Jatinder's Blog

Claudia Mayer is in Delhi, teaching at the National School of Drama. Her thoughts, of course, are on what’s going on in London. She writes:

The C18th mob was a beast to fear – are we heading there?

http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t17100418-46&div=t17100418-46&terms=the%20mob#highlight

Though looking at a fat old biker outside looted Swarovski’s in Manchester it strikes me that surely the whole consumer culture emphasis buy buy buy that came in in the 80s – the importance of money – and conspicuous consumption followed by dirt cheap goods – clothes etc thanks to 3rd world labour, child included, the whole bling thing, developed by blair’s world and now casually millionaired and privileged top shelf tories – there is a philosophical rebellion in all this – don’t make us fight for what we can’t have – smashing it is the only recourse – on an abstract level it makes sense. But smashing local family shops and businesses is just awful.

The other thing is that it seems entirely logical that the Tottenham kids would foul their own nest – it’s called self-harm and emerges out of alienation and despair.

I still ask – where are the parents?

I’m so glad I won’t have to suffer the wall-to-wall empty bluster about unacceptable this and deplorable that from tanned trillionaires! (who, by the way, are able to claim expenses for holiday interrupted by work).

The appointment of Madani Younis as the new Artistic Director of the Bush is thrilling news. Congratulations to Madani for seizing the moment and to the Board for appointing him.

A long overdue moment in British theatre: there have over the decades been so few – what shall I say? Ethnics? Darkies? – heading our major theatres, that each appointment seemed a herald of a new dawn. Only for it to remain a singular event rather than sparking a whole movement of change.

This may be different: the Arts are on shifting sands at the moment and perhaps this augurs a more hopeful moment of sustained infusion of other voices, other sensibilities, other colours across the landscape of theatre. Let’s have Kalidasa rub shoulders with Shakespeare, Soyinka with Pinter, Williams, Bhatti and Bano (& the host of others we never hear of) with Bean, Churchill, Walsh and all the many contemporary playwrights – why not? And actors in leading roles, please, as frequently as rain during this summer!

It suddenly struck me: today’s the anniversary of the London Bombings… And we’re almost exactly a year away from welcoming the world to the 2-week Olympic jamboree…

So now we know. The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, said yesterday that the so-called “multikulti” concept – where people would “live side-by-side” happily – did not work, and immigrants needed to do more to integrate – “lmmigrants should learn to speak German”. Attempts to build a multicultural society in Germany, according to her, have “utterly failed”.

Failed? Has Germany learnt nothing from the re-integration of East & West Germany, let alone the Holocaust? Or are we back to the language of euphemism, where “culture” means ‘coloured foreigners’ – Muslims, Blacks, overt ‘Others’?

you, a dashing young millionaire suddenly elevated to assume charge of the nation’s finances, take from the people just under a thousand pounds a month for eight years for your own capital gain but keep this under wraps as you try and help the very same people swallow the bitter pill of cuts in government spending. The National Interest demands sacrifice from the many to help the few. Welcome to the Brechtian era of New Politics…

So, the veil has at last been lifted. Immigration, immigration, immigration was one of the key issues of the recent election, with no party being quite clear what they were referring to. The Queen’s unveiling of the coalition government’s programme makes clear at last what’s meant – non-EU migrants. In other words, from Commonwealth countries. In other words – to strip yet another layer of obfuscation off – Blacks and Asians. These are the people – I am the person – the new government wants to restrict from entry into Britain. I landed here in the 20th century; could I land here in this century? Not if his government has its way.

And now the news that a teacher who is a BNP member, and who posted comments online using a school laptop which described immigrants as “savage animals” has been cleared of racism by the General Teaching Council.

As if the recession were not enough to deal with…