Bad night, my fault too.
Had a very bad night last night. After the meeting I went home and spoke to K. on the phone. She is obviously quite fraught at the moment - however much I may want to mock actors she does invest a great deal in the parts that she has to play.
So last night we were having a conversation and it somehow led on to Cameron's tories. In fact she led with "David Cameron is really starting to piss me off" and proceeded to do a very good impression of DC spouting vacuities. I didn't try to deny that the "Built to Last" document is, in some ways, quite vacuous. It still doesn't say anything about policy, but it points towards individual freedom, trusting people and not just sticking up for the rich. This is surely what people need to hear from the tories. I explained how I'd watched the webcast of Cameron speaking at Vinopolis and how impressive he'd been, speaking in the round, without notes, for 20 minutes. Quite quickly we were having a heated argument and she was telling me that my wholesale adoption of tory ideas was a mark of low self-respect. I think perhaps that she's right. But I also think that she hasn't really tried listening to how a tory government could work. Because to her, the idea of wanting to pay less tax, only seems a product of greed, rather an incentive to drive the economy. Also she thinks that one must always do one's best to help the weak (I believe this too) and so not being willing to give up any amount of money the government asks of you to this end again, to her, only seems selfish and greedy. When I try saying that sometimes looking after people isn't the best thing for them, or that sometimes systems can run themselves without government intervention, or that systems run more efficiently when they have an inbuilt economic incentive, I get this slightly uneasy feeling. It's like arguing for these things that seem un-idealistic feels decadent, a slight perversion of the intellect, the sense that with the tories I've found club that will allow me to express my worst views and dress them up as legimate, pointing to the gang behind me for support. I think about David Cameron who is so eminently well-fed, so jolly somehow, even when he's trying to be earnest, there is something untroubled about his face, his views were not borne out of a moral struggle, to him they merely feel like the right and proper way of doing things.
Also the vignette that he painted of a state with ID cards:
"...I don't want to live in a country where you go out in the evening to walk your dog and a policeman can come up to you and say "Sir, where are your papers?""
There's the dog, the fact that the policeman would call him sir, it all points to something quite sheltered. Untroubled.
Anyway, we had a row, I went to bed, couldn't sleep and got up to smoke cigarettes and write. Spent an hour on the party scene, which ended up as a digression about me, not the party at all.
Also, I'm worried my friends are avoiding me because I've stopped drinking. This may well be paranoia, but I have the distinct recollection of avoiding Toby when he wasn't drinking. I just didn't know what to do.
So last night we were having a conversation and it somehow led on to Cameron's tories. In fact she led with "David Cameron is really starting to piss me off" and proceeded to do a very good impression of DC spouting vacuities. I didn't try to deny that the "Built to Last" document is, in some ways, quite vacuous. It still doesn't say anything about policy, but it points towards individual freedom, trusting people and not just sticking up for the rich. This is surely what people need to hear from the tories. I explained how I'd watched the webcast of Cameron speaking at Vinopolis and how impressive he'd been, speaking in the round, without notes, for 20 minutes. Quite quickly we were having a heated argument and she was telling me that my wholesale adoption of tory ideas was a mark of low self-respect. I think perhaps that she's right. But I also think that she hasn't really tried listening to how a tory government could work. Because to her, the idea of wanting to pay less tax, only seems a product of greed, rather an incentive to drive the economy. Also she thinks that one must always do one's best to help the weak (I believe this too) and so not being willing to give up any amount of money the government asks of you to this end again, to her, only seems selfish and greedy. When I try saying that sometimes looking after people isn't the best thing for them, or that sometimes systems can run themselves without government intervention, or that systems run more efficiently when they have an inbuilt economic incentive, I get this slightly uneasy feeling. It's like arguing for these things that seem un-idealistic feels decadent, a slight perversion of the intellect, the sense that with the tories I've found club that will allow me to express my worst views and dress them up as legimate, pointing to the gang behind me for support. I think about David Cameron who is so eminently well-fed, so jolly somehow, even when he's trying to be earnest, there is something untroubled about his face, his views were not borne out of a moral struggle, to him they merely feel like the right and proper way of doing things.
Also the vignette that he painted of a state with ID cards:
"...I don't want to live in a country where you go out in the evening to walk your dog and a policeman can come up to you and say "Sir, where are your papers?""
There's the dog, the fact that the policeman would call him sir, it all points to something quite sheltered. Untroubled.
Anyway, we had a row, I went to bed, couldn't sleep and got up to smoke cigarettes and write. Spent an hour on the party scene, which ended up as a digression about me, not the party at all.
Also, I'm worried my friends are avoiding me because I've stopped drinking. This may well be paranoia, but I have the distinct recollection of avoiding Toby when he wasn't drinking. I just didn't know what to do.
posted by william at 2:58 AM
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