A Feminist Take On The New Royal Family And Other Matters

Image by courtesy of Wikipedia

Feminism, like support for slow growth, skepticism of nuclear power, and, indeed, socialism, is out of fashion. As a not-so-fashionista, I will, therefore, use her as lens to look upon yesterday's Royal Wedding. I should also point out that I don't mind a bit of Gentleman's Relish* in the humour department, although my tastes almost certainly differ from those of our Prime Minister and his deputy.

Yesterday, I had intended a diet free of royal nuptials, but was overcome by a strong desire to sit down in front of the television and do nothing for a couple of hours, as well as the excuse for a glass of alcohol at lunchtime, along with most other Britons. It all turned out to be quite enjoyable : my only criticism being that the equestrian formation which escorted the newly weds back to the palace occasionally looked like something out of a John Wayne film.

This set me wondering what Princess Ann made of it all: the horses, I mean. Now there's a lady that could keep David Cameron on the bit : there would certainly be no "Calm down, Ma'ams" or other speaking out of turn, nor any kind of misbehaviour tolerated amongst the two grey geldings - and their postilions - leading the Coalition Government carriage. She would also, I am sure, bluntly advise the Leader of the Opposition to have the other Mr Ed re-schooled.

Moving on to the matter of succession, I'm glad that this has come up again recently. Personally, I would favour positive discrimination in favour of female offspring, starting with Princess Ann who would succeed her brother Charles as quickly as possible, leaving Zara and her soon to be rugby-player husband as the New Royal Couple. This should continue the reign of stalwart women exemplified in the present Queen Elizabeth.

As to the event of yesterday, surely this was an apotheosis of the spirit of New Labour, but with its prime movers left to be ghosts at the feast, with Ken Livingstone invited instead. It just goes to show that the general matter of transport, and not just getting a wedding party to and from one's palace, may be close to Her Majesty's heart and that the former - and possibly future - London Mayor's introduction of the congestion charge is well regarded in Royal Zones.

* A condiment (? by Royal Appointment)

BRITAIN - A NATION OF DISPLACED DISCOURSE

The term "displaced discourse" has been used in media studies to identify certain tendencies, notably in television and the popular press, whereby a narrowly focused preoccupation, for instance with the private lives of celebrities, displaces wider coverage of changing social values. However, in this post I want to use the term more loosely to describe the displacement of significant issues in favour of less important and sometimes trivial public discourse. Yesterday's House of Commons exchange between the Labour MP, and former minister, Angela Eagle and Prime Minister David Cameron is a good example of this.

Ms Eagle was challenging the Government's proposed changes to the National Health Service when she was told my Mr Cameron to "Calm down, dear...and listen to the doctor". The doctor in question was in fact the PM's medical colleague Dr Howard Stoat, although it should be noted that Mr Cameron has a tendency to adopt the manner of a hospital doctor on his rounds when going about the country on political business. "Calm down, dear" was, of course, a reference to a well-known Michael Winner television advertisement for an insurance company. Although it is also the kind of thing a doctor might have said to a colleague or patient in the "Carry On" series.

The Labour front bench team were not amused. Deputy party leader Harriet Harman called upon Mr Cameron to apologise for the patronising and sexist remark, forgetting that her predecessor, the now Lord Prescott, had caused similar offense to a French female minister with an apparently male chauvinist comment. Whilst I agree that the PM was behaving in a patronising way to Ms Eagle, and possibly being sexist to boot, neither feminism nor the national sense of humour were advanced during New Labour's time in office, and Ms Eagle, for whom I have some respect, was made to look more foolish by the reaction of her colleagues to Mr Cameron's jest than she was by being told to "Calm down, dear".

So what was yesterday's frisson in the House of Commons really all about? The situation was almost certainly aggravated because Angela Eagle is a lesbian, who, according to Daily Mail columnist Quentin Letts had been shouting at the PM like a "tattooed stevedore". If Ms Eagle was indeed doing this, I can indeed sympathise with her, for what woman wouldn't have occasion to feel angry from time to time with someone as smug and privileged as Mr Cameron. I've felt a strong urge to punch such men in the face myself, especially when they have a grinning side-kick like Nick Clegg. Yet equally I find myself with little truck for privileged and smug women like Harriet Harman and her New Labour sisterhood.

For in reality, there isn't much difference between the social values of the Coalition Government and the previous administration. Indeed I would credit Tony Blair rather more than David Cameron with creating the conditions for tomorrow's Royal Wedding between Prince William and "Kate the Commoner", and I'm most surprised that the Blairs - and the Browns for that matter - haven't been invited. Not very correct form Ma'am, if you don't mind me saying so ! Perhaps it is this exclusion from "the wedding of the century" - only Ed Miliband and his partner are going - which has made the Labour front benches so tetchy. If so, my advice is simply this: "Calm down dears, it's only a commercial !"

THE IDIOT'S GUIDE TO POWER POLITICS

One of the "party-tricks" of a central character in Dostoevsky's "The Idiot" is to foretell the Apocalypse. The character, Lebedyev, is also something of a entrepreneur and fixer in the contemporary mold.

Given this Apocalyptic reference in my current fictional reading, I was fascinated to learn in a BBC Radio 4 programme on Chernobyl broadcast yesterday that the town's name translates into English as "wormwood" which also has strong associations with the end of the world.

This was excellent "low budget, high value" broadcasting incidentally, in stark contrast to the political white noise which seems to have beset much of the BBC in recent days. Is the media silly season getting earlier with global warming, I wonder ?

For who, other than Nick Clegg, really cares whether David Cameron has given an unpaid internship in his constituency office to the offspring of an Oxfordshire neighbour. I'm far more interested in whether the Government is dispensing rather more lucrative favours to its friends.

This was certainly the case with New Labour, and we should remind ourselves that prime minister Gordon Brown's brother was head of communications at the French-owned company EDF when it secured a deal which may yet determine the future of Britain's civil nuclear policy.

The response of the Liberal-Democrat component of the Coalition Government to this situation has been extremely disappointing, given that Chris Huhne and Vince Cable hold the key energy, and climate change, and business and innovation portfolios.

Indeed, it would seem that on energy policy, and not just on the "Alternative Vote" that the Lib-Dems favour co-habitation with Labour, something on which independent-minded Tories of the "Conservative Home" persuasion might reflect.

They will also note that Gordon Brown's financial largess, as prime minister and chancellor of the exchequer, to the international business community, which our own country could ill-afford, has been recognised by the World Economic Forum to the tune of £750k per annum.

This "allowance" - like Blair, Brown seems to have pull on the grace and favour circuit - will no doubt support many internships and possibly the odd consultancy for Lord Mandelson's new firm "Global Counsel".

The present British prime minister and his deputy, meanwhile, need to wise up on energy policy and other pressing issues. Let's hope that the end of the present silly season is only just over a week away, and that a prolonged political impairment does not prelude something even worse.

THE NATURE OF CHERNOBYL'S LEGACY

The 31st March 2011 edition of the science magazine Nature has an article on "Chernobyl's legacy" to co-incide with a major conference on nuclear safety being held this week in Kiev. The article notes that "the quarter-century of work following the Chernobyl disaster will offer some important lessons for Japan as the nation begins to assess the health and environmental consequences of Fukushima".

Since the article was published the scale of the Fukushima nuclear disaster has worsened and is now graded 7 like Chernobyl.

Rather grimly, the Nature article suggests that the ongoing Chernobyl clean-up, forecast to finish in 2065, may be a financial beneficiary of the renewed global interest in nuclear safety following the accident in Japan. For at the core of Chernobyl's legacy is a massively expensive decontamination exercise which is programmed to last for eighty years, and one of the key goals of this week's conference is to "secure more cash from international donors".

The article also draws attention to the "value of accurate information" and its communication during the initial phases of a nuclear disaster and through subsequent years. This requires resources other than funding, although the latter is key to the decommissioning process. Twenty five years after the Chernobyl explosion, the health and wider environmental implications of this are still not fully understood.

Although, as the article notes: "Today, hundreds of farms in Wales still have their sheep tested for Chernobyl radiation before herds can be moved or sold". No wonder countries in the Far East and Pacific region are concerned about the impact of Fukushima, both in the short and longer terms, and are putting pressure on Japanese authorities to provide the most accurate and up-to-date information about the disaster.

However, the greatest impact will obviously be on communities nearby. One of the scientists interviewed for the Nature article says that: "Ultimately...Chernobyl's most important lesson for Fukushima is that a nuclear accident haunts a region long after the reactors have cooled....and the government may have to maintain an exclusion zone for decades".

These themes are taken up in my most recent post at my "shadow blog" - http://the-edge-of-town.blogspot.com/

TREASURE ISLANDS AND LITERARY HAVENS

Having recently confessed to being a Saturday reader of The Daily Mail, I realise that some may interpret this as my having a "No-Brow" tendency. Fear not, my brows are nearly as bushy as those of former Labour Chancellor Dennis Healey, and I aspire to the Mid-High Brow in my general reading: currently Fyodor Dostoevsky's "The Idiot", Nicholas Shaxson's "Treasure Islands", a book of which Lord Healey would surely approve, and "Nature" (see above). Moreover last weekend, I broke the recent habit and purchased the Financial Times once again.

Like the Mail, the FT has joined the debate about the future of Britain's public libraries - from one of which I've loaned "Treasure Islands and also photocopied a Nature article. Columnist Christopher Caldwell predicts their demise: "It is the fate of libraries to die"...because..."The government must focus on necessities and cut frills".

However, set in the context of Shaxson's analysis of "Treasure Islands" or tax havens, at the heart of which are the United Kingdom and the United States, the literary haven of the British, or American, public library seems a curious candidate for the death sentence. For it is precisely this type of institution that provides the citizen with the intellectual resources to adopt a more critical attitude to current affairs, of the kind promoted by the FT, including how governments should regulate and spend money, and otherwise safeguard the public interest.

Thames Cable Car: A River Crossing Re-Imagined

Above Image - Cologne Cable Car (Wikipedia Media Commons)

Yesterday's announcement that Transport for London is to fund a cable car crossing of the River Thames between the Greenwich Peninsula and Docklands in readiness - hopefully - for the 2012 Olympics is an interesting development in the history of plans for East London river crossings.

Proposals for cable car projects in the London Thames Gateway go back many years - I can remember schemes put forward in the late 1980s - but next year's Olympic Games seem to the final catalyst to implementation.

The need for improved access in the transport corridor served by the Blackwall Tunnel has long been recognised, but additional road capacity has been opposed for environmental reasons, not least increased air pollution.

Transport for London's support for an aerial passenger crossing should, therefore, be viewed as a progressive development in moving people around the capital, although it is still questionable whether the full potential of the Thames itself has yet been re-harnessed.

THE MAILSTROM OF MODERN BRITAIN

I have to confess to being a reader of the Saturday edition of The Daily Mail newspaper, and that my days as a weekend Guardianista are long gone. There is something about the indignation of the Mail which appeals to middle age. I'm sure that other forty something plus women will know what I mean. The Saturday edition does, however, usually last me until the following weekend, whilst I now catch up with other news online.

Today's Mail is the usual maelstrom of indignation, and perhaps surpasses itself on the subjects of culture, in particular with regard to the Arts Council and new media in the form of Google. The latter American import is singled out partly because of its close links with the office of the Prime Minster, and the Arts Council because of chair Dame Liz Forgan's fall-out with the Mail's Quentin Letts, himself a cultural aficionado. In short, Google and the Arts Council are respectively regarded as threats to British culture, in the form of contemporary creative industries and national heritage, but for very different reasons.

The article on Google is accompanied by a picture of the British singer Adele, whose music has recently exceeded that of Madonna and Bob Dylan in popularity (ie sales), and who was featured on last week's BBC Radio 4 "Profile" programme. Google's search engines are demonised for promoting pirated downloads of Adele's music. The Arts Council, on the other hand, is blamed for promoting multi-culturalism through encouraging better representation of ethnic minorities in the management of cultural institutions.

My own view of the Adele phenomenon is that this is a manifestation of "The X Factor" generation - or Generation X Factor perhaps - in both the UK and the US, where she is even more successful. An anti-American attack on Google, therefore, seems rather out of place. In recent surveys Google comes out as the most trusted global brand, ahead of all other media organisations. Rupert Murdoch, please take note ! The reason for this is, quite simply, that Google provides choice. Some of its choices may be crass, offensive and even illegal, but the ability to choose is what the modern punter wants, including, I imagine, most Daily Mail readers, the majority of whom will also subscribe to the Google preference.

The Prime Minister's desire to foster links with Google, therefore, seems entirely reasonable. "Brand Britain" is after all looking rather jaded, but for reasons that go beyond the arts and media dimensions of culture. Nevertheless, media and the arts are important dimensions of the national psyche, which is certainly in a state of confusion about issues such as multi-culturalism and the vexed subject of political correctness. Part of this confusion arises from the mix-up of multi-culturalism, with an emphasis on diversity and equal opportunities, with political correctness, which is now widely used as a form of explicit or implicit censorship. To their credit, new media organisations like Google have enabled this important difference to be clarified through the blogosphere.

As people of privileged position, both Quentin Letts and Dame Liz Forgan, previously a senior BBC executive, do not have need of new media channels to conduct their cultural conflict. Personally, I have sympathy for both positions: Forgan for standing up for unfashionable multi-culturalism and equal opportunities, and Letts for challenging the culture of political correctness which is like a canker at the heart of many British institutions. A more open and truculent public debate about what culture merits government funding and what should be left "to the market" is certainly needed, the more important question is just how this might happen.