The idea that we should spend a large saum of taxpayers' money to save two Titian masterpieces for ‘'the nation'' is a bizarre one. The paintings, Diana & Actaeon and Diana & Callisto, currently hanging in the National Gallery of Scotland, are important works. They are on loan from the Duke of Sutherland's Brigewater Collection, that also includes paintings by Poussin, Raphael and Rembrandt, which the Duke will leave in Edinburgh for a further 21 years if the gallery - along with the National Gallery in London - can raise the cash.
Anyone visiting the Edinburgh gallery - and I was there just last week - can see one of the greatest works of art in Britain which was also ‘saved' for the nation when it was almost sold abroad - Canova's Three Graces. It was bought with money from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, set up to honour those who died in the Second World War, and a large donation from the late Paul Getty.
The Three Graces, commissioned by the Duke of Bedford in the early 19th century, were part of the country's heritage. But the same cannot be said of the Titians. They were collected mainly in th elate 18th century and early 19th when the British aristocracy was obsessed with the Italian renaissance and with Venice. Radicals like William Blake hated Titian, calling his paintings ‘sickly daubs' and extolling instead the works of Michelangelo and Caravaggio.
As a result, this country has more Titians than any other country. The National Gallery in London has 20 by the Venetian master, and works by Titian hang in many stately homes owned by the National Trust, such as Ickworth and Petworth.
True, they are not regarded by expert as of the same quality as the two in the Bridgewater Collection, which some think are of such paramount importance that they should never be allowed to leave the country.
But do we really think this should be the case? We cannot ban the sale of these paintings. They adorn a British gallery but art should transcend national boundaries. If they end up in an American gallery they will be seen by people who have never had the chance to enjoy them.
If the British want to keep these paintings then the money can be raised by private donation. No doubt there are wealthy benefactors who would like to help out. But for taxpayer's money to be spent, there should be a stronger argument than ‘saving the paintings for the nation.' If they were of such great power, like the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, that they drew tourists to Edinburgh on their own, then a case could be made out. But, unlike the Three Graces, this is a difficult argument to make on behalf of the two Titians.
Full coverage of the US Elections 2008 Much excitement because Bill Clinton has endorsed Obama, supposedly with some sincerity. Countless BBC correspondents reported his pronouncement on the race for the White House with much solemnity. But even if Bill was being sincere, the question is: how would we ever know?
Bill Clinton addresses the Democratic Convention
The old Clinton hokum gets worse with every outing. I recall his 2006 appearance at the Labour conference, when he was greeted with much enthusiasm by the delegates. They sat bolt up-right waiting for his words of wisdom and the old stager crinkled his nose, narrowed his eyes, put on his best Elvis voice and launched into an endless parable about African villages as a metaphor for society and something called Ubuntu. It is drawn from Bantu, a southern African language, and relates to a Zulu idea: umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu - meaning that "a person is only a person through other people". You don't say.
After a while the Labour grins became fixed. One could almost see the thought bubble forming above the heads of the audience and framing a question: How much more of this rubbish does Clinton have left in him?
The answer, unfortunately, is reams of the stuff. At least Obama has done the world a favour and his defeat of Hillary means we are spared four more years of Bill's tosh.
The new director of Demos, Richard Reeves, will, it appears, hit the ground running. He is due to take up his post in September and has published several thought-provoking articles in the run up.
"Will the Internet kill think tanks?", he asked in the Guardian. Heargued that "thinktanks win their influence either through intimacy with their principal political ‘clients' or through independent technical expertise", but that their power may wane "in an era of online networking, blogs and wikipedia."
At the same time, in A question of character in Prospect magazine, he explored how the need for "good character" was emerging as a key area for both the left and the right. British society, he argued, is not broken "in any meaningful sense", but if it became composed of individuals without "a sense of personal agency or self-direction; an acceptance of personal responsibility; and effective regulations of one's own emotions", all attempts at social inclusion or harmony would be doomed.
The interesting thing is that these two arguments are linked in a way that he did not explore.
Reeves recognised, in the Prospect article, that character is dangerous territory for politicians, tempting them to "will what cannot be willed."
It's actually worse than that. It is treacherous, indeed electorally suicidal, "don't have the capability to deliver on my promises", "go on, call me a hypocrite if you dare" territory.
Character may end up being a problem for politicians but it is not a political problem. Good character is formed, above all, by the strong personal relationships nurtured by family, community and civil society. And each of these is, by definition, not government. Government may be able to create the conditions for each to flourish but it cannot, by almost by definition, deliver on the promise of good character.
This is not, of course, a new observation. Political theologians Oliver and Joan Lockwood O'Donovan have argued that it is one of the most important lessons of St Augustine's City of God tells us, they argue, that:
"It is the deep groundswell of social cohesion, the corporately felt commitments and unarticulated impulses that really determine the character of communities. These make the rational plans and conscious judgements of their leaders look like waves on the surface of the ocean."
But it is a new problem for us, living at the fag end of the modern period during which political will became the one, true gospel. We are now so locked in to this "politicians delivering a better Britain" model that changing the script will be painful.
All this may seem like a greater problem for the Left than the Right. After all, the Left has traditionally made more of Government's ability to solve problems. Now, faced with a problem that lies largely outside the political sphere, it is left somewhat unarmed.
But it is also a problem for the Right. It is a long time since the Conservatives did any serious conserving. The Right's almost monomaniacal focus on the market as a "solution" over the last three decades has blinded it to the fact that the market does not necessarily foster "good character" and may, if allowed to eat its way through communities and civil society, actively destroy it.
And it is also, returning to where we started, a problem for think tanks, at least conventional ones. If, as Reeves observes, thinktanks owe their influence to intimacy with politicians, when those politicians are faced with a challenge, like character-building, that is ultimately beyond their capacity, thinktanks risk losing their influence with them. Maybe, for thinktanks to remain influential, they will need to be active on the ground, in church halls, just as much as in Whitehall.
There is much speculation in all this. The Left and the Right will continue to proclaim Britain wrecked or recovering, depending in which is in power, and thinktanks will continue to tell their political friends that they have just had the best idea since Child Tax Credits. And the population will continue to say they are disillusioned with all of them.
But if character does emerge as a political problem, it may do more than cause ministers and their minions to scratch their heads. It may show that they, like the emperor, are wearing rather fewer clothes than they thought.
Today the TaxPayers' Alliance has released a report, The Burden of Green Taxes, that lays bare the amount we are all paying in green taxes and charges and examines whether that burden is justified.
Since 1993 when Ken Clarke introduced the Fuel Duty escalator in order to meet "our Rio commitment", green taxes have become a massive burden on ordinary families. Green taxes, net of road spending, now stand at a colossal £24.2 billion, nearly £1,000 per household.
This is quite an imposition and those who pay the most are those in rural communities who need to drive to get around, the elderly paying more to heat their homes and manufacturing industries already struggling with competition from the developing world.
Green taxes are generally paid in addition to other taxes like VAT, so they constitute a premium that you wouldn't want to place on vulnerable consumers and industries without good reason.
The reason that has been given - by the environmental movement, politicians of all three parties, and those economists who support "Pigovian'" taxation - is that we need to correct for "externalities".
Those externalities are the harms to the rest of humanity that someone's greenhouse gas emissions create by their expected contribution to climate change. Under the logic that politicians use to justify green taxes, the tax should be set to compensate exactly for those externalities. In this case, that means that the tax should be set at what economists call the "social cost of carbon", which measures the harms of each ton of carbon dioxide emitted.
That makes the social cost pretty important and estimates have been constructed by a number of different groups. We compared estimates from the most respected academics in the field, international institutions and Government departments. It turns out that British green taxes are already set between £7.9 billion and £21.8 billion too high, between £316 and £872 per household.
The massive burden of Fuel Duty and Vehicle Excise Duty, the Landfill Tax, the Climate Change Levy and Renewables Obligation place a huge price on carbon that just can't be supported by mainstream estimates of the social costs of British greenhouse gas emissions.
Politicians are promising more green taxes and the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme is getting into its stride, but the intellectual justification for further interventions just isn't there.
Green taxes have failed to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions; in fact, emissions have risen since Labour came to power.
Cuts before then were a one-time gain from the dash for gas. Politicians have been trying to tax people into replacing fossil fuels before alternatives are ready and the result has been that the taxes haven't delivered the green goods.
At this stage - when we've had high fossil fuel prices for several years and consumers and businesses face excessive green taxes - there is already every financial reason for people to adopt alternatives to fossil fuels.
Making the burden of green taxes ever heavier is an unjustified and deeply unwelcome imposition on families struggling to make ends meet in a slowing economy.
If you want to find out how green taxes are affecting your area, we have also produced local estimates of how much people in each local authority area are paying in green taxes and the extent to which those taxes are excessive. Those estimates can be found on our site.
Teen chases mother with knife after change to computer privileges Authorities say a Palm Bay teen chased his mother with a knife and beat
his brother with a sugar cane because of a change to his computer
privileges.
Man tells deputies he slept through car chase The Monroe County Sheriff's Office says a man who led a deputy on a
high-speed pursuit told investigators he was sleeping, not driving,
during the chase.
Robber curses out judge at sentencing The mother of all curse words flew across courtroom D Monday as
16-year-old home invasion robber Richard Brantley was sentenced to 25
years in prison.
Man sentenced after sending hostages for beer An Illinois man who police say held five people hostage in a motel in
Fort Madison, Iowa, was arrested after he sent 2 of his hostages on a
beer run.
15-year old charged in killing another 15-year old Ramsey County prosecutors have charged a 15-year-old boy with
second-degree murder in the shooting death of another 15-year-old who
refused to shake his hand.
Blogger arrested over leak of Guns N' Roses songs A blogger suspected of streaming songs from the unreleased Guns N'
Roses album "Chinese Democracy" on his Web site was arrested Wednesday
and appeared in court, where his bail was set at $10,000.
Police say man swam nude in neighbor's pool Police say a man who lives in a town just north of New York City has
been caught with his pants down - skinny-dipping in his neighbor's
swimming pool
Got me a new job, I just started working at AT&T and Cingular Wireless on 8-25-2008. I am a Sales Representative for a Cellular phone Kiosk at Rosedale Mall in Roseville we are located on first floor of the mall near Caribou Coffee, ALDO, The Walking and Cache' store, So stop by and I will hook you up with some discounts. I am always working from 9am-6pm so, when you get there just ask for me "Saly". Peace! See you guys there.
Yes, I DO Dave in The Morning and Do KDWB All Day Long when I am at work. I mostly listen to the KDWB on my cell phone.
- If you live in the debatable lands of Eastern Europe, it's likely that you will know several languages. These may inlcude the one that, in public, you must pretend not to understand; the one you learned in secret and are now struggling bitterly to forget; and the one whose great lexicon, which existed in a single paper copy, may have burned earlier this month. I discovered all this in a fine and depressing New York Times dispatch from the Caucausus (via).
- Michael Chabon podcasts from the Democratic Convention. The version that downloaded to my iPod this morning cuts off after seven minutes, and the NYRB hasn't got around to mentioning it on their home-page yet, but it ought to be good when sorted...
Llevo dos días en Kingston, Jamaica y estoy afectado por el contraste entre la belleza del paisaje y la dejadez en que se encuentra la ciudad. He viajado por diversos lugares del continente, conozco varias zonas de México, he visto el tercer mundo en primera persona en Indonesia, pero Jamaica los supera a todos en decadencia.
Por lo general en todos estos lugares que les he mencionado hay una gran diferencia entre las zonas pobres y las zonas turísticas. La pobreza es mayor en Bali que en Jamaica, pero la zona de Nusa Dua (donde se encuentran los hoteles cinco estrellas) refleja el flujo de capital turístico. El contraste con el resto de la isla es grande, pero a pesar de la miseria, existe un espíritu de conservación de lo propio.
Esto no pasa en Jamaica, por eso digo que más que pobreza es dejadez y miseria compartidas. Las zonas turísticas de la capital están en un estado de abandono, el resto de la ciudad es deprimente. El dinero del turismo no se queda en Jamaica. Las grandes corporaciones pertenecen a extranjeros que no invierten en la mejora de la isla. La deuda externa es tan grande que el propio gobierno vive hipotecado sin poder mantener a flote su ciudad. Aún así la belleza rodea la miseria de la ciudad de una forma tan peculiar que no deja de atraerme.
La pobreza es tremenda. Niños descalzos, sin camisa pedaleando sus bicicletas que en cualquier momento pueden caer desmontadas. Cientos de personas sentadas en la calles, sin hacer nada, hablando, fumando y con ojos de abandono, se han rendido ante el sistema. Mujeres muy jóvenes cargando niños en pañales. Los huecos en las calles parecen llevar años ahí, erosionados por el tiempo y la lluvia. El calor y la agobiante humedad ralentizan todo. Las gallinas escarbando en las montañas de basura que se acumulan en las esquinas. Las cabras cruzando las calles buscando un trozo de pan duro que no le sobra a nadie. Los perros, desnutridos y cojeando, tienen el aspecto de ser más callejeros que en otros lugares. Los olores me impactan al recorrer las calles destrozadas por el paso del tiempo. Aceite quemado, comida frita, grasa, en cada esquina de los barrios pobres. Puestos de comida ambulante sucios, cocinando en barriles metálicos bajo unos toldos viejos de plástico para protegerse de las abundantes lluvias. El olor a tierra mojada no desaparece nunca al igual que la marihuana.
A pesar de todo, la belleza es insuperable. Hay algo del paisaje, de la gente, que me atrae. Las montañas tupidas por la espesa selva, imponentes, vigilan el atardecer en la bahía. El rojo ha invadido el ambiente. El sol, a escasos minutos de desaparecer, se deja ver entre unas gigantes nubes rojizas que marcan una bella silueta al otro lado del puerto. Unos barcos de carga oxidados esparcidos por el lugar, el dibujo de las casas en la ladera de la montaña y el olor al agua del mar me hacen olvidar la necesidad del lugar. La humedad ha desaparecido. La noche trae una cierta esperanza tras un día de un intenso sol, un brutal calor. Las sonrisas, los ojos, la piel, la amabilidad y la belleza innata de la mujer jamaiquina superan los límites de lo exótico. Un paraíso, una joya perdida en las aguas del Caribe.
I am always interested in those ‘On this day..' bits in the newspaper, which turn the reader's mind this way and that according to the date. Today is the anniversary of Martin Luther King's ‘I have a dream' speech (1963); it is the anniversary of the death of St Augustine (430) and of the birth of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in 1749.
Goethe has always been a bit of a hero of mine, perhaps the most extraordinary polymath who ever lived. Many people know him for his Faust (his own take on a traditional tale, with Faust being redeemed at the end and raised up to Heaven, unlike in Marlowe's) which was the inspiration for works by Schumann, Gounod, Liszt, Wagner and Mahler. But his literary works included novels, plays, romantic poetry, eroticism and much else. He was the leader of the Sturm und Drang movement, but later went to Italy to clear his head (as so many people do) and collaborated with Schiller in the Weimar Classicist Movement.
But Goethe was also a lawyer, statesman (he was effectively Prime Minister of Weimar), soldier (he fought at the battle of Valmy and the siege of Mainz), natural scientist (his work on plant morphology influenced Darwin, he was the first to prove that the intermaxillary bone existed in all mammals, the mineral goethite is named after him and his Theory of Colour, translated into English, influenced Turner's painting), and heroic lover, it now appears, of both sexes.
Hi Ho - Off to the games I go!!!!!! This weekend is the Pleasanton Scottish Games (in California of course), hope to see you there.... Look me up in the Living History area... Spinning and Weaving I will be.... Elyn
I found out from my mom the other night, that they tried taking Aunty off of sedatives to see if she'd wake up on her own, then they found out that Bird Mites (Would not kid you about this) was breathed in and were multiplying in her lungs, causing the lung infection. The doctors immediately put her back on the sedatives and are trying to figure out a way to stop that infection. Trinidad has the most varied amount of birds in the world, and my uncle likes them, so he has a lot of birds at the family home...somehow, the mites (small pests, close to dust particles) got breathed in to her lungs, maybe it's because she wheezes a lot and may have sucked it in...not quite sure...but I've been having nightmares about it... sigh.
Robb's been around a lot for me though. I went to his basketball game on Tuesday night to cheer him on, he had a really good game, but the team lost and went out for the final night the team was playing in that league. He has another two leagues starting up in a couple weeks, so that'll be another two nights of basketball soon, plus he also plays softball, so that's 3 nights of sports starting up really soon...
I have to run to work now, I wake up so early in the mornings to go, but I always have Ryan on the radio in the morning to keep me company!
Thursday, August 28, 2008, 02:08 PM GMT [My Telegraph]
Good afternoon fellow bloggers. The regulars among you will immediately know that I am the 'new kid on the block' The only reason I am here today is because I am suffering from 'Man Flu'. Yes, ladies, you don't know how lucky you are to be immune from this particular varient of the flu virus, but I digress.
I find it fascinating to be in this small corner of cyberspace and witness the intrigue that abounds in this blogging area: Someone has upset Owen and he's waving goodbye, 'Love for Sale?' reveals young Ethel is looking for a man and, ye gads, a moderator(s) is having a frenzy deleting unacceptable posts. It's carnage out there.
Keep up the good work bloggers and by the way:
1. Owen. Its great that you are fuelling a debate - keep it going - don't walk away
2. Ethel. Look him in the eye and leave him in no doubt.
Prior to the UC/EKU football game tonight I'll be on the plaza with the "Stadium Show". I've been trying out my new gear:
"The Not Ready For Airtime" spectacular runs approximately 5:30 to 7. Scheduled to appear are longtime color analyst Jim Kelly (Jr.) who I worked with for 14 years on the radio broadcasts and Chris Wineberg--husband of Olympic gold medalist Mary Wineberg and a former UC decathlete himself. We''ll talk about Mary's time in China and about UC hurdler David Payne and his silver medal. You, of course, are welcome to join in with your comments, catcalls, harassments, etc. As always, please keep the vegetable throwing to a minimun.
Thanks to the "The Dark Knight" the summer movie season was a huge hit! This is the final weekend of summer movies and so far the box office has taken in $3.9 billion! It is up 1% from last year's record summer. Theaters are selling fewer tickets but they're making more money due to higher ticket prices.
It looks like Michael Phelps and Lil Wayne are scheduled as the host and musical guest on the 34th season premiere of "Saturday Night live" on September 13th. Lil Wayne is one of Michael's favorite rappers. There are also rumors going around that Michael Phelps will be at the "MTV Video Music Awards." Michael Jackson may show up at the "MTV Video Music Awards" as well.
"Survivor" just unveiled its next seasons cast. This is actually the 17th season of "Survivor." This time around it's called "Survivor: Gabon- Earth's Last Eden." This season you will get a former Olympic gold- medalist named Crystal Cox. Crystal won a track relay event in Athens 2004. There is also an actress names Jessica Kiper who was on a few episodes of "Gilmore Girls." Ken Hoang is also on the show. Ken is the world champion of Nintendo's Super Smash Brothers game.
Yesterday "Star" magazine was reporting that Eric Dane (Grey's Anatomy") and Rebecca Gayheart were separated. This is NOT true. Eric says that everything is great and they are working on having kids.
Luke Perry is saying he is not interested in being on the new "90210!" He doesn't want to bring his character of Dylan McKay back. The website zapit.com says that the CW is hoping that he will come back for at least one episode. It looks like Dylan will be the father of Jennie Garth's character's ("Kelly") 4 year old son.
Have a great day, until tomorrow, HAPPY GOSSIPING!
