The Battle of East Croydon
Happy commuters gather to celebrate paying thousands for a shit service
Train Home? You Having a Laugh?
The following is an excerpt from The Unknown Commuter, who fought in the legendary Battle of East Croydon, summer 2016. Update August 2026: He's currently believed to be somewhere between Clapham Junction and Brighton waiting for a train. The reader is advised that the recollection includes strong opinions expressed robustly.
"Chaos at East Croydon. Again. Where am I? My 17:52 from Clapham Junction has just been cancelled. Cancelled because too many drivers and conductors pulled a sickie. Because they can’t be bothered calling a real strike and lose pay. So they do this low-down trick.
The petulant bosses cancel trains at the last minute. Twelve car coaches are reduced to four. When they turn up. Standing next to some git's armpit listening to his techno leaking from his headphones. Wanker.
Pub Stop Clapham Junction
So I stop off at the pub. The Junction is a proper pub. I have a pint and hope the chaos has died down. My train app says the train is on time. Run to the station. Go on the platform. My train has been delayed. Doesn’t even merit a revised time. Just delayed. That is ominous. Okay, so no direct train. Recalibrate, so; if the 17:52 has been cancelled I’ll take whatever goes to East Croydon – they all go to East Croydon – and take pot luck there. I jump on the first train arriving at my platform. Travellers swirl around the opened doors. No one tries for a seat – just to get on and then find somewhere to lean on that’s not a fellow passenger. Somewhere to hold on.
A Slow Train To East Croydon
The train, almost deliberately, crawls to East Croydon. I mean, I could walk faster than this fucker. It must know there are whispered reports of mythical connecting train that will take me home. Leaving in ten minutes from East Croydon. So my train goes slow. Very slow. Stops at Purley and just chills for ten minutes. The conductor says something about there being congestion which means we’ve missed our slot to get into East Croydon. Fucking comedian. They’ve cancelled half the bloody trains? What congestion can there possibly be? Congestion at the bar in the striking drivers local, perhaps?
A feeling of bleak despair grows in me as I keep checking the time. I know, yes, I know, I’ve missed my connection. Gone like the wind. Unlike every other train tonight, my connecting train will be promptitude itself. Arrive on time. Leave on time. Of course.
Croydon; No Loos. No Info.
So I join the chaos at East Croydon looking for another way home. Need a piss. Hey – I’m at a railway station. Need a piss. I know there is nowhere to go. When did that happen? When I was younger, I can still remember - though it’s pictured in sepia - you could take a piss at railway stations. Where did they all go to, those public conveniences? Maybe it was too many junkies shooting up or too strangers giving each other hand jobs but toilets in stations disappeared. So now what we gonna do? Hold it in while we wait for some fantasy train that will take me home which has fantasy functioning toilets.
The platform signs are in on the great swindle. Part of the con. Constantly changing, they show an ever changing landscape of fuck ups. Seasoned travellers, world weary and pissed off, stand up the stairs ready to run wherever directed. Just cause a train to the South coast is always on platform 2 or 3 doesn’t mean they won’t pull a surprise on you last minute. Platform 5! Leaving now. Run plebs! Too late.
So I stand on the concourse. Bladder full to fuck, ready to run, run wherever the electronic scoreboard predicts a train going my direction might be. Flashed up – it will arrive in ten minutes on platform 3. We all run down there jostling for space, for a place. Then the platform scoreboard flashes up that this train has been cancelled. Lots of shouts and swearing. Some of us go back up again. The scoreboard upstairs still says the cancelled train will arrive, er, well, about three minutes ago.
Ignore the Announcements!
The station announcer employs a world-weary voice. Fed a diet of bullshit and nonsense by the train companies he reads out the ever changing deployment of fantasy trains he knows won’t make it. His bosses just want us off their platform, out of their station. Pass the problem further down the line. Get East Croydon passenger free, demob the mob on someone else’s patch. So they get the announcer to try and parse our journeys – push us to smaller stations down the line with promises of legendary connecting trains. Some fall for it. We see them hours later, mournfully sat at Balcombe or Three Bridges helplessly watching the non-stopping Brighton trains pass them by. Idiots. Novices!
As to my own train, it’s now got a time, eight minutes hence on Platform 3. Hang on. No, it’s now twelve minutes away. No it’s cancelled. No, it’s just late the announcer says. Might be at Clapham Junction. Might be further ahead. Who knows. Information is power.
An Unannounced Train
Silently, below us on platform 2, a train pulls in unannounced. Suspicious, some passengers edge towards that platform. I hear a shout – it’s our train – just as the announcer tells us that it is indeed the train we want but it is now getting ready to depart. Shouts and swearing as three hundred people rush towards platform 2. Exactly ten seconds later an announcement says that we should move away from the doors as the train is preparing to leave.
Fuck off.
We rush the train, rush the doors, the rail people on the platform tells us to move away but we’re an unstoppable, feral force of nature. They’re concentration camp guards, and collaborators. Fuck off. To the sword with them!
We storm the train. Push the guy with the folded bike out the way, edge past the confused old couple who had a day’s shopping in London and now rather wish they didn’t. The seats are all taken. Naturally. So we’re packed in, standing, holding onto whatever we can. The LCD sign in the carriage boldly displays that we will be going back up to London Victoria – the wrong way FFS. Can’t these monkeys get anything right? The conductor comes over the tannoy and announces that we should stay away from the doors. Cheers mate, but where are we actually going? This way or that? Not until the doors have shut and we start to crawl away – packed, overweight, angry – and it’s too late to change – does the conductor announce that this train is indeed going south.
Train achieved - Sussex here we come!
And we crawl there. Two toilets out of three are out of action. The one I go in looks blocked. I don’t care. Shut eyes and leave quickly. Ah the relief. My station is announced. As I get off, tired, sweaty, battered, the station tannoy says that the 19:54 train to Brighton is ten minutes late. It’s taken me two hours of stress to get here. Should be fifty minutes.
Wankers. Truly wankers.
The battle begins anew tomorrow."
This ends the transcript from The Unknown Commuter.
Quotidian Notes
1) When they fuck up, boy do they fuck up. I always imagine they have a clock-like device with 12 bullshit delay excuses and just spin the wheel: Points failure at Balham, tragedy at Wandsworth, shortage of train drivers, too hot, too cold, over-running engineering works. Blah. Blah. Blah. Eat it, bitches.
2) For a calmer, more introspective piece on this very train line, read my A Literary Girl on the Train.
3) This piece was revised and edited August 2026. Nothing’s changed. I have almost a second income from my delay repay compensation for late trains from Southern.
4) The area of Wandsworth Road, Lavender Hill, I explore more in A Walk on Lavender Hill and Goodbye Clapham article - The Dead Pubs of Clapham. Well worth a read. Well, I think so.
Into the Hopper
Gas (1940)
“Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world.”
Although my writing often uses allusion and metaphor my most common technique is reference. The deliberate triggering of emotion or intellect by forms of words and experiences with which the reader may be familiar, perhaps unknowingly. Sometimes my references pass people by, but they are there, hidden beneath the surface, like buried treasures. Music, films, history, ancient texts, The Bible nestle side-by-side. My prose is deceptively simple but is buttressed by those that went before.
Visually, I'm quite literal. I could be dismissed - and often am - as hating all art that doesn't have a semblance of reality. But this literalism can hide artifice and subtext (pre-Raphaelites, anyone?). The framing, the subject, the angle, the deliberate manipulation of scene, emotion and place that an artist consciously puts into a painting is as important as the form.*
So, in this spirit, let me introduce my favourite artist, Edward Hopper. In my lounge, along with framed LP covers, two Hoppers hang, facing each other. On one wall is:-
New York Movie Theatre (1939)
This is faced by:-
Nighthawks (1942)
Within these two you get pretty much quintessential Hopper. The very strong sense of place, mood, of images being presented full on but still hiding much. I mean, what is the usherette thinking in the Movie Theatre picture? But also, it reveals the human element behind life which I like. It's the deliberate panning back in order to highlight the trivial. All life is affected by mood, emotion, secrets. There is surface and there is stuff going on underneath. Hopper is about these things. It's not happy.
So Hopper is a realist but his paintings always convey a mood, hint at a story, scratch the surface of deep emotions. These are the sorts of paintings where you can sit in front of them in an art gallery, scratch your chin and speculate on what the artist meant. 'Gas' pictured above is very much like this. A solitary garage on a little used road, closes for the night as the shadows from the evening and the forest close in. It's lonely, suggestive, oppressive even,
Let me give you a couple more favourites:
Automat (1927)
I suppose an early fore-runner of Nighthawks. Who is she? Why is she on her own? Questions. Questions.
Cape Cod Evening (1939)
The grass, the sinister trees again. The man and woman pensive (argument, loss, waiting something), the dog!
But I've entertained you enough, I feel. Hopper's my man with the brushes. But it's a personal thing. Shared by millions.
So long, farewell, auf weidersehn.
Tim
* I could bore for Britain on my views of the duty of the artist. Or the freewill of the artist. How selection and viewpoint is as much a part of the artistic palette as skill, technique, form. But also serendipity.
RIP Charmain Carr who died this week. Remember her this way. I think somewhere we're all 16 going on 17.
This doesn't happen often...
"Did you write this, Tim?" asks Tomaso.
As you know I love Vivaldi and especially his oboe concerti...
But I've just found this gorgeous piece by Tomaso Albinoni (1661 - 1751). Oboe Concerti in D Minor op 9,2 largo. It adopts the canon format (repeated cyclical sequence) of his most famous piece - Adagio in G Minor. And then, and then, the oboe comes in, lyrical and plaintive. It's rare these days that I find something so beautiful. I close my eyes, listen, and everything is fine with the world.
Love this piece.
Thought I'd share it with you.
Move over Vivaldi. Let Tomaso take over.
Dating: The Truth
Augustine of Hippo considers Tim Robson's lastest blog. "Fuck - I wish I'd have written that!"
A dating discussion in the Bobbin
We were having a discussion in the pub last night. In Clapham. Balmy weather. Barmy people. Nice food, good conversation. Wine flowed. Will Young was in the corner. Thought about being a hero to my kids and asking for a selfie but, decided not to. He's got his own life and, anyway, shouldn't he be asking me for my autograph? Should be dancing. It’s all a bit hazy but I’m sure one of the females in our party chased him to the gents for his autograph.
The discussion turned to modern day dating and the benefits or not of online dating websites. It was a great discussion; wide ranging, robust, interesting. However, my natural tendency towards discretion and good manners means I won't be delving deeper into the view points raised and asserted at our table.
Well... Possibly I was pissed and the forgetfulness fairy sprinkled her 'no memory' dust over the evening. So I may have forgotten the ebb and flow, the nuances and the, no doubt, many good points I myself made in this vital discussion. But hey! broad brush strokes are my thing, anyway.
Online Dating. Shit.
I have views about online dating; namely it is just like real life dating but, more restrictive. Whilst in person I might be able to - through my verbal fluidity and natural exuberance (good looks?) - convince a lady that Tim may just be the one, online, this isn't the case. We're all too picky and the internet's ability to filter potential partners against so many criteria works against philosopher/king/poets like myself. Being short doesn’t help. Ladies like to wear heels you see. Especially online.
There may be a backlash however against the Corbusian brutalism of the internet... For example, if you read many female profiles on dating websites, especially those who have been online dating for a while, a great number spend an inordinate amount of time detailing exactly all the negative things about men they have been dating and how they don't want that experience again. For some it seems like a dieter’s shopping list of negativity. "You mustn't be this, this, this, this. I hate this, this, this. Don't apply if you are this, this, this."
How very reductive of the human experience. I'm sure there really are plenty of crap men out there. My advice? Don't date them, then. Re-appraise your filters. If some good-looking guy meets up with you, flatters you, does the deed and never then ghosts you, perhaps look to yourself as much as the man-whore.
"How will I know?" as Dame Whitney of Wisdom once opined.
IRL: ie, The Pub
How will you know if he’s the right man? Dunno. Not my job. But, I sense that maybe, the old fashioned way of real life interactions, random, spontaneous, drink fuelled, using friends of friends, fellow office workers, is not such a bad way after-all. Go out for a drink with someone all night and you'll get a pretty good idea of their personality. The good and the bad. And you can do a runner when you like.
Me? I can trace the arc of an evening's progress by the stories I tell, the points I make, the suggestions I think need to be explored. If it's ten o'clock then Tim is probably telling his Lisa Stansfield story. Or perhaps my Madonna, Princess Diana or Margaret Thatcher stories. Or maybe now, my Will Young story. Some people like this. Some don't. But it's a good way of seeing who the hell I am.
Beware the Guy with a Glass of Water
There was some guy at an industry event last week. Chatting to everyone. Very serious. Boring in fact. Lots of wine was flowing. Mainly into my glass. But even I noticed he carried a glass of water. Calculating. Stay away from him girls. He plays with a mask.
"Never trust any bastard who doesn't drink," as Bogart said. Before dying of alcoholism and cancer.
But it's a good general rule. If you avoid getting pissed with someone and you miss out on the various stages of personality change a person goes through as they progress though the evening. You get to know a person. Potential partner. Light and shade. Humour and personality. The whole nine and a half inches. I also do marriage counselling down the pub and couples therapy in a club.
Beware though false trails and blind alleys. Read about my sapphic misadventures in Battersea Arts Centre.
"Lord, make me chaste - but not yet!"
I have no current online dating profile. It's a loss. But not a real loss. Just content yourself with my picture below. Will Young not pictured. Buy me a drink and take your chances.
Tim of Hippo
More Dating Stories
It’s a tangled world this seeking romance thing. But if you want stories (you’re not alone sang Olive - remember that one?) then go for :
Tim’s Sapphic Misadventures: Battersea Arts Centre story of missed connections.
Dating Advice - mannequins, vegetables, er what? - you have to read it!
Or Tim out in Belgium and experiencing The Darkness of Bruges
St.Tim of The Bobbin gives it that 'in person' fairy dust for the ladies of Clapham.
Razor Toothed Soul
A shoe.
So; what's on the agenda for September? Which bon mots am I gonna scatter out into the internet for y'all to gather, cherish, repeat? Is this gonna be a safe month ("Is it safe?") or is it gonna be a cruel, bareback ride into the darker recesses of my mind?
Actually - I veto'd a post I wrote last night called 'So Wrong, It's Right.' Whatever you're thinking RIGHT NOW - was probably referred to. And then some more. Your sister was probably involved. Olive oil. Celebrity couples. Luckily my internal editor eschews such sensationalist ramblings and blocks them from being posted. Until I'm pissed...
Well, obvs I gonna post 'The Dead Pubs of Clapham'.
I think it's about time I raised my game and started waffling about history again. There's been a shortage of tortuous historical analogies around here. I know a post on Augustus was promised last month and escaped my non penetrating gaze. Yeah, well, fuck him. Everyone talks about Augustus. What about Aurelian? Septimius Severus? Diocletian? Julian? So, I'm going to be taking a face from the ancient gallery and dancing the scarlet maypoles.
(BTW - sat in a pretty empty Battersea Arts Centre Bar and yet everyone who is here comes and sits at an adjourning table. As I've mentioned previously, I can't turn it off. Even when working. Tempted to join in the conversation to my left about Jesus.)
Some high minded chat about the process of Brexit, perhaps? I'm a magnanimous winner as you have observed. Certainly not a mirror image of the losing side. However, some thoughts on this are probably overdue.
An article on rock. As in RAWK!! A listette article on music I like, listen to, was influenced by. I've kind of ignored rock - mentioned the Zep, Who, Stones in passing. Well, that's gonna change.
Food. In the last few weeks I have cooked three great dishes. Really mind blowing. Tartiflette (with Reblochon cheese, of course.), Vietnamese beef salad, the most amazing Nachos with beef skirt and a deconstructed salsa verde. Yum! I'm going to TESCO tonight for a Reblochon and I'm making a big mess of Tartiflette tonight.
Some observational bollocks about September. School days. The ending of the year. Where did summer go? Avoid if you see this one coming down the tracks.
And I think it's about time I started addressing the dating issue. What dating issue, you ask? You're funny. Good looking. A catch. Well, thank you, that's all true but even despite all those things I find it hard to find a soul mate. Blind alleys. Back alleys. Love on the rocks. Ain't no surprise.
Neil Diamond. Top Five easily... Or Top Ten. Go on - list them now!
Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin/The Yardbirds, Simon and Garfunkel, The Smiths, The Stone Roses, Neil Diamond. And others. Elvis.
Yeah, and loads of new stuff. The Pierces. Er, Taylor Swift. First Aid Kit. I am, of course, achingly on trend. Loving this season's razor toothed sole, moccasins and ballet shoes. All over that. Heels are so August 2016.
September. The best seventh month in ninth place. Like ever!
The Robust Annals of August
Tim Robson in August 2016. Literally unable to turn it off.
Well, August has gone but summer still persists here in the nation's capital and down on the South Coast. Which is a shame really as I bought a nice Autumn coat from Samuel Windsor. In the sale, of course. And now it's September. There was a girl in Rochdale one September many autumns ago. I promised I'd never tell. The lady however, when asked, said, 'Tim Who? Is he the short one? Oh him! It was only one kiss for fuck's sake! I was drunk. Yeah, can I go large on it. Extra fries.'
Happy memories, but let's not let August slip away like a greased pig thrown into a three-way with an oiled up celebrity couple. Let's review this blog's August performance shall we?
This blog started the month in self-congratulatory mode celebrating July's record RSS numbers. However, as August's RSS numbers didn't quite reach July's numbers, I'll concentrate on the fact, last month, I got the second highest number of visitors to the site in 2016. That's good, right? And what the hell is RSS anyway?
I have a mate in the industry. Writing a book on this stuff. I asked him about RSS feeds. He tried to explain. Still none the wiser. But he'll get your website up Google's rankings, apparently.
So - August was one of the best months for, er, actual people coming here and reading stuff. Maybe it's all the many millions of fans from my writer's Facebook page coming here, hanging out, chewing the fat and learning about Folk music. Or something.
Now let's review my posts. And the blogs I promised but didn't actually deliver:- Led Zeppelin, The Emperor Augustus, Edward Hopper and probably loads more but I can't be arsed looking back. There's also a few blogs that I did write - possibly refreshed, possibly not - that my internal Quality Manager judged to be so bad, forced or plain masturbatory, that I pulled them. Fear not though, they're still here in draft. Crap posts are but a couple of drinks away. I walk the line between genius and arse like Johnny Cash trying on a pink shirt.
I liked the Folk Music / Bleecker Street double header blogs. Worthy but heartfelt I felt.
And who hasn't read my back to back blogs musing on information gate-keepers and the blogs I read myself? Up there with Bramwell Bronte's best stuff. And it's a shame I don't get rewarded for all the traffic I sent Peter Hitchens' way after name-checking him and putting in one of those fancy weblink thingies.
It was good to write about one of my poems being accepted and published this Christmas. Bet that's gonna be a money spinner!
I also got long listed again for another literary competition though - surprisingly - there was no blog about this middling failure. FFS - long-listed again! Always the jilted bridegroom and never the rogering best man. (Yeah, that metaphor doesn't really work. I know.) Still; longlisted is better than spunking my literary children into a Kleenex. (Did I actually just write that sentence - the curse of a large white strikes again.) Anyway, it gives me the opportunity to show you another Tim Robson profile (written by me, of course) on another website. Fame, fickle fame.
So, enough. This is getting to be the blog that celebrates itself. Not a great look. (But it's a look).
Additionally, I finished two short stories in August and began another. The Dead Pubs of Clapham still remains unwritten but Bang the Beat! and Insignificance were completed on trains, in pubs and my kitchen during the month. And then entered into competitions. Obscure long lists sternly beckon, no doubt.
August. Kind of top end when it comes to blogs and popularity. Not The Beatles. More The Yardbirds; respected, revered but alas, For Your Love aside, obscure. But, as we all know, The Yardbirds begat Led Zeppelin.
Nob.
Tim
(September's laughable aspirations for this sturdy organ to be published tomorrow. Or not.)
Sad Songs Say So Much
Automat, 1927 Edward Hopper. Yeah. Hopper knows. Listening to The Smiths probably.
Often we are sad. Things don't work out or we feel nostalgic for a past that was probably every bit as melancholy. So, what music to play? To feel sad? To get music to match the melancholic mood? Classical? Rock? Pop? Bossanova? Well, all of the above.
Debussy - The girl with the Flaxen Hair. Beautiful, sad, melancholic. Fading beauty, pale shadows, misty memories, dawn tears. I love this piece.
The Smiths - Please, please, please let me get what I want. The Smiths. Morrissey. Hero of many a lonely bedsit. The first and the best Smiths miserable songs. Oh how I used to put this on repeat!
Guns n Roses - November Rain - Sad. Sad. The shining flame that was GnR came up with a handful of classics but this one... Man... I remember 1991/2. I lived it. Everything was raw. Real. First time. Beautiful song.
Blur - Miss America. My secret. 1994. That was a year!
A-ha - You'll Never Get Over Me. From their flawless comeback album - Major Sky, Minor Earth. Beautiful. From the masters of melancholy a late career fightback. Check out the counterpoint melody.
Abba - The Winner Takes it All. Fuck this is sad. The best Abba song for sadness. The way Agneta says 'but you see' and then holds that high note on the last chorus just breaks your heart. One of my top ten records ever.
Van Morrison - Beside You. Well, I've mentioned this already. Just perfect. Fucking perfect. If you want to blub and think about what might have been and what used to be, then this is your song. Perfection.
The Eurythmics - Savage. I've written a full blog post on this song. It breaths. Annie is always the master of melancholy. But the guitar solo! Less is more. Stunning.... Yeah... Let's move on!
Elgar - Nimrod. Yeah, I've already mentioned this but, when I'm feeling sad - the power, the majesty and uplift of this piece always makes me feel better. Shake the house with this one and shake away the blues!
Everything but the Girl - On My Mind. Before they were famous... Private. Memories... A story told a thousand times but never with a happy ending. A different era. Different times. See the video below.
Elton John - Sad Songs. Not his best song but - hell - Bernie describes this feeling of sadness so perfectly! A more authentic song would be Sacrifice. I used to play this in a studio only group in 1994. Happy memories. Things mattered. Ultimately, we didn't.
Dry your tears. Tomorrow can always be better!
Tim
Late Night Cab To Victoria
The poet - Tim Robson - raises his glass. Solipsistic wanker.
The knife edges ever closer to my ear in this season of the sunflower. I apologise in advance.
I told you I'd started writing poetry again some months back. I just signed a contract for one of the resulting poems to be published in an anthology this winter. I barred the press from this event - no photos were allowed. The official and only licensed PR is this blog.
Winter Love (for that is the name of my poem) started life as a song nearly twenty years ago. One of my better songs actually. About needing someone but pushing them away. Never played live as my group was defunct at this point and anyway, it's more old style American classic than rock. Jazzy chords (F#m4 anyone?), ominous lyrics, somewhat more sophisticated than my usual fayre. Think George Gershwin not George Harrison.
Winter Love is an expanded rewrite of the song. For days and weeks as I commuted to London, I tinkered with the words. Doubling the size, changing a word here, substituting a new line there, adding a more rounded feel, an ending... Taking out the chorus (well obviously).
I seem to like my writing projects these days to be shorter than previously. No more 80,000 word novels. More 2000 word shorts stories. Fifty line poems. Apart from a general laziness, there's method in my reductive penmanship.
I think I've got better as a writer over the last two years. No, correct that; I am better as a writer. Fact. As David Brent might say. End of. Short stories and poems give me the opportunity to distill the essence of a situation, a feeling, an idea. It's writing at the sharp end. No room for verbosity, for elongated set-ups, digressions, dodgy plot leaps.
My favourite feeling is when I've got to the end of short story or poem. The first draft done. For this is the start of real work! The enjoyable bit. The editing. Short stories typically lose 25% to 33% of their size at this point as I reduce, re-order, debate each and every line. Unlike this blog post which could probably do with the editing axe all over it's flabby ass (I have a train to catch).
Anyway, I wanted you to share in my success. Crack out the Cava!
Tim
The Echo Chamber?
Tim Robson. Not reading a blog.
Close readers of this blog will discern some sort of overarching pattern to my views. If you suspect that I'm not a Jeremy Corbyn supporter, you'd probably be right (except perversely to keep Steptoe where he is to mess up Labour good and proper 2020).
Anyway, I digress. Today I want to mention a few blogs that I follow and help me to form, reinforce, challenge my world view. I suppose there's an algorithm out there where you enter the blogs you read and out pops a designation of your character. Well, I'll save some time and skip to the conclusion:-
Broadly of the right / libertarian / low taxes / isolationist / Austrian economics / history / humour
So who do I read:-
Peter Hitchens, of course. Erudite, well-read, impeccably sourced, not afraid to point out the emperor's new clothes. Broadly a traditional Conservative - Anglican, sceptical of change and fashions, serious. Good travel writer. One of the few brave souls in the media. Loved by many on the right as John the Baptist type figure.
Rod Liddle. In The Spectator's Coffee House website. Rod is that rare species, a libertarian leftie. But, his readership is mainly right-wing and we all know, shhhhh, that Rod secretly votes UKIP. What you might call the old working class patriotic left - the antithesis to the metrosexual UK hating wankers that scratch their beards and just love cultural relativism and are apologists for all the world's nasty bastards out there. But two main things about Rod that appeal - firstly he's libertarian - mistrustful of attacks on free speech and secondly, he writes brave - did he really say that? - columns that wind up exactly the right people. But mostly he's fucking funny.
For a sense of balance I troll The Guardian's Comment is Free (CIF) and The Independent websites. It's like outreach work, missionary activity, preaching the gospel of capitalism and libertarianism to the big state / magic money tree lefties within their natural home. The Guardian is notorious in it's biased moderator policy (Komment Macht Frei) - deleting anything it deems offensive, sexist, Islamophobic, racist (except against Jews, of course) or just against the paper's dreadful editorial policy. The trick is to get your trolling in subtly and wind those beardies up to a state of de haut en bas, foul mouthed hissy fits. In return, I do read some of the articles. 99% bollocks of course but at least I escape my echo chamber. The Independent is the brattish, more left-wing, crazier younger sibling of The Guardian. Better for trolling but with a smaller audience for your bon mots.
Guido Fawkes - Order Order blog, is good for breaking political stories, muck raking on politicians. Of the right but lately his voice is muffled due to the constant fellating of the Conservative Party.
The Conservative Woman is good website for a traditional Conservative viewpoint on most issues.
Breitbart is a good place to hang out, pick up some of the whackier US and UK stories and indulge in the decent BTL non-policed comments. The occasional sound of tinfoil rustling can be heard. Anti-global warming trollmeister, James Delingpole writes here. Always worth the read.
WIiliam M Briggs - mixes up statistics, probability, science, religion and politics. Also does a good podcast.
Well that will do for now - and should keep you busy for a while.
Laters
Tim
A Little Bit of Folk
Those were the days! Acoustic guitars, jamming in the sun. Hair.
When I was in service in Rosemary Lane
Other than the homegrown Lisa Stansfield concerts I went to in the mid 80's - about which I've written before - Steeleye Span at the Manchester Apollo was one of my first ever 'gigs'. Young Tim loved the folkie sound! Simon and Garkunkel have to be top five for me. I love British / American folk music. It often gets characterised as twats with beards, beer bellies, fingers in their ears singing about sailors and shady ladies!
Which is basically what Rosemary Lane is about. Actually, I had the privilege of seeing the late, great, Bert Jansch live in concert in Brighton in 1990's. He didn't do Rosemary Lane. Bastard.
I've often thought that it would make a great book or film to depict the British folk scene in the mid-60's. The scene that created Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span, Pentangle, John Renbourne, Jackson C Frank, Simon and Garfunkel, and loads of others. They all knew each other, played in the same places, did versions of the same songs. Nicked each other's guitar style.
So let me be your guide though some the highlights of the great folk boom of the 60's / 70's - which probably reached its apogee with Sandy Denny duetting with Led Zeppelin on The Battle of Evermore - a crossover folk rock song like no other. The mighty Zep did what they did with the blues - amped up the power, took what's best in the genre, co-opted the best female folk voice ever, and created the folk hammer of the gods.
Anyway - here's Tim's top 10 acoustic / folkie / whatever list.
Top Ten Folkie / Acoustic Music
1) Bert Jansch - Rosemary Lane (1971)
2) Fairport Convention - Who Knows Where the Time Goes
3) Steeleye Span - All Around my Hat
4) Martin Carthy - Scarborough Fair
5) Simon & Garfunkel - Bleecker Street
6) Van Morrison - Beside You
7) Gordon Lightfoot - In the Early Morning Rain
8) Pentangle - Light Flight
9) Renaissance - The Northern Lights
10) Jackson C Frank - Blues Run the Game
Number 6 also appears on my top ten songs ever. I could pick half a dozen Paul Simon songs for this list but I limited myself to one.
Extra Waffle about Bert Jansch
One of the most influential guitarists ever to come out of Britain. Solo artist, part of the folk supergroup Pentangle and then back to solo again. Jansch seems a genuinely nice, self-effacing guy, as I can recall when I saw him back in the 90's. Needle of Death, from his first album, is such a sad song, tear-jerking even now, and as empathetic a song as I've ever heard. It Don't Bother Me, from his second album, is classic Bert - folkie, intricate guitar figures, detailing love's woes. But I'll plump for Rosemary Lane. Traditional song, rendered traditionally, this was the first folk song - after Steeleye Span - to really get to me. It details the seduction of an innocent servant girl by a travelling sailor. He loves and then leaves. Jansch's version - like Dylan's House of the Rising Sun - reverses the sexes, he sings from a female point of view. Love this song. Bert Jansch - a great soul who died in 2011 - the guitarist's guitar player.
Renbourne left and Jansch right. Scat singing. A bit of jazz, a bit of blues, some folk and a whole lot of soul.
Augustus Had to Have 31 Days Too
Percy popped his buttons when he knew Led Zep would be featured on Tim Robson's website August 2016
The month of August, Augustus, is upon us. As I mentioned, somewhat vaingloriously below, July was a record month for this blog. Well, let's blast that out of the water.
Let's review...
There are three blogposts I didn't finish, waiting in a crocodile-shaped queue in the 'unpublished' list. They may come out. The Dead Pubs of Clapham oscillates between a blog-post about lost England and a short story about lost Tim. Not sure which yet. There's an Elvis blog with some cracking live footage waiting to be aired. And there's a hat tippin', paying my dues blog about the writers, blogs and websites I read to keep informed.
And yet that is just the tip of the iceberg. In a normal month, that would be a good haul but for Augustus (my dearly beloved and missed cat, and the first citizen of Rome he was named after) that is not enough. Here's what I plan for the next 31 days (if Julius got 31 days, Augustus was gonna bloody well get the same).
- Edward Hopper. An appreciation. Yes, I branch, tentatively into art. Is there no beginning to my talents?
- Led Zeppelin. Often mentioned on this blog. Power and grace, tight jeans and bare chests. Why these guys (the three that are left) aren't Lords of this realm is a fucking disgrace. The Beatles of the 70's with double necked guitars and killer riffs.
- Brighton. If I'm from Rochdale, Brighton - for all it's faults and leftie bullshit - is my spiritual home. And yes, I include Hove into the mix.
- Discussion on some short stories that are coming up for their judgement. Let's hope I have to update the Honours Page many, many times.
- Maybe something about the Romans. Fuck it, why not my take on Augustus?
Let's salute the month of Augustus.
Tim
I'm a lovin' July!
Tim Robson basks in the warmth of July and self-love and a big tyre.
July was a record month for this blog.
The most RSS feeds ever. Yeah, RSS feeds. All that. Internet. Clicks, flicks and chicks. Technology. RSS feeds. No, I haven't got a clue what RSS Feeds are but apparently they're really important and indicative of how many people are book marking my stuff. Or something. Whatever.
The main thing is that the numbers don't lie. There were more RSS Feeds in July than any other month. And no, it wasn't me coming back here many times. That would be just cheating myself and what's the point of that? (I've tried anyway - doesn't work).
To be honest - and when aren't I - I can see why the numbers are high. No, I can. Good writing, jokes, art, culture, bollox. It's a journey this blog. Yeah, and we're all on it. Well, I'm on it right now. On the lager anyway.
So let's raise a glass to me.
"To Tim"
Tim
BTW - the thing under these words is the RSS feed thingie. Click it. Doing so will change your life. Gives you more Tim than any lady ever wants without cocktails and getting back at a loathsome ex.
Yeah.
Bukowski, Maupassant, Graves and Bronte and Wilde.
The victorious Prussians march through Paris, 1871
i remember when I was 19 sitting in a field - wind blowing but the day warm - with a bottle of 1979 Portuguese red and a slab of blue cheese and a copy of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. And the grass rustled, and the leaves made that sound they only make in high spring and I turned the pages, drank the wine and ate the cheese. The day got dark, the bottle emptied and the book finished.
I was going through an Oscar Wilde phase (no, not in that way) - in that I read Oscar, wanted to be an aesthete, well-rounded, well-read, lettered and all that. I swore that although I thought Wuthering Heights the most magnificent book, I would never read it again, so perfect was the time and place.
Yeah, what a nob. I get that now.
More or less finished my primer on Charles Bukowski. Yes, he has some style, and yes he has viewpoints, but, frankly, towards the middle, it all seemed a bit, well, one note. So, he drinks. So, he likes the bigger woman. Yeah, he likes horse racing (yawn). So, he has consistent but incoherent views on poetry and the human condition. But I stated to feel imprisoned as though trapped in a bar with a ranting drunk next to me, grabbing my shoulder and raging about things I don't care about.
Next on the night-table, The Best of Guy du Maupassant, I've not yet pinned to my wall of prejudice. He hovers mid-air, awaiting my judgement. The historian in me is interested in the Franco-Prussian War setting a war which tends to be forgotten these days. The eternal truth that war is hell. How this is forgotten and then rediscovered, as though the first time ever, each time mad men, ambitious men and the stupid beat the drums.
But, for a comforting ritual, I'm reading the second of Robert Graves' Claudius series - Claudius the God (just finished I, Claudius). I've read these books many times but I keep coming back to them. The second isn't as good as the first, but it's still a rattling good read. I feel though I could be a little more ambitious but, as this is the book I pick up before lights out, a challenge is probably the last thing I need.
As for writing myself, I've taken the week off from creation. It's strange - isn't it - then when I'm busiest I want to do more and when I'm not, I do less? Actually, it's probably not that strange at all. Probably it's basic human psychology. (He sits down, embarrassed, to the sound of titters from the back).
Anyway, I have the Stilton, the weather is just right - being warm and breezy - I have Hardy's Wessex Tales to read. Now can anyone tell me where I can buy a 1979 bottle of Portuguese red?
For £1.99?
Defer, Delay and Enjoy!
"Hello. Is it me you're looking for?"
Owlsey and Charlie, twins of the trade // come to the Poet's room.
Back in the 1980's (or was it the 1880's, seems a long time ago) we practised what is known in economic parlance as 'deferred gratification'. Some of you older readers will remember that; some of my younger readers will be scratching their heads and asking 'wot's that? lol!!'
Mainly it manifest itself by saving up money for something, taking a half an hour bus trip into Rochdale town centre, buying a single or computer game, getting the bus back again and sitting and listening to said record or load said computer game (to find it didn't work).
It was an interesting system of meeting wants; making the buyer wait for a period of time before certain wants were met. The theory goes that, by making the end-user wait, they put more value on the goods or services eventually purchased.
Well that was the theory anyway.
Now, with the internet, most wants can be met instantaneously or much more quickly than previously. If I want a track or a book or want to read about the Battle of Zama or The Franco-Prussian War, I can do so with just a few mouse clicks. It would have amazed my younger self, and it's still pretty revolutionary to my older self.
But what does it do for the soul? If your wants are met so easily? No waiting. Often no saving. Just click, click, move on? Do we value things less?
Deep questions. Sort of pint three philosophical ramblings before ordering a whiskey and going off on a rant about Southern Rail or broadband speeds.
So, do I value music less now than I did in 1984 when I'd make that bus journey into Rochdale, buy Lionel Ritchie's 'Hello', take the bus back and put it on the turntable, play it eight times in a row and realise it wasn't that great after-all (sorry - Lionel, it's not that bad actually. Just making a point. Could have picked Nena - 99 Red Balloons, but you came to mind first)?
I think that residual value might have something to do with when it was bought. Extraneous factors. When you're sixteen, pretty much everything is new, everything is the first, everything marks the way to a whole series of other choices. At 48, although I like new tracks, none of them will ever have the impact on my brain as the first time I heard Jumping Jack Flash or The Battle of Evermore.
On my itunes, I have more or less everything from my past I like, filling in the gaps and buying stuff I've never heard is the nature of the game. Most of the hard-to-get tracks have been found (thanks Jay).
One eluded me for years. Jefferson Airplane's Mexico. A single without an album. A musical orphan, hard to find. Well, I found it today. As my original copy was on a long deleted 80's compilation Best of Jefferson Airplane cassette, I hadn't heard the track for, I dunno, fifteen years.
And I still like it. For it's lyricism, it's musicality but also because I remember Tim took the bus to Rochdale town centre, went to the library, hired the cassette, took the bus back, thought most of the tracks crap but loved this, the last track on the album.
Interestingly, I thought the track dealt with some 19th century Mexican revolution, perhaps involving Napoleon III and Maximilian. A romantic, nobel interpretation. Now - thanks to Wiki and online lyric sheets - I know it's actually about cannabis smuggling and Richard Nixon. FFS. I could have done without that unasked for want - curiosity - being met. Deferred or not.
"I had that Emile Zola in my cab, last week."
Tim peruses his copy of Okay Magazine
“It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.” *
I think, like Sleeping Beauty, I must have pricked my finger towards the end of the 1990's and slept for nearly two decades. It was a strange sleep - I can remember where I was and what I did and events that happened. Outwardly I was the same - eating, drinking, working - but something key, something vital was missing. A spark had gone out.
I think I lost my natural curiosity. The ability to take an oblique view, to check - like some tosser French existentialist - all my assumptions, all my biases. But more than that, to grow inside, to nourish - yes I'll say it - the soul. Yes, I agree I sound like a nob. I'll bear that burden.
And it is only lately that I've rediscovered a sense of wonder, discovering how very little I know, that my knowledge is parochial and patchy. There's nothing brave about admitting ignorance but I do so. Which reminds me of one of my favourite Charles Bukowski quotes I've been saving up, waiting to use on this blog:-
“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”
So, what to do? Well, me being me, I won't be dyeing my hair green, putting on a dress and joining The Labour Party or any other crazy type of thing. Neither will I (probably.. dunno) get a leather jacket, a motorbike and drive too fast down Sussex country lanes. No, my moment of clarity comes in very Tim like ways:-
Read More
- Fiction. There' so many authors I've never read. You have to make time for this. Commuting helps. Much more 19th Century French literature. Probably not Zola who - on my brief acquaintance with him - is unremittingly dour. Too dour. Much more Balzac. But also more Great American novelists. More Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Wolfe, Roth...
- History. I have a history degree. But that's a piece of paper (lost, I think). I've always kept an eye on my favourites - Rome, 20th Century American politics, Tudors but there's so many gaps in my knowledge. So, expect me to bore you about the Dark Ages following 476, Eastern European history, The English Civil War, Marlborough, The Seven Years War etc etc. As Silent Bob says to Jay in Chasing Amy:
Bitch, what you don't know about me I can just about squeeze in the Grand fucking Canyon.
In this instance I guess I'm 'Bitch' and Silent Bob is my lack of knowledge on history.
- Thought. Management speak bollox, self-help books, fads and contemporaneous SHOUTING mean nothing to me. There's a whole world of thought out there and we pretty much know what it is from Plato, to The Bible, to St Augustine of Hippo, to Luther, Shakespeare, Adam Smith, Goethe, the Enlightenment, blah, blah. From my (limited) reading I conclude, like Harold MacMillan, "Events, dear boy, events" tend to distract us from underlying issues. The state of the human condition / behaviour has always been the same, IPads and Facebook or no. I'm curious as to what the great thinkers of the past observed. I don't expect it to make me happy but like Marcus Aurelius counselled, disenchantment is a desirable - and stable - state.
Poetry
Apart from Hardy, my knowledge of poetry is shocking. I could blame my state schooling for this. Oh okay, I will. See the video below of Peter Hitchens shaming a panel of leftie Neanderthals on Question Time. Watch it all as it tees up Hitchens nicely. It almost makes you weep the way his erudite knowledge, respected finally, is gradually slipping away from us all. Well no more around this parish! Also - I want to start committing some to memory because a) you carry it around with you b) it gives my ageing brain a workout!
Music
- Classical and more classical! Playing lots of Beethoven right now. Just downloaded his 7th. There was a programme (on the radio on the TV, dunno) which had the third movement as its theme music in the 70's. I did think it was the Galloping Gourmet (remember that!) but now I think it's just the Horse of the Year Show. So like Alex in The Clockwork Orange, plenty of Ludwig van. But also Handel, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Bach. I've no desire for dissonance. I work with the grain of my tastes.
I'll leave you with Prince Hal's soliloquy from Henry IV (Part 1). My O Level play. I always liked this speech. It speaks to me now more so than it did when I was a 15 year old.
I know you all, and will awhile uphold
The unyok'd humour of your idleness.
Yet herein will I imitate the Sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wonder'd at,
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.
If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work;
But, when they seldom come, they wish'd-for come,
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.
So when this loose behaviour I throw off,
And pay the debt I never promised,
By how much better than my word I am,
By so much shall I falsify men's hopes;
And, like bright metal on a sullen ground,
My reformation, glitt'ring o'er my fault,
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set it off.
I'll so offend to make offense a skill,
Redeeming time when men think least I will.
* Luke 15:32 KJV
Rochdale - God's own town.
Naden reservoir - Rochdale
I come from Rochdale. Technically I was born in Yorkshire, but from the age of two, my home town, and where I still call home, is Rochdale.*
For those that don't know, Rochdale, despite it's dour Northern and - in recent years - somewhat unsavoury reputation, is often quite beautiful. My parents still live there and I love going back. I've always been proud to come from Rochdale.
I have the eyes of returnee now. Everyone in Rochdale is proud of their town, to me, with my Southern perspective, I can see why.
I see wonder in the Moors that surround the valley of the river Roch, the urban parks, the splendour and bracing walks around Hollingworth Lake. Sentimentally, I see beauty in the rows of terrace houses, the indomitable spirit of the inhabitants who - lest we forget - took on the boss class in the worse excesses of Victorian factory exploitation and invented the co-operative movement in 1844.
A muscular and unapologetic working class culture - patriotic and self-supporting. You get off the M62 at Rochdale and are met by the sign - "Rochdale - Home of Cooperation"**. Not many towns have a boast that spans the world.
The people.. Funny. Friendly. Don't take any shit.
Rochdale Town Centre
The town centre, a triumph of Victorian ambition, urban planning and architecture, was always impressive. The wide open feel of the town centre was created by a bridge that enclosed the River Roch; one of the largest bridges in the world. The Grade 1 listed town hall, a gorgeous Gothic building, represented civic pride and the local centre of democracy for so many years. Opposite the town hall the Grade 1 listed war memorial - like the more famous one in Whitehall - designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens from public donations - sits in a peaceful garden flanked by the Grade 2 ex Post Office building.***
Stupid, ignorant, local counsellors have conspired to rip the heart out of one of the most beautiful Northern town centres by digging up the bridge, building inappropriate modern buildings all over the place and fatuous, empty shopping centres, side-lining a wondrous natural town shopping street (Yorkshire Street). The venality and short sightedness of local politicians never ceases to amaze me. Brighton suffered from them to in the inter war years and - with the Green Council - did recently.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that Rochdale - despite recent scandals and being resolutely working class - can, and always did, hold its head up high. To quote JFK:-
Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was civis romanus sum ["I am a Roman citizen"]. Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is "I am from Rochdale." Therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Rochdalian!"
He's right. Hold your head up Rochdale. There is no finer place in the world.
Tim (Ich bin ein Rochdalian - really!)
* I also claim dual citizenship with Brighton & Hove
** Farcically - orginally the council put up - "Rochdale - home of the Coop"
*** This war memorial was where I first saw tramps / drunks / beggars. I remember them from the 70's
The Grasshopper and the Cow. A modern guide to dating.
Tim Robson in Brighton looking sharp. He's single girls!
“Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field.” *
One of the problems of dating in Brighton - if you hold what some might classify as right-wing views - is that your potential date will be, with a 90% level of certainty, a virtue-signalling leftie. You're stuck with a choice - to stay quiet and fail gracefully to get sex or to reveal your politics and be damn certain not to.
Saying you voted Brexit perhaps, or admire Nigel Farage, is literally like turning up to the wine bar dressed in full Gestapo uniform with a copy of The Final Solution in your top pocket. There again... The hard left these days seem to love a bit of anti-semitism. Can't get enough of it.
Saying you support low taxes, a small state, free trade and capitalism is usually - and disingenuously - met with hysterical guilt-by-association accusations. That's because, to a leftie, holding a few non leftie views means you must subscribe to a whole set of others too. So, I say, Brexit for democratic reasons, they say racist; I say low taxes and they say I want to burn the poor. Maybe piss on them first.
Therefore, on a date, it's easier to take the cowardly, pragmatic approach. When your leftie date jabbers on about some social justice outrage de jour, just smile and take the conversation off at a tangent. Lefties generally - and especially in their natural environment within Brighton - tend not to meet people who disagree with them out loud. Silence is taken as assent. So she'll not spot the evasion but will take the change of subject as affirmation of her point of view - a point so obvious it should be, like, the law or something. The science is settled, the debate is over, the platform is not open, safe spaces are not going to be invaded.
It's a bit like Facebook (of which I'm not longer a member). The busy grasshoppers chirp noisily all over the timeline whilst the bovine Brexit / Tory supporting multitudes stay suspiciously quiet. Hence the outrage when these special snowflakes actually lose (see my article on 1992 election and the narcism of the self-righteous). They literally cannot comprehend it. Everyone agrees with them.
But - Edmund Burke fans - in looney-tunes Brighton, the fucking grasshoppers are in charge of the town and rigidly boss the poor cows about.
Does that mean I'm a cow? Hell no, I'm a bull me. El torre! Just a rather quiet one.
So where does that leave the nominal right-winger (libertarian actually, thanks) in his quest to bed the leftie date? Well, about in the same position as with a right wing date. Or a liberal date. Or a date with woman of no political views.
Politics, I've found, aren't actually the primary driver in the dating scene. Other, more corporeal attributes, claim that sovereignty.
It's possible I may return to this subject.
Tim
* A rather good, and prescient quote from Edmund Burke. Beware the mob!
The Clapham Sect
The Holy Trinity Church, Clapham July 2016
I work in South London, in Clapham. On Wandsworth Road. Just off The Common.
Surprisingly, although I did my Masters degree just down the road at Southbank University, I never really explored the area that much. My girlfriend and I used to take the tube north and wander around Pimlico, neglecting the wonders of South London.
I can put that right now. Battersea Arts Centre you know about already. I'm working on an article / short story called The Dead Pubs of Clapham which, well, talks about the dead pubs of Clapham. You'll like that.
Clapham Old Town is just a few minutes stroll from my office. And there lies, workmanlike and unshow-ey, The Holy Trinity Church. Splendidly set on the Common itself this eighteenth century evangelical church was the home of the Clapham Sect.
The Clapham sect - including William Wilberforce - used to meet and pray here. They were prime movers behind the Slave Trade Act in 1807 and the 1833 Abolition of Slavery Act. But not only did they drive the abolition of slavery in both Britain and her Empire but, with the establishment of the naval West Africa Squadron in 1807, Britain then used her considerable military muscle to stop the trade completely. Our navy was employed to enforce the abolition of the slave trade.
The church still stands in splendid isolation on the Common. If you are in the area (and it's a beautiful area) take a few moments to visit it, reflect and think of those who came before us who fought the good fight. And it was a hard fight. The easy thing would have been to do nothing. I'm sure most countries in the world have proud boasts, acts of enlightenment and empathy that are produced to show they are a great society.
But Britain has many. Many proud boasts. Standing on Clapham Common, passed daily by thousands of people, is a representation of one of them. We should talk about our past more and not through the unseeing eyes of today, the triviality, easy choices.
The landmarks series continues next week with my views on the pies at the Amex Stadium in Brighton.
Read On
The Dead Pubs of Clapham explores the area more.
What about reading about Lavender Hill?
Or my London Walks (and other places)?
Thoughts on Trump
The Donald likes Tim's Blog
If I were to vote in American elections, I'd be severely unhappy. Americans seem to face a choice between an hereditary Bush or an hereditary Clinton. Obama came out of nowhere. He certainly was the first black president and he was so good he secured the Nobel Peace Prize in his first month in office. Yeah. Way to go Barry!
Clearly I'm more on the Republican side than the Democrat. If I lived in the US (and was a citizen) then I'd be a registered Republican. My choice for presidential candidate last time would have been the libertarian Ron Paul. My choice this time would have been his son, Rand Paul. I like the fact that they are so unfashionable they hark back to unyielding founding principles, principles which offend today's society that likes to bend rules based on emotionalism or expediency. I like the fact that both are strict Austrians in economics - no borrowing, currency backed up by real worth, no support for mal-investment, the superiority of the market over political judgement. They also are also anti-war which, as I've written before, is probably one of three or four dominant political characteristics (along with democracy, free speech and capitalism) I believe in.
But both lost. Ron, controversially against Mitt (only in America) and Rand to the force of nature that is Donald Trump.
Now I didn't follow the Republican debates until about October / November but then - as usual - I was hooked. Okay, they're false formats and candidates with with well scripted (and delivered) one -liners often do best over the more cerebral, reflective candidates. Sorry Jeb! But this is democracy in the raw. America is great at that (though big money is, I admit, a problem).
I became, after Rand's early demise following the New Hampshire primary, fascinated by Trump. And not especially because of what he said, or what he'd do (BTW these two concepts can be very different animals - hello Barry, talking about you, again).
So why's Trump interesting as a phenomenon?
- He is politically incorrect. I'm fucking tired of people telling me what to think or say. Politicians are scared to say anything controversial these days. This timidity has spread to social media, corporations. How long before this cultural stalinism spreads into the private sphere? It's a deadweight on ideas, thoughts, creativity, laughter. Good manners and civility should be a person's guide. One thing about Trump we can all agree on; he's not politically correct.
- Trump isn't beholden to vested interests as he self-finances (see the above about campaign finance). I'm not saying that I support rich people only running for office - of course not - but I think America needs a good dose of 'fuck you' juice sprayed at lobbyists.
- He isn't scripted. He says what he wants. For the antithesis of Trump, see The Marco-bot as he trotted out the same answer four times when challenged by NJ Governor Chris Christie. The career politician - in the US, in the UK - who parrots the party line, eyes closed or focused on the mid distance, gets my goat. I love the mavericks - the Farage, the Livingstone, the Franks Fields. Party politicians - like executives at big companies - always live in fear and slavishly toe the party line.
- He's successful outside politics. Yeah, sure he fronts the American Apprentice but he is also a successful business-man. Now I don't worship businessmen - they need balance - but I prefer them to career politicians or corporate wankers. Businessmen who own their own company know about risk, making decisions and taking accountability. Most politicians do not. They just like to spend other people's money gathered by force.
- He's funny! He is! Watch a speech. Funny goes a long way. Humour is very under-rated. Humour shows to me a real person. Someone who is funny (it's a skill) shows intelligence both intellectual and emotional.
- He might cause a massive re-alignment. Talking to those who are always written off - lower classes, tax payers, the law abiding - might catch on. Sort of a Brexit demographic. He might just bring the whole shit-house down. Good. Democracy is too precious for the parties to think they own it. Fuck 'em! In a democracy, the people are always right.*
- Lastly, and let me just have one trivial reason, his ongoing success pisses off exactly the right people. The BBC, The Guardian, Facebook twats, bien pensants everywhere. His on-going success makes them so incoherently angry it's worth electing Trump just to watch them explode with self righteousness and condescension for their fellow man.**
So this is The Donald without me looking into his policies (and did I mention his unbelievably attractive wife Melania and his daughter Ivanka. No? Whoops just did!).
Shit hair though.
Cheers
Tim
Notes
* People are always right. This is always true and I don't buy the view that the people are too stupid or will be led astray by populists. However, my own caution to this would be that ordinarily a representative democracy works best and also that there should always be a decent lead up before a populace votes. Otherwise you run the risk of the Facebook-isation of politics (virtue signalling votes as 'likes', short-termism, shallow not contiguous policies).
** As a democrat I've never been more appalled than I have been over the last few days where Facebook emotionalism allies with hard-core and nasty undemocratic forces. What some unthoughtful people on the losing side of referendum. The Guardian, BBC etc (usual suspects) are playing a VERY dangerous game. In a democracy you have to accept an adverse result. To do otherwise leads only to violence and civil war. I never thought I'd write that about Britain and I pray the cry-bullies think about what they are doing and pull back. Not respecting democracy might become a habit which can be learned by all sides. And the denigration of their fellow citizens as stupid is right out of Marx's false consciousness playbook. And we know that dictatorship follows.
John Major and all that.
Oh boy! Did I not like this result!
In June 1992, John Major - against the odds - won a Parliamentary majority in the UK General Election. He hadn't been predicted to win and Labour, under Neil Kinnock, looked like it was finally to take over the reins of power after thirteen long years. The Tories were tired and had killed off the great Matriarch, Margaret Thatcher. Me and everyone I knew, voted Labour. We had the momentum, we had all the celebrity endorsements. Our moment was now. How could we lose?
And then the results came through and the feeling of giddy anticipation turned to dread as one-by-one Labour candidates went down against their opponents. The pleasure at seeing Tory Chairman Chris Patten lose Bath was negated at the realisation that Major had a workable majority and that 13 long years would now be 18, at least.
Gosh! I wish social media had been around in those days! I would have spent the whole of the next day ranting on Facebook, posting links to articles that called into question the democratic verdict of my fellow citizens, how really Kinnock and Labour had won all the arguments and that only old and selfish people had kept them from government.
I went to work the next day full of righteous anger and fully expecting my colleagues to be similarly burning with the injustice of it all. No such luck. Most of my team at work had voted Tory. Older, wiser perhaps. I was shocked. They never talked politics in the office. They never disagreed with my leftie rants. And yet they still voted Tory!
Up until now, I didn't know anyone who voted Tory. And here I was surrounded by them. How had I not known (didn't they roast babies on fires to keep warm?) and how could they have been so stupid? Readers, I was shocked and angry. Selfish bastards. Stupid bastards, brainwashed by the Sun, The Mail, The Tory Media. Bitching about them later with my friends - who all voted Labour - we moaned 'why didn't they think for themselves'?
I was twenty four. I was also stupid.
I can relay this story now because, well, I'm older and perhaps have a little more perspective on life. I wouldn't call it wisdom because the first casualty of experience is, certainty. The old 'the more I know, the less I know' trope. The future is unknowable, unmade, events and inventions happen. What doesn't change however, is human nature.
Which is kind of a long intro into Thursday's vote... Interestingly enough, in 1992 I was editor of the staff magazine at a large multi national. Before the 92 election I penned an article (never published) on what I considered to be the biggest non-issue of the ballot - the EC, as then was, the EU now. My view was that all three main parties supported membership and that the issue wasn't discussed. I wanted to know who I could vote for to express my point of view.
And my point of view on the EU has been pretty consistent for about 30 years, ever since Jacques Delors came to TUC congress in 1988 and persuaded the left to support a supra-national, non democratic way of getting their domestic agenda imposed on Thatcher's Britain. I was appalled at the willingness of many 'progressives' to jettison their mistrust of a non-democratic, corporatist club in order to win some baubles (The Social Chapter). Denied the ability to introduce their policies in the UK due to the good sense of the British public, they decided to go over the public's head.
And at the time I supported the ends but not the means. For, I reasoned back then, what happens if this benign dictatorship does something I don't like? How do I change that? How do you veto it? How can you change the leadership? Of course now, 2016, I support neither the ends nor the means. I'm a bit of a purist on this - Britain should decide its government and its policies for the good of Britain. If we don't like it, or the government make a mess of it, we can chuck them out. To me, the symbol of Britain's democracy has never been Big Ben, Parliament, our free press and courts but, on the morning following an election, a removal van. A van bustling out the departing Prime Minister, so powerful just the day before but now, scuttling peacefully away at the will of the people.
That my friends is democracy. We just got that back.
To those bitching on Facebook, starting petitions; basically throwing their toys out of the pram, I say this, accept the result, move on and embrace the new opportunities we now have to forge our way in the world. We have many friends across the world, a well used language and, despite the EU elites being angry, many envious - non fascist - friends across Europe. Never forget, the Dutch and French also had their referenda in 2005. Both voted no to The Lisbon Treaty. Both were ignored. When democratic means no longer work, non democratic means become the logical solution. We have escaped that (though some people don't realise it). Let's hope my good friends in Europe get the chance (again) to have self-governing peaceful democracies.
Cheers
Tim
Today I resigned from Facebook. It's an amplified version of that 1992 pub conversation my friends and I had following John Major's win. Back in those days you had to win arguments - now you just signal arguments. I think we've lost something.
Sign here to petition Parliament to remove David Lammy the Labour MP who has actually suggested ignoring the results of the referendum. Not only is it stupid and laughable but dangerous. This man is not fit to be an MP. Thanks to the great Rod Liddle for starting this.