Graeme Archer: The Naming of Cats

I’m lying in a metal box, me and about fifty other humans. The others are fast asleep: the light is dim and the air is filled with the susurration of their snoring. I am unable to share this air of somnolent unconcern, because a moment ago the ground lurched from under my bed and my stomach attempted to find its way into my mouth. I’m gripping the sides of the bed in a cold funk, composing farewell letters to everyone I care for. Is this it? Welcome to BA’s overnight flight from Philadelphia to Heathrow. Not going to dine tonight, sir? asks the nice steward, but of course in my terror I hear Not going to die tonight, sir and I’m relieved. Until we hit the next bout of turbulence.

*
Yes, I know there’s an irony in the fact that someone who spends so much of his life strapped to a board above the Atlantic should be increasingly terrified of flying, especially given that he’s a statistician, since we all know that there’s nothing safer than flying. Don’t you think the aviation industry pushes that statistic a bit too much? Like, almost hysterically? I sort of think it’s a bit like sword-swallowing. Your risk of injury from sword-swallowing is vanishingly small, because most people don’t swallow swords. Condition on the fact that you decide to repeatedly swallow swords, however, and the risk potential surely rises dramatically. Sooner or later some plane I’m in is going to fall from the sky in a ball of flame. It will be of little comfort to me that I had previously been at greater risk by taking the bus down the Hackney Road.

*
Come to think of it: the sickening lurch, engendered by dropping from a great height, with impending doom rushing upwards to meet you– not unlike the home life of our own dear Prime Minister? I keep reading of the apparently Shakespearian tragedy that is our Prime Minister: a man whose sense of ambition led him to fight for a job, a job for which the flaws in his character made him unfit to carry out. The media is full of articles like that: more in sorrow than in anger type thing.

I don’t get it, though, not quite. Macbeth, Hamlet – they were tragic because they were human. Their flaws arose from their humanity. The problems for the Clunking Fist are not a function of his humanity; rather, it is his lack of human understanding that is the problem. They arise because he is a machine – a war machine at that. Like a dalek with its gun set permanently to “exterminate”, Brown knows nothing other than fighting a total political war. His mistakes come, not because he prevaricates, not even because of his ambition: but because he cold-bloodedly destroyed, politically, anyone who could have added talent – or competence – to his cabinet, in case they rivalled him in his fight to succeed Blair. Remember the Labour conference in October? Brown’s men briefed the media that they were determined to “kill” the Conservatives.

The first run on a British bank for a century, and Brown’s reaction is to undermine the Bank of England governor through newspaper leaks. We get an ID fiasco beyond the realms of the imaginable, and Brown’s response is to blame a clerk and to attack the Conservatives for their 2005 election manifesto. It was that moment at PMQs which convinced me that Brown is, at best, psychologically dysfunctional. Only a machine could have felt it was in its tactical interests to attempt to blame David Cameron for the child benefit identity disaster. Now he seeks to end the career of Harriet Harman, rather than tell us the truth about what his campaign team knew about the illicit funding scandal.

Soon there will be insufficient useful idiots to take the bullets for Brown: who’s he going to use then? If I were (shudder) Ed Balls or Douglas Alexander, I would be lying awake at night, wondering how long I could rely on the protection of the Leader; how much would my years of devoted loyalty count for, if push comes – as it will – to shove? I doubt we’re able to begin to guess at the level of paranoia in the Bunker of the Fist.

There is tragedy attached to Gordon Brown, and it is twofold: his reforms have damaged us all, and in particular the neediest (I’m thinking of the tax credit machine); and I suppose there’s a tragedy for those on the left who believed their own hype about the towering Brown intellect which would be unleashed upon a grateful nation when their man replaced Blair. But the correct response to Gordon Brown’s malevolent premiership is not pity: it is anger. Stay angry until the wrong man is no longer Prime Minister.

*
The naming of cats is a difficult matter, as Thomas rightly told us. Ours are called Dave and Kitty (Dave is proud of his east end roots; Kitty seeks to rise above them somewhat). They’re both uber-modernisers: they have their own entries on Facebook. We’re just about to send off their insurance form to the Cats Ripoff Insurance Company, and I’m wondering about writing in their full names, since TS Eliot tells us they should each have three. Just as well I didn’t ask a classroom of infants to help me choose! Even TS Eliot, while admitting that name selection can be difficult, didn’t prophesy that it could become a matter of life or death. 

The treatment of Gillian Gibbons rouses in me a cold fury – about the obscenity of a mob demanding her execution – about the appalling report I watched on BBC World, where a reporter described the mob as “good-humoured” – about the nonsense from the Archbishop of Canterbury over the “disproportionate” nature of her punishment, as though a lesser degree of punishment was merited. What would have been good to hear from the Archbishop would have been an unequivocal defence of plurality, tolerance and the universal indivisibility of freedom of speech (and, if he wished, the role of Anglicanism in promoting these virtues). In a week when a holocaust denier and the BNP leader were the Oxford Union’s poster boys for freedom of expression, it seems all the more disgusting that a British citizen remains in a Sudanese prison, because some religious people objected to the name of her classroom teddy bear. That type of reasoning and outcome is unacceptable to an enlightened society. If I can say it, a secular liberal atheist, surely the Archbishop of Canterbury can manage it too? Else, what is Anglicanism for?

Comments

[Annabel Herriott]

Graeme, I have a book - "Islam" which goes from Medina in 622. Get any book like that, the spider's web across the mouth of the cave, illiterate Mohammed having dreams and relating them to his literate wife, the battles to increase the spread of this new religion - b y the sword, and you will understand them!

[Tony Makara]

Gordon Brown like most of the Labour leading lights is a reactive politician. He is the type that flourishes in opposition, very effective when having something to aim at, to criticize, to attack, to destroy. However the art of politics and particularly of government goes beyond destruction. It is also about creation, having ideas, replacing that which has been destroyed. That is where Labour and Gordon Brown have failed. They were effective as the great iconoclasts, tearing down the Tory power structure, but once they donned the crown themselves they found they didn't know how to rule. Gordon Brown is, in effect, a nihilist. He is a force for destruction. Search and destroy. The Dalek tag suits him perfectly.

[David Sergeant]

"Stay angry until this man is no longer Prime Minister" Exactly.

We seem to have a media, particularly the BBC, which seems unable to separate right and wrong from bullying spin. New Labour did well because their rediculous pronouncements were repeated by the media (Including "serious" media like the Times and Telegraph)as serious and factual when they were wishlists or just plain lies.

Blair managed to get away with it but Brown can't because he is more interested in destroying than building. His record is utterly appalling and any decent person should hate him. However, I can say that as I have moved among older people, they really do hate him. So much so I suspect that in an election Brown haters will turn out determindly to vote Tory and opinion polls seriously under estimate this effect.

Blair, Brown, Sudan. We treat them with a sort of respect. We think they are mistaken or disproportionate, we don't look at something despicable and hate it, we pretend they make some sense. I'm afraid we must learn to hate otherwise things will just get worse.

Brown is becoming a figure of fun when he should be hated. While we are having a jolly time reading about North East businessmen no one is drawing attention to our Primary schools falling from 3rd to 19th since 2000. Now that is a monumental disaster that makes Black Wednesday look a triumph demonstrating that Labour is only interested in spinning propaganda and couldn't give a toss for public service consumers and it isn't at all funny. It's hatefull.

[Malcolm Dunn]

First class article as Graeme. Agree 100% with all of it. The situation in Sudan made me furious too. As I said on another thread I hope when Gillian Gibbons is home and other British nationals have been told to leave that the Government takes totally 'disproportionate' retaliation. No aid, no diplomatic relations, no travel arrangements and arms and training to Darfuri rebels. Then we can watch the sometimes ludicrous Rowan Williams bleat.

[Scotty]

Enjoyable article as always Graeme, I have to admit that despite the other meatier political subjects you touched on, the story of flying over the Atlantic gripped me the most.
Why? Because as I get older I get more and more terrified of flying, the butterflies set in with a vengeance about 3 days before I get near the entrance of the airport.
Flying recently, a friend was impressed with my calm demeanour and commented on it. I simple reminded them of the placid duck that glided across the pond looking relaxed while they peddled hard underneath the surface.
Anyway some big girls blouse behind me screeched so much that I was forced to show I was made of sterner stuff, no one noticed I read the same paragraph of an article in the Spectator 15 times in an attempt to focus, sorry Fraser!
The last time we flew with the kids was across the Atlantic, the touching scene of me holding the youngest hand upon take off was spoilt when they complained I was squeezing it too hard. And the in flight entertainment, forget it, I watched that little dot on the stationary screen that was our plane praying for it to move a bit faster!!