A blogging go-slow

Despite my life being far more eventful, I am blogging less.  It is because my life is more eventful, I get more opportunities (a) to sound off (b) to hear/understand other people's views, opinions, etc.   I therefore have less need to blog.   I spent this afternoon preparing a riposte to the Sunday Times article about SUTU and this evening at a very jolly election launch party.  I therefore have nothing else to say.

I will now imitate the action of Eleanor of Aquitaine - above - and lie down with a book!

The Great Beauty/ La Grande Bellezza

This is the most glorious film I have seen for ages.   Firstly it is spectacular to watch - exquisitely beautiful, barely a shot fails to please.   Second, it is in Italian and set in Rome - which gives me an enormous shot of cultural cocaine, and a certain amount of nostalgia.   Finally it is set amongst people in late middle age, who are thinking about their lives and still trying to live them well - so it is age-appropriate!   Finally, it is attempting to say the simple thing we all think about life - that it is wonderful, beautiful, a great gift, but that our mundane life prevents us from appreciating it as we should.

Jeb Gambarella (Toni Servillo) in La Grande Bellezza

There is so much to enjoy - incredible soundtrack of wonderful music as well,  And it's funny.

In some ways it's a bit like La Dolce Vita except the characters are older - but there are whole scenes that seem to be re-worked from Fellini films - I thought I recognised bits from DV, Roma, Satyricon and Otto e mezzo... and some very Fellini-esque scenes - which managed somehow to be more touching than grotesque.  It is so Fellini - but better - often in Fellini one is watching an artefact - an historical experience, a bit of cinema heritage.  This was not true when I first saw Fellini in my teens - his films then were only 10-15 years old - relatively contemporary, even if some were in black and white.  I still love some of his films, notably Roma and Amarcord, but to see this film was like seeing a Fellini who had properly matured. I don't know his late films well - but I always feel that they didn't have anything new to say.  La Grande Bellezza also lacks the mammismo elements of a lot of Fellini's films, and in fact there is a rather glorious put down of a woman who claims to have sacrificed a great deal for her children.

You can see Jeb Gambarella as Marcello in Dolce Vita - but grown older.  Jeb came to Rome from elsewhere, he loves Rome, he's been a journalist, but he's also written a very influential novella.  He's wealthy and hedonistic, but still questioning things.  He has a long-lost love who has died recently - and then her husband revealed that she was in love with him all her life.

The lighting is exquisite - seldom full bright searing day, but early evening, or morning shots.  The architecture is Rome - with a lot of Bramante's Tempietto and the great fountain on the Gianicolo (Janiculum) as well as the Colosseum - even interiors, my fave being the short scene in the Palazzo Spada... places I'd forgotten I'd been to, and places like the palace with the great terraced gardens which I've always wanted to go to.  I don't even know the name of this palace - I saw a picture of it once in an 18thC painting -  but they appear to have filmed part of it there.

Many of the themes are themes from Fellini: the weirder aspects of the Church (a worldly cardinal who talks boringly about food, an ascetic, toothless nun), the decayed gentry of Rome, appearance, fading beauty (a botox clinic), nuns, a stripper, etc.

I have probably left out a dozen other things - yes, the flamingoes - surely not a nod to John Waters?

This is not coherent I feel - it is a raving review!

Standing Up to UKIP in Margate

Both the author and her husband are in this picture - if you look carefully...

This is the front of the anti-UKIP march that I helped organise on Saturday (well, if I'd waited until Saturday it wouldn't have been very organised.- ha-ha). 

Although I spent much of the day feeling anxious and "on duty" it went off remarkably well and everyone was kind and smiley and my jacket was admired as usual (despite the hi-vis vest on top of it) and there was singing and laughing and brilliant posters - and quite good speeches, although I didn't really hear most of them.  I spent 4 hours standing/walking without sitting down - which is why today I am completely knackered.  

It felt worth it - we brought out a lot of people who don't normally appear locally - and to feel the support we got from people waving from windows (yes there were some vote UKIP posters too) and vehicles, including an ambulance, hooting as they went past was great.

There were the predictable shouts from the fascists - the EDL stood by the clocktower - and the Britain First lot were outside the Winter Gardens "guarding" UKIP.   Nigel wasn't there - and neither was Douglas Carswell - he left the conference while we were still assembling at the station.  So really it was just the usual Dad's Army types there plus a few suits who walked briskly past us..

Interesting, if unsurprising, that the fash don't stick together - unlike us.  Although I have joked about Thanet SUTU being mild-mannered, middle aged people, with this march lots of young people were there, and it was good to have evidence that there is a real visceral resistance to them.  In some ways the young are more opposed, because they haven't seen this sort of thing before, whereas a lot of us saw the rise of the NF in the 70s and very nasty they were: old Rock Against Racism and Anti-Nazi League logos have been revived and re-utilised, and as well as the "official" SUTU and Socialst Workers banners there were many great home made, individual creative efforts.

Are the left better-looking than the right?

There is a wonderful set of photos here https://www.facebook.com/funk.dooby.5?fref=photo&sk=photos which give a flavour of the day.   I will post a few below - but the last observation I want to make is that while us lefties were a pretty cheerful, nice-looking bunch of people, it was quite striking that the fash and their chums on the whole are pretty ugly.  I wonder whether from an early age they'd experienced less positive reactions - as the less cute child they were smiled at less, and it goes on from there.  Can that have somehow transposed into a wider perception that the world was against them, and then a search for someone to blame?

Here's a section of the crowd photographing the far right who are "guarding" UKIP - if our lot look less than sunny it is because the fash are snarling and shouting at them...

I think my observation about the fash is fair.  That hoodie does him no favours. 

Two of my favourite home made placards from the demo - and the essence of the cheerful atmosphere!

I should also say that I did two media interviews, one with Meridian - which wasn't shown - since they decided it was more important to report on the "violence" - they failed to explain it very well, but essentially what happened is that a fascist ran to the crowd because he was being photographed, seized a placard and broke it and was then restrained by the police.  So that was Meridian's story.  The BBC rather awkwardly filmed me as I was walking along with the banner.  I was shown for a few seconds and said something good - but I looked beyond hideous.  Fortunately they used most of what I said behind pictures of the demo. 

Springtime for UKIP

.... and somehow this little song came to mind:

Springtime for UKIP & Thanet South,
Ramsgate is happy and gay
We’re putting imm-i-grants in their place
Look out here come the master race!

Springtime for UKIP & Thanet South,
Winter for healthcare and rights,
We’ll vandalise the NHS,
Cre-ate an economic mess

Springtime for UKIP & Thanet South
We ‘re Europeans and proud 
Nigel can just, go take-a-hike,
He can get on - his flipping bike!
(repeat ad nauseam!)

Mel Brooks/Kate Hamlyn

My press cuttings

As things hot up in Thanet I get to do a bit of press work - latest article in RS21 here
http://rs21.org.uk/2015/02/26/thanet-activists-prepare-for-protest-against-ukip-conference/  and I've been interviewed for background/research purposes as well.  On Monday I called in to Radio Kent and got 10 minutes on air on the subject of ex-UKIP councillor Rozanne Duncan.... Fame at last!

SUTU - it's being so cheerful as keeps us going!

Spent the last two hours on Fb - trying to calm troubled waters, as well as provoking further turbulence... and being called a Nazi.  I am now so battle hardened by the whole social media thing that I barely noticed... or perhaps it was the port at supper that dulled my sensitivity.

So there was an hour or so of fire-fighting, messages, comments, sniping etc.  and then at last things calmed down, and then we all started making little jokes about the far-right who have been threatening us.  And all seemed sweetness and light again.

Of course, in my new discreet LP wannabe councillor guise, I cannot say more.  I suddenly realised that although I am not exactly prominent, being a "leader" of SUTU here (officially co-chair) will make me more of a juicy target for UKIP.  Then again, since I daresay a lot of kippers are not terribly hot on social media, they probably wouldn't know where to look - so I may be safe.

However, the truth is, the next two months will be a bit gritty.  I am more confident than ever that Nigel Farage will not get a seat here.  I wouldn't put it past him to do a flit to a more juicy prospect.  Then again, where would he find one?  Nationally their support is down to 11% and it's a bit of busted flush.  Maybe Carswell will be re-elected and struggle on as leader for a bit, but I would not be surprised to find him dropping out, or "discreetly" rejoining the Tories...

The Rozanne Duncan revelations were pure joy.  How can you be a councillor who denies services to black youth - because they are black - and say you aren't racist?  Clearly she has no understanding or insight - and is thus pretty typical UKIP material.

Really insulting UKIP is very infra dig. like shooting rats in a barrel really (or is that meant to be hard?  Rats move fast).

An Introduction to UKIPIA - the British Caliphate

Now that I'm a Labour candidate for the Council, I am expecting UKIP to be all over my social media offerings, so I thought this blog post might particularly delight them.  

I was writing a few months back about the idea of the Caliphate - as a Utopian society...and it occurred to me that that was what UKIP was offering their followers: Ukipia


When I hear their nostalgic chat about what the UK should be like, I wonder if UKIP have a sort of utopian ideal of the UK, where everyone is English and happy, smiling and cheerful (this would make a change from the UKIP supporters, who tend towards the snarling, grumbling end of the spectrum - but perhaps that would all change in UKIPIA).   

 As well as there being no, or very few foreigners (wives and concubines of leading party members would be permitted to remain - as long as they continued to please these potentates) we would be living on English produce from our own fields, and having our own nuclear energy (instead of having to buy it from the detestable French), and, once we had opted out of human rights legislation, we would be able to enslave people, and remove any of their human rights we chose to. There wouldn't be much tax, but there wouldn't be any services any way - everything would have to be paid for.

Women wouldn't work, unless they were very old and unlikely to require maternity leave.   Education would be optional after 12 and useful apprenticeships in mining and the chimney sweeping sector would become widely available. 

As a result of opting out of the EU with its tyrannical water purity standards, the sea would gradually become disgustingly polluted.  Planning controls would have been relaxed, so there would be no problem about siting say, a cement block works, next to a beach and a conservation area.   Pubs would become grim, fuggy places once more, as businesses are no longer allowed to operate a non-smoking policy. 

LGBT people would be "discouraged" - and would find themselves spending more time indoors, if not actually in the closet, since there would be few penalties for those who harmed them. 

Economically UKIPIA would be a bit of a mess as we would be losing a great many of our export markets once we left the EU.  We would not have the income to import foreign goods - especially foodstuffs, which would gradually become more expensive. The tax on luxury goods was initially welcomed, since most of us don't regularly buy Prada handbags, but the need to raise more money means the definition of "luxury" is gradually extended and now includes cat litter, deodorant and quilted lavatory paper. The sales of skin whiteners went through the roof initially as people attempted to diminish their ethnicity, but now they too are taxed at luxury rates.

It becomes more apparent that the senior party members are living a rather more luxurious lifestyle than ordinary people.  These career politicians most have their own small businesses too, and there is persistent talk of UKIP MPs cheating on expenses.  It is brushed off as "confusion" about legitimate business expenses.    

Despite all this, after 5 years, election publicity shows happy smiling faces, and even fat people (most of whom have disappeared in the last few years since biscuits, cakes, fish and chips and Coke were declared  "luxury goods" and attracted the top rate of tax).


This is just off the top of my head of course, further research in the UKIP manifesto will no doubt reveal more potential horror.   Their fantasy British caliphate, would emerge just as unjust and cruel as any other similar regime... The important thing to remember about the word Utopia is that it is concocted from the Greek ou topos - No Place!  And this is never going to happen.