Events | 2009.11.16
Hugh Muir's Diary
Watch out. There\'s a new bishop on the block. Things are going to be different
At this, the beginning of our week, let us give thanks for the elevation of the Reverend Donald Allister. Who he, you ask? So did we. But last week, rather quietly, he was unveiled by Downing Street as the new Bishop of Peterborough. Whole new ball game now. National press, Thought for the Day on Radio 4. What do we know about him? Well, at the moment the Rev Allister is archdeacon of Chester Cathedral, and has a fine track record, including the reported banning of baptisms for children whose parents are not married. He also refused to sully a marriage ceremony with the hymns chosen by the couple concerned, on the grounds that he found them noncommittal at best in their attitude to God. No to Jerusalem, he declared. As for I Vow to Thee My Country, not in my church, said the Rev. "Liberalism is one of Satan\'s greatest weapons against the church," was his pronouncement in 1993, which makes us think that Mel of the Mail might like him. But on the Thinking Anglicans website, opinions are mixed. "Sounds like an exemplary fellow," says one observer. Sounds like "an embarrassment", says another. Churchgoing just got more interesting in the Fens.
The search goes on for a contemporary proverb; and after last Wednesday\'s offering, which suggested shooting good bosses before they turn bad, a pattern is emerging. "Some people are like Slinkys – completely useless, but they raise a smile when you push them down a flight of stairs," submits Neil Dean of Kent. Perhaps Britain really is violent and broken. Hate to say this, but maybe David Cameron was right.
It\'s a big problem, made worse by the fact that even those in authority sometimes fail to set the right example. Look at Chris Brown, professor of international relations and vice-chair of the academic board at the London School of Economics. When he encountered hecklers during a lecture by Israel\'s deputy foreign minister, his reaction was not to calm things down, as one would expect. Indeed the allegation passed to the dean of undergraduate studies – and gleefully reported in the student newspaper, The Beaver – is that he told the student protester who was sat behind him, a Palestinian, to "fuck off". He was provoked, it is true, and he has apologised. But it\'s not called for. Not good.
But then nobody seems content here. Listen to Jeremy Clarkson: "It\'s a lovely idea, to get out of this stupid, Fairtrade, Brown-stained, Mandelson-skewed, equal-opportunities, multicultural, carbon-neutral, trendily left, regionally assembled, big-government, trilingual, mosque-drenched, all-the-pigs-are-equal, property-is-theft hellhole and set up shop somewhere else," he says in the Sunday Times. "But where?" He has a few ideas. And he\'d improve this place just by leaving it.
But will he really go? Unlikely. There is something in the air. Illiberal types seem to like it. Such as Michael B Chertoff, George Bush\'s homeland security guru, who will hold forth at a London conference this evening. "The Use and Misuse of International Law in the Face of the War on Terror" is his subject, something Dubya\'s lieutenants knew a lot about. Chertoff appears as the guest of the Henry Jackson Society – a known rallying point for neocons in the UK – and the Federalist Society, a network of rightwing lawyers, politicians and pundits in the States. They all see London as fertile ground for this sort of thing. So isn\'t it strange to see illiberal types such as Jeremy looking elsewhere?
Some folk would miss him, but let\'s face it, he\'s no Gerald Kaufman. Good old Gerald (pictured). Seventy-nine and still doing what he does. Folk still discuss his turn at a recent party for activists, when observers say a whole range of "idiosyncratic shapes and moves" and signs of continuing vitality were much in evidence. He\'s The Greatest Dancer was the song that got him going. Once he was off, that was it. "Arrogance, but not conceit. As a man, he\'s complete," says the disco hit, and clearly this is a song that speaks to him. Those who have dealt with him over the years will well understand.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/[...]ugh-muirs-diary-gerald-kaufman
