Maytime

The main flowerbed in late May - a few years ago.

I was trying to think about why May is so utterly gorgeous - already the blossoms on the fruit trees are over, and the roses are just beginning.   What is so beautiful about it is that while one watches the blossoms fade and fruit beginning to set, one can also clusters of buds, roses, honeysuckle, pinks preparind to flower in the next few weeks.  Still lots of potential even while things are already looking wonderful.  

 In the last few days I have just about begun to shake off the post-election disappointment, although one friend who voted Tory rang up today because she fancied a political discussion, ended up so annoyed with me that she has de-friended me on FB.... I suggested we agree to differ three times and tried to change the subject, but she wasn't having it.    Over many years of political life I have heard all the arguments - I can't see myself having a Damascene conversion to the Tories at this stage.      Meanwhile, between bouts of gardening, drinking and socialising I am getting on with the book - I have nearly 50,000 words on The Malice of Fairies - and that is really encouraging.  I don't want it to be much longer than about 80-85,000 words.  I've got most of the plot sketched out - so it should be straightforward to write it.  I guess I could do it at a gallop by the end of June - but I think I will do it in a slightly more leisurely way.

What else is new?  We have bought a lovely painting from out neighbour Steve Lobb - and we are about to have works done on the house.  I do hope my father can be persuaded to give us the rest of the money he promised us.  Or, even better that we can earn some - our lives are very full without earning money - which isn't much fun.  Still we had some lovely visitors this weekend and earned a massive £161...

Resisting UKIP

Some of my comrades in the Stand up to UKIP group want to write a pamphlet - with the working title of "How we beat UKIP".  Although we have agreed that this will not be the title - I feel this highlights a fundamental issue.   My analysis of what happened in the general election in Thanet South is very different from theirs, and I don't think there is much chance of an honest discussion within the group of "what really happened" or the "truth" as the more philosophically inclined of us like to call it.

SUTU did a wonderful job in encouraging people to realise that they were not alone... and that we should try to resist the Purple Menace with all our might.  Despite my occasional suggestions that we should do something to undermine UKIP's attempts to seize the council, this was contradicted saying "Farage is our focus".  He didn't win the seat, but both Thanet District Council and Ramsgate Town Council are now dominated by UKIP.   Last night - at our post election meeting - it was said by several speakers that having a UKIP Council (the only one in the country) was somehow "a good thing" because it gave us a focus to continue the struggle.   It may well be - but I cannot see it being objectively a "good thing" for the people of Thanet.   It is "a good thing" perhaps that more people have been politicised and engaged than for a long time - but at what cost?

Personally I would rather not be continuing the struggle - personally I would like to be cultivating my own garden and not attending meetings etc.  I would like to do something useful, but I don't want to continue doing it this way, in this style, and I'm not sure whether the Labour party will be the place for me now either, as some people begin to salivate at the prospect of a return to Blairite values.

How did we "beat" UKIP?

I would love to believe that our relentless campaigning, leafletting, stall running, stickering, etc. had beaten UKIP.  I don't want to take any glory from the people who worked so hard (harder than me probably), but this is why I think we beat UKIP - or rather, why Farage was not elected.   I don't have statistics and so on to back me up - but this is how I analyse the election result here.

In 2010 the Conservatives won 48% of the votes and had a 6,600 approx majority over Labour; UKIP came 4th. with 2,500 approx.  This was after a boundary change had made the constituency a far safer Tory seat than it had been previously.  Labour won it in the 1997 landslide - and Ladyman held on to it, with tiny majorities, partly due to the benefit of being the incumbent.

I have no doubt that Laura Sandys would have comfortably won it if she had run this year.  It is a Conservative seat.  In this election a large number of Tories defected to UKIP as did a roughly similar number of Labour voters, and apparently most of the Lib Dems....The Tories held onto their seat - the polls were wrong, Will Scobie (Labour) didn't in fact have a realistic chance, and we were lucky we didn't have to vote Tory to defeat Nigel.   Many Tories dislike UKIP even more than we do.  Laura Sandys' Hate not Hope letter to the constituency may have been helpful - or it may have been too late to make any difference.   Perhaps SUTU prevented even more Labour people from defecting to UKIP, and perhaps dislike of Farage galvanized more people to come out and vote against him, or perhaps love of Farage encouraged traditional non-voters to come out and vote for him.

People love novelty.  They  don't like change when it's thrust upon them - but they like feeling that they can bring about change.  By getting the only UKIP council in the UK they have got a change of their own making.  We are hoping the council will screw up big time, indeed we are expecting it.  However, our definition of screwing up and the voters' definition are two different things.   Local Kippers may be emboldened by their success and delighted by what the council does (privatised litter fines for example).

No more glad, confident [Friday] morning...

For all these reasons I couldn't share the delight in the great moment when Farage lost on Friday morning.  Of course I was relieved and pleased, but not triumphant: because frankly, with a Tory government, and now a UKIP council there's not much to rejoice about, and the combined evil of these forces rather overwhelms my pleasure at seeing Farage depart from Fannet South in a puff of purple smoke never to be seen again - oh, until Monday, when he returned as the newly-re-elected Party Leader.  But at least he won't be coming here for his next crack at Parliament - which is why I say: Long life and Good Health to our Tory MP  vivat McKinlay!

Athens - Christos Aneste!

We arrived in Athens on Easter Sunday - somewhat inauspiciously I came over all weak and feeble walking up the ramp out of the plane - and Mark had to carry my laptop bag, which felt as if I had filled it with leaden bricks.

I had spent most of the flight reassuring Finn - who is afeared of flying - that when the plane wobbles as it banks over Surrey, it is not planning to plummet down again, and I also warned him about likely turbulence over the Alps.  He was relieved about that; he had the good sense to buy us some mini-Chupa lollipops to deal with the pressure changes and was just generally a pretty good companion.  He hasn't moaned much yet, although he has been annoyed about the slightly odd wifi signal here.

The journey was in clear skies, mostly - sereno as the Italians say - so we were able to see everything - the Medway, Whitstable, Herne Bay, Pegwell Bay, Ramsgate Harbour - then a whisk across the sea and across Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, crossing the Austrian Alps - which were beautifully snowcapped - then down the Adriatic, with lots of rocky islands and beaches on the Croatian (?) Coast.  We crossed Greece, seeing the geography laid out below us - including a solitary, tall snow-capped mountain - Olympos? That was what I guessed, but it can't have been.  Soon we were flying over Attica and saw the great miles of Athenian sprawl beneath us.  I hoped we could make out the Acropolis (you can see the Colosseum when you fly over Rome), but instead I saw the harbours at Piraeus very clearly.   The long spine of Mount Hymettos separates Athens from the new airport.  It sounds such an evocative name, but I don't really have any connections with it.

Nice taxi driver - I tried my best Greek phrase on him,  "Then milo Hellenika... " but I have "ligo" in fact... after a while I realised "ligo" was derived from "oligos" - a familiar ancient Greek friend, but one's ancient Greek friends are dangerous - the pronounciation is incredibly different and the meanings have been updated..

The most beautiful thing was seeing motorways signs with  "Kale Pascha - Christos Aneste - "  couldn't read the 3rd line, but Happy Easter, Christ is Risen.... the idea one could see Christ is risen on any public place in UK is incredible.  I felt rather emotional at this public witness of faith.

We drove for ages through suburban Attica and finally arrived, turning a corner, the driver said "This Athens!"  Then we drove down wide boulevards lined with trees and vast 19thC neo-Classical buildings, and narrower, more modern streets with shutterd shops and "to let" signs.  Eventually we reached Omonia Square, and turned into some tiny narrow streets to Monastiraki, there was the modern hotel, with a manager who spoke excellent English and we went up to our room.   We do not have a view of the Acropolis from our room - but we can see the square below - the Mitropoulos Cathedral and in the distance the Lycabettos hill.  Which is quite enough.

That Camilla Long riposte in full.

Warning - this article is really only of interest to anyone who (a) lives in Thanet South, and (b) read Camilla Long's article in the Sunday Times last week    Her article is here http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/focus/article1537512.ece   Mine didn't break the surly bonds of social media to soar into print, since needless to say no one on the Sunday Times was interested, and no one thought to offer it to the Thanet Gazette.

CAMILLA DIDN’T STAY LONG ENOUGH

No seaside town looks its best at the end of winter, and yes, Margate looked sad, but it’s not in Thanet South, so why did Camilla Long start her Sunday Times piece about Thanet South there? Genteel Sandwich is in the constituency too – and the trains to Margate stop at Ramsgate first, where she could have seen the heart of Stand up to UKIP’s (SUTU) fightback against the Farage menace, or she could have written about Broadstairs – parts of which are practically Wandsworth-on-Sea.

Those of us who have been living under the Farage Barrage for the last 8 months or so, are bloodied but unbowed: the struggle is hard, and we don’t need frankly snooty London journalists coming in and giving out a load of flippantly sloppy misinformation. Some of us have been London journalists ourselves, but we like to think we occasionally allow the facts to interfere with our blinkered prejudices. We see Thanet South in entirely different way.

A few dozen UKIP loyalists tottering to the Walpole Bay Hotel on a January evening does lively up the place no end. Most of the liveliness usually comes from SUTU’s banter with Farage’s vast security detail – whom we are assured are not armed. UKIP supporters at these faux-democratic “open” gatherings tend to be elderly; UKIP’s a nostalgia party, with (very bad) attitude. Their other supporters look frankly “well hard”. If Long is talking about the meeting at Walpole Bay Hotel in January this year, the attendance was around 40-60. She may be confusing it with the 500 who attended the Spring Conference at the Winter Gardens. Or is she referring to some secret mass meeting held long ago before Cllr Rozanne Duncan besmirched the “good name” of Thanet UKIP?
We’re not surprised Long had difficulty getting accurate information from UKIP. She should have asked us. Numbers aren’t UKIP’s strong point – they claim 500 as a matter of course – would that be the 500 who were photographed listening to the Dear Leader’s speech at Walpole Bay on a winter’s day? We counted 92 in the photograph. At the hustings Long refers to there were considerably more than 6 independent people, or does she think the audience was entirely composed of friends and relations of candidates? Thanet is small (140,000 population) and a lot of us are related to each other, but apart from Will Scobie, most of the election candidates are not Thanetians.

We know the correct immigration rate, the number on the council, and how many actually attend these UKIP meetings. At least 600 of us, mostly local people, marched against UKIP on 28th February. Not because we want to suppress their freedom of speech, but because we all want something better for Thanet than UKIP.

Yes, Thanet is poor – but worse than that, its education and skills levels are at the bottom for Kent. Education is skewing our demographics – grammar school kids go off to university and often don’t come back for years. Poor education, especially in economics, leaves a section of the population susceptible to UKIP’s “common sense” policies – which bear little resemblance what happens in the real world. Yes we were once an island, but we aren’t isolated: we’ve had higher rates of marriage to outsiders since the 17th century according to a recent academic article, more recently the USAF has made a few contributions to the genepool. Some of the most intransigent insularists are the first generation incomers, offspring of Londoners who came here after the war. In the last 5 to 10 years particularly, artists and professionals priced out of the London housing market have moved here, and Ramsgate is becoming renowned for its music scene, as well as the visual arts that flourish all over Thanet. Others have started small businesses, employing local people. Stand up to UKIP is a group which has united people from all backgrounds in Thanet – natives, returners, DFLs (Down from Londoners) and, yes, even immigrants!

We are a deprived area, but we have pockets of resistance, we have hope, and prospects. In the last few years weekend tourism has grown, people visit and then return, delighted by the beaches, the cliffs, the architecture, the glories of Ramsgate harbour, the bars and restaurants. And although Thanet has suffered a good deal from the decline of the coalmines in the 1980s and the removal of Pfizer’s industrial activities in the first decade of this century, there is the beginning of a growth in jobs, with the prospect of a new industrial development on the former airport site. We need jobs, inward investment, a proper university of our own, but we don’t need UKIP and a clear majority of us don’t want it.

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.