thirteen dead souls

...or, essential resurfacing work on the A361.

At this blog, you can read about: atheism, Christmas, cyborgs, David Foster Wallace, Elon Musk, existentialism, Hackney, Jesus, kitchen sink drama, Leeds, Moana (and also Mao), the miners' strike, Nanette Newman, Putin, rats, Rod Hull, Swansea, toilets, Trotsky, vampires, widths, X-rays and zombies.

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brexit party prospective parliamentary candidates (PPCs) on twitter

"Don't kid yourself they belong to you..." - David Bowie, 'Oh You Pretty Things'.

220 candidates and former candidates listed; when did Nigel tell his Brexit Party PPCs? If twitter's anything to go by, many were still looking forward to the campaign trail yesterday. Some PPCs may let their friends persuade them to stand as independent pro-Brexit candidates, of course; good luck to 'em.

*bold = formerly standing in Tory seats; thereby 'stood down' by Nigel today (Mon 11th Nov) with little or no notice

Brexit Party Current & Former Prospective Parliamentary Candidates (PPCs), by Constituency (any mistakes in this list, please DM me on twitter; I'll be happy to fix any errors; keep any online communications, even with Liberal Democrats or members of the Brexit Party reasonably polite and respectful).

Aberdeen North @DianeTbp
*Amber Valley @DrAnnaBailey1

Anglesey @HJPlaidBrexit

Ashfield @MartinDaubney
*Ashford @cooke_andreaC

Ashton-Under-Lyme @derekb1970

*Aylesbury @Wild4Aylesbury

*Banbury @DouglasChirn
Bassetlaw @Debbie_soloman

Bath @JimiOgunnusi
Batley & Spen @JHughesBrexit

Bethnal Green & Bow @marcsidwell
*Beverley & Holderness @craig_linsner
Birmingham Erdington @WGarcarz
Birmingham Perry Barr @AnnetteW_Brexit

Bishop Auckland @Bishop4Brexit
Blackpool South @BrexitSouth

Blaenau Gwent @Richardwtaylors

*Bognor Regis & Littlehampton @hartley_elder
Bolton North East @trevjonesbrexit

*Bosworth @TMaitlandTBP
*Bournemouth East @PatrickD_PPC
*Bournemouth West @RobinBrexit

Bracknell @DavidwinsperB

Bradford South @KulvinderManik
Brighton Kemptown @CushwayDr

*Bromsgrove @MandyChilds15

*Broxbourne @MaxJacksonBXP
Burnley @StewartScott62

*Burton @DalePrime4
Bury North @AlanBrexit

*Bury St Edmunds @EdmundFordham
Bury South @brexitlivesey7
*Calder Valley @PhilipJamesppc
Cambridge @MayorDawe

Canterbury @OwenPrew
Cardiff Central @GarethPearceBP

Cardiff West @_peterhopkins
Cardiff South & Penarth @TonyWillicombe
Carlisle @JB4Carlisle

Carshalton & Wallington @jameswoudhuysen or @TBPCarshWall
Central Leeds @PaulThomas_BP

*Central Suffolk & North Ipswich @drdavidbull

*Charnwood @Sadhana_Stokes

*Chatham & Aylesford @FabriceOcchini
*Chelmsford @LewisTBPppc

*Chesham & Amersham @MrAhmadKMalik
Chester @AThebrexitparty
*Clwyd West @Jay_Brexitparty
Colne Valley @stuarthaleTBP

*Copeland @wa1kerclan

*Corby & East Northants @matt_belsom

*Cotswolds @udalep

*Crawley @Wayne_Bayley
*Croydon South @SonnexPeter
*Dartford @AlaricBamping

*Devizes @dandayrob
Doncaster @BrexitDoncNorth
Doncaster Central @brexitdonccen

Don Valley @p_whitehurst

Dover @hall_ed

*Dudley South @PBrothwood

Dundee @StuartWaiton

Ealing & Acton @Samir_Alsoodani

Easington @JulieAnnmaugha2

Eastbourne @StephenGanderBP
*East Devon @Michael_J_Amor
*East Hampshire @Bint4Brexit

*Eastleigh @Beaumont296
East Surrey @yasminfitzppc
East Worthing & Shoreham @BrexitEWorthing
Eddisbury @NickGoulding4
Edinburgh @MBoydPPCEdWest
Eltham @elthambrexit_SK

*Epping Forest @BrexitParty_DS
*Epson & Ewell @malcolmepsom

*Erewash @johnlawson55

Erith & Thamesmead @TomEBright

*Esher & Walton @AxelThill
Feltham & Heston @_martynnelson

*Finchley & Golders Green @JuliePelta or @the_golders

*Forest of Dean @Elizaphanian
*Gainsborough @GainsboroughPPC
Gedling @Hunty4Gedling

*Gillingham & Rainham @TaniaJa65789587
Glasgow South @DanyaalRajaBXP

*Gosport @gosport_uk

Grantham & Stamford @jessjswift

Great Grimsby @Barker4Grimsby

Great Yarmouth @AdrianMyersBP

*Halesowen & Rowley Regis @englandkerrmep
*Haltemprice and Howden @BrexitMatthew
Hammersmith @JamesKeyse

*Harlow & The Villages  @nbgreaves

Hastings & Rye @tombewick2

Hayes & Harlington @EBabade

*Hemel Hempstead @ShaiAhmedBP

*Hendon @YosefDavid9

*Henley @KatHarborne

*Hexham @Keller32269939

Heywood & Middleton @brexit_colin

Houghton & Sunderland South @historykev
Huddersfield @SteveGreavesTBP

*Huntingdon @DavidJBlakeBre1

Hyndburn @glbbrexit
Ilford North @n_anderson1979
Ilford South @_Munish_Sharma
Ipswich @NTBrexitParty

*Isle of Wight @PeterWilt101

Islington North @JamesHeartfield

Islington South & Finsbury @paddyhannam

Islwyn @JamesfWells
Keighley @Waqas4MP 

Kensington @JayAstonC or @ppc_jay
Kingston & Surbiton @KevinLa87286063
Kingston Upon Hull @MartenPHall
Lancaster & Fleetwood @LeanneMurrayTBP

Leeds Central @PaulThomas_BP

Leeds East @SarahWass_BP

Leeds North East @InayaFolarin

Leicester East @JackCollierUK
*Lewes @Adam4Lewes
Lewisham Deptford @tegan_lucas

Lincoln @ReeceMWilkes

*Loughborough @The_Brexit_Bear
Luton South @GarryWarren13
*Macclesfield @MartinBrexit

Maidenhead @MowbrayClaire

*Mansfield @KateAllsop2
*Mid Derbyshire @Crocker4Brexit

Middlesbrough @clemmyBP
*Milton Keynes North @ColinBrooksTBP

*Milton Keynes South @mrrogerln
*Moray @durance_les
Newbury @jabbari_david
Newcastle-under-Lyme @DrJasonCooper

*Northampton North @Norman_Nickason
*Northampton South @james_cotton10

*North Devon @DawnWestcott
*North Dorset @tim4northdorset

*North East Hertfordshire @prishuby
*North Herefordshire @bpgarethjones

*North Somerset @AnnTarr4
*North Warwickshire @julesmo35958357

North West Cambridgeshire @LiamPRound1
North West Durham @BruceFo83853126

*North West Hampshire @Tessacan61
*North West Norfolk @JamesNWNorfolk
North Wilts @LesWillis9
Norwich @Kate4Norwich
*Old Bexley & Sidcup @T_Alan_Cook
Oldham East & Saddleworth @PaulTay26041122

*Orpington @SamuelHibbs
Oxford East @OxfordeastB

Nuneaton @Deeanne2503

Penistone & Stocksbridge @JohnCBooker

Peterborough @MikeGreenTBP

*Plymouth Moor View @peter_agambar
*Portsmouth North @BrexitAngie

*Preseli Pembrokeshire @PGriffTBP
Putney @teixeirahambro
Redcar @cummins_jacqui

*Redditch @jordanlakeuk

Runnymede & Weybridge @LornaRowland
*Rutland & Melton @Jim8ennett

*St. Austell & Newquay @rkoerner
St. Helens South & Whiston @DanielOxleyBP
*St. Ives & The Isles of Scilly @rdevitoboutin
*Saffron Walden @RiderMalcolm
Salford & Eccles @MicklerPpc

Salisbury @JulianMalins

*Scarborough & Whitby @RobertWAnderse1
Scunthorpe @jerrygormanbre1

*Sevenoaks @paulettefurse
*Sittingbourne & Stepney @eviemartinppc

*Skipton & Ripon @kozlowcharlotte

*Sleaford & North Hykeham @CarolineCoramUK

Slough @VishKhatri357

*Southampton Itchen @BrexitAlex

Southampton Test @PhilipCrook9
South Cambridgeshire @SpencerCambs

*South Derbyshire @kensdavies
*South Leicestershire @JamesPo60869315
*South Ribble @BrexitShirl
*South Staffordshire @NicklakinB
*South Suffolk @DupreeGraham
South West Devon @brexitmark

*South West Norfolk @RuthJolley5

*Stafford @AnneGrahamslaw

Staffordshire Moorlands @RichardWatkin2

Stockton North @MartinWalkerSN
Stockton South @JohnPrescottTBP

Stoke North @DanielRudd73

Stoke-on-Trent Central @Drtariqch

*Stoke-on-Trent South @BrassingtonIan
Stratford On Avon @HenryLu_BXP

Stroud @brexit_latimer
South Northamptonshire @rachel_warby
South West Bedfordshire @JDoherty_Brexit

Sunderland Central @ViralParikh20
*Sutton Coldfield @Markhoath2

Swindon South @JustinStares
*Tamworth @BrexitFergie

*Telford @ecadams

*Thirsk & Malton @AlesheaWestwood

*Tonbridge & Malling @PeddieStephen

*Torbay @BrexitTorbay                       

Torfaen @cllr_thomas

Vale of Clwyd @PeterDain1

Vauxhall @HortenseSheppa4

Wakefield @rob4wakefield
*Walsall North @stephen4brexit
Walsall South @TBPGaryWalsallS

Warrington South @aspinall_claire
Washington & Sunderland West @HowardB67208460

Watford @William4Watford

*Waveney @RowlandBrexitSE

*Wealden @PGriffTBP

*Welwyn Hatfield @KeithAdamsBP

West Dorset @DarkinRosie

West Midlands @RupertLowe10
Westminster North @CyrusParvin
Weston Super Mare @AnnTarr4
West Oxford & Abingdon @BrexitJoseph
*West Suffolk @JohnR_TBP

Wigan @William4Wigan

Workington @ptgwalling or @PhilipWalling2

Wrexham @NathanGillMEP

neither your cat nor your dog are really bothered

I’ve always been a little intrigued by the concept of Weltschmerz (the Germans always have a word for it) – perhaps as someone who cultivates it a little, as others cultivate bonsai trees: there, I said it so you don’t feel you have to - and today I’ve been thinking about that Merchant Ivory adaptation of E.M. Forster novel's Room With A View (1985) in which Denholm Elliott says – a propos of his son, who's a little given to hooting 'truth! beauty!' up trees; some would say he should get a job – “I don’t hold with this world-sorrow, do you?” 

In asking this – with a degree of implied spiritual enquiry, kind of an I-thou moment; he has a greater emotional range than the average British character actor - D.E. expresses a degree of weariness with world-weariness, sorrow about sorrow thereby intimating his commitment, albeit negatively expressed, to groundedness and joy. Meta-emotion is what makes you human, of course, meta-emotion and opposable thumbs; your dog can feel happy or cross but it can’t experience ennui or schadenfreude like it can’t operate the remote control - which is probably a good thing on the both counts.

Meta-meta-emotion, on the other hand – let’s not even go there, this just make you Henry James – and no-one wants that. (P.S. Your cat is also not intrigued by the concept of Weltschmerz – it rejects the concept out-of-hand as bourgeois mystification and existential bad faith, it demands that you feed it and stop reading this rubbish on the internet).   

this is the b-side of our single, sports fans

Are you a little jaded today? Native hue of resolution sicklied o'er by the pale cast of thought? It happens sometimes.

Listen: you could do a lot worse than watch this somewhat Dada-esque video in which the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band perform 'Canyons of Your Mind' - while sending up Dylan-mania and letting Viv Stanshell wander off and then back on again wearing a kind of giant Easter Island head for some reason.

Three minutes of your life you won't want back.

from the kitchen sink to proto-fascism via the new jersey turnpike: twenty-seven word film reviews, with longer bits in smaller type

This article contains SPOILERS in respect of the films A Taste of Honey and The L-Shaped Room.

I’m All Right Jack (1959, dir. John Boulting, starring Ian Carmichael, Terry-Thomas, Peter Sellers, Liz Fraser, feat. Malcolm Muggeridge as himself) - Supermac-era industrial relations satire; obvious/ mean-spirited sometimes; Peter Sellers (as shop steward Fred Kite: “ah, Russia…! all them cornfields… and ballet in the evenings!”) - redeems experience.
 

A Taste of Honey (1961, dir. Tony Richardson, written by Shelagh Delaney, starring Rita Tushingham, Dora Bryan, Murray Melvin)     

The L-Shaped Room (1962, dir. Bryan Forbes, adapted from the novel by Lynne Reid Banks, starring Leslie Caron, Anthony Booth, Brock Peters, Cicely Courtneidge)

These films - mirror images of one another in some respects - dance around themes of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, freedom, constraint more interestingly than do the ‘belligerent male antihero’ films of the same era (your ‘Saturday Nights’ and your ‘Look Backs’). 

At the start or towards the start, each protagonist has ‘falls pregnant out of wedlock’ (as we used to say); each film ends with a kind of rapprochement with the older generation; in the middle, joy, struggle, love, heartbreak, a sense of running up against the limits of an indifferent-to-intolerant social world (narrower limits in ‘Honey’, somewhat looser limits in ‘Room’). 

In the former film, a wholly different and better kind of family life seems briefly possible for Jo and Geoffrey (the gay chap Jo pals up with, after he pops in to and buy shoes at the shop where she works, and who then redesigns her shabby half-derelict warehouse-like flat for her, literally letting the light in). As Jo’s pregnancy advances, Geoffrey visits the ante-natal clinic for her and collects leaflets from a puzzled nurse; he cooks, she smokes (there's so much that we didn’t know back then; if we knew, did we care?), they hang around doing fun kinds of nothing the way most young people do, bantering good naturedly about the anticipated happy event: 

   Geoffrey:  (serving pudding with a flourish) So what you gonna call it?

   Jo:             The cake?

   Geoffrey:  No, not the cake. The baby. 

                (It’s funnier in broad Mancunian.)

Geoffrey’s departure and Jo's good-for-nothing mum’s re-appearance then figures as a kind of sudden foreclosure, defeat snatched from the jaws of victory as sometimes happens in these sorts of films (one reason why the people who don’t like them, don’t like them – yes, I’m talking to you, Peter Bradshaw). 

In ‘The L-Shaped Room’ by contrast, the finale is promisingly both open-ended and, to a degree, self-referential (Jane’s boyfriend Toby, who isn’t the baby’s dad by the way, is a writer; ‘The L-Shaped Room’ is the title of a memoir that he writes, and leaves as a gift her; do we make our lives in the telling of them?).  This difference in mood may also be a class difference with all that that implies in terms of money, cultural capital and all the rest – while the unexamined life is not worth living, it's also true that, as Virginia Woolf and others have pointed out (A Room of One’s Own, Three Guineas), there have been and still are structural differences, some relating to gender class and so on, in who gets access to the proper examination of one’s life. (It's, like, your base and your superstructure, innit?) Guess what, it may also be, in some aspect, a difference between Leave and Remain… and I’m not being wholly facetious or anachronistic about that, I’m thinking of David Goodhart and other theorists of the postwar imaginary… so you can buy me a drink sometime and ask me what I mean; be careful I don't try to read you my 1960s-set time travel story 'Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind' (feat. Vashti Bunyan, Rudi Deutschke).

The Small World of Sammy Lee (1963, dir. Ken Hughes, starring Anthony Newley, Julia Foster, Robert Stephens, Wilfrid Brambell) -  Wish you could run round seedier parts of early-1960s London for an afternoon? This (feat. Warren Mitchell as North London Jewish grocer) is next best thing.

Being John Malkovich (1999, dir. Spike Jonze, written by Charlie Kaufman, starring John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, Catherine Keener, John Malkovich) -  Glorious late-1990s indie comedy; portals, mind control, the dance of disappointment, the New Jersey turnpike, fin de siècle sexual politics. Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich; what’s not to like? 

The Commune (Kollektivet) (2016, dir. Thomas Vinterberg, starring Fares Fares, Ulrich Thomsen, Trine Dyrholm) –    Absorbing Aesopian dog/reflection story. Mid-1970s Danish professional, don’t recklessly destabilise your nuclear family (& underpinning Judaeo-Christian assumptions) by reaching for some inchoate collectivist New Age ideal!

Passengers (2016, dir. Morten Tyldum, starring Jennifer Lawrence, Chris Pratt, Michael Sheen) -  Liked this, but (as with Wall-E, Dark Star), found the set-up more compelling than the plot; Aurora should’ve made a different choice near the end (no spoilers). 

Every Day (2018, dir. Michael Sucsy, starring Angourie Rice, Justice Smith, Debby Ryan) -  Watchable, unmemorable fantasy romance (premise: modern teenager doomed to daily, not post-mortem, metempsychosis); like ‘Time Travellers’ Wife’ but less inherently silly; because ‘a Y.A.', less well-known.

-----------------

Red, White and Blake (2017, dir. and starring Will Franken) – Set-up: canter thro’ Milton, Swedenborg, 1789; well-briefed, delivered in gonzo/ punk style… tidy! Reveal: sudden lurch to transphobia, Islamophobia, unconnected alt-right talking points... sour taste, disappointment, worry.

If you wanted to read more about what’s good about this documentary – and also about the ‘yuk’ factor induced once it has, metaphorically speaking, had three or four too many G&Ts at the family wedding and thus progressed from telling embarrassing and somewhat racist jokes to sharing actual pro-Trump pro-Brexit so-called theories derived from the alt-right media via twitter; of course, ultra-Remainers can be almost as annoying (yes, you're objectively right about climate and about the Erasmus programme; just please stop sounding so damn liberal and entitled about it) – read Jason Whittaker’s review. (Jason’s Head of the School of English and Journalism at the University of Lincoln and he’s written or co-written various books about Blake, including one on ‘William Blake and the Digitial Humanities': he knows so much about these things). 

I’m not meaning to say or imply, by the way, that Will Franken’s ‘alt-right’ (read his Index on Censorship piece, google him, make your own mind up). For my money I don’t think he is, I think he’s a talented stand-up comedian who knows plenty about William Blake and holds some horrible political views. So it goes. I do mean to imply, though, that it’s precisely this kind of contrarian minority-baiting right-wing shock-jock rubbish that helps to lay the cultural groundwork for fascism, helps to make it more thinkable and thereby more possible. This is, in other words, 'punching down' - an idiom which, like 'doubling down', has become vastly more popular in recent years, which tells you plenty about the zeitgest in and of itself. Let's level with ourselves here: this is a world in which Dark Money and Big Data are aiming to subvert the whole fallibly-democratic Operating System of the West and in which the too-rigid parameters of hegemonic late capitalism threaten to drive our whole civilisation to the brink of ecocide. If your gut-level response to such a word is "social justice warriors are annoying" or "women wearing the burka look like postboxes", then frankly there might be something wrong with you; you'd be well advised to have a think about how you're choosing to use your talents as a writer, film-maker, satirist or what have you. (Some of the great creators have had something wrong with them: Ezra Pound wasn't a very nice human being by all accounts and neither was Enid Blyton). When I talk about fascism, incidentally, I'm well aware that it’s 2019 - so we’re not talking goose-stepping Nazis or Mussolini-worshipping Miss Jean Brodie, no, we’re talking “networked, dispersed, entrepreneurial, crowd-funded, conniving gig-economy fascism” [Laurie Penny]. Weird, scary times...