Essential Snobbery 101: The Slow Death of Proper Address

A Stringent Beginning

It was almost a decade ago when I underwent a stringent vetting process with all the officialdom that extracted more information from me than I would willingly have volunteered. This process was supervised by a department within the organisation to which I was contracted to offer professional services.

When the process was completed, I received a notice from a member of staff confirming that I had passed all the requirements. It began with "Hi!" Just "Hi", without a name, stripped of all formality, dignity, and function, as though we shared the familiarity born of mutual friendship going back decades, rather than mere acquaintance.

I was reeling and altogether taken aback; this could not seriously have come from within the company with which I held a formal contractual engagement.

Insult and Injury

To add insult to injury, the person who signed off the message bore names suggesting a common Nigerian heritage, where the expectation is that a modicum of formality should greet those with whom you have never interacted before. Only after you have introduced yourself and established communication through a cordial response and acknowledgement should informality be considered.

This was analogous to an ingénue who had abandoned the sophistication of speech for grunts and howls.

From that day, I wanted nothing to do with that individual, and I made a point of expressing my displeasure at such an approach to their manager. My own manager attempted to apologise on her behalf, then suggested that we might have become old-fashioned.

Manners Never Age

Maybe we were; but good manners, in my view, can never be old-fashioned. They should always be fashionable and properly taught. Comportment, decorum, respectful address, honour, regard, and etiquette make the person and exude character.

I have worked in places where informality is the culture, yet I would still address you by name, and with deference, because I was brought up that way, and what you give out comes back to you in spades.

The Order of Greetings

Whilst I have spent four decades in the corporate world, any first contact with a person would always come with a greeting for the time of day: good morning, good afternoon, or good evening. Good night is usually goodbye.

Then comes the person's name, which might be preceded by a standard, academic, religious, military, royal, or political title. Professions deployed as titles, apart from "Dr" for medical doctors, are an exercise in pompous superfluity and self-aggrandisement.

At other times, it is "Dear" and the person's name. "Hello" is for friends. Then I close my messages properly, with a variation of "regards" and my name. In speech, it is formally the greeting for the time of day; I introduce myself with purpose if required, or await a response with names and preferences.

Pronouns and Coherence

On the new trend of pronouns, especially those that challenge the natural flow of the English grammar I learnt from well-appointed schooling, I would rather use a name than defeat the ends of coherence and adherence.

Good and traditional forms of address will always establish the standard of communication and the protocols of language. If someone is too well-spoken to use expletives in any way, it is unlikely others would deploy them when speaking to you; or at least they are guarded, and moderate their language with apologies for any unfortunate slips of the tongue.

The Art of Subtlety

Maybe, indeed, I am old-fashioned. I would rather be that than uncouth and uncultured. From my youth, my mode of address has earned me consideration, respect, and a hearing. Yet if I am overly formal in beginning a message with "Dear Mr Jones", when we have always been on first-name terms, you need not read any further to know that this is an expression of great displeasure.

Subtlety and discretion; the polite turn of expression that, on first reading, seems complimentary, until some thought is put to it. It is the way of the English, an art of communication lost to many for whom a good education might have been a luxury. It is not their fault.

Essential Snobbery 101: The Etiquette of Getting Caught

The Art of Discretion

If one were to court controversy, one could say that infidelity is congenital or consanguineous, but rarely learnt or taught. The debate around that is for another forum.

However, the tendency to stray must surely come with the essential common sense of, first and foremost, not rubbing your partner's nose in it. This means according those liaisons the respect of keeping them at a distance, and being as discreet as you possibly can in order to avoid getting caught.

History, as I have read it, would suggest that the Victorians and Edwardians who kept mistresses made sure their spouses were not disadvantaged in dignity, position, attention, or latitude. It was usually a case of knowing without feeling threatened.

A Cautionary Commotion

What I cannot abide are those who break the rules in wholly unforgivable ways, such as placing their matrimonial bed at the very centre of the travesty whilst hoping not to get caught. What on earth are you thinking? The follow-up question is unprintable.

I was once privy to a narrative relayed to me of a commotion that brought the police to a home, the cacophony having included the shattering of glass, and whatever else might have been flung, in both words and objects, when a hapless fool was caught in the act.

His wife had gone away and was not expected back until the weekend; she returned the previous night, however, only to find her husband canoodling with another woman. There is no need for a graphic replay, at the risk of sensationalising the matter with the aplomb of a village rag.

A Failure to Plan

There must be a reason why she did not telephone ahead to forestall what might have been her suspicions of something untoward. Some people spare themselves the possibility of such situations by making allowances, in the spirit of "out of sight is out of trouble".

He, however, in his careless and carefree manner, played the oily mouse whilst the cat was away. He should have planned his rendezvous for a motel, or somewhere far from home, yet he did not.

Stepping back to view this from an objective angle, the effrontery and audacity required to bring someone else home should always have come with the forward planning of a number of things. First, an alert system that detects proximity, so as to avoid an encounter. Then, easy sequestration, should your spouse enter the house when there is no chance of escape.

Hiding the Evidence

You cannot put the interloper on the window ledge outside if you are on the tenth floor, especially if that was not intended as a final goodbye. Slipping them under the bed, behind the curtain, or into the wardrobe are far too common as places to hide, and so to be found. Just roll a bottle under the bed; if it does not come out the other end, take a look.

Someone suggested the oven or the fridge, which left me thinking of the double-jointed contortionist who performs at the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town, doing such unimaginable things with his body that the spectacle is too suggestive for a polite audience, and yet impossible to look away from.

Perhaps the clothes basket could help, and what you would need next is a snake charmer to play the pungi as your quarry wriggles to the swaying hypnotism of the sound, lifting the lid of the basket and unleashing the scandal that would ensue. You may not be prepared for the confessions.

If you do not have a number of well-planned escape routes, no amount of explaining would extricate you from a complex situation that would serve as entertainment for your neighbours, and inspiration for this very piece. You got caught, pants down, and the only thing you might ever salvage is your dear life, by the skin of your teeth.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

Essential Snobbery 101: Revisiting discretion and how we share

Opening to strangers

Considering the topic of my last blog post, the importance of discretion becomes increasingly relevant. I suspect we tend to share much more information with strangers, viewing brief encounters as fleeting and inconsequential, than we do with people we know well.

However, there are different levels of comfort with friends, colleagues, and family compared to strangers. We might overlook that any conversation, regardless of familiarity, can seem more interesting and meaningful to our interlocutors than it appears to us in the moment.

There is clearly some research and writing about why we tend to confide in strangers, the people we assume we will never see again. By that assumption, one might wonder about the embarrassment that could arise if a future encounter brings an indiscretion back to mind.

Holding one’s peace

There was one such conversation I could have fully engaged in, as familiarity might have caused me to let my guard down. It concerned remuneration and rewards, though it focused on how poorly longer-term engagements were being recognised through promotions and appropriate pay.

Opposing that was the absurd situation where titles do not necessarily entitle the holders to better pay than the staff they manage. Although the discussion called for some disclosure, I chose to observe rather than contribute.

Then, the following week, everything that could be deemed absurd happened, and I was grateful not to have been overwhelmed by the urge to speak, despite having several opinions to express. It remains clear, regardless of the setting, that discretion is the better part of valour.

The price of not forgetting

Mind what you show

A while ago, I saw something both unusual and attractive in a face online, and did wonder who it was. I was gripped by curiosity but unaware of the tools at my fingertips to satisfy it.

In one of those events of one thing leading to another online, I happened upon PimEyes, a website that thralls the Internet for image similarities, it uses a form of Artificial Intelligence and for the free product, it is good.

I did find the face and just the other pictures and URLs you could not visit on the free version was revelatory. Let's just say you do not want to put pictures online on sites and profiles that could leave you compromised.

That it out of face

The same happened with a chap with totally enviable model looks, I found out where he took his modelling pictures from one of the URL results, but some other pictures were in flagrante dilecto, giving full expression to his sexual proclivities.

The prude in me did wonder how such a beautiful man could be up to such naughtiness. Even in my wildest years, my nudity never included a face, which must be a law, a rule never to be broken regardless of your state of sobriety, except where that is your clear intention.

It’s somewhere online

However, more pertinent was the impression of the Internet never forgetting, when a website I used for a core part of work research went offline months ago.

As I needed information only it could provide, in simplicity, I found the Wayback Machine, a website that does a sweep of the Internet, it periodically captures literally anything published online, it is an internet archiving resource. I was back in my element for the recall of an essential service.

My blog started in December 2003, hosted by a local company in Scotland that I thought I was supporting until they decided they found no more pleasure in hosting blogs in mid-2010. The harsher lesson was they used proprietary tools which made it impossible to migrate my blog to another hosting provider.

We were given 18 months to do whatever we could to get our content off before the hosting facility closed down in 2012. It took a good few weeks to copy each of the over 1,500 blogs to another location, but I lost the images, internal links, and interactions in comments.

Publish and be damned

Imagine, 13 years later, I plugged my old URL in the Wayback Machine and up came captures from 2003 to 2012, including comments.

All was not lost, just somewhere, if you knew where to find it. That is both a solution and a problem, how you can find what you thought you had lost, but worse still is what others can find that you had totally forgotten, you had done.

When Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington was being blackmailed to be left out of the saucy memoirs of his mistress Harriette Wilson, he retorted, “Publish and be damned.” The publisher Joseph Stockdale did publish, but retribution came through others who ruined him with libel suits.

To many of us, there is probably no fear of libel or defamation, just the unfortunate situation of someone being able to dig up something from the past and make it relevant to the present, at a point of ascendancy, that you might have to relinquish an honour, an accolade, or a position in ignominy.

Think about what you post or court controversy at your peril.

Essential Snobbery 101: The waning art of discretion

In view of the setting

It is interesting to review a day in which some settings within which I found myself brought a mix of behaviours, attitudes, prejudices, and indiscretions which, on reflection, just indicated how much we need to be self-aware of how what and how we do things can affect others.

In the first instance, the engagement, which had moved from the necessities and essentials of effective communication last week, was initially an exercise in how the same instructions given to a group can present different results in comprehension and action. Though the core element for the day was the broader subject of diversity, equality, and inclusion.

An undress in address

In a multicultural grouping of diverse and variant abilities, this would bristle against the learned long before the acquired suits you to the environment. My first encounter came with an enthusiastic fashion aficionado who, in my view, probably knows what goes with what for what time of the day but forgot to recognise we were not being groomed for either the catwalk or the red carpet.

As I asked to sit with them, my acknowledgement of compliments on my apparel seemed to open the door to a level of intrusion that should have been invited rather than imposed. However, she took it upon herself to instruct me on what colours and styles should match what I was wearing. I could have brusquely rebuffed her and asked her to mind her own business, but I made the allowances in observation of an intriguing display of the use of discretion.

Absent filters of sharing

As the day progressed, there was something about just giving out too much information, where even as you begin to cultivate familiarity in a grouping, you let down your guard too easily to reveal what probably should be kept to yourself in some eagerness to share something that might yet not be known about you.

Even though I can be quite expressive, I still filter the products I share and consider what a no-need-to-know in consideration of how what one dares to share might affect others. Discretion is an art in and of itself.

Once some secrets of others were shared, there were a few instances where I could have interjected with ‘Me Too’, but I was not so inclined. I learned much and revealed little else, but in the observation of character, you appreciate who to keep in your confidences.

Of prejudice in scowls

Then came the apologies, this was in the aftermath of both discrimination and prejudice that some would have observed as redolent of a stereotype belonging to a certain demographic that, for a matter of discretion again one would think but never voice.

The need not to voice everything that comes to mind, even when there is irresistible prompting, is a discipline in awareness and sometimes necessary not to upset others.

That I found myself in the middle of the exchange whilst offering an example to buttress a point was incidental, but I was only ready to reveal so much about myself without laying myself out to avoidable vulnerability and exposure in sharing information that was not germane to the discussion. It was rattling and eventually resolved; uncomfortable would not fully describe what happened.

Platform pearls before swine

Back at home, I happened upon a tweet that included a clip of a BBC interview with an unctuous ingenue, a Nigerian male YouTuber who, with little urging, seemed to spill the beans on the immigration inclinations of his fellow countryfolk, just at a time the UK government has been looking for a means to reduce net immigration and dependants joining students during their sojourn in the UK.

He, apparently a dependant himself, in his excitement, ingratiated himself with a forwardness lacking self-reflection that could implicate him in immigration fraud when he inferred that he had helped some falsify documentation, apart from painting Nigeria and Nigerians in a very bad light. His quest for notoriety and clout presented more than an opportunity for indiscretion and lascivious boast of questionable ability or prowess. If ever the pearls of a large platform were cast before swine.

We remain, good ambassadors

He no doubt irked many a Nigerian at home and abroad, but I, being a 25-year resident of the UK and another 12 in the Netherlands, and we Nigerians, by birth, heritage, or allyship, are unwittingly ambassadors in the communities wherein we are, and no upstart, regardless of the platform they gain, can rubbish the good and useful contributions we make in our communities.

Honest Nigerians need not fear a backlash in their quest to emigrate; this would blow over, as we have always faced hurdles from as far back as memory would allow and have still made the moves and progress we have desired. Our YouTuber, who would not be granted even basic recognition, would fade into obscurity at just the same speed at which he came to our notice. An irrelevance in the scheme of things.

In the sidebar, I joined a Twitter space to assure Nigerians of continuing our good work, and for all I had to say, one was too distracted to listen, for he had read my profile and all he could glean from it was to ask why I am gay. I could have been exasperated, but when you realise that some can never learn to mind their own business, you make a cursory note and ignore it.

Thought Picnic: If only we knew the truth

A runaway train at speed

We can so soon be carried away with the media frenzy and the dimensions of how a situation is portrayed, and this along with the commentariat spawns a world of imponderables and the utterly incredible.

Sadly, this is rarely within the context of the event or representative of the truth, but once sensationalism has grasped a story by the scruff of the neck, it runs away at such speed that the truth probably has no chance of catching up and correcting the impression made.

A moment to regret

Sometimes, the principals in the story in a moment of indiscretion, a lapse in judgment, or a poor choice of words with a microphone jabbing at their lips inform a sceptical audience of their intentions only to have opprobrium heaped upon them. By consequence, their causes and mission sometimes suffer irreparable damage, even as reputational risk is heightened.

There was a news story way back in 1987 that became the hallmark of a rather distinguished career that was quite impactful for another two decades. Between a kind of desperation to achieve for the good of the many and for a renowned public speaker, words that attracted derision over praise became a negative by which the person now deceased is remembered by the wider world.

The benefit of the good

In my own opinion, I strive to believe in the best of people and understand that they have faults and failings that do not necessarily make them nasty and irredeemable people. An old saying I learnt from a preacher over 30 years ago, feeds my inclination to ‘have as much sense as an old cow, eat the hay and leave the baling wire.’

This is what allows me to engage with people I may not totally agree with, yet the same people have gems of wisdom and knowledge that can be quite profitable to me. However, having absorbed the stench of the prevailing news story which had become a controversial and trenchant part of his biography I never researched any further but took it at face value of the reportage.

If only we knew

In listening to a message today, I caught a portion where the event was related by a witness with insight into the motives, intentions, and rationale of the person in question. You then realise for every story that gets told about you, there is probably little that could be done to arrest the juggernaut careering down the steep incline of gossipy and salacious interest. Some battles like that cannot be won, but you should not for the noise abandon your determination and purpose.

I put it down to a moment of human weakness and an unscripted poor choice of words. If everyone knew, they might have been forgiven. Then again, when a story has grown hairy and swift legs, it is unlikely the truth would be allowed to get in the way of a story about to breast the tape of notoriety, ignominy, and obloquy. Selah!

Thought Picnic: In a moment of filial indiscretion

In the telling

My father who is 83 today is an interesting man of numerous talents, great generosity, and impactful mentoring ability, along with considerable human failings as we all are for any story that might get told of us.

However, this is not the time to dwell on those matters for in a lifetime a scion is as much equipped with the knowledge to write both hagiography and excoriation with an equal consequence if presented with the glee of indiscretion.

Of associative relationships

I guess there are ways in which I probably do not appreciate my parents as much as I can even as they are in this year octogenarians both. It is funny that I recently found the words to understand some of what that relationship affects.

At nativity, a time for bonding was lost to the need to give a prematurely born child the opportunity to thrive. The first description of what I looked like depending on who was relating the story varied from lizard to hamster, though it was agreed that I only fit in the palm of my father’s hand before I was shipped off to the city of Birmingham to be incubated for two months.

Our familial relationship is more associative than anything, they stuck to me, reared me, took responsibilities on my behalf and gave me both a start in life and the makings of a world outlook that defines beliefs, expressions, actions, and much else.

A preview loosed

For that, I can only be grateful and thankful, I love them if I understood what love is, yet at various times, I have cultivated these relationships on my own terms, when I want to communicate, how I choose my viewpoints, the audacity of opinion respectful and truthful, for a child, I could well be an aberration given unusual liberties.

I cannot even remember why I started this blog for its course was not essentially to post a birthday greeting, I was thinking of what might end up in a book I am trying to write. The broader narrative will be found there, this is just a synopsis.

Thought Picnic: In weakness let your discretion rule

Buckled by weakness

History chronicles the lives of many great men brought down by their weaknesses, many through sex and all the accoutrements of seeking that gratification of the flesh.

One can only feel sad for the misfortune that befell Keith Vaz, the Member of Parliament for the Leicester East constituency and Gonville and Caius (pronounced Keez) College graduate of the University of Cambridge. He with the distinction of being the longest serving MP of Asian origin in the House of Commons.

A good head start, one would say and until Tuesday, the influential chairman of the Home Affairs Committee since 2007.

Pursuits of the flesh

I cannot be said that Mr. Vaz had many friends as a politician, he has been dogged by many scandals from which he has deftly extricated himself unscathed and even served a suspension from the House of Commons as a consequence, but with that he had weaknesses that when those became the focus of media attention, none ran to defend him as a symbol worthy of anything less than opprobrium.

As each and every one of us has weaknesses, it would be unfair to dwell on the shortcomings of one man, but there are things one must comment on with regards to his downfall.

Mr. Vaz would apparently have liberal views and tastes along with a penchant for exploring adventurous pursuits of the flesh. Being a married man of 23 years with two children, he was at the weekend exposed as having met for sex with prostitutes, which really is no crime in itself. [Sky News]

The plot congealed

However, the deeper the detail of the story got, it became impossible to bat away any of the tales as media intrusion without any lasting consequence. Mr. Vaz was meeting with male prostitutes for bareback (unsafe) sex on presumably excitement enhancing substances.

Again, there is no crime in adults meeting up for sex and choosing to have any kind of sex they desire, if done with consent. However, there are moral issues that would have arisen about this liaison and other issues of compromise that could result from being exploited by less than discreet and scrupulous partners.

Unbeknownst to him, his liaisons had identified who he was being a high-profile politician on television and they decided to contact the media about their trysts. The videos that then emerge for the scoop that landed on the weekend pages of the newspapers were recorded by the men he met up with.

Discretion above all else

It goes without saying that on matters of straying from the expected, one should choose those one chooses to cover very carefully. It beggars belief that Mr. Vaz took such risks with men who probably had more to gain than to lose with meeting him for sex.

I am of the opinion that meeting with people requires a modicum of understanding the power dynamic between yourselves to understand temperament and honesty of the person to ensure one does no suffer rotten consequences from the relationship. Meeting with people in the same cadre and class, much as some might frown at this anachronism goes a long way in ensuring no one comes to harm, or if any, negligible if the situation turns sour.

The reckless things we do

Beyond this, Mr. Vaz could easily have been the subject of blackmail with the men bilking him for anything they thought they could get away with. It is unimaginable though conceivable that certain people in the know of Mr. Vaz’ interesting tastes might have exacted favours of him by reason of his influential position and his work history is not without controversy.

Invariably, he had to resign from his chair because he was caught in a seriously untenable position that suggested subjective thinking and conflicts of interest in matters over which he had the power to influence, suggest, advice on and promulgate laws.

Tougher days ahead

The other not insignificant matter of his family looms, the wife probably put at risk because of the down-low proclivities of her husband. His wife may never walk out on him, but if she does, she first has to make sense of this development.

Mr. Vaz may not identify as homosexual or bisexual, though there is a growing cohort of seemingly outwardly heterosexual males venturing into a bi-curious phase of sexual experimentation.

His children will be beside themselves in understanding their father, the shock of which will not wear off that easily. There will be some rather difficult talk ahead, with the nuclear family and the extended family.

What next?

Things like this anyone would rather keep private and secret, to have such revealed to the whole world on the yellow journalism pages of English tabloids is a raid on one’s being that one must never wish on one’s worst enemy. However, I think Mr. Vaz will come through this, a bit battered, but unbowed, he was not known as Mr. Vaz(eline); a play on Vaseline, for nothing.

Now this is out in the open, Mr. Vaz also has to decide where his loyalties lie and whether his acquired taste for men is necessary for the full expression of his sexuality. This will also determine the future of his marriage and anything else he does from henceforth.

The lesson for us is to handle our weaknesses with a little more discretion and some smarts about those we choose to exploit those pleasures that derive from our weaknesses with. At risk is position, dignity, status and respect, none of which is easy to earn back once lost.

Essential Snobbery 101: David Cameron was being silly

In company of class

I arrived home yesterday to the conversation recorded between Her Majesty, The Queen, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Prime Minister, the Leader of the House of Commons and the Speaker of the House of Commons.

The Prime Minister, after being introduced by the Speaker to the Queen, decided to engage in small-talk (polite conversation about unimportant or uncontroversial matters, especially as engaged in on social occasions) with the Queen, and this would have been separate from the formal weekly audience with the Queen, where the Prime Minister visits the Queen in camera to discuss matters of state.

Quite nasty talk

As the camera rolled, capturing this seemingly private banter, the microphones, hot and ready, picked up a declension into unguarded commentary by a Prime Minister who once had a life in public relations. Almost boastfully boisterous as if to show familiarity and ease before royalty, he declared, “We've got some leaders of some fantastically corrupt countries coming to Britain ... Nigeria and Afghanistan, possibly the two most corrupt countries in the world.” [BBC News]

Now, there is no doubt that Nigeria and Afghanistan have great and almost overwhelming problems with corruption. The Prime Minister had invited the leaders of these countries to his much vaunted anti-corruption summit, and it now appeared that he had in mind to ridicule them for the problems in their countries.

Reprehensible indiscretions

On the one hand, this kind of banter, which skirts the bounds of the typically politely rude English, also smacks of old colonial snobbery of the worst kind. The very kind where someone jocularly abuses, insults and offends you and then pats you on the back with the faux-sympathetic apology of not meaning to hurt you.

On the other hand, as we observed of George Osborne some years before, it is the kind of indiscretion that obtains from public school-educated toffs who fawn obsequiously in the presence of royalty or money, people who have a heightened sense of self but are immediately self-conscious in the presence of those whom, for one reason or another, they deem their betters.

Blog - Discretion still matters

Fishing for laughs

Now, the well-educated Englishman usually got away with utterly bad manners as a matter of status, class and privilege. Their misdemeanours happen behind closed doors with witnesses holding their peace in disgust and disapproval, but shine a public spotlight on any of this, and it stinks to the high heavens of odium most vile.

The Archbishop, given to circumspection, interjected, saying, “But this particular president is not corrupt... he's trying very hard” The Queen concurred, before the Speaker, hoping to make a joke of the slight and bring humour to obloquy, then asked, “They are coming at their own expense, one assumes?”

This would have been funny if it were not to add insult to injury, the Speaker aping the Prime Minister in an off-hand game of attempting to amuse the Queen.

Just a silly boy

The end result of this contemptuous activity was that it became the headline news of every media outlet and the papers the next day. Quite unbecoming, very uncouth and socially maladroit, one could almost subscribe to the conspiracy that this was deployed intentionally by the Prime Minister to take Brexit away from being the centre of cynosure for a day or more.

Yet, it can only be one thing, a silly boy trying to show off and slipping on a banana skin, a spectacle with a necessary sense of schadenfreude. Aside from all the offence caused, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that David Cameron has been a rather silly little boy. Even if you could get a good laugh, some thoughts are best left unspoken.

Double life: Denials creating a first time every time

Learned to perfection

Society sometimes helps model people into quite interesting and unique individuals with somewhat common traits. I have observed this in people with fantasies, maybe dreams or daring ambitions.

The secretiveness that governs the quest should be a case for study; it might well have been studied, who knows?

They come across as knowledgeable of what they want having relived the fantasy so many times, it has become experiential as to be performed as rote.

First time every time

Having satisfied that fantasy, the truth then emanates that it is really just the first time and then a torrent of denials follow.

First about whom they are and how their deviation of the public façade they present is an anomaly, then about their fears about being discovered calls for utter discretion.

This is quite duplicitous and probably dishonest too, the secret double-lives puts all interactions at varying levels of risk as the protagonist finds an accommodation that balances quest and guilt with managed daring and pangs of conscience.

The art of denial

Using the device of denial, they deign to wipe the slate clean every time that each real repetition of the fantasy is projected as a novice who just seems to have the deft hand of the expert. Denial has become an art form, practiced with all the necessary safeguards to prevent the Jekyll and Hyde lives in the same person from visiting each other.

At which point you begin to wonder, who you can believe and who has created a world of make-belief, therein lies the erosion in trust of strangers with fantasies.

Editorial: Fourteenth of May 2011

Class remains a celling of glass

It can so easy to draw parallels between two seemingly disparate stories that pertain to the social elements of contemporary life and contemporaneous life of a bygone era.

The quest for an egalitarian society continues apace but it is nowhere within grasp, rather opportunity by merit or graft grants access to certain circles for a season without conferring a belonging until the next generation comes of age.

Life becomes a flux between class and vulgarity with many being unable to distinguish between either and those who do risking the epithet of snobbery.

The playboy and the player

The difference between a playboy and a player is all too evident; by player, I mean a football player who in certain leagues is highly paid in weekly wages and the dexterity of legs and foot might also belie the context of being lowly taught.

The death of a playboy who by unusual circumstance lived into his late 70s only to end his life with a gunshot to the head as the dread of Alzheimer’s disease loomed is quite different from a host of other playboys who ended their lives in their prime as their fast cars rammed into the gates of the great beyond.

Professional footballers do not necessarily come to such conclusions but have their reputations built and shattered by a lack of essential breeding that espouses the understated, a modicum of privacy, the presence of discretion, the circle of the trusted whilst being able to maintain sophistication and dare one say class.

Privilege and impecuniousness

So, in the review of five possibly ghost-written autobiographies of some famous footballers, the reviewer conjures amazing interest by narrating the five ages of a professional footballer and one cannot fail to notice how far the progeny of a player is from that of playboy.

A boyhood driven by ambition to succeed from a working-class background to the public school boy who has continental Europe as his playground, never bereft of the means to do anything he wishes.

The young professional with allegiances forged from childhood to coming of age of literally having nothing to do for work but at the same time socially busy and occupied.

The dramatic changes of allegiance for one might well be the advent into the adulthood of difficulty and clashes with ones forebears and as the former gains stardom on the field on the back pages of newspapers and the front-pages of tabloids, the latter will only find column inches at birth, marriage and death.

Representing ones country becomes the epitome of a footballing career as a player whilst the playboy literally has no nationality with the will and the means to be at any exclusive place as time and desire demands.

Class and crass

The other subtlety that divides the player and the playboy is chivalry, gentlemanliness, airs, graces and escorts that will never become courtesans but the distinctions then become snooty beyond compare.

Whilst each might well access the others circle, the ready put-down though unspoken is glaringly that “showing off was left to a few arrivistes who possessed neither class nor pedigree.”

That haunts many beyond players to include those lumped into the cachet of arriviste but the biggest slight of all is reserved for “little English lower-middle-class girlies like Anna Wintour and Tina Brown, had they been around, would never have come close to meeting them or even seeing them.”

Worst still is to come as he concludes that line of thinking with “Now both ladies are considered arbiters of taste and society, in America, at least.” It goes without saying that America still aspires to the sense of class that Europeans exude, but that is to kick up unnecessary fuss.

In the age of the player it appears the playboy mourns the passing of something that was once called high-society.

Acknowledgements

The Financial Times reviews five ghost-written football player autobiographies and manages to make a good reading of what would conveniently pass for drivel in that the lettered might not necessarily find literary or sociological value in those stories.

Taki Theodoracopulos who was once a playboy writes the obituary of Gunther Sachs for the Daily Telegraph lamenting the passage of high-society for the advent of the vulgar vicissitudes of albeit low society.

The philistines pillaging discretion

The denuding of Shimon

I was saddened as I queued up to board my flight to Stockholm this morning when CNN flashed the news of Shimon Peres the President of Israel dozing off during an interview.

It showed the depths to which we have sunk to in the quest for sensation rather than decent news that people felt showing the Grand Old Man of Israel in such a state of human frailty was worthy of publicity.

Pandering to indignity has become the ratings, interviewing the President and hearing what he had to say before he nodded off or what he would have said when he came to was not more significant, they had a better news story, an opportunity to laugh at an old man – the man is 84 for crying out loud.

Boring people and meetings

I have attended meetings where I have dozed off and sometimes maybe snored and I cannot count how many times those meetings have bored me stiffer than an Egyptian mummy – surely, a man of Shimon Peres’ stature should have been treated with a greater modicum of respect, honour and discretion.

That interviewer should have a career that has reached a dead-end from today, she can interview frogs for all I care, and maybe a croak or two might convey something worthy of contemplation.

They know no discretion

Discretion is a rare virtue nowadays and that was depicted in the CBS’ 60-minutes interview of President Sarkozy of France – he is the president and when a president attends an interview, I doubt if what he wants to talk about is his pending divorce.

The interviewer could not resist the urge to be pointedly indiscreet after he said; he would not use that forum to talk about his wife. When she went on to say that people want to know what was going on, I could only commend the President for terminating the interview, there and then – if the people who want to see the interview are the “Hello”, National Enquirer or trashy tabloid crowd looking for salacious gossip, he had better things to do – and rightly so – Nicolas.

Nosing around my piss

So the star of Formula 1 who was so mismanaged by his team that they lost both the constructor and driver championships wants to leave the UK for Switzerland where he can go for a pee and not have people waiting at the door for urinary autographs – the insatiable appetite of the press for stories that make elevate gossip to sewer news can really drive people to distraction and drive them away from home.

The Diana inquest shows that lessons have not been learnt that feeding idle minds with celebrity tripe does nothing to improve society rather, the self-same golden goose might be killed – unfortunately, the chase is for the moment - forget posterity.

The royal prerogative

One could commiserate with John Simpson when he could not get King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to talk about Iraq or Iran; well people have every right to feel so strongly about a situation that they would keep their counsel, just in case their utterances complicate situations – but the revelation that Saudis provided no matter how trivial the information about the London bombing and felt it was dismissed by the British is a grievance enough to air.

The candour of the king was evident when he said to John Simpson that he did not want to be evasive or dishonest.

My final bouquet goes to the unnamed (now named in Australia) “minor” royal who the Queen is quite fond of who has refused to be blackmailed but called on resources that allowed the dirty blackmailers to be nabbed and charged.

Submitting to the first blackmail attempt is a slippery slope that has you beholding to circumstances that would always be out of your control; come clean quick and you will never be cleaned out.

Selling their discretion, dignity and honour

The death of discretion

It is now institutionalised; our armed forces do not have to live by the old English tenets of honour, courage, discretion, dignity and valour.

In fact, this might as well be the whole sum of 10 years of Tony Blair in government, the fact that everything that was traditionally British in terms of conduct and decorum has been jettisoned for the cult of personality.

After the naval personnel were released and had flown back to motherland, they lamented the fact that they were blindfolded, kept in isolation and interrogated.

The fact of captivity

One is left quite gob-smacked about what else was to be expected; surely, if anyone captures a group of military personnel in seemingly criminal activity like in this case allegedly plying the waters of Iran.

Any self-respecting intelligence outfit would isolate the members, disorientate the individuals and introduce elements of mental anguish and disinformation to discover in reality what that team was up to.

This is serious business, and what was to say that the British personnel under the guise of UN inspections were not trying to gather other intelligence about Iran?

The Iranians having captured the seeming enemy had to ensure beyond reasonable doubt that not one of all those captured had a specific assignment to do something different from what the team as a whole believed was their purpose and assignment when they presumably strayed into Iranian waters if that really was the case.

Preventing group-think

Beyond that, isolation was necessary to prevent a case of group-think where the captives would parrot out an agreed view rather than allow the intelligence people to piece together each story to see if they indeed match up.

It is something used everyday in crime-fighting, evidence gathering and basic interviews or interrogation, there is no reason for the Iranians to have been foolish about this.

That aspect of group-think came out in one of the interviews when some of the personnel said they all agreed that they would confess that they had crossed into Iranian waters - this is the kind of thing isolation and disorientation through blindfolding is supposed to prevent.

Smart and dumb

The supposed outrage at this treatment is a bit over-stated, we are at war in that region, and some really hard things are happening there just as we learnt of the death of four of our soldiers in Iraq on the day the naval personnel flew in to be reunited with their loved ones.

The only really smart thing the naval personnel did was not to adopt the folly of bravado in resisting the overwhelming power of the force that took them captive in the Iranian/Iraqi waters a few weeks ago.

Sell, sell, sell

Now, this is where I have abandoned hope about the discretion of the English, however, one must say, this more the exclusive preserve of the well-bred and properly schooled; that sort of breeding seems to have been exhausted at the Ministry of Defence when they gave permission to the naval personnel to sell their stories to yellow journalism newspapers, village rags and tabloids.

I really feared this development in an earlier blog but against hope really thought that reason and discretion would prevail on those in authority that was not to be the case. Publicists are now working overtime in an auction to determine who would pay the most for stories that were neither heroic nor commendable.

This is going to end up worse than some Big Brother tripe, the first to get their story in might get the most views and who better than the propaganda bait Leading Sea(wo)man Faye Turney to break all records and precedents of serving military personnel set lose to tell tales?

Nothing good will come of this

Each consequent story from other personnel would have to trump the previous till the whole thing becomes too incredible to believe because it is unlikely that each story would be interesting without suggestive prompting and reckless analysis as they egged on by editors without conscience or restraint.

The worse case scenario as I have already predicted is if and when anyone else gets captured anywhere in the world by our enemies, beautiful smiling faces would we not see, that is if they end up living to tell the tale - it could really become that serious, because no enemy would want to be portrayed a fool after their captives are released.

The clear and present danger to those left on the battle field cannot be exaggerated, not to talk of the possible recklessness of others who might see being guest of the Islamic republic as a ticket to earning a cool big packet of cash - at last reckoning Mrs. Turney was being offered GBP 100,000.

Even if the fees were to go to charity, the damage would have been done and it would have done irreparable damage.

No Great in Britain anymore

I am sick to the stomach not of the opportunity and the benefit, but of the fact that the whole infrastructure behind our military personnel could not provide emotional, mental and financial succour to the victims of a seeming injustice and captivity that they think being able to sell their stories would provide the best treatment for their trauma.

The ones who then have nothing interesting to sell would probably be left more damaged for not looking good enough to be fed to the British public as the next "Jade Goody" of ignoramuses who are in cahoots with Tony Blair in taking the Great out of Great Britain.

References

Dismay as crew told they can sell stories | Breaking News | News | Telegraph

Woman sailor sells her story in lucrative deal | Uk News | News | Telegraph

BBC NEWS | UK | Captives' media fees spark fury

Taking the "Great" out of Britain