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An accidental dog owner - and loving it.

20/1/2018

If you'd told me two months ago that I'd soon be the proud owner of a dog I wouldn't have believed you.

It's not that I hadn't thought about it: I thought of it often when it wasn't really feasible. Living and working in London for thirty-something years, and most of those years in a flat, it was something to put on a distant future to-do list. Now, theoretically retired and living outside London in a house with a garden, the excuses have mostly dried up. Out of curiosity I began to take the occasional look on the East Suffolk RSPCA website. I noticed that all the sweet, healthy dogs rarely stayed on the site for long, with 'Reserved' next to their name within a day or two, while others were there week in, week out. The reason some of them were difficult to place was obvious enough, fierce-looking things with behavioural issues.

There was one exception, a seven-year-old standard poodle who by all accounts was a joy to have around, though in his case the reason for the lack of interest was most likely to do with possible expense. When he arrived at the RSPCA his ears, eyes and skin had all needed special ongoing attention, and they warned the pet insurance might be difficult to arrange because of these existing issues. I made further enquiries and it transpired that these issues had stemmed mainly from neglect. He had not been groomed and his nails had not been cut for a very long time. Poodles need regular grooming. He had abscesses in his years and his eyes had been badly affected by his overgrown, matted hair. I arranged to go and see him (fatal error!) and was smitten. The staff at the RSPCA in Martlesham had worked wonders in restoring his health and good looks, though some ongoing care would be required.

Until then I had never thought of a poodle. For the first thirty or so years of my life our family had always had a dog, three in all (though not concurrently), and they were dark, macho things. I associated poodles with yappy little specimens owned by daft rich women (while I like to see myself as a writer, Barbara Cartland was not the sort I wanted to model myself on), but Cody is very much a dog's dog, albeit a very gentle and graceful one. I did some belated research and learned about the difference between standard, toy and miniature poodles, which put my received prejudices in their place. And so, after further visits to Martlesham, a home inspection and some form filling (adopting a dog these days, at least from the RSPCA, has some similarities with adopting a child, except that you have to pay for the dog) I could finally take Cody home. The American-sounding name Cody was slightly puzzling, like a character out of Bonanza or The Little House on the Prairie, but that's his name and I don't intend to confuse him by changing it. Besides, it's grown on me anyway, as has the dog.

And so he is here, dozing beside me as I write this. He has settled well, though understandably still a bit clingy. Perhaps one day I'll be able to leave a room for a few seconds without him following me. He has laid down some ground rules and takes me for a good walk at least twice a day. Sleeping arrangements could have been a problem, but a compromise was reached. He can sleep in my room but must not get onto my bed. He sticks faithfully to this and is happy on the old duvet he now sees as his own.

I was in two minds about showing the picture below, taken when Cody first arrived at the Martlesham RSPCA three months ago. I include it now as a tribute to the wonders they worked on him.

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Scandals, Myths and My Bottom

5/11/2017

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Me being oppressed, 1972

'Feminism', Sixties Style

One advantage of growing older (okay then, old) is the first-hand memory of events that younger people can only read or hear about. A good documentary, assuming there is such a thing as an unbiased one, can be very informative but to have an overall picture of an era it is also important to know the sequence of events and how they are linked to each other. Not to possess the knowledge of this linkage can allow people with agendas of their own to give a false picture of an era and how we arrived where we are now.
This has been brought home to me by the recent Westminster ‘groping’ and 'touching' allegations, not that I intend to comment specifically on those in the present fog. In recent days, however, there has been a repetition of the charge that the problem is entirely with men (from the context, heterosexual men) and their alleged sense of entitlement. ‘It’s all about men,’ one female MP asserted in a news interview. ‘They have been praised all their lives and think they can get away with anything’. Apart from speculating about what she would have said if such a broad insult had been directed at women by a male MP (I suspect he would not have lasted in post for long), I have to say that my memory of the relationship between men and women over the last fifty years does not really confirm her assertion. Could it be that her confidence that she could say such a thing without challenge has something to do with her own sense of entitlement?
Not that I have any particular interest in defending heterosexual men. As a gay man I was usually just an observer during the shenanigans between heterosexual males and females over the last fifty years (I had an oppression of my own to contend with, though I’ll save all that for another post), but I was acquainted with enough of both to remember how things developed. Yes, up to the 1960s males did often make the first move, but that was expected on both sides and a man who held back would be considered weird by many, perhaps most, women. In the Sixties (though I will add the proviso that change did not come at the same pace for everyone), the beginnings of modern feminism coincided with what was dubiously described as the sexual revolution, and initially many ‘liberated’ women were very much into ‘free love’ as it was called among other things. At music festivals, at parties, on a trip to the seaside, whatever, it was a mark of the new liberation that women were entitled to the action as much as men. Males and females snogged, fondled, touched each other’s bums, and there were few fixed rules by either party about the etiquette of it, especially not after the marijuana had kicked in.
In the 1970s I was first at university in Norwich, then in flatshares when I worked in London. I was not ‘out’ then as it would have been very difficult especially for a shy lad like me, in fact in the civil service it would have been all but impossible. Yet at university and later at office Christmas parties or with female flatmates and other acquaintances, even a couple of times at the photocopying machine, I experienced the touching and groping from women which now, apparently, is supposed to say something about the awfulness of men. After my failure to respond I think it gradually dawned that I was gay, and once or twice it may even have been an attempt to confirm the rumours. Whatever the reason, sexual liberties were most certainly not confined to one gender. It was the new era, and 'feminism', albeit interpreted in varying ways, played a part in creating that atmosphere.
It was also in the 1970s, with the advent of campus feminism, that there seemed to be something of an about-turn, though it was to be some years before the new rules passed down to the masses and to photo-copying machines. It was not yet puritanism - that came later – but it was the beginning of the road that led to the rule that not only could women be the initiators of sexual contact, however mild, in practice it was only women who could be.
By all means let’s establish new rules of conduct, but they might be better obeyed if they are agreed in a mutual way rather than as a result of the latest gender theory from a particular faction, especially when the theory is infused with a strong dose of spite and an underlying assumption that injustices and insults directed at men cannot ever be as bad as those directed at women. As we approach Armistice Day, it might be worth remembering that many of those men with a ‘sense of entitlement’ in reality had no entitlement other than to be sent to die. They did it because from their earliest years they were taught (and it was mainly women who brought up boys in their formative years) that it was a man’s role to do that, just as it was (and is) mainly his role to do the risky jobs. When the world was a more dangerous place, and when work meant a mine or a leaky fishing vessel, ‘proper boys’ were needed to carry out the task.

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Two anniversaries: Leo Abse and how intellectual integrity can be a lonely path.

22/10/2017

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This year has marked the 50th anniversary of two events often hailed as landmarks in UK social history. In July 1967 The Sexual Offences Act completed its path through Parliament and homosexual acts were decriminalised, albeit only for those over 21 (it was to be another 34 years before the age of consent was finally set at 16). The Bill had been introduced by Leo Abse (whose centenary was also this year), a longstanding campaigner who had also played a large part in the abolition of the death penalty and, among other things, reforms allowing better access to contraception. Abse, who represented a Welsh mining constituency, had to go to great lengths and do a few deals with Labour MPs sponsored by the trade unions which, at that time, were not naturally favourable to what we would now call gay rights. It pained him that as part of the compromise he was forced to accept a higher age of consent.
Then, in October of the same year, The Abortion Act was passed. This allowed for deliberately induced abortion for physical and mental reasons (very loosely defined ones in the opinion of the Bill’s opponents), provided two doctors (even ones paid by an abortion clinic), agreed. At the time David Steel, who had introduced the Bill, promised the sceptical that it would not mean abortion on demand. For much of the time since its defenders have resisted attempts to alter it precisely because it does effectively mean abortion on demand. Few watching soap operas, where ‘It’s her choice’ has become a mantra, would know that in law deliberate abortion is homicide except in defined circumstances.
Many seem to assume that those who applauded the first of these 1967 Acts would also approve of the second. There is now a set of boxes that have to be ticked on such matters, and apparently these two issues should belong in the same column. There were, however, some who broke ranks on this, not least Leo Abse himself who, along with some others on the Left, was what we would now call pro-life. Actually, I preferred it when we said pro- and anti-abortion which, while not perfect, seem more specific to the issue. ‘Pro-choice’ seems absurd when the victim has no choice in the matter (would someone who wanted rape or slavery decriminalised get away with calling themselves ‘pro-choice?’ All our choices are constrained by the rights of others). ‘Pro-life’ is very vague, including as it does some who favour the death penalty and others who can be gung-ho when it comes to war, while others believe that it would be too unfair on the mother not to allow abortion in some cases, especially where her life or health is threatened, and seek some kind of balance between the rights of the mother and the child.
But to get back to Leo Abse, why did the darling of the ‘liberal’ elite of his day blot his copy book so badly? It was not as if he kept his opposition relatively quiet. After 1967 he continued to write about the rights of the unborn child, he fearlessly spoke at universities and he led two massive anti-abortion demonstrations in London in the 1970s. As a Jew by birth and an agnostic by reason, he was at least immune from the simplistic but ubiquitous charge that he was only saying that because the Church told him to (campaigners for abortion often like to believe that all anti-abortionists are religious nuts, probably because it allows their views to be dismissed without too much thought). Still despised by one section of society for the part he played in the abolition of the death penalty and the legalisation of homosexuality, he had now made enemies of many of his erstwhile allies.
Abse simply saw himself as being a genuine socialist. Abolishing the death penalty, relieving the persecution of homosexuals and protecting children (before and after birth) were all part of the same thing, a consistent belief in the rights of all from conception onwards. It had to be from conception, as that’s when a new unique life, the product of two human beings, starts living and growing, and the only way to stop it living and growing (unless it dies a natural death) is to kill it. To Abse it has the same right to life as the rest of us, and to deny its rights is to deny our own rights. It is also an obligation to defend those who cannnot defend themselves, and to do so requires no apology. This is the secular pro-life position and it is not dependent on any religious belief. It has been reinforced in the last fifty years by DNA, which shows that the child is much more than simply a part of the mother’s body.
Leo Abse seemed to be at home with the knowledge that he stood almost alone in many ways, though he was probably hopeful that his belief in truly consistent human rights would be vindicated in the future. In his heyday he was a colourful figure, literally so on every Budget day when people looked forward to seeing what outrageous outfit he would be wearing for the occasion, in fact his arrival in the Commons often received more news coverage than that of the Chancellor. His occasional flamboyance, coupled with some of his causes, inevitably led to speculation about his sexuality but he appears to have been happily married to his first wife for forty years. Five years after her death he married again. After his retirement from the Commons in 1987, Margaret Thatcher is said to have vetoed his nomination for a peerage. It is not certain why, as she could live with the elevation of others from the opposition benches. What is not commonly known is that Thatcher’s voting record shows that she was on the opposite side from Abse on abortion (some on the Left would probably be reluctant to admit that she was their bedfellow on this). Whatever the reason, he got his revenge in a psycho-analytical biography of her.
He would probably be saddened that some gay groups (or at least their leaders) back an abortion-leaning stance, though whether that’s by conviction or the result of the prevailing faux leftism is another matter. It is ironic because we can be pretty sure that, if there had been a way to detect gayness in the womb, many gays alive today might have ceased to exist in the early months of their lives.
Leo Abse died in August 2008. Obituaries in The Guardian and some other newspapers gave good coverage of his part in abolishing the death penalty and homosexual law reform but barely mentioned his anti-abortion activities, despite the time and effort he put into them in the last twenty years of his political career.

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The strange revival of Soviet jargon in the UK.

22/7/2017

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When I was in my early to mid-teens and had been told it was my bedtime, I often spent an hour or more listening to the radio. Nothing unusual in that, but whereas most people of my age favoured Radio Luxemburg (there was little pop music on the BBC then, except on request programmes), I was more interested in the English-language broadcasts that came from Eastern Europe. I had an advantage over some of my peers in that the former family wireless (a solid 1940s Philips thing), had by then ascended to my bedroom. It had long, medium and short wave, though it was the short wave that was of most interest to me. Thus on the same wireless on which Lord Haw-Haw may once have relayed the views of his masters, I was able to listen to his successors doing much the same thing. Perhaps it was not quite the same, as the newsreaders were Russian, East German and so on, but their guests were often Communists, Trade Unionists and sometimes Labour Left comrades enjoying a ‘fraternal visit’ to one or other of the ‘socialist’ countries, whose glories they extolled as arranged.

Although I considered myself a socialist at that time (in a fair’s fair rather than a Marxist sort of way) I was largely immune to the propaganda because even at that age I knew too many people who had suffered at the hands of the Soviet Union. Our neighbours (who became close friends of my parents’) were Poles who had been among those deported to Siberia during the Nazi-Soviet Pact period, and some of my school friends’ parents had suffered the same fate. This was not a coincidence as most Catholic schools in London at that time had quite a few Polish pupils, and most of their parents had come via Siberia (Stalin had agreed to let the survivors go when he was most in need of Churchill’s assistance, though many did not survive their time there or the trek to freedom).

The propaganda from Radio Moscow and its little brothers and sisters in East Berlin, Prague, et al was predictable enough, but what fascinated me was the vocabulary used. When talking about the war, for example, the Nazis were never called Nazis, but Fascists. But the Fascists had been an Italian party which, although similar in some ways to the Nazis, had not been as ghastly: there had been no mass rounding up and deportation of Jews, for example, until the Germans occupied northern Italy. So why had Soviet propaganda given them a name which, on the face of it, was a lesser evil? I guessed that it was partly to do with the fact that Nazi was short for National Socialist, which could be seen as an uncomfortably apt description of the regimes Stalin had set up in his part of Eastern and Central Europe after World War II, complete with antisemitism. There was obviously some sort of house style established in Moscow that others had to follow, because all the ‘Socialist’ countries’ broadcasters used this terminology and, more surprising, so did some of the fraternal guests from the West. These guests, like their hosts, also used other buzz words a lot. ‘Progressive’ was very popular, as in ‘the progressive people of the world look to the Soviet Union to maintain peace in the face of the reactionary American industrial-military complex.’ And, of course, there was ‘Zionism’, the campaign against which was to see half of Poland’s remaining Jews sacked, dispossessed and expelled.

Then, almost out of the blue, one Eastern bloc country started talking normally. The news was read in a balanced way, guests spoke about the good and the bad, the merits of greater democracy and the removal of censorship was were discussed. The Prague Spring had arrived. At the time I was thrilled by the idea of this liberal socialist experiment. It only lasted a few months before the Soviets invaded to put a stop to it all, but I vividly remember the continued broadcasts from Radio Prague after the invasion, initially from a van outside the capital. What is often forgotten now is just how long it took the Soviets to reassert control. Dubcek’s more liberal regime was forced to compromise, but for a while it seemed as though the Russians might compromise too. Radio Prague could not openly criticize the Russians, but they could quote those who did. But gradually the Soviet stooges were back in place and the old language restored. We knew that when words like ‘fascist’, ‘Zionist’ and ‘progressive’ (as in people who supported the Soviet Union) returned, and again ‘fraternal delegations’ from abroad came to praise the building of socialism as defined by the Soviet Central Committee and Arthur Scargill.

Fast forward three or four years to my student days and my trips to Poland. The first was just a holiday with a friend, albeit to an unusual location in those days except for those with relatives there, but my Polish friends’ stories had made me curious. While there I was asked by someone if I could send an ‘invitation’ to someone else on a grapevine. These official ‘invitations’ (you were given a form by the embassy in London), required you to undertake to house and feed the invitees, and to make sure they returned home on the specified date. In practice they expected no such thing. They just wanted to work in England for the summer, and usually had other contacts to help with this. Some, of course, never returned, though if they had received a higher education their relatives back home or some other guarantor were obliged to reimburse the state.

In the event I sent several invitations in the coming years to the lady in question (sometimes she stayed with me, sometimes with others on her grapevine) and to others of her acquaintance, and in return I was invited to Poland, more particularly to Lodz. On my initial couple of visits I got to know some friends and neighbours of hers. She and her father broadly followed the Party line, though this may have been for show, as I was told by others that he had been a member but had fallen foul of the Party some time before. I have to be careful not to offend here, but I think it's fair to say that he was indifferent at best to the recent expulsion of the Jews, in fact the 'anti-Zionist' campaign had its origins in Lodz. The irony was that he lived in the part of the city that had been the wartime Jewish ghetto, from which more than 200,000 had been transported to their deaths less than thirty years before. Not that anyone ever mentioned it.

Others had different views, at least when I was alone with them. A friend of hers I met in town gave a totally different take on things, and the neighbours across the landing invited me in for a drink and a chat on several occasions. The father had been in Auschwitz and later Mauthausen concentration camps, and had been liberated by the Americans. We had some extremely interesting conversations and I once asked him about the use of ‘Fascist’ for Nazi and he laughed. During the German occupation, he said, everyone referred to them as Nazis when not simply calling them Germans. The ‘Fascist’ usage was a Soviet Communist thing. My experience bore that out. Throughout the Seventies and Eighties those who described the Nazis as Fascists were usually on the far left, plus a few trade union leaders. Those ‘fraternal visits’ to the ‘Socialist countries’ had obviously left them with the jargon. And as we know, Fascist is a handy catch-all word to shout at opponents. Official Polish publications did use another word for them occasionally: ‘Hitlerite’. That at least has an accurate feel about it.

And now those words so beloved in the Soviet era are back in fashion. As well as Fascist and Zionist, that old Stalinist faithful ‘progressive’ has re-emerged. ‘Progressive alliances’ had helped the Communists seize power in the post war era, and those who entered the alliance with them were soon dumped (or worse) when they had served their purpose.

The trouble with ‘progressive’ (and it's opposite 'reactionary') is that it’s shapeless, a nonsense word beloved by totalitarian regimes because it can mean whatever you want it to. Are the capitalist companies that created the internet and other modern technology progressive? I doubt if those on the Left would admit that, even while they are using the internet and their smartphones to spread their message. On the other hand, is a self-proclaimed socialist who has never actually produced anything progressive? I suspect he or she would think so. Probably the most telling use of the word was back in the late Seventies when I lived in East London. An Australian junkie whom I had very unwisely put up for three months (after he had initially asked me if I could just put him up for a night) was telling me about a trip to Sweden where, after spending all his money, he went to the Social Services who, as well as finding him a hostel for a night or two, gave him some packets of cigarettes. ‘It really is a progressive country.’ he enthused. So that was his definition of ‘progressive’: free cigarettes for junkies.

And even outside politics ‘progressive’ can mean something evil as well as good. Some cancers and other nasty medical conditions are progressive too.

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Long live different personalities - even for politicians.

23/6/2017

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One of the nastier developments in the media over the last few years has been the insidious attempt to force all politicians to have the same personality, expressing their emotions in the obligatory media-conscious way. The latest victim of this Orwellian nonsense has been Theresa May, someone with whom I have not felt a great deal of sympathy until now. Over the last few weeks she has been the subject of a thoroughly vicious and dishonest campaign largely because she has not always publicly worn her heart on her sleeve during the string of recent disasters and tragedies, even though those who have had dealings with her, not all from the same political caste, have testified that she has been deeply moved. I sympathise with her because I know where she is coming from. I have sometimes been accused of being diffident and shy myself. It’s true that my own emotions are often understated, but believe me they are there, and I don’t think they are any the less for not being on show, in fact the opposite might be the case.

One thing I have in common with Theresa May is that I am from a very ‘English’ background, had a fairly typical English education and, while my father was not a vicar like hers, I am from a churchy sort of background. While I now lean more towards agnosticism, I would be the first to admit that those early influences have left their mark on me as early influences do on everyone, regardless of their background. While humour most certainly played a part in that background, and I have fairly good relations with a diverse assortment of people, there are some things I have never learned to do convincingly and so I avoid them, as to get it wrong can simply make it look like a parody. I will laugh and joke with anyone, but I can’t really do ‘high fives’ and I can’t visualise Mrs May doing them either. Shaking hands was the way we greeted people, and it is neither superior nor inferior to any other way.

The problem with forcing a media-expected way of showing emotions onto everyone is that everything becomes a façade, and that means a person’s merit may be judged largely on their acting ability. It also means that politicians will be inclined to put photo opportunities and other shallow gestures above more practical actions. What on earth is the good of a politician (and the attendant media circus) turning up and getting in the way when the fire, police and ambulance services are trying to get on with the urgent job in hand? Better to visit the injured in hospital a little later when they are in a position to appreciate the visit. This is what Theresa May did, on advice from the security and emergency services, yet she became the butt of one of the nastiest and most irrational personal campaigns I can recall in recent years. This campaign may well rebound on those who organised it, as the political opportunism was all too obvious, and people will judge for themselves who exactly has been better at the ‘gentler, kinder politics’ Mr Corbyn somewhat ironically spoke of a little while ago.

It’s not only in politics that this showy and sometimes unconvincing way of displaying emotion has crept up on us. Although not always in front of a camera, some people, especially younger ones, are influenced by the images they have seen on TV and social media. Up until twenty or thirty years ago, for example, school students would go on a set day in July or August to collect their GCSE results (roughly 16-year-olds for those of not familiar with UK exams) and A-level results (mainly 18-19 year olds – these results being the important ones for getting into university). They would go along, look at their results, some would be happy and some sad and congratulations or commiserations would be exchanged. But then the media got hold of it and this has led to an entire personality change among older teenagers. With cameras there, a new tradition of dramatic tears, histrionic hugging and general hysteria was born. In the first few years it was probably when local TV was there to record the event, but later it somehow became the way they thought they were supposed to behave. Now with Facebook and other media this hysteria is on another level again.

Of course, it may be assumed that I’m a bitter old fart (which I am), jealous because I did not have all that touchy-feely stuff in my day. Yet although it wasn’t as often, we did have those moments. It’s just that when they came, they came because there was a reason for us, and you knew instinctively when those moments were. Doing it for a camera or when getting your exam results was not one of them (except for the most extreme fails). We just went to the pub.

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An accidental dog owner - and loving it.

Scandals, Myths and My Bottom

Two anniversaries: Leo Abse and how intellectual integrity can be a lonely path.

The strange revival of Soviet jargon in the UK.

Long live different personalities - even for politicians.

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