Quote of the day - Dracula Rises from the Tomb

A brilliantly-phrased gem from Caedmon's Cat today describing the recent doings of one Tony Blair, or, as he is known in the Cat's Kingdom of Northumbria, 'Tondvig the Bleurgh':

Eager to exercise his finely-honed skills in mendacity, oratory and sincere guile, he's been travelling over the many waters of the earth, giving lectures to adoring window-lickers, knuckle-draggers, lickspittles and anyone deranged enough to part with several million Holy Groats for the privilege of hearing diatribes of magic-mushroom-fuelled fantasy and folly drip from his amply proportioned chops.

Actually, this one was entirely predictable; even when he was in Downing Street, the fervour with which Blair proclaimed the importance of the role of EU president was a clear indication of his ambitions in that direction.

If he does manage to fasten his teeth into the Presidency and ensure that we are, once again, maintaining him in the lifestyle to which he has become accustomed, at least there's the small consolation that he may, once again, inspire others to memorable flights of oratory...

And a bonus quote today: from JuliaM at OoL, on the power of advertising:

I’ve watched quite a lot of advertising this week, but so far I’ve managed to avoid:

a) taking a meerkat to bed,
b) bungee jumping off a bridge with my identical twin,
c) strapping a bulldog into a motorcycle sidecar, or
d) setting up a relationship counselling agency for snowme…err, snowpeople?

So I think we can safely say that normal adults can distinguish between real life and advertising scenarios.

Britain in the EU; a matter of Persuasion?

Thesis:
An opinion poll published in the Observer found more than half of British voters (56%) would vote to leave the EU if a referendum was held.
(BBC news)

Antithesis:
EU officials have begun work on a plan to create a long-term budget without the UK in a move that reflects mounting frustration that Britain’s demand for a spending freeze cannot be reconciled with the rest of the bloc.
(ft.com)

Synthesis:
"Oh! Mr. Bennet, you are wanted immediately; we are all in an uproar. You must come and make Lizzy marry Mr. Collins, for she vows she will not have him, and if you do not make haste he will change his mind and not have her."

Mr. Bennet raised his eyes from his book as she entered, and fixed them on her face with a calm unconcern which was not in the least altered by her communication.

"I have not the pleasure of understanding you," said he, when she had finished her speech. "Of what are you talking?"

"Of Mr. Collins and Lizzy. Lizzy declares she will not have Mr. Collins, and Mr. Collins begins to say that he will not have Lizzy."

"And what am I to do on the occasion?—It seems an hopeless business."
(Pride and Prejudice; Jane Austen)

Nice work?

"Yes, you can have your 15% - just call off the strike, please!"

In today's Europe-wide climate of austerity, it seems unthinkable that a group of workers could strike for a 15% pay rise and get it within two days. What vital part do they play, these people? Have they a stranglehold on some essential issue of national security or economic stability?

Well, no, not exactly; the strikers in question are the dancers of the Crazy Horse cabaret in Paris, famous for its nude shows and regarded by the French as a kind of cultural institution, the subject of numerous backstage documentaries and guest appearances on national television.

While all the acts on televised variety shows are applauded with unaccountable enthusiasm by the audience, the occasional appearances of the girls from 'Le Crazy' are greeted with a kind of awed veneration, which is odd, when you come to think of it. After all, the act essentially consists of a set of nearly nude women in matching wigs striking poses to music under some very clever stage lighting.

Despite the US news sites referring to them as 'exotic dancers', their 'Plus Grand Cabaret du Monde'* performances are regularly broadcast for family viewing, largely because, though aesthetically pleasing, they bring to mind Kingsley Amis' description of a nude revue - 'as exciting as looking up the word 'naked' in the Concise Oxford English Dictionary'.

The Crazy Horse has always been seen as the 'artistic' counterpart of the more exuberant Moulin Rouge or the Las Vegas-influenced Lido, providing tits sans feathers for a more discerning clientele. While the Moulin Rouge routines evolved from the frenetic high kicks of the public dance-hall where ladies of dubious virtue strutted their stuff - there's a fine description in Zola's 'L'Assomoir' (recently the subject of a post by A K Haart)- the Crazy Horse opened in the early 1950s with a distinctly modern orientation.

Modern for the 1950s, that is. In today's internet age, images of naked six-foot amazons are so widely available that few would consider it worth forking out Parisian night-club prices purely to see the real thing. What attracts customers now is a reputation among tourists - and more than a touch of patriotic sentiment.

The appeal must still be there; the haste with which the management rushed to settle suggests that the 2,000 euros each a month it payed its dancers for a six day week was a small share of the takings. No dancers - no show; a simple equation that was enough to force a capitulation after two nights. And so national pride is salvaged and the Show Goes On.

The Crazy Horse - now so tame that its shows are performed before a family audience - has become a Sacred Cow.


*While Variety has more or less bitten the dust in Britain, replaced by the horrors of 'Strictly X-Factor Find Me A Talented Nancy Boy on Ice', it is alive and well on French television in the guise of 'Le Plus Grand Cabaret du Monde'. Now it its 13th season, this show features a variety of cabaret acts, some impressive, some cheesy and some downright bizarre (my all-time favourite has to be a contortionist hanging from a high trapeze and singing 'Makin' Whoopee' while hooking her left foot around her right ear, though the stripping German punk unicyclists on a tightrope run her a close second).

Losing the swings - and the roundabouts too

The Mail is exercised this morning about a children's playground dismantled because the equipment failed to meet European safety requirements.

Perhaps the most striking thing about it*, for those of us on the downhill side of 40, at least, is that the offending equipment illustrated looks distictly tame by the standards of our childhood.

When I was young, our local park featured a slide of such vertiginous altitude and gradient that users regularly overshot the long horizontal run-out; a cage at the top of the ladder was the only protection against plummeting to the tarmac ten feet below.

Meanwhile, the swings described vast and graceful arcs from a massive frame and the see-saws were long planks of wood balanced on a central pivot; no springs or rubber matting - if you didn't get your feet down in time to break the fall, the end would hit the ground with a spine-jarring crash and your opposite number would be flung wildly into the air.

Best of all was the roundabout, a flat octagonal arrangement of planks on a central pedestal strangely reminiscent of our dining table at home. The resemblance ended there, however; in the hands of determined ten-year-olds, this contraption could generate sufficient centrifugal force to catapult its gleeful occupants a distance of several yards.

It is, perhaps, a good illustration of how expectations of children's behaviour have shifted over the past four decades. Certainly we sported an interesting variety of grazes and bruises, but the incidence of serious injury was, if anything, lower than today.

Regardless of European directives, we have seen an increased insistence on monitoring and restricting children's ability to decide for themselves or to take responsibility for their actions - small wonder, then, that a generation has grown up expecting to be provided for and entertained by others.

And just as the relaxing of discipline in schools has led to appalling behaviour as pupils try to find the limits of what's allowed, so the reduction of risk has taken all the fun out of the playground and surely contributed to risk-taking behaviour elsewhere.


*apart from the blatantly misplaced apostrophe of the caption - 'Before: The playground with it's full complement of equipment'.
I mean, we're all vulnerable to the occasional typo but they get paid to produce this stuff.

Incidentally, a trawl through the Mail also turned up this festive headline:
'Father has finger bitten off in parents' brawl at school NATIVITY PLAY'
I can't wait to see what JuliaM makes of that one!

"Les QI, ont-ils brusquement baissés alors que j’étais absent?"

Remember these chaps?

Six intrepid astro/cosmonauts have spent the past 513 days on a simulated mission to Mars in the interests of space research. For over a year and a half, their only contact with Earth has been through the official communications link.

While they have produced plenty of media-friendly diary entries and accounts of their situation, all their information on events outside has come via Mission Control, where psychologists have been employed to ensure their emotional well-being and equilibrium.

How likely is it, then, that the two Europeans involved - a Frenchman and an Italian - have been allowed to follow the development of the growing financial crisis in the eurozone? What possible good could come of describing the situation to men in their position?

So in a week or so, Romain and Diego will emerge, blinking, into the spotlight of European media attention and find out that it's all been going to the dogs - and just to complicate matters, thanks to an ill-timed grimace captured by the world's cameras, relations between Berlusconi and Sarkozy are less than cordial.

I imagine that, sometime next week, on the outskirts of Moscow, there will be a scene not entirely unlike the one in Aliens when a newly-defrosted Ripley discovers just how disastrously things have gone wrong in her absence.

And like Ripley, one imagines, our intrepid heroes will find themselves asking the question,"Did IQ's just drop sharply while I was away?"

Julie's on to a nice little earner

She's back! Julie Kirkbride, former MP and occasional muse of this column, is looking for a tenant for her Worcestershire mansion flat at £925pcm - yep, that's right; the one where we subsidised the £50,000 extension and the £500 bedroom curtains.

By coincidence, the Times today reports on the EU decree that 'tourism is a human right' and that the taxpayer should subsidise foreign holidays for those too poor to afford it.

'The scheme, which could cost hundreds of millions of pounds a year, is intended to promote a sense of pride in European culture, bridge the north-south divide in the continent and prop up resorts in their off-season.

Officials have envisaged sending south Europeans to Manchester and Liverpool on a tour of “archeological and industrial sites” such as closed factories and power plants. The idea is based on a project in Spain in which holidays in the winter off-season are subsidised by the government.'

Well, if they fancy Bromsgrove instead, there's a flat already available, substantially extended with taxpayers' money; surely the state should be entitled to use it for free every now and then. In fact, there are houses in constituencies all over the country paid for, at least in part, by us.

So why not fill them with southern Europeans in search of culture? I'm sure we could develop a pro-rata system - we paid for your guest room so we're putting a couple of Greeks in there for a week next Thursday, OK?

Storm in a (M&S) Teacake

Phew! Sighs of relief all round as Law Lords uphold the findings of the European Court of Justice on the legal status of the M&S chocolate-coated teacake. After thirteen years of litigation the byzantine baked goods and confectionery tax laws have been interpreted to classify the teacake as a cake and not a biscuit, entitling M&S to a refund of the £3.5m they paid in VAT between 1973 and 1994.

One doesn’t know whether to envy the lawyers the thirteen years worth of fees from this case or to commiserate with them over a third of their working lives spent embroiled in the minutiae of tax law and bakery products. Did they fret for hours about chocolate coatings or wake at night in a cold sweat over the exact definition of millionaire’s shortbread?

And what of the £3.5m? Well, Customs and Excise felt it would ‘unjustly enrich’ M&S, since customers had paid VAT as part of the retail price. Now the store is to receive the windfall, it will be interesting to see whether it is translated into benefits for customers in the current retail climate. If there are any free teacakes, I'll be first in the queue.