Censoring Political Views, Spitting Image, Letters, Test and Trace, Artemisia Gentileschi

Milton  visiting Galileo when a Prisoner of the Inquisition
Solomon Alexander Hart (1806-1881)
Photo Credit: Wellcome Trust  [Public Domain]

Pro-Brexit and right-wing academics feel forced to censor their political views, putting free speech at universities under threat, a report has said.

Campuses are increasingly governed by unwritten rules that mean lecturers are under pressure to muzzle unfashionable opinions for fear of being ostracised or passed over for promotion, the Policy Exchange think tank said.

A YouGov poll of 820 academics found that nearly a third - 32 per cent - of those who say their political views are 'right' or 'fairly right' have stopped openly airing opinions in teaching and research, compared with 13 per cent of those in the centre and on the left.

...The report said that academics on both the right and left discriminate against each others' applications for grants, promotion and manuscripts submitted for publication.

...While those on both sides are similarly willing to discriminate against each other, the smaller proportion of conservatives in academia results in a much larger discriminatory effect against them, the report claimed.

...Left-leaning respondents were most likely to censor their critical perspective towards transgender issues. Only 37 per cent of respondents said they would feel comfortable lunching with someone opposed admitting trans women to women's refuge centres.

...The report called for Parliament to create a director for academic freedom with ombudsman powers. It said an academic freedom bill should also establish that universities have a duty to protect academic freedom and that staff are able within the law to question and test received wisdom.

(Nicola Woolcock, The Times, 2020)

Staff at university should be able, within the law, to question and test received wisdom. Isn't that part of their function? That some academics feel that they have to muzzle unfashionable opinions is a disgrace. 

The Policy Exchange think tank describes itself as an independent, non partisan educational charity but it refuses to reveal the identities of its donors and it was founded by two Conservative politicians. Having said that, some Labour politicians have contributed to its reports.

Spitting Image

A Grotesque Accouchement
Pietro della Vecchia (1603-1678) (attributed to)
Photo Credit: Wellcome Collection [Public Domain]

... The return of Spitting Image is a throwback to Thatcher's Britain but it follows a much older British tradition: a mockery of the powerful that has its roots in 17th-century Punch and Judy shows, the furious art of the 18th-century British caricature and the great satirists of the Age of Enlightenment.

Satire is perhaps the oldest form of constructive social criticism, a way of holding up to ridicule the vices, abuses and follies of rulers and institutions, the supposedly great and good, through parody, exaggeration and burlesque. It aims to shame our betters into better behaviour and though it almost never achieves this, the satirist's ability to make them squirm is one of the measures of democracy.

... The rise of social media made anyone with a computer a potential satirist, though not necessarily a good one. Online, political mockery is instant but scattergun, much of it vicious, only some of it truly comic. For a decade, there has been no single place where the nation has gathered to observe the ritual, ludicrous lampooning of the establishment... in a time of rolling uncertainty, we need satire more than ever.

... The best satire makes you laugh and then wince... only in Britain has the combination of puppetry (Punch and Judy) and politics been elevated to an art form, the product of intellectual freedom, a determination to mock the prominent and a love of slapstick. Dictatorial and puritanical regimes are fearful of puppets. The new Spitting Image models of Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin would never be permitted in China or Russia.

... Even the most pompous public figure would never dare sue a puppet and while the targets of derision may claim to enjoy it, in reality they are painfully murmuring, as the great always do when presented with their own failings: "I don't understand these caricatures."

(Ben Macintyre, The Times, 2020)

David Young, Lord Young since 1984, was a Cabinet minister from 1984-1989. He had this to say about the programme:

"Spitting Image was wicked but it wasn't cruel. It really got to the essence of a lot of us. Norman Tebbit was Norman Tebbit. John Major was John Major, although I don't think they would thank me for saying that. Margaret, of course, had her vegetables ... and I was one of them. I laughed at that sketch, but not very heartily. I mean, who wants to be compared to a tomato or whatever.

I tended to look gormless mostly. But I was never upset by it. It made politicians more human. It really showed their frailties. And we could deal with that...My daughter gave me my Spitting Image head as an 80th birthday present. It is sitting in my study looking at me every day. It's a gormless head, but never mind.

The sketch in question involved a waitress and Margaret Thatcher:

Waitress to Thatcher; "Would you like to order, sir?"

Thatcher: "Yes I will have a steak."

Waitress: "How d'you like it?"

Thatcher: "Oh, raw please."

Waitress: "And what about the vegetables?"

Thatcher; "Oh, they'll have the same as me."

One critic was not impressed by Spitting Image's return:

*... On delivery, it was worse than a disappointment... But beyond the superficial visual merits, it was satire by numbers. The jokes were were excruciatingly obvious, seemingly written by committee rather than the result of a stroke of inspiration...

Satire is a tricky business. Mimicry by its nature sits too close to affection when you take a powerful figure and reduce them to an unthreatening cartoon. Comedy that goes no further than observation is flattery. Satire goes one step further: it draws out the absurdities at best, or darkness at worst, of those in power by contorting their images into grotesque caricatures.

In moments of political turmoil, satire's role is to communicate to the public, via seemingly innocuous comedy, that something is seriously wrong with the system, and not just the characters that inhabit it...

(Nesrine Malik, The Guardian, 2020)

 

Letters

In the 1980s, a neighbour in Birmingham enquired in Tesco in Moseley as to where the lychees would be. He was told that it would probably be next to the bacon counter, with all the other cheeses.

(Prof Bill Wardle, Glasgow, The Guardian, 2020)

I once asked a newsagent in south Devon for a Guardian, having not found one on the rack. He told me that he only stocked the leading titles. Surely, I asked him, the Guardian is a leading title? "And I don't sell Marxist literature," he added.

(David Evans, Exeter, Devon, The Guardian, 2020)

Out here in the deepest of blue North York Moors, the Co-op in Pickering has a half dozen copies of the Morning Star on sale every day.

(Mark Newbury, Farndale, North Yorkshire, The Guardian, 2020)

Test and Trace

...The truth is, in the areas under restrictions, there are large numbers of people in low-paid, insecure jobs who cannot self-isolate if asked to do so by the test-and-trace system. They know they won't be paid if they do or, worse, could lose their jobs. This helps explain why there is a low contact with test and trace in poorer areas and why people are reluctant to provide names of contacts to tracers.

We have raised this issue over many weeks and, finally, it has been acknowledged as a serious weakness in our defences by a senior government figure. Dido Harding, the head of NHS Test and Trace, told a Confederation of British Industry event this week that there is now clear evidence that the lowest-paid people find it hard to follow the guidance. Ministers must listen.

We urgently need a simple national policy which allows all workers to isolate on full pay if asked to do so. How that is paid for is a matter for government to sort with employers. As it stands, the lack of such a policy is a major chink in our armour against Covid-19 and leaves our poorest communities dangerously exposed.

Also, how can we be sure it is safe to reopen schools in our poorest communities in September when the test-and-trace system is not working properly?

(Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, The Observer, 2020)

If not on full pay, then allow all workers who have  to isolate to do so on at least the National Living Wage - that is over £8 an hour.

Artemisia at the National Gallery

Susannah and the Elders
Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1654 or after ) (copy after or attributed to )
Photo Credit: Nottingham City Museums [CC BY-NC]

This revolutionary exhibition of the work of a forgotten genius is like being on a film set, with the actors right in your face, and the lights revealing who they really are deep down inside. Bodies rush towards you out of the canvas, anguished faces, huge hands, explosions of blood. It's a thrill ride, a Scoresese film shot in 17th-century Italy's meanest streets, and it starts with a blow right to the heart.

In 1610 Artemisia, 17, the daughter of the moderately successful artist Orazio Gentileschi, painted a blinding masterpiece in her bedroom. Susanna and the Elders lights a fire in your soul. Susanna sits naked by a pool as two looming male figures force themselves into the confined space of the canvas. These creeps don't just spy on Susanna, they push right up close to her.

It's a stunning work, probably the most powerful version of this biblical story ever painted - no small claim since there are Susannas by Tintoretto and Rembrandt. But Artemisa brings something unique to it - her own story. For Susanna is modelled on herself, her body, her vision. She's painting this with a mirror. It is the selfie from hell.

This is the most thrilling exhibition I have ever experienced at the National Gallery. The sensational Susanna makes its first room so dazzling that the show has already in a moment, done its job: to prove Artemisia's greatness. It makes you ponder why that was ever in question. Born in Rome in 1593, dead in Naples by around 1654, this brilliant woman had gifts that were recognised by her contemporaries. Her father boasted: "I would dare to say she has no equal."

(Jonathan Jones, The Guardian, 2020)

*Last Wednesday's Guardian carried an ululatingly ecstatic review by its art critic Jonathan Jones of "the most thrilling exhibition I have ever experienced at the National Gallery",  the new Artemisia Gentileschi show.

Oddly, the paper omitted to mention that Jones is the author of an accompanying biography of Artemisia, conveniently on sale in the National Gallery shop. Why not plug it? Surely the Grauniad wasn't in a sulk because the Daily Mail had devoted a two-page spread to Jones's book the same day? 

(Private Eye, No 1532)

... It was in February   that the seeds of   Independent Sage   began to germinate.   That was when King   (Chair of Independent   Sage) first noticed our   divergence from the   rest of the world.

  "I was a little bit   puzzled by the fact that WHO (World Health Organisation) advice had gone out, but we weren't following it."

The orders from the World Health Organisation were to "test, test, test", but there seemed, he felt, to be no urgency. Elsewhere, it was not the same.

"I love Greece; I go there often. And I know quite a few people in the government and the British embassy. I called them up to find out what Greece was doing.

"They were following every bit of WHO advice. In February, they started sending ships to China to buy equipment for their hospitals to handle the pandemic. They were preparing everything in advance, getting themselves in a position where they could test and trace and isolate everybody who had the disease.

Then, when they had their first death, they went into lockdown. At the time of writing, Greece has had fewer than 200 deaths.

In contrast, he remembers watching Boris Johnson, incredulous. "Remember the prime minister shaking hands with six people in that hospital who had Covid-19? Who gave him that advice? Because he was playing with death. He wasn't taking it seriously."

(Tom Whipple, The Sunday Times, 2020)

The question has to be asked. Why did the UK not follow the advice of the World Health Organisation?

Cronyism

Studies made in the House of Lords
John Lavery (1856-1941)
Photo Credit: The Fitzwilliam Museum [ CC BY-NC-ND]

The Russian billionaire and newspaper proprietor Evgeny Lebedev and the prime minister's brother, Jo Johnson are amongst dozens of new nominations for peerages announced by Downing Street, while Theresa May's husband is in line for a knighthood.

...The Tory donor and city grandee Michael Spencer is nominated for a peerage.

...Reacting to the announcement of the nominations, Norman Fowler, the Lord Speaker, said:

"This list of new peers marks a lost opportunity to reduce numbers in the House of Lords. The result will be that the house will soon be nearly 830 strong - almost 200 greater than the House of Commons. That is a massive policy U-turn. It was only two years ago that the then prime minister pledged herself to a policy of "restraint" in new appointments. It was the first time that any prime minister had made such a pledge."

(Simon Murphy, Jim Waterson, The Guardian, 2020)

The House of Lords has over 500 members of political parties including Tory and Labour advisors, fundraisers and functionaries.

It is the second biggest legislative chamber in the world after the Chinese National People's Congress, which represents a country of 1.4 billion people. The Communist Party dominates the Congress. Who dominates the Lords? Bishops, judges, landowning Lords and various wealthy people. Reform of the Lords has been going on since 1911 and nothing much has changed.

Why not get rid of the lot of them and if any of the present incumbents thinks they're doing a good job let them stand for election.

A few days later.

Sir, Claire Fox will not be the first revolutionary communist to join the House of Lords. That distinction belongs to Wogan Phillips, who succeeded his father as Baron Milford in 1962. Having joined the Communist Party in the 1930s, Phillips served as an ambulance driver during the Spanish civil war and stood, unsuccessfully as the Communist candidate for Cirencester & Tewkesbury in the 1950 election.

In his maiden speech in the House of Lords, Phillips called for the abolition of the upper chamber. I trust Baroness Fox will do the same.

(Dr Alison McClean, Bristol, The Times, 2020)

A foreign view of the UK

Joshua Chaffin, an American who has recently become the Financial Times New York Correspondent, gives his view on what he will miss after spending five years in this country.

Adieu
Edmund Blair Leighton (1852-1922)
Photo Credit: Manchester Art Gallery [CC BY-NC-ND]

...In no particular order:

I miss the Question Time music. I miss that moment in every Question Time when somebody in the audience barks, in effect, "You're all bastards!" and everyone roars their approval.

...I miss the convivial vibe of the families at the cricket club where my son played - in contrast to the self-loathing dads and baying mothers on the sidelines of our son's soccer team in New Jersey.

I miss the woman in south Wales who wore pearls to meet me for a cup of tea at a supermarket cafeteria in Pontypool. I miss the woman from Sheffield who made me understand that sharp elbows are the defining feature of the middle class everywhere.

...I miss the sight of the cocky young men, with Beckham-esque