Monday, 1 March 2010

Extract from an email to a pal

'Yes the Tory slump is wonderful. I hate Cameron and Osborne, because they’re our generation and we know what they think and what they’ve done why they’re full of shit. As you say, they’ve spent the last eight years preparing for power on the mistaken idea that Blair © was the new reality. What people want is Billy Bigballs, not trendy vicar.
I want Labour to win because that will bankrupt the country fully and irrevocably. Some of the shit and vomit will get splashed on Obs readers finally and they won’t be able to be righteous when an axe wielded by a socialist humanitarian falls on public services. The Tories will be destroyed: good.
With the money all gone and the IMF knocking on the door all those little consumers who are living in la-la/ryanair land now will suddenly wake to find themselves in a sort of post war country with a lot of draughty shopping malls getting boarded up; Europe will end up having the bits of control it hasn’t already got; immigration would go on as it is now, causing further rent rises and pay slumps; queuing and overcrowding would get even worse; unemployment would soar; the country’s credit rating would be downgraded, there’d be no growth, massive budget deficit, tax hikes, super tax, race riots, a General Strike, militant Mohammadanism running amok (on taxpayers’ money, given to ‘promote non-radicalisation’), the extreme right boneheads fighting the Muslims and everyone else, barbed wire enclaves in Burnley, the handing back, by Miliband, of the Falklands to the Argies with a little smirk; mutinies in the armed services when Labour try and merge them with the French forces*, and possibly even a coup d’etat if we’re very lucky. And in the middle of it all that lying, autistic fucking dunce Brown. Someone will shoot him.
It would be such *fun* to watch, so much better than four years of Cameron and Osborne and with the added piquancy of seeing a proper bit of history: the swan dive to EU banana republic.

Exile: I doubt the doc will be done well, because Jagger will have control of it and he’s never had any idea about that sort of thing and doesn’t understand the appeal of the band or what makes it great and never has had. The Stones were just lucky that they could hire the hippest filmmakers in any given period – Godard, Robert Frank, Scorsese. As Keith Richards said when Watts asked him what he thought of Godard’s Sympathy for the Devil: ‘crap – but we look good in it.’
Jagger said when the record was released: ‘There’s a lot of rock and roll on it. Too much. I like to experiment, I don’t like to go over the same thing again and again.’
Trouble with that is that the reason the Stones were great, particularly on Exile, is because Richards DID like going over the same thing again and again. If he hadn’t liked jamming the same four chords around for hours on end with Taylor and co All Down the Line etc would never have got written. And the world would be worse off.
Experimentation, on the other hand, took the Stones to Their Satanic Majesties and Undercover of the Night.
I rest my case.

Punk will become the property, if it hasn’t already, of academia, which will distort it even further into a Marxist reading of 70s social history.

Reading wise: I read Roger Lewis’s Seasonal Suicide Notes. Funny stuff, if a little too in debt at times to Waugh’s later diaries. He can be very funny though. Do you remember that letter I got from him after I wrote how much I laughed at his Burgess book? Scruton’s new wine book is a very fine read, but I hardly ever drink wine these days.
I had another bash at Crime and Punishment recently but it’s such a monumental bore and the lack of style makes it ‘hard shoulder’. Bits of Conrad’s memoirs. I’ve been reading some Simon Raven. Ever tried him? Funny, half-queer, snobby, public school, cricket, cad, army, gambling, writing; sort of Captain Grimes with a bit of Stringham. Very clear stylist and fun on the train. He disgraced his regiment through his gambling on horses and was warned off. But at one point he had a yankee up for about five grand in the early fifties. Can you imagine? He bought a Bentley with some of the winnings.


*See left wing think tank’s proposals for the armed services. Reported on by the BBC’s website as A think tank. Have you noticed it doesn’t prefix left wing think tanks with ‘left wing’ but always does ‘right wing’ for right wing think tanks?'

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