CONFOUND THEIR POLITICS!

Looking back over this blog, there seems to be an awful lot of political comment.

Are you politically-minded?

No, I am not. It's just that political events keep pushing their way to the front and shouting.

What are you going to do, then?

I'm giving notice that I shan't be making any more political comments for a long time. In the mean time I shall gaze with silent but fascinated horror over the edge of the snake-pit that is Iraq, while Bush pours more bucket-fulls of young American blood into the chaos. I just wonder how much longer the gullible American electorate are prepared to put up with it.

INSULT TO POOH - WHAT ON EARTH IS THIS SIMPERING THING?

Pooh forms a part of an English tradition dating back to the first half of the last century, which has given joy and comfort to generations of children. The stories are, of course, played out against an implied background of solid middle-class status, which may irritate the sociologically twitchy, but I cannot remember that I ever felt excluded from this unattainable world of nannies, and doctors who came at a call, wearing a bed-side manner and pin-stripe trousers, any more than I felt degraded by reading of the exploits of the toffs at Greyfriars.

The basic reason for this, I think, is that Pooh lived in a real world of his own, very like a child's world, in which life is often happy and contented, but where inexplicable events can sometimes impinge, frightening visions appear, and where one is often aware of incomprehension and of sad mistakes being made. Experience gradually fills in the gaps. All this is mirrored in the constantly shifting images of Pooh in a variety of moods, yet always at heart a well-worn stuffed bear, which appear in the original illustrations by E.H.Shepard. In the illustration above, for example, he is having difficulty working out which of them is in the other's house.

I find it very sad to contemplate the enfeebling of all this by the flabby hands of Disney. This plasticated fantasy-factory markets a sanitised fluffy toy, his features wreathed in an inane grin, who goes through life having lots of fun in a pinky landscape, surrounded by grotesque distortions of Piglet, Tigger, Owl, Rabbit's-friends-and-relations, and the rest. The wit of the dual relation of the narrator with the child listening and the adult reading aloud seems to be ignored. And what will a child learn from this pap? Nothing but that life ought to be a round of easy play - a lesson that is very hard to unlearn in the real world. Perhaps that is why some adolescents go about with expressions suggesting resentment at having to exist at all.

WHY WE INVADED IRAQ - VERSION 3

1] To root out weapons of mass destruction - only there weren't any. 2] To establish a bastion of democracy in the Middle East - don't make me laugh. 3] Ah, this sounds more like it - to tie up Iraq's oil production in the hands of western companies. So the truth is creeping out at last.
Blair, of course, took advantage of the powerful leverage he exerts by means of the special relationship to propose a trust to hold Iraq's oil revenues for the benefit of the country. Bush smiled benignly, and put it straight in the bin. Still, it's nice to see the facts shyly appearing.