21 September, 2014

Of Gentlemen and Fools

Tricky Dicky - or gentleman?
In last week’s New Statesmen there was an article about Richard Nixon – the disgraced president of the USA who resigned his presidency 40 years ago this year following the Watergate exposures. The article retold the tale of Nixon’s brush with British  prime minister Harold Wilson at the start of the Nixon Presidency. In the run up to election the hot favourite to win the presidency was Hubert Humphrey  and Harold Wilson, anticipating a Humphrey victory, appointed a new ambassador to Washington  - the former Labour MP and then editor of the New Statesman, John Freeman. Freeman had, over the previous months and years written many scathing articles on Nixon which had increasingly irritated the Nixon camp – but to Wilson’s horror having just appointed Freeman and sent him off to Washington to represent British interests, Nixon, against all the odds, won the Presidency. Wilson (and Freeman) were left in an embarrassing situation with egg very much on their faces – the man they had so actively disparaged was now the most powerful man in the world. It was a diplomatic faux pas of some magnitude!

John Freeman 

In early 1969 the newly inaugurated President Nixon visited the UK and on his arrival was wined and dined at 10 Downing Street. John Freeman, was present as was Wilson – and they were clearly worried about any repercussions following the criticism and scorn they had heaped on Nixon in the run up to the election. It was a tense occasion – but Nixon rose to it. As they all sat down to dinner – senior politicians from both sides of the Atlantic, civil servants and the rest Nixon rose to his feet and lightened the mood. He tapped his glass and, smiling, said......"Some people say there’s a new Nixon, and they wonder if there’s a new Freeman. I’d like to think that’s all behind us. After all, he’s the new diplomat and I’m the new statesman”. The assembled guests roared with laughter – Nixon’s quip had taken the heat out of the situation.  His, clever use of the name of the magazine that Freeman had used to criticise him and his reference that they were all in changed circumstances so should forgive, forget and move on was both magnanimous and appreciated. Wilson  recognising that this had got him and his new ambassador off the diplomatic hook – quickly scribbled a note on the back of his menu card and had it passed to Nixon. It said “That was one of the kindest and most generous acts that  I have witnessed in a long political career. You can’t be born a lord but it is possible – and you have shown it – to be born a gentleman.”  Freeman went on to enjoy a long and distinguished career in Washington and developed a close relationship with Nixon which in the turbulent times of the cold war was of huge benefit to both nations and the world at large.
Harold Wilson

Reading the article and the comments made by Nixon and Wilson got me thinking about the idea of “a gentleman” – it all sounds a bit old fashioned and twee in this day and age and I wondered, as I read Wilson’s comment, if he had in his mind the famous aphorism of King James I who commented “As your King I can make a you a lord, but only God can make  you a gentleman”. Or, maybe, Wilson was thinking of the equally famous comment by Cardinal Newman in the nineteenth century: “It is almost the definition of a gentleman to say that he is one who never inflicts pain”. One might argue that Nixon, too, was thinking of Newman’s comment – clearly, the American president was out to build bridges and not seeking painful revenge for the earlier criticism of John Freeman. My own favourite as to the essential  of a gentleman is one proposed by Confucius: “A gentleman would be ashamed should his deeds not match his words” – and although Nixon’s later career was shrouded in dispute and dishonour just maybe a bit of Confucius was in the back of his mind when he rose to speak that night at the Downing Street dinner.

On a more flippant note, while writing this it occurs to me what I often used to say when in school before I retired. Like many schools we increasingly found ourselves providing tissues for children – instead of tissues simply being available in case of an emergency they increasingly  became free use – a box on every teacher’s desk and the children simply used them when required. This increasingly irritated me since it was costly to the school and, more importantly, I also felt we were not encouraging the children/parents to ensure that they had with them a basic piece of hygiene -  a handkerchief or packet of tissues. I had many “discussions” with the staff on this and always lost! – my grumpy riposte was always the same: “A gentleman always carries three handkerchiefs – one for himself, one for a lady and one for an emergency........!”  I never won the argument with the rest of the staff, but always felt better as, grumpily stumping out of the staff meeting, I said it!!!!!

But, to move on. Over the past few days I have read with some considerable despair of a number of other news items that cast a different slant on the world than considerations of the essential nature of a gentleman. I read the other day that the state of Texas executed Lisa Coleman – a convicted child murderer. There seems no doubt that this lady was guilty and Texas was merely following its state law in the matter. Apparently some 1400 people have been executed in the USA since 1976 but only seven states – Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, Alabama, North Carolina, Arkansas and Virginia – have imposed the death penalty on women in the past three decades. Whatever the moral, religious or legal arguments for or against the death penalty what I can’t get my head round is that it would simply appear not to work.  To use Texas as an example: Texas is by far the USA’ s “executions leader”, with 517 inmates put to death in the past 32 years. That represents 37% of the national total and yet  Texas comprises only about 8% of the US population. The state has carried out nine executions this year and has another eight scheduled between 15th  October and 18th  March. Am I missing something? Clearly, the good folk of Texas and their state government  need to start examining themselves and their society – because if they have so many people who qualify for the death sentence executing them clearly isn’t solving the problem. Either the killers or the Texan residents are just not learning the lessons of history – state imposed violence and imposing the death sentence simply doesn’t work in reducing murder. Even the briefest study of criminal history in any country in the world manifestly proves that – that the good folk of Texas and other US states seem unable to grasp that is a matter of concern. One can only assume that states like Texas who are burying their heads in the sand so far as what works and doesn't work in reducing the need for the death penalty merely wish to keep the punishment not as a deterrent - since it clearly doesn't work - but as a form of retribution and vengeance. That, it seems to me, is never a sound or morally justifiable reason for a law of any kind. It merely makes Ghandi's comment even more true: "An eye for and eye leaves the world blind" - and boy, are there a lot of blind people in that part of the world
But it doesn't work!

Similarly, on the same day I read about the latest execution I also read that school  departments across the US have taken advantage of free military surplus gear, stocking up on mine-resistant armoured vehicles, grenade launchers and scores of M16 rifles. At least 26 school districts have participated in the Pentagon’s surplus program, which is new but has become especially pertinent after police responded to protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, with teargas, armour-clad military trucks and riot gear. Federal records show schools in Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Michigan, Nevada, Texas and Utah obtained surplus military gear. At least six California districts have also  received the equipment.

Now it may well be that in the violence and killing that seems endemic in the USA these items are judged to be necessary – just as executing people is judged to be good idea in Texas – but again, it seems to me that people are just not learning from either the experience and the facts. Violence begets violence and the facts are clear, it doesn’t work. In a bizarre twist San Diego school district said it was painting its armoured vehicles white and hoping to use the Red Cross symbol on it to assuage community worries.  A spokeswoman confirmed that the vehicles had been stripped of weapon mounts and turrets and would be outfitted with medical supplies and teddy bears for use in emergencies to evacuate students and staff! As I read this something else crossed my mind......in the past week or so we have heard increasing sabre rattling by the US and the British government about what they plan in relation to the worsening middle east situation and in particular  the struggle against the ISIS terrorist organisation. The plan, such as it is, is to ramp up the military hardware and action and, where only  a few weeks ago, we were being told that there would be no military intervention this now seems to have been conveniently forgotten. We now have “a couple of thousand advisers on the ground” we are told; sadly, a trawl through the recesses and dark corners of my mind reveals that I seem to remember about fifty years ago hearing that same phrase in relation to Vietnam – “advisers” were to be available but would play no part in any military operations...........!  Well, we all know where that lead and how it all ended in tears and ignominy (at least for the Americans). And, so, I wondered hopefully, if the San Diego spokeswoman had got it right – that just, maybe, stripping out the weapons and filling these killing machines with teddy bears and good will might be the better option. It would seem to me that teddy bears and a bit of common sense in Texas, or in rioting American school districts or in Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq – and the rest – might just be more productive than violence, war and death sentences as solutions to the problems.
Every school should have one apparently!

“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent” suggested Isaac Azimov and fellow author Tolstoy said:  “All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do”. Absolutely, I hear myself saying and I can’t but say “spot on” when I read Socrates telling us from two and half millennia ago that "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it!".  Clearly, those in power in the White House, in Downing Street or in states like Texas haven’t thought about these things – they are displaying their incompetence by failing to learn from history so are repeating the errors of the past. They have a total lack of understanding of the human condition and what might prompt and sponsor violence in the first place and so cannot begin to understand how to deal with it in a positive way that will change individuals and societies. With fools in charge of the asylum the outlook for the world looks bleak indeed.

And so to the matter of fools. You might be thinking that certain parts of the world and many of those in power have a monopoly upon incompetence and stupidity. It may often seem like that but it is not so. Over the past couple of days I have come across several items that illustrate well what a foolish, Alice in Wonderland, place the whole world is becoming.  The more I look and the older I become I am minded to think that Alice’s make believe world is more and more our own: "If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?”  says Alice and the Cheshire cat’s comment seems apposite: "We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad."
"How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn’t have come here.” 

Quite – we live in foolish times!

I read this morning that in Texas (again!!!!!) the constitutional right of “Texans to photograph strangers has been upheld as an essential component of freedom of speech - even if those images should happen to be surreptitious “upskirt”pictures of women taken for the purposes of sexual gratification!........ The judges said that photographs were “inherently expressive”, like other artistic mediums such as films or books, and so the process of creating them, as well as the images themselves, was part of an American’s right to free speech because “thought is intertwined with expression”. Well that might be a legal nicety and may well sit well with the right to free speech as enshrined in the US constitution and in other human rights legislation but in the end it is the legality and reasoning of the madhouse and the fool. We live in bizarre times.

But don’t be fooled, the Texas court system doesn’t have a monopoly on stupidity (although they are working very hard on all fronts to win the world stupidity award). Also in this morning’s paper I read that Oxford and Cambridge universities – two of the most prestigious places of learning on the planet and attended only by those with very greatest minds on the planet are to introduce one or two new initiatives for the coming year.
They may be the nation's brightest and best - but they
haven't quite got their heads round basic right and wrong

Because of increased incidences of  sexual violence on university campuses students will have to attend what are called “sexual consent workshops” where they will have explained to them (presumably in  very short, easy to understand words) what they might and might not do when out on their first date or what they are or are not allowed to do with or without the permission of another. A spokeswoman for Cambridge said "We are sending out a very clear message with these workshops that sexual violence is not welcome within the university community."  Presumably her saying this implies that there are some who think it is welcome!  It is further suggested that there is a need now because "A lot of people come to university with a very, very basic sex education which stems from sheer biology." Mmmmm......so our young, indeed, the brightest and best of our young, people who have more access and opportunity to information and understanding than any previous generation in the history of the world now “come to university with very basic sex education”.....absolute rubbish! To be clear, this is not about sex education it is about basic right and wrong – which clearly our brightest and best have failed to understand or get to grips with despite the years spent in our education system, despite the privileged background from which many of them come and despite the fact that by the time they get to university they are legally classed as adults. Am I missing something?

Additionally, however, we are told, there is the problem of what is termed “the lad culture", which began in the 1990s. A survey this week suggested lad culture, sexual harassment and assault affect women right across the higher education sector. A spokesperson said the university had recently reviewed its harassment policy to make "more explicit its inclusion of all aspects of harassment, including sexual violence, assault and stalking". Another problem facing many female students at Oxford and Cambridge are, we are informed,  the drinking societies, where, they say, lad culture persists. “The Wyverns”, a notorious drinking society composed mostly of public school boys at Magdalene College, Cambridge, did, for example, cancel its annual "jelly wrestling" contest for female students following a petition of complaint; but it then  subsequently hired a bucking bronco in the shape of a penis. Then there's the "finger a fresher" challenge, and the annual mass drinking bash known as "Caesarean Sunday". "The environment in some of these drinking societies is at best sexually aggressive, at worst openly misogynistic," said a spokeswoman. Quite so – and again it is deeply worrying that many of these people will go on to positions of power and influence within our society! The lunatics will be in charge of the mad house!
Mmmmm! - is this one of the essential skills  and
qualifications to gain a place at Cambridge? It would seem so.

For the life of me I cannot understand a number of points: Firstly, we are talking here about the brightest and best in society – why do they need it all explaining to them that to stalk a woman or harass a women in any way is wrong? What is so difficult to understand? – they have often been to the greatest schools in the land (Eton and places), almost certainly in the case of the members of the Wyvern society come from the great families of the land and have had  a very privileged upbringing, and yet despite having all these brains and this background still need to be given extra instruction on basic rights and wrongs. Secondly, I ask myself, what the hell are the university authorities doing – it seems to me to be not a matter of negotiation. Clearly anyone who, having been deemed academically worthy of a place at Oxbridge should not find the harassment of women, the lad culture, bucking broncos in the shape of a penis, fingering freshers or drinking bashes reasonable pastimes – nor should they require extra classes to give them simply pointers on right and wrong. If they do then manifestly they should not be in the university. It seems to me to be non-negotiable. For the university to tolerate an “environment in some of these drinking societies is at best sexually aggressive, at worst openly misogynistic,"  is as stupid and unacceptable as court ruling in Texas about “upskirt” photographs. It is, as I say, the reasoning of the mad house.

And finally something a little lighter but also a sad reflection of our mad, mad world. Yesterday morning Pat and went to Leicester to do a bit of shopping. As we walked through the Highcross shopping centre which, since it was early in the day, was quite quiet we noticed a huge queue which, as we approached, we realised went way down the shopping mall. As we gazed at the queue we realised that it was eventually disappearing into the Apple Store. Pat quickly realised that all these people were queuing to buy the new Apple i-phone which had just been released for sale. Many of those in the queue had sleeping bags and fold up chairs – clearly they had been there a long time. I stood open mouthed partly because I could not conceive of why anyone would make such a gesture just to get a phone but mostly because as I looked and took in the fact that the queue was virtually wholly comprised of young people – teenagers and those in their early twenties – and I could not comprehend how these people could afford the £500/£600 that the new phone costs. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t begrudge them their “toy” but I guess that most of these people already have a mobile phone so this is merely to keep up with the fashion. Further, I wondered since this was a mid week morning that none of them were at work  - so were they students, unemployed, not yet old enough to work.......and if so where does the money come from? And finally, I read weekly in the paper and hear on the TV news from our pundits and politicians how hard it is for young people today – they cannot afford a mortgage or the rents of properties in some of our major cities, they cannot afford the increases in university fees and even that the young have been hit hardest by the recession and many can find no work. Well all that’s as maybe  but when I go into Nottingham to the theatre or cinema I do not see the bars and restaurants filled with middle aged or older people – I see it filled with the young, when I see youngsters going off on a gap year to the far corners of the earth I wonder where the money comes from and on Friday morning I wondered where the £600s were coming from to pay for this latest fashion must have? Apple must be laughing all the way to the bank.

When I returned home I glanced at the internet and found this article in the local Leicester newspaper, the Mercury:

"Hundreds of iPhone 6 fans queued outside Leicester's Highcross shopping centre on last night to ensure they were the first to get their hands on the new model. A line of tech-heads snaked through the shopping centre this morning, which opened at the earlier time of 6am.

Sham, who was front of the queue, was greeted by a round of applause from staff, as he entered the shop at 8am. The 19-year-old, who had been waiting since 9am yesterday morning, said: “It feels really good to finally have my hands on it. I was pleased to finally see the phone but I must admit, I was sad to see the money go.” Sham said he felt like a celebrity as he walked through the doors to buy his iPhone 6 Plus.“I plan on gloating to all of my friends and family for a little bit - I’m looking forward to showing it off. “But them I’m off to bed. “It will be the Apple Watch next - but I might pre-order that one.” Ronak had also been queuing for nearly 12 hours, with his girlfriend, Shanice  . Ronak, 20, who also brought an iPhone 6 Plus, said: “It is very exciting. The time actually passed really quickly overnight, I’d definitely do it again - the wait was worth it.” Shanice, added: “I need a bath before I even think about playing on my phone - I feel so gross. But I agree, it was worth the wait.”Jamie 19, who also joined the queue at 9am yesterday, said that “adrenalin” kept him awake throughout the night.“People might criticise us for queuing all night but to them, I’d say ‘haha, I’ve got the new iPhone and you don’t’.” Nikeal19, said: “It’s great, I can’t stop smiling. “Although, I’m ready for bed now.” Mohammed 21, was among the first 20 in the queue. He said: "It was a slightly chilly night but I do it because I love Apple. "I'm so excited to be one of the first in Leicester to get the phone."

The iPhone 6 cost new owners from £539 and the iPhone 6 Plus, from £619.99"
Yep - that was the queue we saw

Mmmmm.....all youngsters, all had the time and the money to spend and all were going back to bed – clearly there was no thought of going to work to earn the £600 required. I asked myself again where did the money come from? And I read that 20 year old Shanice wants to play on her phone and that 19 year old Jamie is so pleased he can’t stop smiling. Do I detect any sort of maturity here – sadly not – these are just overgrown babies – and rather foolish babies at that. Should I weep crocodile tears for the poverty stricken youth and their problems of today? I think not!

The old adage “A fool and his money are soon parted” was never more true that in Leicester’s shopping centre on Friday morning! Alice’s mad world is with us....and yes........Albert Einstein was indeed right: "Two things are infinite: The universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." 


No comments:

Post a Comment