Tuesday, June 10, 2008
DT
DT clearly has the DTs again this morning. What with one thing and another it seems that the world is fast heading for its end.
A couple of Muslim flavoured items caught my eye. First, it might be more grown up, at the time we are running on about our 100 heroes (this without commenting on whether we are doing the right thing and without detracting from their hero status. These are not the points being made), to at least report how many of the other side we are killing. Reading between the lines we are killing a lot more of them than they are killing of us. And if the number is large, whatever the rights and wrongs of the business and despite the Afghan addiction to violence, there will be scars to heal and a bit more honesty about the damage we are doing might win us a few friends in the Muslim community. The time has passed, I guess, for similar honesty about the much larger number of Iraqis who are now dead as a result of our efforts there. Second, I see that the Israeli ambassador is unhappy about the British view of his country. So in the same vein, while the time has long passed to deny their right to exist, a bit more honesty (from the Israelis) about the unpleasant way they acquired their country might win them a few friends.
But the 100 heroes plus a peice in one of the Sunday papers about how our prisons are not only overflowing with people put there for drug related business but are also overflowing with drugs, only go to strengthen my view that some sort of legalisation would be a better place to be than where we are now. What I have in mind is something like the state liquor shops they have in Scandanavia. Don't make recreational drugs illegal - including here alcohol and nicotine - but do cut down the number of places from which they can be bought for consumption off the premises. And given that a lot of drug users are rather unpleasant and smelly people, maybe have separate counters for the various differant sorts of recreational drugs. But watch out. Sell your shares in Group 4 and Serco before the idea catches on. They have lots to lose.
I also see that the Tate Britain, hitherto largely an oasis of artistic sanity, has now succumbed to a fit of self-flagellation., with a lot of PC twaddle about the evil doings of the UK in the past filling out their catalogue of an exhibition of British Oriental art - that is to say pictures by British artists with an oriental theme. Artists who were probably mainly decent, middle aged, cultured tweedy types, possibly a touch Bohemian (maybe the odd puff of opium with their post prandial pipe?) in their habits, but not particularly into savage beatings or massacres of people of colour. And the word oriental conveniently carrying the bad overtones given it by the late Mr Said. But maybe I ought to go and see the thing for myself rather than relying on the DT.
Now finished my first roman dur from Simenon - the snow is dirty. Odd sort of book, written in 1948. Appears to be set in a town with a low town and a high town - which usually suggests a town on a large inland river with cliffs - a town which is also a port, is occupied and whose inhabitants mainly appear to have German flavoured surnames. Perhaps we are on the Rhine in the Alsace. Rather depressing - if gripping - portrait of a young low life, with a fair amount of coverage given to the drearily unpleasant ways of the people who operated and used brothels in those days. A rather sordid view of the world - the flavour of which one does not catch from the much more rose tinted worlds of Frost, Midsomer and their like. Or is the differance just one of timing? In 1948, the war, the poverty and other troubles that came with it were all much more recent. Much more in the minds of ones' readers. And one wonders, despite the energy with which Simenon explains his devotion to family in his memoires, what writing about such stuff tells us about him? Must go for a bigger sample and see if low lives of this sort feature in all of these roman durs. And what about the occupation theme? How much of that is there? Another rather dreary business, some way removed from the more rose tinted tales of the home front that we get.
A couple of Muslim flavoured items caught my eye. First, it might be more grown up, at the time we are running on about our 100 heroes (this without commenting on whether we are doing the right thing and without detracting from their hero status. These are not the points being made), to at least report how many of the other side we are killing. Reading between the lines we are killing a lot more of them than they are killing of us. And if the number is large, whatever the rights and wrongs of the business and despite the Afghan addiction to violence, there will be scars to heal and a bit more honesty about the damage we are doing might win us a few friends in the Muslim community. The time has passed, I guess, for similar honesty about the much larger number of Iraqis who are now dead as a result of our efforts there. Second, I see that the Israeli ambassador is unhappy about the British view of his country. So in the same vein, while the time has long passed to deny their right to exist, a bit more honesty (from the Israelis) about the unpleasant way they acquired their country might win them a few friends.
But the 100 heroes plus a peice in one of the Sunday papers about how our prisons are not only overflowing with people put there for drug related business but are also overflowing with drugs, only go to strengthen my view that some sort of legalisation would be a better place to be than where we are now. What I have in mind is something like the state liquor shops they have in Scandanavia. Don't make recreational drugs illegal - including here alcohol and nicotine - but do cut down the number of places from which they can be bought for consumption off the premises. And given that a lot of drug users are rather unpleasant and smelly people, maybe have separate counters for the various differant sorts of recreational drugs. But watch out. Sell your shares in Group 4 and Serco before the idea catches on. They have lots to lose.
I also see that the Tate Britain, hitherto largely an oasis of artistic sanity, has now succumbed to a fit of self-flagellation., with a lot of PC twaddle about the evil doings of the UK in the past filling out their catalogue of an exhibition of British Oriental art - that is to say pictures by British artists with an oriental theme. Artists who were probably mainly decent, middle aged, cultured tweedy types, possibly a touch Bohemian (maybe the odd puff of opium with their post prandial pipe?) in their habits, but not particularly into savage beatings or massacres of people of colour. And the word oriental conveniently carrying the bad overtones given it by the late Mr Said. But maybe I ought to go and see the thing for myself rather than relying on the DT.
Now finished my first roman dur from Simenon - the snow is dirty. Odd sort of book, written in 1948. Appears to be set in a town with a low town and a high town - which usually suggests a town on a large inland river with cliffs - a town which is also a port, is occupied and whose inhabitants mainly appear to have German flavoured surnames. Perhaps we are on the Rhine in the Alsace. Rather depressing - if gripping - portrait of a young low life, with a fair amount of coverage given to the drearily unpleasant ways of the people who operated and used brothels in those days. A rather sordid view of the world - the flavour of which one does not catch from the much more rose tinted worlds of Frost, Midsomer and their like. Or is the differance just one of timing? In 1948, the war, the poverty and other troubles that came with it were all much more recent. Much more in the minds of ones' readers. And one wonders, despite the energy with which Simenon explains his devotion to family in his memoires, what writing about such stuff tells us about him? Must go for a bigger sample and see if low lives of this sort feature in all of these roman durs. And what about the occupation theme? How much of that is there? Another rather dreary business, some way removed from the more rose tinted tales of the home front that we get.
# posted by Jim @ 12:44 AM 
