Father Brown

G K Chesterton’s Father Brown stories were published in five books from 1911 to 1935. A little while ago, fellow blogger Demetrius alerted me to a new Father Brown BBC TV series. There were to be ten episodes each about 50 minutes long broadcast on successive days, so I put them on to series record.

However, as Demetrius warned me later, this new TV version of Father Brown had strayed a very long way from the original.

Re TV Father Brown, took a look. At 50 minutes it is clearly destined to be satellite scenic retro tosh. Chesterton it isn't nor is it much at all. Also, it seems to be relocated to possibly the Cotwolds and advanced fifty years. It did not resemble much though the Cotswolds I knew in the 1950's. It had a very large dollop of 21st Century correctness and it was the poor old Anglican vicar who was the one with a bad dose of religion. The locomotive was right for the 1950's but not the coaching stock. Also, plain clothes detectives inspectors of police were not in village police stations or chasing about in routine car patrols.

Yes – I won’t argue with that. We found them just about watchable for winter afternoons with nothing else to do. However, the TV series prompted me to read the original stories again. I’d read some of them, but so long ago I could barely remember them. It may even have been during my teens.

The entire collection of Father Brown stories is available on Kindle for 77 pence which by any standards is a real bargain. I'll repeat that for Kindle doubters - 

all five books for 77 pence.

To my surprise I find I like them and can’t stop reading them. I’m already well over half way through the entire series, even though I’m not a huge Chesterton fan. Although he wrote fluently and had a great imagination, I find he looms behind his works like a great hairy, didactic presence.

Father Brown is no Sherlock Holmes either in spite of Chesterton’s imaginative plots. Brown’s character is somewhat flat and shadowy and the stories are written in the third person, which doesn’t help warm him up. Conan Doyle wrote almost all the Sherlock Holmes stories in the first person from Dr Watson’s viewpoint and that brought even Holmes’ austere character to life.

Conan Doyle doesn’t loom behind his stories as Chesterton does. For example, Chesterton can’t resist digs at atheism and science which don't blend well into what little we are told of Father Brown's character. He carries it off mainly because he is a fluent writer. Mind you, I think this quote is rather good.

“What we dread most,” said the priest in a low voice, “is a maze with no centre. That is why atheism is only a nightmare.”

G K Chesterton – The Head of Caesar

In spite various jarring notes, I like the stories very much. I don't count Chesterton as a great writer, but he weaves a thoroughly delicious, Gothic atmosphere such that even when Father Brown walks down a street there is a strange and eerie influence lurking in every shadow. And of course there are many shadows.

An otherworldly sense of mystery, romance and frustrated fates circle round Father Brown's blameless life in a way I find most refreshing after the clunking routines of modern drama.

So all in all I much prefer the Father Brown books to the TV series. The TV series is tosh as Demetrius says, but not wholly unwatchable tosh if you are ill or have a cream cake to get through. Father Brown's character is much less of a blank than the books too, but I won't bother with the next series.

Chesterton's clever plots and the glorious, creepy gothic atmosphere of Father Brown's world – the TV series just can't touch it.

They entered the churchyard slowly, the eyes of the American antiquary lingering luxuriantly over the isolated roof of the lynch-gate and the large unfathomable black growth of the yew looking like night itself defying the broad daylight. The path climbed up amid heaving levels of turf in which the gravestones were tilted at all angles like stone rafts tossed on a green sea, till it came to the ridge beyond which the great sea itself ran like an iron bar, with pale lights in it like steel. Almost at their feet the tough rank grass turned into a tuft of sea-holly and ended in grey and yellow sand; and a foot or two from the holly, and outlined darkly against the steely sea, stood a motionless figure.

G K Chesterton - The Curse of the Golden Cross.

Optimistic pessimism

 I have been called many names – pragmatist, poet, intellectual, dualist, mystic, epiphenomenalist, phenomenalist, brutish materialist, atheist, papist, amateur – but no one, I believe, has yet called me an optimist.

George Santayana

There are ways to be optimistic and ways to be pessimistic and to my mind it isn’t easy to choose between the two when it comes to adopting general attitudes. Because there are aspects of British life which if observed too closely are grim reminders that too often, pessimism is realism and optimism isn't.

Political life in particular.

I can certainly understand why many leave it alone and many more prefer to be deluded into supporting one of the major brands of professional lying. Joining is always some kind of shelter isn't it?

Yet for those of us outside the shelter, political correctness, floods of unnecessary laws and regulations and increasingly overt immorality and even criminality by our elite classes don’t inspire much in the way of optimism.

So why do we bother? Or do we? Many don’t bother if the prevalence of the low information voter is any guide - which I think it is. Many opt for ignorance, platitudes and superficiality and maybe for some that's another shelter. It shelters one from having to admit that political reality is as awful as it seems.

Ties, habits, mortgages and familiarity also help to keep our eyes averted and our noses to the grindstone even though we know public life should be more honest and involving.

And yet...

A pool of sunlight on the table, early morning birdsong, a good book or good conversation – these essentially spiritual satisfactions help make up for it - if only temporarily.

So effective are such pleasant distractions, that I often wonder why I don’t just switch off, go for long hill walks or sit in comfort and follow my literary tastes with a glass of wine at my elbow and some early jazz on the music box.

Well why not?

It’s either that or keep facing up to a world where the elite classes are grasping liars, where the tax system is rigged to bribe vested interests. A world where government bribery is by far the largest business, a world lies are the first port of call in any public communication.

And yet...

Maybe it is actually rather enjoyable to puncture the pomposity of the elite even though they are not listening. Our Prime Minister is a lightweight fool, but there is satisfaction to be gained from knowing it and saying so publicly.

Yes there is satisfaction there - no doubt about it.

Not necessarily grim satisfaction either, not when we have sarcasm, satire, ridicule and laughter among our weapons. Maybe it’s why the buggers never manage to grind us down.

We enjoy not being ground down.

Low Information Voters

Modern language, whatever else it is and however misused, is at least fertile, especially over the past few decades. We all come across numerous modern expressions which fit the linguistic purpose for which they evolved.

One which fits rather well in my view is the mainly US term low information voter or LIV. There is nothing technical about the term – we probably all know what it means without being told and without having to look it up on Wikipedia.

From wikipedia

Low information voters, also known as LIVs or misinformation voters, are people who may vote, but who are generally poorly informed about politics. The phrase is mainly used in the United States, and has become popular since the mid-nineties.

Surely UK politics suffers acutely from the problem this term so neatly encapsulates? Whether the problem is suffered equally by left and right I don’t know.

American pollster and political scientist Samuel Popkin coined the term "low-information" in 1991 when he used the phrase "low-information signaling" in his book The Reasoning Voter: Communication and Persuasion in Presidential Campaigns. Low-information signaling referred to cues or heuristics used by voters, in lieu of substantial information, to determine who to vote for. Examples include voters liking Bill Clinton for eating at McDonald's, and perceiving John Kerry as elitist for saying wind-surfing was his favorite sport.

Over in the US, Professor Jacobson thinks the LIV problem is much more a problem for the political right than the political left.

I previously wrote about how BuzzFeed Politics has combined “the culture” and savvy crafting into a highly effective tool for undermining Republicans with subtle and not-so-subtle mockery.  “Look at the goofy cat, look at the goofy celeb, look at the goofy Republican” is more dangerous to us than a 5000-word article in The New York Times Sunday Magazine.

Back to Wikipedia, there are plenty of examples of what political parties are up against. It’s nothing we don’t know, but is worth raising because it’s an intractable issue.

A 1992 study found that in the absence of other information, voters used candidates' physical attractiveness to draw inferences about their personal qualities and political ideology.

A study performed using logistic regression analysis on data from the 1986 through 1994 American National Election Studies found that low-information voters tend to assume female and black candidates are more liberal than male and white candidates of the same party.

A 2003 study that analyzed precinct-level data from city council elections held in Peoria, Illinois between 1983 and 1999 found that the placement of candidates' names on the ballot was a point of influence for low-information voters.

An analysis concerned with the "puzzling finding" that incumbent legislators in mature democracies charged with corruption are not commonly punished in elections found that less-informed voters were significantly more likely to vote for incumbents accused of corruption than were their better-informed counterparts, presumably because they did not know about the allegations.

The LIV problem is not a problem for mainstream politics, in the sense that they probably don’t care if voters are informed or not. They just want influence - by pulling whatever levers there are.

UK politics is corrupt, but whose responsibility is that? Is it the corrupt political classes or the low information voters or both?

Donkey DNA found in MPs

There is increasing concern that donkey DNA is turning up in numerous MPs. Experts from the Science Policy Authority (SPA) are investigating, but have run into problem trying to corral recalcitrant MPs into the testing arena.

The source of the donkey DNA is not yet known and the effect on MP’s behaviour is even more uncertain, although one wag has commented that the rogue DNA will at least dilute the weasel version they usually find in these cases.

Labour leader Ned Miliband tried to brush aside this latest contamination scare, claiming that a touch of donkey never did anyone any harm. His stable mate Ned Balls agreed.

Update - shocking new research.
A more alarming and long-term aspect of the donkey DNA story is that politicians and their bureaucratic masters may be evolving away from the main branch of Homo Sapiens. Clearly a finding with serious implications for the whole human race.

After extensive research and testing, genetic experts from SPA are now convinced that the apparent donkey DNA found in MPs does not derive from actual donkeys, but is merely a genetic similarity.

Homo Politicus may well have many characteristics of the real donkeys we all know and love, but quite obviously lacks the lovable, hard-working and affectionate nature donkeys generally possess. We should not mistake the inhumanly stubborn obduracy and comparatively lowly intelligence found in MPs for genuine donkey characteristics.

How this amazing evolutionary lapse came about is still a mystery, but Flouncer, the minister with overall responsibility for SPA was quick to play down any possibility that genetic testing may become an essential part of the MP selection process.

Ideas like that are just bloody racist, Flouncer brayed, nostrils flaring.

Luxury seating

From PaulR

Next week’s soaps

The BBC’s latest serial drama Skaggford has been a hit with TV soap fans. We review the main storylines for next week’s episodes.

While Baz, Maz, Lizzi and Maxxi plan their holiday in Magaluf, Amir realises he still has feelings for Jucee, even after she had Kyle’s name tattooed on her thigh after the birth of their baby Babe.

Jucee tells Amir she had the tattoo done when she was drunk and didn’t know what she was doing, but amid mounting tension, Amir realises he doesn’t believe her. He accuses her of seeing Kyle whenever his back is turned and storms out of the flat.

In floods of tears, Jucee waylays Dr Binj in the medical centre car park. Dr Binj reassures Jucee that her baby Babe will not grow up to be a moron as long as Jucee cuts down the salt in her diet and doesn’t give her so much junk food.

Meanwhile, a repentant Sami-Ann realises that when Daggs said he was going clubbing, he didn’t mean he was clubbing baby seals. She admits she panicked after watching too many nature programmes and offers to take him back. However, Daggs is reluctant because of his secret feelings he’s developed for Maz since the chip shop fight.

Meanwhile the police are investigating the Hi Five kebab house fire. Gossip at the Dog's Head says Pozza and Nozza started it in revenge for Simmo putting dog food in Pozza’s special birthday kebab.

Soul is busy choosing a name for her new baby, but Rik points out that she can’t use Vax because it happens to be a brand of vacuum cleaner.

Soul is angry and hurt by this and her distress boils over as she screams at Mr Braithwaite that she won’t go on holiday with him even though he bought her a posh drink during the pool match at the Dog's Head.

To be continued...

Bus stop

From PaulR