08/02/2010
Of Captains and Kings etc..
I share your pain Tony, Tone, me ol’ mate an’mucker,
Tone.The Shame; a straight kinda guy likeyou hauled up to explain to a jumped-up bureaucrat
theinner rationale of the Worldstormer!I bet it wasn’tlike that at Fettes , or maybe it was; forced toexplain to your housemaster that it was the
dog that ate your homework. I bet you put up a magisterial, spirited
performance thenalso.A
pity that the other Weltsturmer , men
who toofelt the hand of History didn’t
have your problem, Alexander, ,Frederick the Great, Napoleon, Genghis Khan,
Tamerlane.Theywould
have put upan equally convincing show, but had no-one to whom to answer. No parliaments, just Destiny or God or in
Tone’s case a bit of both . Those who do
not feel the hand of History but the reassuring weight of a history book may
not be as easily swayed. Ultimatum given; ultimatum rejected.Hmmm...1914 springs to mind.When the Austrians gave the Serbs the
ultimatum after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand the Serbs accepted it save
for a couple of points aboutcontrol of
the police and foreign policy. But this was the point. The Austrians knew it
would be rejected and then this would be used as a cassus belli. ‘Well we were reasonable
but those ingrates the ....( fill in the gap here) refused or reasonable offers
and with a heavy heart and the hand ofHistory it’s “ cry havoc and let slip etc ., etc.”’ You all know the rest.I bet that if we all examine the ultimatums
that we have everissued ; tospoilt
brats, unfaithful lovers/spouses,
rebelliousworkcolleagues, wewant them to be rejected andunleash shock and awe.How bathetic to accept!The nature of the ultimatum consists in it
being givenafter the consequences have
already been decided.No one on the Chilcottboard has flagged this upto my knowledge., despite the presence of two
distinguished historians.Lots of
legalese though which will obscuremore
than it will reveal.
As for two mensitting on a sofa and planning an invasion, that’s been done before an’
all . Peter the Great of RussiaandAugustus II of Poland got togetherin theearly 1700in the course of a
gargantuan piss-up ( unminuted , of course) decided toknock Swedenout asBalticpower.Result?The Great Northern War (
which knocked Poland out as a Baltic
power). What a hangover, that was!Tchah!Menin pubs, eh?
There is much that dry bureaucrats can’t find in
documents.Never mind , Tone.Like the Great Captains before youcan do your lectures, write your memoirs and blame everybody else.No need for introspection. I’ll get round to
reading them eventually.
The cartoon below is based on ‘Napoleon on the Bellerophon’bySir William Quiller- Orchardson.I painted it at the time ofBanana Boy Milliband’s unequivocal( sic) pledges of support for Tone ‘s candidature for the Euro presidency ( for those of you who remember, tone was pipped to that post by a faceless bureaucrat...DOH!). I would put in Alistair Campbell now, emoting and blubbing like an American!But I think itcaptures the lonely tragedy of the Weltsturmer.LOL!!!!
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02/12/2009
Gordon Agonistes.
Hallo,
Words , words , words. Words of comfort, joy , betrayal. 'It'll be alright on the night,' 'the cheque is in the post' and the all time classic 'I love you .' We use these to sweeten the bitter pill or when we have no ideas left and wish to appear we're in some sort of control. The mots de nos jours is of course, climate -change. Anyone can tag this onto any statement with the subtext 'disagree with me and you are exposed as a flat- earther imbecile and even worse than dad -dancing at a wedding you will lose all brownie points with the bourgeois student anti -globalists.' Death by uncool.
As with most conventional wisdoms the substance of the argument is not questioned enough as the sides get increasingly polarised along progressive/reactionary, cool/uncool polarities. For my part ,much of the fundamental intellectual underpinning is flawed. For what it's worth I believe that change is the order of the universe; change violent, dramatic, cosmically unstoppable. We are arrogant if we believe we can influence, accelerate and worst of all stop or reverse these forces. Yes, don't pollute our beautiful planet, but to accept that somehow WE have a material effect is to accept that we are all- powerful ( Man's greatest sin is hubris) , that the order of the universe is Stasis and that we can control Mummy Nature. To the argument that the best- available scientific evidence points to global warming etc.,etc., you can say that when I was a kid the best available scientific evidence I heard told us we were heading for an ice age in the 1990s!
The climate change debate has been conscripted into the service of politics as usual, ideological ping-pong. But never mind, in three hundred years time it won't matter. For those of you who say well we need to save the world for our children's sake I say since I haven't got any I don't give a damn, and even if we do save it for them they'll doubtlessly fuck it up anyway.
The title of the cartoon below is ' The Prime Minister, the Right- Honourable Gordon Brown MP agonises over the Fate of The World before his speech at the Copenhagen Summit.'
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29/10/2009
The Decline and Fall of Western Civilisation.
Bon Jovi,
Well, Summer has turned into Autumn –exactly as I had suspected it would. I had a truly great Summer and now the time has come to knuckle down to some tooning work. There have been many interesting developments ( I shall provide some more Eastern European whimsy for all the baroquomaniacs out there next blog ) but the main one , of course is the continuing slide of Western Civilisation down the toilet. This time as well as the early mince pies and Christmas puds in Sainsbury's, is one when bankers start to think of their bonuses (while the rest of us mortals think about our P45s). The financial classes still don't get it, and are still getting sozzled in the bar on that most intoxicating cocktail, power without responsibility. We are just naive to hope for some sort of epiphany in the City . We don't know how many heads rolled and have obtained only cursory words of contrition and humility. Well, they had to say sorry as a blood sacrifice (sans blood) to get the taxpayer's cash. 'We may be going to Hell in a bucket,' the song goes ' but at least we can enjoy the ride.' Nope, it'll be bumpy.
The political classes too are still taking lessons in the Marie- Antoinette school of social graces. The inevitable counter- attack has come in the expenses row is rolling forward. On the bright side, my local MP has started to send me letters outlining how well the government is doing in meeting its Five-Year Plans, or Stakhanovite production targets. I am immensely grateful for the information and I simply refuse to believe that the timing has anything to do with the expenses row or next year's P45s, sorry General Election. No , I do not!
Marie Antoinettism has pervaded the bien- pensant classes . The Colossuss of Stephen Fry has added his invaluable apercus lately, on all under heaven thereby tightening his Stasi -like stranglehold on our national consciousness. Not content with political punditry, he popped up on Channel 4 during the Tory conference in the guise of an historian . To be sure, I saw his Auschwitz remarks coming over the horizon. You can follow the interesting debate on tinternet. The Titan has no limits, but Simon Schama's job is safe for now.
Crisis and Decadence,Decadence and Crisis.
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18/05/2009
The Great Stink of 2009.
Bon Jovi,
Who would have thought it, journalists taking politicians to task over expenses claims . We live in interesting and ironic times indeed, my friends. But seriously,....naaaah! I remember vaguely, it was Lord Macauley ( I think and I paraphrase here) who wrote that there are fewer things funnier than the sight of the British public in one of its periodic fits of moral indignation. And here we are again! Okay ,phantom mortgages are naughty but much, like it or not, was within the letter if not the spirit of the rules created by the MPs themselves. DOH! Not good , I accept and you may say it brings Parliament into disrepute; that really would be a step up! They will face the electoral court next year anyway and I predict a massacre. We all get our comeuppance. Now being world –weary and cynical comes with the cartoonist's job description so all this is grist to my mill, but as a moral ( not in the above sense) being I, like Captain Willard in Apocalypse Now am a bit wary of handing out speeding tickets at the Indianapolis 500. Memo to self: Stinks, you get used to 'em eventually.
