"Pseudo-intellectual rehashed claptrap"

Can’t paint? Can’t draw? Meet Tate Britain’s £25,000 Turner Prize winner for 2004!

Jeremy Deller has won himself dubious immortality and a lot of money as this year’s winner of the British Art World’s most prestigious, ( some might say “infamous”), award; the Turner Prize. His prime exhibit entitled ‘History of the World 1997-2004’, was a collection of words written in felt pen as a flow chart with arrows that link ACID HOUSE with BRASS BANDS via 'Throbbing Gristle', by way of 'Castlemorton' the 'M25' and sundry other words and places. It defies serious artistic description, but the judges managed to come up with: “generosity of spirit across a succession of projects which engage with social and cultural contacts and celebrate the creativity of individuals”.

The Guardian could be expected to pontificate with appropriate pompous piffle on such an august occasion and did so on cue with Elizabeth Mahoney opining that “There is a strong sense of community in much of his art, and it's this quality which gives it a gently political edge. Rather than cold, self-regarding conceptualism, that's what we need from art just now”.

I do not often agree with Charles Saatchi, Britain's most celebrated collector of contemporary art. He recently complained however that the Turner Prize has become “pseudo-intellectual rehashed claptrap”. Spot on Charles!

Tanqueray-Gordon of Gordon’s Gin fame, (my regular tipple for half a century), has sponsored this rubbish. I’m changing to Allied Domecq’s Beefeater Gin forthwith. Join me for a "stiff G & T"!

Ernest

Remembrance Sunday

Lest we forget....


In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow
Loved and were loved, and now we die
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Lt.Col. John McCrae, (Canada). May 1915.

We remember!
Frank and Ernest

If cigarettes dont kill you, the Scottish Parliament will!

So Scotland joins the clean air league of California and Ireland with a ban on smoking in public places. Will this be the death knell for those warmly welcoming, smoked filled pubs on a Saturday carouse? Scots will now be forced, on pain of a £100 fine, to go outside into the wintry night for a puff between downing vast quantities of beer with whisky chasers.
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You can spot a bar in downtown San Diego a block away because of the knot of chatting nicotiners standing outside in the hot midday sun or balmy night air, puffing feverishly at their cigarettes in between downing their dry martinis and watching the ball game on the bar television.

The Scottish executive’s plan to force Highland addicts of the weed out of the pub onto the icy streets on a snowy night in order to indulge their craving is surely a cruel and unneccessary overkill. Why give them pneumonia when they are already going to die from lung cancer and cyrrhosis of the liver?

Ernest

Triumph? What Triumph?

It has not been a good month for the unelected EU bureaucrats of Brussels or the ‘Alice in Wonderland’ European Parliament and their vaunting aspirations for power.

The overpaid members of the Parliament , (that tower of Babel which can’t decide whether to reside in Brussels or in Strasbourg so commutes between the two at colossal expense to us, the taxpayers), threw out the entire EU Commission Directorate because they didn’t like the Christian ethics of Dr. Buttiglione, the commissioner designate for the Justice, Freedom and Security portfolio. In his interview he had infuriated the left wing and liberal MEPs by stating that, as a practising Catholic, he believed homosexuality to be a sin.

On the basis of our MEPs’ decision that Dr Buttiglione is unfit for office because of his personal attitude to moral issues, (though he was at pains to stress that he would not allow his views to impinge upon his work), no practising Christian, Jew, Muslim or Hindu should be eligible to work for the European Commission – or, by extension, represent the long-suffering citizens of EU States as an elected member of the European Parliament.

There are doubtless many who, like me, will disagree with Dr Buttiglione over the “sinfulness” of homosexuality. But, as he himself pointed out, there is a difference, (some would say a yawning gulf), between perceived morality and legality.

MEPs appear to be heading down the slippery slope toward the imposition of a politically correct orthodoxy of thought which those of us old enough to remember the book burning in Hitler's Reich would label as “fascist”.

As one disenchanted British MEP commented after this disgraceful episode, the European Parliament has shown itself to be "contemptuous of democracy, heedless of its own rules and intolerant of dissent".

In focussing upon the hapless Buttiglione, who appeared to be one of the few able commissioners designate in a motely crew, MEPs chose to blackball the wrong man for the wrong reasons, while accepting others who have apparently glaring conflicts of interest, are Communist apparatchik retreads, or manifestly incapable of mastering their brief.

This was a “triumph for Democracy” as the Liberal parliamentary leader proudly described the debacle. Triumph? What triumph?

Ernest.

Education Standards

There is so much garbage talked about education that it becomes well overdue to take issue with some of the key issues involved.

It seems clear that only an unreformed elitist living in the past could object to a democratic society making maximal use of the talents available to it, and thereby providing maximum opportunity for its citizens.

What this view does not involve is the rejection of elitism, in the sense of the celebration of excellence and of genuine talent. Too often changing words, changing labels, and changing visible standards has replaced the real objective of the promotion of genuine excellence. This has typically been done in the name of equality by allowing an implicit or worse, an explicit difference in the height of the bar to influence the actual result, and thereby the apparent level of attainment or the degree of competence actually attained.

This process, often in the name of ‘do goodism’ of one sort or another has undermined real standards, alienated the genuinely talented, and provided a public message that standards in the educational arena at all levels are about ideology and politics, rather than about genuine achievement. When a society can no longer trust the quality control mechanisms applying to educational outcomes it is in serious trouble.

It is one thing to provide opportunity for relatively disadvantaged groups or social categories. It is quite another to so shift the goal posts that results are themselves skewed to become measures of the social disadvantage rather than measures of actual and real achievement. While this involves the necessity for genuine and fair standards of achievement to be developed, this is precisely where the action must be located.

If we genuinely believe the logic of social equality and equal opportunity then we must also accept that people must have equal opportunity to succeed or to fail. Levels of performance difference are built into the very nature of irreducible reality itself. Thus failure or success is always open as an outcome possibility and is dependant on a wide range of social psychological and genetic factors well outside the possibilities of political/social engineering.

It is of course possible to argue that in the social context of disadvantage, some overcompensation is a worthwhile price to pay, in other words that there must be positive discrimination. The argument here is exactly the opposite. Rather, it is being asserted that the very idea of equality and fairness involves exactly the same ingredients as the elements for maximal utilization of available talents in the society as a whole. Genuine equality must mean equal standards, equal opportunity, and a determination to ensure equal measurement of outcomes regardless of social characteristics or background. Fairness and equality demand no more, but no less.
Frank