Blackened toast

Politicians generally get short shrift in the Tavern but we are always prepared to be open-minded; this week, therefore, we are raising a brimming tankard to none other than David Cameron.

The Prime Minister was photographed at a folk festival on Saturday amid a Border Morris side complete with traditional costume trappings including - and here's the rub - black face paint.

Given that, these days, an image can travel halfway round the world while the text is putting on its shoes, this could be seen as a somewhat courageous move, in the time-honoured political sense of the word. In the words of one Canadian academic,

"...it seems unlikely that North American audiences who encounter Morris [...] would see in blackface dances anything other than a white peoples' representation of black culture."

Sure enough, even on this side of the Pond, knees are apparently jerking in a veritable Riverdance of protest - at least according to those newspapers doing their best to fan the flames. The Independent, for example, merrily relays this charming example of liberal intolerance:

"If you're a Morris dancer and you want to black up, ask yourself if it's really appropriate. If the answer is yes, you're wrong.”

Never mind over four hundred years of documented practice and the stated aim of disguise, for which soot long provided the cheapest and most effective medium; someone has decided to be offended so it has to stop.

Thanks to recent media fuss over the Bacup Coconutters, whose blackened faces adorned, successively, Will Straw's twitter account and the label of a guest beer in a House of Commons bar*, Cameron must have been fully aware of the implications of posing for the photograph.

While it's unlikely to have lost him any votes - it certainly won't be the Tory faithful carping away on Twitter - it shows a certain moral courage to ignore the critics and publicly embrace a tradition that has been so emphatically misinterpreted.

And a Prime Minister prepared to stand up to the offence-seeking mob and their ill-informed revisionist prejudice is a welcome sight to see.

So, just this once, David Cameron, your very good health!


*Regular readers may remember being subjected to a longer post containing which contains much rambling historical detail and comment.

Today, Home Secretary, you're going to be a beansprout

?WhatIf!

More like WTF, as in 'WTF is a purveyor of new-age psychobabble through a company of that name* doing in 10, Downing Street?' It's like a frightening throwback to the days of Carole Caplin - any minute now Cameron's rubber mask will slip and we'll see that he was really Tony Blair in disguise all along.

Here in the Tavern, we normally try to moderate our language but even we are reduced to Anglo-Saxon profanity in the case of Cameron's newest recruit. According to the Times, Australian psychologist Kris Murrin (as seen on TV) is to be 'in charge of ensuring the Prime Minister's policies are delivered and that staff work effectively'.

So far, so reasonable. But Ms Murrin's methods are somewhat unorthodox - when she's not confronting weeping parents with grotesque images of their obese, diseased children half a century hence ('Honey, We're Killing the Kids' - BBC) - she's showing office workers how to "build a personal bravery plan" and "fill their minds with freshness".

Her methods have included shamanic rituals, African drumming, fortune-telling and temporary tattoos. And the benefits are as tangible as the Emperor's new clothes; according to her (inevitable) self-help book, "Nobody tries to explain what we get out of it directly - it's understood. It's our freshness store cupboard".

Her book describes a role-playing exercise with employees of a food retailer in which she "made a wok out of beanbags and asked them to act out being a stir fry". Participants were "a bit uncomfortable at first" - surely not! - but "soon overcame their shyness and were throwing themselves into the wok".

Since this kind of exercise is likely to be the first casualty of projected cuts, its creators are looking for another source of income. Turns out Ms Murrin's a bit of a canny political operator, working on a school food quango and as an 'associate of Tony Blair's delivery unit', whatever that may be (White vans? Babies?) while acting as a consultant to the Conservatives.

Well, some of them, at any rate - when she proposed psychometric testing for the shadow cabinet, one Conservative MP said he was not prepared to be subjected to a "mumbo-jumbo psychobabble experiment". Well said, that man!

So here's a bit of free advice for David Cameron. Firstly, if you're cutting the public sector to the bone, people won't take kindly to "stimulus sessions" and "freshness store cupboards" at Number 10. And secondly, if you're looking for sensible people for Cabinet posts, be very, very wary of anyone who actually wants to be a beansprout.

*As their website has it, 'The focus here is on the systematic design of addictive customer experiences'. Sample case study: 'Helping Boots' Medicine Customers Buy Better, and Buy More' .
Yep, folks, that's what we really need - more medicine!

In a Tory Urban Garden - Dave's PEB

Looks like the backroom boys at Tory HQ have been busy with a spot of Freudian analysis. Taking advantage of going last of three, they've looked at the competition and come up with a sharp riposte.



Gone is the blasted heath of Labour's offering*, or the litter-strewn cityscape conjured up by the Lib Dems; Dave sits in a modest back garden in the evening sun surrounded by blossoming fruit trees and a climbing frame - and isn't that just a hint of birdsong in the background? Welcome to 'Hector's House'.

Clever. Very clever. The lone figure striding through desolation is replaced by a relaxed paterfamilias in a secure and comforting environment. Instead of the hurrying passers-by who brush past Nick Clegg (one of them twice - check him out at 1.15 and 1.20 in their video), the supporting cast are attentive audiences hanging on Dave's every word.

And if Labour were tapping into the latent fear of Dr Who's monsters, the Tories have produced an evocation of something quintessentially English - Gardeners' World**. Dave's Spring Garden is channeling Geoff Hamilton and Percy Thrower (with a touch of Parsley the Lion thrown in).

Incidentally, the audio transcription which so mangled the Lib Dem offering strikes again; 'That's why we need a new Conservative government' becomes, inexplicably, 'That's why we need the name Saudi Government'. Plenty of fuel for conspiracy theorists there.

*A propos of Labour's PEB, it has since occurred to me that Sean Pertwee - their proxy Gordon - was a memorable Macbeth in a 1998 Ch4 schools production; not a felicitous image to conjure up for a generation of younger voters.

**Viewers in Scotland have their own programme.

A Slow Bicycle Race to No. 10

Like one of those magic eye pictures, the events of the past week, when viewed in a slightly different way, suddenly present a whole new political vista. Sir Nicholas Winterton channelling Marie Antoinette, Heseltine's gloomy prognostications and Portillo's doubts, all surfacing at once, add up to one inevitable question.

What if the Tories don't want to win the election?

Think about it - whoever ends up in Number 10 will be tackling a mess of epic proportions with a side order of chaos. It's difficult to identify any area of the public sector which does not constitute a ticking time-bomb, from our unemployable young to future pensions crises, from elderly care to childhood obesity.

Far better to let Gordon et al. return with a perilously slender majority to face inevitable decline and fall, Gotterdammerung and votes of no confidence, after which Cameron can ride in on his white charger and pluck the helpless Britannia from the jaws of disaster to riotous applause.

Meanwhile, Gordon's cronies don't want to have to clear the mess up either. Gordon himself may be clinging on to power with both hands and his teeth, but I can't see his minions relishing the prospect of years of public vilification as chickens come home to roost.

So Gordon and Sarah are given free rein to make use of their organs of choice, Piers Morgan and a supermarket magazine, to court the misery memoir generation. It's hard to imagine the sort of person who contentedly 'shares Gordon's pain' with a nice cup of tea actually getting out there to vote, so no danger there.

And we're likely to end up not only with a hung parliament, but with the undignified spectacle of both leaders trying to avoid power while pretending to campaign for it sincerely. And if that happens, we might even get Clegg for PM.

With Friends Like These...

You have to feel sorry for Dave 'Man of the People' Cameron; first there's Nicholas Winterton's spectacular foot-in-mouth, now it's Heseltine lumbering out of hibernation and foretelling doom to all and sundry, like something out of the darker recesses of Greek mythology.

According to the Times, 'The former deputy Prime Minister said he would "put money" on a hung parliament, with the Tories the largest party. Mr Cameron would then be forced to call a second election later this year to seek a proper mandate to govern.'

With new research showing Cameron's poll lead eroding fast, things could be looking bleak for his party. It's a sobering thought that the electorate may actually be swayed by Brown's media antics, but even without them, the Tories are hardly helping their own cause.

No sooner has Winterton raised the spectre of moats and duck houses - could he really have been unaware of the impact his remarks would have? - than a senior figure casts doubt on their hopes for victory in the forthcoming election.

Self-fulfilling prophecy, anyone?

Update: Michael Portillo has added his pennyworth to the debate with an article in the Sunday Times deploring the indecisiveness of the Tory party and claiming "The Conservatives are failing the grit test".

David Cameron in UFO Shock

Aliens in UFOs have visited Earth, says David Cameron

David Cameron said he "was convinced" the Earth had been visited by aliens and has vowed to publish any secret files that may exist on UFOs if he becomes prime minister.

Telegraph Online 27th Jan 2009

All is not quite as it seems, dear Reader. In fact Cameron was making what we on Earth call a joke, in response to a question at a 'Cameron Direct' meeting in Tynemouth, but this did not prevent the Telegraph embellishing the article with links to an assortment of UFO stories - my favourite being 'Tentacled UFO's at Turbine Site' - presumably to keep the X-files fan-club happy.

Despite beginning his answer with a joke - albeit one straight out of Billy Bunter; ' I know we've been visited by aliens; Jenkins Minor is one of them!' - he marred the effect by earnestly promenading once more his belief in freedom of information and openness. Placed on the hook by his questioner, he gave a delightful display of wriggling ambiguity as he neither confirmed nor denied belief in the existence of intelligent alien life out there, but insisted that he 'would always be entirely open and frank about these things'.

Well, that's nice to know. It's always a risk when politicians appear in public that someone with a really wacky idea can put a spanner in the works. In this case, I'd love to know whose crazy notion it was to take the laudable concept of regular meetings with the general public and curse it with the label 'Cameron Direct'.