Gotta Work It Out
Gotta work it out
An interesting report in Saturday’s Irish Times examined the phenomenon of Irish graduates’ unwillingness to work at low-skilled jobs, and how the gap is being plugged by foreign workers. The overall impression was that many in Ireland would prefer not to work at low-skilled jobs when they receive the equivalent money from the dole, as many of the foreign interviewees noted. The information was presented neutrally, and could be interpreted in any way, but the response of one of the interviewees indicated what response is expected from the public. Andrew, a postgraduate economics student, commented ‘Personally, I didn’t study for five years to work in McDonald’s’, and at the interview’s end requested that his last name not be printed. When asked why, he said: ‘I don’t want to be portrayed as a student stereotype who’d prefer to bum around rather than work.’ A later interviewee stated: ‘I’d rather be cleaning toilets than on the dole,’ indicating what is likely to be the commonest media and public reaction to the piece – that people should always work, in whatever jobs are available, rather than take social welfare.
The problem with this reaction is that it assumes that work – any kind of work – has intrinsic moral value. It can be argued that a job keeps people focused and helps maintain a healthy timetable – but it’s a bit of a jump from that to assert that cleaning toilets and flipping burgers is morally superior to staring at the wall. It seems strange that educated graduates should feel guilty for admitting that they think themselves too good for certain jobs. From an educational and experience point of view, they are too good – yet that is not the assessment they are perceived to be making. Instead, it’s seen as a moral question – do you think yourself too good for work, which in all its forms is inherently good? Such moralising seems to lose sight of the real issue – that a First World economy with a small population such as Ireland cannot provide jobs for its graduates.
It’s over 70 years old, but Bertrand Russell’s In Praise Of Idleness still has highly relevant things to say on this matter. The social rigidity of his England has loosened up somewhat, so it’s not the case anymore that the idle landowners preach the validity of ‘the Slave State’, but his statement that ‘….the necessity of keeping the poor contented…..has led the rich, for thousands of years, to preach the dignity of labour, while taking care themselves to remain undignified in this respect’ still rings true. Opinion makers and business people (and it’s not just the usual-suspect loudmouths like Bill Cullen and Michael O’Leary that pass judgement based on their own experience) may have spent the requisite years waiting tables and cleaning toilets, but nobody with aspirations to influence is prepared to make an unskilled job his or her career. The work experience of the currently well-employed does not validate their arguments in favour of the morality of work, because for them, low-skilled work was always a means to an end, while in the current climate it is the only option for the foreseeable future for too many people.
The argument that we are ‘palming off’ our menial jobs on foreigners because we’re too lazy and immoral to do them ourselves doesn’t carry any great weight outside of simplistic moralising. It avoids the key, difficult question – why do we still live in a world where there a yawning chasm between skilled and unskilled work, between the professions and the trades? Carpenters and painters often made big money during the Celtic Tiger, but without the advantages of higher education and connections many of them have come crashing back to square one. Foreign workers from poorer countries tolerate working in monotonous, uninspiring and difficult jobs here because they’ll make more money and enjoy a better quality of life than they do back home. Much is said about certain groups’ unwillingness to go on the dole and it’s implied that this makes them morally better than other groups. Yet surely the fact that trained accountants and lawyers from abroad work in Irish hotels and shops should be seen as a worldwide injustice, rather than a reason to celebrate moral worth?
Too many humans all over the world, even in 2010, still labour endlessly just to survive. Thousands flee the Indian countryside every year to live in the hellish atmosphere of city slums, just for a chance to escape the grind of subsistence living. Those people would consider western fetishising of work insane. Of course, the plight of Indian slum-dwellers and that of European graduates facing into a career making coffee are not the same at all; the latter is still infinitely more fortunate, but it’s objectionable to dismiss today’s graduates’ unhappiness with the current lack of work as expressions of their ‘pampered’ nature. Supposedly ‘pampered’ students often work two or more part-time jobs to put themselves through college, and university in Ireland and England has broadened immensely over the last couple of decades to include a wider cross-section of society than at any time in history. Graduates today are not the Daddy-fleecing sybaritic stereotypes of old.
The budget will probably see a cut in social welfare, which many comfortably employed people will welcome as an ‘incentive’ to get people back to work. The delusion that depriving people of welfare leads to a magic upsurge in employment shows no sign of dying out since the days of Norman ‘Get on your bikes’ Tebbitt. The dole needs some overhaul and savings could certainly be made by limiting the amount given to single people under 25, for example. But debate on unemployment and welfare, in the media and the public echo chamber at least, seems to be short on sense, compassion and practicality, and high on moralising. The government is frantically drawing up a budget which will improve the country’s standing in the eyes of the unelected speculators that control the international financial market, whose morality is rarely questioned, while on the ground easy answers are sought by passing judgement on what isn’t,. nor should ever be, a moral matter.
Ask anyone who works in a menial or low-skilled job, and they will not tell you that they think their work has moral worth. The foreign people interviewed in the Irish Times article had varying opinions on the issue of the Irish and work, but none indicated that they enjoyed the work they have to do to survive. Perhaps Russell summed it up best when he described how a menial worker should describe their work according to the morality of the rich, and added his own response:“’I enjoy manual work because it makes me feel that I am fulfilling man’s noblest task, and because I like to think how much man can transform his planet. It is true that my body demands periods of rest, which I have to fill in as best I may, but I am never so happy as when the morning comes and I can return to the toil from which my contentment springs.’ I have never heard working men say this sort of thing. They consider work, as it should be considered, a necessary means to a livelihood, and it is from their leisure that they derive whatever happiness they may enjoy.”
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(Monthly Book, November 1963)
The Threepenny Opera
Image: Dada Rundschau by Hannah Höch, 1919.
(A review from last year of the Threepenny Opera in the Gate Theatre. Trying to get this post to nestle into the correct chronological space, but Tumblr seems to have a problem with that kind of reverse-scheduling. Hence this introductory note - this review was written in October 2013.)
Seeing the show in the flesh, in the theatre, after years of exposure to the myth, is a slightly disorientating experience. The expected, stunning musical set-pieces are interspersed with narrative-prolonging longeurs, while the most famous songs (Mack The Knife and Pirate Jenny) pop up at rather incidental points in the story. The political message is less a message than an announcement, clunking the audience over the head with the complaints of the oppressed in rags. The show itself, as presented by The Gate and directed by Wayne Jordan, is both less strange and more wonderful than I’d imagined it would be. This is a production that takes the source material seriously, as shown by the 18-piece orchestra that starts playing as soon as the curtain lifts. From then on the show dazzles with pitch-perfect (and refreshingly unamplified) singing, choreography that manages to be challenging without being confusing and costumes and set design that convey just the right amount of ragged decadence.
The lack of subtlety and nuance in the original storytelling persists through a game reimagining by Mark O’Rowe, but the music and aesthetic for which the name Threepenny Opera is synonymous more than compensates. Allusions to the present economic situation are kept mercifully subtle. This production is no exercise in superficial window-dressing – it is the very sincerity with which the cast and crew present this musical and visual feast that gives this production its extraordinary power.
Highlights include Hilda Fay as Jenny, Mark O’Regan as Mr Beecham and the aforementioned 18-piece orchestra.
The Wolf hides his teeth
Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall was the literary sensation of 2009, and the excitement didn’t abate with the publication of its follow-up, Bring Up The Bodies, in 2012. In some ways the anti- ‘A Man For All Seasons’, Wolf Hall recasts the traditionally maligned Thomas Cromwell as a sympathetic character, quietly pragmatic in the face of the class snobbery of the Tudor courts, and fiercely loyal to his mentor Cardinal Wolsey.
The story covers the now-familiar ground of Henry VIII’s split from Rome and disastrous marriages, but Mantel’s skill as a writer and researcher has ensured her books will be remembered long after more lightweight retellings are forgotten. The same could be said for the new TV adaptation, running on Wednesday evenings on BBC 2 since January.
I haven’t read Wolf Hall or its successor (the only Mantel I’ve read is an obscure early novel set in Saudi Arabia) so I’m coming to the series without much background knowledge other than Alison Weir’s history of the fall of Anne Boleyn. The latter was a useful primer, but there are still many characters and situations that are unfamiliar to me. It doesn’t really matter though, because the story is gripping enough even without a dramatis personae.
Director Peter Kosminsky steers well clear of ‘sexing up’ the material, resulting in an understated, authentic-feeling but nonetheless compelling story. The timeline is complex and moves around a lot - some familiarity with the books or the historical period is recommended - but the editing is so elegant that the jumps don’t feel jarring. I reviewed Kosminsky’s series ‘The Promise’ about the founding of modern Israel a couple of years ago and was impressed with its scope and intelligence, if disappointed in its inability to give its Arab characters the same depth as its Jewish ones. There are some hints of that same urge to simplify in 'Wolf Hall', albeit in the opposite direction. Whereas in ‘The Promise’ the Arab characters were portrayed as saintly to the point of simpleness, in 'Wolf Hall' Thomas More and his coterie are cartoonishly nasty, smirking at Cromwell’s ‘low’ birth and doing everything short of steepling their fingers like supervillains. Thomas More being a villain isn’t the issue, but he needs to be a complex villain in order to be believable.
The contrast is especially stark when Anton Lesser’s performance of Thomas More comes up against Mark Rylance’s as Cromwell. The latter’s ability to navigate the treacherous intrigues of Henry’s court is explained in this version of history by a wonderfully watchful performance by Rylance. Thomas is quiet and reserved, mysterious to even his family, but he is constantly observing and absorbing what he needs to know in order to survive. Survival isn’t his only motivation though - he is a committed (if circumspect) believer in Church reform, smuggling Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament into his home and encouraging Henry’s avarice towards the monasteries in a sincere effort to dismantle their feudal power and redistribute their wealth. He is also motivated by loyalty to Cardinal Wolsey (played by Jonathan Pryce), a fellow ‘low-born’ man and a kind of mentor to the young lawyer (the series has fun with how Cromwell changes his job description every few years in order to finagle his way into spheres of influence). Wolsey’s days are numbered once Anne Boleyn sets her mind on becoming Queen, but Cromwell stays loyal and quietly vows to avenge him. How the story will treat the historically controversial issue of Cromwell’s role in Boleyn’s eventual fall will be interesting to see.
Speaking of Anne Boleyn, Kosminsky stalwart Claire Foy turns in a delightfully spiky performance of the imperious, determined young woman. Eschewing any approximation of conventional seductiveness, Foy’s Boleyn is a streak of loud, clever arrogance bursting through the murky, hushed double-dealing of Henry’s court. It’s an interpretation that hews closer to what we know of the real Boleyn’s character and provides an explanation for Damian Lewis’ surprisingly milquetoast Henry’s infatuation with her. Lewis seems to be playing Henry with plenty of understatement for the early part of the series, but hints of his megalomania and unpredictability are already beginning to show. In his interactions with Henry, Rylance’s Cromwell plays the classic manipulator’s trick of convincing Henry that implementing Cromwell’s plans was, in fact, the king’s idea all along. Seeing Henry fall in line without even realising he’s being pulled is delightful. It’s a credit to Rylance’s quiet charm that this somewhat terrifying skill endears him all the more to the audience.
You can already see how Cromwell’s cunning rectitude will defeat the equally clever but more impulsive Boleyn’s scheming. Seeing those two face off will definitely be a highlight of the series. The Thomas Cromwell of ‘Wolf Hall’ is someone who’s been through the wringer personally and in public life, and his patience for the pampered man-children of the Tudor court is running out. It’ll be interesting to see how he enacts his revenge - probably slowly, quietly, and ultimately getting off scot-free.
Another regular conversational pit stop during our calls was the guests I was interviewing on my radio show on any given week, especially if they were rock stars. Inevitably, John would have some spirited opinions to share about his competition. One time, for instance, I casually mentioned an upcoming booking with Mick Jagger.
“Why are you interviewing him?” John asked.
The truth was, I was interviewing Jagger because he was holding a concert in L.A. to raise money for victims of an earthquake in Nicaragua. (His wife, Bianca, was Nicaraguan.) But for some reason I foolishly blurted out, “Because the Rolling Stones are probably the greatest live touring band in the world.”
“Isn’t that what they used to say about us?” John coolly replied.
“But the Beatles aren’t touring anymore,” I said, stepping on a landmine. “The Beatles as a group don’t exist anymore. And the Rolling Stones are as important a presence as anybody in rock ’n’ roll.”
“The Rolling Stones followed us!” John shouted. “Just look at the albums! Their Satanic gobbledygook came right after Sgt. Pepper. We were there first. The only difference is that we got labeled as the mop tops and they were put out there as revolutionaries. Look, Ellie,” he went on, “I spent a lot of time with Mick. We palled around in London. We go way back. But the Beatles were the revolutionaries, not the Rolling Pebbles!”
Excerpt From, ‘We All Shine On’, Elliot Mintz
mclennon truthers 🤝 john was killed by cia truthers
(wrongly) believing that when Yoko dies It'll All Come Out.
A couple of fics I wrote
I got an ao3 account this year and have 2 fics in the Beatles fandom that I'm a little proud of. Both character studies focused on late 1970s John in NYC. Have a read if you're so inclined. Username bodhbdearg.
Where I would be: Househusband era John is very depressed and disengaged from music, but is nudged out of it by folksinging lesbians & NYC queer culture.
Singing a song of ruin: Writing DF-era John is no longer depressed, and spends a night trying to talk someone out of jumping off a bridge.
Edited to add: him and Linda's mealymouthed explanation "It's not fair on the children! the bosses and workers should just work it out rationally!" is easily explained when you remember that this is a person who never had a real job and therefore doesn't have a CLUE. Not that he didn't work hard, but that he never had the experience of being an ordinary person with a boss (a few weeks winding coils doesn't count). All the sending-your-kids-to-state schools in the world won't change that fact: it makes you out of touch with most people. Not a crime, but it leads to nonsense like this.
What did goddess mean by this?
The Quarry Men’s banjo player, Rod Davis, recalls, “I had bought the banjo from my uncle and if he’d sold me his guitar, I might have been a decent enough guitarist to keep McCartney out of the band. I might have learnt guitar chords, I might not, and that was the big limitation really. McCartney could play the guitar like a guitar and we couldn’t, and let’s face it, a banjo doesn’t look good in a rock’n’ roll group. I only met Paul on one other occasion after the Woolton fête and it was at auntie Mimi’s a week or two later. He dropped in to hear us practising. From my point of view, I was the person he was replacing – it’s like Pete Best – you’re the guy who doesn’t know. Some things had gone on that I was unaware of.”
(Best of the Beatles: The sacking of Pete Best by Spencer Leigh, 2015)
Some writing and Beatlemania. The phrase 'slender fire' is a translation of a line in Fragment 31, the remains of a poem by the ancient Greek poet Sappho
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