This morning Wednesday October 29th I am torn between writing about an effective Irish film set at times when communities were divided according religious tribalism, used to cover or uncover basic crime and its guilt; the confirmation of some new friends from the dimensions of film, art and music; continuing the attempt to complete 100 new sets of project 100.75 work this month; give attention to Prime Minister's Question and to hoping that the level of public support for one of the two candidates for the USA Presidency will not affect the turn out and waiting to hear some private news.
The issue which I knew nothing about but which the Prime Minister is among the British media clamouring for action is the behaviour of two broadcasters who I have always found juvenile, unfunny, overpaid and at times obnoxious, Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand have been suspended for making cruel and lewd telephones to a grandfather, former actor aged 78 because of the relationship between one of the two men and the granddaughter of the former actor. This would have been bad enough if the calls had been made on the BBC phones and then talked about on a radio programme, but the calls were recorded and then broadcast as part of the programme. It is right that the BBC have suspended the two and no doubt following the investigation there will be some form of immediate punishment and longer term repercussions. Admitting that I dislike the two men, avoiding and programme in which they feature, which means I miss the clips of new film releases and rely on Dr Mark Kermode on Friday Live Radio Friday afternoons, does not also mean that I am sympathetic with the amount of attention given by the media to what they have done and what happens to them. Later in the morning the Director General of the BBC issued a statement saying that he had been kept informed of the situation while away on holiday, that he was returning, and that he did take the view that what had been said was unacceptable. Later I hear the actor involved explain that he had been contacted and played part of the programme by the editor/producer of the programme. He confirmed that when asked if he would prefer the item held over and for further discussion about what was to be broadcast he had agreed and was surprised that no action had been taken. This contrasted with the suggested allegedly made from the BBC that he had sanctioned the broadcast.
It was right and proper that the issue was not raises during Prime Ministers Question Time when the spokesmen of the major and minor oppositions and several back benchers raised the subject of the economy. They were in some difficulty because to morrow following meetings between economic leaders and banks major reductions in interest rates will be announced although here in the UK his is unlikely to result in rates as low as 1% or less, which later was announced was the new rate in the USA, but we shall learn over the next two to two three months.
The problem of cutting rates too quickly and too low is that if a major cut does not immediately work then there less manoeurverability later. Thee are also other considerations which have to be taken into account. The problem has been the under capitalization of banks because of the problems of investment and lending policies. Therefore banks need to build up income as capital in addition to government help which has to be returned. Banks can do this by charging interest and therefore lower interest rates mean less income which can only be achieved by increasing the volume of lending which caused the problem in the first instance. Here the issue is the nature of the lending and achieving the right balance in the volume of lending. Secondly savers will be looking for safe places for their money but also those which pay the highest rates of interests and therefore any cuts in interest rates by the national banks will create problems if these are not roughly in line with each other, given the global state of the economy. This is where Gordon Brown, British Prime Minister has scored great success in persuading colleagues that in accepting the circumstances of individual economies it is nevertheless important that they take concerted action and announce steps being taken together and that such steps take into account the likely impact on each other as well as the world economy overall.
The key question is the balance between public expenditure achieved by borrowing more and tax cuts which usually mean reductions in government expenditure and which usually means the public having more money to spend on consumables, with heating, lighting, food, mortgages payments being good, but more likely to go on fuel, drink, tobacco, holidays and such like, and less money on public services.
A good example of the potential problem if cuts were to be cuts involving cuts in public expenditure is the announcement this morning that the take up of new student grants to enable more young people from poorer communities to go to university has been so successful that the forecast is that the budget will now be overspent by £200 million, resulting in the new grants will have to be slashed, bearing in mind that if say the number of first year student this year is 30000 over budget, this rate will carry forward for the remaining two years of their courses over the present one. Clearly it is advantageous to everyone for more money to be placed in this budget to cover the extra expenditure required this and the next two years for present level of student, taking account that there will be a proportion available back as students now in their second and third years complete courses and no longer require the funding. However the larger numbers will also mean a greater proportion of successful students going on to a higher level of degrees and professional training courses provided at universities and this will result in more posts of university teachers and researchers being created which will all have to be funded, most by government but also by business and industry who are now facing recession. Working out the financial implications is in fact more complex because if the young people are not being funded into higher education they are more likely to require government financial support though job seekers allowances.
Ideally one wants a good proportion of young people to get adjusted to the work ethic from an early age. There are problems with young people staying in further education to massage unemployment figures or in the hope they will gain some of the basic educational and social skills the system failed them before.
Young people spending too long a period between the present school leaving age at sixteen and the in the comparative freedom of two year six forms and then three to five year university level education means that it is harder for some of them to adjust to the discipline, the competitiveness and other reality of employment at the ages of 21 to 25. It is always unwise to generalise from personal experience but I performed poorly on leaving school at sixteen although I kept good time and worked hard but I was not mature enough for the kind of work then fit for. Qualifying for something I wanted to do meant that aged 24 I worked until I got the job done even if this meant fifteen hour days and this continued for the next thirty years, then dropped when I left directly paid employed and was only re-established when I found something else which I could commit to.
The politics show played recordings of politicians coming to blows within the precincts of other democratic Parliaments, presumably to justify the ritualistic shouting within the British House of Commons at Prime Minister's Question Time. I could not resist shouting at the screen myself, stupid twits at the so called members of the public, but in reality folk organised by the political offices of opposition parties to text in to complain that the Prime Minister was refusing to answer questions. I wanted to point out that the session is called Prime Ministers Question Time not Prime Ministers Question and Answers time. It is period of half an hour in which the opposition parties try and score political points against the government and the government tries to score political points back. The effectiveness of this session is judged on whether one side score more than the other. It is not about asking key questions of the day and giving accurate and informative answers. If those making the point week after week were genuine members of the public they would write in about the real questions of the day.
One of these is the information which emerged in the programme is that Afghanistan is presently governed by about twenty families who are out to make money and further their positions and maintain corrupt practices with over half the police force and local army on drugs, part of the warlord drug money making culture and using their office to exploit their own people. It is time that the UN and EEC recognised this and abandoned propping up this corrupt regime, not by withdrawing though but putting in the troops and resources to do the job required directly. Nor is it time to start to talk to the terrorist leaders, the extreme religious fanatics who want to degrade and hold women and girls in captive ignorance, or the drug warlords. Thee may be moderate and serious Muslims who call themselves Taliban who we should directly engage with and try and gain their cooperation against the rest. The answer is definitely not to pull out but to put more resources in.
Now to film watched in the early hours going up to bed close on 5am. It was the second film in three days about Northern Ireland, after Close Up which demonstrated that despite a history of conflict and the daily threat of violence Israeli conscript female teenage soldiers are more interested in their personal appearance and in relationships than in religious and national troubles although some but not all are concerned about becoming the oppressors, humiliating other women because they belong to a different race, nationality or religion.
Crossmaheart is the fictitious name of a border town in Northern Ireland clearly divided between Protestants and Catholics and the gangster freedom fighters who rule, with the local police trying to keep one step ahead of the feuding and not a British soldier in sight. Into this mix a normal teenage reporter who cannot take his drink is thrust as punishment and cover for a colleague who has disappeared from the provincial weekly run by his employers. He is understandably interested in what happened to his predecessor and strikes up a relationship with the man's girlfriend who he finds is a disturbed young women continuing to being affected by being gang raped when aged thirteen by older youths. He sets about finding what happened to the young man and why, and to a great extent the film covers familiar themes and offer no new insights or twists. The paramilitaries are dangerous thugs and bullies and attract disturbed morons, two of whom in this film unintentionally blow themselves up, also unintentionally helping to save the life of the journalist as a consequence. The film is about the arrogance of men who committee horrendous crimes and then expect the system to cover up what they have done and return to live in the same communities as their victims and hold similar levels of power over the lives of others. One is exposed as a non conformist vicar with influence over young girls and parishioners in general in a situation where his wife does not know that he was previously convicted, and has changed his name; he also sups pints and sings sectarians songs with one lot of the town bigots but as a consequence of the actions of the journalist he is forced to resign. Another of the perpetrators, active in one of the para military groups dies as a consequence of the premature bomb exploding while the third arrives at funeral blind and dying from cancer and seeking forgiveness, although he did not directly participate in the rape but was present in the vehicle. This leaves the fourth, a youth who was not named at the trial because he was only 15 years. It as quickly evident to me and from their comments to other viewers who this was, and the man instrumental in the death of the journalist whose hidden body was taken away and mashed through the mobile waste collector on the weekly collection. In achieving this second level of justice, the four were charged and convicted before, he is helped by the local police man who even provides a gun for him to shoot the fourth, although fortunately the man uses the gun to blow his own brains out.
The twist is that the girlfriend with whom he is about to take to back to Belfast having been recalled, was not the raped girl but her older sister. At the time she had become promiscuous and thought nothing of engaging in sex with more than one individual at a time. (There is that moment in the Rose, the Janis Joplin story, when she talks of taking on the football team and there is a documentary film about one USA based porn artist who took on over 100 men in a filmed world record attempt). Unfortunately it was her virgin younger sister who was out in the dark on the fatal night in question bundled into the car because she looked at a distance as the older one. She has to live with the guilt of what happened that night and that the younger sister could not cope and killed herself. What we do and who we do with lives on for eternity, within us and those with who we do or say it to.
There has been some progress in creating one myspace friend's for every Blog published and that of artist Soutine profile is one of the best encountered with some fabulous pictures, including those from other artist friends. His site also has links to the sites of others who in turn include wonderful pictures of their works.
Together with Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni created for me a view of Italians as interesting and sophisticated people worthy of their historical inheritance and so different from the images of Sicilian gangsters and strutting fascists of Mussolini. Later I experienced the work of Vittario Di Sica, Bernardo Bertalucci, Luchino Visconti and Sergio Leoni.
While the first Antionianni films are Italian made L'avventura (The adventure)1980, La Notte 1961, L'eclisse 1962, Il deserto Rosso 1964, and their theme of man's alienation from contemporary society is one I felt strongly throughout the 1960's in company with other works dealing with the Outsider from works of Ibsen, Look Back in Anger and some of the Russians writers, it was his subsequent English Language films Blow Up and Zabriske Point which affected me most and both film can be regularly viewed on satellite and cable TV. I must see again his Italian films, including those not previously seen
I first experienced the captivating Monica Vitti (Maria Luisa Ceciarelli) in her performance in the adventure, in the company of a young woman just as stunning although unlike Monica who went back to comedy roles, my companion studied philosophy and further developed a trouble mind. I never saw myself or felt to be like Marcello Mastraianni at that time, and yet as I think off he number of beautiful, sophisticated intelligent and multi layered young women I knew briefly during that period of my life 1959-1963, others might take a different view.
Talking of beautiful women the most extraordinary without question is Sophia Loren whose images alone demonstrate her capacity as an actor to transform according to character and for to become glued to her screen presence. A film in which she appeared and which I view every time it is shown but never realised she had an appearance as a slave, is Quo Vadis. Working backwards these are the films I am certain I have seen Sofia act: Pret-a-Porter 1994, Brass Target 1978, The Cassandra Crossing 1976 Man of La Mancha 1972, A countess from Hong Kong, Arabesque 1967, 1965 Lady L, 1964 Operation Crossbow, Marriage Italian Style, 1964 The Fall of the Roman Empire, 1963 Yesterday today and Tomorrow, 1961 Boccaccio 70, 1961 El Cid, Two women, 1960 A breath of Scandal, The Millionairess, 1959 It started in Naples, 1959 Heller, In Pink Tights, That Kind of Woman 1959, The Black Orchid 1958, 1957, Desire Under the Elms, Legend of the Lost, The Pride and the Passion, 1955 The river Girl, Scandal in Sorrento, The one with affected me most was Two Women, the Alberto Moravia story which I possess in English together with the Women of Rome and Bitter Honey Moon, The book which I read and influence me most is the Imbroglio and I have also read Two Adolescents, Conjugal Love, and Roman Tales.
It continued to be a very cold day and I avoided going out, something I will do tomorrow as I need glitter and transparent pockets. I had a pasta bake for lunch slice of toast with anchovies for tea, some lemon stuffed olives with a glass of red wine, a cup of soup, some mixed vegetables with a piece of fish, two plums and pear, and later a bottle of Peroni beer.
I listened to Sunderland at West Brom, missing half an hour of the second half falling asleep at this desk and then waking up with a couple of minutes to go after West Brom had scored the goal which won the match and left the Manger saying it was the worst performance of the season. I decided to console myself and watched a Harry Potter DVD.
The issue which I knew nothing about but which the Prime Minister is among the British media clamouring for action is the behaviour of two broadcasters who I have always found juvenile, unfunny, overpaid and at times obnoxious, Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand have been suspended for making cruel and lewd telephones to a grandfather, former actor aged 78 because of the relationship between one of the two men and the granddaughter of the former actor. This would have been bad enough if the calls had been made on the BBC phones and then talked about on a radio programme, but the calls were recorded and then broadcast as part of the programme. It is right that the BBC have suspended the two and no doubt following the investigation there will be some form of immediate punishment and longer term repercussions. Admitting that I dislike the two men, avoiding and programme in which they feature, which means I miss the clips of new film releases and rely on Dr Mark Kermode on Friday Live Radio Friday afternoons, does not also mean that I am sympathetic with the amount of attention given by the media to what they have done and what happens to them. Later in the morning the Director General of the BBC issued a statement saying that he had been kept informed of the situation while away on holiday, that he was returning, and that he did take the view that what had been said was unacceptable. Later I hear the actor involved explain that he had been contacted and played part of the programme by the editor/producer of the programme. He confirmed that when asked if he would prefer the item held over and for further discussion about what was to be broadcast he had agreed and was surprised that no action had been taken. This contrasted with the suggested allegedly made from the BBC that he had sanctioned the broadcast.
It was right and proper that the issue was not raises during Prime Ministers Question Time when the spokesmen of the major and minor oppositions and several back benchers raised the subject of the economy. They were in some difficulty because to morrow following meetings between economic leaders and banks major reductions in interest rates will be announced although here in the UK his is unlikely to result in rates as low as 1% or less, which later was announced was the new rate in the USA, but we shall learn over the next two to two three months.
The problem of cutting rates too quickly and too low is that if a major cut does not immediately work then there less manoeurverability later. Thee are also other considerations which have to be taken into account. The problem has been the under capitalization of banks because of the problems of investment and lending policies. Therefore banks need to build up income as capital in addition to government help which has to be returned. Banks can do this by charging interest and therefore lower interest rates mean less income which can only be achieved by increasing the volume of lending which caused the problem in the first instance. Here the issue is the nature of the lending and achieving the right balance in the volume of lending. Secondly savers will be looking for safe places for their money but also those which pay the highest rates of interests and therefore any cuts in interest rates by the national banks will create problems if these are not roughly in line with each other, given the global state of the economy. This is where Gordon Brown, British Prime Minister has scored great success in persuading colleagues that in accepting the circumstances of individual economies it is nevertheless important that they take concerted action and announce steps being taken together and that such steps take into account the likely impact on each other as well as the world economy overall.
The key question is the balance between public expenditure achieved by borrowing more and tax cuts which usually mean reductions in government expenditure and which usually means the public having more money to spend on consumables, with heating, lighting, food, mortgages payments being good, but more likely to go on fuel, drink, tobacco, holidays and such like, and less money on public services.
A good example of the potential problem if cuts were to be cuts involving cuts in public expenditure is the announcement this morning that the take up of new student grants to enable more young people from poorer communities to go to university has been so successful that the forecast is that the budget will now be overspent by £200 million, resulting in the new grants will have to be slashed, bearing in mind that if say the number of first year student this year is 30000 over budget, this rate will carry forward for the remaining two years of their courses over the present one. Clearly it is advantageous to everyone for more money to be placed in this budget to cover the extra expenditure required this and the next two years for present level of student, taking account that there will be a proportion available back as students now in their second and third years complete courses and no longer require the funding. However the larger numbers will also mean a greater proportion of successful students going on to a higher level of degrees and professional training courses provided at universities and this will result in more posts of university teachers and researchers being created which will all have to be funded, most by government but also by business and industry who are now facing recession. Working out the financial implications is in fact more complex because if the young people are not being funded into higher education they are more likely to require government financial support though job seekers allowances.
Ideally one wants a good proportion of young people to get adjusted to the work ethic from an early age. There are problems with young people staying in further education to massage unemployment figures or in the hope they will gain some of the basic educational and social skills the system failed them before.
Young people spending too long a period between the present school leaving age at sixteen and the in the comparative freedom of two year six forms and then three to five year university level education means that it is harder for some of them to adjust to the discipline, the competitiveness and other reality of employment at the ages of 21 to 25. It is always unwise to generalise from personal experience but I performed poorly on leaving school at sixteen although I kept good time and worked hard but I was not mature enough for the kind of work then fit for. Qualifying for something I wanted to do meant that aged 24 I worked until I got the job done even if this meant fifteen hour days and this continued for the next thirty years, then dropped when I left directly paid employed and was only re-established when I found something else which I could commit to.
The politics show played recordings of politicians coming to blows within the precincts of other democratic Parliaments, presumably to justify the ritualistic shouting within the British House of Commons at Prime Minister's Question Time. I could not resist shouting at the screen myself, stupid twits at the so called members of the public, but in reality folk organised by the political offices of opposition parties to text in to complain that the Prime Minister was refusing to answer questions. I wanted to point out that the session is called Prime Ministers Question Time not Prime Ministers Question and Answers time. It is period of half an hour in which the opposition parties try and score political points against the government and the government tries to score political points back. The effectiveness of this session is judged on whether one side score more than the other. It is not about asking key questions of the day and giving accurate and informative answers. If those making the point week after week were genuine members of the public they would write in about the real questions of the day.
One of these is the information which emerged in the programme is that Afghanistan is presently governed by about twenty families who are out to make money and further their positions and maintain corrupt practices with over half the police force and local army on drugs, part of the warlord drug money making culture and using their office to exploit their own people. It is time that the UN and EEC recognised this and abandoned propping up this corrupt regime, not by withdrawing though but putting in the troops and resources to do the job required directly. Nor is it time to start to talk to the terrorist leaders, the extreme religious fanatics who want to degrade and hold women and girls in captive ignorance, or the drug warlords. Thee may be moderate and serious Muslims who call themselves Taliban who we should directly engage with and try and gain their cooperation against the rest. The answer is definitely not to pull out but to put more resources in.
Now to film watched in the early hours going up to bed close on 5am. It was the second film in three days about Northern Ireland, after Close Up which demonstrated that despite a history of conflict and the daily threat of violence Israeli conscript female teenage soldiers are more interested in their personal appearance and in relationships than in religious and national troubles although some but not all are concerned about becoming the oppressors, humiliating other women because they belong to a different race, nationality or religion.
Crossmaheart is the fictitious name of a border town in Northern Ireland clearly divided between Protestants and Catholics and the gangster freedom fighters who rule, with the local police trying to keep one step ahead of the feuding and not a British soldier in sight. Into this mix a normal teenage reporter who cannot take his drink is thrust as punishment and cover for a colleague who has disappeared from the provincial weekly run by his employers. He is understandably interested in what happened to his predecessor and strikes up a relationship with the man's girlfriend who he finds is a disturbed young women continuing to being affected by being gang raped when aged thirteen by older youths. He sets about finding what happened to the young man and why, and to a great extent the film covers familiar themes and offer no new insights or twists. The paramilitaries are dangerous thugs and bullies and attract disturbed morons, two of whom in this film unintentionally blow themselves up, also unintentionally helping to save the life of the journalist as a consequence. The film is about the arrogance of men who committee horrendous crimes and then expect the system to cover up what they have done and return to live in the same communities as their victims and hold similar levels of power over the lives of others. One is exposed as a non conformist vicar with influence over young girls and parishioners in general in a situation where his wife does not know that he was previously convicted, and has changed his name; he also sups pints and sings sectarians songs with one lot of the town bigots but as a consequence of the actions of the journalist he is forced to resign. Another of the perpetrators, active in one of the para military groups dies as a consequence of the premature bomb exploding while the third arrives at funeral blind and dying from cancer and seeking forgiveness, although he did not directly participate in the rape but was present in the vehicle. This leaves the fourth, a youth who was not named at the trial because he was only 15 years. It as quickly evident to me and from their comments to other viewers who this was, and the man instrumental in the death of the journalist whose hidden body was taken away and mashed through the mobile waste collector on the weekly collection. In achieving this second level of justice, the four were charged and convicted before, he is helped by the local police man who even provides a gun for him to shoot the fourth, although fortunately the man uses the gun to blow his own brains out.
The twist is that the girlfriend with whom he is about to take to back to Belfast having been recalled, was not the raped girl but her older sister. At the time she had become promiscuous and thought nothing of engaging in sex with more than one individual at a time. (There is that moment in the Rose, the Janis Joplin story, when she talks of taking on the football team and there is a documentary film about one USA based porn artist who took on over 100 men in a filmed world record attempt). Unfortunately it was her virgin younger sister who was out in the dark on the fatal night in question bundled into the car because she looked at a distance as the older one. She has to live with the guilt of what happened that night and that the younger sister could not cope and killed herself. What we do and who we do with lives on for eternity, within us and those with who we do or say it to.
There has been some progress in creating one myspace friend's for every Blog published and that of artist Soutine profile is one of the best encountered with some fabulous pictures, including those from other artist friends. His site also has links to the sites of others who in turn include wonderful pictures of their works.
Together with Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni created for me a view of Italians as interesting and sophisticated people worthy of their historical inheritance and so different from the images of Sicilian gangsters and strutting fascists of Mussolini. Later I experienced the work of Vittario Di Sica, Bernardo Bertalucci, Luchino Visconti and Sergio Leoni.
While the first Antionianni films are Italian made L'avventura (The adventure)1980, La Notte 1961, L'eclisse 1962, Il deserto Rosso 1964, and their theme of man's alienation from contemporary society is one I felt strongly throughout the 1960's in company with other works dealing with the Outsider from works of Ibsen, Look Back in Anger and some of the Russians writers, it was his subsequent English Language films Blow Up and Zabriske Point which affected me most and both film can be regularly viewed on satellite and cable TV. I must see again his Italian films, including those not previously seen
I first experienced the captivating Monica Vitti (Maria Luisa Ceciarelli) in her performance in the adventure, in the company of a young woman just as stunning although unlike Monica who went back to comedy roles, my companion studied philosophy and further developed a trouble mind. I never saw myself or felt to be like Marcello Mastraianni at that time, and yet as I think off he number of beautiful, sophisticated intelligent and multi layered young women I knew briefly during that period of my life 1959-1963, others might take a different view.
Talking of beautiful women the most extraordinary without question is Sophia Loren whose images alone demonstrate her capacity as an actor to transform according to character and for to become glued to her screen presence. A film in which she appeared and which I view every time it is shown but never realised she had an appearance as a slave, is Quo Vadis. Working backwards these are the films I am certain I have seen Sofia act: Pret-a-Porter 1994, Brass Target 1978, The Cassandra Crossing 1976 Man of La Mancha 1972, A countess from Hong Kong, Arabesque 1967, 1965 Lady L, 1964 Operation Crossbow, Marriage Italian Style, 1964 The Fall of the Roman Empire, 1963 Yesterday today and Tomorrow, 1961 Boccaccio 70, 1961 El Cid, Two women, 1960 A breath of Scandal, The Millionairess, 1959 It started in Naples, 1959 Heller, In Pink Tights, That Kind of Woman 1959, The Black Orchid 1958, 1957, Desire Under the Elms, Legend of the Lost, The Pride and the Passion, 1955 The river Girl, Scandal in Sorrento, The one with affected me most was Two Women, the Alberto Moravia story which I possess in English together with the Women of Rome and Bitter Honey Moon, The book which I read and influence me most is the Imbroglio and I have also read Two Adolescents, Conjugal Love, and Roman Tales.
It continued to be a very cold day and I avoided going out, something I will do tomorrow as I need glitter and transparent pockets. I had a pasta bake for lunch slice of toast with anchovies for tea, some lemon stuffed olives with a glass of red wine, a cup of soup, some mixed vegetables with a piece of fish, two plums and pear, and later a bottle of Peroni beer.
I listened to Sunderland at West Brom, missing half an hour of the second half falling asleep at this desk and then waking up with a couple of minutes to go after West Brom had scored the goal which won the match and left the Manger saying it was the worst performance of the season. I decided to console myself and watched a Harry Potter DVD.
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