I SHOULD HATE TO UPSET ANYONE

Several years ago I ran a programme on marketing for the Brighton Chamber of Commerce. One of my definitions of marketing was:

“persuading people to do something they otherwise wouldn’t do”

I referenced the story of Heinz Baked beans. In blind test most brands of baked beams do better than the Daddy brand. Yet when people know what the brands are, Heinz is the massively preferred brand. It’s to do with the perceived brand values of Heinz or, in other words, its marketing.

In the tea break I was approached by some earnest looking people saying I’d offended them because my definition of marketing was an explicit definition of torture. I recall saying sorry if I’ve offended anyone and my apology calmed a storm but made me feel slightly sick. In fact in some sense (ironically) I felt as if I’d been tortured. To this day I regret not having exploded and had a damn good row driving these preposterous woodenheads from my sight and saying if anyone else felt the same they should leave now. What had made the incident even worse for me was they all seemed to believe that small was beautiful (yes, OK) but that big was, by definition, obscene, ghastly and diabolical. Nike, Heinz, P&G, Sony and others like them were all Nazi corporations.

So this is about freedom of speech - my freedom and your freedom.

If in doubt go the American Constitution which says “no” to things like “obscenity, slander, false claims in advertising, child pornography and so on.” All these ‘no’s are what we need to create a civilised society. But it’s pushing back the boundary of these from time to time which allows us to create an intelligent civilisation not just a safe one. In the 1960s ‘That Was the Week that Was’ shook up a stuffy and complacent establishment. Satire became the weapon of intellectual choice. And it was born and nurtured in the Universities. In my lifetime we’ve seen Christopher and Peter Hitchens, brothers with extreme polarity of opinion, knocking the stuffing out of respectively  the establishment and the liberal left and using brilliant language to do so.

But it seems that satire and debate have been exorcised from the world of learning now. At Cardiff University Germaine Greer may be banned for having “upsetting” views on the transgender community. Indeed the government has told Universities to draw up a blacklist of banned speakers. Leading pundits like Roger Scruton denounce this squeamishness:

“Free speech can make for uncomfortable listening but it needs to be defended even when it gives offence….free discussion is being everywhere shut down, so that we will never know who is right - the heretics, or those who try to silence them.”

This repression of free speech is stopping the youngest and brightest debating, learning about and supporting or opposing issues….it’s stopping them from thinking. Being offended is no reason to ban something. Banning things in general is just plain wrong.

YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST

Last year in June I wrote a blog about Beppe Grillo. I’d never heard about him until then but I was intrigued.

Here’s what I said:

“For some time I’ve been worrying about the absence of comic anger in the midst of a shaken world. Where, I lamented, was a Swift or Hogarth or a That Was the Week that Was? Thank heaven, to be sure, for Private Eye and Have I got News for you? But where’s the rage? Where’s the kind of filleting that Christopher Hitchens gave Tony Blair in their debate on religion?

This week that all changed.

I became aware of Beppe Grillo and his Five Star Movement in Italy.This comedian and political activist won just under 20% of the vote in local contests in Parma, and several smaller towns. Have a look at the story of his journey and his beliefs http://www.euronews.com/2012/05/24/beppe-grillo-explains/

Like Alexis Tsipras in Greece he seems uncorrupted, focused and damn mad.

I confess (shamefacedly) not to have realised Beppe had been voted a European of the year by Time Magazine in 2005 on the back of his fantastic blog (http://www.beppegrillo.it/en/).  And then I saw Griff Rhys Jones on Question Time demolishing the other contributors including the, for once, tongue tied Caroline Lucas trying to defend wind power. He was angry and eloquent. I wanted to vote for him. Sitting opposite Lord (good Lord, how did that happen?) Prescott and two brains Willetts, he was so much more passionate and smart. And no, he doesn’t look funny in this clip does he?” 

This week Beppe holds the fate of Italy and maybe Europe in his hands. He has over 100 seats in the Italian Senate and his threat to slice open Italian politics like a tuna tin doesn’t seem entirely idle.

Like him we should be enraged by the old boys club that is Euro politics,

It’s time for a big change.

I see in the Eastleigh by-election that there’s a party called the “beer, baccy and crumpet” party with a candidate called Ray Hall….good solid trustworthy sort of name.

I hope he wins.

And I hope he’s as angry as I am at how disappointing normal politics has become.
Ray and Beppe – that’s a glimpse of new Europe.

www.colourfulthinkers.com

HAVE YOU HEARD THE ONE ABOUT?

For some time I’ve been worrying about the absence of comic anger in the midst of a shaken world. Where, I lamented, was a Swift or Hogarth or a That Was the Week that Was? Thank heaven, to be sure, for Private Eye and Have I got News for you? But where’s the rage? Where’s the kind of filleting that Christopher Hitchens gave Tony Blair in their debate on religion?

This week that all changed.

I became aware of Beppe Grillo and his Five Star Movement in Italy.This comedian and political activist won just under 20% of the vote in local contests in Parma, and several smaller towns. Have a look at the story of his journey and his beliefs.  Like Alexis Tsipras in Greece he seems uncorrupted, focused and damn mad.

I confess (shamefacedly) not to have realised Beppe had been voted a European of the year by Time Magazine in 2005 on the back of his fantastic blog.

And then I saw Griff Rhys Jones on Question Time demolishing the other contributors including the, for once, tongue tied Caroline Lucas trying to defend wind power. He was angry and eloquent. I wanted to vote for him. Sitting opposite Lord (good Lord, how did that happen?) Prescott and two brains Willetts, he was so much more passionate and smart. And no, he doesn’t look funny in this clip does he?

And then there was the film “the Dictator”, Sacha Baron Cohen’s satire on despotism and the ludicrous postures of the Gadaffi’s of this world. Would that he were to do something similar about the Euro and the absurd politics of Brussels.

Version three: “I’m sane and I’m not going to take it anymore.”


What we need is more comic rage. More people like Bill Maher in the States and more like Ian Hislop over here. We need more contrarians everywhere. It’s the ability to undermine the person with whom you’re debating and use teasing humour to remind them of their frail arguments that is so telling. Hence the popularity and success of Boris.

Where we are today is so serious it calls for a deluge of laughter and ridicule. And one final example of that: the Eurovision song contest. Me? I’m putting my money on Saturday afternoon, as I write this, on “Aphrodisiac” – the Greek entry. 

That would be fun.




“Aphrodisiac? What’s that?”

DING DONG MERRILY - ASK NOT FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS

I sent a Christmas Card this year produced by Private Eye which had a group of snowmen sitting around a boardroom table one of whom was gloomily intoning “Gentlemen I think we’re heading for a meltdown”. Thus we read in the Sunday Times article “Nightmare before Christmas” all about the retail bloodbath with rucksacks and thongs in the news…..Black’s Leisure and La Senza apparently on the brink. Meanwhile the Foreign Office is working on advanced plans to evacuate over 1 million Britons living in Spain and Portugal who may have their savings frozen in failing banks and be thrown from their mortgaged villas on to unswept and potholed streets because yes, the end of the Euro-world is nigh. Tragedy was heaped on tragedy as the rumbustious polemicist and contrarian Christopher Hitchens handed in his dinner pail and got two double page spreads in the Times. The Queen Mother didn’t even get that. Hitchens was quoted “The four most overrated things in the world are champagne, lobster anal sex and picnics”. All of them are highly rated here in Brighton – although it’s agreed here that lobster is, perhaps, a bit over hyped. None of this is very Christmassy all this is it? Yet I’ve heard more good singing in the past few weeks than for a long time and I’ve laughed more. I laughed at the story in Stephen Pile’s story in his Book of Heroic Failures about an opera in Wexford thirty years ago on a sloping stage covered in marbled formica. This proved so slippery that the first singer slipped fell and slid rapidly towards the orchestra pit but hung on to be swiftly joined by another singer who suffered the same plight. Locked in embrace on the brink of the stage (not in the script) they carried on singing. The moral of that story which made me laugh out loud was their professionalism was not daunted by the minor mishap of a stumble. The show went on. As our show will. And I realised as I was laughing why the whole Euro farce has been pissing me off so mightily. No sense of humour. Have you ever seen a Belgian laugh? Name a comedian from Luxemburg or Lithuania. And satire’s role in France died with Voltaire. The last words, as they should, belong to Christopher Hitchens. “Alcohol makes people less tedious and food less bland and can help provide what the Greeks call ‘entheos’, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing”. Cheers and Happy Christmas.