pumpkinstrokemarrow

I also see that the Czechs are worried about another aspect of human rights. All those Germans who were ejected from the Sudetenland without notice or compensation at the end of the second war (sixty years ago that is) are exploring whether they can use human rights to get something back. Now while the ejection was a bit crude and few of those ejected were war criminals, the ejection was a political act a long time ago. I am not sure that human rights is or should be very applicable to that sort of thing. And what about the Palestinians? And the Diego Garcians? If the human rights net is cast too wide, I suspect the principal beneficiaries will be the lawyers. Remedy should be a political, not a legal, matter.

Presumably the US has not signed up, given the way it treats some of its prisoners. Presumably their lawyers are already doing well enough, thank you. Which reminds me that I read somewhere once that the road to corporate dizzy heights in the US lies through law school, whereas in the UK it lies through the accountancy crammer. Or perhaps this was a deduction from watching films set in the US.

Watched one such the other night called 'The Truman Show' and very entertaining it was too. The first time I have watched something on page 1 or main television for a long time. From the late nineties and about a chap who, from birth, had unknowingly been the centre of an elaborate soap. His whole world, apart from himself, was a film studio. A very large film studio, including roads, sea and weather (sometimes more localised than intended), in addition to lots and lots of actors and lots and lots of hidden cameras. The product was broadcast continuously, making its dosh from collateral merchandising rather than from advertising. Apart from being a good film, the thing that most interested me was where did the story come from? As a child - say twelve or thirteen - I sometimes used to have fantasies about being the centre of such a performance. That I was the only real person and everything else around me was a fix. Nonsense, but I subsequently read somewhere that it was fairly common nonsense, a fairly common fantasy. So I suspect that this is the ultimate source of the story.

Moving from fantasies to aristos., the last but one TLS carried a full page review of a book about a book about aristos.. That is to say a book which claimed to unlock the key to Brideshead Revisted. It says something about the Brit. fascination with the aristos. that used to run the place that such a book should be written and that it should attract so much space in a respectable literary mag.. It seems that the posh people that the original book was built on were a fairly rum lot. Drunks, druggies, the lot. But one aspect of the rumness did not get a mention, which omission drew down a hurt letter in the following TLS. From someone whose mother had spent time in the in-castle orphanage run by the chatelaine, the chatelaine on which one of the characters of Brideshead was built. It seems that the orphanage was run on rather Victorian lines with the orphans, who spent their weekdays doing the castle laundry, and their Sundays being paraded (for the real guests) in the castle church, being seriously underfed. Next time I come across a copy of Brideshead I must see if the orphans get a mention there.

This following TLS also included a long review article about a book about modern art. The reviewer was brave enough to say that some people thought that most of the work of the Brit. Art. crew was an embarrassing con trick. Pretentious and sometimes offensive rubbish talked up to dizzy prices by people dazzled by the emperor's new clothes. People who are terrified of being thought to miss some important point or some important new trend. People who are desperate to keep their grip on the arty gravy train and all the recreational substance fuelled fun which goes with it. All credit to these entrepreneurs of art who can pull such lucrative stunts off, but we are not going to clap forever. Maybe the next reviewer will be brave enough to say that he thinks such and such, rather than reporting that someone else thinks such and such.