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1: Britain from a Waiting Room

HAVING SIGNED A CONTRACT to write this volume for Canongate Books in 2012, I almost at once saw it a duty I postponed tackling. I hate duties, especially those I impose on myself. I therefore avoided keeping up to date with the political state of Scotland and Britain by only reading The Times Literary Supplement and magazines in my doctor’s waiting room. I had an ailment which kept me visiting it steadily for two or three months.

I am fascinated by waiting-room reading matter. The doctor’s surgery of my childhood had bound volumes of Punch cartoons, none later than World War I, though there were hints of it coming. A cartoon showed an officers’ mess where a colonel asked a junior, “What, Captain so-and-so, do you see as the role of cavalry in modern warfare?” and was told, “I suppose, Sir, it will add tone to what would otherwise be a mere vulgar brawl.” In another officers discussed an un-named foreign country. One said, “Yes, we’ll have to fight them sooner or later. I only hope it isn’t in the grouse shooting and salmon fishing season.” In the aftermath of two world wars these amused and surprised me.

Later my favourite waiting-room reading became the American National Geographic, whose articles and pictures were always factual and entertaining. Yesterday in my doctor’s surgery the only magazines with that name were very small, and seemed intended for children with a mental age of five. Other reading was mostly glossy fashion or style magazines, lavishly illustrated but cheap because mainly subsidized by adverts. Their many photographs of glamorous women attracted me more than I liked, because a married man of my age should have outgrown pornography. So I picked up Focus, a magazine for those interested in science and technology, and published by the BBC.

Like many who grew up before television I used to think the BBC a friendly institution. As well as the Radio Times it published The Listener, which printed radio broadcasts on literary, historical and scientific matters. In the 1950s it told me about discoveries of the Big Bang and continental drift. It had hardly any pictures, so in 1964 I was thrilled to see in it a reproduction of my best painting, which illustrated Anthony Burgess’s review of a TV documentary about my art. Focus, unlike the long defunct Listener, has on every page bright photographs, computer visualizations and headlines that reduce the factual text to a series of sound bites. It is obviously for young folk interested in the future, not for specialists or older folk. It explains that Neuroimmunology reveals how our own body can attack the brain, and about a New British project set to renew the search for an alien civilization then asks Could rising CO2 levels see Earth returned to the kind of climate not seen since the prehistoric era? Suddenly a full-page advert caught my eye.

Central was a photograph of an aircraft that technically minded youths would know was one of the Unidentified Flying Objects developed by the USA. Radar could not detect them, so they were used to spy on the USSR when international agreements made that illegal. For decades the American air force fooled some observers into thinking they came from outer space. They are now called Stealth Bombers. Britain has them, for the Ministry of Defence placed this photograph under the slogan We have the technology. Beneath it I read: The UK requires modern, battle-winning forces to defend its interests and to contribute to strengthening international peace and security. These forces increasingly depend on scientific and technological advances to maintain their ability to operate effectively: this means the provision of technologies of tremendous speed, power and capacity to deliver a decisive operational edge.

We are The Ministry of Defence, Defence

Engineering and Science Group.

Organization Description: Government Department.

The DESG is the team of thousands of engineers and

scientists within the MoD.

DESG offers you many benefits including . . .

Here follows a description of secure, well-paid careers for smart young science graduates.

There was much food for thought in this. These graduates were not being invited to help defend Britain from invasion, but to defend British interests abroad – in other words, financial interests. The government of Britain once acquired an empire by doing that, and since then has not stopped fighting battles on the soil of poorer nations. That BBC advert was announcing that the UK government is still busy with the kind of arms race which led to two world wars. Yet it claims that the Ministry of Defence will contribute to strengthening international peace and security. That is how Big Brother now tells smart youngsters: “WAR IS PEACE! JOIN US! THE MONEY IS GOOD.” Many will join. Compared with Welfare State students of pre-Thatcher days, the modern ones are a docile lot. Those without wealthy parents are heavily in debt when they graduate, so need well-paid jobs.

I picked up a journal called All About History which said on the cover, “Wellington won the war. Did Napoleon win history?” There was a final article about Edison and electrification. The rest were about warfare with the main article headed: CONQUEST – EMPIRES GAINED BY THE SWORD. Subjugation and acquisition by force have been common since tribal times. We present a guide to conquests both ancient and modern. The only women shown in it are a phalanx of black-robed Syrian women with their faces exposed and carrying machine guns. Thomas Carlyle had a cruel streak which made him approve of slavery for black people, but I agree with his saying that what is usually called history is interruption of life maintained by the cultivation of food and the other arts of peace. I forget whether this magazine or Focus advertised an improvement on war and crime video games such as Call of Duty, the game most played by actual soldiers, and only second to Grand Theft Auto (produced by a Scottish firm). The improvement would allow several friends to enjoy the same visual reality while behaving differently from each other in a combat situation. Good training for the young?

A friend who saw video footage recording US soldiers killing Iraqi civilians from aircraft tells me their conversation about this exciting and perfectly safe business was exactly like people playing combat games. I believe this is partly because such games will be part of the soldiers’ training. Since World War I, psychologists investigating British and American troops in battle had found that only eight out of ten deliberately shot to kill. Usually they just fired their weapons in the general direction of the enemy. This means that, despite the greater number of murders in countries where big business stops governments banning the free sale of firearms, the majority of folk have an instinctive distaste for killing others. I am also told that heads of our armed forces are now deliberately training their troops to overcome that distaste. Combat games must be part of that training. No wonder Julian Assange is being driven from one country to another for publicizing facts which our governments do not want us to know. I am glad a Norwegian MP nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize, sorry it has not been awarded to him. I am glad Scottish students chose Edward Snowden as Rector of Glasgow University, though the USA government would like him extradited to one of their jails for questioning, for he too publicized facts that the bosses of the belligerent Western democracies want to keep secret.

I took refuge in the magazines with pictures of women illustrating adverts and articles about clothes, jewellery, cosmetics and food. They mildly excited me by constantly suggesting women want sexual fun. Under a picture of an excitingly dressed blonde Style magazine announced:

NAUGHTY!

THE OUTFITS, THE GLITTER, THE GAMES,

THE BOOZE:

How To Have The Best Time At A Party

WOMEN IN THE KNOW: Let’s All Move To Cheshire

BREAK OUT THE GLOWSTICKS:

Christmas Day, Raver Style

Marie Claire’s cover says:

HOT MEN, SEXY ACCENTS!

The Europeans Revving Up the UK Dating Scene.

FIT AND FABULOUS!

Busy women’s amazing body secrets.

BEACH BODY READY!

New quick fix ways to tan, buff and glow.

These magazines have articles about highly paid, visually alluring women, some emphatically married with children and good houses in pleasant districts. One has advice for those with too little time to properly adjust their make-up between leaving work and arriving at a party or dinner. It says “most of us” have several portable cosmetic cases (here called palettes) “because single ones usually lack items we find essential, or have used up”. The solution is to buy an empty palette (available at a given price from a named shop) and fill it with just the cosmetics we need for that party or dinner. Since most readers cannot afford to buy such accessories as Prada handbags “surprisingly cheap at £450”, such magazines are mainly invitations to daydream, though they must make poorer readers also feel inadequate.

British GQ is a similar fashion magazine intended for men. It has as many pictures of women, but they wear less, because women desire the clothes and appearance of the models in their magazines, but men desire their bodies. GQ articles never refer to marriage and home, and deal more obviously with money and politics. The cover shows a stunning blonde wearing nothing visible but an earring, and announces that inside we’ll be told why ELVIS LIVES! and why REAL MEN DON’T WEAR SHORTS, and HOW TO STAY SHARP AND COOL THIS SUMMER, and also (EXCLUSIVE) WHY GREED IS STILL GOOD by Michael Wolff. In the 1987 film Wall Street, the central character yells, “Greed is good!” to a roomful of cheering shareholders. He is a company director who acquires wealth through buying productive companies, removing their saleable assets then closing them. He is cheated by a young protégé with a conscience who brings in a richer asset-stripper. The film’s moral is spoken by a minor character who tells the young man to “Get a job where you make something” – by which he means essential manufactured goods, not just money.

Michael Wolff’s GQ article is headed YOU ARE WHAT YOU MAKE, by which he means nothing but money. His sub-heading says: The Eighties changed the way the rich get richer. Now, despite financial apocalypse, we still have an appetite for incredible wealth – and it has become insatiable. He does not say widespread appetites for incredible wealth can cause only frustration for a large majority, because he says that for some people it will always be possible. He has a full-page photograph of a well-dressed handsome hunk of a man surrounded by eager reporters, for he is on the way to jail. It is captioned: Michael Milken made, in a year, as much as $500 million. This made him much closer to folk hero than criminal.

Yes, we have always enjoyed stories about highwaymen, pirates and successful train robbers. How many have wanted to become one of them? Do many fantasize about being fraudsters and pension-fund robbers like a former director of the Guinness company and Robert Maxwell? I doubt it, but without admiring them folk in national and local governments emulate them, selling to each other and associates the public properties and organizations decried as the Welfare State. If less than half GQ’s readers are in these governments, the majority must also use it to foster fantastic daydreams alternating between frustration and disappointment. What a lot of imaginary living headlines invite us to do! On a Times supplement cover I read:

THE RISE OF THE £100,000 HOLIDAY

Yachts, private islands and a plane for your luggage:

inside the wild world of the six-figure getaway.

One or two millionaires have started a company which now sells the kind of holidays they enjoy to people equally rich. This may stimulate some to become richer by working harder for promotion in banks or by juggling investments through the Stock Exchange, which Michael Wolff says is the one sure way of doing it. I cannot be the only visitor to NHS surgeries angered by so many magazines enthusiastically boosting incredible wealth. My doctor’s waiting room has no information about Glasgow’s ruling Labour Party, which is funding a Commonwealth Games event by shutting centres that help disabled people.

My doctor’s surgery is too respectable for magazines that advertise the sexual adventures of the rich and famous, nowadays called celebrities, and which would be shortened to slebs if that did not resemble plebs. Pleb has recently been publicized as a curse word. Since style magazines have also articles about food they certainly promote gluttony, lust, pride, greed, jealousy and (in jealous folk like me) anger, all of which were once thought deadly sins. The only one missing is sloth, unless holidays costing £100,000 are opportunities for that. But the MoD advert for the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence quango disturbs me most, though I know the sale of weapons is the UK’s biggest export industry. Many pension funds are invested in that. In 2003 the principal of Glasgow University was a trustee of the British senior academic fund whose monies were mainly invested in the British arms industry.

Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday is a French film I enjoyed as a child. It has a gloomy radio broadcast which, according to the subtitle, asks, “Is there, upon the horizon, one ray of hope?” On my horizon the ray of hope is a Scottish government as separate from the

United Kingdom war plans as New Zealand,

Holland or Norway.