170. From Anarchy to Graffiti via J.K. and Manny.

HOME.

The frightening face of anarchy.

Anarchists used to be depicted as comic figures who wore black hats and cloaks; they were wild-eyed and bearded and they carried a bomb atop of which was a lighted fuse. How things change.

A couple of weeks back anarchy hit the streets of London and, via social network messages, rapidly spread to other cities around the country. People were killed as mobs of thieving bastards indulged in frenzied rioting and looting. Shops were destroyed, property was burned, the defenceless were robbed and, for a terrifying while, mass violence ruled. When it was all over, government mouthpieces hastened to take credit for ending it. They didn’t. The police, badly managed and equipped though they were at the start, eventually did.

Now somebody will have to work out how to stop it happening again. This is too important to be left to any politician, whatever title he or she may boast, and it must certainly not be handed to some gun toting bullshitter from America.
We have plenty of sound coppers here quite capable of formulating the right plans to deal with future outbreaks of mass theft and thuggery. Make a respected (within the force) senior officer responsible for forming a national anti-anarchy team and let him get on with the job.
All we need then is for David, Nick, Theresa, Ed, Boris and the rest of the political forefronters to shut the hell up and keep the hell out of it.
Yeah…I know…pigs might fly.

Ludicrous sentencing.

I cannot believe, either, that respect for the law was much enhanced by the judge who sentenced a couple of idiot Facebook contributors to prison for four years for inciting riot. Apparently neither of the idiots managed to persuade other idiots to turn up at their proposed kick-off sites; neither of them attacked persons or property and neither managed to convince even their Facebook friends that they were anything other than type-happy online dickheads. A fine and a hefty helping of community service would surely have done for them. Instead, with our prisons already overcrowded, the judge chose a bloody great hammer to crack two very small nuts.
Rogue care workers who bully and cheat elderly people get less. This was ludicrous sentencing.
Oh well…say no more lest the police knock at my door.
ABROAD.
Libya.
As I write this Col. Gaddafi’s rule seems to be coming to an end. Whether he will be replaced by former justice minister Mustafa Mohammed Abdul Jalil, or by some faceless opportunist lurking in the background, will probably depend on who most appeals to the CIA.

TELEVISION.

A+ list celebrities.

With the riots taking up more and more viewing time and summer holidays in full swing, television programmers have resorted to the customary diet of popular repeats bolstered by a few new series, most of them tried and tested favourites.

In the past I have somewhat churlishly questioned how much it must cost an allegedly strapped BBC to ferry rich celebrities all over the world looking up their ancestors (something the cat Shadow manages to do, daily, without leaving the rug in the living room). Now Who Do You Think You Are is back on BBC1 and the first people searching into their past were June Brown and Jo Rowling (above), two rightly famous persons and very much A+ list celebrities.

I’m still not sure whether other people’s family histories are any of my business, but both ladies were articulate, sincere and unflinching in their quests. Many of their findings were, as is often the case when one probes the past, extremely moving,
Following each of them around was an education and a joy.

BBC Proms 2011.

This year the Proms came alive for me with the discovery of the concert pianist Emanuel Ax. I bow my head in shame at the admission, because Manny Ax has apparently been a welcome performer at the Proms for thirty five years and, in my musical ignorance, this year is the first that I have come across him.

I have to thank Brahms - not my favourite composer - for the discovery. Two successive evenings last week were given over to the composer’s music: the concerts, performed by The Chamber Orchestra of Europe conducted by Bernard Haitink, included Piano Concertos No. 1 and 2, with Emanuel Ax the soloist.

What a revelation! A pianoforte genius who is a cross between the much loved Henry Sandon of the Antiques Roadshow and the late, great John Ogdon (without the goatee). I hope maestro Ax would not be offended by that description, but doubt he will ever read this, so I shall not worry too much.

I was captivated by both his mastery of the keyboard and his generosity of spirit. The orchestra clearly loved him and he them. Brahms is still not my favourite composer, but I will listen to his work with a new ear from now on.
And I’ll listen with a great big smile on my face if Emanuel Ax is playing.

The graffiti craze.

Something else that came from America and makes me smile. Recent television programmes featuring Banksy and King Robbo have put a new slant on wall scribbling - something that used to be confined to public toilets - and show that not only are the worthies who write and draw on every spare wall in the country amazingly talented, they are also fiercely competitive and dogmatically territorial.
My admiration for them is tempered by the realisation that if I was a council boss I’d detest them; employ a full time team of painters to constantly erase every sweep of their spray cans and stroke of their brushes; prosecute them mercilessly when they were caught and hope they would find themselves in front of the sort of justice that sent down those two futile Facebook comics for four years.

But I’m just an ordinary man in the street and I love their fuck you, Jack fanaticism.

READING.

Graham Hurley.

I am halfway through Mr. Hurley’s Permissible Limits and becoming more and more aware why I am not a best selling thriller writer. He is so damn good.
More next time.

AND THE BLOG.

A need for modernisation?

For some time now I have been considering a change in the presentation of  Watching…a notion that has become increasingly appealing each time it comes to the difficult (to me, anyway) task of editing and presenting a post. The blog reached 5 years of age last month, so perhaps the time is right for me to review it, or to consider creating another.

An aristocratic old parliamentarian once said something along the lines of: “No change, for whatever reason, is ever for the better,”

In complete contrast, a nice old boy I met while serving on a committee which has long since ceased to exist assured me: “The main thing I learned from a lifetime in business was that you either make changes or you die.”

Trouble is, change does not come easily to me. Most of the changes imposed by our infuriating national lords and masters, or their local pipsqueak counterparts, seem to be made for the sake of it. Seldom do they make sense. So I am wary, even when it is only the proposed modification of an old bloke’s occasional blog. I’m not in business and if it ain’t broke…
Back next month in one format or another.