Have I really agreed with That Man?

THAT MOMENT WHEN....

....You find yourself in agreement with Tony Blair. It doesn't happen very often, but it did today, and I suppose everyone must get it right some of the time. And, aside from the shock of finding myself in tune with a war criminal, it was good to hear somebody on the BBC saying the right things about bloody UKIP.

I recall the spirit of optimism in May 1997. After the long, disastrous and damaging Thatcher/Major years it felt like anything had to be better, preferably with a healthy dose of socialism to put right the many mistakes that had been inflicted upon us. We'd seen communities destroyed, working people trampled over, minorities vilified, the police used as a political instrument, our wealth as a community sold off to the highest bidder. This was the era of Loadsamoney and those people who knew the price of everything and the value of nothing. Caring was less fashionable than greed and a bankrupt ideology set the scene for the disasters to follow. Surely Blair had to be better than that?

And, in some ways, he was. The minimum wage showed what could be done to help those who had been walked on. There was a more inclusive agenda, with progressive measures like Civil Partnerships and the active encouragement of a multicultural society, a sense that people would be made welcome in Britain whatever their background. After having felt too embarrassed to admit to being British when Thatcher's shadow loomed over us it became possible to feel some sense of pride in the opening up of our society.

And yet. There was also disillusionment. For many people that means the Iraq war and the lies which surround it. But to me the real betrayal was the continuation of some of the worst aspects of those appalling Tory governments. The 'greed is good' mantra never really went away, the notion that private could do things better than public was still the accepted doctrine (despite all the evidence to the contrary) and nothing was done to reverse the growing inequality in society which was the underlying disease fueling the symptoms that eventually led to disaster.

When the financial crash came it wasn't socialism that caused it, because there was no socialism. There was just more and more deregulated capitalism with the greed of the financial system spiralling out of control until it collapsed. And the people who ended up suffering weren't those who caused the problem. That is the true disgrace of the so called 'New Labour'.

Blair left office to pursue a life as a self aggrandizing multi millionaire and supposed 'international statesman'. His interventions in Middle East conflicts have had little constructive benefit and his pronouncements on other aspects of global politics often appear out of touch with reality.

But Blair was a successful political operator, winning all his election victories convincingly. Whatever his faults as the leader of a state he was always astute when it came to providing the soundbites of conviction. And he knew how to deal with political opponents. So it should come as no surprise that he has been the first major politician to state clearly how our mainstream political parties, and Labour in particular, should be dealing with the increasing rise of far right extremism reflected in the recent election results.

The first key point is not to overreact. For all that UKIP present some dangers to mainstream democracy the actual threat is nowhere near as great as the media (with the BBC being especially, and disgustingly, guilty) have made out. They only have around 4% or councillors in England, hardly the 'surge' being portrayed, and their share of the vote in the local elections was actually several points lower than last time around (not that you'd think so from the coverage they've been given). Even their triumph in scoring the largest share of the vote in the EU Parliament polls doesn't stand up when looked at in context. With little more than one third of voters bothering to turn out, and UKIP taking little more than a quarter of that total, only around 10% of the electorate were motivated to record an anti-EU vote. And given that the EU elections are largely going to interest those people who have strong views on the EU, either for or against, that figure probably represents UKIP's real level of support. The arithmetic shows they are not the major player they want to paint themselves to be.

Secondly, and this is where I wish there was a Blair-like figure in Parliament who will stand up and tell the truth, the main parties should not be trying to play UKIP at their own game (if only for the reasons set out above). Immigration and the EU are not 'issues', they are positive benefits and that case needs to be made, over and over again if necessary. If you really think these are the most serious issues we face then you haven't understood the situation - and the blame for that has to fall on the politicians who should be providing the leadership, and information, that demonstrates this. Making the wrong diagnosis can only lead to incorrect solutions (the old IT adage is GIGO - 'garbage in, garbage out'). Blair is right when he says that's UKIP's political agenda (most of which they have tried to keep very quiet about, for fear of being found out) does not provide solutions for Britain and would actually make most of our problems worse. Regressive, inward looking, non inclusive views are to be discouraged, not made the basis for an ideology. They would not benefit us economically or geopolitically, and damage our essential humanity.

Tony Blair is far from being my hero. I would never agree with his neoliberal policies for the future. But in telling us how to deal with the proto fascists in our midst he's got it spot on. Now is Ed listening?

I'm soooo Bored?

LET'S BE BORED

We have so many gadgets in our lives, especially those mobile ones we carry with us everywhere, that there's little opportunity to be bored.  And I have allowed myself to be swayed by the dominant modern thought that boredom is, of itself, a bad thing. Something to be fought against, planned around, avoided and evaded.  And yet the converse is also true.  Those same gadgets dissipate our ability to concentrate, encourage us to engage with different facets of the virtual world simultaneously, with the result that we frequently aren't truly in contact with any of them.

There was a photo I saw on Twitter recently (and yes, I conscious of the irony of my own statements here....) showing a crowd waiting for a train on a station platform. There must have been about a dozen people and all bar one were looking at some kind of screen - mostly mobile phones, but also tablets and ebook readers. A lone figure was circled, looking upwards with hands in pockets, and the caption read "What is wrong with this man?".  Intended ironically, but are we now reaching the point where those who don't whip out an electronic device at the slightest opportunity are considered the odd ones out?  It's not quite there yet, but this feels like the way the world is headed.

A sub caption queried this man's sanity suggesting that simply staring at the sky was a form of madness (although he could have been looking at the big screen giving incoming train information!). The implication, and it's one I do feel the urge to join, is that this man has it right and all the others have got it wrong.  That sometimes simply contemplating the world is the best thing to do, that looking around at the real world can be more rewarding that seeking on screen gratification.

Not that I'm going to be some sort of evangelist here.  I'm as guilty as anyone of checking my mobile, or using it to while away time while I wait for a bus, train, other person.  I'd be reluctant to leave home without it, less so I can keep in touch (I receive very few calls) but as a useful tool (how often is an instant Google the answer to a tricky question?), a timepiece (I stopped wearing a watch years ago) and, I admit it, a form of playmate.  If I feel I might be bored I can use it to play a game or have a read.  But maybe I should experiment with letting go.  

So I will try leaving it behind a few times (even if I'll still be carrying a book and a camera!). Perhaps the biggest loss will be in not knowing the time, but there are usually public clocks around and it's not as if I often have to be anywhere at a specific hour.

I might even - revolutionary idea - go without a book and force myself to simply take in the sights and sounds around me, should I choose to stop for a rest.  Embrace the potential for boredom....

For the reality is that I am hardly ever bored.  My mind, deprived of external stimulations, will always find a path into some other world.  Rather than looking around me I am more likely to look inwards, to create my own imaginary conversations or situations and lose all sight of what is happening around me.  With the most visible side effect being a tendency to walk along the street talking to myself.

But in that I may be in a minority. For so many people now the idea of being deprived of their gadgets is to suggest enforced boredom, and boredom is, to them, a very very bad thing. An evil to be avoided. Nobody should be allowed to be bored.

And yet.  One of the secrets of a contented life is recognising that all forms of enjoyment are relative.  Happiness can only be experienced if you've known sadness. Excitement is the counterpart of boredom.  You can get more out of life if you allow dullness in.  An excess of anything creates immunity.  Too much of any experience which gives pleasure will lead to the sensations of that experience being reduced to the point where the pleasure no longer becomes noticeable. The human mind requires counterpoint in order to recognise that it is enjoying itself. Too much of a good thing is indeed too much, in that it will cease to be a novelty and become the norm, and the norm soon becomes the dull, the boring.

So I will embrace opportunities for dullness. Last August, when we saw fifty five Edinburgh Fringe shows, was one of the best months of my life. But could only be so because it stood out so brightly in contrast to other periods. It is is not a state I could, or would wish, to maintain throughout the whole year. It is the limited availability of such excitement that gives it such value.  If pleasure comes too easily it soon ceases to be pleasure.

Go with the boredom.  It's better for you than you think.

A matter of reading

THE FREELING FEELING

As I’m known to be an avid fiction reader I’ve sometimes been asked who my favourite novelist is.  In times gone by I would have answered Aldous Huxley or Joseph Heller.  But I've come to recognise that the correct answer is Nicolas Freeling.  He's not the best, or most significant, and he hasn't written anything that changed my life.  But he is always entertaining, interesting and thought provoking.  Plus I admit that I enjoy being able to provide a response that baffles most people, for there is pleasure to be taken from being obscure.

Not many people seem to know the name nowadays, and it is almost impossible to buy his books new.  I first read some of his books many decades ago, and they remained in my collection waiting to be rediscovered.  The spur to do so came from a lovely old secondhand place in Cromer, Norfolk, who had a couple of Freelings I'd not seen before. Reading them reminded of what a fine writer he is and how in tune with much of my own way of thinking.  And that led me on to try and complete my collection.

Determining how many books he'd written is so much easier in the internet age, as is tracking them down.  Using the likes of eBay and Amazon (resellers of course) I tracked down every single title and managed to collect all the novels, and most of his non fiction works, over a period of eighteen months.  (In traditional dead tree form of course, although it is possible to get some of his works as ebooks.)  They came in various shapes and sizes - mostly small Penguin paperbacks from the sixties and seventies, but with a few hardbacks, and even one I could only find in large print format.  No matter, they are not there to be admired on my shelves, but to be read.  And that, gradually, is what I have been doing.

The novels break down into three groups.  I began with his first, Valparaiso, which Freeling originally wrote whilst in prison.  None of the characters in that novel appear again in further works, and I worked my way through the other seven books which can be considered to be stand alone, independent of his two major series of books.  I am now deep into the first of those two series and the one for which Freeling is probably best known, at least in the UK.

Not many people recognise the name of the author, but anyone of a certain age will know that of his most famous character.  It was used as the title of an early 1970s TV series, featuring Barry Foster as the eponymous Dutch policeman, with had a tingly theme tune which, somehow, became a number one hit (Eye Level, by the Simon Park Orchestra - yes, really).  Although the name of the detective, and the Amsterdam setting, came from the Freeling novels, the plots did not.  In truth it was very poorly written and I have no desire to revisit it.  But I suspect (for I cannot accurately remember the event) that it was responsible for calling my attention to the first Freeling book I purchased.  So I owe that dubious TV programme a debt of gratitude.

There are thirteen Van der Valk novels, set in the sixties and seventies. Mostly based in Amsterdam, although his investigations do take him to other parts of the Netherlands and other countries in western Europe.  Freeling, although British by birth, spent most of his life on mainland Europe, initially as a chef before his writing career took off, and he has absorbed the cultures of France, Holland, Germany and others.  Although the fictional Dutchman is his most famed creation he is not the best.  That title goes to the central character of the other series I mentioned, Henri Castang.  A French policeman in an unspecified provincial town.  Like Van der Valk he has a foreign wife (French in the Amsterdammer's case, Czech for Castang) which gives him a less parochial view of the world than that of his colleagues.  Like Van der Valk he often takes on cases that are unconventional, even ill defined.

When bookshops still stocked his output you'd find Freeling novels on the Crime and Thrillers shelves. And certainly most feature crimes, of one sort or another. But thrillers? Few would meet the criteria that we would normally associate with the term. There are murders, but rarely are they particularly gruesome. There's not much in the way of armed confrontations, or car chases, or cliffhanger moments. I think of most Freelings belonging to a genre from the past - Mysteries.

Mystery there is aplenty.  Both detective and reader may be unclear about events, even after the end has been reached, and you are left to place your own interpretations on what has passed before your eyes.  You might have some understanding of what happened, but it can be up to your imagination to fully understand (should full understanding be your thing) why circumstances and behaviour unfolded as they did.  And it this ability of the author to leave you with dots to connect at your leisure that I love most about his books, and why I know I will happily read them several times over.

The writing is good, at times outstanding, but never great.  The plots are sometimes complex, but not as multi layered as we are now used to, and the pace is quite consciously plodding at times.  The stories are relatively short by modern standards, often little more than two hundred pages.  They won't take long to read.  Except they do, for I often find myself sitting, book in hand, trying to figure out a plot twist, the meaning of a character's words or actions, or diverted into another subject altogether because the background of the story has taken me to an aspect of art or music or literature or science that I hadn't considered much before.  Freelings are like that.

With most of the canon dating back to a time before the widespread use of computing (Freeling died in 2003) the detective work has little reliance on technology. It is conversational, intuitive, foot slogging, patient, cerebral.  Both Van der Valk and Castang ponder as much about the societies they live in as the crimes they are probing.  This is crime writing as a vehicle for social investigation and philosophising.

If you crave action then look elsewhere.  If you do not have the patience for a slower moving world then these are not for you.  But if you enjoy being made to do some work by your reading matter, if you take an interest in human motives and foibles, if you like a bit of pondering, then these books might be what you're after.  Hard to come by nowadays, but worth seeking out.

Of course I might be prepared to lend you one.  But I will definitely, most definitely, want it returned.