Distractions and Choices

Writing – let alone blogging – is a solitary activity. The thought which (hopefully!) precedes writing is more of a social process – requiring the stimulus of discussion or at least reading. But putting words together requires some protection from the pressures of everyday living – and the last week has seen many of these, with various technical challenges from the central heating system and my faithful 14 year-old Daewoo Cielo car.
A great dump of Amazon books and Truffaut films hasn’t helped the writing – nor the glorious weather. The books have been a mix of le Carre novels, Chinese and Scandinavian detective stories, Mackintosh-Smith travelogues, art books (Infinite Jest – caricature and satire from Leonardo to Levine and Simon Schama’s The Power of Art - whose (video) treatment of Turner you can see here) and a few serious treatises such as David Graeber’s Debt - the first 5,000 years and Why we disagree about climate change.

Anyway, back to cars. I am one of these people for whom a car is a facility for getting me from city a to cottage b with minimum fuss and cost and who, having bought it, doesn’t want to think about a car again for many years. I was almost 50 before I bought my first new car – having been well-served initially with an old French Simca; then had a series of second-hand Volvos before succumbing to my first new car in 1989 – a modest Fiat Tipo which faithfully took me around Central Europe in the early 1990s from my Copenhagen base. I've also been lucky with my Daewoo – it’s recognised that the early models assembled here in the Romanian plant were the best. I also ran a 10-year old Audi Estate in Kyrgyzstan for a couple of years and was delighted with the experience. 

Noting the high level of satisfaction from buyers of Skoda cars (and the fuel consumption of their diesels) I settled on this brand – but have been a bit put off both by three things - their prices; the complication of the choice of engine size, fuel and names; and feedback I have been getting from mechanics about the inferior nature of some of the materials in the newer models.
I cannot be bothered with all the apparent choices I am presented with. And I am downright cynical about the claims made - not least about reliability. How come the marketing international companies do doesn't throw up this basic profile?? I';m sure I'm not unique...After all Volkswagen (Skoda's parent company) gave us the Beetle. Where is today's version??? Coincidentally I came across this interesting article on the issue of consumer power.
Our economic system is based on planned obsolescence. And the four-year guarantees in this part of the world are apparently not worth the paper they are written on – an interesting test of European integration.
So I am back to thinking of a 10 year old Audi – except that four-wheel is a better bet in this part of the world! Choices, choices…… 

The superb weather continues - although I look forward now to Sofia - a great  exhibition in the Sofia City Gallery celebrating its 60th anniverary; a reopened National Gallery (which I know about thanks to a private blog - not the official site!; a Toni Todorov exhibition at Vihra's Astry Gallery from 1 November; and a Victoria Gallery auction on 15 November

And, in the meantime, I discovered today this interesting website about the Bulgarian painter Georgi Zhelezarov (1897-1982) - which gives a nice sense of the national art of the period. 

Toni Todorov is a contemporary - and the above is taken from a calendar of his work which Vihra kindly gave me. That's another feature of Bulgaria - the number of (Bulgarian) art calendars you can find - and the frequency with which hotels everywhere display original Bulgarian paintings.

Taken for a ride - UK rail privatisation

I always try to be fair on this blog – even to Sarah Palin! One subject, however, on which it is difficult for me to remain objective is the privatisation of the UK railways – now costing the British taxpayer some three times more (allowing for inflation) than did state ownership and costing the passenger some 4 times more (and greater inconvenience) than equivalent travel in the rest of Europe. It is a marvellous case-study of, variously, policy development (on what evidence was the policy brought in and discussed?); democratic accountability (who wanted it – and has supported it?);  civil service management (skill preparation) and neo-liberalism.

It was a mad scheme from the start (in 1993) – totally against basic economic theory (or what remains of it). Rail is a natural monopoly. Services cannot run against one another. So sections of the system are put out for tender by the State for 10-15 year “franchises”. About 2,000 companies are involved in these contracts and sub-contracts – with all the bureaucracy (let alone profit-taking) this involves. And that is before we bring into play the new regulatory systems set up to monitor targets and ensure that the customers and government were not being “taken for a ride” (excuse the pun) by the private monopolies. I do not pretend to understand the complex (and ever-changing) process by which public assets were sold up, franchises awarded and regulatory systems managed. A 2004 paper by Prof Stephen Glaister seems to give a lot of the detail – if you have the patience to follow it all.

The last 19 years have seen a lot of problems – train collisions; bankruptcy of RailTrack; huge rise in complaints – but they are small beer compared with the scandal which has now erupted over the contract for the West Coast line (London to Glasgow) which has just been cancelled due to irregularities (so typical for procurement processes). Three senior civil servants in the Ministry of Transport have been suspended (one intriguingly an ex-employee of a merchant bank) – and the Government seems to be using this is a once-in-a lifetime opportunity to shake up the civil service (again).  

Even ex-civil servants are playing the government’s game of faulting the civil servants rather than the crazy system they are forced to play in.

What I have never understood is the reluctance of the Labour Party while in power to honour the clear and detailed statement it made in 1993 to renationalise – despite the strength of public opinion against the mess of privatisation and of the intellectual argument for renationalisation. 

Closer Admiration

Lists of people one admires, of course, say as much about the person making the list as those on the list – about the qualities in people we respect and look for in others if not in ourselves. Authenticity, generosity, curiousity, passion and integrity are key values for me - choosing one’s own path; and being open to others.

I admire 83-year old Viciu, my neighbour, for his resilience (tending to the livestock so cheerily); his carpenter skills; and his warm acceptance of me as an eccentric outsider.

I admire my friend Stefan in Slovakia for the way he has led the renaissance of an old Hungarian Palace which serves a mixture of a training centre, hotel and art gallery; given life to the village in which it is located; and for his passion for cultural travel and collecting artefacts.

I admire my friend Vihra in Sofia for her passionate encouragement of Bulgarian contemporary artists through the special exhibitions and vernissajs she arranges in her small gallery – and the beautiful bookmarks which accompany each exhibition.

I can think of quite a lot of “local heroes” I knew in the West of Scotland (not least my father).

Most belonged to the “old school” who had experienced poverty and the war. It is, I think, difficult for the materialistic and narcissistic post-war generation to develop real values.

I spent my formative years (26-50) as a reforming Regional politician (with an academic base) – so had an unusually wide range of contacts (political, professional, community). I consorted with senior people of all sorts – civil servants, politicians, journalists, policemen, social workers…. and felt that most were operating beyond their level of competence…..

Most people expected me to move on to national politics – but I had looked into the eyes of so many national politicians and seen so much emptiness. Tam Dalyell was a maverick Labour politician I admired – you can sense his integrity from the detailed obituary he wrote here for John Smith, the Scottish politician whose death in 1993 (?) robbed us of a better Labour PM in 1997  

Amongst the 103 councillors elected to the powerful new Strathclyde Region in 1974 with me, there were many of the time-servers you would expect to find.  But the powers of the new Region had attracted a good calibre of politician - the experienced leadership of the old counties and a good mix of younger, qualified people (despite the obvious full-time nature of the job, we were expected to do it for a daily allowance of about 15 euros. Clearly the only people who could contemplate that were the retired, the self-employed or those coming from occupations traditionally supportive of civic service - eg railwaymen or, like myself, educationalists)

With a strong sense of heading into the unknown, a dual leadership was created - with the public persona (the President and Policy Leader) being someone fairly new to politics, a Presbyterian Minister (without a church) who had made his name in "urban ministry" working with the poor. Geoff Shaw inspired great respect - particularly in the world outside normal politics - and brought a new approach. He was determined to have more open and less complacent policy-making: particularly with respect to social inequalities.

Appointed as the Leader of the Majority Group (and therefore holding the patronage powers) was an older and politically much more experienced man - an ex-miner. Dick Stewart may not have had the formal education and eloquence of Geoff but he commanded respect (and fear!) amongst both politicians and officials of the Council for his ability to get to the heart of any matter and for his honesty. He readily grasped the key elements in any issue: and would not easily deviate from policy. To persuade him to change, you had to have very strong arguments or forces on your side - and a great deal of patience. This made for policy stability: occasionally frustrating but so much more acceptable than the vacillation and fudge which passes for so much policy-making! Geoff stood for moral direction: Dick for order.

Both had a deep sense of justice: and utter integrity to their principles. And the new political structures unusually adopted for this most unusual of local authorities gave them both an equal share in policy leadership.

The difference in perspectives and styles occasionally caused problems: but both approaches were very much needed in the early years. Sadly, when 4 years later, the Convener died, the tensions led to a rethink of the concept: and all power concentrated in the hands of the Leader. 

Admiring - and meeting - Remarkable People

I was once asked who I admired – and didn’t find it easy to answer. The dictionary definition (“to regard with wonder, pleasure or approval”) doesn’t seem to me to go far enough. For me, to admire is “to look up to” and has connotations not only of skill but of moral courage. I can admire someone’s eloquence or writings – but not necessarily the person (not, at least in the absence of knowing him/her). I can list some of my “heroes” – people who shone a light at an important stage in my development – and whose work is still worth reading. They would include George Orwell, Reinhardt Niebuhr, EH Carr, RH Tawney, Karl Popper, Ivan Illich……and Tony Crosland who was the only one whom I was fortunate enough to meet and talk with (briefly) when he visited my local Labour Party when I was its chairman in the early 1960s - a few years after he had written the definitive Future of Socialism.

But it was his colleague Hugh Gaitskell whom I really admired for the courage he showed in the late 1950s – as Leader of the Opposition – in standing up to fight for what he believed in. I had talked with him at his house in the late 1950s (invited with other promising young reformers) and was transfixed listening on the radio to his defiant speech at Labour's 1960 party conference where two unilateralist resolutions were carried and the official policy document on defence was rejected. Gaitskell thought these were disastrous decisions and made a passionate speech where he stressed that he would "fight and fight and fight again to save the party we love". This was at a time when I was highly ambivalent about the nuclear issue and would shortly afterwards become an active nuclear disarmer. But I had to admire his courage and oratory.

I was also lucky enough in those days to have a session fixed up for me in the late 1960s with Wilfred Brown, head of the Glacier Metal company and the man who, with the help of Elliott Jaques,  oversaw several experimental efforts in empowerment, workplace democracy, compensation, pricing and organizational design that culminated in the almost two-decade long efforts (1948-1965) led by Dr. Elliot Jaques. This unique collaboration between a CEO and a researcher — which Peter Drucker called "the most extensive study of actual worker behavior in large-scale industry" — resulted in one of the only true comprehensive systems of management and led to groundbreaking discoveries and management methods that challenged almost every area of management and organizational design. For a simplified version of Brown's practice and theory see here. 

Such a combination of leadership with respect for both people and organisational learning is rare indeed

These memories of remarkable people I’ve met were sparked off by an interview with Senator Bennie Saunders in the interesting Orion Magazine. He too I met (in the late 1980s) when he was the “democratic socialist” mayor of Burlington, Vermont, USA. I happened to be in Vermont, knew of him and asked to meet him (as a fellow democratic socialist politician). He has shown immense guts not only in the various fights he has taken on with corporate interests in his attempt to represent the ordinary citizen – but for the simple act of not disguising his basic values.   

Perhaps the most remarkable person I ever met was a Romanian - Cornel Coposu – then (1991) Leader of the newly re-established Christian Democratic Peasant  Party who was condemned in 1947 to spend 15 years in prison for his activities in the National Peasant Party. After his release, Coposu started work as an unskilled worker on various construction sites (given his status as a former prisoner, he was denied employment in any other field), and was subject to surveillance and regular interrogation.[]

His wife was also prosecuted in 1950 during a rigged trial and died in 1965 soon after her release, from an illness contracted in prison. Coposu managed to keep contact with PNŢ sympathisers, and re-established the party as a clandestine group during the 1980s, while imposing its affiliation to the Christian Democrat International.

I also had brief but one-to-one meetings with two great German Presidents -  Richard von Weizsacker and Johannes Rau. Weizsacker was a Christian Democract and President 1984-1994 and West Berlin Mayor 1981-84. Rau was a Social Democrat; President 1999-2004 and Head of the huge RheinWestphalen Land (Region) from 1978-98. I was lucky enough to meet both of these men informally and can therefore vouch personally for the humility they brought to their role. Weizsacker was holidying in Scotland and popped in quietly to pay his respects to the leader of the Regional Council. As the (elected) Secretary to the majority party, I had private access to the Leader’s office and stumbled in on their meeting. Rau I also stumbled across when in a Duisberg hotel on Council business. He was not then the President – but I recognised him when he came in with his wife and a couple of assistants, introduced myself ( as a fellow social democrat); gave him a gift book on my Region which I happened to be carrying and was rewarded with a chat.

And then there was Tisa von der Schulenburg - Prussian aristocrat, nun and artist in 1920s Berlin who supported her brother in the plot to assassinate Hitler whom I met a few years before her death (at 97!) – at an exhibition of the sketches she had done in the 1939s of the Durham miners.

"Tisa" Schulenburg's life was by any standard remarkable. Having grown up among the Prussian nobility and witnessed the trauma of Germany's defeat in the Great War, she frequented the salons of Weimar Berlin, shocked her family by marrying a Jewish divorce in the 1930s, fled Nazi Germany for England, worked as an artist with the Durham coal miners, and spent her later years in a convent in the Ruhr.

Her experience of the darker moments of the 20th century was reflected in her sculpture and drawing, in which the subject of human suffering and hardship was a constant theme - whether in the form of Nazi terror or the back-breaking grind of manual labour at the coal face. 

When she heard that I was a politician from Strathclyde Region - with its mining traditions in Lanarkshire and Ayrshire - she presented me with a signed portfolio of her 1930s drawings of the NE English miners for onward donation to the Scottish miners.

And I almost forgot my memorable lunch with the Greek actress Melina Mercouri!
So what do all these stories tell? All but one of the people I;ve mentioned are dead! And those I met, I met only for a few minutes - 60 at most. Does this mean we can admire only from afar? Hopefully not.

In a future post I want to say something about "closer admiration"

The painting at the top of this post is one of Tony Todorov - of whom I spoke yesterday

Some contemporary Bulgarian artists

My Bulgarian artist friends are remarkably patient about my passion for the work of their dead compatriots. And I should feel guilty that my purchases, for the most part, do not help existing painters survive or nurture new talent. I say “for the most part” since my collection does include about 30 contemporary works – mainly realist. Three artists in particular caught my eye early on – 

Juliana Sotirova, an incredibly talented, productive and versatile young woman from whom I have bought some 12 paintings. These include a specially-commissioned one of my father which she did from a black and white photograph I gave her. I was stunned with the uncanny likeness when she revealed it to me.

She has a variety of favourite themes - old houses; African scenes; still-lives. I will try in future posts to lead with some of her paintings I love looking at.  

Milcho Kostadinov’s more impressionistic take on run-down Sofia and Plovdiv buildings charmed me from the beginning – with their soft greys and small bursts of colour.

Recently he has moved to boats, nudes and the sea.

Angela Minkova is the last of the trio whose work has always attracted me – with its creativity and humour.

She concentrates on aquarelles (a lot on the theme of Queen Mary at Balcik) and on fantastic small sculptures made from a variety of materials eg bone and feather.

Two people in Sofia are responsible for what (little) I know about the contemporary scene - Yassen Golev of Konus Gallery (reference in previous post) and Vihra Pesheva of Astry Gallery. They are lovely people – full of passion and integrity. Yassen is also an artist – a couple of whose works I have already shown on this blog.

Vihra organises special exhibitions in her tiny gallery – and it is there I was first introduced to the work of the trio I have spoken about above.

And also where I purchased my first “non-realist” works from two Veliko Tarnovo artists Natasha Atanassova 

and her partner Nikolai Tiholov. 

Both produce such joyful works!

It was also in the Astry Gallery that I met Tony Todorov who does amazing pieces which are growing on me. I particularly like the painting 3 minutes 16 seconds into the video.

And it was in Astry too that I was privileged to meet an old giant of Bulgarian painting Vassil Vulev – in his 80s - and it was three of his 1980s aquarelles I bought.

Finally I have to confess that this is one of the first Bulgarian paintings I bought (way back in 2008) - at the open-air market at Alexander Nevsky Church. By Violetta Stanoeva. Interesting that it was symbolic! And with all the appropriate symbols. But more than a touch of kitsch

How one’s tastes change!

Nature's Bounty - Preparing for winter

I like this time of year – although, in this part of the world, it does presage grim months ahead - last winter, my old neighbours had difficulty opening their door at one point because of the packed snow lying against it – and temperatures fell to minus 30 in the area for a week or so.  Spring, obviously, is a more optimistic time of year – despite TS Eliot’s line about “April is the cruellest month”. But my vivid memories are of late Septembers, as a child, of the long table between my father’s pulpit and the congregation groaning with vegetables and fruits as the Presbyterian Church in Scotland celebrated HarvestThanksgiving.

The weather is still balmy here in the mountains but, from my balcony overlooking the village road, I can see the village prepare for winter – tractors towing carriers full of cut wood for the stoves; livestock changing their pasture; work on the houses stepping up a pace to ensure it’s finished before the snow strikes - and stays (for several months). And patterns in my own work reflect this – arranging at last for the cracked boiler of the (wood-fired) central heating to be repaired and the system tested for the winter; today shifting the summer shirts to another section of the wardrobe, bringing out the winter shirts, washing some and exposing all of them to the warm, strong wind which sweeps along the balcony.  

The link I’ve given to TS Eliot above is a great reading by three very good British actors (interposed with Eliot himself - very dry) of The Waste Land – not a favourite of mine. I am, however, very fond of his FourQuartets - giving an excerpt of my favourite section this time last year. Here is a useful commentary

I'm very happy to show, at the top of the post, my Yassen Golev aquarelle. He is a friend, the owner of Konus gallery in Sofia and helped me a lot with my booklet on Bulgarian realist painters. He does great surrealist oils - and these highly detailed still-life aquarelles.

Plutocracy at work

 As someone who has fought 20 successful elections over a 22 year-period - 8 of them public elections; and 12 internal "political group" elections for leadership positions, I am now remarkably indifferent to (if not cynical about) elections. Particularly American elections whose "policy-makers" are so much in thrall to commercial interests - not least because their (very expensive) campaigns are funded by these same interests.

Radicals like myself, of course, often run the danger of underestimating the importance of voting for "least worst" candidates to avoid the worst excesses of the rampant neo-liberal characters who are everywhere these days in elections. A "what if" approach to history has become quite popular these days - what if Gore or McCain had been elected??

A good solid analysis here on the financial and tactical aspects of the current Presidential elections in the USA shows the extent to which big money thinks it can buy elections. Two and half billion dollars spent so far by the various campaigns to put one man in the White House. The article also suggests that the Obama campaign tactics have been well-researched and successful -     

Romney's outside fundraising body or "Super Pac", called Restore Our Future, has no fewer than 25 billionaires on its list of donors. Sheldon Adelson, a Las Vegas casino magnate, has alone injected almost $40m into this election cycle in favour of Republican candidates and may approach $100m before it's done. Emboldened by the two court rulings in 2010 (Citizens United v Federal Election Commission andSpeechnow.org v Federal Election Commission) that removed any barriers from the investment of corporate, union or private money into elections, Adelson and other mega-wealthy donors will have pumped in close to $500m come November. That in turn will bring the total cost of putting one man into the White House to a dizzying total of $2.5bn.
"Wealthy donors are injecting money into the electoral process at a level we have never seen before," said Bob Biersack, who tracks the influence of cash in politics at the Centre for Responsive Politics. "The danger is that this will swing the balance of power, effectively disenfranchising the majority of Americans."

Obama has fought off the march of Big Money partly by transmitting a positive message to voters of who he is and where he stands. His convention was a master-class in political communications, replete with a lecture from the master himself, Bill Clinton. With his help, Obama made the case that the continuing hardship felt by many Americans was not a reflection of his own failed policies, as the Republicans contest, but rather a sign that he needs more time to get the job finished. "It will take more than a few years for us to solve challenges that have built up over decades," he said.

The 2012 election was always going to be about the economy, and it remains Obama's most vulnerable point. But in this crucial area the Obama re-election campaign has coolly refused to be cowed by the Republican assault and calmly turned the argument back against them: the economic meltdown happened on the Republicans' watch; Romney opposed the bailout of the car manufacturers; though the economy still falters, the stock exchange is robust; and house prices are beginning to recover. Those arguments have played well in battlegrounds like Ohio, where Obama's role in having saved the auto industry resonates among its thousands of car parts and distribution outlets. The state has a jobless rate of 7.2%, notably below the national average.
Across the country, the anxious electorate appear to have been listening. This week's Quinnipiac poll records that for the first time since it began following the Obama-Romney race, the president has come out on top on the economy. Some 51% of likely voters said that Obama would do a better job on the economy to Romney's 46%.

While Romney and his conservative rivals were slugging it out with each other for the Republican nomination, the Obama team were quietly working behind the scenes to define Romney's biography. In a series of attack ads aired remorselessly in the swing states, they painted him as a rich kid born with a silver spoon in his mouth who had no affinity with the daily trials of the middle classes, destroyed ordinary people's lives as head of Bain Capital, and was so arrogant that he wouldn't declare his taxes.

Quinnipiac's Peter Brown, who as a polling analyst sides with neither of the two main parties, says he has never witnessed such a successful character assassination in a presidential race. "They have turned Romney into a wealthy, out-of-touch elitist, who is just not someone the average voter wants to have a beer with."

The cartoon is a James Gillray
Here's a good piece on a new book on pluocracy

The greatest art form?

Yesterday’s post on the Azeri satirical journal of the 1920s reflected my admiration of graphic arts as a whole - let alone those who do caricature – which has been defined as “moral satire – making some point about the nature of man rather than a specific individual”. I would amend that slightly to replace “rather than” with “as much as” since some of the most famous caricatures have savaged individuals. The classic caricaturists for me are Goya and Daumier – with the Germans (Otto Dix, Georg Grosz, Kathe Kollwitz and Max Beckmann) making a powerful contribution in the early part of the 20^th century before the later British caricaturists such as Gerald Scarfe.

A retired British politician who has such a great passion for political caricatures that he was instrumental in opening a London museum devoted to the art suggests on this interesting video on the history of British caricature that “graphic satire is an art form (the only one) which Britain created” – starting with William Hogarth. In his steps followed James Gillray (the work above is his - an ambassador presenting his "credentials" to the King - more here), George Cruikshank and Max Beerbohm 

And, during my researches for this post, I was delighted to find this glorious output from some Glasgow artists in the 1820s giving incredible insights into the lives of Glasgow people in those times.

I had been aware that it was not easy to find books (in English) about this art form (however defined) or even its best practitioner such as Daumier. A very useful 1980s article on the genre (the only one I could find on the internet) tells me that it has been viewed down the ages as inferior. For the life of me I can’t understand why – since its exaggerations and social scenes are far more inclusive and tell us so much more than what passed for portrait painting.

A recent exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Museum reminded us of the greats. For those who want to know more, here is a two hour video with three presenters. And there is a great website on Daumier which not only gives all his works but actually explains the background of each!

The Bulgarian tradition of caricaturists is a very strong one – starting (I think) with Alexander Bozhinov a hundred years ago and including people such as Ilyia Beshkov, Marco Behar, Boris Angeloushev and Jules Pascin  whose main efforts were in the pre-war period.
One of my prize possessions is a copy of a 1954 magazine called New Bulgaria with each of its 18 pages covered with 3-4 amazing pencil caricatures almost certainly doodled by Bulgaria’ most loved graphic artist – Ilyia Beshkov.
I was happy to pay 250 euros for the journal – after all I got 50 sketches for about the same price as the going rate for one (admittedly larger) caricature of his! 

And delightful, comprehensive volumes have been published (in Bulgarian of course) on the first three of these individuals – Beshkov and Behar in the pre 1989 period; Angeloushev more recently.
Bulgaria at least honours its graphic artists properly.
Here's one blogger's introduction to eight old Bulgarian illustrators - a more general word, perhaps, than "caricature", "satire", "comic"........

How artists coped during communist repression is a fascinating subject - some (like Boris Denev and Nikolai Boiadjiev) refused to toe the official line on painting and almost stopped painting; many other moved into theatre design and cinema; others had to emigrate. One of them, Rayko Aleksiev, so annoyed the communists that he was arrested on their coming to power and died in prison under suspicious circumstances. An important Gallery is named after him – on Rakorski St. Things eased only in the 1980s largely due to the influence of PM Zhivkov's daughter who was a great art afficiando!