+Watching the David Dimbleby series 'What's the Monarchy For' it became clear towards the end that the answer, at least explicitly would not be forthcoming. Maybe it was intended that way, because implicitly the answer was simply 'themselves.' I don't know if David already has any gongs, but he certainly won't be getting any more. I do have another answer to the question he posed, which in the light of the renaming of the Kennedy Centre in Washington DC the Kennedy-Trump Centre we with our royals don't have to worry too much about important public buildings here being named after politicians (at least living ones). What would the Royal Albert-Starmer Hall sound like?

+Here below in a world exclusive is my seasonal greetings card just for you:

​

When Good King Charles last looked out,
on the Feast of Harry,
The snow lay round about,
deep and crisp and Meghany;
Brightly shone the moon that night,
tho' the frost was cruel,
When a poor man came in sight,
gath'ring winter allowances f’fuel.
 
 "Hither, and stand by me,
if thou know'st it Sir Starmer,
Yonder peasant who is he?
Where and what his dwelling?"
"My Liege, he lives a good league hence,
underneath the maisonettes;
Right against the CCTV,
Where he pays Saint Rachel’s debts."
 
 "Bring me flesh, and bring me wine,
bring me pigs trotters hither:
Thou and I shall see him starve,
when we linger and dither."
Keir and monarch, forth they went,
forth they went together;
Through the DHSS’s wild lament
and the bitter weather.
 
 Sire, the night is darker now,
and the wind blows stronger;
Fails my heart, I know not how;
For a new coat to a peer I’ll gladly kowtow."
"Mark my footsteps, good my Keir;
Tread thou in them boldly:
Thou shalt find the winter's rage
Freeze thy blood less coldly."
 
 In the King’s' steps Sir Keir trod,
where the snow lay frozen
But bugger all was left as he plod
in this path less well chosen.
Therefore, Christian them/they, be sure,
wealth or rank possessing,
Ye who now will blame the poor,
shall surely find a tax blessing.

I have just returned from my annual trip to the Netherlands, which for me has become more about the Hague than Amsterdam (for one thing the Hague’s hotels are cheaper). I have always found Holland to be a very civilised place—all those cycle lanes, politeness and ample culture for all tastes and not forgetting that nearly everybody speaks English. So how is it, I wondered whilst imbibing the culture has such a civilised, enlightened place turned to the political hard–right in recent years?
 
Anyone visiting the country’s museums and galleries will be confronted by things about their history they may not be all that keen on, chiefly the history of colonialisation and slavery. When everybody was imbued with the spirit of the Old Masters they probably weren’t thinking about slave masters and the brutal sequesters of others’ property. Now it’s impossible to ignore the fact that the ‘Golden Age’ was also an age of misery, albeit not for the rich merchants and bankers of Amsterdam whose fine canalside houses and Old Master portraits we now admire so much.
 
It may not be the case that the rightwing political trendsetters pay much attention to captions in galleries, but in a more general sense I think what is happening, not just in Holland, is a large scale reaction against a more honest cultural/historical appraisal of what it is that a nation is. Added to this awakening of course is the payback of migration. When once it was OK for colonial troops to traverse the world on a thieving and genocidal crusade, the descendants of the victims are now ‘invading’ us! Horror!
 
It makes for a disquieting experience. Visiting the Maritime Museum in Amsterdam I was particularly keen to step on board the Amsterdam, a large masted ship originally dating from the time of the Dutch East India Company. It turned out this wasn’t the original (which sank off the English coast) but a replica made in 1985, part funded by the city council as a job training project. Now hand-wringing captions everywhere on board ask whether it was right to spend a fortune on such a project, as if the history of the original ship was a long lost (or more appropriately) buried secret.
 
It’s like a long sleep has been rudely and irrevocably interrupted. Wouldn’t it be better to let sleeping dogs lie? What next—reparations? No chance of that. The West still wants the interest paid on the debt it has foisted on the developing world. And never mind addressing the social injustices arising from climate change. It’s all too much to handle so has an easy answer: Stuff the Others, Send Them Back Where They Came From! (and continue exploiting them)

Here's a couple of quotations:

'Trump, who absolutely did not tolerate collegiality in leadership and in work, acted not though persuasion, but by imposing his concepts and demanding absolute submission to his opinion. Trump originated the concept "enemy of the people". This term automatically made it unnecessary that the ideological errors of a man be proven. It made possible the use of the cruellest repression, against anyone who in any way disagreed with Trump, against those who were only suspected of hostile intent, against those who had bad reputations. On the whole, the only proof of guilt actually used was the "confession" of the accused himself. "Confessions" were acquired through physical pressures. Innocent individuals - who in the past had defended the party line - were victims. Mass arrests and deportations of many thousands of people, execution without trial and without normal investigation created conditions of insecurity, fear and even desperation.'
 
Yes, where's a Krushchev today when you need him? As you will have read, I have made some small amendments to a paragraph taken from Comrade Nikita's speech denouncing Stalin at the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in 1956. Here's another (untouched) extract:
 
 'Comrades! The cult of the individual acquired such monstrous size chiefly because Stalin himself supported the glorification of his own person. The edition of his short biography, which was published in 1948, is an expression of the most dissolute flattery, approved and edited by Stalin personally. He marked the very places where he thought that the praise of his services was insufficient. Here are some examples characterizing Stalin's activity, added in Stalin's own hand, "The guiding force of the party and the state was comrade Stalin". Thus writes Stalin himself! Then he adds "Although he performed his tasks as leader of the people with consummate skill, Stalin never allowed his work to be marred by the slightest hint of vanity, conceit or self-adulation." Where and when could a leader so praise himself?'
 
Well Nikita, now we know the answer! Comrade Trump! When I wonder will there be an equivalent moment in the history of Trump? Must we too wait upon his death before someone from his own party has the courage to slay the monster?

It seems, according to the Daily Star, reporting the words of a former Russian Deputy Prime Minister who is a ‘mouthpiece’ for Putin that there are 23 UK towns and cities in the firing line when WWIII starts. Thankfully there’s only one target in Yorkshire which is the Forgemasters plant in Sheffield. Phew, what a relief, although bad luck Sheffield!  Meanwhile, Mark Rutte, NATO’s Secretary General is telling us that we will have to engage in war just like our grandparents and great grandparents did. I suspect there’s going to be a rush on Dad’s Army DVD box sets unless the Ruskies haven’t snapped them all up already for training purposes. The military-industrial complex has really got its teeth into this war of words. The US Congress has just approved a $900 billion defence budget, although in Trump’s terminology this may now be called a war budget. To think that once upon a time the greatest threat to civilisation was climate change. Today’s war talk seems like a massive distraction activity. The trouble is, that doesn't solve climate change.

Things get weirder in Trumpland. According to a report on the Beeb yesterday the US government will ban the use of the typeface Calibri in its documents, possibly because Biden favoured it. This is where cultural wars go, and identity politics to boot. It’s part of a piece with e.g. Trump taking over the Kennedy Centre in Washington, and demanding that federally assisted art galleries remove certain pictures. All very Hitlerite ’degenerate art’ mode, with only one version of culture available. I’m currently reading Solomon Volkov’s excellent book Shostakovich and Stalin, which examines how the great composer survived in the dictator’s time. So far Stalin appears a little less the cultural simpleton one might assume. He knowingly—cynically—used culture as a weapon of the state, even if it meant allowing a certain small degree of dissonance to appear. He wanted Russian culture, even with its coat of socialist realism to compete with the assumed supremacy of western culture (Putin no doubt feels the same way). It should worry us deeply when political leaders start meddling in aesthetics. It’s not really the art, it’s the marketing –not a word used 80 years ago—of an insidious form of persuasion. The Left and Right in politics all resort at one time or another to these tactics, but typically the left tend to be more anarchic (I’m not referring to Stalin as ‘left’ by the way). We are entering the dawn of Trump Realism, and an art form devoid of depth, class, aesthetic richness or any appreciation of subtlety. One only needs to look at the way he has decked out the Oval Office to realise the man can’t even see the aesthetic value of gold. He is as shallow as a medallion man, with a stick-on hairy chest and a cheesy moustache (or rug). There’s so much gold, one wonders whether it’s real. But yes, it’s the real shallow him. And now typefaces are in the firing line!. Defend Calibri! Sign the petition!

I shouldn't be really, but I am still slightly amused by the vagaries and idiocies of clickbait, the stuff which populates the Microsoft search home page (other brands are available). Here are two stories which have appeared almost side by side a few minutes ago. What to wear??

Rarely do the actions of newspaper editors have a personal impact on me. Yes, the editorial stance of the Guardian over the Corbyn years of the Labour Party helped solidify my decision to cancel my subscription. That saved me around £500 a year. Now the announcement of the death of Andreas Whittam Smith, the founding editor of the Independent has reminded me of another personal consequence. In the second edition of that paper there was a double page spread detailing what goes on in the meat industry, not least what takes place in abattoirs. I have been a vegetarian ever since.

What exactly I wonder is the relationship between a government’s fiscal rectitude and its authoritarian instincts? Somebody somewhere must have written a thesis on the subject. One can see a direct link between reducing state expenditure whilst increasing the forces of repression. The question morphs into on whose behalf is the repression being wielded? I imagine Noam Chomsky has chewed on this subject a fair bit. I just take it for granted that so-called fiscal rectitude and authoritarianism go hand-in-hand. Hence, hot on the heels of Reeve’s bond market bowing budget (and they seemed to think it was OK) we have the lame Lammy, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Justice (Ha!) proposing the most significant attack on jury trials in modern history. Should we be surprised that the government of a former chief prosecutor should find this acceptable? What is happening here, and so far not receiving any attention in the media is a continuation of Starmer’s authoritarianism inside the Labour Party where members were treated disgracefully. At least Stalin had his show trials. Anyone who protests against the State’s misdemeanours had better watch out. Juries have shown the door to prosecutors pursuing the likes of Clive Ponting to climate protestors. But its seems for people like Lammy our attachment to juries is sentimental. The current proposal to abolish jury trials in more cases is what I believe is what is known as being on the ‘slippery slope.’

​+The more I read about cryptocurrency the more I am perplexed that some governments seem prepared to engage with it. It is a currency for fraudsters, scammers and money launderers as well as drug dealers and a host of other nasties. The people who love it who don’t fit into those types usually only have one ambition—to make money without contributing anything to society, still less life. It is ironic that the Trump family have fully engaged in cryptocurrency whilst Trump has begun a campaign to blow up alleged South American  drug traffickers’ boats. No judicial process is called for there, and it seems given that Trump has pardoned convicted cryptocurrency fraudsters so there’s no need for judicial approval there either. Any talk that cryptocurrencies should be recognised by the state as legitimate should be stopped immediately. That’s unlikely to happen, since legislators simply cannot move as fast as the technology develops, and of course there’s always the fear that ‘we’ll be left behind.’ Sod’em I say.
 
+An’ another fing! Who are these so-called peeple livin’ in their ivory towers at the Oxford English Dictionary who are tryin’ to tell us that ’rage bite’ is the word of the year or some such utter crap. For a start it’s two words, these peeple can’t even spell and anyway who are they to tell us anythin’ haven’t we had enough of these so-called experts tellin’ us how to live our lives and  another fing! They know what they can do or they would if they had real jobs . .