NEWS OF THE WEEK BEFORE CHRISTMAS - NIGELLA : HOUSE OF LORDS RIP OFF : CONFLICT IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA : COLLAPSING THEATRES : BORIS JOHNSON

The jokes currently making the rounds about television celebrity chef Nigella Lawson preferring a Coke to a Pepsi are now wearing thin, same as they once did about George Michael loving cottage cheese. Celebrities in trouble seem to be fair game for all kinds of people. The unfortunate Nigella being no exception. Alas it simply didn’t help having the Prime Minister giving her his support while she was a witness in a trial after she’d admitted resorting to cocaine to help alleviate her domestic problems, but then who knows. She may have lost her case but at least she wasn’t raided by the police for being a user. Having her front door smashed in the way we see it in police programs on television and grilled about her supplier. The police have said that currently they’ll be taking no further action so maybe David Cameron’s intervention helped a bit after all. But then maybe that’s all part of another joke making the rounds about half the Tory Cabinet being on something or other. Drugs and the celebrity-rich and their problems are something quite outside the understanding of most people, ordinary people like you and I. The death of Nelson Mandela covered it all up for a while in the media then out it all came after the Mandela media-sickener subsided and there she was front page looking all sleepless and haggard.

Who knows what goes into all that food she’s been cooking, people will ask? Will they be able to associate her with anything else than the Grillo Sisters and coke while they’re watching her cooking program on television? So many stories, so much innuendo. Will the moralizing BBC continue allowing her to work on television or squeeze her out as a bad example to housewives? Who can say? She is after all the daughter of Margaret Thatcher’s once closest ally, Tory-Boy Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson who’s economic policies kicked off the financial ‘revolution’ from which we’re still suffering today, the rich excepted that is, while her husband until only recently Charles Saatchi ran the advertising agency which helped the lovely Margaret to power. Poor Nigella, caught up in a privileged life of endless credit card use, drugs, Tory politics and an unhappy marriage. A real nasty stew if there ever was one and nothing like those delectable little things she’ll rush up on telly, so far from the kitchen of most women who are, by necessity, into fish fingers or burgers and chips for their kids. Please don’t tell me you did all your shopping at Iceland my dear!

So England get thrashed by Australia three games in a row and lose the Ashes. Then a day or two later we see them on television having fun and laughing their heads off together in some light relief test driving. So that was your reward for a gross failure. For a casual unprofessional attitude and a total lack of commitment, being allowed to go out and have fun. For treating the game and your country with disrespect you needed rewarding! It’s all part of the attitude that pervades this country today. Lords and Ladies absolutely and deeply honorable Members of the House of Lords checking in for fifteen minutes and then checking out for three hundred quid, DAILY, FIVE DAYS A WEEK! Now please tell me and tens of millions of hard working people, millions of those who are unemployed, poor, homeless and destitute… IS THAT TAKING THE PISS OR ARE YOU LAZY BASTARDS JUST HAVING A LAUGH ON THE TAXPAYER… LIKE BANKERS OR DIRECTORS OF COMPANIES ALLOWED TO GET AWAY WITH TAX AVOIDANCE AND OTHER FORMS OF BLUE MURDER BY THE RASCALS AT THE INLAND REVENUE?

Are you members of the House of Lords just taking the piss? Fifteen hundred a week for seventy-five minutes work? Okay, I know it’s not what the jokers in the Premier League are getting so I know there are  some serious issues here, but then pissing on nurses, teachers, firemen, ambulance workers train drivers and dinner ladies for an hour and a quarter a week! And then you people being called Honorable and My Lord and making the laws of this country and all! I suppose you think you really deserve it, don’t you, your Lordships?

It’s alright then! A Chinese warship cuts directly across the bows of an armed American Missile Cruiser in the South China Seas without warning and it’s alright! Never mind that the American Government have described the incident as serious, as a provocative act, the response of Chinese officials was to state that the issue was resolved through formal procedures whatever that meant. What it actually means is nothing at all!  It means nothing, and it means everything! What it actually means is that the United States with Japan close behind are gearing up for naval conflict with China over small inlands territory in the South China Seas whose ownership is hotly disputed. Japan, China and even South Korea all claim the islands, now currently occupied by Japan and the clock is now running down. Inexorably ticking to conflict.

It all seems far from us now, however it’s not. In the last week Japan has announced a multi-billion dollar program to upgrade its military forces, manpower and equipment. China has now condemned this as a highly provocative act. The United States has begun moving serious naval power into the region with ships carrying nuclear armament. And what’s it all for? Truth to tell, a handful of tiny islands! What is its cause, truth to tell, China’s fast growing status as a regional power and hence an inevitable nationalism. The force driving the upcoming conflict is likewise the economic rivalry and competition between the two Asian powers being irrevocably played out on the world stage. The microcosm of the conflict, a handful of tiny islands, much the same as the assassination of one man in 1914 was the microcosm for a World War. The islands themselves actually mean nothing. It is their symbolic value that will focus the storm. This year has seen a growing military preparedness by the two interlocked players, stormy exchanges of words and near naval collisions. Next year might lead to matters altogether more serious.

The situation is complex! Washington is a key ally of Tokyo, yet Washington is in debt to Peking to the tune of trillions of dollars! If the Chinese call in the debt the US economy will sink. If the Americans don’t go to Tokyo’s aid in a conflict with China they will lose Japanese support in all things. Never mind! I feel quite confident that with William Hague at the helm of the British Foreign Office, Britain’s power and authority, coming through our lead in the Commonwealth, will prevail upon all powers involved in any such conflict to see the error of their ways and immediately desist!

Oh dear, oh dear! The plaster ceiling of the lovely heritage Apollo Theatre in Shaftsbury Avenue collapsed onto the balcony below throwing a large number of people who’d paid good money for their tickets down into the Stalls where they might have got a much better view of the play but for the fact that many were injured and the fact that the debris also fell on the actors themselves. Result, many theatre goers got the kind of participatory performance they’d never expected in something that came close to a farce never mind a serious tragedy. The sight of trembling bewildered people covered in blood outside the theatre in various transports heading for hospital was a sight straight out of a nightmare. Instead of a fun evening out in theatre land they got something quite unexpected and lo and behold, theatre owners and associated management bodies all hurriedly rushed to declare that their buildings were all safe as houses and this was an event quite out of keeping and character. Unfortunately, events over recent years have proved quite otherwise.

Their concerns are quite understandable. Filling the West End Theatres twice a day at this time of year with the prices of tickets quite serious money is an extremely lucrative business and the well publicised images of customers emerging from the Apollo covered in blood, and talk by Westminster City Council of concerns about safety, building inspections and regulations, along with similar talk of risk by the Fire Brigade isn’t likely to enhance reputation or takings. What it’s more likely to do is advance the cancellation of tickets during the key Christmas Season so it was therefore quite natural for the owners of these places to rush headlong into heavy assurance. If the televised sight of theatre goers looking like participants in Julius Caesar was to be somehow assuaged then guarantees and promises of security and safety had to be given.

One of the ongoing problems of London’s theatre land is the lack of financial investment for modernizing  many of these old and ornate buildings, particularly the facilities provided for customers. Many toilets, both men’s and women’s, are seriously outdated and look like something straight out the ark. Not quite like having to shit through a hole in the floor but not far short if you know what I mean and quite frankly disgraceful for the price you pay for a ticket. Dirty, unclean and out of date is the best way of describing the general situation making it all quite an experience for the fussy middle class customer. Theatres are a serious business with piles of loot for successfully packing bums on seats which is why newspaper theatre critics get to be given stacks of complimentary tickets for themselves, family and friends in the hope of RAVE REVIEWS for the all-important good publicity they might engender.

Complimentary tickets? Is that all one wonders! Yes, for the owners it’s a very serious business. Maybe someone ought to write a deadly black satire about what REALLY goes in in theatre-land with its implicit stack load of bitchiness. That would really pack all the cynics in but quite frankly it might spoil the party and would almost certainly never see daylight. Besides, people go to the theatre to have fun and be entertained and the truths that might emerge from any such dramatization of social reality might be too serious to contemplate and never be profitable.

Did anyone ever think that theatres were about conveying social and political truths to an audience? If so think again. Theatres first and foremost are about making loot. Still, I do think that some talented playwright ought to consider it. Written with truth in mind it might make a perfect subject for having a real belly laugh.

Boris Johnson’s been busy lately. Closing down fire stations in London and campaigning to build a dirty big island in the Thames Estuary on which he can plonk yet another airport for London. This public school Tory boy stalking horse of the Party’s visceral vicious right wing has suggested that most people in Britain have a low level IQ and in this he may be right, after all a majority of Londoners voted him mayor, but his striking up a pose of serious intelligence is quite frankly ludicrous as are most of his seeming strengths. I use the word ‘seeming’ because that is how they appear when set against the intelligence and capabilities of so many of his opponents. The man quite frankly is borderline dense but when set against the acumen of his opponents and critics he comes out sounding like Einstein. The question is how does he manage it? Well as I’ve suggested it’s undoubtedly the inferior qualities of others that magnifies his own, but more important perhaps is the pose he strikes up, invariably confronting challenge and criticism with a superb public school air of insouciant bluster that makes people think he simply must know what he’s talking about or else he’d be full of bullshit and he can’t be that, can he. After all he’s an ex-Eton public schoolboy and seems to know all the top Tories!

It’s those winking little piggy eyes of his and that genuine air of leery insouciance! Mix it all in with his well calculated bluster and you have the kind of comic book character that the British lower classes love and find sympathetic. He has all the air of a wayward bumbling blimp and to anyone seriously intelligent brings a refreshing touch of a wilfully anarchic idiocy onto the British political stage. Set this against the dour unfunny charm of Muslim fundamentalist friendly Ken Livingstone and he’ll come out smelling of roses time after time. He’s a British political jackanapes who understands his electorate with a well-manicured charm. Meanwhile he’s managing a city that’s been fast turning into an immigrant rat hole of countless East European illegals soon to be joined by numberless more. Under his command London has been turned into a duality of jack the lad financial rascals in the City and Dockland and a great sea of on the make begging, importuning, petty theft and East European gang controlled cheap labour day to day employment in a wide variety of unregulated off the books employment from the West End to Hammersmith and beyond. It’s a nasty little place with theatres and museums lodged at its center, cheek and jowl with islands of immense property wealth at Mayfair, Kensington and Chelsea. And right at its heart is the well-guarded holy of holies, Buckingham Palace.

These islands of wealth are already seeing charming incursions of Romanian beggars, mainly Roma women with dirty babies, doorstep sleepers and con artists against all of whom the powers of the police seem quite inadequate, instead being used against student demonstrators protesting against Tory welfare cuts, young people for whom Boris Johnson has entirely no sympathy! If the police are short of manpower as they claim the trick is to help recruit this whole army of East European illegals into the police and make them respectable! Then they can help guard all the palaces and officially patrol Kensington and Chelsea instead  of urinating in the doorways of all the rich émigré Russians! Make that your major achievement and your return to Westminster with a top job in David Cameron’s Government will be assured, namely as Minister for Pompous Insouciant Leery Bluster and Bullshit.