A work, as of yet without a title, that may or may not be finished.
I sing a shallow selfsong of the man
The man of twists and turns
The mind that cantered through a dozen different successes
And decided that none was adequate.
The man whose head held him high
The man whose eyes walked up the carpeted walls of a nearly-there house
And hung above in stasis, comfortably hesitant
With umber cataracts of streetlight screenburn.
Somewhere inside, upstairs, and beyond, a door let itself open
Inviting in the bad dreams and movie scenes
Of too many late nights and white noise.
Walking up the walls further still
The stairs slide away into crowds of darkened laughter
And I light a flame just to cast a shadow.
In the melee below, they’re shouting.
Loud and voice-proud, they’re shouting loudest
They’re thrusting in leaps and bounds, and coming on far faster
Than I’d expected. Than I’d hoped.
I fall out into the hall
With blue thunder running down my face
And a melancholy mistaken for indifference
Like an empty can crushed underfoot
Like a liberated gaze longing for capture
Like cigarettes between lips, or
An asymmetrical pair of hands on hips
Falling through the floor.
Shining a violent green,
Risen above like a jealous totem
With many masks smiling and laughing and raging in fury
Talking of anger, money, sex, and the French
Walking on stolen paths in commandeered shoes
And still the transcendent blue eyes climbing to the ceiling
Refusing to be laid to rest.
If this all evolves into catastrophe then that’s probably for the best
You said
“This isn’t some kind of fucking odyssey”
And you took your coat and left.
Wednesday, 22 December 2010
Tuesday, 23 November 2010
Avast, a poem.
The Underground Pirate
In this, the turning tube of inertia, disjointed through the terra firma
On the Metropolitan line, at some kind of time
Between the braying invasion of the strategic pubs
And the neon halo atop the bald doorman’s head
We are ferried below the city’s swollen belly.
We clatter to a halt, the doors slide away to let the people fall out
And he boards, the clock of his crutch-leg deafening the dumb.
“Good evening ladies and gentlemen...”
He crows, and the chipped beech parrot on his shoulder affirms.
“I’m only getting off at Moorgate” he explains,
Holding us at ransom to our copies of the Metro,
Shifting his weight from one spindle to the other, splintering the easy deck.
Blinking in the white noise from within sallow hollows
The clearest blue eyes circling like gulls over a torrid blackbeard sea.
“If you can spare anything...”
The underground pirate, sailing from station to station
Recommencing his beaten demands to all and to each
While the luvvies roll their eyes across the floor
Turning blind.
“Thank you for your time. Have a safe journey home”
And with that-
He disembarks, plots a course, and disappears-
As we rumble onward,
Onward into our own green seas of guilty duvet dreams.
In this, the turning tube of inertia, disjointed through the terra firma
On the Metropolitan line, at some kind of time
Between the braying invasion of the strategic pubs
And the neon halo atop the bald doorman’s head
We are ferried below the city’s swollen belly.
We clatter to a halt, the doors slide away to let the people fall out
And he boards, the clock of his crutch-leg deafening the dumb.
“Good evening ladies and gentlemen...”
He crows, and the chipped beech parrot on his shoulder affirms.
“I’m only getting off at Moorgate” he explains,
Holding us at ransom to our copies of the Metro,
Shifting his weight from one spindle to the other, splintering the easy deck.
Blinking in the white noise from within sallow hollows
The clearest blue eyes circling like gulls over a torrid blackbeard sea.
“If you can spare anything...”
The underground pirate, sailing from station to station
Recommencing his beaten demands to all and to each
While the luvvies roll their eyes across the floor
Turning blind.
“Thank you for your time. Have a safe journey home”
And with that-
He disembarks, plots a course, and disappears-
As we rumble onward,
Onward into our own green seas of guilty duvet dreams.
Monday, 18 October 2010
Belated shadow cabinet and front bench appointments comment
So, this was originally meant to be entered to Leeds Student for the 15/10/10 issue, but the repsonse to the Browne Report rightly took precedence.
Since the announcement of his victory in the Labour leadership contest, Ed Miliband has been under scrutiny from analysts and bloggers of all political colours who are trying to discern the direction in which he will lead Labour. It has been two weeks since the results of the shadow cabinet and front bench appointments have been revealed, and instead of confirming expectations, he bucked them and further confounded commentators. While his choices were unexpected, he must take care to ensure he is still making wise ones- and there are certainly a few that raised some eyebrows in and outside of Westminster.
Foremost, of course, was the decision to appoint Alan Johnson as shadow chancellor, denying the position to frontrunners Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper. Miliband confidently and knowingly prevented either one of Labour’s prominent economic experts from being the one to spearhead their response to the coalition deficit reduction plans. Alan Johnson’s appointment is likely to pacify those who feared the “lurch to the left” in the wake of Ed Miliband’s leadership victory aided by the trade union vote- those who, like Johnson himself, backed the leadership campaign of David Miliband. His position regarding deficit reduction is nearer to that of former Chancellor Alistair Darling’s- the pledge to half the budget deficit within four years- and it will appeal to those within the party who were more reluctant to strike down the spectre of New Labour that has dogged the party in the wake of their election defeat. He has already proved a strong counter to Osborne in the Commons, but the government’s rebuke- citing inexperience and “deficit denial”- is clear and damning.
Despite his comparative economic failings, Johnson may well be a more strategic choice than Balls. Ed Miliband will seek to avoid the kind of personality clashes that appear to have rocked the Blair-Brown relationship- elder brother David’s refusal to serve in the shadow cabinet might too be seen in this light- while exercising more of his own economic expertise over Johnson. Elsewhere, some of his chief allies within the party were appointed to key posts, with campaign manager Sadiq Khan becoming shadow justice secretary, while erstwhile lefty and unsuccessful leadership candidate Diane Abbott became shadow minister for Public Health. Conciliatory measures such as these showed an opposition leader intuitively taking control of his party, disregarding outside anticipations. Unfortunately, and confusingly, this intuition did not extend to all reaches of his party appointments.
Phil Woolas, MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth, was among those appointed to Ed Balls’ team of junior Home Office ministers. During the general election campaign Woolas and his team published a leaflet defending his “strong” stance on immigration, while apparently attacking Lib Dem candidate Elwyn Watkins on his party’s plans for an amnesty for certain immigrants who had come to Britain illegally. “The Lib Dems plan to give hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants the right to stay [in Britain]...Do you want the extremists to win?”, read one line on the leaflet, accompanied by inflammatory pictures of radical Islamist demonstrators brandishing signs with slogans such as “Behead those who insult Islam”. In the wake of other campaign material that featured doctored photos of the Lib Dem candidate being arrested, and false claims that he possessed a criminal record, Watkins issued a legal challenge to Woolas and his subsequent election victory.
Not only were the tactics of Woolas’s team churlish and petty, they were frankly offensive, and clearly designed to play on the fears of what prosecutor Helen Mountfield described as “the white Sun [reading] vote”. E-mails between election agent Joseph Fitzpatrick and Woolas speak of “[getting] the white vote angry” and going strong on the “militant Moslem [sic] angle”. Telling untruths about a candidate’s personal life or political manifesto is bad practice enough, but deliberately invoking racial tensions in the community in an effort to revitalise a flagging campaign is downright despicable; it is something for which the BNP were overwhelmingly rejected by the voting public this May.
If Woolas is defeated in court, he will be expelled from parliament and a by-election called. It would be the first major scandal to hit the opposition, and would surely bring Ed Miliband’s judgement into question. Left-wing bloggers have hit the roof over the selection of Woolas. His shadow cabinet decisions already made the headlines for their unexpected nature. If any one of his choices proves disastrous during Labour’s opposition, there will be no one else to blame.
Since the announcement of his victory in the Labour leadership contest, Ed Miliband has been under scrutiny from analysts and bloggers of all political colours who are trying to discern the direction in which he will lead Labour. It has been two weeks since the results of the shadow cabinet and front bench appointments have been revealed, and instead of confirming expectations, he bucked them and further confounded commentators. While his choices were unexpected, he must take care to ensure he is still making wise ones- and there are certainly a few that raised some eyebrows in and outside of Westminster.
Foremost, of course, was the decision to appoint Alan Johnson as shadow chancellor, denying the position to frontrunners Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper. Miliband confidently and knowingly prevented either one of Labour’s prominent economic experts from being the one to spearhead their response to the coalition deficit reduction plans. Alan Johnson’s appointment is likely to pacify those who feared the “lurch to the left” in the wake of Ed Miliband’s leadership victory aided by the trade union vote- those who, like Johnson himself, backed the leadership campaign of David Miliband. His position regarding deficit reduction is nearer to that of former Chancellor Alistair Darling’s- the pledge to half the budget deficit within four years- and it will appeal to those within the party who were more reluctant to strike down the spectre of New Labour that has dogged the party in the wake of their election defeat. He has already proved a strong counter to Osborne in the Commons, but the government’s rebuke- citing inexperience and “deficit denial”- is clear and damning.
Despite his comparative economic failings, Johnson may well be a more strategic choice than Balls. Ed Miliband will seek to avoid the kind of personality clashes that appear to have rocked the Blair-Brown relationship- elder brother David’s refusal to serve in the shadow cabinet might too be seen in this light- while exercising more of his own economic expertise over Johnson. Elsewhere, some of his chief allies within the party were appointed to key posts, with campaign manager Sadiq Khan becoming shadow justice secretary, while erstwhile lefty and unsuccessful leadership candidate Diane Abbott became shadow minister for Public Health. Conciliatory measures such as these showed an opposition leader intuitively taking control of his party, disregarding outside anticipations. Unfortunately, and confusingly, this intuition did not extend to all reaches of his party appointments.
Phil Woolas, MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth, was among those appointed to Ed Balls’ team of junior Home Office ministers. During the general election campaign Woolas and his team published a leaflet defending his “strong” stance on immigration, while apparently attacking Lib Dem candidate Elwyn Watkins on his party’s plans for an amnesty for certain immigrants who had come to Britain illegally. “The Lib Dems plan to give hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants the right to stay [in Britain]...Do you want the extremists to win?”, read one line on the leaflet, accompanied by inflammatory pictures of radical Islamist demonstrators brandishing signs with slogans such as “Behead those who insult Islam”. In the wake of other campaign material that featured doctored photos of the Lib Dem candidate being arrested, and false claims that he possessed a criminal record, Watkins issued a legal challenge to Woolas and his subsequent election victory.
Not only were the tactics of Woolas’s team churlish and petty, they were frankly offensive, and clearly designed to play on the fears of what prosecutor Helen Mountfield described as “the white Sun [reading] vote”. E-mails between election agent Joseph Fitzpatrick and Woolas speak of “[getting] the white vote angry” and going strong on the “militant Moslem [sic] angle”. Telling untruths about a candidate’s personal life or political manifesto is bad practice enough, but deliberately invoking racial tensions in the community in an effort to revitalise a flagging campaign is downright despicable; it is something for which the BNP were overwhelmingly rejected by the voting public this May.
If Woolas is defeated in court, he will be expelled from parliament and a by-election called. It would be the first major scandal to hit the opposition, and would surely bring Ed Miliband’s judgement into question. Left-wing bloggers have hit the roof over the selection of Woolas. His shadow cabinet decisions already made the headlines for their unexpected nature. If any one of his choices proves disastrous during Labour’s opposition, there will be no one else to blame.
Tuesday, 5 October 2010
Cameron keeps his Coul(son)
With the Conservative Party conference proving the ideal platform for plans to slash Britain’s structural deficit- £109bn being the figure touted- one particular figure is yet to be cut from the picture. Andy Coulson, David Cameron’s media adviser, is facing fresh allegations from a senior journalist that, while editor of the News of the World, he listened to hacked voicemail messages obtained by reporters. Such a controversial claim, the like of which is very serious indeed, should alone be enough to warrant an investigation; but the actualities of the case seem almost more worrying than the claim itself.
The former NOTW executive, who spoke as part of Channel 4’s Dispatches program, threw light upon Coulson’s distorted sense of media integrity. He claimed that the former editor insisted upon seeing or listening to the phone messages in order to determine whether the proposed stories would include misinformation that might be subject to libel or defamation lawsuits. In what twisted world or journalistic immorality (if that concept is itself not a paradox) can a newspaper editor demand assurance that the illegally obtained material before him is legally viable to print? The answer, it seems, is the world of News International, the UK wing of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. His publications all but ignored the issue; The Sun gave a passing note on Scotland Yard’s ruling out of an investigation due to insubstantial evidence, and Cameron granted Coulson affirmed sanctuary. When last year a news anchor on US channel Fox, of which Murdoch is CEO and Chairman, asked the Australian to divulge, he was flatly met with refusal. The anchor replied: “No worries Mr Chairman, that’s fine with me”; and the interview continued anew. This kind of insidious contempt for freedom of the press must not be permitted shelter under the centre of Britain’s democracy.
The original allegations of Coulson’s involvement in phone hacking date back to 2007, when he resigned as editor of the tabloid newspaper following the revelations that Clive Goodman, at the time the paper’s royal correspondent, had hacked the voicemail messages of three members of the royal household. For one reporter’s illicit activities to go unnoticed by his editor is not beyond belief; but when claims began to surface of the widespread practice of phone-tapping within the NOTW offices, we are left to draw one of two conclusions. Either Coulson’s authority over his reporters was so weak as to be entirely irresponsible for their actions, or his denial of involvement and distancing from the allegations was watertight enough for him to elude suspicion. After all, Goodman was subsequently imprisoned for his role in the scandal, while Coulson managed largely to escape intense scrutiny and in a matter of months was appointed Conservative Party Director of Communications. Coulson has frequently and fervently denied his knowledge of his reporters’ practices, and since taking up his role within the innermost circles of the coalition government, seems to have benefitted from the protection of both Cameron and Murdoch, who owe much to one another following the News International union of newspapers’ full and unequivocal backing for the Tories in the recent election.
In a tumultuous few months, senior coalition figures have already been forced to bow out amid scandal and cries of foul play. David Laws, short lived Chief Secretary to the Treasury, was the first to go after details of his expenses claims were unnecessarily conflated with stories of his sexuality. William Hague had a turbulent week when he too faced “malicious rumours” regarding his own sexuality and relationship with his wife, after sharing a room with his aide on the campaign trail. Hague clung on, and rightly so; it would have been grossly unjust had he been forced to retreat under the pressure of the gossip-hungry hacks baying at his door. In the case of Andy Coulson, the same reporters who attacked Laws and Hague are those who hold positions Coulson himself once occupied: part of the same network of intrigue and backroom deals, whose reputations are made and veritably owned by News International. Now Coulson needs to be brought forward and made to account for himself, if not by tribunal then by Cameron himself, or by any senior Conservatives concerned for their party’s integrity. In this case, the allegations- unlike those regarding MPs’ sexualities- are of indiscretions that have absolutely no place in the upper echelons of government, and that further jeopardise the ever-questionable ethics of the free press. Here stands one figure whom I would be glad to see cut by the Tories.
The former NOTW executive, who spoke as part of Channel 4’s Dispatches program, threw light upon Coulson’s distorted sense of media integrity. He claimed that the former editor insisted upon seeing or listening to the phone messages in order to determine whether the proposed stories would include misinformation that might be subject to libel or defamation lawsuits. In what twisted world or journalistic immorality (if that concept is itself not a paradox) can a newspaper editor demand assurance that the illegally obtained material before him is legally viable to print? The answer, it seems, is the world of News International, the UK wing of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. His publications all but ignored the issue; The Sun gave a passing note on Scotland Yard’s ruling out of an investigation due to insubstantial evidence, and Cameron granted Coulson affirmed sanctuary. When last year a news anchor on US channel Fox, of which Murdoch is CEO and Chairman, asked the Australian to divulge, he was flatly met with refusal. The anchor replied: “No worries Mr Chairman, that’s fine with me”; and the interview continued anew. This kind of insidious contempt for freedom of the press must not be permitted shelter under the centre of Britain’s democracy.
The original allegations of Coulson’s involvement in phone hacking date back to 2007, when he resigned as editor of the tabloid newspaper following the revelations that Clive Goodman, at the time the paper’s royal correspondent, had hacked the voicemail messages of three members of the royal household. For one reporter’s illicit activities to go unnoticed by his editor is not beyond belief; but when claims began to surface of the widespread practice of phone-tapping within the NOTW offices, we are left to draw one of two conclusions. Either Coulson’s authority over his reporters was so weak as to be entirely irresponsible for their actions, or his denial of involvement and distancing from the allegations was watertight enough for him to elude suspicion. After all, Goodman was subsequently imprisoned for his role in the scandal, while Coulson managed largely to escape intense scrutiny and in a matter of months was appointed Conservative Party Director of Communications. Coulson has frequently and fervently denied his knowledge of his reporters’ practices, and since taking up his role within the innermost circles of the coalition government, seems to have benefitted from the protection of both Cameron and Murdoch, who owe much to one another following the News International union of newspapers’ full and unequivocal backing for the Tories in the recent election.
In a tumultuous few months, senior coalition figures have already been forced to bow out amid scandal and cries of foul play. David Laws, short lived Chief Secretary to the Treasury, was the first to go after details of his expenses claims were unnecessarily conflated with stories of his sexuality. William Hague had a turbulent week when he too faced “malicious rumours” regarding his own sexuality and relationship with his wife, after sharing a room with his aide on the campaign trail. Hague clung on, and rightly so; it would have been grossly unjust had he been forced to retreat under the pressure of the gossip-hungry hacks baying at his door. In the case of Andy Coulson, the same reporters who attacked Laws and Hague are those who hold positions Coulson himself once occupied: part of the same network of intrigue and backroom deals, whose reputations are made and veritably owned by News International. Now Coulson needs to be brought forward and made to account for himself, if not by tribunal then by Cameron himself, or by any senior Conservatives concerned for their party’s integrity. In this case, the allegations- unlike those regarding MPs’ sexualities- are of indiscretions that have absolutely no place in the upper echelons of government, and that further jeopardise the ever-questionable ethics of the free press. Here stands one figure whom I would be glad to see cut by the Tories.
Saturday, 25 September 2010
Baroness Warsi's e-mail to Conservative supporters following the election of Ed Miliband as Labour leader
Dear _____,
On behalf of all of us in the Conservative Party, I congratulate Ed Miliband on his election as Leader of the Labour Party.
He will have many challenges ahead in these next few days, but if he wants to be taken seriously, the first thing he's got to do is own up to his role in creating the mess that Britain is in and tell us what he'd do to fix it.
From advising Gordon Brown in the Treasury in the 90s, to serving in his Cabinet in the 2000s, he must recognise his central role in creating the financial mess we're all paying for.
For the past five months, all we've heard from Labour is knee jerk opposition to our plans to tackle the deficit. Now is the time for Mr Miliband to tell us what he'd do instead. He promised us a Labour spending plan before the spending review, now we'd all like to see it.
The new Labour leader now has a clear choice. He can either serve the national interest by joining with us and the Liberal Democrats and set out how he would cut the deficit, or he can stand on the sidelines and refuse to engage with the biggest challenge facing Britain in decades.
The fact that Ed Miliband owes his position to the votes of the unions does not bode well. At the moment this looks like a great leap backwards for the Labour Party.
After 13 years of Labour failure, we need your help to hold Ed Miliband to account. So please forward this email to your family and friends - and don't forget to follow and share our updates on Facebook and Twitter.
Yours,
Sayeeda Warsi
Co-Chairman of the Conservative Party
On behalf of all of us in the Conservative Party, I congratulate Ed Miliband on his election as Leader of the Labour Party.
He will have many challenges ahead in these next few days, but if he wants to be taken seriously, the first thing he's got to do is own up to his role in creating the mess that Britain is in and tell us what he'd do to fix it.
From advising Gordon Brown in the Treasury in the 90s, to serving in his Cabinet in the 2000s, he must recognise his central role in creating the financial mess we're all paying for.
For the past five months, all we've heard from Labour is knee jerk opposition to our plans to tackle the deficit. Now is the time for Mr Miliband to tell us what he'd do instead. He promised us a Labour spending plan before the spending review, now we'd all like to see it.
The new Labour leader now has a clear choice. He can either serve the national interest by joining with us and the Liberal Democrats and set out how he would cut the deficit, or he can stand on the sidelines and refuse to engage with the biggest challenge facing Britain in decades.
The fact that Ed Miliband owes his position to the votes of the unions does not bode well. At the moment this looks like a great leap backwards for the Labour Party.
After 13 years of Labour failure, we need your help to hold Ed Miliband to account. So please forward this email to your family and friends - and don't forget to follow and share our updates on Facebook and Twitter.
Yours,
Sayeeda Warsi
Co-Chairman of the Conservative Party
Wednesday, 8 September 2010
US blind spot? A quick post.
The BBC reports on the plans of Florida pastor Terry Jones and his Dove World Outreach Center to burn copies of the Koran on the 11th of September.
"On Monday, General David Petraeus, the top US commander in Afghanistan, warned troops' lives would be in danger if the church went through with its bonfire. The US Attorney General, Eric Holder, called the idea "idiotic and dangerous"."
Not "bigoted and intolerant"? All they seem to think about is the impact on America... and American soldiers, rather than daring to speak out against what I fear is an attitude shared in whatever form by many more than the fifty Florida churchgoers in question. The safety of American Christians serving in Afghanistan may be put at risk, but what about the safety of American Muslims at home? There doesn't appear to be any indication that this consequence has been considered.
"On Monday, General David Petraeus, the top US commander in Afghanistan, warned troops' lives would be in danger if the church went through with its bonfire. The US Attorney General, Eric Holder, called the idea "idiotic and dangerous"."
Not "bigoted and intolerant"? All they seem to think about is the impact on America... and American soldiers, rather than daring to speak out against what I fear is an attitude shared in whatever form by many more than the fifty Florida churchgoers in question. The safety of American Christians serving in Afghanistan may be put at risk, but what about the safety of American Muslims at home? There doesn't appear to be any indication that this consequence has been considered.
Friday, 3 September 2010
The Sad Story of Mr. Hague
I'm always anxious as to how these are read- if they are read at all. They're merely off-the-cuff musings that I should probably take more time to think about, but that if I don't write down immediately will probably fizzle out and never reappear. Maybe I shouldn't even write them at all. With that in mind, do proceed.
Picking up the tail-end of this entirely unimportant non-news story, I feel compelled to write a short piece on my belief that the rumours about Foreign Secretary William Hague's sexuality and following PR disaster-a-thon were not at all worth writing about. Got that?
Already, one coaltion minister has, effectively, been forced from his post after a media storm about homosexuality. And here's the thing- that story wasn't about Chief Secretary to the Treasury David Laws' sexuality at all. It was about his questionable expenses claims, a misdemeanour that happened to coincide with the fact that Laws paid rent to a person who happened to be his long-term partner. The disclosure of his homosexuality was somehow twisted by the press so as to make it seem as though this was about something more sinister, more seedy, than it was- and in fact, it was nothing. We recently saw prisons minister Crispin Blunt express his wish for time to 'come to terms' with his homosexuality- as though he was forced, all of a sudden, to become accustomed to having wheels where his feet once were. I don't mean to suggest that he doesn't need an adjustment period if his life has changed significantly- he has left his wife, and thus possibly his home as well- but the language used to convey this situation still betrays a benign homophobia that colours the way in which these people are portrayed in the media. The hideous result of mixing MPs' private lives and their media representation came to a head with the utter non-story of William Hague's sharing of a room with an aide when campaigning. Now, I'm not the biggest Hague fan, but if his job is now under threat as a result of this shitstorm, then that's not right.
So, it transpired that Hague had indeed shared a room with aide and colleague Chris Myers (who has since quit his job and fled from the intrusions of the media) whilst on the campaign trail for the general election. Teeheehee, he's sharing a room with a man- he's GAY! Many Tories have blasted Bill Hague for this apparent 'error of judgement'- as though we the public are helplessly and interminably compelled to put two and two (read 'man' and 'man') together and get five (read 'deviant/devious homosexuality'). Of course, by no means is this a phenomenon exclusive to the happenstance of two men sharing a room, for if an unmarried (or separately married) man and woman shared a room, people would cry 'foul play' all the same. This is surely a symptom of a collective mindset by which we're driven to suspect, doubt, decry and denounce at every opportunity- where we're all so self-important and yet tragically insecure, where we need to condemn others so that we ourselves are absolved. Gone is the innoncence of companionship, where two men might dare to do something so suggestive as share a hotel room. The nihilist's explanation for this suspicion is of course that people are all morally corrupted and probably guilty of everything with which we charge them. Unfortunately, a few thousand years of inhumanity, death and destruction don't do much to prove them wrong. But morals are an intangible and arbitrary construct, and so don't really have any business guiding our animalistic thrill-seeking pleasure-quest through life, right? Another day, another post.
I've lost my place. Apparently these rumours of homosexuality have dogged Hague for a while, for reasons that The Telegraph un-tongue-in-cheekedly points out (in an editorial, no less) are probably applicable to half of all MPs, let alone Tory ones. The rest of the story, I shan't go in to here- but it's the next part in which Bill, unfortunately, makes a mess of things himself. And I don't mean in the way that Alastair Campbell seems to think- that, by announcing his and his wife's history of miscarriages in a public announcement, he has somehow fuelled yet more speculation about his sexuality. Rather, by putting out an intensely personal statemant about deeply sad family matters, he has further convinced the media that his private life is the property of hacks who have nothing better with which to fill newspaper pages or screen time than affairs of the home. Instead of crushing malicious rumours (and I'm worried that the 'malicious' might refer to an accusation of homosexuality being offensive, rather than the intent behind the accusation) and getting on with his job- which he could stand to do better- he has unbolted the door to the figurative politician's home, and invited the hungry journos in to take photographs onf said politician's figurative underwear drawer. Or something like that. Now Hague's judgement is being questioned- just like David Laws' was. And I fear that Laws' fiscal affairs weren't the only reason.
Picking up the tail-end of this entirely unimportant non-news story, I feel compelled to write a short piece on my belief that the rumours about Foreign Secretary William Hague's sexuality and following PR disaster-a-thon were not at all worth writing about. Got that?
Already, one coaltion minister has, effectively, been forced from his post after a media storm about homosexuality. And here's the thing- that story wasn't about Chief Secretary to the Treasury David Laws' sexuality at all. It was about his questionable expenses claims, a misdemeanour that happened to coincide with the fact that Laws paid rent to a person who happened to be his long-term partner. The disclosure of his homosexuality was somehow twisted by the press so as to make it seem as though this was about something more sinister, more seedy, than it was- and in fact, it was nothing. We recently saw prisons minister Crispin Blunt express his wish for time to 'come to terms' with his homosexuality- as though he was forced, all of a sudden, to become accustomed to having wheels where his feet once were. I don't mean to suggest that he doesn't need an adjustment period if his life has changed significantly- he has left his wife, and thus possibly his home as well- but the language used to convey this situation still betrays a benign homophobia that colours the way in which these people are portrayed in the media. The hideous result of mixing MPs' private lives and their media representation came to a head with the utter non-story of William Hague's sharing of a room with an aide when campaigning. Now, I'm not the biggest Hague fan, but if his job is now under threat as a result of this shitstorm, then that's not right.
So, it transpired that Hague had indeed shared a room with aide and colleague Chris Myers (who has since quit his job and fled from the intrusions of the media) whilst on the campaign trail for the general election. Teeheehee, he's sharing a room with a man- he's GAY! Many Tories have blasted Bill Hague for this apparent 'error of judgement'- as though we the public are helplessly and interminably compelled to put two and two (read 'man' and 'man') together and get five (read 'deviant/devious homosexuality'). Of course, by no means is this a phenomenon exclusive to the happenstance of two men sharing a room, for if an unmarried (or separately married) man and woman shared a room, people would cry 'foul play' all the same. This is surely a symptom of a collective mindset by which we're driven to suspect, doubt, decry and denounce at every opportunity- where we're all so self-important and yet tragically insecure, where we need to condemn others so that we ourselves are absolved. Gone is the innoncence of companionship, where two men might dare to do something so suggestive as share a hotel room. The nihilist's explanation for this suspicion is of course that people are all morally corrupted and probably guilty of everything with which we charge them. Unfortunately, a few thousand years of inhumanity, death and destruction don't do much to prove them wrong. But morals are an intangible and arbitrary construct, and so don't really have any business guiding our animalistic thrill-seeking pleasure-quest through life, right? Another day, another post.
I've lost my place. Apparently these rumours of homosexuality have dogged Hague for a while, for reasons that The Telegraph un-tongue-in-cheekedly points out (in an editorial, no less) are probably applicable to half of all MPs, let alone Tory ones. The rest of the story, I shan't go in to here- but it's the next part in which Bill, unfortunately, makes a mess of things himself. And I don't mean in the way that Alastair Campbell seems to think- that, by announcing his and his wife's history of miscarriages in a public announcement, he has somehow fuelled yet more speculation about his sexuality. Rather, by putting out an intensely personal statemant about deeply sad family matters, he has further convinced the media that his private life is the property of hacks who have nothing better with which to fill newspaper pages or screen time than affairs of the home. Instead of crushing malicious rumours (and I'm worried that the 'malicious' might refer to an accusation of homosexuality being offensive, rather than the intent behind the accusation) and getting on with his job- which he could stand to do better- he has unbolted the door to the figurative politician's home, and invited the hungry journos in to take photographs onf said politician's figurative underwear drawer. Or something like that. Now Hague's judgement is being questioned- just like David Laws' was. And I fear that Laws' fiscal affairs weren't the only reason.
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