By Pat Kane. First published on MARCH 2ND, 2019
THE best thing for me about BBC Scotland's The Nine, after watching three of its five episodes in its initial week, is its opening title sequence.
That sounds dismissive, but it isn’t. When Channel 4 News opens up its swirling graphics and toots that trumpet line, you know that Jon Snow and his colleagues are about to deliver their cool, liberal take on the day’s news. Good: that’s why you’re here.
By Pat Kane. First published on FEBRUARY 23RD, 2019
THE word of the week is “independent”. From what, and to do what, exactly?
Those appalling Yessers among us (you know who you are) have already fanned out in satirical force. They are wondering, idly, whether at any point soon The Independent Group – the renegade squad of awfully sensible Labour and Tory MPs which launched this week – will even recognise that Scotland exists. Never mind the possibility of an “independent” Scotland. (Does that mean we’re a group too?) As for abuse, so far we’ve had The Funny Tinge Group Limited (this references both the racist solecisms of Angela Smith, as well as the weird company legal status of the group itself). I also saw “UKIG” (ho ho, excellent). Not to mention, if they ever manage to get some of their more beige Caledonians to turn, the Scottish Independent Party (anti-independence, of course).
By Pat Kane. First published on FEBRUARY 16TH, 2019
THE story passed down about my Gran Kane was that she snarled at the mention of Winston Churchill.
One of her Irish family was murdered by a member of the Black and Tans, a regiment Churchill formed when he was British secretary of war in 1919. Recruited largely from shell-shocked Great War soldiers, the Black and Tans struck terror into rebellious Nationalist communities in the North of Ireland.
So even before I became a perfidious independista, inherently sceptical of the call to “Great British” anything, we had a familial line on the great war hero Winston Churchill.
By Pat Kane. First published on FEBRUARY 9TH, 2019
‘I’VE been wondering what that special place in hell looks like, for those who promoted Brexit, without even a sketch of a plan how to carry it out safely.” Thus did the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, wring some extra harrumphing (is that even possible?) from the Brexitannia Chorus the other day.
But I detect a jolt of extra outrage, coming from the specific imagery that Tusk deployed. Coincidentally, as the news flashed everywhere, I was listening to the excellent Talking Politics podcast from the London Review of Books.
By Pat Kane. First published on FEBRUARY 2ND, 2019
BREXIT gets weirder and weirder. And you can rely on the bookies to put a price on it. A few days ago, Paddy Power opened a line on “what the British Government would officially ration first in 2019”. Fuel came top at 4/1, olive oil and bread at 16/1, chicken 66/1, prosecco 125/1.
Next in my twitstream (never better named) was a punter vox-popped by the BBC. Asked about retailers’ warnings of empty shelves after a no-deal Brexit, he suggested that, as far as he was concerned, “it would do the country good to go without for a little while. Make them appreciate what they’ve had”.
By Pat Kane. First published on JANUARY 26TH, 2019
WE mourned a quiet and substantial Scot earlier this week. It’s fair to say there was an outpouring of tributes for the late Andrew Fairlie – the two-Michelin-starred superchef at the Gleneagles Hotel, and my former fellow board member on Yes Scotland.
Andrew was a poignant package. A working-class boy who detected tarragon in the sauce of the hotel restaurant where he was skivvying. This sent him on a spectacular journey though the great kitchens of the world, particularly in London and Paris. In a world where taste – of all kinds – is notoriously subjective, and where the power relations between people can often be the most oppressive and instrumental, Andrew had quite the anchor: his memories of dinner-table debates about the future of Scotland, with his father, the notable SNP grandee Jim Fairlie.
By Pat Kane. First published on JANUARY 23RD, 2019
IN In the early days of the Yes campaign, I was asked by Jennifer Dempsie to join the Yes Scotland advisory board. I was part of a non-party-political cohort that included the actress Elaine C Smith, the property developer Dan MacDonald ... and the late Andrew Fairlie.
I often sat nearby Andrew, and in the midst of the general argy-bargy on strategy and performance milestones, would often glance at him, as someone that might ground the lightning. Was this discussion connecting with the world in which people run their enterprises, apply their graft and talent to succeed, have a basic faith in the country and its possibilities?
By Pat Kane. First published on JANUARY 19TH, 2019
‘YE are my bonny blessed bairn, / My small miraculous gift. / I never kent luve like this.” Some of you may recognise these lines from the Jackie Kay poem that’s been tucked into each new ScotGov baby box (52,065 delivered in its first year).
For those who choose this journey, living on this bit of the planet, it’s hard to imagine the emotion could be expressed better.
By Pat Kane. First published on JANUARY 13TH, 2019
WHEN you walk into the forthcoming exhibition on robots at the National Museum of Scotland (NMS), you will first see a rosy, nappy-wearing baby, dreamily wiggling in mid-air, backlit by a soft halo.
Step to the side, and the truth is revealed. A column of wires explodes out of its back, into a knot of pistons and circuitry.
It’s a prop from the film industry, ensuring no actual little one is harmed on set. But from its flaxen hair to its chubby thighs, the human realism of this object creeps the flesh.
By Pat Kane. First published on JANUARY 12TH, 2019
IT’S a long, high set of public steps, and the piano crate is hurtling down to the bottom of them, for about the fifth time. Two men, in work clothes and bowler hats, look down – the fat one appalled, the thin one (as ever) dreamily confused.
Elbows out, they bustle to the bottom, and try again to deliver the goods. By this time, you doubt they’ll ever manage it.
By Pat Kane. First published on DECEMBER 29TH, 2018
IN a year dominated by swivel-eyed Brexitopians, toxic tinpot oligarchs and the general scunneredness of the citizenry, forgive me for beginning my 2019 preview with an utter genius. He might be half a millennium distant from us, but he’s exactly what we need right now.
This year we celebrate the 500th year of the passing of Leonardo Da Vinci (May 2, 1519). We should expect a parade of tech moguls to be clutching the hem of his garment, hoping Da Vinci’s polymathy might rub off. From discovering Newton’s laws of motion 200 years before Newton did, to painting the Mona Lisa and sketching out flying machines, Leo is a relentless spur against mediocrity.
By Pat Kane. First published on DECEMBER 22ND, 2018
BETWEEN two bookshops – Waterstones in Sauchiehall Street, and Foyles in London – I have just blitzed Xmas.
All other retail experiences fall upon me like a plague of boils. But wandering round these bookshelves – taking a single hour to do each comfortable shop, picking items exactly appropriate for each recipient – has nearly made me a fan of consumer capitalism again.
By Pat Kane. First published on DECEMBER 14TH, 2018
THE story certainly caught the eye. YouTube’s most disliked video ever – having just received more than 10 million thumbs-down icons on the digital platform – turned out to be YouTube’s own 2018 “Rewind” video. This is the company’s annual celebration of what it regards as the year’s best content, made by users.
(Incidentally, this beats Justin Bieber’s “Baby” music video into second place for most hated clip. Well, there’s no accounting for taste.)
By Pat Kane. First published on DECEMBER 8TH, 2018
I’M one of those non-engaged observers who has been slowly turning his attention to transgender issues. And it’s mostly because of the sound of previously equable colleagues, exploding all over their own columns in outrage.
Rather than launch into theory and policy, let me begin from a personal angle. On all matters of human diversity, I tend to proceed from our long-standing family axiom, “it takes all kinds to make a world”. Working-class Scottish life, in my 50-something experience, has always had skeins of the non-normative running through it.
By Pat Kane. First published on DECEMBER 1ST, 2018
THE future bears down upon us... in the form of a single-decker passenger bus, sedately proceeding along the old Forth Road Bridge. That’s the means whereby self-driving vehicles will introduce themselves to Scottish roads in 2021.
Five driverless buses will run a 14-mile route between Fife and Edinburgh – 10,000 journeys a week across the bridge, 40 passengers a bus. And eventually, one assumes, not a grumpy, taciturn human driver in sight.
By Pat Kane. First published on NOVEMBER 24TH, 2018
I DON’T have much connection to the Scottish fishing industry, but I do have this.
My late ex-father-in-law, Jim McAlpine – a quiet but fiercely proud father of three fiercely unquiet daughters – was a seaman engineer. Firstly in the Merchant Navy, then on the Greenock shipyards and, in his final years, on his own wee boat, moored at a marina on the Firth of Clyde.
The highlight of every Christmas was when Jim was just smeeked enough to start clearing his throat, signalling the arrival of his party piece: Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger’s (pictured below) Shoals of Herring. I won’t quote all the verses, just the few I can remember him singing, in his steady, surprisingly light voice:
By Pat Kane. First published on NOVEMBER 17TH, 2018
I HAD to check a few times on Netflix, but yes it’s there. In its opening credits, David Mackenzie’s fascinating film about the degradation and redemption of Robert the Bruce spells its title precisely this way: Outlaw/King.
To my mind, that slash (and yes, there are many other forms of slashing in this gorefest) makes intellectually explicit what is the movie’s implicit theme.
If you are a national community residing within a bigger polity, to what extent should its leaders seek progress (or even maintenance) within the rules – or by challenging the rules themselves? Are you king or Outlaw? Or does that slash indicate how one stance might modulate back and forth with the other, according to circumstances?
By Pat Kane. First published on NOVEMBER 10TH, 2018
OUR news-cycle always seems to find plenty of time for errant celebrities, literary award winners or ratings-topping reality-TV formats.
So it’s extraordinary to note how poorly covered the launch of the computer game Red Dead Redemption 2 has been.
It has literally marked up the biggest single opening weekend in entertainment history. The game has grossed $725 million, with 17 million units sold in 10 days (as much as the first game sold in total). And the pace is hardly slowing.
By Pat Kane. First published on NOVEMBER 3RD, 2018
IT’S beginning to feel stuffy and constricted in here. The two leading African acts (from Mali and Senegal) who have pulled out of this year’s Celtic Connections music festival, due to the “hassle and stress” of trying to secure permission to enter the UK, are only the latest in a recent and disheartening wave.
This August’s Edinburgh International Book Festival – a global republic of letters, if ever there was one – had 12 authors with visas refused, from predominantly African and Middle Eastern countries.
And in the same festival period, with some African acts also unable to attend Peter Gabriel’s Womad event, the veteran prog-rocker asked: “Do we really want a white-breaded Brexited flatland? A country that is losing the will to welcome the world?”
By Pat Kane. First published on OCTOBER 27TH, 2018
O MIGHTY American huntress, in your pseudo-Gulf-War combats, bearing your sniper-level high-tech rifle, picking unsuspecting goats off the cliffs of Islay, taking selfies with your bro-friend, grinning over your grotesquely glass-eyed spoils.
The modern Artemis, you ain’t. But what are you, exactly?
The immediate answer is that Larysa Switlyk, whose Twitter celebrations of her killing spree on the lovely island have triggered pearl-clutching on an epidemic scale, was legitimately hiring a sporting service provided by a local Islay landowner.
By Pat Kane. First published on OCTOBER 20TH, 2018
YOU think you’re looking into the heart of darkness – and then, over there, something even worse distracts you.
If you’ve come upon the barbaric details of the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, then no need to repeat them here. Your soul deserves some respite.
But suffice to say, and combined with his valiant final column for the Washington Post, Khashoggi’s death might well have you running up the “free speech” flag above any other this week.
By Pat Kane. First published on OCTOBER 13TH, 2018
THE tweets went round, a little less desultory than usual: “I suppose this seems like a BBC Question Time (#bbcqt) I might watch this week.” And indeed, Thursday’s show – its cast-list scattered all over the HolyroodParliament chamber – looked as if it might rub cliches together vigorously enough to catch some flame.
A strangulated editor of the Spectator, a Duracell-powered young Scots Tory, the near-papal Michael Russell, a Celebrity Who’s Clearly Getting Out Of Here, and Val McDermid (representing literature and humans). Plus a “diverse” audience which we now know is carefully assembled by an “audience producer” (with equally carefully placed “star turns”, in case the pabulum threatens to choke us all). Haud me back.
By Pat Kane. First published on OCTOBER 6TH, 2018
THE advance tremors are already rattling the tea-cups. The seismic event, this coming Monday, is the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Which, if it was an Arctic survey boat (to change metaphors), would be at the bottom of the sea, so leaky has it become.
According to the latest PDF to slip out from the biggest scientific peer-review exercise ever conducted, the message is stark. We must aim to keep global warming below 1.5% (that’s the percentage above pre-industrial eras) by 2050. We’re already at 1% above.
By Pat Kane. First published on SEPTEMBER 29TH, 2018
In these highly polarised times, we should note when there seems to be unity across the parties. The effects of online abuse on female participation in politics appears to be one of those overlaps.
In the last seven days, both Theresa May and UK Labour’s shadow education secretary, Angela Rayner, have highlighted how much social media, and its hordes of screen-jabbing misogynists, dishearten and discourage women politicians – both actual and aspiring.
By Pat Kane. First published on SEPTEMBER 22ND, 2018
YOU don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. The last few times I’ve ventured into Glasgow, head lost in a podcast, I’ve absently let my feet take their usual route: Off at Charing Cross, a nod to the Mitchell Library, and then head up the Street of Dreams ...
Except I forget: the upheaval of the roadworks; the weird, permanently Sunday calm of the deserted pavements; and of course, the charred hulks of the ABC and the GSA. And then the dull and dusty front of the CCA.
By Pat Kane. First published on SEPTEMBER 15TH, 2018
WE’RE in the middle of a great and substantive debate about play in Scotland (if we can suspend the party-political tribalism for a moment).
On one side are those who want to bring formal tests in a school setting to five-year-olds (P1), in order to best monitor their progress. On the other are those who believe play-based kindergarten, from three to seven, would be the best developmental start for future learners.
By Pat Kane. First published on SEPTEMBER 8TH, 2018
THERE’S no doubting the power, symbolic or otherwise, of a mighty bridge. Earlier this week, we saw the initial sketches of a proposal to link up Scotland and Northern Ireland. The shorter option is between the Mull of Kintyre and Torr Head; the longer, between Portpatrick and Larne.
The pencilled impression of the “Celtic Bridge” suggests a design that’s like a copy-and-paste of the Queensferry Crossing over the Forth. Like that bridge, many “cable stays” peak and trough their way across the Irish Sea. But the artist puts it all in scale by sketching in a family, plowtering about on a harbour beach, gazing out at the massive structure.
By Pat Kane. First published on SEPTEMBER 1ST, 2018
FOR long-term America-watchers like me – often stranded between love of, and frustration with, the whole inferno – it is a strange thrill to see the US grapple with the idea of an “American socialism”.
What could possibly have triggered such a weird, indeed un-American activity? Well, perhaps the election of some out-and-out American socialists.
By Pat Kane. First published on AUGUST 25TH, 2018
"THIS is going to be the most amazing ride of your life". The wee man with the piercing blue eyes leaned towards me, with some urgency. His offer was, to be specific, the position of associate editor (culture and books) at the Sunday Herald, eight months before its launch-date on February 7, 1999.
Andrew Jaspan had already been the editor who’d turned around Scotland on Sunday’s fortunes in the 90s, and then left for stints at the Observer and the Big Issue.
His mysterious middle-distance stares, and jack-knife conversational turns, were all suggestive of great fun to come. It was the full tyro-editor routine.
By Pat Kane. First published on AUGUST 18TH, 2018
AS the Queen of Soul, she would expect nothing less than candour. So, on the passing of one of my lifetime inspirations, the elemental Aretha Franklin, I will try to appreciate her as honestly as I can.
Like Sinatra’s, or McCartney’s, or Bowie’s, Franklin’s voice makes possible what any singer afterwards even imagines they could produce. It clears original ground. She fused together the best of the gospel tradition, and the timing of jazz and blues, to perfection.
By Pat Kane. First published on AUGUST 11TH, 2018
IT’S been fun reading the snash around Chris McEleny’s case against the MoD. He’s pursuing them for their poor and punitive treatment of him as an employee when he announced his candidacy for the SNP depute leader position in 2016.
A Glasgow employment tribunal, presided over by Judge Frances Eccles, ruled this week that he could make a case under the Equality Act 2010. This allows certain “philosophical and religious beliefs” to be understood as “protected characteristics”. That is, they can’t be taken into consideration as grounds for dismissal or harsh treatment.
The MoD has appealed to have the decision reconsidered and revoked.
By Pat Kane. First published on AUGUST 4TH, 2018
THE dramatist Peter Arnott is famous for his definition of Scotland as “not a country, but an argument”. Our major Scottish news story this week is, to some degree, about how we can even have that argument – if what is argued over suddenly disappears into a digital and legal void.
The BBC’s triggering of YouTube’s takedown of two indy-supporting bloggers and their video archives – Stuart Campbell (aka Wings Over Scotland) and Peter Curran (aka Moridura) – has been a stramash for connoisseurs of the form.
But like most decent stramashes, it features both low-level fumbling and high-level implications.
By Pat Kane. First published on JULY 28TH, 2018
IF he wasn’t acting in everything already, you might imagine a pensive Benedict Cumberbatch, chewed ballpoint hovering over his list of suspects, murmuring to himself in a shabby, dust-moted office: “Sheridan, Militant … Jones, Plaid … ah yes, McTavish, Scots Nat ...”
Such is the bad spy drama evoked by this week’s disclosure from the National Archives: that during the 80s, MI5 maintained a list of 1420 civil service employees identified as “subversive”, who were closely monitored and kept away from certain jobs and roles.
By Pat Kane. First published on AUGUST 21ST, 2018
THE pelters from above were, indeed, near cosmic. “Back from holiday to find that science fiction still dominates one half of Scottish politics”, harrumphed Tory MSP Adam Tomkins in a tweet 12 months ago.
The image he’d attached was a front cover from this very publication, which had mocked up an orbiting Space Shuttle with a saltire on its hull. The picture floated above this headline: “Independence and Beyond: new report outlines how an indy Scottish Space Agency and spaceport could be set up to give huge boost to our economy”.
“Quite, quite mad. Got your tinfoil hat on tonight?” posted the centre-right commentator Chris Deerin. Annie Wells MSP gravely submitted: “This has to be a spoof, surely.”
No – it was just an enthusiastic reaction to a far-sighted paper from the think-tank Common Weal. The author, engineer Craig Berry, had made a strong strategic and economic case for a Scottish Space Agency post-independence. And for a Scottish spaceport, as soon as possible, in any case.
So look, here we are – at least one Scottish spaceport has been announced this week, to be built on the starkly beautiful pennisula of A’Mhoine in Sutherland.
The SSA, in all its saltired, star-spangled, space-cadetted glory, may have to wait a wee while (for the necessary constitutional arrangements).
But for once, let us praise the panicky largesse of Westminster – desperately seeking new markets for the listing Starship Brexitannia, and also trying to keep the Jocks quiet for a bit, in one fell swoop.
For we are now about to have a bona-fide, rocket-launching facility on planet Caledonia.
Cue your Macdiarmid: “our multiform, our infinite Scotland small?” Maybe indulge in another Edwin Morgan line, from The First Men on Mercury: “Bawr stretter! Bawr. Bawr. Stretterhawl?” Then a quick, painful slurp of Star Trek Scotty’s favourite Aldebaran whiskey.
And then, our nerd duties over, to business. To be mildly fair to our opening trio of cringers, the Sutherland facility won’t indeed involve Space Shuttle-like “horizontal” lift-offs.
Meaning airliner-like craft flying to the edge of the atmosphere, then releasing their payloads. (Newport Cornwall is the first designated for these services, and Prestwick Airport is still in the game).
Our spaceport will be old-school “vertical”. That is, they’ll be rockets containing either solid or fluid fuel, shuddering upwards on a column of fire, as the sea eagles from the nearby Handa cliffs learn to circle at a distance.
Scotland may be about to slip the surly bonds of Earth. But – somewhat in national character – the mock-ups of the facility itself look like an abandoned bit of container terminal. Still, on the way to Iain M. Banks’s mighty and artificially-intelligent GSVs (General Systems Vehicles), it is to my eyes a bonnie wee start.
What will they be taking into space? This is where propellor-hats must be laid down, and hard economics acknowledged (though still with a hint of geek idealism on the horizon). The Sutherland facility is an ideal location for launching what they call “nano-satellites” or “cube-sats”. These are much smaller versions of the usual item, sized anywhere between a pan loaf and a fridge.
Scottish-located companies like the wonderfully named (and entirely native) Clyde Space, and the US-owned Spire Global, have had to send their items overseas to be launched. They can wait months, and sometimes years, for a slot in the schedule.
Now, with “clockwork-like launches” up the road, says Spire’s Peter Platzer, “we can finally get our space sector supply chain to be truly integrated!”
Which maybe gives you another hint at the imperatives here. As they are much cheaper to get into the heavens, and operate at a low orbit, these nano-satellites could mesh their services together. Nano-sats can provide both surveillance of the earth, and enable transmissions from and to it, at a much lower cost than hitherto.
So with this, Scotland steps right into the heart of one of our next global shifts – what the tech theorists are calling an “instrumented planet”. What are the various reasons you might wish a glittering, communicating net of eyes and ears to engird the earth?
Some bend to the light, some are plunged in darkness. Of course, from up there you might wish to monitor environmental, agricultural or humanitarian-disaster conditions – the better to anticipate or respond to crisis. (Clyde Space’s devices were recently part of an early-warning system for bush fires in Australia).
Given that we are now fully responsible for the earth, in the “anthropocene” (or capitalocene, as some call it), satellites become the planet-wide tools we need to garden the place properly.
But also, of course, you might want to hurtle flows of untraceable and untaxable capital, or soul-shrivelling content, by means of these private and unaccountable devices.
There may be low deeds in low orbit. And who, these days, would trust any national security operation that inserted any of its tendrils into any of these little clusters of cube-sats?
So very quickly, as the A’Mhoine rockets’ red glare subsides, we are back down to earthly matters – of politics, power and democracy – with a bump. But why not? Space exploration has, for most of its existence, been a public and state-driven affair.
We may seem to be in a heroic moment of private space enterprise and cosmos-happy tech moguls.
With undue haste they plan their moon and Mars “colonies”, or asteroid mining operations – often before they can even get their self-driving cars to park properly. But there are still huge amounts of public money going towards Musk, Branson, Bezos and others, whether in primary research or the state commissioning of their services.
Tens of ScotGov millions have already been directed the way of the cube-sat companies previously mentioned. As Marianna Mazzucato (one of Holyrood’s own economic advisors) will often say: shouldn’t the state and its voters have some say about (never mind get a return from) the grand missions its investments serve?
It’s early days. But even the prospects of our douce wee launchpad in Sutherland allows us to bake in some standards.
That so-called “tinfoil-hat” report from Common Weal suggested that an independent Scottish Space Agency could take the lead on what the author, Craig Berry, called “federated satellite systems”.
Federated satellite systems! How constitutional! But it’s also really practical. According to the concept’s guru Alessandro Golkar, so much satellite capacity is wasted, because each satellite is narrowly tied to a client’s requirements.
If sharing deals and protocols between satellites could be agreed (or “federated”), this spare capacity could be utilised, and access to satellite services become even cheaper.
“Federating space” sounds like a very recognisably modern-Scottish way of proceeding to this next proximate (if not quite the final) frontier – done collegiately, bien sur, with our European partners.
It could be a mission for an agency that we might embrace … that is, when we finally assume we should run the entirety of our own national affairs.
However, requests to place certain representatives and pundits in sealed oil-barrels for a rough moon landing will not, unfortunately, meet the mission criteria. Sorry.
By Pat Kane. First published on JULY 14TH, 2018
THE other day I watched John Cleese – the head of the comedy institution known as Monty Python – announce on Newsnight that he was leaving Britain, because of the “awfulness” of Brexit and the British press.
Cleese harrumphed away about “friendly races” and “I only lived here two weeks last year”, sounding sadly like one of the bumptious blimps he used to satirise. The backdrop on Newsnight was a tidily animated tumble of various Pythonesque symbols: random legs, flying fish, antique pointing hands, coconuts, an old TV.
All too comfortable. Or maybe a bit pitiful. Much of the original Monty Python was about taking such TV talk show moments – those mainstream framings that attempt to make reality stable and sensible – and tearing them to pieces. (The closest we got on Newsnight was Cleese clumsily knocking his pin mike off, with the interviewer, Emily Maitlis, scrambling to fix it.)
But as I watched, a realisation started burning its way to the surface. Monty Python shines a weirdly illustrative light on the coming Brexitannic era. I took myself to Netflix this week, and watched their first series. From Python’s beginnings in 1969, the continuities with the present are startling – and the prophesies sometimes even more so.
I mean, let’s just begin with Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson. Watching these two must be odd for the remaining Pythons, They would seem to be carbon copies of the kinds of stiff-necked (or bumblingly eccentric) members of the ruling class the satirists thought they were delegitimating in the 1960s and 70s (with sketches such as “Upper Class Twit of the Year”). Is this a sign that Brexit heralds a reversion to the power structures of 40 years ago? Wait: it may be subtler and stranger than that.
The Pythons were educated in the same Oxbridge circumstances as their targets. So much of the early humour involves showing off their own intellectual assets, while at the same time subverting them with popular culture.
Take the Philosophers’ Football Match (with Marx on the left wing, Nietzsche on the right, Wittgenstein all over the place). Or their endless pisstakes of pretentious arts shows. Or Terry Gilliam’s cut-out animations, with Botticellis dismembering themselves and doing crazy dances.
The creepy thing to consider is whether our current Anglo-American overlords are actually self-consciously Pythonesque in their strategies, rather than being the dumb targets of satire.
When Rees-Mogg said the current Brexit is “the greatest vassalage since King John paid homage to Phillip II at Le Goulet in 1200”, it could easily have been a line in a Python sketch (spoken by someone in a suit of armour, holding a rubber chicken).
Yet the true horror may not be that Mogg is being authentic, and that the upper class has returned with a vengeance. It’s more that he’s consciously cultivating an eccentricity that cuts through the modern media maelstrom.
That is, he is as concerned with his affect – the emotional impact he makes, his sheer memorability – as his effect. As Mogg is third in the polls among Tory Party members for potential leader, it shows that something must be working.
Boris Johnson has parlayed the same self-satirical routine for decades (what Python sketch could beat him sticking his mayoral legs out of his flying fox harness, waving a paper Union Jack?).
However, Johnson’s schtick currently seems to be palling, as ministerial office has revealed his laziness and limitations (a well-timed Cicero or Churchill quote doesn’t get you out of geopolitical trouble). But there is an elite-right strategy dimly visible here. As Trump stomps around the world stage, dropping wise-guy logic bombs everywhere, sucking all the media attention to whatever issue he decides to frame, you come to a queasy conclusion. These figures are learning from the satirists – much more than they might fear their tongues.
The theory seems to be: If you can crowd the electorate’s mental reality with as many bewildering and taboo-breaking stances as possible, you can exhaust them enough so that they’ll respond gratefully to the one clear offer you make.
This policy was trialled early in the Vladimir Putin administration by his advisor Vladislav Surkov. Surkov was educated as a theatre director, with a particular love of surrealism. This he decided to apply to the art of political propaganda itself.
As the Russian writer Peter Pomerantsev puts it, under Surkov’s control, “the stage was always changing: a dictatorship in the morning, a democracy at lunch, an oligarchy by suppertime. While backstage, oil companies are expropriated, journalists killed, billions siphoned away”.
Surkov was “at the centre of the show, sponsoring nationalist skinheads one moment, backing human rights groups the next”, continues Pomerantsev. “It’s a strategy of power based on keeping any opposition there may be constantly confused, a ceaseless shape-shifting that is unstoppable because it’s indefinable”.
This strategy also sounds, to be honest, like a standard Python episode. There’s a sketch in series one, episode five, where a management training interviewee’s sense of normality is completely ripped apart by Cleese’s artful mix of nonsense and authority. It’s more like a harsh psychological experiment than a comedy moment. But it also anticipates the daily surrealism of our current affairs.
So never mind Norwegian blues pining for the fjords. Should we be pining for a new wave of Monty Pythons? But given the deliberate reality-bending already deployed by these oligarchs, how extreme would they have to be?
Chris Morris (with The Day Today and Brass Eye), our own Frankie Boyle, and Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror are probably the only attempts that have gotten anywhere near the requisite intensity. And after Brooker’s pig-meets- prime-minister episode was outdone by David Cameron’s own porcine explorations, the writer was moved to redefine his work as “a documentary series”.
But until we figure out how to disconnect from this brain-seizing spectacle (Scots: there is a democratic device for this in your toolbox), we can still grimly enjoy the Pythons’ capacity for prophecy. If you google “Python” and “Brexit”, the mashed-up video remakes are endless.
Particularly popular is the scene from their movie Life of Brian, where the Judean People’s Front (or is it The People’s Front of Judea?) ask “whatever has the EU” (substituting for Rome) “ever done for us?”. Cue the list of 57% of its trade, environmental and workplace regulations, massive infrastructure investment …
There’s also many droll online comparisons with Monty Python and the Holy Grail. An EU official compares Brexiteers to the movie’s Black Knight – “who, after being defeated terribly and having all his limbs cut off, says to his opponent ‘let’s call it a draw’.”
You can even find an entire mini-film called Teresa May and the Holy Grail. Her face is digitally mapped on to King Arthur’s, saying desperately: “Nothing has changed! Nothing has changed!”
All fun and games, as the phrase has it — until someone loses an eye. And that may be, metaphorically at least, the right strategy. There is a Cleese character in the Kilimanjaro explorer sketch (series one, episode nine), who has to put his hand over one eye to stop seeing double. Indy-minded Scots may have to do the same.
By which I mean that we block out the Brexitannic spectacle (or Trump’s Caligularity) and train our remaining eye on the Scottish prize.
It’ll be less absorbing, perhaps, but the reality distortion game is huge these days: it’s not just Monty Python and the satirists who are flying circuses around.
Scots should start to address the issue of how we define, and thus act, on our own desired reality. Because that’s what everyone else is up to.
You can watch the first series of Monty Python on Netflix
By Pat Kane. First published on MAY 26TH, 2018
GROWTH is good. In the most intuitive sense, don’t we think this is true? The growing garden pleases us; the children in our lives grow in height, stature, hurts, joys, experience.
And when all that growth leaves us as elders, the ideal would be that our accumulated wisdom (maybe also wealth) is distributed outwards, to the oncoming generations.
By Pat Kane. First published on DECEMBER 30TH, 2017
WHAT’S coming in 2018? After 2017’s experience – history in the blender, jammed at 11 – it may be best to stick to what’s officially in the calendar. Yet even on the big safe dates, this age of extremes doesn’t stop.
By Pat Kane. First published on DECEMBER 23RD, 2017
I FELL out of love with the circus early, and I remember the moment almost exactly. In the 1970s, our family – like thousands of others – made an annual winter trail from Coatbridge to the Kelvin Hall Carnival in Glasgow.
On one side of the massive space, all the neon-lit, screaming, hydraulic fun of the fair. Hit tunes, lurid graphics, space rockets spinning around: 70s modernity all over the place. On the other side, the circus. In my memory, it was the full affair: there were acrobats, clowns, jugglers, “wild” animals and their trainers.
Continue reading "PK column in The National: What does the circus say about humans and animals?" »
By Pat Kane. First published on DECEMBER 16TH, 2017
GETTING pelters on Twitter can be a sign that, as a critic, you’ve at least touched a nerve. But after my tweet that the new Paddington 2 movie was “ideologically weird”, I felt more like a brain surgeon carving his initials onto the collective neo-cortex. Abusive, were they? Heavens, I’m still clutching my pearls.
By Pat Kane. First published on DECEMBER 9TH, 2017
WHAT are the problems to which basic income is a solution? In Scotland, we’re at the start of an answer to that question, as the Scottish Government announces financial support for feasibility studies in four council areas – Fife, Edinburgh, Glasgow and North Ayrshire.
Will we be getting visits from supermoguls like Richard Branson, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, who have recently spoken up in favour of the policy? I’m sure they’ll be welcomed to the Kingdom of Fife – but I’m not sure they’d be here for the same reason.
By Pat Kane. First published on DECEMBER 2ND, 2017
THIS Sunday, get yourself to a local hill, set your smartphones for 3.47pm precisely, then hang around for about 45 minutes. With any luck (and a cloudless sky), the moon will rise into view – 14 per cent bigger, 30 per cent brighter and 16,139 miles closer than the average.
We’ve taken to calling this – after the American usage – the “supermoon”. Or you could follow the words of the novelist Marcel Proust: “The ancient unalterable splendour of a Moon, cruelly and mysteriously serene.” Either way, there it will be, unnervingly large in your skies, brushing the very tops of the electrical pylons.
By Pat Kane. First published on NOVEMBER 25TH, 2017
BREXAPOCALYPSE rained down another burning bolt from the skies on Wednesday. And one particularly fiery chunk landed right on Dundee waterfront.
A terse letter from the European Commission said UK cities would no longer be able to compete for the title of European Capital of Culture (formerly the European City of Culture). They said it “would not be possible … following the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union”.
By Pat Kane. First published on NOVEMBER 18TH, 2017
"THEY call it ‘wreck-the-hoose-juice’.” My brother Greg is the best repository of modern Scots I know, and I hadn’t heard this one before. I’d been rhapsodising about my recent embrace of lager, and pint drinking in wee old men’s pubs. I’m finding it a longer experience, and — compared to wine and spirits — a more diffuse hit: its explosives are weaker, as it were.
And pubs are an environment I newly appreciate. Men of all ages and stages, sitting and sipping in the gloom: not being judged for their performance, facial hair, clothes or conversation. A refuge from the endless performativity of life in 2017 (except, of course, for the harmless pirouetting of men in shorts on the monitor).
Continue reading "PK column in The National: The positive case for enjoying a drink" »
By Pat Kane. First published on NOVEMBER 11TH, 2017
ACROSS from my mum’s house in Coatbridge, on the crest of the Blair Road, an archway of superheroes scrapes the sky (well, nearly). Wrought in the kind of iron railing my grandfather Kane used to hammer out in his Monklands blacksmiths, and surmounting the entrance to the old commercial canal, Captain Coatbridge raises her arms in flight, flanked by two other female exceptionals.
Underneath there are a few granite blocks, rooted there for the ages, and carved with what look like comic strip action words. These turn out to be, delightfully, “Dunt!”, “Scud!” and “Skelp!”
By Pat Kane. First published on NOVEMBER 4TH, 2017
I NOTICED them when they started to appear, several years ago: little blue Saltires on packs of food in mega-supermarkets. A flag is meant to catch your eye, and catch your heart, and both happened to me.
If the first half of your adult life has been about wanting your country to gain self-confidence, and get the recognition it deserves – then yes, you notice these wee things.
By Pat Kane. First published on OCTOBER 28TH, 2017
YOU know a city’s changing when its moves and rhythms suddenly surprise you.
So I’m standing at the start of Finnieston in Glasgow, on the split between Argyle Street and St Vincent Street, with a dangerously bulging Tesco bag of messages. Mild drizzle, looming headache, imminent trudge to upper-level station: Tuesday early evening at its most spectacular.
In front of me, three black cabs swish to the pavement, almost choreographed. From the doors – perfume and cologne first – emerge some leading citizens of Glasvegas.
By Pat Kane. First published on OCTOBER 21ST, 2017
IT’S bewilderment, initially. That’s my reaction to a week of revelations about sexual harassment (and potentially worse) by the film mogul Harvey Weinstein. And to all that female testimony about male behaviour, swirling around the #MeToo hashtag on social media.
Who are these creeps? The recording of the sting operation on Weinstein is extremely hard to listen to. His rat-a-tat conversation aims to leave the woman no space to think or respond (that’s the media-magnate too, sucking most of the air out of the room, so that people breath according to his whim).
By Pat Kane. First published on OCTOBER 14TH, 2017
GEORGE Monbiot’s new book, Out of The Wreckage: A New Politics For An Age of Crisis, should be of great interest to anyone with political ambitions to change their country – whatever country that is.
His core idea is that human beings crave powerful stories to make sense of their lives. No matter the facts they corral, any effective politics must have such a story. Monbiot says the most shaping ones are “restoration” tales – heroes coming to repair the collective damage left by identifiable villains.
By Pat Kane. First published on OCTOBER 7TH, 2017
THE new Blade Runner movie will be a total gift to yourself. It’s nearly three hours of mind-bending visuals and heart-shivering emotions. However, for all its dateline of “2049” – and like all the best SF – it’s hardly an act of escapism from the present.
No major plot spoilers, I will try my best (and if you’re nervous, of course, file this away till you’ve watched it). But I do want to explore how both movies illuminate the bigger future trends we’re facing.
By Pat Kane. First published on SEPTEMBER 30TH, 2017
AS the disco lights flash around the death of Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy and all its mildly stained works, I have two stories about my tangential encounters with the soft-porn empire (other than some fumbly teenage memories). Granted, they may reveal as much about me as about the phenomenon itself.
The first is an admittedly terrible recollection. It’s 1989, and my brother and I are on a music-promotional tour of Germany. It’s not going well, and we irascibly rumble toward the final appointment of the day.