Nuclear Chic: New For A/W 08-09

Poor old Gordon Brown, no sooner does he go off on his joyless holidays than the upstart D. Miliband tries to a) usurp him and b) re-start the Cold War.

Now, different people have different ideas about whether confronting Russia is a good idea right at the moment, particularly given that we're already engaged in two wars, and given that we made our own declaration of independence from the moral high ground in 2003 when we (I say 'we', although really it was actually T. Blair and his conveniently nebulous chums, God and History) chose to invade Iraq illegally.

But so far, no one has drawn the obvious conclusion from Miliband's posturing, which is that he is in the pay of a shadowy secret society whose deadly aim is to provoke another Cold War purely for its own ends.

And by 'shadowy secret society' I do of course mean the Victoria and Albert Museum, and by 'its own ends' I do of course mean the viral promotion of its new September exhibition, 'Cold War Modern'.

Yes, what better way to pique the nation's interest in its latest artfest than to persuade the Foreign Secretary to go and declare war on Russia, thereby ensuring column acres of Cold War 'nostalgia' in the media? Before you know it the Daily Mail will be giving away a free cover-mounted DVD of Threads to every reader, while the Saturday Guardian will be inserting glossy wallcharts showing what to do in the event of imminent nuclear attack.

(Bored of knitting your own jumpers from leftover edamame to beat the credit crunch? Have fun with the kids this weekend by building a fallout shelter under your raised vegetable beds! Our supplement shows you how!)

The marketing geniuses at the V&A, meanwhile, are doing a sterling job of making the threat of nuclear annihilation fashionable again, primarily via the time-honoured medium of the enamel badge. For just £3 you can purchase a set of five badges that apparently 'capture the imagination of the Cold War era':


(Click for bigness.)

'The badge designs draw on images from ‘Civil Defence Handbook No.10: Advising the Householder on Protection against Nuclear Attack’,' chirps the marketing blurb, before regaining a modicum of composure and warning 'Not suitable for children under 3.'

I should say not.

Does anyone from the V&A Marketing Department - or, for that matter, David Miliband - actually remember the Cold War? I don't recall it being in any way imaginative, stylish or exciting: the adjectives that spring to mind are more along the lines of 'chilling', 'unspeakably terrifying' and 'the FOUR-MINUTE WARNING, for fuck's sake'.

Still if it comes down to it, at least the V&A shop will make a few pennies, which does make a nice neat metaphor for the ideological triumph of capitalism over communism - although perhaps not quite as much as this item does.

NEXT WEEK: Miliband declares war on France in a teaser campaign for the National Gallery's Jacques-Louis David retrospective.

Criminal Justice

I've been commissioned to write a lengthy tract about some technology my client has developed that will apparently make the criminal justice system more efficient.

On a planning call with various 'stakeholders' in this project, the conversation wheels around to why I was selected to write this thing in the first place.

'So, Patroclus, do you have a background in criminal justice?' asks a stakeholder.

I pause briefly to consider my experience in the sector, which includes:

1. Being told off by a weary policeman for rolling in a municipal flowerbed in Forres, Moray, at 2am on the night before the 'Britain in Bloom' judges were due to arrive.

2. Having a disgruntled policeman pop up from behind a hedge to take my photograph as I participated in an episode of organised civil disobedience on Crown land as a protest against the criminalisation of peaceful mass trespass under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill (later Act).

3. Being forcibly manhandled off Crown land by a no-nonsense mounted policeman during the same episode.

4. Being tear-gassed by riot police in Park Lane, after a protest march against the aforementioned Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill (later Act) became somewhat lively, this liveliness including the burning of cars, trampling of flowerbeds and overturning of bus shelters in the aforementioned Park Lane, and the rattling of gates leading to Downing Street (the latter activity later immortalised in the opening credits of woeful 1999 Britflick Human Traffic, which is now notable only as an early celluloid outing for The Lovely John Simm (awww look at his little face, awww, etc.) and for having the Age of Love's 'Age of Love' on the soundtrack).

5. Receiving a phone message from the Devon and Cornwall police requesting that I go down to the station 'for a chat' following the publication of an article I had written for the student magazine about a conference at which representatives of the aforementioned police force had reassured local parents that 'there are no drugs in Devon and Cornwall'. (In proper Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas style I had turned up to the conference stoned, but only in order to give a hilarious ironic counterpoint to my article. My professional dedication has never been anything less than impeccable.) I didn't go.

'Erm, not really,' I reply.

Paging Mervyn King

You were probably thinking that this country's incipient economic slowdown has been caused by things like the US sub-prime mortgage bubble bursting, the rising price of oil, the rising price of food, the rising price of water*, the abolition of the 10p tax rate and the sudden reluctance of banking institutions to lend anyone - even each other - any money at all.

Well, more fool you, because according to Elle Decoration editor Michelle Ogundehin, all this is a nonsensical fabrication made up by 'statisticians'.

'I hear people aren't shopping as much,' laments Ogundehin in this month's editorial**, as word of our new-found parsimoniousness wafts on a gentle zephyr into her luxury modernist retreat in one of Cloud Cuckoo Land's better postcodes.

But Michelle isn't buying all that depressing economics guff. What's really causing British consumers to tighten their purse strings, she believes, is their inability to find really good, authentic designer furniture.

Never mind the price of a pint of milk, the fact that the market is now flooded - simply flooded, darling! - with fake copies of Mies van der Rohe's 'Barcelona' chair is causing British shoppers great distress, to the extent that we literally don't want to go shopping until the nasty fakers stop 'devaluing the meaning of good design'.


Alistair Darling, know thine enemy.

But don't worry, people of Britain! Michelle has a cunning plan to restart the flagging economy and get us all shopping again. All we need to do is go to the 10 Downing Street website and sign a petition demanding that fake designer furniture be outlawed.

'After all, without authenticity there can be no quality, no meaning and ultimately no value,' she warns. And no megabucks for her furniture-designer friends either, presumably.

(While you're there, you may like to sign something that's ACTUALLY WORTHWHILE. Like this one, perhaps.)


* My monthly water bill went up from £112 to £134 last month. How can this even be possible?

** I wanted to link to this, but sadly Elle Deco has no online presence. UPDATE: But wait! I can copy it out...so here we go, the economic wisdom of the Oracle of Kings Reach Tower IN FULL:

'Authenticity is the word ringing in my ears this month. I hear people aren't shopping as much and statisticians have put it down to the fragile state of the economy. I don't think it's just that. I think there's simply not enough good stuff out there. Consumers, you and me, aren't stupid. We don't buy things we don't like, that we think are overpriced or badly made, whether that's homes, furniture or dresses.

But, of more concern, on the design front, cheap is coming increasingly in the form of knock-off versions of classic pieces. These fakes are invariably produced using lesser quality materials, often in sub-standard factory conditions and with little consideration for human rights***. As such they devalue the meaning of good design at every level.

And yet it was recently brought to my attention that it's legal in the UK to manufacture and/or supply such copies just 30 years after the issue of the original design, as opposed to a minimum of 70 years after the death of the designer, as it is in Germany or Switzerland.

Fakes flood the UK market because we don't have sufficient laws to prevent them. We effectively promote plagiarism! What can you do? Simple. Join the campaign to have the law changed by adding your name to the e-petition lodged on the official 10 Downing Street website.

ELLE Decoration has an absolute editorial policy of never knowingly endorsing copies of iconic designs. After all, without authenticity there can be no quality, no meaning and ultimately no value, whatever price you paid. Add your name at http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/CapperCopyright.'

*** You will note that protecting the human rights of people working in these supposed designer knock-off sweatshops does not turn out to be La Ogundehin's primary concern...

Farewell Then, Ken

Two steps forward, three steps back for London, then. I know I don't live there any more and so I shouldn't care, but I really do.

But now I've got over the horror and embarrassment of seeing someone who thinks it's OK to use the word 'picaninnies' elected to be mayor of what is - or at least was - probably the most successfully multicultural capital city in the whole world, I've decided that Boris and everyone who voted for him have actually done Ken a massive favour.

A third term as mayor would probably have sent him the way of Tony Blair, plus the economy is about to turn nasty and the Olympics are going to be a huge fiasco, as any project of that size is bound to be. So this way Ken will - I hope - avoid all of that and go down in history as one of the boldest and most successful and most genuinely enthusiastic and committed politicians of our time.

Say what you like about Ken, I'm still massively in awe of him for standing up to Blair and the Labour Party, for actually getting the congestion charge up and running, and for genuinely loving and caring about the city he represented. I voted for him in both elections and I'd have done so again this time.

(Somewhat more alarmingly, I've also had a huge crush on him for years.)


Ken: *would*

But if Boris is what Londoners want, who am I to argue? I just hope he - or whoever he puts in to do the job for him, as if that wasn't MASSIVELY CHEATING - manages to do a decent job and doesn't let the whole place down.

Harrumph.


UPDATE: This neatly encapsulates my worst suspicions about a lot of people's motives for voting for Boris. He's funny! He's not Ken! Who cares what he actually thinks, does or stands for?

More Great PR For Christianity, Well Done Tony

Autocratic leader gets out of hand in Iraq, tortures countrymen: Prime Minister Blair chooses to invade illegally, kill more Iraqis, British soldiers.

Autocratic leader gets out of hand in Zimbabwe, starves countrymen: Prime Minister Brown chooses to donate £1bn a year to restart economy.

I think I know whose morals I prefer, and it isn't the one with Jesus* on his side.


* And History, let's not forget.

Class Struggle

I was minding my own business in Abingdon Street, waiting for the anti-war march to start, leaning on my "Bush: World's #1 Terrorist" placard, smoking a cigarette in the autumn sunshine and trying not to look too much like a fully paid-up member of the bourgeoisie, when I was accosted by a very handsome and earnest Trotskyist.

I switched immediately into slightly flirtatious mode, as is my prerogative now that I am unattached and Mistress of my Own Destiny. But Handsome Trotskyist was having none of it. "How much do you know about Marxism?" he asked me sternly, having established that I had come here from Shepherd's Bush and that I had participated in previous anti-war demonstrations.

Resisting the urge to tell him that I think Karl Marx was a feckless waster who allowed his wife and kids to starve around him in their garret rather than lower himself into the structure* and get a job, with the result that he was so crazed with hunger and cold and the plaintive whines of his wife and kids that not a word of his writings is intelligible to anyone, thus rendering them completely open to interpretation by a multitude of left-wing factions who can't agree on anything between them, let alone actually get it together to start a revolution, I replied "errr, a bit."

Seemingly encouraged by this, he went on to ask if I didn't think the world would be a better place if capitalism were completely abolished and replaced with some kind of Utopian society where everyone had a job and no one wanted for anything at all. "Not really, I'm afraid," say I. "I don't mind capitalism. (Note to self: Things Not To Say When Wielding A Socialist Worker Banner.) I think you can have responsible capitalism and still make the world a better place. But then I'm a company director, so I would say that."

"Oh, what company?" says he. "Oh, a very small PR agency in Chiswick," say I. He gives me a sort of pitying look. "Well, that's OK," he says. "It's hardly Halliburton, is it? Would you like to buy a copy of Class Struggle?"

So I did. And I read it all, this morning, in the bath. And bugger me if I hadn't completely forgotten what a revolting, profit-driven, patriarchal, violent, self-interested world we live in. I resolved to do something about this immediately. Sadly I got sidetracked and somehow ended up in Habitat buying pictures of orchids. But tomorrow...

* It's actually the base, isn't it? That's been bugging me for some while.