Salut!

An ugly affair: the Trump and Putin bromance

Please allow me to alert all my Salut! readers to my pages at Substack, which I think can be described as a posh blogging platform.

This item is based on my latest post there, dealing with the disturbing developments emerging at the start of what once seemed unthinkable, a second presidential term for Donald Trump.

My pages at Substack are called Salut! Life. Having published dozens of items on a free-to-view basis, I have now decided to limit full access to those readers kind enough to pay to subscribe. Some have already done so and I am hugely grateful to them. Many, many more are free subscribers and will continue to be offered occasional postings that are not covered by the paywall.

But I write for a living, as I have done since 1967, and need to find a way of compensating for a dramatic drop in freelance opportunities. Budgetary constraints have made a difficult market tougher still. One commissioning editor, for whom I wrote regularly until a few months ago, says he is a "huge fan" of my work but is no longer able to turn to me as he often as he could.

That's it in a nutshell. The step I have taken is a bold one and I may well fall flat on my face. Substack is jam-packed with star writers with vastly bigger followings than I can ever expect to attract. Let us see whether I can make a modest mark there, too.

The subscription rates I have suggested are deliberately pitched how, £4 a month or £45 for a year. I will review my Substack activity in the coming months.  

Support Associated Press as it stands up to the White House bully

For my latest posting at Substack, I rise in defence of the historic US news agency Associated Press, which has been stripped on President Donald Trump’s orders of White House press access. Its crime? To stick to its style book and continue to call the Gulf of Mexico by that centuries-old name ….

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A person’s common law name, I remember being taught decades ago, is the name by which he or she is known. Billy Fox can accordingly become, legally, Jimmy Knox simply by persuading everyone that’s now what he should be called.

If US law also sees it that way, Donald Trump’s weird executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America may be above formal reproach. If still weird.

 

No matter that for 400 years or more, the world has come to no harm by referring to that body of water as the Gulf of Mexico. Americans, or those who settle for saloon bar brawling in place of statesmanship, naturally welcome the change

 

Alterego's phoyo of the logo on the former AP building in New York

Far right advances in France, US mayhem and AfD gains show dire state of western politics

February 24 2915 update:

Today the far right is celebrating potentially growing success in Germany. Far right headbangers exert sinister influence over a US president who already thinks Zelensky is a dictator but Putin is not. Jordan Bardella, a leader of the French far right, itself knocking on the doors of power, offers a theatrical gesture to establish distance - pulling out of a far right US conference after the odious Steve Bannon gave something resembling a Nazi salute. Bardella may have forgotten his own party has Waffen SS in its DNA. And then there is the UK’s own hideous Reform, its leader Nigel Farage a fawning buddy of Trump’s and feted by the dismal London Standard …

As this resurrected piece from last summer indicates, I have been banging on about the far right threat for quite some time.

 

 

A look at the anticipated but still worrying outcome of the first round of the French legislative elections. They happened because President Emmanuel Macron made a spectacularly botched response to successes by the French far right in June's polling for the European Parliament .... this article appeared at my Substack pages, still free to view

 

At the school gymnasium where I play badminton in the French resort of La Londe-les-Maures, two of my three companions in any game of doubles can statistically be assumed to have voted for Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National in last Sunday’s legislative elections.

My return to France much delayed, I have been missing from the courts for months. But I hope to join fellow club members at the end-of-season soirée this weekend, the eve of the second and decisive round of voting.

Now it could be that badminton players are a species apart, too noble to contemplate supporting a party with such a sinister background, one still routinely described as l’extrême droite with the blessing of a constitutional court ruling. But that is not really likely so I must resist any temptation to throw shuttlecocks about in a rage.

 

Jordan Bardella: by BootEXE

Adieu France's Olympic glory, re-bonjour French political chaos

This is how I looked back on an inspiring Olympics and forward to France's pressing need to sort out a hopelessly hung parliament and get a new administration up and running ... I wrote it for The National, which permits me to reproduce my work here

 

From the reflected glory of a successful Paris Olympics to the urgent need to salvage a viable new government from political turmoil, France is coming down to earth with an uncomfortable bump.

It was a smart call on the part of French President Emmanuel Macron to promise an “Olympics truce”, placing the unifying qualities of the Games ahead of nagging domestic and international issues.

Dating from Ancient Greece and a treaty signed by three city-state kings – Iphitos, Cleisthenes and Lycurgus – the truce originally provided for a laying down of arms, suspending incessant hostilities to allow spectators safe travel to and from Olympic events.

From the opening on July 26 to Sunday’s closing ceremony, its 2024 version in France has been impressively observed.

Courtesy: official Paris 2024 site

Scruffy at Glyndebourne, a scruffy Farage defence of racists, Labour's scruffy Brexit attachment

It was a great afternoon and evening out, a relaxing walk around the gorgeous grounds of Glyndebourne before an exhilarating burst of Bizet, Carmen - first performed at the Comique Opera in Paris in 1875 but here presented by a cast wearing the clothing of 2024. I also found space at my latest Salut! Life post at Substack for one pop at Keir Starmer (his "make Brexit work" drivel appals me), another at Nigel Farage and warm praise for Killian Mbappe's call to French youth to reject extremism (by which he meant the far right) ...

Do accents matter? Plus thoughts on beautiful places and ugly politics

Anyone who comes to these pages regularly will have noticed that Salut! is not nearly as active as it was once. Plenty still happens at Salut! Live, for those who enjoy folk music, folk-rock and similar, but this site goes through long periods of silence. I have, however, launched another branch of the Salut! mini-empire. Salut! Life is the name I give my pages at a writers' platform known as Substack.

This is the link to those pages.

The idea of many, maybe most, people who hook up with Substack is to persuade readers their published work is worth paying to read. I am deeply grateful to the few readers who have taken out paying subscriptions and so, I know, are the good causes that I have been able to help as a result with some of the proceeds.

That said, I have deliberately made it possible for people to subscribe free of charge. This will continue for the time being and even when I move forward to greater dependence on paid subscriptions, I shall apply the paywall selectively, allowing free access to some of what I post.

This - and what follows here - is my latest Substack offering, covering two familiar topics: prejudice about regional accents and the alarming rightward drift of the Conservative party. I also found space for some words on the beauty of Sussex.

If you find enjoyment or stimulation in anything I had to say, please explore Salut! Life further...   

 

Sounds 'lower class northern'? Amelia Coburn and her record. Photo: Andy Johnson

As the West turns to ugly populism, can Labour rise above just not being Tories?

 

 

A century after Labour first made it into government at Westminster, a decisive new electoral victory is within grasp. 

 

 

When I think of Sir Keir Starmer's timid approach to a general election that cannot come too quickly, I think also of those brilliant but, sadly, soon-to-retire, folk-rock stars Oysterband. "We voted Labour," they wrote in album notes during the Blair years. "But we didn't inhale." 

 

 

In this Comment piece for The National, (for which Sir Keir is plain Mr Starmer), I describe how Britain, for now. Is sheltered from the grim populism sweeping the West (I include the alarming resilience of support for Trump in the US) ….. 

When so many European voters seem intent on drifting to the right or, without trace of embarrassment, even to the extreme right, it somehow feels odd to be contemplating a victory for the left in Britain.

If the polls are accurate, the UK’s Labour party is bucking a western trend. It is on course under Keir Starmer for an emphatic return to power when a general election is held later this year, after 14 years of office for the Conservatives – a period of despair and disappointment for many people. Some disgruntled Tories, perhaps with exaggerated gloom, even talk mournfully of the prospect of political extinction.

Portrait: Chris McAndrew

Gabriel Attal: should the French wonder how Le Boy Wonder will do?

 

French politics: a very special, sometimes frenzied sphere and one I enjoy writing about. Oddly enough, I didn’t initially propose an analytical piece to The National on the elevation of 34-year-ôld Gabriel Attal to the role of prime minister. I misjudged what interest there’d be given how how firmly real power in France resides in the presidency. The National came to me. This - which you can see in original form at the newspaper's site  - is the result …

 

The next time political pundits mock British Conservatives for having worked their way, with scant success, through so many prime ministers – five in their 13 years of power – they should perhaps cast a glance across the English Channel at France, where an unpopular President, Emmanuel Macron, has announced his fourth in just seven years of office.

Mr Macron’s choice as successor to the earnest but beleaguered Elisabeth Borne is the youngest to hold the office in modern times. Gabriel Attal, just 34, has enjoyed a meteoric rise to the top and is regarded as the best-liked member of the centrist government, even though the administration’s inability to win public hearts and minds suggests he is merely the figure voters dislike least.

In many ways, Mr Attal is the mirror image of the President who, for now, is also his cheerleader.

Image: Conseil de l'Union Européenne

Out with the old but will the new year be any better ?

Well 2023 was hardly a year to remember for good reasons. What will 2024 bring? In my piece for The National, I struggle to sound an optimistic note…. 

 

Amid the profound uncertainty, hopes and fears that dominate thoughts as Europe enters 2024, some predictions can be made with confidence and have the power to impose radical change on the continent and its way of life. 

 

Beyond reasonable doubt, the terrible suffering of Gaza, itself following the horrendous attack of October 7, will continue to cause not only deep shock but deep division across Europe. While there remains great sympathy for Israelis killed, maimed or bereaved by Hamas, millions are also appalled at a military response that seems as indiscriminate and frankly inhuman as terrorist atrocities. These divisions are sure to assume increasing prominence. 

When Irish eyes are unsmiling. The Dublin riots, Conor McGregor and the Irish diaspora`

My love affair with Ireland began some time before I first set foot in the country.

I became hooked on Irish music while attending and running folk clubs in the North East of England. I would go on to spend several happy holidays there, later making repeated visits - Northern Ireland mostly but also, often enough venturing south, as a reporter.

I have made Irish friends in many walks of life and almost always experienced a warm welcome on my travels to their land. But the times are changing.

Europe's current obsession with immigration is affecting attitudes throughout the EU as well as in Britain. The politicians seem too incompetent and unimaginative to act in an effective way that does not at the same time lose sight of the need for compassion and a sense of proportion.

Recent events in Dublin are instructive, as I attempted to show in this analysis for The National ...

 

 

 

The island of Ireland, where the stabbing of three children outside a Dublin primary school last week led to rioting, is beautiful, often troubled and historically a great exporter of people.

Definitions vary but the Irish diaspora numbers between an official estimate of three million, born in Ireland but residing overseas, and an astonishing 100 million, the higher figure covering everyone of known Irish ancestry scattered around the world. Ireland's population, even taking account of Northern Ireland, part of the UK, stands at just seven million.

Dublin burning. Image: CanalEnthusiast