Mike put up a piece last night responding to another malign comment uttered by Michael Gove. Gove is the former cabinet minister responsible for education, and so can fairly be blamed for a good portion of the problems now affecting our educational system.
He’s a close of ally of Boris Johnson, though this didn’t stop BoJo stabbing him in the back over Brexit. Nevertheless, he showed his loyalty to Boris, as well as his complete ignorance and utter incompetence in the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. This was the British woman of Iranian origin, who went back to Iran on holiday. She was visiting relatives, but the Iranians threw her in jail on the trumped up charge of spying. Boris made her situation worse by claiming that she was teaching journalism. She wasn’t, and Johnson’s comment was seized on by the Iranians as confirmation of their own allegations that she was trying to overthrow the regime. Gove then appeared on TV to support Boris, and declared in an interview that ‘we don’t know what she was doing’. This was wrong, and showed Gove really didn’t know what he was talking about. And it just made matters worse for Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who used his stupid comments as more proof of espionage and put more years on her sentence.
Now Gove has waded in to give his considered thoughts on the current scandal of the deportations of the Windrush generation and their children. OH no! cried Gove, it’s not that bad. It’s just been ‘weaponised’ by the Labour party to divert attention from the massive anti-Semitism in their ranks.
No, Gove, it isn’t. As Mike points out, the evidence shows that anti-Semitism in the Labour party has actually fallen under Jeremy Corbyn. But this won’t matter to the Tories. Like Goebbels, they prefer to repeating a good, useful lie until people believe it. Well, it worked with a lot of people under Thatcher. There’s always the possibility, however, that Gove really does believe what he says, or, just as likely, he’s so ignorant of the facts and the issues involved that he doesn’t know any better. Just like he didn’t know better than to mug up on the real facts before holding forth about Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
The deportation of the Windrush generation is important for a number of reasons. Firstly, it’s a vile, racist policy in itself. But it’s also offensive and dangerous because, as Lammy shows, they were British citizens. The Social Contract theory of government states that political authority arose when the early human community joined together to elect a powerful figure – a king- to protect their lives, families and property. The theory was first formulated in Ancient Greece, where it was taken over by Plato. It was the basis of some medieval theories about the origins and duties of kingship, and formed the basis of the political theories of John Locke and Thomas Hobbes. It has also been used to argue for the people’s right to remove their sovereigns and leaders, and to form democratic, representative governments.
Social Contract theory’s been more or less rejected by scholars. One of the reasons is because their almost certainly was never a primal meeting of the early human community, to elect a leader using legal terms that wouldn’t exist until thousands of years later. Even so, it has still be influential. Rawls attempted to defend it, or advance a similar theory, in his A Theory of Justice. And it remains true that one of the very basis, essential functions of government is to preserve the lives and property of its citizens.
But this the Tories have signally not done. They have decided to remove the basic right of citizenship from the Windrush migrants, simply because of their ethnicity. This has led to their deportation from a country, in which they have every right to live, and the denial of other essential rights. Like cancer treatment under the NHS, and other basis services to which they are entitled.
Not that this bothers the Tories. They’re whole attitude to government is based on marginalising and depriving the poorest, most vulnerable sections of the population in order to give more wealth and power to the rich elite. Hence the attacks on the poor, the unemployed, the disabled as well as the normal attacks on immigrants and ethnic minorities.
This is what has made the deportations extremely dangerous. It has shown that the Tories regard basic citizenship not as a right, but a gift that can be withdrawn on a whim or for reasons of political expediency.
This is not about Labour trying to use it to deflect attention from the anti-Semitism smears and witch hunt in its own ranks. This is about protecting a group, that has been subject to a monstrous injustice, and preserving fundamental civic rights.
Not that you can expect Gove to admit to all this, as someone who has constantly supported the Tories’ persecution of marginal and underprivileged groups.
It’s time to get him, Tweezer and the rest of them out of office.
Mike also put up another hilarious article on Thursday about a piece of work Grayson Perry produced to represented the financial sector. Perry’s a Turner-prize winning artist, specialising in pottery and ceramics. He found the world of banking and finance to be increasing male the further one went up the hierarchy. To symbolise this, he sculpted a giant phallus, embossed with pound coins, and the heads of bankers, including George Osborne.
Perry states that it’s not his most subtle work. Possibly not, but it is accurate. There have been a number of scandals about the lack of women in the upper levels of the financial sector, and it is a very, very masculine environment. One report about the imbalance said that not only were there very sexist attitudes towards women – they were divided up into ‘babes’, ‘mums’ and ‘dragons’ – but that the bankers themselves had a very cynical and exploitative attitude to their clients. Indeed, they often boasted about how they had shafted them. This is the world of the Wolf of Wall Street and Gordon Gecko.
And quite often members of the financial sector do describe themselves in phallic terms. One financial whizzkid, whose book was reviewed back in the 1990s by Private Eye, even described himself as ‘a big swinging dick on the stockmarket floor’.
You can also find support for Perry’s ceramic penis from the sociobiological interpretation of mythology. One academic used sociobiology, or as it is now, evolutionary psychology, to explain the phallic shape of ancient Greek herms, or boundary markers. He noticed that troops of baboons similar post guards with erect willies as sentries when out foraging, and males also engage in ‘penis fencing’. He therefore concluded that the shape of the herms was a similar primate display of masculine guardianship over place. You could therefore argue that Perry’s pottery penis is thus an apt sociobiological comment on the extremely culturally phallocentric culture of the financial sector.
Or am I reading too much into this?
As Freud said, ‘Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.’
Last Thursday, February 18th 2016, I was privileged to attend a webinar held by the Open Democracy forum on ‘alternative democracy’. Webinars, if you’ve never come across before, like me, are discussions held over the internet between a number of participants. They remain in their own homes, and talk to each other via their webcams or digital cameras attached to the computers. In this instance, the main speaker at any given point occupied most of the screen, while the other participants were each shown at the bottom. I was invited to go by Michelle Thomasson, a member and a commenter on this blog. The discussion was an hour long, covering topics that have been central to the issue of democracy since the very first democratic theorists like the ancient Athenians and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. These include the fact that democracy leads to popular government, rather than right government; the problem of applying a political system that originally arose in small city states to large, complex modern societies, and the problem of energising and encouraging public engagement in politics and the political process at a time when increasing numbers feel disenfranchised, and that politicians are self-serving and isolated from the rest of society.
The first issue, that of democracy allowing the public to vote for the ‘wrong’ people, or make the ‘wrong’ decisions, is shown by the controversy about capital punishment and the EU. One of the female participants made the point that she wasn’t happy with referenda, because if one was a held on those two issues, the British public would almost certain vote in favour of reinstating the death penalty and leaving the European Union, both of which she considered wrong and unjust. She also made the point that there was a problem in that people don’t understand how parliament itself works. People have been horrified by what they’ve seen of it and the parliamentary process on television, especially since the launch of the parliament channel. She also discussed the problem of young people becoming uninterested in politics. She felt that part of the solution to this problem of increasing political indifference and disenfranchisement was for parliament itself to become more representative. She was in favour of quotas, and particularly for more women in parliament. She also felt that there should be more teaching in schools about the importance of politics, democracy and political participation. There still were areas for the public to be involved in politics in local issues, but these were becoming increasing rare as many local amenities, such as youth clubs, were being closed down. There was therefore a real danger of people retreating into social media.
The participants also discussed the possibility of learning from the Occupy Movement, which mobilised people against the cuts and bankers’ bail-outs across the world. People were disillusioned and felt that politicians were distant. One possible solution was digital democracy, but it was felt that this also was not the right way to go. They also pointed out that as far back as ancient Greece, politicians have never done what the electorate wanted. There was also the additional problem of democratic decisions in large societies like modern Britain. They pointed out that although the march against the Iraq War were the largest modern protests, most people still supported the invasion of Iraq, because they had been deliberately given the wrong information. There were similar problems with the reforms attacking and dismantling the welfare state. This led to a discussion of the wider problem of how communities could be connected to parliament.
Some possible solutions included the transformation of the House of Lord’s into a genuine popular assembly, and the revitalisation of political parties. Trump and Bernie Sanders in America, and Jeremy Corbyn over here at sparked an upturn in people joining and becoming interested in political parties. This led to the problem of how to involve other organisations to balance the power of the big corporations now involved in defining and influencing politics. They felt that the revitalisation of the political parties should be done through the existing political system. However, one of the problems with Jeremy Corbyn was that one of the speakers felt he hadn’t drawn new people into the party, but caused older members, who had let their membership lapse, to rejoin.
That led in turn to the question of what should be done with all the new political activists and participants, once they’d been energised, so that they could transform society. One of the men stated that the Labour party had declined from a genuinely popular movement into a party, in which people in suits made decision on behalf of the people they represented. This led to the question of local democracy in the Aristotelian sense. He considered that we currently have local administration rather than democracy. Most of the funding for local councils in England comes from central government, compared with Sweden where 80 per cent comes from local taxes. One of the other participants pointed out that the Coalition was indeed trying to reverse this situation under the guise of localism. They also discussed the way the Tory-Lib Dem Coalition had dissolved the regional partnerships, that had some success in regenerating the local political and economic situation. On the other hand, the Coalition has also encouraged local authorities to group together so that they could co-operate across borders. This worked well in some areas, like Manchester, but was less effective in others.
They also discussed whether Britain needed a constitution. It was pointed out that those nations with constitutions were not necessarily any more democratic than those which did not. One of the speakers was also quite scathing about the way the leadership in Labour party had blocked a bill on corporate funding in order not to upset the trade unions. The result of this was that the Tories were continuing to enjoy massive corporate donations, while trying to find ways to deprive the Labour party of money.
They also returned to the question of referenda. They stated that this worked in small countries with a tradition of direct democracy, like Switzerland. It was much less effective in large countries like Britain. As an example, when the Americans set up internet polling following the British example, the two petitions with greatest number of signatures were for America to build a Death Star, like the one in Star Wars, and to deport Justin Bieber back to Canada.
They also raised the issue of untrained cabinet ministers. Many ministers didn’t know how to manage the performance of the civil servants under them, as it wasn’t a requirement for cabinet ministers. There was poor human resource management in the Civil Service and poor project managers. However, expertise in specific areas did not necessarily make someone a more efficient minister. Andrew Lansley was an expert on health and healthcare, and yet his reforms were dreadful. The Coalition had also performed a number of U-turns, as no-one had told its members what the results of their reforms were intended to be. Overall, they concluded that the problem was one of improving the existing system, rather than overturning it.
All of these issues are complex and it’s fair to say that they need long and careful examination if we are to overcome the continuing crisis in British democracy. People do feel bitter and disenfranchised by their politicians. The scandal over MPs’ bonuses showed how bitter the public felt about their claims. Hopefully, more seminars and discussions like this will lead to the discovery of better ways to reverse this, and to bring people back to participating in the political process, which is supposed to serve them. Democratic political theory states that political sovereignty lies with the people. It’s a question of putting them back in charge, and taking power away from an increasingly managerial elite.
And if digital democracy is not a solution to this problem, than the internet has also provided part of the solution. Yes, there is the danger that people are retreating into social media. But the same social media has enabled political discussions like the above, by connecting people vastly separated from each other, who can discuss weighty issues like this easily in the comfort of their own homes.
A recording of the webinar, plus comments, can be found at: https://plus.google.com/events/cqjpogiqt6osi7fliui4k4tkg4c
Thanks, Michelle.
This is a fascinating piece of footage showing Boston Dynamics’ Atlas robot being tested. It’s a bipedal robot, with two arms, and the video shows it walking about, picking up boxes and placing them on shelves, It can also follow the boxes when they’re moved out of its way or reach, and right itself when its pushed over. It’s an impressive display of robot engineering.
From the look of it, Boston Dynamics were the manufacturers of the ‘Big Dog’ robot, which was supposed to help carry loads for the US military. This ended up being cancelled because its electric motors were too noisy for the covert missions for which the machine was intended to be used. I’m sure Atlas has been designed with a military role or disaster relief in mind, very much like Hammerstein, Rojaws, Mek-Quake and their metal pals in Robusters and ABC Warriors. We’re not quite there yet, and I have real qualms about the use of this technology. Not so much in the fears about Terminator-style robots running amok to exterminate humanity, but simply of the process of mechanisation replacing human workers. I’ve noticed that in shops and cinemas, the self-service machines are being used to replace human staff, and this process is likely to continue until about 1/3 of service sector jobs are lost in the next 20 years. Or at least, they will according to current projections. The end result will be Mega-City One, sprawling conurbations with a 95% unemployment rate due to robots replacing humans in just about all areas of employment.
One of the reasons historians and sociologists have put forward to explain why modern science did not arise in ancient Greece, the Islamic world and China, is that despite the immense inventiveness of these cultures, they only made limited use of the technological advances made by their natural philosophers and artisans. Both the Chinese and Islamic engineers produced automata. In China, there was an automaton serving girl constructed in the 9th century AD, which went round filling people’s tea bowls. The ancient Greeks invented a toy mechanical theatre, singing mechanical birds, and an automatic hand cleaner to allow visitors to the temples to wash their hands. In Islam, al-Jazari and the Banu Musa brothers similarly produced automata. These systems were, with exceptions, not applied to industry, but used as toys to amuse the upper classes. I think at certain times a brake was deliberately applied, because they feared the social disruption such developments might bring. It’s a Luddite attitude, but as the world faces mass unemployment through mechanisation, one that we should possibly appreciate as wiser than it appears.
It’s an interesting idea. The piece points out that there is already a children’s commissioner, following the horrific maltreatment and death of Victoria Climbie. Continuing the Classical theme from my last post about Boris Johnson, there’s a kind of precedent for all this in Ancient Greece. I can remember reading in one of the books at College that one of the Greek city states – probably Athens – had an ‘archon for women’ – effectively a ‘minister’, to investigate causes of complaint raised by them. This followed a women’s strike or strikes similar to the sex strike portrayed in Sophocles’ Lysistrata. There was, I believe, also radical working class Communist movements, which formed the basis for another ancient Greek play, The Ekkleziae. In the case of women, today that’s resulted in calls for greater representation of women in parliament and politics generally, but that simply wasn’t considered in the very patriarchal political environment of the ancient world.
It’s an interesting idea, but I honestly don’t know how effective such a commissioner would be, even if one could be set up. The Tories don’t like bureaucracy, and especially not when it deals with disadvantaged groups. Mike’s undoubtedly correct when he says that there’s little chance of such a commissioner being appointed under Cameron. I feel that if a commissioner were appointed, it would only be a cosmetic measure. The institutions within the civil service which are supposed to be the government in check seem to be all too willing to bow to their every whim. For example, Mike had to fight long and hard to get the DWP to concede that it had to release the figures of the number of people with disabilities, who had died after being found fit for work. The Department did so only exceedingly grudgingly, and the Information Commissioner at many points seemed very willing to accede to the government’s wishes, rather than get them to release the information. Privacy and civil liberties groups have also expressed alarm at the way the government watchdogs, which are supposed to protect us from the massive expansion of the surveillance state and the intrusive acquisition of personal data by the state, have done no such thing, or have made only the flimsiest of protests.
It’s a good idea, but I’m pessimistic about how it would work out. Even if Cameron appointed one in the first place. And I doubt he would. I think the home at the centre of the abuse scandal is privately run. Cameron definitely does not want anyone to take any action that might impugn the mighty efficacy of private enterprise. It’s why, after all, Nikki Morgan, the education minister, refused to answer Charlie Stayt’s question about how many privately run academies have had to be taken back into state management. The last thing Cameron and his crony capitalists want is another report stating that private enterprise doesn’t necessarily mean quality care, and the expansion of the powers of the state. The Tories are, after all, the party of Thatcher, and that’s what she hated the most. The frontiers of the state have to be rolled back, and who cares if the poor and the disabled are abused and victimised.
Mike over at Vox Political also has a very interesting piece about Boris Johnson’s decision to join the ‘Out’ campaign. Mike points out that until a couple of weeks ago, BoJo appeared to be in favour of Britain remaining in Europe. He was certainly in favour of Turkey joining it. Now apparently he’s decided to put all that behind him. Mike writes
Soon after Boris Johnson declared that he would campaign for the UK to leave the European Union, we were all reminded that he had campaigned for Turkey to become a member, so he was already guilty of double-standards (why want them in, and us out?) but more was to follow.
We have since learned that Mr Johnson has been hoping an ‘Out’ vote might lead to further renegotiation with the other EU countries, leading to a settlement for the UK that would make him happier.
(Or – as most of us surmised – he thought joining the ‘Out’ brigade might endear him to Tory backbenchers, or at least enough of them to ease him into Number 10 after Cameron slings his hook.)
This has earned Britain’s own tousle-haired buffoon (I wonder – are he and Donald Trump clones from the same genetic laboratory?) a swift rejoinder from Dave Cameron, who has told him that it’s going to be a straight case of Britain either being in Europe or leaving. There is no plan for renegotiation.
This debacle shows BoJo for what he is: a demagogue. If he genuinely wishes that a vote to leave Europe would result in a second referendum, and further negotiations to revise the conditions of Britain’s membership so that we remain in, then he’s simply supporting the ‘Out’ campaign as a kind of political utilitarianism. He’s really in favour of membership, and always has been, but he hopes he can use it to frighten the EU into granting concessions. It’s a dangerous game to play. The danger is that by that time, the EU could be so sick and tired of us, that they can’t be bothered to indulge us, and will just simply say, ‘Well, be like that. Go away then!’
And I think Mike’s right. This is all about trying to enhance BoJo’s standing within the party, as the ‘man of the people’, and the populist candidate against Cameron. It really does look like he’s angling for backbench Tory support. In a Classical simile that Boris should appreciate, he’s rather like the Greek philosopher Carneades. Carneades went on an embassy to Rome. There he decided to give a talk on ‘virtue’. In the morning he argued for it, and in the afternoon, he argued against it. It was part of the attitude of the Sceptic school that knowledge could never be absolute and information was always provisional. And Carneades was also a bit of a wiseacre, who liked to show off how clever he was by arguing contradictory positions. Boris is basically doing the same thing here. It’s nasty, and shows that one thing Boris is not and will never be, is a statesman of the mould of Solon or Pericles.
Ancient Greece is rightly venerated as the place where western democracy began. However, Daniel E. Fleming, in a book published in 2004, suggested that the origins of western democracy may lie even further back and to the east, in ancient Mesopotamia, now modern Iraq. In his book Democracy’s Ancient Ancestors, Fleming examined 3,000 letters from the archives of the ancient city of Mari, finding in them evidence for collective leadership and early democratic ideas and vocabulary in the city’s myths and literary traditions.
I haven’t read the book, but I think I can see where Fleming is coming from. The cities of the Babylonian Empire were ruled by three different layers of government. There was the governor, appointed by the emperor; the city’s local ruler, the mayor; and the karim, or chamber of commerce. This last could be the popular assembly of a limited kind that provided the proto-democratic element in the Babylonian political system.
The Babylonians were also rather like us, in that they also expected their rulers to act in their interests, and had a cynical contempt for them when they didn’t. There’s one Babylonian story about a citizen, who gives the mayor a golden cup, expecting a suitable favour in return. When he doesn’t get it, the citizen arranges a series of four incidents, in which the mayor has the living daylights beaten out of him in consequence. Okay, so it isn’t democracy so much as a bribe, but it does show that there were limits placed on the actions of their rulers, and the citizenry considered it their right to mete out appropriate justice when their rulers didn’t govern on their behalf.
Aside from this, since Edward Said’s Orientalism, there has been a move by some historians to challenge the simplistic notion of a free, democratic West versus a despotic East. Said traced this idea back to Herodotus’ The Histories, and the Father of History’s account of the Persian War as a battle between Greek democracy and Persian absolute monarchy. Sasan Samiei, for example, in his book Ancient Persia in Western History: Hellenism and the Representation of the Achaemenid Empire , wrote a measured attack on this view, in particular examining and contrasting the works of Goethe and Gibbon.
Said’s Orientalism was an attempt to challenge what he viewed as Western imperialist attitudes towards Arabs and their cultures, attitudes, which justified American and European imperialism and domination. The same attitudes have been seen as influencing Frank Miller’s 300, about the Spartan victory over the Persians at Marathon. Clearly histories like Samiei’s are important as they challenge the assumptions about the Near East and the Arab and Iranian worlds, which see them as a terrible ‘Other’ implacably hostile to the West and democracy, and which partly justify Huntingdon’s theory of renewed ‘culture wars’ between the democratic, free West, and a despotic, Muslim East.
And I wondered if Fleming’s book also didn’t provide another key to explaining the destruction of the priceless Assyrian artefacts by Isis a few weeks. They weren’t just trying to destroy the remains of a civilisation they considered to be pre-Islamic and therefore idolatrous. They were trying to destroy the reminders that Iraq had a history and culture going back thousands of years, in which democracy, rather than the rule of force, may have played a part. This last might provide a point a rapprochement between the West and Iraqi Islam. ISIS despise the West, and would like to provoke us into further attacking Iraq and its people further, in order to create more chaos. This would, they hope, further cut the rug from under the moderates and radicalise more of the people against us. Smashing those artefacts was part of that process, in the hope it would incense the West, as well as destroy the ancient, and possibly democratic legacy, of that ancient civilisation.
Mike over at Vox Political has published a lot on his blog over the past few days, which I definitely want to reblog. One of the pieces of news he tackled was the accusation by UKIP’s Fuehrer, Farage, and Guido Fawkes, that a female labour candidate had demanded the deportation of Myleene Klass. Klass had joined Griff Rhys Jones and other members of rich and selfish in complaining about Labour’s proposed Mansion Tax. The Labour lady had replied by suggesting that if Klass didn’t like it, she could simply emigrate.
This in itself shouldn’t be controversial, as in the past a number of other rich celebs have threatened to emigrate if Labour got in and raised taxes. These have included Phil Collins, and, I think, Paul Daniels. However, Farage and Fawkes seized on it, and started shouting that as Klass was the daughter of an Austrian father and Filipino mother, the Labour politico had demanded her deportation.
Not true. As Mike points out, emigration is voluntary. Furthermore, the Labour lady had made absolutely no mention of Klass’ immigrant background. She was demanding she consider emigration as rich woman, who obviously didn’t like a particular Labour policy. Her Britishness wasn’t in question, as she would have joined others like herself, like Collins. The only people shouting about deportation were Farage and Fawkes, and in their cases it looks highly hypocritical.
The ‘I’ the other day covered a story in which both Farage and his Conservative opponents were accused of using the language of the BNP. In the election campaign for Rochester and Strood, Farage had suggested that EU immigrants be limited by a fixed term of residence in Britain. They would then be forced to leave after the term had expired.
Farage and the Introduction of Fixed Terms of Residence for Immigrants
You can tell Farage had an expensive, public school education, as this is essentially the metic system from ancient Greece, dressed up for a return in 21st century Britain. In ancient Greece, foreign merchants and tradesmen could reside in the various Greek city states for a period of seven years. After the seven years were over, these resident foreigners – metics – would have to return to their home countries. Classics have always been one of the staples of the public school curriculum, and it shows that, whatever Farage claims to the contrary, his outlook is still very much one of the privileged upper classes. He is definitely not standing with your average British worker.
Tories: Only BNP Represent White Working Class
The Tories also managed to get themselves mixed up in this controversy when one of them stated that the only party that stood for the White working class were the BNP. Well, that must explain why they go around beating up trade unionists, Socialists, Communists and activists for women’s rights, as well as Blacks, Asians, Liberals and anyone who looks at them funny. Guido Fawkes, although a Tory, is no exception to this. He’s very much a man of the very hard Right, and so to hear him shouting that Labour is demanding the deportation of foreigners is hypocritical, to say the least.
Farage and Fawkes Hypocrites on Deportation
The whole accusation directed against the Labour lady actually strikes me as a piece of deliberate misdirection and obfuscation by Farage and Fawkes in order to draw attention away from the fact that UKIP and the Tories really are demanding the expulsion of foreigners.
And in the case of UKIP, they don’t just want to drag us back to the Victorian period, but all the way back to ancient Greece in the fifth century BC. They don’t get more reactionary than that.
Here’s another one for the Kippers. I used to save newspaper clipping on items of particular interest, such as space, archaeology and general weirdness, to send in to the Fortean Times. Rummaging through them this morning, I found this little gem from the Daily Mail, Saturday, 26th August 2000.
Where the Hull have we landed, pharaoh?
Egyptian were shipwrecked off the east coast of Britain some 2,700 years ago and settled in Hull, it was claimed yesterday.
Three wooden boats found in mud on the banks of the Humber in 1937 – thought at first to be Viking- are now said to date from around 700 BC and be identical to ones which once navigated the Nile. Egyptologist Lorraine Evans says her findings will revolutionise views about our ancestors. ‘The simple fact that many peoples of Britain are going about their daily business unaware of their Egyptian heritage is astounding,’ she added.
I can remember talking to a friend of mine about the possibility of ancient contact between Britain and the Land of the Nile, following some of the very bonkers stuff published in the 19th century. One of the century’s great eccentrics decided that ancient Israel was really Great Britain, because obviously only the British were truly great enough to be the descendants of the ancient Israelites. He also believed that Scotland was ancient Greece, and that many of Britain’s place-names were actually derived from ancient Egyptian. Robin Hood’s Hill in Bristol, for example, was really Ra-benu, a reference to the rising sun. It is indeed, completely mad, absolutely wrong, but strangely fascinating.
My friend replied that he’d been talking to a scientist friend, who told him that a set of genetic tests had been done in Birmingham to see if the genetic information taken would allow them to trace the people’s origins. Of course, Birmingham now has a highly diverse population, including people from all over the world. He remarked that apart from people of more recent African and Asian origin, they found evidence of ancient Egyptian heritage in the genes of the traditional population, who had been there for centuries. I think the genetic evidence suggested that this heritage goes way back to the Iron Age.
Which means, if I interpret that correctly, that a proportion of White Brummies are descended from travellers from ancient Egypt.
So there have been African immigrants to Britain from a very long time ago.
Which is something the Kippers can discuss when debating leaving Europe and putting up even more restrictions on immigration.
Shoes from ancient Greece. From Giovanni Caselli, History of Everyday Things (Hemel Hempstead: Beehive Books 1993)
Nick “Colthurnus” Clegg?
I found the saying, ‘He wears the sandals of Theramenes’, and its explanation in the 1981 edition of Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. It said that this was
Said of a Trimmer, an opportunist. Theramenes (put to death c. 404 B.C.) was one of the Athenian oligarchy, and was nicknamed Cothurnus (i.e. a sandal or boot which might be worn on either foot), because no dependence could be put on him. He “blew hot and col with the same breath.”
Which just about describes Clegg, the man, who broke all his election promises to climb into a coalition with the Tories, and is now frantically trying to convince the electorate that the Lib Dems are still a party of principles who can be depended upon to restrain the excesses of whichever party with which they will form another coalition. There is absolutely no evidence they have actually done this, and indeed have appeared only too eager to support the massively illiberal legislation passed by the Conservatives destroying the health service, state education, what’s left of the welfare state and setting up secret courts from which the accused is barred and may not know the charges against him. For security reasons, of course.
Or it could equally describe Dave Cameron, who spent his period in opposition trying to make the Tories appear slightly left of New Labour by engaging in community activism. His mentor, Philip Blond, published Red Tory, which tried to embrace 19th century working class radicalism and the progressive legislation passed by Conservative reformers like Richard Oastler, as well as name-checking the great anarchist Kropotkin. Now in power, Cameron has turned his back on all that, and has firmly embraced the usual Tory policies of putting the boot into the working class by privatising everything he can get his hand, cutting welfare benefits and forcing the unemployed to work for free for the Tories’ corporate paymasters.
And like Theramenes, Clegg and Cameron belong to the aristocracy, and so thoroughly represent oligarchic rule against any kind of democracy.
