Won't somebody shut that swivelgate!

In case you hadn’t noticed, the media is currently in a tizzy about ‘swivel-eyed loons’ – indeed, the inevitable coining of ‘swivelgate’ (would it shut properly?) has already occurred.

This all centres on the tale that someone ‘close to the prime minister’ used that term to describe the constituency Conservative activists. A state of high dudgeon has ensued; fingers have duly been pointed and wagged, and the target has denied all knowledge and says he is taking legal advice.

Frankly, given the current implosion within Conservative circles, and the nefarious behaviour of some in the media, it would hardly surprise me to learn that it was all a calculated invention to whip up a storm in a teacup.

But while the vexed question of ‘Europe’, in its conflated sense of That Place Over There and the political institutions of the EU, once more threatens to give the Tories a collective nervous backdown, it’s not the only issue causing havoc.

Yet again, a number of people are getting their oh-so-sensible underwear in a knot over equal marriage.

Now you could be forgiven for imagining that such matters as the huge rise in British people needing to use foodbanks or the deaths of yet others mere days after being declared fit for work – or the suicides of some in this same category – might be cause for such angst.

You may indeed believe that unemployment and underemployment are the big issues, together with that of a culture of low incomes that means that over 80% of all recipients of welfare in the UK are in work.

It’s possible that you would consider the small matter of the privatisation of the NHS by stealth to be worthy of attention. Or even – heaven forfend – the state of the economy and the outright failure, based entirely on his own standards, of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

But no: these all pale into insignificance beside the question of whether any two people who love each other should be able to get married.

So much is the issue upseting some, that the Conservative Grassroots umbrella group has written to David Cameron saying that equal marriage will lose the Conservatives the next election, because activists, in their disgruntlement, won’t do the work, and voters will flock away.

Chairman Bob Woollard also says that the government needs to ‘strengthen traditional marriage’, “for the sake of our children”. Oh, won’t somebody think of them!

What a pity his concerns for the future of “our children” appears not to extend to concern at the diminishing educational and job prospects for so many.

But while Mr Chumley Wumley of Tunbridge Wells is grinding his teeth over this (and ordering his wife to pour him another cup of tea) he has found common cause with Abdul from the mosque.

Because, as if it isn't funny enough when the shire swivel-eyes suddenly become multi-culturalists when it suits a homophobic agenda, a group of more than 500 imams and community leaders has also written to the PM (and Messrs Clegg and Miliband E) on this same question.

For them, the worry is that “Muslim teachers will be forced into the contradictory position of holding private beliefs, whilst teaching a new legal definition of marriage.

“Muslim parents will be robbed of their right to raise their children according to their beliefs, as gay relationships are taught as something normal to their primary-aged children.”

First, is the legal definition of marriage really on the national curriculum at primary school – or is that only something that will happen after Michael Gove has (personally, the rumours suggest) redrafted it on the front of a blank fag packet?

Second, if such matters of equality are taught in schools, then it’s good to know that all the same teachers will already be stressing the equal rights of women, and that this will be in no contravention at all to anything taught in the home.

Although the presence of sharia courts to deal with ‘family’ cases might speak against this, just as the presence of Beth Din courts says much the same of Orthodox Jewish communities. And for the record, it’s worth noting that the Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks, has also stated his opposition to equal marriage.

Given that a number of Muslim leaders have acknowledged that some parts of some communities have major issues with respect – not least for young, white women – such an intervention seems inappropriate at best and a downright demand of a right to promote intolerance at worst.

Not that they’re alone. The antics of leading figures in the Catholic Church on the same issue – and related ones – has hardly been a shining example of a tolerant, integrated and equal society.

And let’s not even mention the paranoid rantings of Lord Carey, champion of ‘persecuted’ Christians on these islands, or the sudden u-turn by the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby (presumably after pressure from the CofE hierarchy) on personal support for allowing heterosexual couples to have civil partnerships.

Oh, if anyone doubted that these are swivel-eyed times, all this should be entirely enough to confirm it.

But we can scarcely let this subject pass without mentioning UKIP – not simply because its leader, Nigel Farage, is conducting a large section of the swivel-eyed orchestra himself (a discordant cacophony) but also because it now it appears that the party’s major donor is a swivel-eyed loon of the very highest order.

Not only does Greek businessman Demetri Marchessini say that all women who wear trousers are “hostile” (I’ve dressed in a miniskirt to write this, just to be on the safe side), but he has actually penned a tome dedicated to his photographs of women’s posteriors and the further, philosophical discussion of the meaningful issue of how trousers were not designed for the female.

Because as every fool knows, trousers are the perfect attire for keeping men’s bollocks in the right state for optimum sperm production. Perhaps that’s why soldiers in some Balkan countries, including Marchessi’s own country of Greece, wear the fustanella ...

He also states that unmarried mothers need “a good smack” and date rape is a feminist fiction – so girls, if you date a man, it’s no point saying no to sex at the end of the evening, because even if you do, you cannot be raped.

His blog also links sexual abuse and homosexuality.

Where do they find them?

Let’s very quickly put a myth or two to bed.

Although equal marriage was not in the Conservative’s manifesto at the last election, it was a specifically stated as an aim in the party’s ‘contract for equalities’ that was published just three days before the country went to the polls.

And if they want to complain about the manifesto, they should remember that the privatisation of the NHS was not featured and indeed, David Cameron had pledged “no more top-down reorganisations of the NHS”.

While – I hope – everyone would agree that a safe, loving home is the very best environment for any child to grow up in, the idea that this is not possible within a home where there is only one parent or where a couple have not been formally married, or that single-sex couples are incapable of providing that, is as groundless as would be a suggestion that all married homes are wonderful and that all marriages are a raving success.

Equal marriage will not ‘devalue’ marriage. It can only do that in the minds of people who want it to do that for reasons that can only be homophobic in nature.

Equal marriage will not change the nature of any individual couple’s own marriage. It can only do that if they themselves decide that it does, for reasons that can only be homophobic.

No religion or sect has ever had a monopoly on marriage or the nature of marriage. It is historically and factually incorrect to suggest otherwise.

* With apologies to anyone with a swivel eye who isn’t a loon.

Honey, we shrunk the brains

South Park takes on Honey Boo Boo and June

One of the cultural highlights of the past few weeks – nay, the past year – has been the arrival of a new digital TV channel from our cousins across The Pond.

And TLC, the channel formerly known as The Learning Channel, has chosen to announce its arrival in the UK with the highly educative Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.

This is a ‘reality’ TV show about a ‘redneck’ family where the mother pushes her seven-year-old daughter – the eponymous Honey Boo Boo – into child beauty pagents that she is never likely to win, and which is how the family was spotted in the first place, during another of TLC’s shows, Toddlers and Tiaras.

The family – parents and four girls – get to go to the Redneck Games, eat ‘sketti’ (spaghetti with a sauce of margarine and ketchup) and comment on life in general.

The audience, presumably, gets to feel superior, in much the same way it does over the ‘guests’ on Jeremy Kyle’s modern-day freak show or on that of Jerry Springer.

Actually, it’s difficult to know on whom the joke is this time. TV stardom has, for the family from rural Georgia, been enough to lift them far away from any impoverishment.

And the programme differs from other examples of reality TV in that they seem to be remarkably functional. The mother, June, has apparently set up trust funds for all her children, noting that such fame won’t last.

TLC – formerly known as The Learning Channel, remember – is also breaking Breaking Amish to UK screens.

This reality show is about a group of young Amish/Mennonite men and women who are taken to see the bright lights of New York, with much being made of whether, if they decide to go home, they’d be accepted back.

Lives lived out in front of cameras, for the entertainment of millions and the profit of a rather smaller number.

Now don’t get me wrong – the idea of giving young people from closed communities the chance to see the outside world isn’t one that I object to in principle.

What concerns me is the question (and let’s assume none of it – or only a small amount – is staged) that really quite dramatic personal experiences, with the potential to be life-changing to the extent that the young people in question might find themselves being ostracised by their families and communities, are being played out for entertainment.

And let's go back to the fact that nobody knows quite how much is 'real' and how much is staged and scripted. It's a blurring of lines that has the capacity to blur the critical senses. This is not the willing suspension of disbelief.

All this reminds me of HL Mencken’s famous quote about the apotheosis of democracy will see a moron elected to the White House – simply substitute culture. And then consider the impact of that on the former.

I’m not opposed to reality TV per se: it can be both educative and entertaining, without being exploitative – as illustrated by the BBC’s recent series, The Tube, about the working lives of some of the vast team that keeps London’s Underground running.

But that’s quite different from, say, Big Brother, when Jade Goody, a very vulnerable woman, according to a former teacher of hers I once met, became famous for being thick.

Later vilified for a racist comment on another version of the programme, she lived out the last days of her life in the public eye, turned almost into a martyr by her battle against cancer.

It all seems so vacuous and vapid and vicarious and vicious: and that is not a comment on Goody herself.

And it’s hard not to believe that such commoditisation of human lives devalues humanity in general.

But further, how much does the public vilification of Kyle’s guests – carefully chosen for their dysfunctionality, since that is what is ‘entertaining’ about them – contribute to the ease with which government and mainstream media demonise vast swathes of the population?

And politicians kowtow to this: from Barack Obama feeling obliged to mention being ‘endorsed’ by an infant would-be beauty queen, to David Cameron and Ed Miliband jumping on the bandwagon to condemn Hilary Mantel’s comments about the Duchess of Cambridge from a position that merely illustrated either their total ignorance of what she had written or their readiness to ignore the facts for the sake of being seen to make the ‘correct’ sound bite that would most please certainly elements of the press.

Honey Boo Boo and her family have been satirised already in South Park – from which no target is, rightly, considered exempt – but goodness, doesn’t it sometimes feel as though there’s a losing battle going on?

Nor is all this a snobbery about what ‘chavs’ watch or read. Consumption of gossip magazines and such programming is spread beyond any one social class, just as the consumption of junk food is.

And if junk food is bad for the physical health, what does junk culture do for the mental health?

For Honey Boo Boo, her parents and siblings, they seem to have been able to exploit the system as much as it has exploited them. And good luck to them in many ways for that.

But what will be the end result for those Amish/Mennonite young people – including the ones featured in a second series?

What about the Kyle guests, whose very dysfunctionality provokes enough Twitter traffic to trend, as viewers share their revulsion? It’s documented that they receive no real help to deal with the problems that allow the show to exist.

We’ve got a cult of easy celebrity, whereby fame is awarded not for actually having done anything or having any sort of talent, but simply for being prepared to act as outrageously as possible in front of a camera.

Geordie Shore, The Only Way is Essex, Made in Chelsea and Desperate Scousewives: moronic television made to moronise and desensitise the public, who appear to have enough of an appetite for it all that such dross keeps appearing.

Television that, when voting is concerned, garners more participation (even though it costs money) than some elections.

And if that doesn’t depress you, nothing will.

So where next in this drive to shock and titillate? Who knows?

But you can bet your bottom dollar that someone is mulling over a new approach even as I write and you read. And that, at its root, it will be about making money for a few with little regard for the larger cost.

The end of an era

And so it seems, Bobby Manc is no more.

No more the insouciant flick of the sliver-ash-blond locks with the manicured hands.

No more the great question of the fruit pastilles: were Brian and David allowed the black ones, Roberto, or not?

Mass before big matches and elegies to departed popes at press conferences …

The scarf: traditional but worn with Italian flair to go with those immaculate suits.

Oh dear.

As if Saturday’s Cup Final wasn’t bad enough, now Manchester City have gone and sacked coach Roberto Mancini in what could best be described as a ‘tactless’ manner.

Just so we get this clear – I’m gutted. I love Bobby Manc.

I love him, quite simply, because he has been the one who has been the coach when my beloved Blues (supported for nearly 40 years – eek!) have finally remembered how to win.

I will love him for ever for last year’s title win alone: the sheer drama of it, agony to ecstasy in three minutes flat, will never leave me.

For goodness sake – there’s a Mancini bobblehead on a shelf in the study (where all my kitschest things live).

Look, I admit it: City is the one major area in my life where I can get a bit irrational. By the very nature of our fandom, we are emotional and generally predisposed to irrationality.

But what I want to do here is to try to change that and to be more rational.

It’s not easy: we don’t know the full facts – and probably never will – and there’s an element of piecing together a jigsaw from a box that is only partly full and has no picture of what the finished puzzle should look like.

But let’s give it a whirl.

The media talk has, for some months, concentrated on the poor showing in this season’s Champions’ League.

In the later stages of the season, that has been compounded by the inability to defend the Premier League title, and then by Saturday’s defeat.

Some of this has been over the top.

There have been problems this season that we were fortunate enough not to have last term: injuries, for one.

The defence has remained sound and we’ve continued to dominate games – the key issue has been an inability to convert chances into goals this time around.

It wasn’t helped when, 10 minutes into the season, Sergio Aguero was injured and subsequently played no part for a month, then struggled to find form.

Mario Balotelli was out at the same time with eye problems. He never found form on his return and, as everyone knows, left in January. Edin Džeko is another who has found consistency hard to come by.

Under those circumstances, a second-place finish is hardly a disaster – although we fans probably have slightly different expectations and agendas than the owners.

But the club’s own statement on the sacking of Mancini included a very interesting word: “holistic”.

It seems that his relationships with the players have been poor – we know that there have been rows. Last season there was, of course, the entire debacle over Carlos Tevez.

This season, with Joe Hart, with Samir Nasri, with Balotelli (of course) and even – and perhaps this was the most shocking – with Vincent Kompany.

And those are the ones we know about.

Now the ‘hairdryer’ approach, as it might be called, can pay dividends – it has for a certain Scot – but if you never balance that with something rather less aggressive, it’s easy to see that there could be problems.

Indeed, I’d also suggest that, while we as fans might find some of this incredibly entertaining, it’s probably not particularly fun if you’re a player or a member of staff who is on the receiving end of such things.

There is an argument, indeed, that it amounts to workplace bullying, for which there should be no place – and it doesn’t suddenly become acceptable or easy to live with or something you should simply ‘put up with’ if you’re earning over X amount or simply because you’re a footballer and not a hospital cleaner.

For clarity, I don’t think City have an issue with ‘player power’ in the sense that it’s generally understood, although I continue to maintain that background issues may have been, in part, what was behind Saturday’s poor performance.

But let’s explore further.

Given Mancini’s rants about Brian Marwood and last summer’s transfer business, and then the weekend’s lambasting of the club for not dealing with the rumours of his own departure, it’s possible to conclude that that combustible approach to man management might also have been carried over into his relationships with club executives, if not the owners themselves.

Next up, is the issue of the club’s academy. If our long-term future is not totally dependent on developing our own players, it will certainly be very important – not least because of rules on spending.

The suggestion is that Mancini has not been interested in this part of the club’s development.

Again, this is something we have to take partly on trust, although the dearth of young players coming into the first team over the last three years (beyond his initial enthusiasm for Dedryck Boyata) may indicate a truth to this point – particularly as we have many potentially good young players at the club.

But finally, I want to dispel the idea that the way in which this sacking has taken place is somehow worse than any other in the game or in our own history.

It’s not. It may not have been good, but it’s not incredibly worse than any other.

And as but one brief illustration, I offer the case of Peter Reid, who was dumped, at the start of a season, for having the temerity to hold out on his own new contract in order to secure a pledge of funds for new players.

He’d done remarkably well in the seasons previously and wanted to take the club forward.

For the then owner, Peter Swales, that wasn’t on. He was sacked and Brian Horton appointed.

City fans themselves were so outraged that they launched the campaign that eventually saw Swales leave, to be replaced as chairman by Francis Lee.

So please let’s not be too rosy-tinted about the past. Or imagine that any problems are simply because the owners are not local.

A sacking is never easy – and Mancini might do well to remember that he himself was appointed on the back of one – and when they take place in the full glare of publicity, they’re even less likely to be handled in some sort of perfect way.

For City, the last few years have seen us rise from general laughing stock to a club that the media is hungry for daily stories about, even if it has to make them up.

As a club, we need to learn to deal rather better with rumours, but generally I think that we’re on the right track.

I know some fans are worried that things might now implode. But personally, I doubt that will happen. To start with, if it’s true that relations between coach and players were strained, then it’s unlikely anyone will be wanting away.

Any incoming coach will inherit the core of a very good team – albeit one that does need changes in order to develop and grow – together with everything that the planned Etihad Campus and emphasis on youth development will bring.

To conclude: Roberto – thank you for the last three years. And all the very best for the future. There is absolutely no chance that we will ever forget you.

Addio signore.

For my fellow fans – a new era awaits us. And CTWD.*

* City Til We Die.

A weekend of two halves

The jester

To borrow from a rather famous sporting cliché – it was a weekend of two halves.

First up, Saturday (although obviously you knew that anyway).

But Saturday just gone was FA Cup Final day – and I had a ticket for the match, with Manchester City set for their second final in three seasons, this time, against Wigan.

Now by this time you’ll all know that we lost.

And let it be said that the best team on the day won: Wigan coach Roberto Martinez got his tactics spot on, using very limited resources to cram midfield and stifle our attack, but without ever resorting to niggly or dirty play.

For City, Yaya Touré was quite clearly unfit; Sergio Aguero and Carlos Tevoz had little or no service, and … well, given all the stuff going on in the background was certainly not helping, that was essentially that.

So congratulations to Wigan – you deserved it. And that is the romance of the cup – and long may it continue.

What made the day rather more bearable from a personal perspective was that I was with good company and that, as a result, the craic was good.

We started at in a pub at King’s Cross at 1pm with lunch – and not just the liquid variety, although the Skinner’s Arms does do decent ale as well as cooking lager.

The pasta

I opted for pasta – which reassuringly lines the stomach – with capers and garlic and chili, and it was not bad at all.

And then we headed for Wembley itself, taking a train that allowed us to walk down Wembley Way – the iconic route.

And yes – I admit it now – I bought a jester hat. Hey – it had to be done. After all, it now entertains the cats.

The atmosphere before the match was wonderful – no need to separate all the fans – and the atmosphere after was fine too.

Let’s pass over the game itself any more than noted above.

Hey ho hum – this is all part and parcel of the experience of being a real fan.

It’s impossible to get on a train straight away after a Wembley match, and hardly easy to get into a local pub. But one of our number knew of a local Catholic social club that opens its doors on match days.

We headed there for the wake, joined by something like 150 other City fans, and with community singing to accompany the cooking lager. This is what, in the darkest times – and they have been far worse than this weekend – have still made it special and worthwhile.

It was around about 11pm when I made it home – surprisingly still largely in a decent state.

The wake

The Other Half had retired, but on receipt of a text had put the oven on before so doing.

I slipped a Pieminster fish pie into the oven, half-heartedly teased the cats with my jangly hat, and waited until my supper was ready.

After that, the only possible place to go was my pit.

And there I stayed until yesterday morning, which dawned bright and sunny.

It was a morning that demanded time in the garden. First of all, though, a trip to Hackney Road was required to pick up a couple of framed pictures – not least, my Günter Grass lithograph.

Then, serious gardening time.

The runner beans had been going so completely mad that they couldn’t have stayed in the grow house a day longer without bending below the lid.

All three went outside. As did the three broad bean plants and one pea plant. For the beans, both varieties had new bamboo pyramids constructed – the runners are already up to the first level of string.

I raked away vast amounts of pink blossom from the tree above the potager: having finally come into bloom so late, the weather had then battered it into early submission with heavy winds over a number of days, leaving the delicate petals lying, like pink, drifted snow, across the carpark and flower beds.

The weather, which had stayed clear to this point, started to change. Clouds gathered to chunter among themselves. The merest hint of rain dropped.

I battled on.

New sowings of carrots and turnips went in, as the older ones finally show real development.

Then a new cloche, with spring onions, radishes, lettuce and chard underneath, sown generously in the hope that such largesse will eventually mean at least something to harvest.

And in the meantime, the blackcurrant bush looks serene as grows in splendid health.

Perhaps most astonishing of all, one of the peas – just a small one, really – is producing the first pea flowers of the season; a delicate white and pale green.

The brave little cat

So finally, the potager looks to be producing the first hints of harvests to come.

Much is still to be done – but these are the sort of things that revive the spirits after depleting times.

And if that wasn't enough, a half leg of hogget, roasted with Jersey Royals, baby leek and asparagus, was more than enough to do it.

Indeed, it wasn't enough, because then there was mad little Otto deciding that she was absolutely not putting up with local semi-ferel cat Reggie, who is SO much bigger than her, being in her carpark. And backing him into a corner and then sending him off in a flurry of claw-tipped paws.

Remarkable.

Sunlight and geekiness

Belis

If not quite the uninterrupted sun that, until the early hours of the morning, the BBC had been consistently forecasting for several days, but nonetheless, Monday turned out to be the best bank holiday in ... well, for quite some time.

And one nurses a hope that the weather itself realises just how much we need a proper, sustained period of good weather.

Windows were pushed open even before people had seriously decanted themselves from slumber; wood creaking and spraying around the accumulated dust and grime of some eight months of being closed against the gloom and damp and cold.

Sunday had seen a bout of serious tidying in the garden, with bedding plants packed in around the lemon tree, whose surrounding soil, naked against the forgotten heat, was drying out too quickly.

Ever-reliable violas, purple with a yellow face; sweet William, yet to flower, and belis, in delicate strawberry and cream garb.

The tidying produced a number of small snails, all instantly crushed and disposed of. The campaign starts early this year and with some knowledge to begin this struggle.

Dying tulip.

Frankly, much of the rest of the weekend has been spent in sitting outside, writing. Which is partly what a garden should be for.

And yesterday, The Other Half cooked springbok steaks and boervors over a fire, to be served simply with a bread roll and good mustard.

The first braai of the year was consumed with relish. Otto rushed back through the gate the moment it was ready: she may have a smaller appetite than the other cats, but her ears are perfectly attuned to the sound of food being served and what she lacks in appetite, she more than makes up for in the gourmand stakes.

All three of the cats relished a day when they could potter around, in and out of the flat as they pleased, for the best part of eight hours.

Belis.

If you get your hands on any springbok, then like deer, it’s very lean and needs handling with a little care.

The Other Half rubbed olive oil into these and left them between plates, at room temperature, for some time before cooking.

And then, as always, you don’t cook over actual flames, thus reducing the chances of the Great British Uncooked Sausage Syndrome.

It’s actually difficult to get your head around just how quickly the weather has changed.

Just a couple of weeks ago, the nights were still dipping close to or below freezing, and bed was a place to snuggle down into.

Now, as if somehow we’ve had the whole of a conventional spring wedged into that intervening two or three weeks, the temperatures are well up and, at night, it’s almost a question of throwing back the covers to keep from getting over hot.

Violas.

Has there really ever been a winter-spring like it?

And almost as suddenly, everything is in – or coming into – flower and leaf.

One week out of the country and the silver birches in the carpark were suddenly green – and even the planes, always late to turn green, are now close to it.

And even the dying flowers have their own beauty – something that I tried to capture in a brief photographic safari around the garden.

In such conditions, surely spring cleaning is inevitable?

Purple.

I did some – well, sort of: assuming you can call attempting to tidy my iPod and iTunes ‘tidying’ and don't expect something more akin to Mole's efforts in Wind in the Willows.

It was mostly a question of trying to impose some order onto the rather grotty new version, which seems determined to create chaos, particularly in my large (and growing) classical music section.

This, geeky as it sounds, also brought about my ranting moment of the weekend, as I tried to change details and import cover art, which the present system seems remarkably reluctant to do all by itself.

And when you’re scrolling through an iPod, having cover art is a nice, helpful way of identifying what you have and what you want.

And, oh goodness – more of it this evening.

Okay, it's not just the software developers' problem – it is quite astonishing just how many albums appear to have a choice of four or more lots of data when you're importing them.

Then, of course, there is no consistency in the basic labels are arranged: for instance, some stuff comes in as R Strauss, while others come in as Strauss (R). But this rather screws with any hopes of an ordered list.

The solution, then, is to change the data, but the new version of iTines seems intent on making it more difficult to find and then fully highlight the required album. And this is a long-term project to digitise and organise the whole of a rather large collection.

Technology – wonderful when it works, and a complete pain in the proverbial when you find yourself struggling with it!