DEMOCRACY Ha! Ha!

DEMOCRACY Subject: democracy:

An email to Dinah 27 March 2011 11:07

Good morning

500,000 – figure mentioned on the BBC this morning - marched, in jolly comedy fashion, to protest against the government’s cuts in services and facilities, and the resulting repercussions these would have on employment and on standards of living, and they marched against abuses by the politicians and the banks: “ £50 cut in Winter fuel Allowance to pay MP’s higher expenses.” 500 – figure mentioned on the BBC this morning – committed criminal acts in protest against the government’s cuts, and against the banks’ bonus abuses, and against business tax abuses, and they entered Fortnum and Masons for a mass sit-in, and they smashed a window of the Santander Bank. I feel that the expression of anger of this latter group, 500 citizens with a vote just like the 500,000 comedians, was a more accurate reaction to the action of a government of privileged citizens damaging the already inadequate social structure of the country, with their foreseeable, utterly disastrous, repercussions. But then anger is not respected in this country. Losing one’s temper is not fashionable in this country. It’s not the done thing. I regard this limitation on the expression of legitimate and entirely appropriate feeling as political censorship, as required self-censorship, as expected self-censorship. What the government is doing is, to my mind, breathtakingly stupid, and utterly evil, and puts me in a state beyond anger. Of course they will take not a blime bit of notice of either of the groups of protesters, the comedians or the crooks, and especially not of the violent group, and they will cut the cuts of the police, so as the better to keep under control our abject and largely apathetic citizenry, which is more interested in sports and in the arts than in their lives and in the lives of others.

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Phew!

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The Observer, while joining all the other respectable citizens in condemning the violent actions of the minority protest group, did yet print a sub-headline that these attacks pinpointed organisations whose personnel or policy were guilty of large-scale financial abuse. The tear gas which you discerned in Shaftesbury Avenue must have been the HSBC bank at the corner of Cambridge Circus. Picture of a hooded youth inside the bank kicking the money machine. I don’t think they’d attack John Lewis, as they are a firm singularly decently run, capitalism with an agreeable face...

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I took myself out for a, what turned out to be, cream tea at the end of the 24 bus route in Hampstead, nice continental cafe with Eastern European amateur girls serving.

OUR GOVERNMENT FAVOURS THE OWNERS V. THE DISOWNED

OUR GOVERNMENT FAVOURS THE OWNERS V. THE DISOWNED

My flat in Soho is rent-controlled. That means that the ‘Rent Officer’ sets the rent. When I moved into the flat in 1954, when my friend Shirley Chubb offered it to me - then a peripatetic or out-of-work actor - as she was going to be living in Paris, the rent, including rates. was £4.3.8d per calendar month. And I remember being uncertain whether I should take it on, the responsibility, my freedom. I was still playing the adolescent, at 32! Thank God I decided ‘yes’! My flat, my home, 22 R St, 22 Romilly Strasse, my geraniums, in the middle of the West End, theatreland, accessible to all, at the centre of town, with Piccadilly Circus just off-centre...

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Until 18 April 2011 my rent-controlled rent – yes, the controlling of rent continues, thanks to our caring government! - was £430 per calendar month. Landlords can have the rent ’reviewed’ every two years, and my rent was thus reviewed, and it went up to £492.50 per calendar month. That’s an increase of £62.50. That means I have £62.50 a month less to spend on living. I worked it out: That’s an increase of 14.534884%, call it 14.5 %: That’s a hell of a lot in 2 years! That bears no relation to inflation. Apparently the rate of increase is arrived at by a new formula, to do with the retail price index, which gives a higher figure, and thus favours owners. The rate of increase two years ago, when the rent was last reviewed, was lower, and the rent went up £393.50 per calendar month to £430 per calendar month, an increase of only just over 9%. Not that I love Labour, (With that war criminal Blair in charge, and that collaborator Brown financing Blair’s Iraq???) but one can see that the Tories are at work today.

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I’m a landlord. I own the bed-sitter flat in Southsea, that I rented as a council flat when I ran the arts and festival in Portsmouth 1975-1979. I bought it on the never never. It was rent-controlled when I lived in it, and for some years after, when I let it. I let it to a now retired coach driver. But I cant raise his rent. He cant even pay the full, set, contractual, rent, even with Housing Benefit! And the government has seen fit to cut his Housing Benefit! It, also, is now being worked out by some new formula, which gives a lower figure,

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It’s been his home for 8 years, since 2003. So I don’t want to turf him out. He’s a mate. I also don’t know what the market is like today. It’s always been easy to let the flat. Simple. Ad in the Portsmouth News. Interviews. Decision. (Sometimes the wrong one!) Basta. It’s a nice little flat, in a block of four flats, intimate, set in greenery, more like a village bungalow; shops, co-op, pubs, cafe, fish and chip shop, the sea, all just round the corner.

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So my expenses go up by £62.50 a month, that’s £750 a year. That means I have £750 less to spend on theatre and music and restaurants and travelling and clothes. But my income doesn’t go up. Correction: My state pension has gone up by £1.1725 a week, which is £60.97 a year...

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But there are other people, thousands of them - or is it millions? - whose now higher expenses and lower subsidies will affect food, heating, and other necessities, and may mean their having to move out of their homes. And they’ll likely be just as attached to their homes as I am after 57 years...

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And what will our kind government’s next steps be?

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18 May 2011

A LYNCH MOB LEADER WRITER!

The Editor

FT Magazine

February 5/6 2011 Edition

THE LUCY KELLAWAY INTERVIEW of

“MAX MOSLEY”

magazinletters@ft.com

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Dear Editor

Excellent and interesting as I found the article, it is the comment quoted of Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail, that got my strongest reaction. He referred to Max Mosley’s “unimaginable sexual depravity”, (S/M) and argued that it was the duty of the press to uphold the nation’s morality. For a man in such an influential position in forming public opinion, or at least in underpinning it, to be so lacking in understanding of the complexity and range of variety of human beings is pretty appalling. A person’s sexual peccadilloes, of whatever strangeness to those who have none, or who have other ones, need in no way interfere with their being splendid citizens, workers, neighbours, or friends. Their peculiarities are really of proper concern only to their intimates. I don’t like Mr Dacre. He leads lynch mobs..

Yours sincerely.

Peter Zander.

8 February 2011

MYTILINI 2010

I was in Lesbos again last year for three weeks, late September, a bit late, as it started to get cold mornings and nights. After ten days with my routine of thermal bath one day and swimming the next, I got bored and also got annoyed with the incomprehensible bus schedules, and the limited access they and the coaches gave me to the island. And I suddenly had this image in my mind, of sunbathing while going all over the island on one of those motorbikes with 4 wheels, must have seen one on the island in a previous year. I asked my landlord about it, and his travel agent son, and found one a coach ride away in a more touristy part of the island, in Molyvos - I stay in a village Aklidiou, near Mytilini, the main port, on the route to the airport - which I knew well and loved. But the man wouldn’t let me have it. Had his doubts about me. But so had I! Hadn’t driven a car for 30 years, and had never ridden a motorbike. So I didn’t inspire him with confidence: Disappointed and in a quandary, I irrationally took a local bus along the coast in entirely the wrong direction, for as far as it went, and there was a restaurant that hired out quadbikes! The English wife of the Greek owner immediately arranged for a bike to be delivered, gave me a glass of orange juice, and I hired it, getting a quick short lesson from the man who had brought it, AND HAD THE MOST FANTASTIC FUN WITH IT!!! I did over 600 km, along tracks by the sea and over fields, up the mountains, right through the island, staying a night or two in 2 other places, in both of which I have fairly regular digs, which gives an intimacy to the relationship with the island. There are even remnants of old customs in the villages. I stopped in one for lunch, and at a long table on a terrace above the street were some 30 fairly mature Greeks eating and drinking. On the opposite side of the road below me was a small park, with a number of magnificent horses, with lovely saddles on highly coloured rugs, being walked and watered by young men. I found out it was a meeting of villagers, who had come down from the hills for this reunion on horseback, an annual affair. Of course I raised my glass to the company, as I started my meal at a table for one and, having eaten, was invited to join in the Greek dancing and given Ouzo at their table: A really old Greek scene. The new Greece is less attractive, rather bourgeois, formal, distant, with city ways. I discovered that I was a better driver than I had been, took it at walking pace round the S bends as instructed, and only went up to just over 50 kmh on the few very good straight surfaces. I'd been to a good driving school early on: The British Red Cross Commission in Germany, 46-48, with the Save the Children Fund, driving 8 ton lorries, Bedford, Fordson and Dodge Trucks, ambulances and the original Volkswagen with the divided rear window, and going on forest tracks and on the Autobahnen. And years later driving my mad Minis. This new mobility, this freedom of movement, enabled me, for instance, to see a Roman aqueduct at close range, that I’d been wanting to inspect for years, always passing just within sight of it on my way by bus to my thermal baths. But my main joy, apart from my giggles and suntan, was that greater intimacy which my quadbike gave me with the island, where I’d first gone in 1958, when I met my painter friend Manolis Kalligiannis and his German wife Angelika and the two boys, Michel and Christian... I look forward to my quadbike rambles again this summer!

7 February 2011

MY PERSONAL PROTEST

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I discovered, on waking up this morning, why it is that I am not taking a detailed interest in the affairs of Egypt, or in the turmoil of other countries in the Middle East or elsewhere: It’s because I am too concerned about the disastrous situation that has been obtaining in this country over the last few decades, and is coming to crisis point now: social inequality, poverty, a high prison population, unemployment, Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuts. I am too concerned at the appalling leadership of shall we call it UK Ltd. I am too concerned that the population of UK Ltd is more interested in football and cricket, and in the sexual peccadilloes of the famous and the infamous, than in their own personal futures, and that only a few students are voicing and showing their protest at the disastrous policies now being pursued by the leadership of UK Ltd, which will close or curtail large, necessary and beneficial sections of activity in this country, education, health, social services, and all the arts. And the brave young protesters are being threatened with the future use of water cannons! I always understood that democracy consisted not only of voting for our illustrious leaders every few years, but of expressing opinions continuously, and in every possible legal way…

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And the people of UK Ltd should be concerning themselves powerfully with curtailing their leaders’ sick tendency to enter into entirely undesirable and unnecessary wars, wars that will have repercussions for generations to come, with the hatred and revenge that they generate, and with the resulting threats of terrorism. And the costs of war, and of the preparation for war, have been, and are, simply immense… No wonder at our debt!

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Concerning the “Cuts”, what is so silly about the government’s policy is the haste with which they are wanting to cut down the debt, and thus the payment of interest for this debt. The cure is worse than the disease. After the war the country was in huge debt. That was paid off in DECADES, not in a few years. Which is exactly what should be happening now, in the present situation. Power has to be exercised with the greatest delicacy, and the greater the power that one has, the more delicacy its handling requires. And at national and at international level it requires the greatest finesse…

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And as the ship of state is steered straight to disaster, the people of UK Ltd see nothing, say nothing, do nothing. And H M the Queen, Queen Elisabeth II, may, perhaps, be smiling sadly at what she sees but, unlike Queen Elisabeth I, Queen Bess, she says nothing, she does nothing, while her Ministers fuck up the country.

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Peter Zander

7 February 2011

The Genesis of the Wigmore Hall London International String Quartet Competition

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John Gilhooly . . . . . . . . 13 December 2010

Artistic & Executive Director

Wigmore Hall

36 Wigmore Street
London W1U 2BP

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Dear Mr Gilhooly

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On my way to the Hampstead Theatre last Saturday evening I happened to meet my old and distinguished colleague Gavin Henderson. He told me that the City of London International String Quartet Competition had been adopted by the Wigmore Hall, and that it was now the Wigmore Hall London International String Quartet Competition. I was most interested to learn of this second metamorphosis of the Competition, and it occurs to me that it might be of interest to you to know some of the details of how it was started in 1978-9 as the City of Portsmouth International String Quartet Competition.

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The then Leader of the Portsmouth City Council, Richard Sotnick, had requested Dennis Sayer, from the City Chief Executive Office, and me, City Arts Administrator, to create a music competition, to coincide the following year with his term of office as Lord Mayor. Gavin, as Director of the Portsmouth Festival, had invited Yehudi Menuhin and Hepzibah, together with the Philharmonia Orchestra, to Portsmouth, and I had suggested to Richard Sotnick that we should invite Menuhin to the reception after the concert, and take the opportunity of consulting him about the projected competition. Menuhin immediately offered to give us his advice and his help, and became Artistic Director and Chairman of the Jury. Dennis and I also had enormous support from Ifrah Neaman. Our feasibility study involved many meetings with him and with Menuhin, and visits to Leeds and to Colmar to study their competitions. It was Menuhin’s suggestion that the competition should be quartets, because of the excellence of British teamwork, and there being sufficient competitions for solo instruments. Because the City wanted fairly mature players to compete, with a joint age of a maximum of 100 years, Menuhin offered a special prize for younger contestants. He also insisted that he should speak after the competition to all performers, winners and losers. I am thrilled to think that I played a part in this process all those many years ago...

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May I add my good wishes to the future of the Competition.

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Yours sincerely

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Peter Zander

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I never received a reply from Mr John Gilhooley. Three months later I thought I'd drop him a line. I got the following immediate response:

From: Andrew Fletcher [mailto:afletcher@wigmore-hall.org.uk]

Sent: 24 March 2011 15:21
To: peterzan.berlin@virgin.net
Subject: Response to your letter

Dear Mr Zander

Thank you very much for your letters to John Gilhooly of 13 December 2010 and 23 March 2011. I am sorry that you did not receive our reply to your first letter, in which Mr Gilhooly thanked you for the information regarding the provenance of the Quartet Competition. He was interested to read it, and we also picked it up on your online blog!

Many thanks for taking the trouble to get in touch and I hope you will be able to attend the next Competition at Wigmore Hall in 2012. More information can be found on our website: http://www.wigmore-hall.org.uk/competitions/wigmore-hall-london-international-string-quartet-competition/2012-competition

With all best wishes

Andrew Fletcher

Andrew Fletcher
Executive Assistant to the Director

Wigmore Hall

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To which I replied the same day:

Thank you so much for your note, Andrew Fletcher, and for the relevant information, which I shall check out.

Best wishes

Yours sincerely

Peter Zander

And they all lived happily ever after, in the those dark Grimm fairy tales...

WE WHITE NIGGERS

I have received the following communication from Nick Weaver, Head of Pensions Services, Hampshire Pension Fund, administered by the Hampshire County Council, concerning my pension from Portsmouth City Council, for whom I acted between 1975 and 1979 as City Arts Administrator and, latterly, also as Director of the Portsmouth Festival. The amount currently paid is £72.75 per calendar month.

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“In the June 2010 budget, the Government said future increases in public-sector pensions {to cover inflation PZ} would be linked to changes in the Consumer Prices Index. (CPI) Previously such pensions were linked to increases in the Retail Prices Index. (RPI)” Thus costs linked to housing, “mortgage interest, council tax, buildings insurance, ground rent etc.” will no longer be considered. Furthermore, figures will be “calculated differently even for the same basket of goods”, which sounds fishy to me.

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The Government has thus resorted to basing its figures on only a part of the facts, conveniently leaving out other, equally relevant, facts, to its own advantage and financial benefit, a thoroughly dishonest ploy.

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“Most commentators expect the CPI to be between 0.5% and 0.8% lower that PRI, over the long term.”

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So I’ll get that bit less. In the future I wont be getting the same increase in the piffling pension as I am getting now. You can imagine some civil servant, cant you, poring over a vast array of figures, the cost of little apples, computer-aided, to save the government a few more pennies, to try and balance its bankrupt books.

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How mean can you get...

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And it’s a good example to demonstrate how the poor will get poorer, and the great divide will get wider. Disraeli wrote a novel, SYBIL, which I have never read. But its subtitle is TWO NATIONS. The powerful, privileged, rich at the top of the spectrum and the impotent, undeserving poor at the bottom. Those all-round ‘cuts’ of Her Majesty’s Government will exacerbate the great divide. And the Government’s threats to the public to knuckle down, to cooperate, to find work (where?) or else! i e lose the state’s financial support, will leave more children poor, and more children growing up in disharmony. Even more bulging prisons will have to be built to house the ever-growing delinquent and rebellious population. That’s what comes of lovelessness and cliquiness at the top and filtering down, of festering ambition and of egotism, and of paranoia, with just a dash of sheer stupidity thrown in. The British public are treated by those in power, by those who make the decisions, like white niggers of empire. Disposable. As Julian Assange, yes, he of Wikileaks, said in an interview over Skype with TIME Magazine, December 13, 2010: “The dead hand of feudalism still rests on every British shoulder;”And he goes on: “we plan to remove it.” Oh, would he could!!!

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Yes, and how many of those ‘white niggers’ have been sent to die, have been made to kill, in unnecessary, illegal, and entirely unjustifiable, wars? How many young men and young women have not come home alive, or have come home maimed? No wonder there is apparent need for those huge war memorials on the island at London’s Hyde Park Corner, to commemorate all the myriad dead of yesterday. And of today. And of the future. But do these monstrous high jagged, and these wide-stretched curved, rusty steel and stone memorials express bereavement and regret? Do they not, rather, seem to celebrate, nay to glorify, the killing, and the being killed, thus uniting the nation in celebration of its noble uniqueness vis-a-vis an alien, threatening world?

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A plea. Isn’t it about time for this country to start spending its money on its own people, on their individual needs, on the infrastructure for their social existence, rather than spending it on maintaining the supposedly high military standing this country has been enjoying world-wide, and which its politicians are enjoying at the top of the top table, on this, alas, permanently warring earth? The slogans of the marchers alliterate: ”Welfare, not War!” “Medicines, not Munitions!” “Arts, not Arms!”

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I have received the following communication from Nick Weaver, Head of Pensions Services, Hampshire Pension Fund, administered by the Hampshire County Council, concerning my pension from Portsmouth City Council...