Blackburn 3 Newcastle 0: For God's sake

Full marks to the True Faith sight for an editorial that offers the correct analysis, and the appropriately despairing and vitriolic tone, in respect of Saturday's dreadful Championship-beckoning defeat, and the comments before and after the game from Joe Kinnear:

'Until now Kinnear has been tolerated by supporters - but if this is going to be a permanent arrangement then the future is postponed… Joe - do yourself a favour, bank the loot you’ve already had off Ashley and go back to pruning the roses.'
'[Kinnear says], 'Our biggest problem is a lack of strength in depth. Why wasn't it addressed by the previous two managers? I am carrying the can for it.' No Joe, the last two managers operated wholly under Ashley and were not given funds to buy the players required. Had [Keegan] been given modest funds you would still be down the f**king bowls club… You do realise why you ended up with the job in the first place, don’t you? It was because no-one decent would touch it with a f**king bargepole and you have made a t**t of yourself sticking up for Ashley, proving your lack of credibility. [Keegan] wasn’t perfect but he worked for Newcastle United whereas you work for Mike Ashley. And that is the nub.'

Social mobility: a 'national crusade'

This blog naturally takes an interest in the Government's new proposals aimed at increasing social mobility in the UK, and in Gordon Brown's assertion that the cause of improving people's life chances ought to be a "national crusade". Fair do's, but be careful you match your deed to your word, bold Crusader...

As we know, and the FT neatly summarises it, ‘The UK has particular issues with a lack of access to some of its elites, and it is poor at helping the poor to escape entrenched poverty.’ The Conservatives still like to see themselves as the Party of Opportunity, and Labour liked the sound of that title well enough to pinch it from them. So I trust there won’t be any political argument about the principle that people with talents and ambitions but impoverished means ought to be assisted by the state toward the achievements of which they are capable – achievements in fields where the better-off get a significant headstart. Since our particular estate in life was not ordained by God, there ought to be periodic and vigorous human adjustment of the apparent order of things. ‘Some people will always be dealt tough hands’ is how the FT puts it. ‘They must be helped to play their cards as well as possible.’

On the other hand, I firmly endorse Will Self’s sentiment that ‘in order that poorer but more able kids should be able to succeed it's important that richer and thicker ones should be encouraged to fail.’ I would modify that only to say that a goodly number of the Thick Rich will fail quite naturally, if permitted to, and they could then be usefully advised (as, periodically, are the less academically gifted children of the proletariat) on the worth and dignity of labour and apprenticeship, as opposed to the more frivolous career path upon which Marlborough and Oxford would have set them had they been more deserving of it.

So far, so worthy. I can see, though, that the Government’s plans to formally outlaw ‘class discrimination’ are a pointless gift to the Daily Mail (as is the sadly enduring career of the terrible Harriet Harman, a common-coin hypocrite and as big a walking joke as ever held high office in the Labour Party and Government.)
That said, Cameron’s Tories have been trying to take ownership of the issues of poverty alleviation and social mobility, despite the natural scepticism of their harder-headed supporters, such as the Mail. I have been impressed by the shadow Work and Pensions secretary Chris Grayling, a seemingly reasonable and thoughtful man who speaks well on the subject of ‘appalling worklessness’ and how we’ve allowed failed estates to become ‘separate worlds.’ I think he’s on the right track, but I’m less convinced when he starts pushing the party line about 'family breakdown' (appalling marriagelessness?) being such a vital factor in all this. And when he says ‘This is all about Gordon Brown fighting class wars and internal Labour political manoeuvring’, he’s merely being trivial. For better or worse, Brown and Labour are genuinely vexed by 'all this'.

A measure of Brown's intent? Well, Alan Milburn is back... As Brown’s 'social mobility czar', no less. To Milburn's credit he’s sounding serious, as he tends to, about the hidden barriers obstructing ambitious children from poorer backgrounds. As the council estate-raised son of a single mum from Tow Law (etc etc), this is a personal matter for Milburn, but he does the standard key-note speech on the issue pretty well.
Just the other day I was asked, not the first time – and on this occasion by a scholarly researcher from the North East, who’d read Crusaders very closely – whether the novel’s Dr Martin Pallister MP was ‘really meant to be’ Milburn? He isn’t, though the fictional Pallister has the typical mindset of the modernizing, northern ex-lefty-turned-Blairite Labour MP – a type of which Milburn is a glaring example.
Per the Crusaders affinities, though, I had to laugh in reading the self-proclaimed sand-dancer Kevin Maguire going after Milburn in the Mirror for what he gets paid in consultancies – ‘raking in the cash’, indeed, from Pepsi, Lloyds Pharmacy, ‘investors profiting from NHS privatisation’, and his own firm, the magnificently named AM Strategy. Late on in Crusaders Martin Pallister gets a similar roasting to his face from a local journalist in the course of a public debate in Newcastle:

‘I’ve a question for you, Martin, I’m wanting to know if there’s a price on every word comes out of your mouth. I’ve been looking into this man, see. Do you know even half what this honourable gentleman gets up to?’
Todd was brandishing a wad of paper, A4 pages in scarlet, waving them before him.
‘Take a sheet and pass it on there. Have a look. Some of it’s Register of Interests – not all, mind. No, he’s not doing badly for an opposition man. Consultant to TronTech Computer Systems. Where are they from, eh? Crooksville, Ohio, how about that? Twenty-five grand a year he gets for that… Now, what do you suppose TronTech get for their money? You think they won’t come knocking if
he’s ever in office? ‘Computer in every classroom’, indeed. I’ll bet they’ve a
fancy for a nice fat contract in Crooksville.’
‘Then you see he gets ten grand off Hart-McGrain oil, you know that Mr Salter, don’t you? Another ten off Hook Millard lobbyists in London. And – oh yeah – his researcher’s a lad on secondment from Hook Millard and all. How’s that work? Well, you might want to look at who he speaks up for, when he bothers to speak – all his early day motions, whose interests concern him... Aye, I tell you, they all want a piece of this man. They’re buying shares in him.’

I’ve tended to imagine myself tough on Milburn and the causes of Milburn, but I should confess that this Times article of his about Newcastle regeneration seemed to me an unusually articulate and felt contribution to the debate – from a politician, at any rate.

Northern Lights Film Festival 2008: affable discussions of horrendous subjects

The Northern Lights Film Festival have posted some nice photos from this year's bash up onto a Facebook page, and already these bring back some funny memories - most particularly of the slightly surreal and riotous final night at the Baltic when the 'Big Pitch' talent competition was decided, and a substantive cash prize awarded to some suitably delirious young talent, followed by the compulsory elbow-raising beer 'n' wine frenzy at the bar next door.
Rewind about 4 or 5 hours and you get the tranquil scene here pictured: myself chairing a discussion on low-budget horror filmmaking in the Digital Lounge of the Tyneside Cinema; to the left of frame, the director Steven Sheil and his producer Lisa (they of the much-lauded Mum and Dad); to the right, the short filmmaker David Pope (and by that I mean a director of - very fine -short films, and not someone who's no taller than, say, Tom Cruise.)
Of course, the real horror of this scene was only to unfold a few minutes after I stepped off the platform and got on the phone, to learn that effing Stoke City had got their last-minute equaliser at Saint James's (see passim.) I won't bloody be forgetting that either...

'Vaz "very surprised" that Prince thinks "Sooty" a term of endearment'

Can't really improve on the manner (above) in which Politicshome.com chose to bullet-point the comments of Keith Vaz, MP and Home Affairs Select Committee Chairman, on the topic of the Windsor lad and what he likes to call his duskier 'friends' (who are of course at liberty to tell the Prince to f*ck off - I mean, what could it possibly cost them...?)
This 'friend' is Cirencester Polo Club member and 'millionaire property developer' Kolin Dhillon. Apparently Sooty has been his 'affectionate nickname' for assorted royals and polo associates for 'at least 15 years'. I can't improve on the rest of what is online at the Evening Standard, so here are the gems:
- Mr Dillon 'is said to be close to other members of the royal family who also refer to him by the name.'
- "Neighbours near Mr Dhillon's home in Coates, near Cirencester, said no one outside the polo fraternity called him 'Sooty'..."
- "A member of the CPC, who asked not to be named, said the name Sooty had been introduced to put "two fingers up" to political correctness... [This source] said of the royal family: "They are no more racists than I am"...

Newcastle 2 West Ham 2: what yuh done to yer heid, Andrew?

Cornrow hair-dos on rock stars, I can just about allow to pass. (Basically I can't think of any to mention, beyond the one sported by Axl W. Rose, and this blog uses and keenly endorses Chinese Democracy, also being of the view that Axl's long locks back in his G'n'R heyday were basically those of a big girl.)
But in general I would be on the side of those who think that cornrows look fairly peculiar on white males. On black guys - I rather think they're best carried off if you happen to be a hip-hop MC or R&B vocalist. On black footballers, well... Rio Ferdinand's used to crack me up, and I guess it must have cracked up his teammates and eventually old Rio too. (David James's imitation-Rio was just James doing what he does best, i.e. worst.)
And Newcastle United's contribution to this key masculine grooming issue? I'm thinking back, and until today only Carl Cort, the makeshift 'striker' bought from Wimbledon by Bobby Robson for £7 million, sprung to mind. That was before Andrew Carroll of Bensham took to the field for today's home game against the Irons...
I am unreservedly delighted that the lad who's been banging them in for the stiffs all season has now notched his first top-flight goal, and by all accounts he put himself about for 90 minutes and proved a proper handful and salvaged a valuable point - for all that the result feels like a slight stumble back into the relegation mire, exacerbated by Stoke's point against the same Liverpool side who stuffed us over Christmas. I would love it, love it if Andy Carroll led the line with honours for Newcastle United in seasons to come.
Still, but. Sort your hair out, bonny lad. I know you think you've just sorted it but you've not. Never mind 'the stick' you'll have had off the teammates already. Listen to Alan Shearer on MOTD, who liked the barnet about as much as the direction on that header that found the side-netting when we were 1-0 in the first half...

Esquire (February 2009) now on stands: includes former junior senator from Illinois + Mickey Rourke

This would be Esquire's inauguration issue then. The inimitable Andrew O'Hagan writes about Obama therein. Elsewhere, the excellent Miranda Collinge interviews Michael Sheen. My contribution is a short consideration of The Wrestler, now in UK cinemas. The bits that are taken for pull-out quotes in these cases are usually a wager on what is the reader's likely interest. In this particular case:

"In The Wrestler’s first reel Aronofsky keeps his camera on The Ram’s shoulder, as if the film were hard-edged docu-drama. But in fact he’s just shooting his star, teasing us before revealing Rourke’s face – the complexion tandooried and tenderised, the lips like waxen fruit."

Call me hypocrite, lecteur, but I go on to say that I do wish people could stop writing about the tragic case of this actor's former handsomeness - it's a little bit unseemly - but then The Wrestler makes this impossible: the movie is just such a big untrammelled load of Rourke.

For the sake of full disclosure I should admit that back in late 1986, while Rourke was rumoured to be in Belfast researching an accent for a movie role with the help of the playwright Martin Lynch, I undertook a most unwise night of underage drinking in some unsuitable pubs he was (no doubt wrongly) rumoured to be frequenting. Why? Well, no doubt the touching hope of bumping into him and striking up an instant rapport. I lost it at the movies, indeed...
Currently one notes that Rourke is really putting himself out there for the awards season, and much is getting written about his Early Life and Later Lost Years, including an interview piece in the New York Times by Pat Jordan about which, one supposes, the subject may have mixed feelings.

Correlli Barnett and the pointless horror of raining down death from above

I haven't heard (or rather, paid much attention to) the name of Correlli Barnett since I was a sixth-former, which was back in the 1980s, at which time a high proportion of the Thatcher Cabinet appeared keen to summon Barnett as ballast for their argument that Labour's policy backwardness was entirely responsible for Britain's post-war decline, and that the Tories would not sit back and be mere managers of same.
Naturally this esteemed Fellow of Churchill, Cambridge and author of The Collapse of British Power has not been letting his sword rust in its scabbard while I was looking elsewhere. Yesterday in the Times he gave a timely and well-seasoned blast on the old horn about Israel's latest failure:

"The Israeli leadership (including Mr Barak, a soldier who ought to know better) have yet again been deluded by the seductive fallacy that air power (especially air power in today's hi-tech form) can win wars all on its own, and at no cost to those flying the bombers or directing the drones on TV from remote “PlayStations”... So the task of rescue falls to Israel's own ground troops - conducting a messy struggle with hate-fuelled guerrillas amid close-packed slums."

Worse Than Barbie

This Christmas my younger sister-in-law made me a rather inspired present of the 'Hillary Nutcracker' (pictured), which offers a decent likeness of La Clinton as well as some funny copy on the box ('What'd You Expect -- A Teddy Bear?').

So far, so amusing. Here's the problem: my daughter has now started playing with the toy Hillary, talking to it ('I like your necklace') and - horrors! - kissing it!

I am starting to consider making a necklace of my own, out of garlic, as protection against this clearly evil charm. A stake to the heart would be the next grave step. But I fear it will be to no avail...

RTK review of The Glass Room (Mawer) in today's Financial Times

To be found here. Looking through it as it appears online, I realise that one extra sentence was excised for length from the proofed version that I checked a couple of weeks ago. For my own completist's sake, the sentence in question ran: "Somewhat akin to Swann’s lament over Odette, Viktor rues that the sum of his passion should be expended on ‘a half-educated, part-time tart.’" But then we all feel that at times, don't we?

The Observer's literary map of Britain: Includes me! Part 2

These were the handful of things that struck me on reading Kate Kellaway's very interesting piece:

1. KK describes the general perception of the "Hampstead novel" as “a middle-class morality novel - probably involving adultery and shallow-masquerading-as-deep.” Yes, that was my prejudice too. The thing is, a fair bit of my forthcoming second novel is set in Hampstead. Will I get away with saying it's an in-joke?
2. KK writes, “(A)lthough British novelists now spread their nets more widely, there is still a paucity of state-of-the-nation novelists, writers able to move freely across the map and get an aerial view. Hanif Kureishi puts it like this: "Dickens had a sense of the whole society, from prisoner to home secretary. No writer has that now." I recognise the condition Hanif K is lamenting but I don't agree with the general prognosis. It may be that fewer writers have Dickens' ambitions and/or interests, and that fewer readers want to be bothered with big Dickensian novels, so affecting the supply of same. But any good writer has what Norman Mailer called 'the power to inhabit men's minds', and women's minds too. I don't for one minute rate myself up in the big league writing-wise, but I know that, were I so inclined, I would have the power to get into Jacqui Smith's head, or Karen Matthews', say, without too much fuss.
3. KK asserts that P.D. James has the best policy on the liberties a novelist must take with place, per this prefacing quote from Devices and Desires: "This story is set on an imaginary headland on the north-east coast of Norfolk. Lovers of this remote and fascinating part of East Anglia will place it between Cromer and Great Yarmouth but they must not expect to recognise its topography nor to find Larksoken nuclear power station, Lydsett village or Larksoken Mill. Other names are genuine, but this is merely the novelist's cunning device to add authenticity to fictitious characters and events." Yes, I agree entirely, as KK knows. I remember her enthusiasm when I quoted this very same passage to her on the telephone. And the 'Author's Note' at the front of Crusaders is a homage to the wisdom in these matters of Baroness James of Holland Park.
4. KK writes, “(T)here are hardly any novelists living in NW3 any more - the place is indecently expensive. In that sense, Crouch End – where mum’s lit flourishes and where many novelists now live - might be the place to watch." This, like #1 above, makes me feel uneasy, albeit for a slightly different reason...

Shay Given: too much for the keeper to handle

Given's agent has presented Seamus's feelings to the media in unusually and sharply eloquent fashion: "Shay is very despondent following the very poor performance of the team against Liverpool last weekend. It was the lowest point of his football career and a performance that he would not wish to be repeated. When he signed a new five-year contract in 2006 it was on the basis that the club would challenge for major honours, but on the present evidence all that he can see ahead, with the turmoil on and off the pitch, is a battle for survival."

Given is one of those great players who came to Tyneside and picked up the Geordie disease, God bless him, which is why he's stuck through bad times to put himself in spitting distance of an appearance record without a medal to his name. As Michael Walker of the Independent comments, Given "regards himself as a naturalised Geordie and his children have been born in Newcastle." Well, in this matter I endorse and second the comments of NUFC.com: "Like the departure of Peter Beardsley to Liverpool in 1987, we would struggle to blame Given if he left. It certainly wouldn't be for the money and any anger felt would be aimed at the club, rather than the individual."

"Good evening Mr Waldheim / And Pontiff, how are you?"

"... You have so much in common / in the things you do." Apologies to Lou Reed, but this interesting number from the New York album has been running through my head ever since that old Hitler Youth alumnus Joseph Ratzinger, who now gets to call himself Pope Benedict XVI, made his touching pre-Christmas pronouncement about the human race dying out because of homosexuality and 'gender theory', and the need to preserve 'God's creation' just as zealously as we protect (or talk about protecting) the rainforests.

Clearly, obviously, there are no homosexual people whatsoever in the Roman Catholic Church, closeted or repressed or otherwise. But other gay Christians have gamely engaged with Ratzinger on his own toxic terms, arguing (from the Bible? You tell me...) that people in this world with homosexual inclinations are also part of 'God's creation'. That all seems a bit too polite to me, but whatever: I do believe you should let people go to Hell in their own sweet way, even if they condemn themselves so out of their very own mouths.

To speak of one such, after Ratzinger's verbal excretion BBC News 24 gave airtime to one of his UK apologists, Joanna Bogle - I say 'apologist', but she appeared very proud of herself and her faith and of God's vicar in the Vatican, while also clearly feeling herself the member of a brave and persecuted minority of staunch moralists out there. So the BBC's blonde female newsreader got quite an earful from Bogle, as well as being patronised royally (and inexplicably) over her grasp on the provenance of birds and bees. Hey, let all voices be heard and debated in this world, but people who believe the stars are God's daisy chain should be very careful about patronising anybody. That such belief should also lead one into the conviction that the sole purpose (and attendant worth) of human sexuality is vested entirely in the making of babies is a shocking ignorance too; and an equally great big shame.

The Observer's literary map of Britain: Includes me!

Kate Kellaway filed this very interesting piece on the contemporary English novel and its vexed relation to place and 'region' in the Observer last Sunday. As I recall, I talked to Kate on the phone for this very purpose about six months ago, so it's nice to see the finished piece finally appear, especially since it's so packed with good discursive meat. More generally I'm also glad of the consideration, of course, and that my efforts should be considered in such distinguished literary company; and, just as last week, I appreciate the Observer's continued support of Crusaders (and it brings particular amusement since their main book critic had one of his deeply characteristic hissy fits about the novel when it first appeared back in January 2008.)
It's looking like bedtime now, but I hope to write a bit more in respect of the various issues raised in the Kellaway piece tomorrow. But these are the quotes concerning me and my stuff:
"At a south London all-blokes bookclub, [Blake Morrison's] South of the River was read with territorial interest. "Would they have read a book called 'North of the River'?" Morrison wonders. It is his belief that people feel a "strange gratitude", that they are "validated" when they are put on the map through fiction. Richard T Kelly, author of Crusaders, an epic first novel set in Newcastle, has had a similar reaction from readers who have felt energised by "a long and detailed book about their locality and recent history".
Crusaders is set in the 1990s and describes the changing face of north-east England - a time of urban regeneration. Newcastle was natural terrain for Kelly because he grew up in the region but also because he feels there is "something epic, magisterial about the North-East in general and Newcastle in particular". It is "a love letter to the North-East", he says, reflecting that he is glad to have had a positive response because "love letters are often returned to sender". Kelly is also quick to say that he would be "hanged from a tree" if he tried to pose as the sole Newcastle novelist - mentioning Julia Darling, Andrea Badenoch, Jonathan Tulloch, David Almond.
Kelly makes the point that "regional literature" is often treated with "condescension" and the literary map is far too London-centric. It is hardly a new complaint. But I am not sure that he is right. Irish and Scottish voices often seem to have more clout than their southern counterparts. Think of James Kelman writing about Glasgow. Think of Roddy Doyle, or of Anne Enright's Dublin-based novel, The Gathering, which won last year's Man Booker Prize.
Yet Scottish novelist AL Kennedy, who was born in Dundee, agrees with Kelly. She implies writers outside London need to try and resist feeling marginalised..."
BTW I'm very pleased to find that Alison Kennedy agrees with me. She's the sort of person whose side you want to be on.

Crusaders blogged in style on Kauderstuff

This blog commentary on Crusaders, by an "English/cultural studies professor", has come to my attention belatedly, and is one of the most interesting and considered that I've seen. Obviously that means he hasn't said anything I'm mortally offended by...

The author is very attentive to the novel's intended marriage of 'classic realism' and 'the modern thriller', and seems not unsympathetic to it, though he echoes Sean O'Brien's TLS review in proposing that Crusaders resorts "increasingly as it goes on, to genre-fiction conventions, and excitements provide it with formal constraint (and perhaps a readership) in lieu of more experimental or literary devices."

That said, he's also very alert to a problem I've encountered in the novel's reception and the general lit-crit debate around it, namely that of "how to represent characters and a social sector with little or no connection to the literary and intellectual world that the novel and its readers belong to." In other words, to those people who thought it risible that a yob like Stevie Coulson could experience a feeling of tristesse.

The author has certainly got a handle on the novel's view of the governmental War on Poverty, a topic that just gets sadder even as the Tories make an undertaking to continue the waging of that war if returned to office. As he puts it: "The novel is especially insightful about black-market/crim capitalism and its deep connections into the economic life of poor communities. At the end, it becomes clear that neither New Labour nor the Church have the capacity to reach into communities such as this."
And I certainly wouldn't take issue with the measured but generous final analysis: "Perhaps this is not one of the great literary novels, although its dialogue is stunning and its characterization wonderfully unsentimental and finely tuned to its major argument (it's a novel which does have an argument). But then to write a great literary novel about the lives of the poor has not so far been possible in the capitalist epoch."
Fair dinkum. One point I can correct the author on, happily: he reckons it's "not available in Australian bookshops", but even as of May it ought to have been. Indeed I think it was reviewed in one Australian paper of note. But then I suppose it depends on the individual bookshop...

Michael Owen's gaff in Portugal: I suppose he's earned it...

He plays off 8, I understand, if you're interested. Golf handicap, that is. And this is his place in the Algarve, overlooking one of Portugal's prime courses. Still needs a lick and a promise to the exterior as far as I can see. Can't speak for the insides, as I refrained from shinning over the perimeter fence. But I decided to inspect the place from a distance on the day it transpired that Mr Owen wouldn't be signing his newly offered Newcastle contract. He's been at pains to say he's not a disloyal sort, and frankly I believe him: the whole issue of his loyalty to NUFC was threadbare from Day 1 when he admitted (and it was generally accepted) that he ought to have been at a different club. So we can't say we weren't warned. Any road, I hope he finishes his house one day and stays fit enough to play the occasional 18 holes, because history will certainly record that he was fettled for the greater part of his NUFC career.

Wigan 2 Newcastle 1; Newcastle 1 Liverpool 5: Happy Bloody Xmas

Sunday was the wrong day for several papers to run their 'Black and Whites United Under JFK' interview pieces; and a pretty poor one for Mike Ashley to make another of his man-of-the-people bids in taking the For Sale sign off the club. God, but when Newcastle are bad they're the worst in the league. They simply can't take the loss of Bassong and Beye as was inflicted by the Wigan game, with a measure of blame falling on the referee. Coloccini had one of his stinkers against Liverpool, and Taylor nearly succeeded in getting himself sent off for nowt - this a lad who once seemed to think the club captaincy was his by birthright. And they can't do without Martins in the forward line either - Ameobi and Carroll aren't going to do it, and Viduka seems to be wanting his bed again. A suitably rotten note on which to end an amazingly rotten NUFC yearbook.

Crusaders in the Observer's top paperbacks of 2008

I'm delighted and grateful today to see Crusaders feature among the Observer's paperback picks of 2008, with a citation taken from Robert Collins' review earlier in the year:

"Big, boisterous and brazenly old-fashioned, Kelly's debut is a sweeping Tyneside epic set in the decades leading to New Labour's accession to power. For sheer scope and rambunctiousness, it's irresistible."

Always loved that "brazenly old-fashioned": a label to be worn with honour, I feel...

Newcastle 2 Spurs 1: the joy of mid-table

My old mate Duane has been proved correct, then - it only takes a couple of wins... Fatalistic Mags of my acquaintance had money on Jermaine Jenas inflicting a last-minute points-stealer on us today, a la old boys Bramble and Faye in weeks gone by. But wouldn't you know with that Lady Luck? It was Damian Duff of all people who pinched the full quota for us in injury time. Duff has been Missing in Action for pretty much as long as he's worn black-and-white, so it's nice to see him finally repaying the faith. Roll on the mighty Wigan, then - they're still ahead of us in the table, just as a reality-check.

Ten Bad Dates blogs on...

This 20-something Kiwi blogger rates Ten Bad Dates among 2008's top reads, which is nice in itself, but especially delightful for me is to appear on this list alongside a writer who was key to my formative-years discovery of reading for pleasure - and that writer's not Naomi Klein or Jon Stewart, but rather Terrance Dicks, the author of seemingly hundreds of novelisations of Doctor Who episodes, and presumably still going too...

NUFC: Cup Winners, in black and white...

NUFC.com has been running its customary top-notch advent calendar since December 1, and this year it's been devoted to classic team photos (the 'classic' not always reflecting the actual playing quality of the ensemble, you understand...)
But it's hard not to get a bit misty about the 1951 line-up pictured here: them 'uns who brought home the FA Cup with a 2-0 win over Blackpool.
Front and centre in this picture, of course, the scorer of a brace at Wembley: Jackie Milburn. At the start of his Toon career Jackie was also a part-time employee of Hazelrigg Colliery, who generally took the bus to games from Ashington having done his pit shift on Saturday morning. Eventually, I think, he got himself a motorbike; then trouble in one ear led him to quit the pit and throw in his lot with the Toon for £12 a week.
To Milburn's left is another canny goalscorer, George Robledo; the 'gangling' Tommy Walker on the far right had goals in him too. In general you look at these 11 lads and you just wouldn't mess with them, would you? Of course one could say the same of Joey Barton today; and yet the sentiment would be -how can I say it? - different.

'The Double Life of Tony Blair'

It sounds like a high-concept literary novel, doesn't it? In fact it's just the title Newsweek have stuck on this interesting interview-based report by Lisa Miller on the course in 'Faith and Globalisation' that Blair has now begun to teach at Yale. Therein Miller neatly rehearses all the contortions of Blair's public and private positions on what he believed while PM. Her best moment is the assertion that 'in a way, Blair's foundation is the culmination of his life as a double agent' - so making him sound rather like a character out of Kipling or Conrad.

Blair is certainly a character in my Crusaders, for which he also furnishes an epigraph, and he also has a 'double' in the figure of the book's young Anglican priest John Gore - though Gore resists the imputation, as in the following edgy exchanges with Labour MP Martin Pallister:

‘One thing you should know, John – he’s sincere is Tony. His faith is solid, really, it’s what he’s all about.’
Gore was pondering. ‘His wife, she’s Catholic, right?’
‘Cherie? Aye, I think so. What of it?’
‘Just, I don’t know if I recognise his particular brand. Of the faith. And I should say, I don’t know that the public care for politicians who wear that stuff on their
sleeve.’
‘Oh no, not a bit. That’s your job. And that’s what Tony says and all.’ Pallister wore his own thoughtful look. ‘You know what, you’d put me in mind of him a bit. Tony.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Don’t blow a gasket there. No, I think you’d get on, the two of you. What with the faith in common. And you’re both Durham lads, right...?

Anyhow... back to Lisa Miller's interview, Blair's main quotes are humdrum, indeed they might make jaundiced students of Labour history groan and try to amuse themselves by substituting 'The Labour Party' for the 'spiritual faith'/'faith area' bits in the following:

"We have an obligation to present spiritual faith as something that is positive and progressive and solves problems and does good, rather than something that people only read about because people are killing in the name of it."

"To me what is important is that the whole faith area gets some what I would call muscularity, and certainly strategy."

Dullsville, eh? But as usual with Blair the interesting part is trying to figure out what he actually thinks and means, (and intends to do), under the polished patter.

Portsmouth 0 Newcastle 3: We're watching MoTD II then...

'All it takes is a couple of wins', remarked Duane Hopkins, rather too nonchalantly I felt, when he and I and Samm Haillay were picking over the grim 2-2 capitulation at home to Stoke last Saturday. An inspired time, then, for The Lads to lodge the first away win of the season; and at Pompey, where the epic journey for travelling fans is usually worsened by on-the-pitch cruelties to boot.
An open game, by most accounts, and their lively strike duo could have put them clean away in the first half. Instead it was Owen and Martins who registered again, plus a late strike from young Guthrie. I slightly wish the mighty Oba's had been the one from 30 yards that thumped back off the post, rather than a tap past a floundering David James, as Oba is by nature a born scorer of smacking great goals. And Owen is clearly doing his best for us in advance of the long goodbye...
But it's all still so sticky in that league, what with the Irons getting a point at Chelsea and Sun'lun's flabbergasting result yesterday. No-one is acting like the drop is their designated lot, though as of tonight, for the first time this season, there's a couple of sides falling slightly adrift; one of them, inevitably, already came away from SJP with 3 points...

Hey! 10 Bad Dates fan spotted.

The film lists book finds itself amid some intriguing company on this reader's list. But then it was always my intention to try to tap the Jane Austen-admiring/Zoe Heller-querying demographic.
In fact I bumped into another 10 Bad Dates fan, a filmmaker, at the bar of the Vermont Hotel in Newcastle last weekend. It was 2am at the time so I may be remembering this over-fondly, but I think this chap keeps the book in his bathroom and finds it a great laugh - the book, that is - but as I say, the ales may have meant I got this wrong...

Davy Hammond 1928-2008

David Hammond passed away near the end of August. I heard so a few weeks after the event, and it's only today that I was properly put in mind to have a look about at some of the obituaries. I see the BBC ran a good obituary and a collection of tributes, and at the foot of both of those pages is a lovely little video that offers glimpses of his singing and filmmaking and a remembrance from Seamus Heaney. Another of the friends remembering him therein comments that essentially Davy was all about taking time when time otherwise moved too fast: this is why Hammond was such a great man for noticing things, seeing their value, passing that on.

I was introduced to Davy by his friend the great Matthew Evans, subsequently Lord Evans of Temple-Guiting - the kind of distinction in life about which Davy was very wry. The one occasion Davy and I spent good time together in Belfast, round 2000, we managed to drink a bottle of Irish whiskey right down to 'the heel', as he called it, and I've used that fine expression of good near-drunk bottles in honour of him even since.

Anyone can look at film or recordings of Davy Hammond and see that he was beautifully gifted and wise and a life-affirming presence in this world. He could pick up a guitar very casually and charm a packed room, but in that charm he was instructive - he was incredibly canny under the avuncular exterior, could cut to the core of things with a slight remark, which must be part of why the likes of Seamus Deane and Tom Paulin treasured his friendship - and the sharpness under the warmth didn't seem to me any kind of a ruse on his part, in fact it's a quality intrinsic to the very best of Belfastmen, as Davy Hammond was and will always be.

Esquire (January) now on stands: includes RTK on HST

Plenty good meat inside the new issue. (BTW there's also a female on the cover this month, which is always welcome, periodically.) I'm looking forward to settling down with a long piece about the so-called 'Natwest Three'. Elsewhere my own contribution is a review of the previously mentioned Hunter Thompson documentary Gonzo by Alex Gibney, which I recommend wholeheartedly. I suppose my chief feeling about it is in the following extracts:

'Gibney shows great footage of Thompson on the stump [during his run for sheriff of Pitkin County], repaying his debt of love to the ‘long fine flash’ of generational energy he’d found in the 1960s; also living out his profound conviction that if one has a serious beef with politicians then one has to get actively involved in politics...'

And yet...:

'In a way, Thompson was too pure for workaday politics. (Gary Hart dismisses him as ‘infantile’.) His drug intake too, however awe-inspiring, clearly generated stores of fear and loathing in him that he couldn’t wholly process...'

Northern Lights Film Festival 2008

Had a good laugh and a decent drink on Tyneside last Saturday, at my favourite festival in the whole wide world, where I've done a turn every year since its inception back in 2003. In the afternoon I conducted what felt like an interesting public discussion with Steven Sheil, the smart and talented director of the deeply unsettling low-budget horror film Mum and Dad, which gets an all-windows release on Boxing Day. Also on the panel, a great guy called David Pope who makes inspired horror/comedy shorts, including Gasoline Blood. In the evening at the closing do hosted in some style by the Baltic Gallery I handed over a Script Development Award, the jury of which I had been part, to a clearly outstanding young writer/director, Deola Folarin. The runner-up Simon Fellowes was also on hand, and I had the pleasure of telling Simon I own a few 'records' he made back when he recorded as Intaferon. Other good, good people it was great to see up there by the broad majestic Tyne included the Better Things team of Samm Haillay and Duane Hopkins, the playwright Fiona Evans, critic Jason Solomons, distributor Eve Gabereau, and the festival's stalwarts Patrick Collerton, Mark Dobson and Melanie Iredale. To 2009, then...

Sean Penn's 'Mountain of Snakes'

Sean Penn's reportage of visits to Venezuela and Cuba, and encounters there with Hugo Chavez and Raul Castro, was published in two parts a fortnight ago on the Huffington Post under the title 'Mountain of Snakes': here are Part 1 and Part 2. I'm rather surprised there hasn't been more media attention paid to these, though the blogosphere seems to have been buzzing at a low level. For a while I had the impression that Sean was minded to make this material into the stuff of something larger, between covers, but I'm glad they've surfaced now for our attention in any case.

Hang the DJ: some Willie on Willie action

Over on Hang the DJ's blog they just began a week of guest entries devoted to Musical Moments of 2008, with one post a day from five of the book's esteemed contributors: Peter Murphy, Richard Milward, Willy Vlautin, Laura Barton and Tom McRae. The justly celebrated Mr Vlautin is first up today, talking about Willie Nelson, dontcha know?

Newcastle United 2 Stoke City 2: living the nightmare still...

How long, o Lord, how long? As nufc.com notes quite rightly, "the Stoke fans captured the true story of the game when they sang, "2-0 and you f***ed it up.""

Richard T. Kelly's 'Lucie Gunn' - Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You...

...in my dreams. And yet there have been crazier notions, and this one at least is acquiring a certain substance. For one thing, today I made it into the industry bible Variety for the first time in relation to the fiction-writing side of my activities - in this case, an original screenplay of mine that's just been earmarked for Film Council backing, much to my delight and all-round gratitude:

"Public funding body the U.K. Film Council has unveiled 18 debut pics that will receive a total of £297,750 ($445,000) from its development fund. Pics include scribe Bola Agbaje’s bigscreen adaptation of her coming-of-age play Gone Too Far!... Other projects include Catherine Shepherd's Like a Virgin, Natasha Wood’s Rolling With Laughter, Richard Milward's Apples and Richard T. Kelly’s Lucie Gunn."

The still herewith is from Looking For Mr Goodbar (1977), a whimsical choice but not totally inapposite, given that Lucie Gunn is described in the UKFC's press notes as "an intense and seductive drama exploring the power games that men and women play in and out of the bedroom."

Here's to Lucie then. A hell of a girl.

Crusaders finds more readers at The Rotters Club

I note an interesting online write-up from a book club who (cf. Jonathan Coe) rejoice in the name of 'The Rotters Club': lately it seems the group have been mulling over both Crusaders and Engleby by Sebastian Faulks, in tandem. That's a whole lotta pages - must have been their 'state-of-the-nation' month. I gather that the readers much preferred Faulks; they thought Crusaders was 'wide in scope and ambition, but loose in having too many characters: its central one, The Reverend Gore, not having enough magnetism.' Still, I'm interested in the judicious closing remarks:

'We all agreed that it was refreshing to read a novel set elsewhere than London and would work well as a TV mini series.'

(Well, they might yet speak truer than they know.)

'It would be interesting to read the novelist's second novel to evaluate any development.'

(Said novel is still at least 18 months away from stores. But it'll mark a change of tack, for sure.)
'Harry Airborne', presumably the group's chief blogger/spokesperson, is frank and rather gracious: 'I probably would not have got past the first 100 pages of Crusaders -it reminded me of Zadie Smith’s White Teeth with its proliferation of characters and unwieldiness - but another member urged me to persevere and I am pleased I did. More JF, who advocated it, had a mastery of the text and clarified the motive of Steve Coulson’s support for the church, whilst another countered my view that the denouement was not too coincidental.'

Obviously I wouldn't have wanted to earwig every last bit of this debate, some of it would probably have stung a bit, but clearly I'd have been pleased to hear those staunch defenders of mine near the end. As I've said before, readers' groups are a great thing in our society, and I'm really pleased to have found my way onto another reading list of this kind.

Aston Martin: Hard Times

For the November issue of Esquire I interviewed the formidable and admirable James Bond producer/gatekeeper Barbara Broccoli, mainly on the fairly rich topic of marketing of and product placement within the Bond movies. Naturally we talked a fair bit about Aston Martin; that firm’s long and fruitful relations with the Bond franchise; and the special enthusiasm for Bond of its current CEO Dr Ulrich Bez, himself a keen connoisseur of speed and gadgetry. The blue-chip, look-and-dream-but-don't-touch lustre of the Aston Martin brand is what has made it such a useful partner to the Bond enterprise. ‘Aston Martin don’t have a huge advertising spend’, Broccoli told me, ‘because they sell every car they make before it’s made, people are so desperate to buy.’
It seems that last year Aston Martin sold 7,300 vehicles. This year they expect to shift 'only' 6,500. Thus today the firm announced it was cutting 300 full-time and 300 temporary jobs, around one-third of its UK staff. ‘Like other premium car brands’, said Dr Bez, ‘Aston Martin has been forced to take action to respond to the unprecedented downturn in the global economy.’ Christmas break had already been extended a fortnight, which was rather a black crow of an omen. Unite has, naturally, pointed out that this spells ‘a bleak Christmas’ for those laid-off.
Is it worse to lose one’s job right before Christmas, or first thing in the New Year? Which has the most piercing effect on one’s personal and familial morale and the management of one’s household finances? I fear a lot of us are about to be told, if not to find out very directly.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: she was right all along...

... as it turns out Barack Obama doesn't know what he was talking about on the great matter of foreign policy, and so has appointed Mrs Clinton as his Secretary of State. This irony is not entirely at the President-Elect's expense. But on the mundane personal level, sad to say, all the mental energy I (and many others?) expended in willing Mr Obama to the Democrat nomination - thus (I, or we, imagined) to break the Clintonian dynastic hold over this unprincipled shambles of a Party - was a waste, and a culpably naive one at that. I don't know who Obama thought he was fooling in welcoming his 'dear friend' HRC to the microphone today, and I hope he knew how silly and calculating he looked. The biggest problem to start considering as of now is exactly how practically ill-qualified is the self-proclaimed Superwoman of the 3AM Phonecall for the job in front of her. On a level beyond argument, in his thorough and consistent trashing of her application at Slate, Christopher Hitchens argues that 'it's difficult to see Sen. Clinton achieving confirmation unless our elected representatives are ready to ask a few questions about conflict of interest.' But then Reuters simply reports that 'all the nominees are expected to win quick confirmation by the Democratic-controlled Senate.' This the end of that, then?

The Internet Archive: a work in progress

Last week a friend introduced me to the Internet Archive, a 'digital library' which looks a bit like an inchoate history of the Web and a bit similar to a tried-and-tested paper archive in terms of its non-judgemental gathering of interesting bits of stuff that future generations might care to rummage. First and obvious thing to strike the eye last I looked - the Kennedy/Nixon debate of 1960.

Middlesbrough 0 Newcastle 0: Not the champagne stuff, then

It's another point on wor travels but clearly our generally bottom-six standard of form continues, even if tonight we sit one spot above the bottom three just on goal difference, as Sunderland took one of their more peculiar spankings at home to Bolton.
I’m glad we have Viduka back – he’ll be sluggish for a game or two, and will need his shooting boots re-heeled, but given a run of games the big man (if arsed, that is) worries defenders and gets goals. Will Kinnear have the wit to follow Keegan and play Marco, Martins and Michael in the sort of attacking triangle that skinned Spurs (away) near the end of last season? Otherwise choosing an attack duo is a bother. The traveling fans at Burra booed when Viduka came off the bench for Martins, who’d looked pacier and livelier than Owen. Oba himself was down the tunnel like a shot, which is a worry.
In other news Big Sebastien Bassong is winning big props – may he abide. But Jose Enrique would probably be on his way in January were it not for our problems on the left.

Crusaders review on Bookgeeks: New URL

Purely for the purpose of one's private web archiving.

http://www.bookgeeks.co.uk/2008/10/10/simon-as-review-crusaders-by-richard-t-kelly/

Mumbai: Patrick Cockburn's not soft on Pakistan

Looking over the early analysis of the Mumbai atrocity I might have been overly keen to hear something original, in the hope that it would prove more discerning. But in today's Independent the very reputable Patrick Cockburn weighs in to argue that the truth, banal and horrible, is that Pakistan is to blame, and that the Western powers and media are deliberately "downplaying foreign involvement. Indian allegations about "external linkages" of the terrorists is wearily reported as an unfortunate resumption of Pakistani-Indian finger pointing."

Backing Cockburn's contention, Sky continues to report that 'a number of Indian officials' place the blame on Lashkar-e-Taiba. Cockburn raises the spectre of Bush's long and forlorn courtship of Musharraf, and presumably believes the West is still trying to make an ally of a scorpion. He goes on to take issue with what we might call the Tariq Ali position of a few days ago: "… supposed experts now emphasise the alienation of Indian Muslims and suggesting that the origin of the terrorist assault on Mumbai is home grown, the fruit of the radicalisation of Indian Muslims by systematic discrimination against them by the Indian state."
He concludes: "…It is self-defeating hypocrisy for the West to lecture the Indian government now about not over-reacting and not automatically blaming the Pakistani government or some part of its security apparatus for Mumbai… It may be that the monster the ISI created is no long under its control, but it is ultimately responsible for what has happened."

I wonder if Cockburn thinks there is any negotiating with Pakistan on these matters - by India or Western powers? He suggests a big headache is on its way for President Obama. But we already know from the campaign how Obama feels about Pakistan's terror-by-proxy, don't we?

Crusaders noted in the Independent's choice of 2008 fiction

The Independent was very good to my debut novel on more than one occasion in 2008, and literary editor Boyd Tonkin's generous mention in the paper's year-end round-up gives me a spot in the midst of more distinguished company:

"In Crusaders (Faber, £8.99), Richard T Kelly used Newcastle politics on the eve of the New Labour landslide as the action and ideas-packed stage for a chronicle of change."

Mumbai: another day for the jackals

The ever more resonant image of India as a 21st century superpower has also had its attendant shadows and ghosts: such as the off-putting strangeness of India's systems of class, caste and religion, and the grim disparities of wealth so evident in Mumbai (which provide the premise and backdrop to the new hit movie Slumdog Millionaire.) Moreover, BBC Newsnight reported tonight that India has been taking its share of the pain of the global economic crisis – the stock market 50% down on the year, the rupee down 20%, £13 billion worth of investment pulled out - even before yesterday’s atrocity, and the loathsome CCTV pictures from Mumbai of those ghouls in sweatshirts and jeans, their backpacks heaving with grenades and spare magazines for the AK-47, stalking the softest of soft targets in hotels and train stations.
If, as they liked to say in the 1970s, 'political terror' is a form of 'communication', what are these ratbags trying to tell us? The rumoured hunting down of British and American passport-holders proposes one horrible interpretation – that these were Islamist jackals, unleashed from Pakistan or Kashmir or recruited by al-Qaeda, taking their glorious stand against the glaring evils of modernity and pluralist poly-ethnic democracy.
Tariq Ali, characteristically, and in Counterpunch, has countered the rush to this judgement: ‘The Lashkar-e-Taiba, not usually shy of claiming its hits, has strongly denied any involvement with the Mumbai attacks.’ Ali also sets out a list of grievances among Indian Muslims – ‘the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in shining Gujarat… supported by the Chief Minister of the State and the local state apparatuses’ and ‘the continuing sore of Kashmir.’ In short, Ali is warning India to get ready for the national angst of learning that these were homegrown murdering scum.
Shuja Nawaz draws a similar conclusion in the Huffington Post: ‘Chances are that this is a homegrown outfit’, and that they are "communicating" on behalf of ‘the Muslims of India, who despite being close to 150 million strong have a disproportionately tiny share of India's burgeoning wealth.’ But the real message Nawaz believes is being sent out is one designed to throttle some promising political progress, by the arousal of hatred: ‘This incident may spell danger for India-Pakistan relations at a time when a much-needed thaw seems to be emerging… Just one day before the attack, at a meeting in Islamabad of the Home Secretaries of India and Pakistan, an agreement was reached on a wide range of measures aimed at combating terrorism.’
Here's to that spirit and those measures, then, and let's be having them.

Recession: Hitting You Where You Live

The excellent nufc.com today reports that Newcastle will be passing on the imminent reduction in the VAT rate to supporters buying match tickets. Cheapest adult admission now £29 - alright, it's not back to what your Da used to pay, but it's summat. Meanwhile, my bittersweet experience of buying the Guns n' Roses album at Woolies on Monday, reported at extravagant length below, has got a bit more bitter, with Woolworths today entering administration - presumably the end for 100s of stores and 1000s of jobs. My local store is 50 yards away, has been a huge boon for me and my family, and I'm really sad about what I fear will be its fate.

Chinese Democracy: one more for the old record collection, then

I went into a record shop today and bought a newly released record: a treat I used to give myself about three or four times a week back in my adolescence, and which I now do roughly once a year. To be strictly accurate, I went into Woolworth's (still there, at time of writing...) and bought a compact disc - that increasingly forlorn and discredited format that even in 1987 was being slated as 'the rich man's eight-track tape.'

Given this was my once-a-year musical treat, and the 'record' in question a much-anticipated collection by a bestselling artist, I was rather hoping to pluck a gleaming shrink-wrapped CD from some conspicuous cardboard tower right at front of store, then join a lively queue at the counter while the instore stereo blared out the opening track... But, no, I had to really search to find a display copy of Chinese Democracy in the humdrum racks of the CD section, a long way behind the top sellers from Pink and Dido, and the new one from the girl who won Strictly Come Dancing last year. Still, the 50-ish lady at the counter gave me a friendly smile: 'Guns and Roses', she murmured uncomprehendingly as she went to exchange my dummy case for the real goods.

Funnily enough, if I'd been listening to the Today programme this morning (though frankly I'd rather give myself an Axl-esque tattoo with a razor blade) I could have heard a discussion of the merits of said record by two 'rock critics' (scroll down) - no doubt some light sandwich filler between keen anticipation of the PBR (see entries passim).

Instead, when the time permitted, I had a look round the web and found quite a few droll and touching testimonies from American rock writers/fans who had wistful experiences much like my own Woolies moment at branches of the US retailer Best Buy, where Chinese Democracy went on sale exclusively on Sunday. Best Buy doesn't go in for 'midnight madness', so no excited queues there either... I've lost track of the funniest bit of writing I read in that vein, but this MTV report captures the general mood.

It should be said that Chuck Klosterman's review for The Onion has done the hard thinking for all of us oldsters on the preceding issue: "Chinese Democracy is (pretty much) the last Old Media album... the last album that will be marketed as a collection of autonomous-but-connected songs, the last album that will be absorbed as a static manifestation of who the band supposedly is, and the last album that will matter more as a physical object than as an Internet sound file. This is the end of that."

How many more trips to Woolies for this old stager then? In the meantime, I like my new record a great deal and look forward to that all-important second play. Today I think the track I liked best was 'Better'.

Pre-Budget Report: Mark the Sequel

How do you like that fine old Tory campaigning poster (left) c. 1929?

Meanwhile, curious... Looking around the news sites this evening I learn that the BBC's online 'live text' coverage of the PBR was punctuated by citations of assorted bloggers, and that at 15:26 they edited together (rather sloppily) a chunk from my earlier post of today and stuck it up, amid comments from MPs and more regular/zealous political bloggers.
It's curious, too, to see the way this BBC coverage has since been combed by blogosphere invigilators, conspicuously Conservative (and calling their soul their own, one hopes) - one of whom I take to be the Mike Rouse who added a comment to that earlier post of mine, asserting that Cameron's 'bashing' in the polls was actually no such thing. It just goes to show that Cameron's Tories really boss the web these days when it comes to its coverage of politics.

I daresay it also goes to show why I'm not to be counted as a regular/zealous political blogger in the modern-day manner: namely, I don't belong to any party and I don't look at polls every day. I understand the latest from ICM has the Tories back up to 11 points in front? Over the last week I saw other polls had them variously in front by 3 or 5. But back at the start of October, weren't there Tory leads of 19 or 20?

Yeah, so I think I'll stand by my story - Cameron's lead has, on the whole, taken a bit of a bashing in the last eight weeks, so disturbing his composure somewhat, and hastened the striking of a few postures that he surely wouldn't have struck if matters had kept proceeding effortlessly in his favour post-Conference.

Meanwhile, the FT's sad verdict on the day's Big Question: "The route back to financial sustainability was unconvincing – both as individual measures and taken as a whole."

The FT also offers some succour for all those Tory watchmen who fear the slightest misunderstanding of their Party's no-doubt coherent, principled and undyingly popular (cf. ICM) stand in opposition to that shower of Scots taxers-and-spenders in government: "It is clear that the current strangeness in British politics of Labour proposing tax cuts while the Tories oppose them will be short-lived. The battle lines for the next election will again see Labour accused of increasing taxes to pay for its profligacy, despite the restraint implied in yesterday’s figures, while the Conservatives will face charges of slashing public services."

There you go then - business as usual. Now I'm just going to write a quick something about Guns n' Roses, which - with a bit of luck - might even provoke some Heavy Metal blogger/master of blogs out there to stick up a Comment in rebuttal, insisting that the best track on the album is actually 'Shackler's Revenge'...

Hey Hey, it’s Pre-Budget Report Day!

I have a distinctive recollection of what I felt, sitting in the big auditorium at last month’s Tory Conference, as George Osborne made that indigestive ‘grave’ face of his and asserted that Cameron’s (and his) Tory Party was committed to the principle of ‘sound money.’ I was thinking this was a very old-fashioned tune for a moderniser to be singing, but that presumably its cadences would delight the Tory faithful, and also play well on the news during a week when money, like many other allegedly solid objects, looked to be melting into air.
This week that tune is sounding creakier still, and yet at the same time no more ancient than the regime of John Major, when any weakness in sterling was held to be a mortal sin and a national disgrace. Today the present weakness of sterling is generally reckoned to be a necessary evil, per the Bank of England’s swingeing rate cuts. A weak pound offers a road to salvation. The Tories as a party seem to find this proposition terminally indigestible.
That Conference week, of course, was the last encouraging one (to date) that the Tories have enjoyed this Autumn, and even that was a rather nervy and rain-soaked affair that got pushed off the front pages by other Events. Today, incredibly, finds Brown and Darling riding a (shaky, treacherous) wave of momentum. ‘It is all very odd’, says today’s FT leader. ‘Here is a Labour government wanting to cut taxes, and a Conservative opposition braying nay… The government is taking a gamble but, on the face of it, it looks like the Tory gambit is riskier.’
I don’t believe Cameron believed any of this before his poll lead took a bashing… but it seems he’s now prepared to argue only for ‘fully funded’ tax cuts. Who can afford to wait around for that day that never comes? Meanwhile the Darling/Brown prescription seems to be a short, sharp fiscal stimulus to boost consumption (a cut in VAT, more income tax ‘allowance’ for the lower paid.) The sceptics will naturally ask what provisions this newly whizkid-like PM and Chancellor are making for our pathway back to fiscal prudence. As the Sun and many others are warning today, we the people are going to pay for all of this, fairly soon too. It’s all a bit too dramatic, really; a good job that it’s only our lives and livelihoods that are at risk here.

Paddy Considine: Winshill's Finest

Effin' top-of-the-range man, that Paddy Considine. I really, really enjoyed the onstage interview I did with him at the Encounters Festival in Bristol on Friday night - enjoyed it so much, in fact, that I rather messed up the running time of the evening by letting the conversation gan on a bit too long in-between the copious clips. But I don't think anybody really minded: you can get a drink in Bristol until quite late, after all.
Perhaps my only real infringement was to suggest to the audience near the end that, in light of the late finish, we needn't bother to look at a prepared clip of Paddy's work in Hot Fuzz... Well, they shouted that suggestion right down, so up went the clip and they laughed like gurgling drains all the way through it, followed by a huge ovation. There's a lesson for me, then: Never underestimate the size of the Pegg/Frost/Wright cult.
Paddy's own cult, of which I suppose I'm a keen member now, is pretty considerable too - lots of very young mad-keen people in the audience, all wanting autographs and arm-round-the-shoulder photos at the end, which is great, and Paddy was extremely gracious on that score. He was already up in the pantheon for me, having taken the time over dinner to say that he'd read my book on Alan Clarke a couple of times. That was exactly the purpose it was intended for.

Chelsea 0 Newcastle 0: Cakes all round!

The Telegraph subs are rather looking at matters through blue goggles to be titling their match report "Newcastle United cause Chelsea to lose two points with spoiling tactics", but then 'Paddy' Barclay's actual write-up is an even-handed affair that probably sums up what Toon fans will have taken from the game by way of encouragement. I can't agree with Barclay that "Newcastle’s 10th point in eight matches" constitutes grounds to say that "the threat of relegation, though still present, has receded." Stoke and Bolton won yesterday, Fulham drew with Liverpool. So, a nice and welcome point for NUFC then, but sadly worth no more than the one taken at home against Wigan, and it'll be fast forgotten should we get turned over at the Burra next weekend.

But this is what I like, as noted by Barclay: "What a player (Jose) Bosingwa is; with (Habib) Beye on the other side, it was arguable that we were watching the top two right-backs in the country. Beye’s display was described as ‘’magnificent’’ by Kinnear, who also lauded the centre-backs Sebastien Bassong (Taylor’s replacement) and Fabricio Coloccini."

Could this be the makings of a proper solid NUFC back-four? I've also liked Jose Enrique on the left, at times... though some say he's not got the grit for England's first division. But Bassong is looking pretty good, and Coloccini's really good games make you forget his occasional lapses. As for the man known as 'Whitley' Beye, it was my dream that he would boss it for the Toon as he used to do for Marseilles, and maybe now the hour hath come.

Penn biog sighted/cited in San Francisco

A short piece on Sean in relation to Milk appeared in the San Fran Chronicle this weekend, by one Steven Winn, and it made nice reference to my authorised biography of SJP, the US publication of which passed away like breath off a razor-blade back in 2005. "I guess if there's any responsibility that anybody in film or any of the arts has," Penn told Kelly, "it's being aware of the times you live in and making things that address them, whether you're making a statement or just shining a light on it. Or questioning it for yourself." I did always rather hope that the book would serve as a database for journalists looking to profile Sean without the usual cliches and hearsays and inconsistencies - though inevitably a lot of 'entertainment journalists' would rather persist with that mouldy old stuff than to try getting at the truth.
Steven Winn also quotes the following: "Sean has no limitations as an actor," Jack Nicholson once said of his friend and colleague (they worked together on the 2001 film "The Pledge"). "I always say, 'Really good actors, if the time came, they could play their own grandmother.' And Sean's one of those."" Were I a pedantic sort of a sod I would point out that in fact Nicholson said that to me, and it's just one of many such jewels of insight contained in Sean Penn: His Life and Times, blah blah, etc...