All publicity for this man is good publicity, and even better if you can play the victim card :
'You know why
I have nomination high?
Stormy Daniels'
With apologies to Etta James.
..........
Would you feel more confident in trusting one of the blue tick Twitterati because they have paid for their tick? Me neither.
.........
Name-dropping. Traditionally the name of a person. Drop the name and it enhances your prestige. Modern name-dropping is mention of anything that enhances your status for those whom you want to influence.
I'll give you an example. In a witty article concerning the site of the Battle of Hastings, Giles Coren writes: '...I have been suffering from PTSD about the Norman Conquest since studying it for Common Entrance in 1981.' For the uninitiated, Common Entrance exams are taken by independent school pupils (not state school oiks) at age 13. Entrance at age 13 also assumes a prep school education, where you are 'prepped' to pass Common Entrance. The worthy Giles could have changed his sentence to 'studying it at school'. The 'Common Entrance' reinforces his elite status. But we are human....
...........
...and I do modern name-dropping all the time. Here we go:
To the Everyman, Belsize Park, for Verdi's 'Falstaff', live from the Met. A rare occasion where we lowered the average age of the audience. The venue benefits from limited steps. So, from a mid-row seat, there were crutches to the right of us, crutches to the left of us, and an assault course to get out. Returning to my seat, (and adapting TS Eliot) it was 'In the aisle the women come and go/Talking of acid reflux'.
At the risk of heavy-handedness, there is:
- I go to the Everyman, a cut above Cineworld (bracket also The Curzon)
- I like opera
- I am smart enough to spot that you can see brilliant opera without paying Covent Garden prices
- I know about the Met
- I have read Eliot (The Love Song of Alfred J Prufrock)
- Oh, and I am still relatively fit and do not walk with artificial aids.
Time to stop the overthinking and hand-wringing over doing this. Just perhaps to suggest that many of us employ these cultural markers, whether in writing or in conversation?
.........
In a spontaneous reaction to the BBC shambles over Gary Lineker, I tried out Times Radio...for 20 minutes. The presenter was a Times journalist and he seemed to be interviewing entirely... other Times journalists. And there are adverts - I had forgotten this. Soon back to the soothing embrace of the Today Programme.
.........
It is ironic that while the Government is planning the use of barges to accommodate asylum seekers, the BBC is airing Great Expectations, where in the first episode the convicts Magwich and Compeyson were housed in a hulk ship off of Gravesend. That dastardly anti-Tory broadcasting institution!
.........
Oh Gove, smoothly apologising for how social housing tenants were treated earlier in the 2000s, but with a catch. It was a standard Johnson trick to apologise for anything negative happening 'on his watch', as long as there was no personal sanction on him. Gove apologised for funding decisions made by the Coalition Government (drag in the LibDems), and by 'previous Governments' (Labour in power back to 1997 and blaming the Tories beyond that too remote). What is gobsmacking is that politicians believe they can get away with lines like those trotted out by Govey.
.........
An example of mindfulness is apparently: 'Fully notice experiences as you walk'. Does this include the experience of noticing (or not noticing) someone else walking along the pavement towards you as you are engrossed on your phone?
.........
Would it be legitimate for a journalist to ask a Junior Doctors Union Leader whether he is an admirer of Jeremy Corbyn?
.........
Also would it be legitimate to suggest that the reason that the DUP have not yet formally rejected the Windsor Framework is because they were entreated to delay the announcement until at least after Uncle Joe had moseyed off home?
.........
Absurdity. The Manager of my local Sainsbury's Local is great, always buzzing around and helping customers, leading by example. A few weeks ago he explained the problems of sourcing tomatoes, but this week a new discussion headed down a bizarre path.
I was standing by the Taramasalata and Hummus section. Tara has been in short supply over recent weeks and there was none on the shelf at that moment. Our man passed by. I asked what was the background to the problem. He responded that it was a shortage of tomatoes.
I think I had spoken clearly. I momentarily lost it, and was almost dashing outside to check the ingredients on my phone, mumbling 'Cod's roe, surely cod's roe'. But our man was intent on the full explanation, and reassuring me that all should be fine by May. Is this the Manager's standard response on any stock issues? 'Toilet rolls seem low". 'Ah, that'll be the shortage of tomatoes'.
.........
Incidentally, another name-dropping story. Journalist Robert Crampton, deputising for our Giles, writes proudly that he has not watched Succession. He stigmatises watching the series as the prerogative of the metropolitan elite. Then drops in elitely that he did watch an episode '...prior to interviewing the star [Brian Cox] on another subject'. 'I see you', as Kendall Roy might have said.
.........
I often don't agree with right-wing commentator Lionel Shriver, but I admire her directness, and ability to cut through to the heart of an issue. The liberal position on stopping small boat immigration is to establish more safe, legal immigration routes and to put resource into speeding up the processing of asylum applications.
Ok so far. But how many potentially successful applications for asylum might that leave after stripping out claims from economic migrants. Shriver's thesis is lots, and critically so much lots that the British public would not accept it.
Thus the logic from this tactic is that the last thing the Government wants to do is to create more safe, legal asylum routes. Rwanda; barges; holding compounds in disused military sites - anything to make the asylum seeking process a misery. We don't want them, we don't want them, we don't want them, thinks the Government. And thinks that (other than for Nimby factor) these tactics play well to its voter base.
Not an attractive analysis for some, but perhaps better to come out with it rather than pussyfooting around with faux suggestions that policy is driven by compassion for migrants.
Also, yes, the drawbridge factor. We have Patel (Indian parents, immigrants to former British colony Uganda, immigrants to UK 1960). We have Braverman (parents immigrants to UK in 1960s from Mauritius and Kenya respectively).
And forget such luminaries. My parents-in-law arrived from Southern Italy post WW2 and way before the inception of what has become today's EU. God forbid, they were economic migrants seeking a better life. How disgraceful. My mother-in-law became a nanny; my father-in-law worked 12 hour days in West End restaurants, rising to become a sous-chef in one of the top places. They hated debt, and paid off their mortgage within ten years.
But autres temps, autres moeurs, as the drawbridge chains clank to a closed position.
.........
The Raab Report needs consideration overnight before PM makes a decision? What nonsense! Johnson would have cleared him within 10 minutes.
.........
I was amused by news of a City law firm offering perks for staff who come up with innovative ideas for developing the business. Amused and impressed (so what follows should not be taken as a slur). Italics indicate what might be the sub-text for lawyers in the more hard-driving firm:
- Paris mini-breaks (but we may call you to get off that Eurostar and come straight back)
- Sky-diving experience (parachute to be provided if you have hit your chargeable hour targets)
.........
Raab resigns. I am drawn to Adam Tolley's report. There may be an article on it.
.........
There used to be an organisational warning over people who would recruit senior staff below them on the criterion of the recruit being not as good as the recruiter. I have recently seen this reflected in Rowse's law (after historian A L Rowse), that without first-rate people to pull in the right direction, second-raters will always appoint third-raters and fourth-raters will appoint etc.... ie expanding mediocrity.
.........
One understands that the University of California, Santa Cruz has a dedicated (and presumably exclusive) LGBTQ&A floor in its Justice House. I am mystified about the value of this beyond perceived personal safety. Surely it only accentuates the 'otherness', as against the wish to be be distinct in society but part of society. Anyway, how does one get access to the floor? I start thinking about airport executive lounges, but halt myself immediately as this analogy might be considered both trivialising and distasteful.
.........
Absurdity and hilarity. At lunch in a restaurant with some thirty-somethings, it was sharing plates time, which I like. One option was a smaller pizza, expressed as a 10 inch pizza rather than in centimetres. How big is 10 inches ? The assembled tried to work it out, with hand positioning.
Then one person dissolved into giggly laughter...
The conversation moved on.
.........
The author is a writer, speaker, historian, occasional tour guide, and former Managing Partner of a City law firm.