Eolaí and his Painting Tour: Week Two

And so the Brother's Odyssey continues.

We left him a week ago on a Kilkenny hillside, surrounded by singing sheep. He rested after that, and painted in the rain and then last Saturday pedalled his way from Carlow through Wicklow into north Wexford, where on Sunday he painted at Tara Hill and greenfly menaced him, doing their best to go for a swim in his tea.

Monday saw him summarising how things had been going thus far, and then set off on his first day of cycling without a host, and him making his way from north of Gorey towards Wexford town. He stopped by the beach at Courttown, as you do, and at an old friend's house, forgetting he was away in Turkey, and again to have lunch by the memorial for those who died in the sinking of the emigrant ship Pomona in 1859. Using Twitter -- that being a big part of the trip, after all -- he spread the word that he was looking for somewhere to stay, and planning on funding the night by selling a painting.

'We've just one room left and it's very small,' said one lady.

'There's only one of me and I'm very small,' he said, drawing her gaze away from his still-ample bolg.

Utterly knackered on Tuesday after the previous day's exploits, he set himself up at Wexford's Crescent Quay to finish the painting he'd been too exhausted to finish the previous day.

Off he went then to Kilmore Quay, fifteen miles or so away to the south and a place I know all too well from studying Ordnance Survey maps and town plans in Leaving Cert geography classes. The brother knows it rather better now, having worked on a couple of paintings there, and done some sketching in his notebook, and admired the Vigil Statue in the Memorial Garden, and gone for a cycle along the south coast in the evening.

Yesterday, he said in the morning, was the nicest day in the history of the Universe. He pedalled on west from Kilmore Quay, stopping to look at the curlews and oystercatchers, before making his way through Wellingtonbridge and on to Arthurstown, taking a ferry from Ballyhack over the estuary of the Three Sisters, the Nore, the Suir, and the Barrow to Passage East.

Finally and into his seventh county -- Waterford -- with knees aflame he made it to Tramore, and on a couple of miles further.

Today's been a Waterford day, cycling through his second Kill village of the trip, and eventually getting him to Dungarvan far later than he'd have wished. I'm fond of Dungarvan, as I'd a lovely family holiday there when I was fourteen or so; I don't remember too much of it, alas, other than the grey house we stayed in, the apple tree in the garden, days out at the beach, looking for cheap books in Dungarvan's shops, watching Zulu in the living room, and a long walk with my Dad on country roads at night where on spotting a white line in the centre of the road I declared with relief that we'd obviously hit civilization at last.

The Brother's knees, as ever on this trip, are killing him. I'm thinking he should get himself some Glucosamine; Sister the Eldest got me on it years ago. My favourite version was Jointace, with cod liver oil being the carrier; I don't know whether it made a real difference in itself or whether it just had a hell of a placebo effect, but it did the job.

Anyway, two weeks down, and seven counties cycled through. Only twenty-five more to go. Keep following him on his blog and especially on Twitter, where his hashtag's #paintingtour. And again, as I've said before, if you think there's a chance he might be passing within twenty miles or so of where you live and you have a bed to offer and fancy a painting, you should let him know. Just send him a message. It's not called social networking for nothing...

Never Judge a Book by its Cover

There's a remarkably tedious article about the third Christopher Nolan Batman film in today's Guardian. Peter Owen squints at the teaser poster for far too long, and proceeds to tell us that the film is obviously going to be crap. The Dark Knight, he says, 'took itself far too seriously, most of all in its lumpen and simplistic attempts to comment on the war on terror,' and as for The Dark Knight Rises, well...

'The new poster suggests the next film will fall into some of the same traps. It hums with seriousness and portentousness, with its black and white colour scheme, hints of awful destruction, and depiction of an empty city totally devoid of people – never a promising sign. It's claustrophobic, joyless, and derivative, like the poster for Batman Begins or one of those for Nolan's Inception, which depicted buildings tumbling like cliffs into the sea while Leo, Juno and the rest stared upwards with sombre, blank stares as vacant as the film itself.

The Dark Knight ended with Batman on the run from the police, having nobly taken the blame for Two-Face's murders so that Gotham's citizens don't find out that their upright, morally impeccable district attorney Harvey Dent had turned evil. The new poster suggests a city literally falling to pieces without him, his bat symbol representing the only chink of light – or hope – in the gloom.'

Now, call me old-fashioned, but if you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, you certainly shouldn't prejudge a film by its trailer, let alone its poster. Frankly, the article's nonsense anyway. Owen grumbles that the film looks set to repeat the classic error of too many superhero films, that being an abundance of bad guys. Granted, as a general rule of thumb a variant of Occam's Razor would make a good maxim for superhero films, in that villains should not be multiplied beyond necessity. However, leaving aside that I'd trust Nolan with a whole brigade of nasties, Owen clearly doesn't know what he's talking about. Of Batman Begins, for which he has at least a sneering regard, he says:

'The only supervillain involved, the Scarecrow, an evil psychiatrist experimenting on asylum patients, was not too over the top, and his costume not too silly'

Whereas of The Dark Knight Rises, he proclaims:

'... judging from the cast list, Nolan has already booked in far too many villains, including Catwoman, Ra's al Ghul ("rumoured" on imdb.com) and Bane, an uninteresting, monosyllabic lunk who broke Batman's back in the comics a few years ago.'

Given that Ra's al Ghul was the principal villain -- there were three, the others being the Scarecrow and Carmine Falcone -- in Batman Begins, and that Owen appears not to have noticed, I think his witterings can be safely discarded. You remember, don't you? Played by Liam Neeson? Trained Bruce Wayne? Used the Scarecrow and Falcone as his pawns? Burned down Wayne Manor? Attempted to destroy Gotham City? No?

While the Guardian has been covering itself in glory over the last fortnight, it's useful to be reminded that even Homer nods sometimes, and that paper doesn't refuse ink.

Looking at Vermeer

I watched Girl with a Pearl Earring tonight, feeling a need to get away from the claustrophic mounds and stacks of books, articles, folders, refill pads, scraps of paper, printed pages, pens, pencils, and random bits of stationery that are currently cluttering and breeding on every horizontal surface in the house. It's a busy time.

I liked the film. It's beautifully shot, in a manner reminiscent of Vermeer's paintings, and is remarkably still, with Colin Firth, Scarlett Johansson, and Tom Wilkinson all being excellent. Not a lot happens in it, and that which happens tends to happen in a restrained Merchant-Ivory kind of way, but somehow that seems fitting. Sure, it's mostly made up -- or, at any rate, the book on which it's based is mostly made up -- but then, given how little we know of Vermeer's life, this is hardly surprising. I have three books about him upstairs -- Wheelock's Vermeer: The Complete Works, Bailey's Vermeer: A View of Delft, and Gowing's Vermeer, the latter being widely regarded as one of the most profound pieces of art criticism ever written and being included in the Modern Library's 1999 list of the twentieth century's hundred greatest non-fiction books in English -- and yet none of them really tell us much about the man himself. We know hardly anything about him.

To be honest, I kind of like that ignorance. Vermeer epitomises the ideal artist as described by James Joyce -- or at least his youthful fictional alter-ego Stephen Dedalus -- in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:

'The artist, like the God of creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.'

There's a distance and an anonymity in Vermeer's work, a serene perfection that doesn't lecture or lure; it merely invites us to watch, and to see the transcendent beauty in the ordinary.  I'm not sure there's even one painting out there, with the very possible exception of Seurat's Bathers at Asnieres, that I've spent as long looking at as Vermeer's Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid which is in Dublin, but I don't think I've ever spent as much time on one occasion just soaking up a single painting as I did back in March when I went to London's Dulwich Picture Gallery to see The Music Lesson.

Normally kept as part of the Queen's private collection, The Music Lesson was on loan to Dulwich as part of Dulwich's bicentennial celebrations. It's perfect, isn't it? The light, the shadows, the reflection, the detail, the colour, and perhaps above all that wonderfully geometric composition. I decided that day that I was going to try to see every Vermeer in the world before I die. I think I've only seen four so far, but I've plans for a fifth before the summer's out, and I'm already hoping to see at least another seven -- those in the Netherlands -- next year. 

With eight Vermeers in New York, and a further four in Washington, a trip to America will have to be on the agenda too. I guess I'd better start putting plans in motion.

On Nodding Dogs, and not being one

I recently bought a collection of  Blessed John Henry Newman's sermon notes from after he became a Catholic -- he wrote full sermons as an Anglican, but only notes as a Catholic. In the introduction, there's a fine quotation from him, saying:

'I think that writing is a stimulus to the mental faculties, to originality, to the the power of illustration, to the arrangement of topics, second to none. Till a man begins to put down his thoughts about a subject on paper he will not ascertain what he knows and what he does not know, still less will he be able to express what he does know.'

And that, in essence, is pretty much the main reason -- other than staying in vague contact with friends -- why I blog, and why I used to blog far more frequently once upon a time under a different name. It's not to vent, and it's not to tell the world what I think. It's mainly to get my own thoughts straight.

Why not a diary, then? Or a private blog? Mainly because this way I know that I'm potentially exposing myself to people who can tell me -- if they can be bothered -- that I'm wrong, or not-quite-right. That forces me to write something substantial, that I think capable of holding up in the face of criticism and disagreement, and should critical comments come, it forces me to listen, and to reconsider. I may well still stick to my original view, of course, but only after listening to those of others. There are few things I believe so strongly that we shouldn't read or look to expose ourselves only to opinions and beliefs that validate our own. In this, I suspect, I'm simply channelling the wise observation in Chesterton's Father Brown story, 'The Sign of the Broken Sword', where his priest-detective says:

'When will people understand that it is useless for a man to read his Bible unless he also reads everybody else's Bible? A printer reads a Bible for misprints. A Mormon reads his Bible, and finds polygamy; a Christian Scientist reads his, and finds we have no arms and legs. St. Clare was an old Anglo-Indian Protestant soldier. Now, just think what that might mean; and, for Heaven's sake, don't cant about it. It might mean a man physically formidable living under a tropic sun in an Oriental society, and soaking himself without sense or guidance in an Oriental Book. Of course, he read the Old Testament rather than the New. Of course, he found in the Old Testament anything that he wanted -- lust, tyranny, treason.'

Or, in short, we shouldn't seal ourselves up in our confessional boxes. Christians should listen to what atheists have to say, and atheists whould listen to Christians, not with a view to rebutting but with a view to understanding. Catholics should listen to what Protestants have to say, and Protestants should listen to Catholics, again with a view to understanding, and, one would hope, ultimately re-uniting. British Conservatives should start their days by looking at the Guardian, and left-leaning Britons should make a habit of perusing the Telegraph.

And then, they should try putting their own beliefs and opinions into writing. It's not as easy as it looks.

(Though it's probably best not to spend more than an hour or so on it, especially if you're busy elsewhere.)

Cameron, Coulson, and Caesar's Wife

Carl Bernstein's Newsweek article yesterday, 'Murdoch's Watergate', does a good job of showing just how the current phone-hacking scandal could keep rippling, with effects far more potent that the closure of a newspaper that's been in commercial decline for years. His summary's pretty useful:

'The facts of the case are astonishing in their scope. Thousands of private phone messages hacked, presumably by people affiliated with the Murdoch-owned News of the World newspaper, with the violated parties ranging from Prince William and actor Hugh Grant to murder victims and families of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The arrest of Andy Coulson, former press chief to Prime Minister David Cameron, for his role in the scandal during his tenure as the paper’s editor. The arrest (for the second time) of Clive Goodman, the paper’s former royals editor. The shocking July 7 announcement that the paper would cease publication three days later, putting hundreds of employees out of work. Murdoch’s bid to acquire full control of cable-news company BSkyB placed in jeopardy. Allegations of bribery, wiretapping, and other forms of lawbreaking—not to mention the charge that emails were deleted by the millions in order to thwart Scotland Yard’s investigation.

All of this surrounding a man and a media empire with no serious rivals for political influence in Britain—especially, but not exclusively, among the conservative Tories who currently run the country.'

I've been trying to get my head around the whole News International web of scandal, with particular reference to the question of David Cameron's folly in hiring Andy Coulson back in the day, and in particular in keeping him on as the evidence and the allegations against him mounted up. So, in an attempt at pulling together what seem to be the salient facts in connection with Coulson alone, rather than Rebekah Brooks, James Murdoch, and others, and in full awareness that much of this must be speculative, I'm going to get this straight for my own sake. There are timelines out there, but they're a bit skeletal for my liking. I want to put more flesh on those bones.

So...

In January 2007, following an investigation begun in response to a December 2005 request from Buckingham Palace that the police investigate interference with mobile phone messages,  Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire were jailed for their phone hacking activities on behalf of the News of the World. The same day it was announced that Andy Coulson had resigned as News of the World editor, though Coulson maintained that he had been unaware of Goodman and Mulcaire's illegal activities. His resignation meant that the Press Complaints Commission no longer needed to investigate the Goodman affair and thereby ensured that Rupert Murdoch would not have to face questions about what had happened.

In July 2007, on the advice of George Osborne, David Cameron appointed Coulson as the Conservative Party's director of communications. Cameron had until this point kept his distance from the News International mob, but Osborne had been building connections among them, and, apparently having headhunted Coulson, persuaded Cameron that wrongdoing on Coulson's watch shouldn't be held against him.

In December 2008, Stratford Employment Tribunal found that Coulson had presided over a culture of bullying at the News of the World, and upheld sports writer Matt Driscoll's claim for unfair dismissal and disability discrimination. In particular, the tribunal found that bullying behaviour on the part of Coulson personally led to stress-related depression among staff. Other editors who had worked under Coulson were found to have emulated him in bullying staff and had lied to the tribunal. The News of the World was later directed to pay Driscoll £800,000 as compensation for unfair dismissal.

In July 2009 a host of new revelations were published in the Guardian about phone-hacking during Coulson's News of the World tenure, notably pointing to out-of-court settlements -- signed off at the highest level of News International -- with prominent individuals, to evidence that phone-hacking was far more widespread than hitherto believed and indeed was, in effect, routine on the paper. Former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott publicly called on Cameron to dismiss Coulson, but a spokesman for Cameron said that he was 'very relaxed about the story'. Prescott wrote to Cameron about the matter, pointing out that the Conservative MP in charge of Parliament's culture, media, and sport select committee said that the Guardian's allegations raised very serious concerns and that the committee would probably call on Coulson to give evidence. He concluded his letter:

'You now appear to be the only person satisfied with Coulson's role while every other relevant authority is investigating the claims. In light of this, will you ensure that Coulson fully co-operates with the select committee and, if called, attends to give evidence. Finally, I must say that I feel your "very relaxed" attitude to these allegations seriously calls your judgment into question. If they are true, Coulson is not fit to enter government as your director of communications if you are elected or, indeed, remain in his current post. I look forward to your prompt reply as a matter of urgency.'

David Cameron did not reply, dismissing as a 'political stunt' a demand from former Home Secretary Charles Clarke that Coulson should answer questions about the Guardian's allegations. The Metropolitan Police refused to investigate the Guardian's claims, saying that in its opinion 'no new evidence had come to light'.

News International issued an official statement saying that it had conducted a thorough investigation into the phone-hacking allegations, and there was not and never had been evidence to support allegations that News of the World journalists had directly oe indirectly engaged in phone-hacking, or that there had been systemic corporate illegality by News International with the intention of suppressing evidence. Called before the Commons committee later that month, Coulson insisted that he had never condoned phone-hacking, and didn't recall any incidents where phone hacking took place.


In February 2010, the Parliamentary select committee publicly accused News of the World of engaging in phone-hacking on an 'industrial scale', criticising News of the World executives and editorial staff for their 'collective amnesia' and 'deliberate obfuscation' and criticising the police for the limited scope of their original investigation. It seems pretty clear that Coulson was one of those they had in mind, and yet Cameron kept to his Tammy Wynette strategy. The government welcomed the report, and said it would consider what action it should take, with Gordon Brown's Downing Street office stating, 'The scale of this is absolutely breathtaking and an extreme cause for concern.' The Sun responded to the committee's report by scorning its findings and characterising it as having wasted its time on unsubstantiated claims by 'the Labour-supporting Guardian'.

Given that a general election campaign was beginning, the Guardian contacted the leaders of all three main political parties later that month to inform them about a matter on which the Guardian was unable to report due to ongoing legal proceedings. In a phonecall to Steve Hilton, Cameron's director of strategy, the Guardian said that a private detective named Jonathan Rees was awaiting trial for a murder, and that he had in the past been involved in illegal activities on behalf of the News of the World; after serving seven years in prison for conspiring to frame a woman by placing cocaine in her car, he had been rehired by Coulson. The Guardian made it very clear that Coulson must have been aware of Rees' corrupt activities, and understands that Edward Llewellyn, now No. 10 Chief of Staff, was informed of this.


In April 2010, Crown Prosecution documents became public showing that although the police had named in court only 8 individuals whose phones they believed had been hacked, Scotland Yard were in fact in possession of 4332 names or partial names of individuals who might have had their phones hacked by News of the World journalists or investigators in their pay during Coulson's tenure; the police had deliberately ringfenced the evidence in order to suppress the names of prominent individuals. That same month it was revealed that Andy Hayman, the officer who had headed the original Scotland Yard investigation, had left the police and now worked for News International, writing a column for the News of the World. Still in the pay of News International, he continues to write for the Times.


In May 2010, following a general election, David Cameron's Conservative Party forged an alliance with Nick Clegg's Liberal Democrats in order to form a coalition government. David Cameron replaced Gordon Brown as Prime Minister and appointed Andy Coulson as Director of Communications at Downing Street, on a salary of £140,000, and with access to the highest level of top secret material. Cameron did this despite the advice of Lord Ashdown:

'I warned No 10 within days of the election that they would suffer terrible damage if they did not get rid of Coulson, when these things came out, as it was inevitable they would.'

Nick Clegg had also expressed concerns to Cameron, who rebuffed them, insisting Coulson was entitled to a second chance.

In September 2010, the New York Times reported that colleagues of Coulson said that, contrary to his claims of ignorance, he had indeed been present during discussions about phone-hacking, with one saying that he had directly ordered reporters to engage in phone-hacking.


In October 2010, a former colleague of Coulson's revealed on Channel 4's Dispatches that Coulson had made a point of listening to illegally-obtained voice messages. An assiduous editor who wouldn't run stories unless he was sure they were correct, he apparently made sure to listen to messages or at least read their transcripts himself. The same programme also featured a Plaid Cymru MP saying that the Parliamentary committee that investigated the hacking affair had been threatened by News International:

'I was told by a senior Conservative member of the committee, who I knew was in direct contact with executives at News International that if we went for her [the News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks] they would go for us – effectively that they would delve into our personal lives in order to punish them.'

The Conservative MP in question denies this, but then, he would, wouldn't he?

In December 2010, the Crown Prosecution Service said that the evidence presented against Coulson fell short of what would have been necessary to proceed with a case against him. Witnesses had withdrawn allegations and been unwilling to support previous claims when interviewed by Scotland Yard  under criminal caution, such that they themselves could have faced charges if they admitted their own knowledge of or involvement in phone-hacking. That same month, Coulson gave evidence in a perjury trial in Glasgow, in which he said, under oath, that he had never instructed anyone to do anything untoward.

The constant drip of allegations continued, and despite Cameron and Osborne's determination to protect him, Coulson tendered his resignation in January 2011, saying:

'Unfortunately, continued coverage of events connected to my old job at the News of the World has made it difficult for me to give the 110% needed in this role. I stand by what I've said about those events but when the spokesman needs a spokesman it's time to move on.'

In the aftermath of the resignation, Osborne, who had described Coulson as 'an incredibly talented, dedicated and patriotic servant of this country' referred to him as a 'good friend', and Cameron lamented the fact that -- as he saw it -- Coulson was 'being punished twice for the same offence,' maintaining that Coulson 'had resigned as News of the World editor as soon as he found what was happening'.

In April 2011, Neville Thurlbeck, the News of the World's chief reporter, and Ian Edmondson, its former news editor, were arrested on suspicion of phone-hacking; they have been bailed, and are to face charges in September. News International issued an apology to a handful of phone-hacking victims, accepting responsibility for the News of the World's crimes under Coulson's editorship and admitting that previous internal investigations had been inadequate. A third journalist, James Weatherup, was arrested just under a week later. Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, challenged the evidence given to Parliament by John Yates, the acting Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, who had refused to investigate the Guardian's July 2009 claims. Starmer said that the evidence shows that the police had of their own accord chosen to limit the scope of the original inquiry, and had not done so under direction from prosecutors.

In June 2011 the trial of Levi Bellfeld for the 2002 murder of Milly Dowler came to an end with Bellfeld being found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. A few days later, in July 2011, the Guardian reported that police working on the News of the World phone-hacking case had found evidence of the targeting of the Dowlers by the News of the World in the aftermath of their daughter's abduction. That's why the story exploded when it did -- it has nothing to do with Jeremy Hunt's BSkyB decision, and everything to do with the Dowler investigation having come to an end.

The rest of the story is pretty clear, at least in terms of Coulson, who was -- along with another journalist -- arrested the other day, apparently on suspicion of bribing police officers, and has been bailed till October. David Cameron, as ever, has insisted that even though it didn't work out, he feels he had been right to offer Coulson 'a second chance'. And, it would appear, to have kept him on as long as he did, and to call him a friend even now, despite...

• An employment tribunal in 2008 having found Coulson guilty of bullying and awarding £800,000 compensation to his victim. 
• John Prescott in July 2009 having advised David Cameron to dismiss Coulson from his position in the Conservative Party, saying he was a wholly unsuitable person for such an important role. 
• A Commons committee in February 2010 having criticised News International executives and editors -- including Andy Coulson -- for deliberately obstructing their investigation, and having described as completely unbelievable the claim that the likes of him had been unaware of the illegality in which his paper was indulging. 
• The Guardian later in February 2010 having given Cameron evidence of how Coulson as News of the World editor had employed a convicted criminal known to have had a history of dealings with corrupt police. 
• It becoming quite apparent in April 2010 that the original police investigation into Coulson's News of the World had been determinedly and woefully inadequate, hardly scratching the surface of what had gone on there. 
• Paddy Ashdown and Nick Clegg having both personally advised Cameron in May 2010 not to allow a man with such a whiff of brimstone into the highest levels of British government. 
• Former colleagues of Coulson claiming in September and October 2010 that he had been fully aware of News of the World phone-hacking, and had even directed people to engage in the practice.
• An ever-swelling stream of allegations about Coulson and the paper he ran over the following months, most easily understood by looking at Nick Davies' Twitter feed... 

And still David Cameron kept him on at the highest practical level of British government. After all, he felt Andy Coulson was entitled to a second chance. Because apparently in this Downing Street, as too often before, Caesar's wife need not be above suspicion.

Bone, revisited, or why I need to read Moby Dick

I realise it's only been a few days since I talked about Jeff Smith's Bone, but it's something I've thought about with unusual frequency in recent weeks. Partly this has been because I've been considering what comics it's be worth introducing to my housemate or other potential comics readers, having already decided that The Tale of One Bad Rat would be perfect for that; partly it's that I gave a friend the first two volumes of Bone just after Christmas in what may have been a futile attempt at cheering her up; and partly because I keep thinking it's about time I read Moby Dick.

Sometimes it bothers me that I have too many books, and I often wonder whether I'm better off reading the books I've yet to read, or rereading ones I know I'd get more from now than I once did.  Take The Lord of the Rings, for instance. I've read it twice, once as a child and once as a teenager, and I've no doubt that if I read it now it'd be a different book to the one I remember. I'd not read any epic poetry back then, for instance, I'd never read a line of the Icelandic sagas and Beowulf, and I knew next to nothing of Tolkien's life or the events and books that formed him. I certainly had no idea of how one could make a credible case for The Lord of the Rings being one of the sacramental pinnacles of the twentieth-century Catholic imagination. So I want to read it again. I've changed, and I think it'll have changed too, to being a deeper, darker, richer book than the one I read so long ago.

Unfortunately, I keep wondering whether my reading time might better be spent on other books, sitting unread and awaiting my attention, most especially Anna Karenina, Middlemarch, and Moby Dick. I've had them sitting on shelves for far too long -- the latter in a lovely Everyman edition -- all neglected as I fear their enormity, the commitment to reading that each one will take, and the fact that they're too big to be lugged about in pockets.

Moby Dick in particular has drawn me for a long time, though, certainly since I first read Bone, with Fone Bone boring everyone unconscious whenever he read from it. It's Jeff Smith's favourite book, so he at any rate, clearly doesn't find it that dull. A huge fan of its structure, it's pretty obvious that he shares Fone Bone's opinion of it, rather than that of his cousin Smiley...

... or, for that matter, the stupid, stupid Rat Creatures, who Smiley attempts to ward off by subjecting them to Melville's words...

To be fair to Herman Melville, though, it may well be that the problem may not lie in his words but in Fone's reading voice. Certainly, that's what most haunts the Rat Creatures when they groggily wake from their nautical nightmare.

Why wait till now to doubt David Cameron's Judgement?

I find it baffling that, leaving aside his apparently being so hand-in-glove with Rebekah Brooks that they go riding together, he has dinner at her house over Christmas, and he may well be responsible for her still having her job, people are pointing to his links with Andy Coulson as reason to doubt David Cameron's judgement.

I have difficulty understanding why people ever had faith in it in the first place. This is, after all, a man who not three years ago chained a supposedly treasured bike to a bollard while he went to the shops and then was surprised that people stole it.

Remember the story? It was late July in 2008, when David Cameron stopped for five minutes at the Tesco on Portobello Road. 'I was cycling home, he said, 'and stopped to pick up some things for supper. I chained the bike through the wheel then put it around one of those bollard things.'

When he came out, rather predictably, it was gone. One eyewitness said, 'He chained his bike to one of the bollards. There had been a couple of kids hanging around. They noticed he had chained it to a short bollard and they just picked it up and ran off.'

And how did he react? With complete incomprehension, it would seem: 'He was going up and down Portobello Road. He said, "I am sure I chained my bike here and it is not here. I left it for five minutes - how can it be gone?" To start with he was not sure whether he had just left it somewhere else then after a few minutes he realised it was stolen. He was embarrassed and a bit annoyed. He was going round talking to people asking them if they had seen it -- most people didn't recognise him.'




I reckoned last year that the British people would have to be morons to vote for Cameron. How could they trust a man who couldn't look after his own bike to look after their country? There are, after all, three things about this whole episode that pretty much showed him to be a clueless buffoon.

1. Firstly, Cameron's surely a man who can afford a decent D-lock, rather than relying on a chain, but let's assume* he's got a high quality chain. Given that, then, surely he knows that you don't just lock your wheel to things; you lock the frame and a wheel if you can manage that too, as the wheel can always be removed, and often pretty quickly, something I learned the expensive way when I was nineteen.
2. Second, if the prospective Prime Minister was using a flexible chain rather than a rigid D-lock, he should have realised it wouldn't be of any value unless it was chained around something it couldn't possibly have been slipped off; a rail, say, or one of fourteen U-shaped bicycle racks. Anything but a two-foot high bollard, basically. As it stood, his bike wasn't locked. It was merely decorated.
3. Third, thousands of  bikes are stolen in London every year. In 2007, it was reckoned that about 440,000 bikes were stolen in the UK -- that's one bike every 71 seconds, and the police reckon that a huge amount of bike theft goes unreported, so there could be 60,000 or so bikes stolen in London every year. The then leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition really shouldn't have been surprised to learn that his bike was not immune to this phenomenon. Bike theft, sadly, happens all too often, and if the Conservative leader didn't realise this it merely shows how unaware he is of the realities of modern British life. He certainly shouldn't have stood there in disbelief and wandered about bewildered, repeatedly saying 'But I locked it,' especially when he'd done no such thing, having instead opted merely to drape a chain around a neighbouring bollard.

There are old sayings about how if you look after the pennies the pounds will look after themselves, and how a man who can be trusted in little things can also be trusted with big ones. Bikes matter, as Cameron seems to believe, claiming his is a prized possession, yet the man who's now Prime Minister showed in the summer of 2008 that lacks the basic wit needed to look after something about which he says he cares deeply; why would anyone be surprised if it turns out that he's been naively snuggling up to criminals and liars? The man's clearly devoid of common sense.

And I'd have thought common sense was something the British people would have seen as a basic requirement in their Prime Minister, not a mere optional extra. I guess the 23.5 per cent of the British electorate who voted Conservative last year would beg to disagree, though.

Yes. Bollards.

* A risky venture, in light of the stupidity demonstrated in the whole affair.

Eolaí and his Painting Tour: Week One

Well, the Brother's cycling trip seems to be going well so far, barring a near-disastrous tube explosion early on. 

Over the first couple of days of the trip, he cycled through the hills of South Dublin, where he painted Glenasmole before cycling into Kildare where he visited the cemetery where Arthur Griffith is buried, and then went on to Sallins. From Sallins he made his way through the Wicklow Gap and on to Wicklow town, where he marvelled at the sunrise after a long night with his host, had a fine view of a coastguard rescue, and then sat painting on a windy hillside in Wicklow before crossing the Dereen into Carlow, where he did a colourful take on Duckett's Grove for his hosts. He's somewhere in Kilkenny now, a week into his travels, and is currently painting on a sunny hill, with cows lazing to the right of him, birds arguing behind him, and the whole world in front of him.

One of his hosts has posted the picture he did as a guest-gift. Nice, eh? 

You should follow his exploits, on his blog and more particularly on Twitter. And, y'know, if you reckon he might be passing within twenty miles or so, and you have a bed to offer and fancy a painting, you should let him know. Just send him a message. It's not called social networking for nothing...

There's a Reason Why the New Testament Calls 'Party Spirit' a Sin

No, really, it does. Factionalism leads to tribalism, and tribalism kills thought.

There are friends of mine who make me sigh, people who are incapable of changing their minds when faced with inconvenient facts, things that challenge or flatly refute their dogmas. They have a habit of reading stuff merely to validate what they already believe, and are incapable of realising that when a source they trust is shown to be either dishonest or ignorant on one issue, that it may well be far from trustworthy on others.

One yesterday said he was a bit cynical about the Guardian's revelations about the News of the World coming three days before the BSkyB decision goes through, as they'd surely known about it long ago.

A Manichean Siege Mentality

This, of course, is typically tribal nonsense, as spouted on the Telegraph blogs yesterday with reference to the BBC, paranoid rot which even the normally odious Cranmer is sensible enough to recognise as reprehensible gibberish. It's of a par too with the victim mentality displayed by Boris Johnson last year and by Conservative Home's Tim Montgomerie in the Guardian the year before, when he said:

'Given that Coulson has behaved impeccably since becoming a key adviser to the Tory leader, we can only assume that the attack on him is politically motivated... 

If this affair was simply a matter of Labour versus the Conservatives it would have quickly died a death, but the antagonism towards Coulson is also rooted in the hostility of the Guardian and the BBC to Rupert Murdoch's media empire. Polly Toynbee articulated that hostility on Saturday. She accused the owner of the Sun, the Times and Sky of "Europhobia", and of corrupting politics. 

I do not wish to defend every action of the News International empire, but Rupert Murdoch has been an overwhelming force for good in this country's life and politics. Sky Sports has revolutionised English football. We now have the most exciting football league in the world thanks to the money that football was denied when the BBC and ITV possessed their duopoly of stale, pedestrian coverage. Murdoch's Wapping adventure broke the stranglehold of the Fleet Street union barons – a bold action from which all newspapers have since benefited. His newspapers and Sky News have formed the most powerful rival to the dominance of the BBC. Without the Sun and the Times, the Eurosceptic message would have struggled to prosper. The BBC has never reflected the British people's concern about the European project and Murdoch has been a champion for them.'

Well, of course. We can only assume that attacks on Murdoch's Minions News are politically motivated. It's inconceivable that there might more to it than that. It's inconceivable that demanding journalistic integrity, standing up for the British people, and opposing the Murdoch Empire might just be the same thing. Isn't it? And no doubt Murdoch is shocked to learn what's been going on...

Of course, the claim that all the newspapers have gained from 'Murdoch's Wapping adventure' is a dubious one: their sales figures certainly haven't. And the idea that the Premiership is a particularly exciting league is, frankly, codswallop, given that it's less competitive now than it ever was in the pre-Sky era. The poppycock about the European project is particularly reprehensible; opposition to the EU has been moulded for decades in Britain by the Murdoch press. It hasn't so much been that Murdoch championed opposition to the European project, as that he basically formed it. Sensible Conservatives can see that.

Margaret Thatcher, Champion of European Integration!

Look at Thatcher, for instance, who before she became Murdoch's creature was herself a champion of the European project. She'd been part of the Conservative government that had negotiated entry to the EEC in the first place, and that signed Britain up to a process of ever-closer union, that being the avowed aim of the European project as stated in the very first sentence of the Treaty of Rome. She had thus been fully aware that a single currency was on the cards at the time of UK accession, and that there was no point the UK joining the Common Market if didn't plan on adopting the planned Common Currency.

When running for the Conservative party leadership in early 1975, just months before the British referendum on Europe, Thatcher insisted that leading Britain into Europe had been Heath's greatest achievement, and said:

'This torch must be picked up and carried by whoever is chosen by the party to succeed him. The commitment to European partnership is one which I full share.'

On 8 April of that year, she openly championed Britain's continued participation in the European project, basing her case on Britain's need for security, guaranteed food supplies, and access to the European market in general, as well as the prospect of a more important role in the world, saying:

'I think security is a matter not only of defence, but of working together in peacetime on economic issues which concern us and of working together on trade, work and other social matters which affect all our peoples [...] The Community opens windows of the world for us which since the war have been closing. [...] When we went in we knew exactly what we were going into.'

She was right, too. It's clear that way back in the 1970s, before Murdoch and his ilk got their talons into her, Thatcher had foreseen and was comfortable with all those things she has denounced since the late 1980s,* with her rabid minions whining and yelping in chorus behind her ever since.

Did Blair Really Sell Out Britain to Europe?

And unfortunately, those curs just keep barking idiotically, foaming at their feral mouths. Yesterday I saw a piece in the Spectator, entitled 'Barroso's EU Confidence Trick', which argues that

'... the battle for Britain's EU spending was lost under Blair. In 2001-02, Britain was a net beneficiary of EU to the tune of £900 million. The next year, the cost of EU membership soared to £3.4 billion. By 2004-05 it was £5.7 billion and in 2009-10 it was £6.6 billion. It's rising even more. Consider that the total defence cuts will save £2.4 billion: this is masses of cash. And for what? [...] Britain is paying billions for membership of a club that most of us think isn't helping at all.'

In the first place, Britain gains massively from the EU through trade within the common market and through having a combined negotiating position globally, so it's ludicrous to limit Britain's gains to what it receives from Brussels directly. That aside, though, 2002 was an anomalous year for Britain, where various factors including the rebate led to Britain receiving more from Brussels than it contributed; this was compensated for the following year. Britain has basically been a contributory state -- which makes sense, given that it sees itself as a successful and wealthy country -- for a very long time, long before Blair. All you have to do is look here to see how long this has been the case.*

Secondly, that contributions to the EU should have risen over the last decade is hardly surprising, given that a dozen countries have joined the Union since 2004, most of these having needed financial help in becoming functioning and profitable capitalist economies, or, if you like, in becoming useful partners for Britain. The UK, in fact, has long been the great champion of EU expansion, and had wanted the accession of all those countries, just as now it's the UK that shouts the loudest in favour of Turkish accession to the Union. This has to be paid for, of course, so it's somewhat ironic that those who should cry most for the Union to be broadened should then cry loudest when the bill arrives.

But of course, the opponents of the EU don't care about such facts, evidently taking the line that reality is something to be sampled rather than understood. They probably don't realise that as a proportion of national GDP, Britain contributed rather less to the EU under Blair and Brown than it did under Thatcher and Major.

* And if you don't believe me and can't be bothered trawling through Hansard, go and have a look at John Campbell's Margaret Thatcher, Volume I: The Grocer's Daughter. Because they hide this information in books.
** Yes, I know, this doesn't seem to incorporate the Rebate. Still, the general trend is discernible either way.

Jeff Smith's Bone, or more lessons in reading comics

I was talking the other day about how tricky it can be to teach the comics-illiterate how to read comics, and how Bryan Talbot deliberately created The Tale of One Bad Rat with such people in mind. The storytelling is straightforward, the art naturalistic, the dialogue kept to a minimum, and the panels devoid of the comics-specific conventions that have grown up as a form of narrative shorthand over the decades. That's not to say it's crudely simple; on the contrary, it's both subtle and sophisticated. It is, frankly, about as good an introduction to what comics can be as one could hope to find.

And it says important stuff, too.

Among the handful of other comics I like to show friends who are sceptical about what comics can do is Jeff Smith's Bone, which could hardly be more different from One Bad Rat. Here's a page from it, as a taster:

And if you think that's simple, you should take a look at the analysis of Smith's storytelling over here. You'll also see what happens next.

Clear and perfectly-paced, owing a lot to animation but not shackled by it, inspired in its look by the comics of Carl Barks and -- especially -- Walt Kelly, Bone is a hilarious and thrilling hybrid of Tolkien and Disney at its best. It tells the story of the three Bone cousins -- greedy Phoney, goofy Smiley, and everyman Fone, all of whom Smith had first drawn when he was a child -- who, having been run out of their own town after one of Phoney's corrupt scams goes wrong, get lost and find themselves in a lush and idyllic fantasy valley, complete with talking animals, burly barmen, grouchy old ladies, and a pretty redhead. It swiftly becomes clear that things in the valley aren't as rosy as they might appear, and that it has a dark past waiting to rear its head, and thus begins a story that as Time magazine said, is 'as sweeping as The Lord of the Rings cycle, but much funnier.'

Comparisons with The Lord of the Rings really aren't all that silly, given that Bone is a classic fantasy and is, indisputably, a very big book. As Neil Gaiman said of the collected edition back in the day, 'It's the height of a trade paperback, and over 1300 pages long. It looks rather intimidating in that format -- it looks like the epic fantasy novel that it is. A perfect gift, too.' Originally published in black and white, it's recently been coloured, which makes for a novel reading experience. I'm not sure that I think the colour's an improvement,* but it certainly does no harm, and adds an extra level to the storytelling, one that'll surely be picked up in the oft-promised film.

_____________________________________________________

* Is it even possible to improve on this? This is, surely, up there with the greatest panels ever.