Frit ...


"The right hon. Gentleman is afraid of an election is he? Oh, if I were going to cut and run I'd have gone after the Falklands. Afraid? Frightened? Frit? Couldn't take it? Couldn't stand it? Right now inflation is lower than it has been for thirteen years, a record the right hon. Gentleman couldn't begin to touch!"

...

We landed this morning at 7am local time which means a mere 7 hour flight from New York - that's pretty good, apparently. A taxi to the house, some sorting out, then I go off for a swim (just me, a few other old lags & the teen synchronised swimming team practising). It feels good to swim after the hours cooped up in Economy Class. So much for the glamour of transatlantic air travel ...

Then the news comes through that The Iron Lady has finally succumbed. The BBC go into overdrive - obviously only too happy to be given the go ahead to air obits & tributes prepared long in advance. (See the toadies jostle for position). Why anyone worries about leftwing bias in the BBC when you hear the stream of overblown eulogy that's being broadcast across the nation. Institutionalised amnesia for sure. Time & again the same phrases crop up: determination, iron will, clear vision, a politician that changed the political landscape. Quite. So let's look at that landscape, shall we? (Deregulation of the City ... dismantling of welfare ... privatisation aka asset stripping ... so-called share-ownership for everyone ... a service (servile?) economy ... Special Relationships (you know who ...) ...). I bet they're crying their eyes out in Sheffield & the Vallies ... trebles all round, what?

I know it is naive to locate so many complex social & economic changes in just one person. But it is hard not to to feel that the virus started here & that - in 2013 - this is the disease-ridden body politic that goes under the name of 'Great' (sic) Britain.

Just to hear that voice again is more than enough: the worked-upon vowels, the lowered register, the deliberate erasure of origin. Voice as deodorant - the kind that catches you in the back of the throat at every squeeze. Yet the stink remains the same.

...

& it just so happens this fortnight's LRB runs Iain Sinclair's review of the Ed Dorn Collected. Only connect ...