Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Euro Ketchup
Only the most zealous Europhile who secretly enjoyed being pelted with tomatos would jump on a soapbox today and argue that Britain should join the euro.
Doing so would be like pointing up at an aeroplane which has smoke coming out of both engines and is lurching groundwards and saying, “Wouldn’t it be great to be on board?”
It is the Eurosceptics who feel they are on the front-foot. Mark Pritchard, the secretary of the Conservative party’s 1922 committee wants a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union.
He clearly thinks it could be won. Traditionally, Britain is not a referendum-friendly country; many politicians regard these public votes as a way for cowardly leaders to avoid fighting for their convictions in the House of Commons.
But the Alternative Vote referendum in May set a precedent – and it showed right-wingers that they could win referendums. The prospect of any change to the voting system was killed off when the No campaign won 67.9% of the vote.
Back in 2007, then-Liberal Democrat leader Menzies Campbell called for a referendum on EU membership. This idea was laid to rest in 2009.
Even voters who do not share Mr Pritchard’s conviction that the EU is an “occupying force” might want to put the greatest possible distance between the misery-hit Eurozone and the UK.
The irony is that the financial crisis is the latest drama to expose not dictatorial tendencies within the EU but a deficit of leadership.
At a time when the global economy is threatened by the potential collapse of some of our key trading partners European Council president Herman Van Rompuy has singularly failed to become a household name.
There had been talk that Tony Blair would take on this role but the EU opted for a decidedly unpresidential president.
The task of staving off economic cataclysm has fallen on the shoulders of Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy.
Similarly, the Arab Spring did not make the EU’s first High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Cathy Ashton, a diplomatic superstar and it was Sarkozy and David Cameron who battled for intervention.
And though the EU has a deep interest in seeing peace in the Middle East it has nothing like the influence of the United States in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
The euro may be in the emergency room but there is a role for a dynamic alliance of European democracies committed to open markets and international engagement.
Whether the sedated institutions of the EU can rise to the challenge is deeply uncertain.
A Thursday Column
Doing so would be like pointing up at an aeroplane which has smoke coming out of both engines and is lurching groundwards and saying, “Wouldn’t it be great to be on board?”
It is the Eurosceptics who feel they are on the front-foot. Mark Pritchard, the secretary of the Conservative party’s 1922 committee wants a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union.
He clearly thinks it could be won. Traditionally, Britain is not a referendum-friendly country; many politicians regard these public votes as a way for cowardly leaders to avoid fighting for their convictions in the House of Commons.
But the Alternative Vote referendum in May set a precedent – and it showed right-wingers that they could win referendums. The prospect of any change to the voting system was killed off when the No campaign won 67.9% of the vote.
Back in 2007, then-Liberal Democrat leader Menzies Campbell called for a referendum on EU membership. This idea was laid to rest in 2009.
Even voters who do not share Mr Pritchard’s conviction that the EU is an “occupying force” might want to put the greatest possible distance between the misery-hit Eurozone and the UK.
The irony is that the financial crisis is the latest drama to expose not dictatorial tendencies within the EU but a deficit of leadership.
At a time when the global economy is threatened by the potential collapse of some of our key trading partners European Council president Herman Van Rompuy has singularly failed to become a household name.
There had been talk that Tony Blair would take on this role but the EU opted for a decidedly unpresidential president.
The task of staving off economic cataclysm has fallen on the shoulders of Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy.
Similarly, the Arab Spring did not make the EU’s first High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Cathy Ashton, a diplomatic superstar and it was Sarkozy and David Cameron who battled for intervention.
And though the EU has a deep interest in seeing peace in the Middle East it has nothing like the influence of the United States in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
The euro may be in the emergency room but there is a role for a dynamic alliance of European democracies committed to open markets and international engagement.
Whether the sedated institutions of the EU can rise to the challenge is deeply uncertain.
A Thursday Column
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
The End of the World as We Knew It
Just back from the Liberal Democrats in Birmingham and I hear that REM are no more.
It seems appropriate to mark the passing of a band which meant so much to me as a teenager by quoting from an A-Level set text...
The breaking of so great a thing should make
A greater crack. The round world
Should have shook lions into civil streets,
And citizens to their dens.
It seems appropriate to mark the passing of a band which meant so much to me as a teenager by quoting from an A-Level set text...
The breaking of so great a thing should make
A greater crack. The round world
Should have shook lions into civil streets,
And citizens to their dens.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Mick Jagger, Samuel Beckett and Nick Clegg
Tony Blair’s fascination with Mick Jagger is well-documented but any politician would respect his gift for survival and undying flair for performance.
He also knows something about life in a coalition. His latest supergroup, SuperHeavy features AR Rahman, Joss Stone and Dave Stewart. “Everyone had to subsume their egos to some point,” he explained. “There wasn't really someone who was ‘the boss.”
Last week, Tory MP Nadine Dorries called on David Cameron to show Deputy Prime Minister Clegg who is “the boss”.
And, yesterday, Mr Clegg used a London School of Economics speech to warn that there was “little margin for error” as the economy reels from a “dramatic change” in the international situation.
Coming on the same day that unemployment has hit 2.51 million, Mr Clegg has demonstrated his willingness to play melancholic notes. He seems to enjoy a genuinely good working relationship with his Conservative jamming partner but he is definitely the most likely of the two to strike a wistful tone.
Just last year, shortly before the May Westminster election, he described his love of Samuel Beckett.
Claiming to have read Waiting for Godot 100 times, he said: “The unsettling idea, most explicit in Godot, that life is habit – that it is all just a series of motions devoid of meaning – never gets any easier. It’s that willingness to question the things the rest of us take for granted that I admire most about Beckett; the courage to ask questions that are dangerous because, if the traditions and meanings we hold so dear turn out to be false, what do we do then?”
His readiness to acknowledge the frailty of the economic situation contrasts with the traditional tub-thumping we might expect. There is no insistence that a golden economic age is around the corner; just a pledge to make sure Government bucks deliver the biggest bang.
If the most crucial asset for recovery is investor confidence, a stark admission of the scale of the challenges facing Britain may be more assuring to the business community than a denial of reality.
Quite what Mr Cameron makes of his deputy’s mood music is unclear, but neither man is likely to be in a photo-op with Mr Jagger in the near future.
The last song on the new album, I Can't Take It No More, features the lines: All you scurvy politicians, crying endless contrition. It really gets my goat, it sticks in my throat.”
The Rolling Stone explained: “They find themselves the prisoners of practicalities and realities.”
Quite. Mr Beckett and Mr Clegg might have said something very similar.
A Thursday column.
He also knows something about life in a coalition. His latest supergroup, SuperHeavy features AR Rahman, Joss Stone and Dave Stewart. “Everyone had to subsume their egos to some point,” he explained. “There wasn't really someone who was ‘the boss.”
Last week, Tory MP Nadine Dorries called on David Cameron to show Deputy Prime Minister Clegg who is “the boss”.
And, yesterday, Mr Clegg used a London School of Economics speech to warn that there was “little margin for error” as the economy reels from a “dramatic change” in the international situation.
Coming on the same day that unemployment has hit 2.51 million, Mr Clegg has demonstrated his willingness to play melancholic notes. He seems to enjoy a genuinely good working relationship with his Conservative jamming partner but he is definitely the most likely of the two to strike a wistful tone.
Just last year, shortly before the May Westminster election, he described his love of Samuel Beckett.
Claiming to have read Waiting for Godot 100 times, he said: “The unsettling idea, most explicit in Godot, that life is habit – that it is all just a series of motions devoid of meaning – never gets any easier. It’s that willingness to question the things the rest of us take for granted that I admire most about Beckett; the courage to ask questions that are dangerous because, if the traditions and meanings we hold so dear turn out to be false, what do we do then?”
His readiness to acknowledge the frailty of the economic situation contrasts with the traditional tub-thumping we might expect. There is no insistence that a golden economic age is around the corner; just a pledge to make sure Government bucks deliver the biggest bang.
If the most crucial asset for recovery is investor confidence, a stark admission of the scale of the challenges facing Britain may be more assuring to the business community than a denial of reality.
Quite what Mr Cameron makes of his deputy’s mood music is unclear, but neither man is likely to be in a photo-op with Mr Jagger in the near future.
The last song on the new album, I Can't Take It No More, features the lines: All you scurvy politicians, crying endless contrition. It really gets my goat, it sticks in my throat.”
The Rolling Stone explained: “They find themselves the prisoners of practicalities and realities.”
Quite. Mr Beckett and Mr Clegg might have said something very similar.
A Thursday column.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Thursday, September 08, 2011
Tuesday, September 06, 2011
Sunday, September 04, 2011
We're Engaged!
Dearest Friends,
It is with the greatest of joy and a surge of delight we can tell you we hope to marry.
Late on Thursday afternoon, right in front of this branch, the utterly fantastic Alison Davies agreed to wed me!
The closer you looked at the moss and lichen, Alison observed, new details emerged. And when we look at what the future might hold - blessed as we are by friends and family who humble us with their example of love - we feel excitement.
Thank you, so many of you, for blessing us so richly so far. Your friendship and fellowship thread our world with gold. Your support has brought love and laughter and adventure and discovery into our lives.
We thank God for you. Please hold us in your prayers as our new chapter begins. We look forward to sharing wonderful times with you as new days unfold.
Thursday, September 01, 2011
The Absence of Kyffin Williams
It is five years ago today that Sir Kyffin Williams passed away and the great artist is missed almost as much as he is admired.
He ranks alongside the poet RS Thomas and the splendid travel chronicler Jan Morris as an example of a Welsh person who was an absolute master of a craft but also an individual with little time for conformity.
His austere landscapes portrayed a Wales that might be storm-battered but was in no danger of being blown away. The ancient hills and mountains will outlast the crazes, fears and fashions of the individuals that might scamper across these ranges.
Although he was a stylist of the highest order who could also paint fast, he dismissed as “junk art” modern works which were not rooted in the core skills of draughtsmanship.
Just as RS Thomas was happy to embrace his many contrarian streaks, he had no fear of standing away from the crowd. Sir Kyffin, a son of Anglesey, roamed across Venice, drank in its marvels, turned his brush on this most-painted city and found fresh beauty amid its bridges, churches and canals; he was a Welshman unafraid to focus his gaze on the world.
It is fascinating to ask what the likes of Sir Kyffin and RST might have made of the March 3 referendum and delivery of powers from one end of the M4 to the other. But we could use such individuals of talent and independence in our politics.
Solidarity is one of the greatest Welsh values and the efforts to create prototype health services in the Valleys before the dawn of the welfare state were more revolutionary than any idea discussed at the time in Bloomsbury. Workers crafted the change they wanted to see and transformed the political imagination.
But solidarity is a very different principle to safety in numbers. We need people of formidable, world-class insight who are prepared to step away from the crowd, question conventional wisdom, and blaze their own lonely trails if needs be.
Politics will always attract eccentrics but to find an individual of true perception and courage is harder. Party selection processes are not designed to favour the grumpy iconoclast who is happier breaking taboos than obeying whips.
Yet, with just 60 AMs and 40 MPs, there is a need to find room for people who will snort at “junk politics”, who understand law, legislation and economics (political draughtsmanship, you could call it) but also burn with a mature vision for Wales and the wider world. Then, this new political generation which has been blessed with the broad palette of devolution could be driven to create a masterpiece.
A Thursday Column
He ranks alongside the poet RS Thomas and the splendid travel chronicler Jan Morris as an example of a Welsh person who was an absolute master of a craft but also an individual with little time for conformity.
His austere landscapes portrayed a Wales that might be storm-battered but was in no danger of being blown away. The ancient hills and mountains will outlast the crazes, fears and fashions of the individuals that might scamper across these ranges.
Although he was a stylist of the highest order who could also paint fast, he dismissed as “junk art” modern works which were not rooted in the core skills of draughtsmanship.
Just as RS Thomas was happy to embrace his many contrarian streaks, he had no fear of standing away from the crowd. Sir Kyffin, a son of Anglesey, roamed across Venice, drank in its marvels, turned his brush on this most-painted city and found fresh beauty amid its bridges, churches and canals; he was a Welshman unafraid to focus his gaze on the world.
It is fascinating to ask what the likes of Sir Kyffin and RST might have made of the March 3 referendum and delivery of powers from one end of the M4 to the other. But we could use such individuals of talent and independence in our politics.
Solidarity is one of the greatest Welsh values and the efforts to create prototype health services in the Valleys before the dawn of the welfare state were more revolutionary than any idea discussed at the time in Bloomsbury. Workers crafted the change they wanted to see and transformed the political imagination.
But solidarity is a very different principle to safety in numbers. We need people of formidable, world-class insight who are prepared to step away from the crowd, question conventional wisdom, and blaze their own lonely trails if needs be.
Politics will always attract eccentrics but to find an individual of true perception and courage is harder. Party selection processes are not designed to favour the grumpy iconoclast who is happier breaking taboos than obeying whips.
Yet, with just 60 AMs and 40 MPs, there is a need to find room for people who will snort at “junk politics”, who understand law, legislation and economics (political draughtsmanship, you could call it) but also burn with a mature vision for Wales and the wider world. Then, this new political generation which has been blessed with the broad palette of devolution could be driven to create a masterpiece.
A Thursday Column
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
