If somebody had asked me yesterday when I last posted to this blog, I probably would have said “a couple of weeks ago” but when I looked, here I am a couple of days after St. Patrick’s Day, and I discover that my last post was on February 17! Over a month ago! I never would have believed it. But then …
It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, indeed! One for the birds, I would say!

Just above the shitline: The Netanyahus — Champagne & Cigars. Case 1000: Bribery
I’m a retired academic and several of my species that I have known over the years have few qualms about re-using material that has previously been published. In my case, this is attested to by the three images above and the text that follows in blue immediately below, (all of which appeared in a blog post four years ago). It seems as if very little might have changed at all, even though indeed it has and, in gross understatement, not exactly for the better! I hadn’t actually planned to start this post in this manner but in the course of writing and under the circumstances of the day, this is what happened. I hope that I can be forgiven!
Contrary to what some of you might be thinking, having read this blog for some time now, and having become familiar with the substandard and unacceptable levels of cynicism to which I am occasionally inclined to sink, the edited and abridged paragraphs quoted below have absolutely nothing to do with Israel’s embattled Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, who was recently indicted for fraud, breach of trust and bribery in three separate cases involving him and wealthy businessmen. In fact, the original and unedited version of the piece above appeared in the June 22 2006 edition of The Economist newspaper—a paper little loved by Mr. Netanyahu, as its Israeli correspondent is his nemesis and who last summer published a biography of him [entitled Bibi], explaining much of his paranoias—but was part of the obituary of another rather smart but also corrupt politician, Charles Haughey, Ireland’s former Taoiseach (Prime Minister).
Foes and critics alike praised [his] … panache, his brains and his energy.… he had mansions, estates and a private island. He liked antique furniture, and fine art, horses, clothes and wines. History may well judge that he was the most gifted … politician of his generation. But it is harder to argue that he put those talents to good use.
Few charges against him stuck … [and m]any had long wondered how he supported a lavish lifestyle on a politician’s salary. [He] had warned [the media] “I can be a very troublesome adversary”.
[R]evelations were tantalisingly partial: … He brushed off … allegations, arguing either that “finances were peripheral” or claiming a precedent: had not Winston Churchill been financed by business admirers too?
Perhaps, but only when out of power, and Churchill did not plunder the Tory coffers … Even his greatest fans would not call him fastidious. It was best to call him simply “Boss”. There was cronyism for chums and thuggish treatment of the rest. Unfriendly journalists’ phones were bugged. His justice minister even considered having dissident members of his parliamentary party arrested.
… He preached austerity, yet practised prodigality, doling out favours and privileges with flair and precision.
In opposition, as evidence of his heavy-handed ways came to light, [his] party split. But [he] had little time to enjoy the fruits of this rare period of goodish government. Old scandals resurfaced and new ones broke. He left politics for good … his reputation increasingly tattered, and with a lot worse to come.
I thought I might be able to avoid writing about yet another political situation that has evolved over the past few months. I’m referring to the one in Israel that is unfolding in front of our eyes and all too vehemently. The current coalition is interested, so they say, in reforming Israel’s legal system or perhaps more accurately the relationships between the parliament and government on the one hand and the judiciary on the other. Without an adequate understanding of how the system operates, (I’m neither a political scientist nor do I have legal training), I probably should not be writing anything about it at all.  However, or so it seems to my simple mind, they’re not really interested in reforming the judiciary but in taking it over completely, in its entirety. I have no doubt that the judiciary or the relationship between the judiciary and parliament needs some tweaking but in a state that has always been regarded as a democracy, such changes need to be be brought about by broad consensus among all concerned rather than being something pushed through parliament at breakneck speed in order to save the skin of a Prime Minister and to meet the demands of more several fanatical political factions, both religious and xenophobic. Sadly, what we are observing in Israel is a clear demonstration of the fragility of Israeli society.
It’s an appalling thing to have to write but Israel’s current coalition is led by a man who is no longer under investigation by the police and nor under indictment by the judiciary. No matter how much he denies what he’s accused of, he is actually on trial on three different counts of alleged bribery, fraud and breach of trust. Moreover, the man who is effectively the Deputy Prime Minister (the term that appears on his Wikipedia entry is Vice-Prime Minister (with my emphasis on the first word) has served time in prison, having been convicted of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust in 1999 for which he was given given a three-year jail sentence and is currently on a suspended sentence for the same. However, things being what they are in that part of the world, when he did return to politics, he was installed into the same Ministry he had occupied at the time he perpetrated his crimes.
In a country in which service in the military as traditionally been regarded as a great leveller in society, of the leaders of the three other parties in the coalition, one has never served in the military at all (because he, one should understand, is a soldier in the “army of God”) and many (but not all) of his supporters neither work nor pay taxes but do demand and receive money from the state, money that is derived from taxes paid by those people who do work. Another one did manage to serve 14 months in the army, in comparison to “ordinary people” who do a three-year stint, and then serve in the reserves for another two or three decades. He is the Minister of Finance and is a minister-as-appendage in the Department of Defence, with authority over civilians in the West Bank. No doubt the two functions are somehow related. The fourth “leader” is possibly the most “interesting” of all for he was rejected by the army as being unsuitable and in the intervening three decades has become well-known to the police on issues related to (Jewish) terrorist activities. So irony of ironies (actually, it’s not irony but pure bloody-mindedness), what better job to give him that Minister of Internal Security, with authority, among other things over the police, an institution with which he has become so familiar?
So it’s quite understandable that there are sections of Israeli society that are revolting in one sense of the word whereas there are other sections that [who] are revolting in another sense. This brings me to Timothy Garton-Ash’s recent book Homelands, which has an fascinating chapter on Hungary and its leader Viktor Orbán who, to my mind, has been for several years now the model for Mr. Netanyahu to aspire to and who actually visited Israel a few years ago as his very welcome guest.
But enough of all this.
Why time flies: A Mostly Scientific Explanation, by Alan Burdick, is a book I bought and sort of read through a few years ago and was also one of the first books I unloaded from the cartons that arrived in London from Tel Aviv a few weeks ago. Before I made the move, I had to decide what books I was going to dispose of and what I was going to send to London. In this respect, I was “fortunate” enough to be able to donate a couple of hundred volumes to the University of Haifa Library and gave a lot more to a used book seller on Allenby Street in Tel Aviv. The rest — almost all of which are books that I had read and want to re-read (and some others that I had bought and never got around to reading at all) turned up here and one of the first I unloaded was Why Time Flies. And how it does!
Part of the reason for my misperception of time is that for the past three weeks I’ve had decorators in the flat and I’ve been “lodging” at Isabel’s place — not that that’s been anything but pleasant but it does mean that what resembles a regular regimen has had to go by the board. So today has been “moving back day” after pictures and mirrors have been rehung, so by tomorrow, I should be back to a somewhat more orderly routine. But as I sit writing this, I’m wondering how my timing of moving to the UK has been little “off” as the former “Great Britain” is wracked by strikes (Wednesday and Thursday it was the Underground, last week the turn if the junior doctors, teachers, universities and probably trains somewhere throughout the country) causing considerable chaos as Britain descends from “First-World” status to something that is less than glorious, with a government that appears to be unable to meet some unreasonable demands made, sometimes by those truly aggrieved (e.g., junior doctors, nurses, etc.) and on other occasions by union leaders interested only, it would seem, in contributing further to the mayhem. It’s a shame — and reading the chapters on Britain in Garton-Ash’s Homelands, which is, incidentally, a fascinating book about the up-and-down relationships between nation-states in Europe since World War II until today, there’s little to be overly optimistic about. After 12 years of rule and misrule by the Conservative party, which has conscripted five Prime Ministers in the process, the Labour Party is preparing itself for government—not that I have any conviction at all that they would be able to do much better at treating the malady from which Britain (although I think that perhaps I should write “England”) suffers.
Meanwhile, spring is making an appearance in London (sort of).
Daffodils are all over the place …
…sometimes accompanied by rain…
… and at other times (and this is mid-March) by a light covering of snow.
Not that that makes too much difference to my London grandchildren as they take a break from running, swimming, tennis, piano, etc.
Over the past few weeks, decorators and temporary lodgings notwithstanding, I’ve taken in some culture. We went to watch the movie The Banshees of Inisherin. In some of the reviews, it was regarded as being too “stage-Irish”. However, I thought it was brilliant and brilliantly acted. It received nine Oscar nominations and came away with not a thing — but at least the donkey (or its lookalike) made an appearance. We also saw The Merchant of Venice 1936, a new adaptation of the Shakespeare play, this time set in the East End of London in 1936 when Oswald Mosley’s fascists were rampant. Though written by William Shakespeare, this adaptation with the changed setting, was redacted by and starred Isabel’s daughter, Tracy-Ann Oberman, who plays Shylock. It worked wonderfully and after a fortnight in each of Watford and Manchester, moves in the autumn to The Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-on-Avon.
Photo: Marc Brenner
We were also fortunate to have been invited to lunch at friends last weekend in Belsize Park. Besides the fact that the meal was super, Dawn is a sculptor (sculptress is a word no longer acceptable, it seems) and when I asked if I could take some photos of her works, the request was met with positive response.
Finally, I went to the Royal Albert Hall to hear an evening of music from shows entitled Let’s Face the Music. It’s quite a while since I had been in this venue and had forgotten just how enormous it really is.
Finally, for some peculiar reason, every now and then someone sends me a picture of a fire hydrant. This one and its caption (much appreciated) was sent to me by a colleague of my daughters who on normal days is a Professor of Musicology and a violist.