Events | 2009.04.16
Duncan Campbell's political diary: Public trust in finance
Trust is important and so is satire. Good then that the two come together in a Fabian Society seminar
• What sounds like a fascinating public seminar, titled Trust and the City, has been organised by the Fabian Society at the Work Foundation in London at the end of this month. It will examine "the role of \'trust\' in shaping public attitudes towards the financial sector ... As banks and other stakeholders consider the future of the industry, including changes to remuneration and regulation, we will consider how banks can regain the public\'s trust in finance. More importantly, where did the public\'s trust go and why is trust needed?" The event will be "kindly supported" by Barclays Bank. As that cherishable humorist, Tom Lehrer, said when Henry Kissinger won the Nobel peace prize in 1973: "Who needs satire?"
• And just to clear up that old quote from Tom Lehrer - and the suggestion that he gave up being a satirist because Kissinger was honoured: what Lehrer actually said was that "political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel prize". As for this year\'s Nobel peace prize, we hear that one nominee, the Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordecai Vanunu, has asked that his name be withdrawn from consideration because another nominee is the Israeli president, Shimon Peres. Vanunu, although freed from prison five years ago after 18 years inside for revealing details of Israel\'s nuclear weapons programme, is still not allowed to leave the country as a punishment for talking to foreign journalists.
• For the last decade, the personal ads column of the London Review of Books has provided high-level entertainment with its idiosyncratic, not to say weird, entries. ("I like my women the way I like my kebab. Found by surprise after a drunken night out and covered in too much tahini. Before long I\'ll have discarded you on the pavement of life ..." etc.) But has the recession stayed the hand of the most inventive of its advertisers? The current edition is very short on those long, free-flowing submissions. Where have they gone? Are they saving on the wordage? Female LRB readers are left with: "Find Mr Right, get steamy tonight." Come on, LRB lonely hearts, get cracking with those extended metaphors. It\'s spring, for God\'s sake.
• The recent death of capitalism has led to an increase of interest in its old foe, Karl Marx. No surprise, then, that London\'s Highgate cemetery, where he is buried, should be attracting many visitors, some of whom report that Karl now seems to be grinning. By chance, another figure long associated with Highgate cemetery is back in the news. David Farrant, who describes himself as a "paranormal investigator", came to prominence in the early 70s when he was busily investigating reports of a ghost in the cemetery. Farrant ended up spending three years in jail after it was claimed he had been "interfering" with graves. He was, in fact, cleared of interfering with a body but convicted of sending voodoo dolls to police officers. Now he has published his autobiography, In the Shadow of the Highgate Vampire, in which he seeks to challenge some of the stories about him, not least that he took part in naked graveyard rituals and animal sacrifices, involving a cat. Although Farrant accepts he was also earlier convicted under the Ecclesiastical Courts Jurisdiction Act 1860, back in 1972, he is adamant that no nudity was involved - "although I did have bare feet". Reassuringly, the foreword states: "No cats were harmed in the making of this book."
• These troubled times have stimulated an interest in philosophy among publishers. The works of John Gray, Slavoj Žižek and Alain de Botton are much in demand. No surprise, then, that the late Scottish philosopher-comedian, Chic Murray, should find himself the subject of a book, Just Daft, by Robbie Grigor. What shines through among the many insights that Murray shares with us is that he owed much to a robust upbringing. The book movingly relates Murray\'s own account of his infancy: "When I was a baby, my mother would pop me in the bath to make sure it was cool enough for her elbow." What a bracing example for us all today.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/[...]iary-trust-city-fabian-society
