SYNTAGMA

Saturday Ramble: A Summer idyll — Minack

John Evans — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 19:54:13 +0000

Getting away from the misery of 2009 and the fag-end, quasi-administration of Gordon Brown isn’t easy. There aren’t many escape routes.

Here’s one I tried earlier.

The myth of Minack in Cornwall has not affected everyone. Few now remember the long series of books by Derek and Jeannie Tangye that ended in the mid 1990s. I had a small walk-on part in the drama, so recall it more than most. Turn away if the call of wild nature is not to your taste.

Over the years, the many adherents to the Minack story have been among the most loyal readers anywhere. But what is the truth: was it an English Shangri-la, or just another hyped publishing opportunity?

If the American dream is to join the high rollers of a largely fluid society and take one’s place at the top of the tree, the British version is much more muted.

Of old it was an aspiration to the squirearchy: an elegant manor house, a few tenanted farms and three days a week in the City. Nowadays, it tends to be a rugged farmhouse in the country, a smallholding, and shelling peas by an open fire.

But Derek and Jeannie Tangye got there first. Way back in the austere 1950s, they abandoned their London lives — she as the famed publicity queen with the Savoy Hotel on the Strand, he as a social gadfly, spy, and sometime journalist — and moved to a minuscule cottage on the coast near Lamorna in West Cornwall. Through Derek’s writings about the place, Minack became a promised land to millions of people around the world.

So was it quite as idyllic as the dream would have us believe. Like everything else, the answer is a complex one.

In their favour, the pair stuck it out until their deaths, Jeannie’s in 1986 and Derek’s in 1996, so we can assume that life was at least tolerable. But their early years were undoubtedly harsh.

Converting the cliffs on their new domain into those peculiar Cornish potato meadows, that have to be tilled by hand, was never going to be easy for urban people. Daffodils, and other early-season blooms, dominated the remainder of the rough landscape.

The weather was fickle — as it always is. Prices fluctuated — as they always do. Both Derek and Jeannie turned to writing to make ends meet — as the middle classes usually do. Each was successful in their own way, and that helped.

Soon, though, the dark clouds of change swept over their demi-paradise of toil and struggle. New cultivation methods elsewhere devastated the Cornish daffodil and new-potato industries.

Tourists started to flood in, responding to the Minack legend created by Derek in his books. Suburbia came to Minack and never thereafter left them alone.

In a book written after Jeannie’s death, Derek told of the strain of those years and how their lack of children diminished their relationship by slow attrition. It was no idyll by this account.

I went to Minack just after Derek’s death to investigate the agricultural lease to the main property. The house and 21 acres (so-called Oliver Land is now a nature reserve) was available to the right person. The owner, Viscount Falmouth, was determined to maintain the legend by all accounts.

It seemed to me like a wonderful opportunity to make a new start after seven years living in Spain. But it soon became clear that this was Derek and Jeannie’s dream, not mine.

I took the scenic route along the cliffs from Lamorna — not as easy as it sounds in the Chronicles — and found myself walking beside a lengthy fence which skirted the cliff path. Totally lost, I eventually took a gamble and climbed over an old gate into what seemed a deserted farmyard. It was Minack.

There was the much-described cottage — so small. How could they have lived in it all those years? The famous “bridge” (a vantage point) was bijou in the extreme; and “Monty’s Leap”, that giants’ causeway of the imagination, was a little trickling stream across the lane.

From such small and and simple features came a whole world that resonated in the minds of jaded urbanites in every corner of the planet.

Gilbert White did it for Selborne, and Derek Tangye made a mighty mountain out of his beloved molehill at Minack.

Small really is beautiful when there’s no one else around.

John Evans

Midweek Politics: PMQs – Gordon Brown lays claim to Mr Zero Percent

John Evans — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:57:28 +0000

The Prime Minister learned the difference between popular parlance and the terminology of economists and statisticians at PMQs today.

While it is perfectly permissible to speak of inflation at zero percent, or even minus one percent, you can never describe spending projections as “a zero percent rise”. Naturally, the Tory benches went into Hogarthian mode after the slip.

Gordon Brown’s reputation for clunkiness went up a further notch today — probably the only indicator on the rise for some years ahead.

David Cameron is right to keep up his relentless barrage of furious interrogation on the issue because, as Fraser Nelson, Matthew Parris, and Syntagma have all pointed out, it throws “Tory cuts” back on the Prime Minister and Labour.

It’s like Andy Murray countering an opponent’s weak second serve with unplayable shots. Conservatives have nothing to fear from their policy of hacking back public financing of the Guardian jobs pages.

At one point, the Conservative leader tried a new label for hopeless Brown: Mr Thirteen-and-a-half Percent. Umm, no … it would take too long to explain, and is too generous by 13.5pc.

Mr Zero Percent conveys an emptiness of content; a nadir beyond which reasonable men don’t venture; a complete full stop.

Cameron rammed it home: “This is the most feeble performance he’s ever given,” he cried, slightly swallowing the last two words as if his mind was already turning to the next attack. [Note to Dave - Don't pull the thrust until the sword comes out the other side.]

However, he produced a “killer blow” with a Treasury document headed: “Reduction in medium-term spending.” Brown attempted to turn the tables by dubbing the Tories “the party of unemployment”.

On The Daily Politics, Nick Watt, a Guardian man for heaven’s sake, supported David Cameron to the hilt. “Brown is back in the 1980s,” he said, “It won’t work today.”

“Mr Zero Percent” is beginning to look like a very useful slogan in the run-up to the General Election.

Nick Clegg again made telling points on spending, but failed to rattle Brown with a demand to cut the Trident project.

Bercow Watch: The Squeaker, as the Mail man in the gallery hilariously calls him, was almost absent from the proceedings. He made a couple of mild interventions on behalf of David Cameron, then settled back into spectator mode.

At last we had a PMQs that shed some light on the crucial arguments over public spending that will rage until the election. All the thinking, though, came from the Tory side. All the fibs, muck-raking and desperation arose from the diminished figure of Gordon Brown.

Syntagma’s Verdict:
Cameron, 8
Clegg, 6
Brown, zero percent
Bercow, 1.5

John Evans

DIARY: Michael Jackson, Palmerston, Balance of power, Ed Balls, Diamond Jubilee, Internationalism, Breakfast with Balls

John Evans — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 14:14:13 +0000

Google slipped up yesterday. The search engine highlighted a story that Michael Jackson died in 2007.

Oops, wrong Michael Jackson.

So who was this posthumous star enjoying his 15 minutes of fame? According to Wikipedia:

“Michael Jackson was born in Wetherby, West Yorkshire. He went to King James’s School in Almondbury and became a journalist, most notably in Edinburgh where he first encountered whisky. On his return to London he briefly edited the advertising trade journal Campaign.

“Jackson became famous in beer circles in 1977 when his book The World Guide To Beer was published. This was later translated into more than ten languages and is still considered to be one of the most fundamental books on the subject.”

Ah, sanity!

Rest in peace, Michael Jackson, journalist and beer lover.

* * * * *

On the Today programme last week there was a throwaway line from a presenter that went like this: “The Foreign Office wanted to do something about Iran, but was overruled by Brussels”.

No gasp of indignation followed, no protest at the disastrous state of Britain’s foreign policy, they simply moved on to the next item.

Your diarist is made of sterner stuff. Lord Palmerston sprang instantly to mind. What would he make of the once mighty British Foreign Office being slapped down and “overruled” by a provincial town in Belgium?

We all know the answer to that. A gunboat would have been dispatched to Ostende and an immediate grovelling retraction obtained.

In reality, little David Milband, Foreign Secretary and heir to Michael Portillo, waved his banana and Britain was humiliated.

The truth is, whenever Labour are in power, the country acts as if it lost the Second World War rather than won it.

Let us hope that William Hague, biographer of William Pitt — the great war leader — inherits something of the Victorian spirit when it comes to British independence and projection of will.

If so, he could go down as one the great British Foreign Secretaries.

* * * * *

In the same area, Peter Hitchens wrote a thought-provoking blogpost last week in the Mail’s website.

It outlined in some detail why Britain is stuck in the sterile structures of the European Union and why the country should leave. Here’s a taster:

“It was undoubtedly a mistake on British terms. We gained nothing economically or politically by it, losing what remained of our special Commonwealth trading links, losing our territorial waters, our foreign policy independence and our ability to make our own arrangements for regulating and subsidising our industry and agriculture. We also lost our political independence, and control over our own borders.”

Brown’s and Miliband’s further surrender of Britain’s foreign policy over the past year is eloquent testimony to the proposition, held by Syntagma, Hitchens, and a majority of the population, that Britain is being wiped off the map by the sort of continental power it fought for centuries to stop developing in Europe.

Joining in hasn’t worked, only by leaving will we regain the power of action.

* * * * *

Watching Ed Balls (roughly Education Secretary in the government) on Andrew Marr this morning was a lesson in all that is wrong with New Labour.

The message never faltered: Tory cuts were the the biggest danger facing the nation; Labour “investment”, plus yet more tinkering with the school system, is the way forward.

Considering that few people watch such a show at 9am on a Sunday morning unless they possess a sophisticated knowledge of current affairs and politics, pushing the much-rebutted “line to take” doesn’t really make sense.

Balls’s body language was equally bizarre. Holding his hands apart and parallel with each other, he continually moved them, first this way, then that. Like a fisherman claiming his catch was a whopper, there was an element of fantasy about the whole performance — a whopper indeed.

But the worst bit was when he claimed the Tories would cut spending to fund inheritance tax breaks for a few very rich people.

If memory serves, George Osborne promised to cut inheritance tax at the Conservatice conference just when Brown was planning a snap General Election nearly two years ago.

The substantial and sudden swing to the Conservatives in the opinion polls forced him to scrap his plans. The following month, Brown ordered his Chancellor to adopt similar measures in the Pre-Budget report.

So, another lie from Labour. Do they now have much support left among the regular audience for the Andrew Marr show?

It seems unlikely.

* * * * *

The Queen is said to have warned the government against mixing up the celebrations for her Diamond Jubilee in the summer of 2012 with the multiple shenanigans of the London Olympics.

One can see her reasoning. The Games are currently set to cost a whopping £10 billion, and that figure will undoubtedly rise.

HM wants a much less extravagant celebration, aware that the effects of the continuing depression will still be with us. Wisely, she has called in Lord Sterling, former head of P&O, who masterminded both her Silver and Golden Jubilees, and knows her mind.

The fact is, the Conservatives will then be in power nationally, and the Tory Mayor of London will be in a re-election year. I’m sure they can arrange matters so that both milestone events will be totally free of “political correctness” and electioneering.

Eh, Boris? Eh, Dave?

* * * * *

The word “globalization” is still widely used as a touchstone of modernity and wealth-creation. The Left, in particular, has fabricated its own version, “progressive internationalism”, for which read, “international socialism”.

The vast apparatus constructed since WW2 in support of international trade and relationships, is just that, Marxism without nationality — and therefore without democracy.

If globalization is so good for us then, why have international banks retreated back to their own countries now there’s a financial war on?

In Britain, almost all lending by foreign banks has ceased, leaving damaged local institutions to pick up the pieces. So far, they remain like wounded bears, confined to their caves.

The point is, if globalization only works during market highs, why stake so much on it? Every intelligent commentator knows the framework will be untenable during prolonged recessions?

The reason is that the present global superstructure of institutions creates a false picture of the benefits, while ignoring the downsides.

Players who should never have been in the field are being stuffed with taxpayers’ cash they can ill afford. The “carry trade” is a good example of what can happen. International bubbles are much worse than national ones.

Without the existing infrastructure, only the best and ablest would cross borders, and they would not expect bailouts during hard times. They would generally be more successful in the long term.

True to form, current economic conditions have not stopped Gordon Brown floating a scheme for another £60 billion a year to underpin yet more “global warming” funds for inadequate companies and greedy politicians. How will that help the British economy?

We need to treat anything global as a field for those who are strictly on their own, and not tacitly promise they will never be allowed to fail.

* * * * *

And finally, back to Ed Balls.

Can’t you just imagine the scene at the Cooper-Balls’s breakfast table. Ed is trying to get the children to eat up their breakfast. With his hands held six inches apart, he coaxes, “This is how much I want you to eat.”

Yvette leans forward earnestly, “It’s the right thing to do.”

Ed continues, “Then you’ll all grow up to be just like daddy.”

Yvette hesitates, examining her husband’s bulgy eyes and manic grin.”

“Time for school, kids.”

“Hold on, Yvette, I was just about to explain neo-classical endogenous growth theory. They really should know about it. … Where are you going?”

John Evans

Saturday Ramble: Wargaming the future

John Evans — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:18:35 +0000

Everyone’s doing it. From ace tennis players to genteel novelists; international fund managers to the Shadow Cabinet.

Wargaming the future is the business tool of choice for the 21st century.

Back in the 1980s we had to put up with ghastly brainstorming sessions, where hyperactive business types vied for attention by shouting crackpot ideas across a crowded meeting room. Now it’s wargaming. Now it’s serious.

Wargaming — in case you’re not familiar with the term — is a technique designed to test the feasibility of potential future actions.

There are two ways to achieve this. The first uses other people as devil’s advocates. The second, more profound method, involves one person utilizing the extended part of the mind that’s not attached to the physical brain.

Political and business wargaming
Let’s look briefly at the first way. The Shadow Cabinet — David Cameron, William Hague, George Osborne, and others — will examine a new idea for inclusion in the party’s forthcoming manifesto by walking it through various stages of presentation and implementation.

What will Gordon Brown’s reaction be? Nick Clegg’s? More to the point, what will Peter Mandelson and Vince Cable think?

The owner of the idea will be too attached to it for objectivity, so other people’s views will strip away the subjectivity and reveal its viability or otherwise. It’s a good way to assess possible objections and the reaction of one’s political opponents.

The method has two stages: other minds’ inputs, and walking the idea through imaginary scenarios. It’s effective as far as it goes, but it leaves out one crucial element.

Personal wargaming
I’ve long been a personal wargamer, subjecting new ideas to an inner process of confrontation with possible causes of conflict and defeat.

Modern tennis players imagine playing superb passing shots down the line against Rafael Nadal or Roger Federer. Golfers do it too — “mind golf” is ultra trendy among golf psychologists and course pros.

Novelists report that at some point in their writing the characters take over and develop lives of their own. That is where the extended mind intervenes in the process.

So how is it done?

If you’ve ever had a daydream designed to perk up your mood, or distract you from the cares and excesses of the day, you have the tools for wargaming.

If you can create a movie in your head and consciously manipulate the action, you can subject an idea or project to imaginary stress tests of viability. It’s amazing how quickly you will identify the stumbling blocks along the way.

In daydreams, you are using the language of the extended “mind-beyond-brain” by picturing the situation. Visualization goes beyond linear thought processes to a much deeper level.

As you approach a hazy area where your knowledge or experience is inadequate, the wider mind slots in an infinitely wiser proposition. You are also able to judge between the success and failure of possible actions by the tone around them.

A sense of depression in the pit of the stomach is a clear negative, while a feeling of excitement and pleasure is a definite go-ahead. If you get something in between, you may have to refine the action into a sharper focus.

Personal wargaming is such a powerful tool that we often do it at an unconscious level. At night, dreams really are trying to tell us something about our major preoccupations. It especially applies to the powerful “hypnagogic” images received in that drowsy period before and after sleep.

Here’s an example from my own demonology:

Next week, I’m launching a major new project. It’s the first in a series of four local supersites covering the counties of the West Country of England.

There have been many teething problems along the way, the latest involving the quantity of code needed to serve adverts to the hundreds of ad spots in the website. Some 12,000 lines of code have to be added to the site before Wednesday. We are drowning in javascript.

Not surprisingly, I didn’t leap out of slumber with my customary verve this morning, but slipped back into unconsciousness with guilty relief.

I found myself wandering down an unidentified High Street with many shopping bags in tow. That in itself is unusual, since I detest shopping and order most things from the internet for delivery to the house.

I became aware that my dream self was planning the launch of a new print magazine, something I’ve done in the past. There was a keen sense of excitement around the project.

After passing in and out of many doorways, I settled down at a table with my heavy load of bags.

What looked like the owner of an Italian restaurant came and sat opposite. He immediately questioned me about my affluence. “You make money so easily,” he insisted. “You just can’t stop. Money, money, money … How do you do it?”

Well, I awoke at that point with the words “money” and “affluence” ringing through my head, and a memory of a new print magazine, yet to appear. I really shouldn’t have to interpret these images for our readers.

Wargaming can happen automatically, as in this case. It can also be induced through a series of consciously-driven daydreams that invoke our extended minds to fill in the gaps where ignorance rules.

I believe this is an aspect of the “sixth sense” that primitive people are said to possess while hunting dangerous animals in the wild.

Wargaming is a great tool when mastered, and an invaluable guide to the future.

Twelve thousand lines of code?

Pah! Chickenfeed!

John Evans

Midweek Politics: PMQs – Brown visibly rattled by Cameron and Clegg

John Evans — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:08:00 +0000

In a snappier and shorter exchange of verbal blows, this week’s Prime Minister’s Questions revolved around a single issue: public spending.

David Cameron went on capital expenditure. Nick Clegg followed with public spending in general based on an EU assessment. Are these two coodinating their attacks now?

The Tory leader began by pulling up Brown on a recent statement in the House claiming he would increase capital expenditure right up until the Olympics in 2012. Brown read out a series of numbers which, he claimed, showed an increase up to 2010/11. Cameron responded with the recent Budget assessment indicating sharp falls.

Brown was visibly rattled by Cameron’s persistence and blustered incoherently at times about bringing capital spending forward because of the recession. He then repeated his glaring falsehood about ten percent Tory cuts across the board.

In a brilliant riposte, Cameron appeared to produce a transcript of a recent Cabinet meeting in which both Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, and Yvette Cooper, a former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, challenged Brown’s accuracy on “Tory cuts”. The script concluded, “The Prime Minister was so irritated he brought the meeting to a swift end”.

So much for a return to Cabinet government.

Nick Clegg again got under Brown’s skin by asking when he would recognize that cuts have to be made? Brown gave his usual immitation of a stuck gramaphone record by repeating his oft repeated remarks on the subject.

At his side, Darling smiled enigmatically, showing no trace throughout of any support for his beleaguered colleague. Alan Johnson too was visibly cool and narrow-eyed. The Cabinet is not a happy place to be, clearly.

The new Speaker, Tory renegade, John Bercow, was smooth, crisp and decisive, even interrupting Brown in full, bellowing flow. Could we grow to tolerate him?

Perhaps not if he continues wearing what resembles the gown of a European judge in Strasbourg.

Syntagma’s Verdict:
Cameron, 9
Clegg, 8
Brown, 1
Bercow, 6

John Evans

Election of the Speaker of the House of Commons

John Evans — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:09:04 +0000

It’s 3.40pm on Monday, June 22, and the ten candidates for Speaker of the Commons have just completed their final addresses to the House.

Voting, which may be protracted, has just begun.

Of the ten, two stood out for me: Sir George Young won it on authority and gravitas; Sir Patrick Cormack, on mastery of the House and entertainment value.

As predicted here, the duffers were:

John Bercow, who was slight, ineffectual, and frankly ghastly.
Ann Widdecombe — far too pleased with herself.
Parmjit Dhanda’s street politics would be a disaster.
Sir Michael Lord, ditto from the Tory side.

Of the rest, Sir Alan Haselhurst got the biggest “hear, hear”, but doesn’t do it for me. Sir Alan Beith was fine but lacked clout. Margaret Beckett competent, but too Labour at this stage of the game.

An outsider who performed well was Sir Richard Shepherd, a Conservative with all the right ideas and the passion to carry them through. Surely, though, his time has passed.

My choice would be between Young and Cormack.

On the day, and going on the final speeches, I would choose Sir George Young. But either would do.

John Evans

Saturday Ramble: What will a David Cameron Government be like?

John Evans — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 11:46:20 +0000

Discussing Royal matters recently, I hazarded a guess that the seemingly never-ending “romance” between Prince William and Kate Middleton may have a simple cause.

Suppose both of them are as disgusted with the state of British politics, and the crumbling of national institutions, as the rest of us. Not an outrageous proposition, I would suggest.

Might they not decide to postpone a wedding until a Conservative Government is returned to Westminster?

Way off the mark? Well, consider that both Prince William and Prince Harry went to the same school, Eton, as the next Prime Minister, David Cameron. They will have met and found they have much in common, despite Cameron’s need to play down his lineage and education in these dark, equality-obsessed times. In private, it would be different, of course.

Which brings me to the point: how different will Britain be when a Tory Government marches into Downing Street, Whitehall, and Westminster?

I think the mood will be spectacularly improved. The nation will breathe a gigantic sigh of relief at finally getting rid of the fetid rump of the most disastrous, dishonest and unpatriotic administration in living memory.

Next summer will bring an explosion of renewal and optimism across the country. Despite the ongoing depression, and the prospect of hard times to come, the lift in the national mood will be palpable. There will be the sense of a nation reborn.

We shouldn’t get too carried away, of course. David Cameron will be presented with the toughest remit of any incomer apart from Barack Obama. That the US President is still widely admired at home and abroad should give our man some sustenance.

Even Obama’s expensive healthcare-for-all plans could actually save America money when compared with the massive 17pc of GDP currently spent on schemes that leave big chunks of the population without any healthcare at all.

Counter-intuitive it may be, but a massive revamp is needed — the three giant US car companies are practically bankrupt it seems because of ongoing costs of healthcare provision for their workforces.

Thus, reform of what in Britain are public-sector leviathans can be presented as opportunities for betterment, rather than slash-and-burn operations against an undoubted culture of greed, mismanagement, and narrow self-interest.

The herd of rhinos in the broom cupboard, of course, are the big public-sector unions, which have the power to terrify ministers and taxpayers alike. Whichever way it’s done, it won’t be easy.

But back to the public mood. There’s no doubt that much will change in Britain psychologically when Brown and his ragtag camp followers depart the scene. The electorate is weary of this bunch of lying losers.

So, will the mood last, and if not, when will the clouds of British gloom once more pervade the national consciousness?

This will depend on Cameron’s ability to instill optimism into the country, despite its economic and political woes. One way to do that, I’ve suggested before.

Margaret Thatcher in her prime would instinctively and unerringly sense the once-in-a-century opportunity for a new Government now. An open goal is awaiting a new leader to negotiate a robust trade agreement with the European Union, while withdrawing from the political and legal entanglements of membership.

Nothing would give such a boost to British self-esteem and pride than the ceremonial dumping of 200,000 pages of Brussels regulation and “directives” in the English Channel.

Nothing would do more to improve the working of Parliament than ditching the rubber-stamp committee for the 75pc of laws that now come from Brussels.

Nothing would bring MPs more back in touch with their voters than ceasing to have to explain why a raft of hated laws, from “green” oddities to bin collections and alien measurements, are really nothing to do with us, guv, honest.

Cameron and the Tories need a big start. Not just a 100-day blitzfest of “eye-catching” measures that add up to less than a row of beans. We’ve been there, done that, and got the body armour.

What the new Prime Minister needs is one big idea that will shape and define his premiership — and his place in history. A mosaic of small technical adjustments will be more of the same.

Cameron should be bold and grasp the national mood for beneficial change. He should go where the cowardly Brown and the vacuous Blair have feared to tread.

John Evans

DIARY: Pork pie in the sky, City woes, Angels and Demons, Speaker, Rees-Mogg, Samizdat Twitterers

John Evans — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 13:51:46 +0000

Lots of normally sensible people are looking around them and spying green shoots growing fast in the June sunshine. In the circumstances, it’s easy to imagine the economy improving in tandem. The national mood rises significantly in the summer months.

Well it isn’t. A new report shows that far from prices beginning to rise in Britain — a sign of growing demand — real “inflation” is actually minus ten percent compared with last year.

To add to the peril out there, the European Union is about to set off another wave of the interminable credit crunch as its banking system shivers on the brink of another catastrophic fall from grace.

World markets are responding accordingly. Wall Street is tanking, banks hugging their cash all over again, and those Will o’the wisps, the credit rating agencies, are picking off Spanish financial institutions at will. Some 25 were downgraded by Moodys only the other day.

With EU banks needing to roll over hundreds of billions of debt this year, the picture looks very bleak, a view endorsed by the IMF over the weekend.

Enthusiasts for a “V” shaped end to the recession are already behind the curve. A “U” bend is looking increasingly untenable. A wipeout winter, leading to a wobbly “W” is now much more likely.

Former British Chancellor, Norman Lamont’s phantom green shoots of the early 1990s are once again fooling the credulous and the desperate.

It’s now clear that Gordon Brown’s hope for a heavenly reprieve is pork pie in the sky. If he delays an election announcement beyond his party conference in October, he will be forced to admit that his efforts “to save the world” were vain and costly mistakes.

This is going to be longer and harder than anyone is allowing themselves to believe — with honourable exceptions.

* * * * *

On top of all its other woes, Britain’s world-beating financial centre, the City of London, is now the subject of a takeover move by the European Union.

Brussels wants to regulate out all its “Anglo-Saxon” tendencies and replace them with great chunks of French law.

Who the hell do they think they are?

More to the point, why hasn’t Gordon Brown gone into battle in the City’s defence? He bled it dry for 10 years, drove it onto the rocks with his insatiable appetite for taxes to fund his super-obese public sector, and now appears to have abandoned it in its hour of need.

Lord Myners, a minor player in the business departments of state, is making squeaking noises about protecting the hedge funds. Eighty percent of the world’s funds are situated in London, mostly in Mayfair. They count for 40,000 jobs and a lot of income.

The envious politicians on the other side of the Channel would love to smite the whole wealth-creation operation of the City in favour of their own tiddlers.

You can see the Labour plan, can’t you? Myners will get a few scraps on hedge funds and Brown will make a big fuss about it.

Beneath, in the thick undergrowth, he will tacitly accept raft upon raft of EU interference in Britain’s vibrant financial services industry.

A British Gulliver will be pegged out by European Liiliputians, while Brown proclaims a triumph for his diplomacy.

The Tories will not want to be seen to support the unpopular bankers and fund managers, so will keep quiet while this outrage is pushed through.

Isn’t it time for the Conservative leadership to show some real grit over this? It was Brown who presided over the banking collapse. David Cameron and George Osborne should be fighting tooth and nail for its future and restoration to buoyant health.

St George didn’t slay the dragon with a swizzle stick.

* * * * *

Dan Brown’s new film, Angels and Demons, is on its noisy way to a cinema near you.

After reading, and mostly enjoying, The Da Vinci Code, despite its elasticated clangers and howlers, I couldn’t resist reading his earlier religious thriller.

Angels is actually a more gripping tale than Da Vinci, with settings inside the Vatican and the European research centre, CERN. However, back-to-back reading of the two novels show they have almost identical plots.

The hero of both is Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor of religious iconography. In both cases he’s woken by a strange request to hightail it immediately to Europe to sort out a brutal, ritualistic murder, in which various symbols play a mysterious part.

In the two novels, the daughter of the murdered man plays a central role (the sex interest). In each case the plot’s main feature is to track down shadowy organizations (the Illuminati and the Priory of Sion), both holders of arcane knowledge that threatens the Roman Church and civilization as we know it.

The plots are driven by a series of ingenious clues, containing codes and allusions which only a person of Langdon’s specialty can solve. Naturally he does so, and the novels move to inevitable, breathless, and breathtaking conclusions.

For all the craft and guile with which they are written, both are as formulaic as any television soap opera.

Dan, you wouldn’t be using one of those computer programs for plotting a bestselling novel would you? If you are, could you please tell me which one?

* * * * *

Britain has just been treated to the first open hustings for the position of Speaker of the House of Commons, a post ranked third in the UK’s order of precedence after the Queen and the Prime Minister.

Following the dismally inarticulate Michael Martin, a host of hopefuls buzzed around for our attention.

John Bercow, a Tory supported by many Labour MPs — make of that what you will — was predictably gruesome, lacking all stature, accomplishment and gravitas. If he’s elected, David Cameron should mount a coup against him after the next election. His administration would be tarnished by a hobgoblin in the chair.

Now that Frank Field is out of the running, only one candidate stands out, Sir Patrick Cormack.

Margaret Beckett would do a good job, I suspect, but really the House needs to purge itself of all Labour influence in the next Parliament if it is to regain the nation’s respect and trust.

Sir Patrick would have the right amount of weightiness, in both senses, a grasp of history and how it plays its role in the British Constitution, plus a backbencher’s drive to make his mark. The expenses row will diminish, we believe, when Christopher Kelly’s report is adopted in full, as it must be.

What the House needs now is a magnificent Speaker. It doesn’t need an elf. This is not Lord of the Rings

* * * * *

The other week, William Rees-Mogg wrote an insightful piece on how differently politics looks from his native Somerset.

A rural county, with a very ancient history, one of the top concerns of its inhabitants is bovine TB and what to do about the badgers thought to cause it.

David Cameron apparently gave a good account of himself on the topic at the county show when repeatedly asked about bovine TB. His own constituency of Witney in Oxfordshire has many of the same concerns.

One can’t imagine a single figure in the Labour government who would have a clue about cows.

We remember well that old townie Nick Brown in wellies and rubberized mac standing forlornly in a field of mud and muck after he was suddenly shot into the agriculture job by Tony Blair during the Foot and Mouth outbreak.

It’s the same in my own county of Devon. Westminster seems an age away in another timezone. I can’t recall the name of the Conservative agriculture spokesman, and looking it up on the internet would be cheating.

Let’s hope he (or she) at the very least sits for a rural constituency.

* * * * *

Hilary Clinton was wise to stay out of the Iranian election debacle. Whatever she said would only harden the stance of those seeking to retain power.

Western verbal interventions may make the intervener seem sympathetic and helpful, but do nothing for those fighting against tyranny on the ground.

Only an open free market system has the strength to topple dictators since they can’t possibly control what they don’t understand. We can’t expect ancient theocracies to turn into democracies overnight. It took us in the West long enough.

At least, that’s what we thought.

Something enormous is happening in Iran right now that may heave that process along. Bloggers and Twitterers are feeding out information from all over the country, undermining the State line. You can follow the Twitter stream at Twitter.com by clicking on #IranianElection.

New media is virtually unstoppable in the modern world. Even a clunky technology like fax served to push perestroika along in Soviet Russia as the samizdats cut through the grip of State information sources.

We in the West should stand back while new waves of freedom fighters strive to disrupt tyranny by information rather than violence.

They may just succeed, or ensure the next lot of leaders are much more moderate.

John Evans

Saturday Ramble: Obscure authors – Garstin and Val Baker

John Evans — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 16:10:57 +0000

To take our collective minds off the beastly business of Brown and bung politics, here are some rambling thoughts on two obscure, but interesting, authors.

Our new website, Devon & Cornwall Online (launching on the Solstice, June 21) has provided a welcome opportunity to delve more deeply into West Country ways, especially a very special group of writers, Cornish authors.

They are surprisingly underrated, although they include such well-known bestsellers as Daphne Du Maurier and Derek Tangye, of Minack fame.

However, I want to indulge myself with two of my favourites: Denys Val Baker and Crosbie Garstin.

Denys Val Baker
Denys is rarely heard of nowadays, but if you ever come across one of his books: acquire, read, enjoy.

Denys Val Baker (1917 – 1984), owner and editor of The Cornish Review, was the author of 20 hilarious autobiographies. Titles included, The Sea’s in the Kitchen and The Petrified Mariner, which give you a flavour of them.

He wrote in the 1950s through the 70s, and was a full-time professional author, by which I mean he was always broke.

Nevertheless, he managed to buy an enormous old tramp steamer, MVS Sanu, and, with no sailing experience whatever, took his large brood of wild children and long-suffering wife, Jess, on incredibly dangerous voyages. He was on the rocks more times than Jack Daniels.

Denys lived in Penzance, Land’s End and St. Ives in Cornwall, and was usually seeking some means of financing his next outrageous project. He was an adventurer in the grand English tradition, although always amusingly shambolic.

In the old days, when libraries were libraries, you could find his books on the shelves. These days they’re not so easy to come by, although Amazon has a good listing of second-hand titles, mostly at premium prices. Denys would have been proud. If you want a really good humorous read, do seek them out.

His character never allowed a moment to pass without doing something absolutely beyond the pale. When I lived in Penzance, we occupied a house across the road from his, although he had been dead for a decade. There was no blue plaque on his house, which is a pity, although everyone remembered him in the library, where he did most of his research.

At the time I was there (late 1990s) his son still ran a print business in the town, and his wildest daughter, Demelza, lived there too.

Denys was one of the old school of writers. He spent a lot of time in London, mostly in the literary pubs around Soho where he hung out with the likes of Dylan Thomas and other luminaries of the scribbling fraternity. But his heart was in Cornwall, as was most of his written output. He will be best remembered for his 20 or so autobiographies.

Gerald Durrell is probably the nearest comparison. Let’s hope he will not be totally forgotten, especially in the county that inspired his best work.

Crosbie Garstin
Crosbie Garstin is best known for his trilogy of novels about the Penhales family, published before the last war by Heinemann.

The Owls’ House, High Noon and The West Wind are all cracking adventures set in Cornwall and on the high seas in the days of sail. China Seas, his last book, continued the genre, and was made into a Hollywood film starring, I believe, Clark Gable.

Garstin was an interesting character, a true adventurer and traveller. He served during the first world war in King Edward’s Horse and was commissioned on the battlefield in 1915.

His early years were spent working in lumber camps in Canada, as a ranger in Africa, a miner on the Pacific coast, and as an army horsemaster and intelligence officer.

He was, by all accounts, a very private man (I can’t find a photograph of him on the internet) and, at the age of 40, he bought “Rosemerryn”, a house in Cornwall, near Penzance.

The fictional home of the Penhales family, “Bosula” in The Owls’ House, is almost certainly located on the site of Rosemerryn. Set in the Keigwin Valley, six miles south-west of Penzance, the valley drains the Penwith backbone of tors into Monks Cove, the physical setting for the novels.

Just down the way, towards Penzance, is the fishing port of Newlyn, which doubled-up then as a world-famous artists’ colony, boasting its own art movement. Garstin wrote this vivid rondeau about Newlyn Hill :

On Newlyn Hill the gorse is bright;
Upon the hedgerows left and right
Song-dizzy birds the Spring-time greet;
The bluebells weave a purple sheet;
Primroses star the lanes’ green night.
Across the Bay each moorland height
Glows golden in the evening light,
And Dusk walks violet-eyed and sweet
On Newlyn Hill.

A swarm of lights, pearl-soft and white,
A fairy-lamp-land exquisite,
Opens its star-eyes at the feet
Of hills where shore and wavelets meet;
Then dreams come, mystic, infinite,
On Newlyn Hill.

Newlyn now is but a shadow of its former self thanks to the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy. I don’t think he would be amused.

It’s difficult to get hold of Garstin’s books now, but I managed to entreat copies of the trilogy from Penzance library’s reference section a few years ago for a writing project, and I wasn’t disappointed. Sadly, he has rather sunk without trace in recent years. Not even the Cornish remember him, except for a few beavering upcountry literatis.

In 1930 he vanished without trace. Nobody really knows what happened to him. Some say he faked his death and went back to the East where he had spent his youth.

It seems likely though that he drowned while rowing back to a friend’s yacht after a party. The boat overturned and a woman friend survived. His body was never found although he was a strong swimmer. Presciently, the final page of his last book, China Seas, written in his study at Rosemerryn overlooking a bank of rhododendrons, has this death scene :

“Heavily he sank beside her … felt her arms go round him clinging desperately as to the last refuge in a yawning sea … A bank of rhododendrons with crimson flowers … fading fast, fading away.”

Even better, at the conclusion of his trilogy, the death of his hero, Penhales, drowning in the sea off the Twelve Apostles rocks in Cornwall, is one of the best death scenes in all literature :

“The boom of the surf was the deep roll of drums. The wind blew with the sound of trumpets, piercing, exultant. The phantom clippers dipped their gilded beaks, most stately, the ghostly soldiers tossed their lances, ‘Come on, old comrade,’ they cried. ‘Fear not! Death is but a pang and life immortal. Ride on with us, ride on forever.’”

Cornwall inspires mysticism in its writers and inhabitants. It’s a shame those upcountry folk in the London salons don’t give it more attention.

It’s better than politics.

John Evans