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Day: 21 May 2012

Ed Miliband For Social Mobility; What About Postcode Poverty?

 I’ve just read an article on Yahoo! News reporting how Ed Miliband went all against the Beecroft Report that suggests changes in labour laws that would facilitate employers to lay off the employees. The coalition Government, in his words, isn’t doing anything to attack social inequality; quite on the contrary, they uphold it by denying “bright youngsters from poor backgrounds to succeed“. He wants to make it easier for disadvantaged teenagers to go to the University and to enter the elite professions. And above all, he wants to build culture based on long-termism, investment, and training.

Since I have two native countries, I take to heart what is happening in Britain, especially in the social and education spheres. Now, the Government may be about to seal inequality and to pervert labour laws, but in doing so it is merely following in the footsteps of its predecessors. When I watched a 2005 programme on BBC about postcode poverty I was shocked and upset. In Moscow I have a neighbouring district that is separated from mine by a railway – to take that as a comparison, on my side we were middle-class with promising future; on their side, they were poor working class, forever dealing with money and drug problems.

Obviously, this cynical nonsense – to offer prospects based on one’s postcode – wasn’t the Labour creation; but as one understands, Labour did nothing to change the state of things. Quite possibly because within the party itself some people didn’t want to mix with someone whose parents were drug-abusing paupers.

It’s great that Mr Miliband voices the problem; it’s bad that voicing isn’t a solution. To solve the problem, people’s mindset has to be changed. I’m glad to have lived in a very typical working-class area to the north of Greater Manchester, for I have no illusions about the so-called “disadvantaged people”. Many of them enforce this condition on themselves and their children. But I also know about snobbery that accompanied a rather patronising mercy towards the poor – quite like in one Victorian story. An upper class girl decided to help a hungry street beggar, also female. She brought her home, gave her biscuits and sandwiches, and was convinced to keep her in – because it was so good to help common people! Unfortunately, the poor girl appeared a bit too pretty, and so she was sent away into a London night with 3 pounds in her pocket.

Is this what the Government, no matter of what political background, also doing?

Gavin Ewart – Shakespearean Sonnets

michelle-puelo-portrait-of-william-shakespeare
Michelle Puelo, Shakespeare In His Study

Back in 1976 and 1977, a celebrated British poet Gavin Ewart composed two sonnets in free verse, mentioning and contemplating William Shakespeare. In case you are unfamiliar with this name, here is what the 1989 edition of the International Authors and Writers Who’s Who tells us. Gavin Buchanan Ewart was born in on February 4, 1916 in London and received his BA and MA in Classics and English from the University of Cambridge. For a number of years he was the Chairman of the Poetry Society, and in 1984 became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He died on October 26, 1995.

Tidying Up (1976) is distinct for its choice of words: the lyrical hero tells us that some thoughts just lay, reposed, in his mind, “awaiting collection”, for they are not of a kind to be uttered (and he explains what he means). Shakespeare, Ewart claims, “owes his power to them”. These thought may well be the product of the author’s psyche, but they should also ideally be informed by the author’s travels and perambulations. If, contrary to the advice in Shakespeare’s Universality (1977), the author fails to get out and about, he “gets stuck in his own psyche” and thus “bores everyone – and that includes himself”.

The illustration is somewhat Baconian Shakespeare In His Study by an American artist Michelle Buelo.

Tidying Up (1976)

Left lying about in my mind, awaitingn collection,
are the thoughts and phrases that are quite unsuitable
and often shocking to all Right-thinking people –
penetrated by a purple penis for example
(almost a line?); and how it’s almost certain,
for Swift’s hints, that the big sexy ladies of Brobdingnag
used Gulliver as an instrument of masturbation.
Hence a tongue-twister: Glumdalclitch’s clitoris.

Though not always decorous, there’s a lot of force in phrases.
A good many poems stem from them; they start something.
More than anything Shakespeare owes his power to them
(his secret, black and midnight hags and hundreds more),
they almost consoled him – though life is pretty bloody
(the multitudinous seas incarnadine).

Shakespeare’s Universality (1977)

In one sense Shakespeare’s ‘universality’ was accidental –
due to the fact that he wrote plays. When you have so many characters
you’re bound to have so many views of human life.
Nobody can say ‘Why are all your poems about moles?’
or tell you you’re very limited in your subject matter.
A playwright’s material (unless it is outrageously slanted)
usually deals with a group of opinions; people can never say
‘Of course this play is entirely autobiographical’.

It’s interesting that Shakespeare’s Sonnets, which are
(I think we can’t doubt) completely based on his life,
are by a long way his least satisfactory verse.
It’s better for a writer, in most cases, to go out and about.
If he gets stuck in his own psyche for too long
he bores everyone – and that includes himself.

error: Sorry, no copying !!