Shadow Health Minister dismisses an entire county

I have had an interesting exchange with Dianne Abbott on Twitter this morning. She was involved in a discussion with a Lib Dem friend of mine, @10anta, about the record of Ken Livingstone as London mayor. She then posted this tweet:

@10anta You live in Yorkshire, so all you know about Ken is what you read in the (Tory) press.

Subsequent exchanges have revealed that the point she was trying (but failing) to make was apparently something to do with the difficulty of judging London mayors if you live outside London. But she has singularly and repeatedly failed to apologise for her apparent view that people who live in Yorkshire are unable to think for themselves.

One wonders quite what the MPs for Doncaster North and Morley & Outwood would make of her opinions...

Home Secretary commemorates Armistice Day by, erm, banning free speech

Every year, Armistice Day represents an opportunity to remember the sacrifice of those who fought to protect our freedom. I try to do so during the two minutes’ silence at 11 am, and again on Remembrance Sunday. I try not to think about the countless numbers of people lost in wars that had nothing to do with freedom or justice. Unfortunately, as that describes most wars, and especially the wars that have happened during and just before my lifetime, I find it very difficult.

I don’t wear a poppy for that reason, although I do sometimes donate to the Royal British Legion. I am more likely to wear a white poppy, although I am reticent to do so given the treatment sometimes meted out to wearers perceived as namby-pamby pacifists.

It doesn’t help, of course, when the Home Secretary takes it upon herself to ban legitimate protests against Armistice Day and what it represents. I understand that the Metropolitan Police are planning to police the two minutes’ silence under the Public Order Act, too. This is a terrible reminder that governments can take away in a heartbeat what so many died to protect.

Finally, on this day, I always find it moving to listen to certain songs written about the memory of wars. Below I’ve linked to a couple of the most moving examples. I hope they will help you to think about what today means.

A moving cover of Eric Bogle’s tremendous folk song about Gallipoli.

Victory Parade, by the McCalmans, is a song about young men going to war.

Lazy Journalism #93: Guardian’s ‘secret veto’ creates hysteria

On the front page of the Guardian today there is a big story about the Prince of Wales exercising a ‘secretive constitutional veto’ over government legislation.

Mark Pack has already demonstrated that the hysterical tone of the story is somewhat unwarranted. Via a simple Hansard search he found that every time the Prince of Wales is asked for Consent it is reported openly to Parliament and recorded in Hansard, which is, of course, a public document readily available to journalists.

I thought I would follow in his footsteps. A simple Google search revealed this page on the ‘Consent of the Crown’ in the ‘Companion to the Standing Orders and guide to the Proceedings of the House of Lords’. In it, we read that:

7.177  Where a bill affects the prerogative or interest of the Crown, the Consent of the Crown is required and in respect of public bills must be signified to the House by a minister who is a Privy Counsellor. This Consent places the Crown's prerogative and interest at the disposal of Parliament for the purposes of the bill, but does not imply that the Crown approves the provisions that require its Consent.

As Consent does not signify approval, it is impossible to tell whether these Bills were in any way affected by the requirement to ask for Consent.

On the (lack of) evidence so far, then, this seems like another version of Royal Assent; technically the Queen has the right to withhold that, too, but it was last exercised in 1708.

I’m prepared to accept that Prince Charles, who has a history of lobbying aggressively to promote his own interests, is having an unhelpful and opaque influence on legislation. But until I’ve seen evidence that that’s really happening, I’m not going to jump the gun and denounce him.

We Need To Talk About Kevin – Curzon Richmond

Or, alternatively: We Need To Talk About We Need To Talk About Kevin.

There are some films that you look forward to seeing. For me, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was one such, as I described in some detail in my review. Lynne Ramsay’s adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s disturbing novel, on the other hand, was something to approach with trepidation.

For those unfamiliar with the book, it deals with the relationship between a mother, Eva, and her son, the titular Kevin. The boy is a monster who eventually commits a Columbine-style atrocity at his school. Shriver skilfully explores the nature vs nurture question through an epistolary style; through telling the story through the eyes of Eva, he removes us from the epicentre of the action.

It was essential that the actress chosen to play Eva was able to embody all the weariness, dignity and suffering of the character. Tilda Swinton was an excellent choice: she is harrowing in her resolution in the face of abuse – verbal and physical – from all sides (including her own son). Also excellently cast is the teenaged Kevin, played by newcomer Ezra Miller. Chosen as much for his facial resemblance to Swinton as for his technical abilities, or so it seemed, he nonetheless captures the sneering arrogance and misanthropy that drives Kevin ultimately to commit his worst and final act.

However, I thought the film flawed in a number of ways. Firstly, there was an over-reliance on a ‘blood’ motif; from the very first scene, Eva revelling in a mass tomato fight in Spain, the screen is perpetually covered in red of one kind or another. Some of these work – the red paint covering Eva’s house, presumably thrown by parents of victims, is a recurring success – but the sheer volume of ‘red’ imagery becomes, in a word, overkill. Perhaps the worst example is when Kevin fills a sandwich with almost an entire jar of strawberry jam, which oozes out from the bread as a result.

Secondly, although it was understandable that the writer/director felt a certain amount of freedom in telling the story, a more linear approach would have heightened the tension. As it was, we basically knew what was going to happen throughout the film, meaning that when the climactic act was finally committed, we were almost ready for it. If there had been fewer hints of what was to come, it might have been a more effectively shocking incident. However, the point of Eva’s character is that she perpetually inhabits two different worlds – the past and the present – and so jumping between the two worlds with her was also a powerful narrative decision.

Ultimately, though, the success of this film lies in the assumption that the audience will identify with Eva. She is a typical modern parent, uncertain even of the decision to proceed with the pregnancy at all, and always ambivalent at best about what she has brought into the world. Similarly, there is no indication of any kind of discipline in the household; the child is king from the beginning, cosseted and pampered and surrendered to, despite the very obvious imperfections and immaturities in its character.

In other words, Kevin is treated as the centre of Eva’s world. What the film entirely fails to point out is that this would be wrong even if Kevin were a ‘good’ child, like his sister Celia; because there is no universal truth to impart to our children, we are at their mercy, and any attempt to deny them the desires of their heart borders on abuse.

The fundamental belief is one of ultimate goodness; that children and adults will ‘come right in the end’. Yet Kevin’s actions are an extreme refutation of that unthinking optimism and a demonstration of the universal propensity to corruption and decay. As such, I suspect that I found the film less shocking than I was supposed to. Anyone who has spent much time with themselves or anyone else ought to have the same reaction – the wonder of it is that humans everywhere choose to ignore the evidence of their own eyes.

Perhaps the final word goes to Ezra Miller, who plays Kevin at his most realised stage of rational misanthropy: “…I wish to embody unhinged characters because it’s what I perceive in the world around me. I haven’t met a hinged person in so long.”

Miliband drives more nails into the coalition coffin

Ed Miliband’s speech to the Labour Party yesterday – for that is what it was – has received a reaction from the media commentators that has been difficult to read. However, my interpretation is that there seems to be a general consensus that it was a bit of a mixed bag. Some of the more right-wing media outlets seem to think that the speech heralded a swing to the left, and there is some evidence to support that theory. But others suggest he was aping none other than Nick Clegg, at least in the ‘anti-establishment’ passages.

For my part, I wasn’t particularly impressed with Miliband’s efforts, but then it wasn’t a message for the likes of me. He seemed uninterested in appealing to anyone but his natural constituency yesterday; it was one of the most tribal speeches of its type I’ve ever heard. It did genuinely fall into the trap of speaking to the hall rather than to the country. Admittedly the 8-minute power outage didn’t help.

However, one thing about his speech did catch my attention. I think this was the speech that finally ensured there will be no coalition between the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties while they both retain their current leaders.

It’s been obvious that the relationship between Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband has been pretty sour from the outset. One need only think back to Miliband’s laughable decision not to share a platform with Nick on AV – despite being even more disliked than him at the time. And certainly some of the attacks on Nick in this speech were deeply personal. Think of the jibe about his constituency, or about broken promises (the latter of which was fair play).

But to me a much more revealing line was one that came during the section on his convictions. Incidentally, some of his statements during this part of the speech were either breathtakingly callow, or terribly misjudged. He claimed that the lesson he had learnt since taking over as Labour leader was ‘to be true to myself, my instincts, my values’ and ‘to stand up for what is right’. It’s always worrying when the leader of a political party doesn’t know that having convictions and principles is necessary prior to taking up the role. More worrying still when that person was previously at the heart of government and a Cabinet minister.

But the line that really concerned me was when he suggested that “nobody ever changed things on the basis of consensus.” In one line this sums up his attitude to working with other parties. We have already seen this tendency during the AV campaign, but here Miliband appears to rule out the possibility of radical policy created in coalition – an odd position given what the current government has done and is doing.

He really is betting everything on red. There seems to be a chasm between his self-confidence and his ability, even wider than for other politicians.