WHY I LIKE SPRING AND EASTER SO MUCH

I have spent the past week feeling refreshed.

Originally the word “Easter” comes from the Saxon ‘Eostre’, the pagan Goddess of Spring which in turn came from the Germanic ‘Austro’ - the Goddess of Dawn. From its outset Easter was always magical. The Christian story of the risen Christ made it much more so.

Something magical still happens every year. Welcome to spring flowers; to plucky battalions of daffodils; to some experimental bursts of sunshine and lambs gambolling.  In April we put on walking shoes to go on pilgrimage like Chaucer.

Change is in the air and, of course, more sunlight makes life easier. This and a degree of gastronomic restraint as opposed to the mandatory, bloated excess of Christmas means this season of celebration leaves us feeling ready to get going.

So, yes, I feel terrific and my good humour even extends to the bunch of jokers who’d been making me rather grumpy recently.

What do this lot have in common? Trump; Putin; Farage; Johnson.

And of course you’re right.

Extravagant egos; wrong people to run anything; irresolute yet dictatorial; will do/say anything to get their own way. They make Kevin Spacey acting the part of Frank Underwood in “House of Cards” look very electable.  They have all pandered or are currently pandering to a vision of the present and future forged entirely out of a nostalgic image of former glory. But to be fair they have the capacity to entertain us as well as baffle.

Hence my good humour. I suddenly realised I was taking what they said much too seriously. The best way to debunk is to deflate with laughter. And anyway the premise of an argument solely based on rationality will inevitably fail. As that supple brained Ad Man Rory Sutherland recently noted, on issues like the EU or the America Presidency or which house to buy or whom to marry, emotion rightly plays a large part.

When I turn on the news or I read the paper I often find I’m reduced to frothing rage.
But then when I see a front cover of Private Eye like this one….

….or I see the cartoon of Paul Daniels’ funeral at which someone is sawing his coffin in half saying “it was how he’d have wanted it” , I feel much better.

So a diet of roast lamb, minted potatoes and Cote de Beaune plus walking in bluebell woods (soon) plus a lot of good old fashioned, squirm provoking and sharp satire plus a resolution to be much nicer to people will do me well enough.

We live in uncertain times said billionaire Warren Buffett. Well yes, but what fun that uncertainty creates. Every day is a cliff-hanger. And the great thing about spring is it signifies the end of a winter of discontent

So I’ve resolved to start listening more and laughing a lot more.

Join me - a very happy spring and Easter to everyone.

THE MAKING OF A PRESIDENT

”Did you hear the one about the Mormon underpants?”

I’ve been watching the US Presidential Election in fascination. It started (it seemed) as Sonny Liston against Cassius Clay and then Cassius began to show feet of clay and a kind of sterile aloofness.  David Clark who used to advise Robin Cook in the late 1990s put it well:-

“I still care about the election result, but not in the way I used to. A decade ago….decisions taken in the White House were life-changing…. but all of that is now for the history books, because …America is now a country in decline…. the most important world-changing events today are happening in spite of America, not because of it.”

It’s hard to judge things from this distance although I recall driving across Massachusetts and Virginia in 1992 and hearing Ross Perot beating up Bush and Clinton on the radio and beginning to think (fantastically) that Ross could win. Being close to the trees doesn’t mean you see the wood.

Unelectable with those ears

It was in 1992 that James Carvill, Clinton’s campaign manager coined the campaign slogan, “the economy, stupid”. It turned out to be a winning thought. And I’ve been somewhat in a minority (actually the only person I’ve recently met) who though Romney really ought to win….so long as his focus was on the economy, jobs and reclaiming American pride.

He put it quite well when he said:-

“And this President wakes up every morning, looks out across America and is proud to announce, 'It could be worse.' It could be worse? Is that what it means to be an American? It could be worse? Of course not….. What defines us as Americans is our unwavering conviction that we know it must be better.”
In truth he – master of outsourcing at Bain – could plausibly claim to know his way around the jobs scene and be capable of being an equally adept master on insourcing which is precisely what the USA needs as unemployment remains at around 8%.

Worthy of Don Draper

Obama’s trouble is he’s too worldly and urbane for a lot of Americans. Strangely in a land where the Buffetts, Trumps and Gates are such formidable wealth accumulators Obama seems strangely unmoved by money and in this respect he’s very un-American. His faux pas – they happen on the campaign trail – is ironic because in a way he does think America has to move forward not back:-

"My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world.
I hope you'll join with me as we try to change it."

He’ll probably win, helped by a commanding storm-performance and because of what Nick Curtis of the Evening Standard discovered in his recent trip to America

“Everywhere we met voiced opinions more nuanced and thoughtful than anything uttered in the campaign.”

But I still have the funny feeling that “the economy stupid” could pull it off.

Here’s the real story about America

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