Third Avenue

That elusive Golden Age

Preparing myself for a transatlantic flight, I've picked up a couple of Agatha Christie novels to keep me amused. First up is After the Funeral, originally published in the mid-1950s. What is fascinating about it is how Christie throughout the novel bemoans the cultural and moral decline of the nation. Pretty typical is this:

Ugh! This country's full of gangsters nowadays - thugs ... Nobody's got the guts to put these things down - to take a strong hand. What's the country coming to, I'd like to know.? What's the damned country coming to?

Sounds like classic Daily Mail circa 2005. Of course, a quote from a pulp detective novel proves very little. It only points to the fact that Golden Ages only ever exist in the past. In 2055 I have absolutely no doubt that people will be bemoaning the Golden Age of the first decade of the century. Twas ever thus.

Snow show

By popular demand (well, one person asked), I've spent some time over lunch taking a few snaps of the snow. Fifth Avenue and Central Park in the white stuff:

Perfection

New York summers are without redeeming feature. A torturing mixture of sweltering heat and frayed tempers. Its springs and autumns are luminous. But what is there on this planet that can beat a New York winter? This morning, the impossible artificiality of the skyscrapers I see from my window are shrouded by dancing snowflakes, falling so thickly and so quickly that they even muffle the never ending noise of this insomniac metropolis. Beautiful.

Another plus point for Cameron

He's managed to seriously piss off Melanie Phillips. So he must be doing something right.

Phillips is now in total despair that virtually the entire country has abandoned her (the Metropolitan Police, the Telegraph, the Tories), and that she alone remains an island of good sense amid a sea of Book-of-Revelation apocalypse. Bit of a Brechtian 1953 East German moment - the people have disappointed her, time to elect a new people.

Lords find that evil is bad

I have mixed feeling about today's Lords' ruling that evidence gained through torture is inadmissible in a British court.

Not mixed in the sense that I think the Lords might have been wrong. But mixed in the sense of feeling some horror that this should be a story at all. It is like reading that 'Lords find abolishing elections is not a good thing' or 'Lords find that executing opposition politicians is a bad idea'. How did we get to the stage where evidence gained through torture was even possibly considered valid?

Cameron in 'I like Britain' shocker

Not that Cameron's speech yesterday was all bad. It contained the following choice statement:

We need to change the way we feel. No more grumbling about modern Britain, I love this country - as it is, not as it was - and I believe our best days lie ahead.

On the surface, nothing all that remarkable. Even rather mundane. But it could herald a change in the way the right in Britain views itself and its country. Cameron is clearly, and sensibly, distancing himself from the likes of right-wing pinup boy Theodore Dalrymple, who not so long ago was telling the world that the modern British character was 'a deeply flawed and unattractive one, as charmless as any that I know, completely unbalanced by any compensating virtues'. Who would want to give their vote to a political movement that described them and their fellow countrymen in such terms? Not me.

If Cameron can position the Tories as a party that doesn't look on Britain as some kind of 'foreign land', but as a real place full of - whisper it softly - basically decent, likeable people, and put knee-jerk right-wing misanthropy to one side, he might, just might, be on the way to putting the Conservatives back in No 10.

On the down side..

I write this listening to David Cameron on Radio 5 Live. Initial impression - he's actually rather bad. What an uninspiring, rather platitudinous speech. And David, did you really have to say that you wanted to end the 'yah-boo' of British politics? Every, but every, new leader to any party has said that since I was a foot high. Which is a long time ago now. Rather naive, I thought. Labour are 'yesterday's men'? Well, maybe, but that's also yesterday's cliche. He'll have to do better, I think.

David Cameron is new Tory leader

Could British politics be about to become interesting and competitive?

The Tories have chosen David Cameron as their leader, and by a very healthy, if not overwhelming margin - the result I've no doubt that Labour most feared. Equally, if sites such as Once More are to be believed, the result that many Tories most feared.

He'll need a cool head over the next few months to avoid the pitfalls that Labour and the media will be preparing for him. But this could just, just be the beginning of the end of Labour dominance in British politics. Or it could be the start of yet another dreadful Tory leadership period. But my guess is that the former is a more likely outcome than the latter. Not that the thought gives me much cheer.

Perhaps Cameron's biggest challenge will be to rally his own troops and keep the Tory party unified. Given the amount of vitriol poured on him by many Tory foot-soldiers on the Internet, it will in all likelihood be a tough task.

..and reasons to love Britain

Much as I relish living in the States, there are some things that Britain just does better. Like tea, beer, mediaeval architecture and gay marriage, to name but four.

While the US continues to be convulsed by the 'culture wars', Britain has to all intents and purposes legalised gay marriage with hardly a peep. This morning's UK papers fail to work themselves into a moral lather. The Telegraph sees it as a business opportunity (of course), and the Daily Mail talks about the number of couples signing up (expect gushing reports on 'celebrity' weddings), and the Times puts it in the context of its own venerable tradition of marriage announcements (so British).

Even the British blog world, where right wing voices are not shy of bemoaning the inexorable cultural decline of the nation, seems curiously silent on the issue (at least according to Google's blog search).

Why the difference between the UK and the US? Partly it's religion. There simply isn't the strong conservative religious lobby in the UK for whom gay marriage has become such a touchstone issue as it has in the US. Then there is politics. The British Conservatives have, sensibly, seen the gay marriage issue as being about actually spreading traditional values, rather than subverting them.

The anti-gay-marriage pundits have, in the end, fallen silent in the British media because they failed to capture the mood of the nation. Britain seems at ease with itself on this issue. Would that it were the same here in the US.

Reasons to love America

Having lived here for quite some time now, I've managed to get onto various mailing lists for reasons that remain unclear to me. Today, I received a letter from the American Civil Liberties Union, who mistake me for a US citizen. In it, they urge me to write to 'my' senators, Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton. The wording of the template is quintessentially American, and makes me truly happy to be living here.

Those of you who spot 'anti-Americanism' in every left-winger, remember that the sentiments in this letter are just as American, if not, at least in my experience, more so, than anything emanating from the Bush White House. So wouldn't it be anti-American to criticise them?.. Just asking. Here's the text:

Dear Senator

I am concerned by escalating assaults on the constitutional principles that define our nation. I urge you to stand up for freedom.

I am opposed to the Bush Administration's drive to make the infamous Patriot Act the permanent law of the land. Republicans and Democrats alike have acknowledged that the Patriot Act went too far too fast in ceding unchecked powers to the government. I am counting on you to bring this law back in line with the Constitution.

I am also alarmed by attempts to break down the wall of separation between church and state through 'faith-based' initiatives that funnel my tax dollars to religious institutions, and religious extremists' plans for injecting every aspect of our lives with their theology.

I oppose laws and policies that restrict reproductive rights, including the first-ever federal abortion ban.

I do not want to see discrimination written into the Constitution with amendments that deny basic rights to lesbians and gay men.

And I will not stand by while federal judges are rendered powerless to check the legislative and executive branches of my government through 'court stripping' laws.

On these fronts and others, I refuse to surrender my freedom. And I am counting on you to do the same!