The Virtual Stoa

It’s probably got to be the Harry the Nazi kerfuffle from back in January. Nothing quite as funny as Prince Charles’s views on education, I think, in 2005, but Harry dressing as a Nazi isn’t bad.

The story also produced this gem, from the mother of someone called Guy Pelly, who is apparently a friend of Prince Harry’s, which ought to win some award or other for crass stupidity:

“It certainly wasn’t disrespectful to dress as the Queen. No more than it would be disrespectful for a white man to dress as a black man. I myself went as a penguin. And you could argue that it was a good thing Harry wore that costume. After all it highlighted the whole debate about Auschwitz � and that’s a positive thing, surely.”

But if there were other Stories that Reflect Badly on the Royal Family in the year about to end, please remind me what they were in comments below.

Eduard Bernstein, German social democrat, born 6 January 1850, died 18 December 1932. Some texts are available here.

This would appear to be a straightforward opportunity for us all once again to agree about how very good Doctor Who was. (But why does the newly-released TARDIS-shaped box-set of the DVDs say that this was the “first series”, when patently it was the twenty- or thirty-somethingth series?) And I enjoyed a lot of the Ashes cricket on the box, too, though perhaps that shouldn’t belong in a review of the year’s TV. Was anything else any good? People tell me that Bleak House wasn’t bad, and they may be right.

Lelio Basso, Italian socialist, born in Varazze, 25 December 1903, died in Rome, 16 December 1978.

OK, it’s albums, records, concerts time. I’m about as completely out of the loop on the so-called popular so-called music front as it’s possible to be – I think the one 2005 record I’ve heard this year is the new Laura Cantrell album (thanks, Sarah), which really isn’t a lot to be going on when assembling a general survey of the field of contemporary cultural production, so do tell me what I missed. The concert I remember enjoying a lot was probably the Newcastle Bach Choir performing Handel’s Belshezzar, with a bunch of fine soloists including Emma Kirkby. Not sure what else I went to over the course of the year. There was probably something.

The interview with Patrick Cockburn in the current New Left Review is rivetingly interesting.

An old one, but I’ll use last month’s 40th anniversary of UDI as the spurious peg to hang it on and justify recirculation:

Q: Why is Rhodesia like Oklahoma!?

A: It’s Surrey with the lunatic fringe on top.

We’ve had Lucy’s and the Globe, and here, as promised, is what remains of the St Giles Cafe, or, as JM reminds us in a comments box below, the Café Saint-Gilles, a nickname that stuck on the grounds that nothing was less French than the kind of magnificently greasy, salty fry-up they served up here. No idea what’s coming next; they appear to have ripped out most of the inside already. Apologies for the slightly out-of-focus pic.

Here’s Andromache:

And here’s Enkidu:

We enjoyed Hannibal ad portas, which we saw in Karlsruhe just before it closed in January, and we’re looking forward to the Persians at the British Museum, though we won’t catch that until the New Year.

Biggest disappointment was Turks at the Royal Academy, which had some splendid objects, but wrapped it all up in the kind of ideological nonsense which pissed you off the more you thought about it.

On the eve of the elections, I thought I’d read the reports from the February 2004 and November 2005 National Survey of Iraq polls side by side, to see what the changes have been over time on the questions that were asked both times around, as I’ve found a number of presentations of the numbers on different blogs and in various media reports a bit annoying.

There’s a little bit of a shift in the “how are things going in your life” figures — more people are plumping for “very good” as opposed to “quite good” and more are choosing “quite bad” rather than “very bad”, but the overall numbers in the two main camps – good and bad – remain the about the same, with about 70% of people saying “good” and a little under 30% saying “bad”. But there’s certainly a small movement towards the people who are content with their lot over the last two years.

On the other hand, ask the same people how their lives compare with the way they were before the war, and another small shift is discernible, but this time towards people who think things are going less well for them. Numbers reporting things as being “much better” and “somewhat better” are down by 1.3% and 3.7% at 20.6% and 30.9% respectively; numbers saying things are “somewhat worse” or “much worse” are up by 6.4% and 4.3%, and now stand at 19.1% and 10.2%.

And people are slightly less optimistic about their prospects over the next 12 months than they were in February 2004, though the optimistis still heavily outnumber the pessimists. 34.9% think things will be “much better” (down 1.8%); 29.3% think they will be “somewhat better” (down 5%); 7.3% think things will be “somewhat worse” (up 4.1%); and 5.2% think things will be “much worse” (up 1.8%).

Support for a unitary Iraq remains high, but is falling. 79% of respondents opted for a “unified Iraq with central government in Baghdad” in February 2004; that’s now down to 70%, with support for a federal government up from 14% to 17.6% and support for partition rising from 3.8% to 9.1%.

In February 2004, 15.1% of those polled thought the coalition forces should “leave now”; that’s now up to 25.5%, which seems a pretty big shift. In the earlier poll 18.3% thought they should stay “until security is restored”; that’s now up to 30.9% — though I think the data here isn’t comparable, as respondents faced a different set of choices each time the poll was conducted.

The occupying forces aren’t especially popular. In February 2004 13.2% of Iraqis “strongly supported” the presence of coalition forces, now only 12.8% do, which is a trivial shift, as is the shift from 19.6% to 20.8% among those who “somewhat oppose” the presence of the troops. Less trivial, though, are the other two shifts in opinion: those who “somewhat support” their presence have fallen from 26.3% to 19.4%; those who “strongly oppose” the presence of occupying forces has risen from 31.3% to a substantial 43.7%.

The question about whether the occupying forces have done a good job or not wasn’t asked last time around, which was a shame, although I’d hazard a guess that there hasn’t been much change here: the answers to a different question from February 2004, about how much confidence Iraqis had in the occupying forces has a very similar profile. Thus in 2004 7.9% reported “a great deal of confidence”, 17.4% reported “quite a lot”, 23.5% reported “not very much” and 42.8% reported “none at all”. And these look pretty similar to the answers this time around to the “have done a good job” question, where 9.6% said “a very good job”, 26.6% said “quite a good job”, 18.8 said “quite a bad job” and 39.8% said “a very bad job”. But these weren’t the same questions, so comparisons are hazardous.

UPDATE [15.12.2004]: I forgot to include the stats on the “was the coalition right to invade in 2003″ question, though I think you know how this one goes by now. Here there’s a shift away from the thought that it was the right thing to do at all levels, which takes the belief that the invasion was wrong above the 50% level: 18.6% think it was “absolutely right” (down 1%); 27.8% think it “somewhat right” (down 1%); 17.2% think it “somewhat wrong” (up 4.3%); 33.1% think it “absolutely wrong” (up 6.9%), with the 12.7% of people who found it “difficult to say” in 2004 now making up a mere 3.5% of the population.

Can some friendly Lib-Dem-supporting VS-reader please explain in words of a few syllables what all this Charles Kennedy stuff is really about?

I heard some idiot on The World At One explaining that the problem with CK was that no-one could really imagine him as PM, which is true. But it’s clearly not at the root of the current flap, as there’s no Lib Dem whom anybody could begin to imagine as PM, and for lots of reasons. So, as I say, if some passing Lib Dem could explain what’s going on, that will save me from having to spend more time than I should like with tomorrow’s papers.

I mean, I assume he’s doomed, but quite who’s wielding the knife / axe [delete as applicable] isn’t yet clear.

Is the key point that some faction among the Lib Dems decided that putsching Kennedy won’t necessarily lead to a Simon Hughes leadership (which might require emigration to avoid)?

I’ve just posted the text of Alasdair MacIntyre’s 1968 radio broadcast, “The Strange Death of Social Democratic England” over here. It’s not especially well-known, but it’s interesting for all kinds of reasons, and, like everything he’s ever written, it’s a good read.

I’ve been to the theatre even less often than I’ve been to the cinema this year, but the two outstanding shows this year for me were both called Don Carlos. We saw Derek Jacobi in Schiller’s play in the middle of the year in London, which was splendid (costumes, acting, production, play); and we saw the Welsh National Opera’s production of Verdi’s epic opera towards its end in Oxford, which had one or two medium-sized problems (not enough subtlety on the part of the chap singing Philip in particular), but which was a thoroughly worthwhile production of a very difficult piece — and they made – in my opinion – all the right choices, with the five-act ever-so-slightly-trimmed-down French version, and the more brutal finale at the end. What did we miss (theatre and opera, please; concerts and other kinds of music will follow in a separate post)?

We’re dealing with books quite happily below. Now’s your chance to tell me whether there’ve been any good films this year that I’ve missed, as I don’t really read the film review pages any more. I enjoyed March of the Penguins last night, and am quite glad that I am not a penguin, but I’ve made very few trips to the cinema in 2005, despite living just around the corner from the only half-way decent cinema in Oxford. Downfall was probably the pick of the (small) bunch, with a remarkable performance from the Swiss chap playing Hitler.

Jill Craigie (also here), socialist film-maker; born in Fulham, 7 March 1914; died in Camden, 13 December 1999.