YouTube – Britten: Violin Concerto / Janine Jansen · Daniel Harding · Berliner Philharmoniker

Truly wonderful playing and such rewarding complex music – what an intriguing sound world Britten created.

YouTube – Britten: Violin Concerto / Janine Jansen · Daniel Harding · Berliner Philharmoniker.

The Pope’s visit to the UK and our equality laws

The Pope’s remarks about equality legislation in the UK have been interpreted as a reference to legislation forcing religious adoption agencies to accept gay clients. Religious leaders have also voiced concern about the government’s flagship Equality Bill, saying it may force churches to employ sexually active gay people and transsexuals when hiring staff other than priests or ministers.
During his address, the Pope urged the bishops to ensure the Church’s moral teaching was always presented in its “entirety” and “convincingly defended”.
He said: “Your country is well-known for its firm commitment to equality of opportunity for all members of society.
“Yet, as you have rightly pointed out, the effect of some of the legislation designed to achieve this goal has been to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs.

So basically The Pope, an ex member of the Hitler Youth, wants to discriminate against gay people, rather like the Nazi’s no? He believes he is above the law. He is presumably far happier with the very large amount of child abusers employed by his organisation.

He must pay for his own visit if he has to come. Sign the petition via the link below.

http://www.secularism.org.uk/petition-the-pm.html

Architecture in Wetherby, North Yorkshire

Cottage near the bridge over the River Wharf, Wetherby. As ever, a momentary fantasy about living here. Not sure about the crucifixion tree and potential for flooding though.

Architecture in Wetherby, North Yorkshire

Here’s a strange little building in the pleasant but unremarkable market town of Wetherby just North of Leeds. A smattering of wealth and poverty, some nice but understated architecture, a few OK looking little shops mixed in with a fair few charity shops too. A promising looking Indian vegeterian restaurant, a tiny bookshop (ever more attractive given I order everything from Amazon so no real browsing), pleasant weir and bridge over the Wharf. One of those places occupied by only the young and old. Oddly comforting.

Apple iPad, how disappointing

Apple iPad – oh…… it IS just a really really big iPhone. What was all the fuss about? I don’t want it – it’s too big and you can’t comfortably read books on it without straining your eyes.

What next a giant iPod shuffle with shoulder straps? iPad is also a terrible name.

This Sporting Life, Lindsay Anderson (1963)

Watched this British New Wave movie again for the first time in 20 years because it’s set in Wakefield and partly shot at Wakefield Trinity. It’s directed by Lindsay Anderson.

Firstly the actors’ accents – no one speaks with an authentic Yorkshire accent in the entire film – the two leads lurch inconsistently between Geordie and Welsh – it’s hilarious listening to these middle class actors trying to get it right, attempting to be ‘authentic’. This helps seriously undermine the film. Only the English (and an Oxbridge director) could produce such a parody of ‘The North’ and the ‘working class’. Every cliche in the book is used – the two leads are inarticulate, brutish, grumpy, dour, unhappy, live in relative squalor, have no fun, don’t laugh. It’s very melodramatic kitchen sink stuff. It’s a deeply prejudiced view of working class life, as though people aren’t part of a worthwhile community and live little better than grunting animals. By the end of the film I felt as though I’d watched something akin to being racist, it’s the nearest equivalent I can come up with for its weird class prejudice and its snide ‘grim up North’ mentality where no characters are adequately fleshed out. I wonder what the people of Wakefield made of this movie at the time? It was obviously made for people in the south. All that said Richard Harris is oddly watchable, as are the line up of familiar British actors William Hartnell, Arthur Lowe, Leonard Rossiter, and the filming of the scenes on the rugby pitch are impressively involving and visceral.

Hilariously the DVD case blurb says: ‘Lindsay Anderson was nominated for the Golden Palm for his unflinching look at working-class life set in the bleak landscape of Northern England.’ Just like the Victorians wrote of those brave authors reporting back about the East End of London then really…

Hansas Indian vegetarian restaurant, Leeds

Now here’s how to do it. Really excellent, honest, great food. Deliciously memorable, well priced and produced with real care.
This has long been a popular restaurant and I can see why – we’ll come back often. Delicious and satisfying.

The Hurt Locker and Tony Blair

What a horribly memorable film. I’d not really seen deaths and killing portrayed like this in a war film before. The sniper fire was near silent – just the awful sound of bullets penetrating a body and of killing at long range. It’s a very tense film that stays with you – good to remind oneself of the appalling mess Tony Blair got us in over there and the terrible consequences it’s having.

I wonder if Tony Blair needed to set up a ‘faith foundation’ to help him sleep at night – I hope his unconscious tortures him to a very early grave.

I was a lifelong Labour supporter but will now be voting Green or Lib Dem, as will the rest of my family.

Henry Moore at Yorkshire Sculpture Park

This sculpture is like a prehistoric flint tool dug up out of the ground and displayed on a pedestal. Strange how many English Modernist artists and critics were fascinated by standing stones and ancient sites: Nash, Hepworth, Piper, Read.

Perhaps it was a wish to get back to something that seemed elemental and more grounded than a modernity that produced two worldwide conflicts where millions had died and cities were flattened. There’s also something of Ruskin’s imperative to find God in the details – to connect to nature and try to channel it through art. The English landscape becomes a kind of consolation and compensation for the failings of contemporary life…

Today I had to spend some time in the deeply grim White Rose Shopping Centre (designed to look like a very large scale public toilet in a middle ranking international airport) on the outskirts of Leeds rather than tramping out on the moors as we’d planned. The entire family walked around this shopping centre in walking boots.

Says it all really.

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet plays Debussy Reflets dans l’eau

Here’s my favourite interpreter of Debussy at the moment.

YouTube - Jean-Efflam Bavouzet.