May the royals peacefully continue their symbolic duties and always surprise and delight us!


Princess Kate



Soon-to-be Princess Harry (Meghan)


SMD
29.11.17

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2017

Wednesday, November 22, 2017

OTHER TIMES, OTHER MANNERS

                                                        
It is a source of wonder to me how much the world has changed, how our habits have changed and how our attitudes have changed in my 75-year life time. The 1940s and 1950s seem an aeon away, the more mature 1960s to the 1990s are fondly remembered in an antiquarian spirit, while contemporary society is to me a jungle full of unexpected pitfalls, sharp disappointments and often total incomprehension, much enlivened by frequent hilarity. British historians will probably ignore the decades but instead define the post-war years by their landmarks; the Welfare State, the end of Empire, the Suez humiliation, the Beatles and Swinging Britain, the Thatcher Renaissance, the Financial Crisis and the Brexit referendum. But I will not sink into highfalutin’ analysis; how did we actually live?

3 types of Aberdeen tram in the 1940s

As a primary school-boy I paid a “ha’penny half” (viz. half an old penny at a child’s price) on an Aberdeen tram (I usually sat upstairs in the front of a No.4) to go to school. In the playground we would eat liquorice or chew on cinnamon sticks – sugar and sweets were tightly rationed. Entertainment emanated from the wireless – Dick Barton, special agent was unmissable, as was Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh and Have a Go with Wilfred Pickles. We would borrow our parents’ Bakelite 78rpm records and play them with scratchy needles on the gramophone, often Gracie Fields, Noel Coward or Edmundo Ros. Cinema-going was ingrained and we never tired of Abbott and Costello, Roy Rogers (with Trigger) or Johnny (Tarzan) Weissmuller. We were able to raid our own and our friends’ gardens and gorge ourselves on rhubarb, goose-berries or peas from the pod.


Sunday lunch was, and remained for years, a family ritual – no sloppy dressing and intelligent conversation was expected, although respectful silence was tolerated from me, the most junior member – requiring a juicy roast joint of beef or lamb with all the trimmings. Often Sunday afternoons involved a run in the car up Deeside or maybe just to the beach – anywhere as long as ice cream cones or my father’s “sliders” featured. The car was often a roomy but lumbering Humber though my mother would run a nippy Hillman, latterly two-toned to keep in fashion. My early memories include “trafficators”, rigid direction indicators pointing left or right before the advent of flashing lights. Trams, Sunday lunches, radio shows, stands of rhubarb and radiogram needles were all to be swept away.


My teenage years saw me at boarding school and university. The music blared from a tinny record-player with 33 1/3 and 45 rpm vinyl discs – an improvement but you still needed to change the stylus. We had discovered Elvis and many others but we were still deferential to elders and betters; indeed we dressed like schoolmasters with cavalry twill trousers and tweed jackets with elbow pads, usually sporting a tie. The more popular TV programmes were American, Sergeant Bilko, Burns and Allen or I Love Lucy, though Swinging Britain soon edged in. Fullers’ cakes were a treat, but institutional diets were biased towards brown Windsor soup, thin beef stews, steamed puddings and fried fish. Brought up on lemon sole and haddock, I could never understand the English enthusiasm for watery hake or far-from-fresh cod.

Spotted Dick and custard kept us going in the 1950s
I became familiar with the world of work in 1965, not before time. In those days workmen wore overalls, management wore suits. I came to the City in 1968 where management’s bowler hats were making their last stand but top hats were still ostentatiously sported by bill brokers as they trotted round the banks. The Bank of England itself was protected (1783-1973) by the nightly “picquet” of Guardsmen, a hoary relic of the Gordon Riots of 1780. The first company I visited as a banker was a heat treatment facility in Park Royal where men roasted in front of a furnace annealing heavy bars of metal. I later came to know well shirt makers for the Prince of Wales, manufacturers of typewriter carbon ribbon cassettes, letterpress printers, pub chains, warship builders, chemical and dyestuff manufacturers, chicken processors and auto-component engineers, among many others. Those businesses that still exist will have changed out of all recognition, just as Big Bang radically changed the atmosphere and practices of the City, mainly for the better.


The most radical change is probably the Digital Revolution which took off in the 1990s. When you recall the hassle of even making a long-distance call in the 1950s via the GPO system, the 2010s are a paradise. Easier communications, quick execution of transactions, roomfuls of records retained in a simple device and knowledge at one’s fingertips. Clerical and secretarial work has shrunk enormously (and with it many jobs) but new industries have been created and global opportunities opened up.


We have little option but to embrace change but we realise that there is a price. The supportive family network has been weakened with all members in their private worlds huddled over their laptop or smartphone, barely communicating with their parents or siblings. Family outings or shared enjoyments are much more difficult to organise – so many people now live alone and put a premium on their privacy. Longevity is a mixed blessing as good health cannot be maintained indefinitely. We need to take a conscious decision to socialise and participate in local activities – our social circles should always be expanding.

A whole digital world at our fingertips  

Yet we are living in a golden age. Our life has many comforts. Healthier, better fed and better paid than our ancestors, we have not experienced the horrors of world war nor the desolation of youthful bereavement. We can speak easily to friends in remote corners of the globe, we can travel to our imagined Shangri-La, we can meet and empathise with other races. Our nation is wealthy enough to care for all its citizens whatever their problems or handicaps and we can even aid faraway communities.


As the song goes Don’t Worry, Be Happy!


SMD
22.11.17

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2017

Friday, November 17, 2017

FOLLOW THE MONEY


“Nothing is certain except Death and Taxes” observed Benjamin Franklin and our seriously rich are much concerned with avoiding both. The Bill Gates Foundation, among others, finances cryogenics, research into the human algorithm and other challenges to mortality. A quest is under way to ensure that at least US billionaires can live forever (perish the thought!), while poor Joe Public accepts his limit these days of 4 score years and ten before he shuffles off his mortal coil.


Simultaneously an enormous industry is dedicated to tax avoidance in all its guises, harnessing the ingenuity of an army of smart lawyers and clever accountants. It will take some very slick genetic engineering to eliminate the defiant gene rebelling against paying any tax whatsoever, but taxes have to be raised somehow (but not from the super-rich, they seem to say). HMRC has smart people too and increasingly the ethical basis of tax avoidance is being questioned. To what extent is avoidance legitimate?


Bermuda, Paradise for tax avoidance

The problem has swollen greatly in the last 30 years as businesses becomes more global and electronic systems move billions at the blink of an eye. Maggie Thatcher and Geoffrey Howe dismantled Exchange Control in 1979, the deadweight preventing the development of the UK’s global economic ambitions. The 2007 Crisis and its dismal aftermath demonstrated how financial businesses could wildly misuse their freedoms but the intervening 28 years had allowed corporate and individuals’ incomes and their portfolios to be managed in a free-booting “tax-efficient” manner.


The time-honoured reaction to criticism of tax-dodging is to make the distinction between illegal tax evasion and legal tax avoidance. Evasion is usually a criminal offence but taxpayers clearly have the right to minimise their tax liabilities within the law and avoid unnecessary expense. And yet…….while avoidance may be allowable in a legal sense, there are legitimate issues over its present scale, the damage it does and its fairness within our society.


The scale of tax avoidance is truly eye-watering. American academics estimate that the equivalent of 10% of global GDP is held offshore by rich individuals via faceless corporate entities. The precise figures are hard to quantify accurately but the UK’s tax authority, HMRC, puts their country’s tax loss from legal avoidance at £35bn plus £6bn if illegal evasion is included.


HMRC fights bravely against this tsunami of shady dealing but it is outgunned by opponents with huge resources. Domestically there are some successes with loopholes being closed at every budget, but new ones are soon prised open. Legal judgements have been delivered helping the tax collectors notably the Ramsay principle (1982) when the House of Lords ruled that where a succession of preordained steps artificially delivers a tax advantage, the scheme will not be allowed, even if each step is legally admissible, if the overall effect is simply to avoid tax.  Bank confidentiality was once absolute but EU pressure and financial diplomacy has allowed the UK to share tax information with the EU, Switzerland and even Liechtenstein.


The UK is far from guiltless in this tax avoidance round-about as she tolerates special tax regimes for the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man; she also presides over the many offshore jurisdictions the world complains about in the British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies like Gibraltar, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands and the Turks and Caicos where huge wealth enjoys low, if any, tax. She is not alone as France shelters Monaco, Germany uses Switzerland and Luxembourg (hypocritical EU chief Juncker blessing sweet-heart tax deals while her Premier); the Irish Republic’s whole economic basis would be threatened if tax privileges were cut back, so dependent has she become on offshore entities operating there. The Netherlands coins it in hosting the world’s largest number of holding companies able to pay dividends offshore tax-free.


It hardly needs to be said that these avoidance structures damage the countries where the revenue and true profits are actually earned and logically where the bulk of the tax should be paid. The loss of tax revenue due to avoidance affects - all public services, all health spending, all subsidies for the poor, all infrastructure improvements – for the benefit of less than 1% of the population.


Fairness is a good test of a tax system and numerous leaks as of late have shone a bright light on many murky corners. The 2007 Falciani List of undeclared accounts at HSBC Geneva was followed up by the Lagarde List of other culprits: many were Greek and although the List was handed over, the corrupt Greek elite sat on this information and pursued nobody: the French claim they recovered €800m in unpaid tax.


In 2016, hacks on Panama offshore lawyers Mossack Fonseca reaped a huge harvest globally exposing the offshore manoeuvres of senior politicians in Pakistan, Iraq, Russia, Ukraine and Iceland among others. The ultimate sources of cash were mainly China, Russia and the UK and while the transactions were probably legal, the protagonists were highly secretive which in itself creates suspicion. Most recently a leak of information from Bermudan-based offshore law firm Appleby has highlighted activities of large entities like Apple, Glencore and Nike including aggressive avoidance schemes. Dozens of prominent people are also named, notably Trump fundraisers but also no less than H M The Queen whose Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall are active offshore. This may be good accountancy but it is rotten politics as the Windsors seek to avoid taxes levied in their own name!


Philip and Tina Green, laughing all the way to the bank

You do not have to be a red revolutionary or to be consumed by bitter envy to choke over the unfairness of these shenanigans. It is Robin Hood in reverse, robbing the poor to pay for the rich. Why do we tolerate a system which allows a rag-trade tycoon of mixed history like Sir Philip Green to organise his wife Tina to become a resident in Monaco, transfer ownership of his empire to her, held in a Jersey trust, and pay out a dividend of £1.2bn, mainly to her, entirely tax-free? It is excessive in business terms and obscene in social terms.


Tax avoidance can only be combatted on an international basis. Tax havens need to be shut down, new taxable income yardsticks established, new tax avoidance doctrines need to be developed and embraced legally; reforming governments must heed the growing swell of public opinion calling for an end to tax inequality based on one law for the super-rich and another for the rest. If some mogul rattles his begging-bowl and pinstripe-suited tax experts complain that they will lose their livelihood, I imagine “the barely managing” and the poor in the UK will chorus: “Well, ain’t that a shame!”


SMD
16.11.17

Text copyright © Sidney Donald 2017

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

FLIRTING WITH DANGER


Kipling told us that “the female of the species is more deadly than the male” and recent events at Westminster may have added credibility to that saying. We are told of a young woman’s knee being “almost” fondled in 2015, triggering off a cascade of demands that the alleged perpetrator be ejected from public life.  Ministers and back-benchers are being accused and condemned before the evidence has been forensically presented and the public is left to assume the official world is heavily populated by predatory males of the Casanova variety. The media of course are having a field-day.


I hesitate to draw general conclusions from this fracas and from the concurrent revelations about show-biz misbehaviour. Parliament is its own closed world, rightly given many privileges, but it is wildly untypical of normal domestic life. Members of Parliament are often from the ranks of the abrasive, the unscrupulous and the self-regarding so that type is over-represented. Bored to tears by the committee stage of some obscure legislation, depressed by the neo-Gothic, quasi-ecclesiastical gloom of their surroundings, they stumble into the oasis of the Members Bar. If they can elbow past the SNP members, apparently almost permanent fixtures at this watering-hole, they can booze away cheaply and after, say, their sixth shot, inevitably their true character comes to the fore and the ladies should run for cover. Pumped up by the booze and by their ineffable self-importance, they easily believe they have a divine right to exercise droit du seigneur upon young (and even the not-so-young) women in Westminster.


Show business is another closed world whose antics are Byzantine. Actors, male and female, are for ever seeking better parts (or even a first role) and will literally do anything to secure their goals. Those with the power to dispense patronage are an irresistible magnet to the profession. “The casting couch” is rightly a by-word and a few squalid moments may be all that is necessary to get that part. Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey probably did behave disgracefully and crudely - they may be candidates for police investigation. Nobody is deeply shocked by this kind of behaviour by “artistes” – nothing better is expected, however much indignation is generated.


Politicians and actors are not regarded as role models but the life-style of the leading lights in their profession is often enviable. It probably does not help this delicate situation that the leading light in global politics is none other than Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the USA. He cannot be looked upon as a role model as his groping predilections are well documented and his locker-room opinions on women have embarrassed him and his family. An oaf, a blowhard and an ignoramus, Trump is not qualified to inject an element of decency into the debate, which his predecessor Barack Obama actually could.

Flirting is innocent

The great majority of citizens behave in a relatively civilised way. In the workplace sexual advances are restricted by the hierarchy required in any business. Predatory bosses are rare and, if power-mania afflicts them, these days there will normally be some kind of complaints procedure to deter them. Out-of-hours dalliances are no doubt widespread, but there we are talking about the actions of “consenting adults in private” which is not the law’s business. Date-rape, indecency and violence are clearly against the law and the police and courts can dispense justice to victims.


More difficult to avoid is the cloud of innuendo and pre-judgement surrounding these matters. The “perpetrators” may be unpleasant people without many supporters and the “victims” may be fantasists with an axe to grind. Hard evidence of the truth can be elusive, and accusations must be tested.


How sad it would be if a young man pursuing a “cracker” finds that she is an explosive firework in disguise, responding to his conventional wooing with wild assertions, complaints and law-suits. Boy- meets- girl is a human rite of passage – it does not need parliamentary approval, whatever noisy Amber Rudd may want. Self-righteous lectures from Ruth Davidson, Yvette Cooper, Caroline Lucas and Nicola Sturgeon are not welcome and merely encourage a busy-body political culture. Of course the physical and psychological integrity of all women and all men should be defended – that is a given – but witch-hunts, hysteria and lynch-mobs can have no place in a civilised society. Let’s calm down!



SMD
8.11.17

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2017

Sunday, November 5, 2017

MELLOW AUTUMN




Autumn Flowers

Autumn in essence is the climax and culmination of the year providing the crowning glory to what has come before. The sadness and elegiac tone is not to be overdone; the colours, the textures the aromas and the sheer vitality of autumn are beyond compare. English Autumn and American Fall are celebratory firework displays making us happy to be alive and allowing us a rest before a New Year calls us for new effort and fresh challenges. John Donne struck the right note:


No Spring nor Summer beauty hath such grace
As I have seen on one autumnal face.


We celebrate this delightful time in all sorts of ways, in poetry, in music, in painting and by simple observation of the natural world about us. Keats’ Ode to Autumn is apparently the most anthologised of all poems but surely its high diction cannot be condemned as hackneyed:


Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.


I am old-fashioned enough to prefer the clear recitation by that great actor Robert Donat, who recorded many of Keats’ works, and whose classic tones fit the piece exactly.


The glorious foliage of New England in The Fall is one of the great sights of the US, refreshing, inspiring and humbling.

The Beauty of New England, USA

The great event of Autumn is the harvest, that joyous culmination of hard farming work and Nature’s fecundity. Nowadays the event is taken for granted, mechanisation sparing much of the sweat, and we look back nostalgically to earlier times:

The Harvesters by Pieter Breughel the Elder (1565)

Harvest was a time for celebration, for Hallowe’en parties, for church Harvest Festivals for Thanksgiving, making autumn a happy few months.

Harvest Time by John Atkinson (1910s)

Autumn is of course honoured in the charming Baroque chamber music of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, composed in Venice in 1723. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z21_VpNipfg


Popular music enjoyed The Autumn Leaves, originally a French song, made famous in English by the incomparable voice of Nat “King” Cole in 1950. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEMCeymW1Ow


Heady autumn eventually gently passes. How much we loved walking in wellies through a carpet of fallen leaves, smelling damp earth and incipient woodland decay. As autumn draws to an end we soon participate in the solemnity of Remembrance. In England the highlight is the wreath-laying and march-past at the Cenotaph in Whitehall. This year the Queen, though present, will delegate her wreath-laying duties to Prince Charles, a reminder that she is in her autumn years. The grey-coated Guards will line the ceremonial routes and the massed bands will play their utterly poignant and patriotic music, including a military version of Purcell’s Dido’s Lament.

The massed bands at The Cenotaph

Autumn’s disappearance is gradual, weather dependent but inevitable. Do not despair, this golden season will be back next year in all her glory.

Late-flowering blue-purple Asters



SMD
5.11.17

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2017

Monday, October 30, 2017

THE TRUTH WILL OUT


Mark Twain famously complained in 1897, when a false rumour spread widely, “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated”. We laugh away this error and enjoy Twain’s quip. For generations we have blithely assumed that “The truth will out”, that, no doubt after some delay, a trail will be discovered connecting one event with its perpetrator(s) and an undisputed “fact” will be proven. This easy assumption probably no longer holds good. Governments and politicians have long distorted, twisted and managed information but now everyone plays this unholy game – the conventional media, oppositions globally, the criminal classes, preening technologists and unregulated social media. The luckless citizen hardly knows where to turn if he wants to know if this or that assertion is objectively true – he struggles through a jungle of fabrication, a miasma of doubt and a swamp of contradiction. Mark Twain would not see anything to joke about.

Mark Twain (1835-1910)

I naively once supposed that lies would never emanate from The President of the United States. Remember the George Washington myth and his hatcheting of his father’s cherry-tree? “I cannot tell a lie” declared 6-year-old Saint George. Well, many Presidents have declined to answer pointed questions and have been at least “economical with the truth”. Richard Nixon (Watergate passim) and Bill Clinton (Monica Lewinsky passim) have told blatant whoppers. Barack Obama seemed reasonably straight in the revered tradition but his successor Donald Trump would not recognise the truth if it floated in his soup.

Would you buy a second-hand car from these guys?
It is unfitting for a Brit to criticise our friendly ally, the sovereign US republic, for electing The Donald President. Yet I must say that this choice seems strange as Trump lacks knowledge of the world, lacks the gravitas associated with Presidents and he perpetuates falsehoods. Trump’s ignorance is heroic. He invents mythical African countries, thinks Israel is not in the Middle East, mixes up European countries and knows nothing of Russian history. It would not matter in a property developer, but he is President of the USA! He tweets in a juvenile fashion and endlessly boasts about his personal talents and accomplishments to the world’s embarrassment. Worse, he belittles women, demonises blacks, Mexicans and Muslims, sowing unnecessary discord. Fact-checking sites are overwhelmed by his misinformation. Trump does not attract trust, which his office certainly should.
Trump, the embodiment of mendacity
In fact this disassociation of truth from event pre-dates Trump by very many years. W. Randolph Hearst notoriously helped precipitate the Spanish-American War of 1898 by claiming in his popular newspapers that the sinking of the US battleship the Maine in Havana harbour was the work of the Spanish. This was “fake news” as no cause of the Maine explosion was ever found. The strains of the Great War added to the wall of lies. Alleged atrocities by the Germans on Belgian nuns were luridly reported in the British press but were found to be false. British official propaganda exaggerated indiscriminate U-boat torpedoing (e.g. the Lusitania sinking) and had a marked effect on moving US public opinion towards entering the War. In reaction, in the 1920s and 1930s stories about atrocities in Turkey, famine in India and, tragically, re-armament and cruel persecution in Nazi Germany took time to gain credence. Hence the horror when the grim reality emerged after the war.


WW2 saw techniques in fake news develop rapidly. Goebbels had seized upon The Big Lie – a constantly repeated large-scale lie that can eventually be believed – pretending that the Jews were aiming at world domination, thus justifying their ruthless elimination. In Russia, with no government tradition of veracity anyway, Stalin lied about all and everything, war aims, casualties, military progress, seeing deadly enemies of the state in even the most muted critics, who paid a fatal price.


Fast forward to the self-righteous but flabby democracies of the EU and the UK in 2017. The Brexit process has given birth to a mountain of misinformation and distortion. The referendum campaign saw the Brexiteers claim that leaving will free up £350 million weekly to spend instead on the NHS. The Leave campaign persisted with this story even when the Office of National Statistics warned this figure was seriously misleading as it ignored counteracting exemptions. The Remainers unleashed a flood of scare stories forecasting balance of payment collapse, industrial paralysis, regional unrest and a mass exodus of talent – none of which has happened. Even after the democratic Leave vote was confirmed, a chorus of gloom and doom still emanates from the Remainers, egging on the EU to inflict as much damage as possible – a strange stance for presumably loyal citizens to take. The Brexit “negotiations” are not going well as the EU is not negotiating in good faith – it has no interest in a deal and seeks only to achieve revenge for the UK daring to defy the EU diktat. All this merely strengthens Leaver resolve.


So Brussels trades in lies, disseminated by unofficial briefings, last minute staged delays, which had so demoralised the Greeks, and hypocritical assertions of friendship. Is it true that a hollow-cheeked, wild-eyed Theresa May pleaded for help from Juncker to save her from the hard-exit Tories? The gloss on this (no doubt meaning to appeal to daughter of the rectory, Theresa) that there is strength in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9) would not butter many parsnips here in Folkestone and merely seems abject. The author of this tale is said to be Juncker’s eminence grise Martin Selmayr, known in Brussels as “The Monster”.


EU Hitman Martin Selmayr
The Brexit talks are covered in deceit: the US President has no credibility: what hope is there for clarity and logic in resolving Catalonia’s differences with Spain or the political future of Syria? Public opinion is too tolerant of falsehood – now there’s a good cause to be tackled by social media. How wonderful it would be at last to breathe pure air, see clear skies and hear honest dialogue!

SMD
29.10.17

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2017