darker arts

Boris gets Royal Borough of K&C tickets for parking badly across multiple bays outside the house of Carrie Symonds. And tickets for not paying the congestion charge. Then it's tickets on tickets, slapped across his green Previa, ignoring the little people parking charges.

They are just a small bump on his £700k income from the Daily Telegraph and other retainers.

Then there's the spoiled posh boy brat that media-savvy Symonds identified in the recent row. No wonder they put a silencer on him during the down-selection and manage him closely whilst the 120k conservative sheep take their toxic no-deal vote. It'll take more than a few pills to remediate the rampant clowning. Jacob Rees-Mogg, the ERG and Lynton Crosby have it all worked out. Meanwhile, flash boys short the market, hoping for more examples of Farage's market manipulating antics.

The years of lies of bogus Boris illustrate he doesn't care. Neither does Jacob Rees-Mogg. They, with their well-funded dark practitioners, have the Tory members where they want them - condoning the big take-down.

Postcards from the Edge: Sledge softly and carry a big mallet

A short walk along the edge of the bay and we could feel like we were in the middle of Europe. Sunshine, blue seas, all that kind of thing.

Meanwhile, the politicians had unscrewed the least insane voice from the debate about leaving Europe. It was all a matter of tactics, with the clown's dark operatives sledging the voting like a game of croquet.

Passengers boarded the ferry creating a metaphor for what is happening.

The rum and raisin ice cream was delicious.

Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2019

Along to Burlington House, for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. Always interesting, and a great leveller, with its down-selection from 15,000 to around 1,000 art exhibits, with unknown aspiring artists rubbing frames with Royal Academicians. Last year the show was a little subversive, curated by Grayson Perry, and this year it returned to a more traditional format, under the eye of Jock McFadyen. It also seemed to be even more packed with art than usual, with the entrance area crammed with animal, painted, sculpted and even a tigerish tunnocks tea-cake (although I was bemused to see it also displayed M&S branding.

With this exhibition, I find myself walking around looking for the items that catch my eye, rather than studying them all in depth. There's so much on offer, filtered by the selection committee, and then curated into the rooms with their different themes. Inevitably I found myself gravitating towards some of the anchor points. A Wim Wenders street scene, Anselm Kiefer's unknown island in a treeless world.

There were some references to Brexit, perhaps less than I'd expected, but I suppose the political edit had probably also been performed as part of the curation. Recognise Jeremy Deller in this gallery? And in another, there was Bob and Roberta Smith curation of cosmic illustrations.

One of the more lasting images, for me, was of Parliament(voices in your head), represented by crows, picking through old newspapers.

I'll always pick up the small guide catalogue too, which features maybe one-third of the images. There's all of them listed in the show guide, a price list which ranges from £150 to £70-80,000 and beyond. And yes, it is impossible to gauge the prices with any accuracy.
Of course, that is not the point. There's a value beyond the island in the democratisation of the art on display.

permeability

I was in a conversation with an architect recently and we were talking about designs for living. His role was to design on a bigger canvas and so it was about whole developments rather than individual buildings. Across the way, we talked about getting around and the idea of permeability. That's the way that a developer can build in the short cuts that pedestrians and cyclists will want to take, to make the whole place come alive.

I recognise the separate paths that run along the edges of fields and railways, clever underpasses and all manner of shortcuts to get anywhere.

Even central London has the cut-throughs, the alleyways and the paths across green areas to help move around. But there's a stealthy new kid in town.

I've just spent some time around Docklands, and its edges remind me of Moscow. In Moscow, there's individual security on the land around every building. It makes for some odd transitions, between well-manicured space and rubble-strewn untidiness. There are uniformed men to protect their piece of the real-estate and tell pedestrians to keep out.

So what's that got to do with London? Try areas of Docklands. As a typical pedestrian, I should be able to follow a route to a landmark, but a new styling blocks the route.

A fence here. A path that leads to a set of railings there. A barrier entry system. Blocked river and dockside access. Metal fences. Locked gates. Plastic chain link. Across what could otherwise be handy paths to create the permeability.

I've walked about in these areas before, and even made the adjustments where a DLR entrance only allows access from one direction or there's the need to skirt along the edge of a building against a traffic flow. I'll even take it for granted that some things are just built that way.

But it hides something. The individual estates don't want you to walk over their land. There's the signs, of course, "Private Property" once used for effect. Just as significantly, there's the estate railings or the colourful chain link that's been draped across any means of passage. It means that as a pedestrian, I'll have to turn away from the building I'm aiming for several times.

Even to have to cross to the opposite side of the road and then back again at one point. The whole of Canary Wharf isn't like this, of course. There are tunnels and malls that link huge areas together. The public realm is architected.

But say hello to the edge zones where the pernicious blocking of permeability occurs. AS well as Streets of London, welcome to the era of "Membership Pavements".

chernobyl

Watch "Chernobyl" I was WhatsApp'd. So I did.

It's all about filling the vacuum. I'm hazy about the facts. That in 1986, the Germans detected radiation that was too high in Sweden before the Russians came clean. The delays and modulations created by the apparatchiks of the Russian bureaucracy.

That a single reactor could potentially have wiped out most of Europe. With a historical perspective, this was ten years ahead of Three Mile Island, right on the edge of Europe.

Chernobyl showed the explosive melt-down of a reactor core. spraying graphite and nuclear dust into the atmosphere. Even the water glowed with ionisation with the extreme fusion let loose.

The series is based upon Alexievich’s book about Chernobyl, published in Russian more than ten years after one of the reactors at the Chernobyl power plant exploded.

The Russian hierarchical authorities do much to protect their reputation and to present "nothing to see here, move along" narratives both to the populous and to the media.

It's a dark tale, shot as workers struggle through contaminated water in a building burning with an irradiated haze. For television story-telling, some of the main actors have been compressed into single personalities. The physicist represents all physicists involved, some of the politicians represent the wider state. The firefighter and his family that are zoomed in upon becomes a proxy for many.

There's a kind of levelling irony that the series shows. After a Shakespearean rallying call, we see the politician Zharkov later being herded onto the same evacuation bus as everyone else.

There's a power gradient. It's downwards. "Do what I say or I'll have that soldier shoot you," exemplifies the state control and the compliance of many to the sometimes apparently irrational commands issued from central briefs, ill-informed to make decisions. Caricature, I know, for effect.

Like the device that was the use of the voice of reason scientists to state the way things would actually play. That was against the "cut the phone lines and no-one leaves" of authority. Seldom did the white-uniformed operations guys get to the grey suits. And when they did they were foaming at the mouth or projectile vomiting.

Confront the power with truth. The physicist explains to the politician, but “Yes, I worked in a shoe factory. And now I’m in charge.” comes the riposte, "have some vodka." It is L. Frank Baum territory but you have to look for the tin man, straw man and lion here. "Contain the spread of misinformation. That is how we keep the people from undermining the fruits of their own labour." The yellow brick road must be followed. Brick by graphite brick. The Central Committee prevails, justice must be blind.

And blind also the scientists that are represented by the Emily Watson character, Khomyuk. She has the omniscience of a showrunner, instantly working out that it is all too radioactive when the window is opened. It's signalling, of course; she is the brains that will face off to Gorbachov.

Then we get to it. The slope of power. The quest for promotion. Many are on this slippery pole and a few misbehave in ways that lead to the terrible outcome that Chernobyl represents.

It should really be a lesson - the cost of truth against the cost of lies? But current times suggest this isn't even on the radar.

box set flashback - never the Dane

Now the box set flashback shows that twenty years ago this leadership hopeful was off the rails like a Withnailian fishing trip- "I will never play the Dane."

In contrast, a similar weighty Boris spinning montage adds dozens of inappropriate colourful themes.

Like we are looking at the Netf(l)ix index wondering what to watch next.

These Nielsen lists worryingly illustrate time already consumed. But like a politiican's CV there's still notable ommissions.

Even with a part two, there's still insufficient data to build the whole picture.

As Marwood put it: "Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day, and for once I'm inclined to believe Withnail is right. We are indeed drifting into the arena of the unwell."

Game Over floats over UK's economy like a Striking Viper

Game Over for the PM comes at the same time as Game Over for the economy, whilst the boys from Eton shout "bully-bully".

The financial institutions have fled, the car companies have declared they are getting out and the high street sinks into retail mayhem, led by a blighted knight.

A well-known trust fund has just crashed to its knees, shorted to oblivion. That Politico cartoon is becoming more accurate by the day.

All the while, we get a roll-call of squabbling politicians using wishful thinking to manoeuvre. Nothing has changed except the remaining length of the road.

Game Over might not float as prominently as in Striking Vipers, but it's there.

it started before it starts

Trumpi revealed the contents of his executive briefcase when he said that the NHS was 'on the table' for trade talks. He subsequently changed his tune in an interview on morning television, when he retracted the statement.

Perhaps Boris Johnson's £350 million of red bus savings from Brexit will, instead, go to the USA to pay for NHS capabilities?

I notice that there's already a degree of US interest in the NHS. The supplier's list includes several well-known US-based companies. There's Cerner, for example.

Cerner Corporation is a Kansas-based supplier of health information technology solutions, services, devices and hardware. Then there's DXC Technology.

DXC Technology is an American multinational corporation, based in Tysons, Virginia that provides B2B IT services. And then there is Intersystems, a Cambridge, Massachusetts supplier of Electronic Patient Records.

I'm wondering if this is really the way to examine the supplier list? The longer lists show more of the pickle of suppliers in use.
Naturally, all of the consultancy houses are there, mostly with alliances with other suppliers. McKinsey (New York), Boston Consulting (Massachusetts), Deloitte (New York), GE Healthcare (Chicago), Oliver Wyman (owned by Marsh and McLennan, New York)... the lists go on.

Curious too, that all four of the big four are represented. Why have one consultancy when you can have several? An invoice of advisors, to use the collective noun.

salvation of the world (Salvator Mundi)

Whilst walking across to the helipad the other day, I mused the heights some reach and yet they still can't get the staff. Today's news mentions the refusal by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to loan the Salvator Mundi (salvation of the world) picture to the Paris Louvre.

Gossip suggests that it might be because it could be found out to be a fake, or at least 'from the premises of Leonardo da Vinci' rather than painted by him. All that wealth yet he can't get enyone to tell him if the picture is real, let alone before he bought it. I'd want to be pretty certain if I'd paid $448 million for it. Come to think about it, I'd want to buy it from someone trustworthy, not a chain with a Russian oligarch and a disgraced art dealer. Let's follow the paint spots.


‘Salvator Mundi’ dates from around 1500. It was first recorded in the Royal collection of King Charles I (1600-1649) and thought to have hung in the private chambers of Henrietta Maria – the wife of King Charles I – in her palace in Greenwich. It was later in the collection of Charles II.

It goes quiet until Salvator Mundi is recorded in a 1763 sale by Charlie Sheffield, the illegitimate son of the Duke of Buckingham, auctioned it following the sale of Buckingham Palace to the king.

It then disappeared until 1900 when it was acquired by Sir Charles Robinson as a work by - wait for it - Leonardo’s follower, Bernardino Luini, for the Cook Collection, Doughty House, Richmond.

By this time, its authorship by Leonardo, origins and illustrious royal history had been forgotten, and Christ’s face and hair have been overpainted.

In the dispersal of the Cook Collection, it was ultimately consigned to a sale at Sotheby’s in 1958 where it sold for a modest £45.

It disappeared once again for nearly 50 years, emerging in 2005 when it was purchased from an American estate at a small regional auction house. Its rediscovery was followed by six years of painstaking research to document its authenticity.

Then, in 2005, an undisclosed consortium of American businessmen purchased the painting. The painting was brokered to the disgraced Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier for $80m.

He sold it to the boss of AS Monaco football club, one Dmitri Rybolovlev, the potash billionaire. Rybolovlev paid $127.5 million as part of a job lot of 37 paintings flogged by Bouvier to Rybolovlev for £2.1 billion. A tidy way to clean up the cash from the *ahem* potash sales.

Bouvier's commission was $45 million. So what would Rybolovlev do? Sue Bouvier for overcharging, of course. The legal action is in cash-friendly Monaco, but Philippe Narmino, Monaco’s justice minister, took early retirement in September 2017 after 'friendly text messages' with Rybolovlev’s lawyer Tetiana Bersheda and other Monaco officials were published (aka “the existence of a secret network affecting the local courts for the benefit of Rybolovlev”) .

So we now have a painting, allegedly by Leonardo da Vinci, refused for display in the Louvre Paris by Crown Prince MBS, the Head of State for Saudi Arabia. He's bought it from a Russian oligarch, via a discredited art dealer and it might be a fake.

Easy come, easy go.

There's quite a few times when 'don't do it' could have been uttered in this chain of events - unless the motivation was other than related to the artwork?

And now the kicker. That Russian football club owning potash billionaire also bought something else of interest. A mansion - the Maison de L'Amite. For $95 million. In Palm Beach. From Donald Trump. But we knew that was coming, didn't we?

Characteristically, Donny sold substandard property. Rybolovlev has demolished it.

rocketman and others.

We were chatting on the way to see Rocketman. I wondered whether there'd be a sudden spate of popstarpix, to follow Bohemian Rhapsody (which we'd seen) and the somewhat delayed Rocketman.

I realised that I've seen Elton around three times - once with Kiki Dee back in the olden days, at Alley Pally. Then for a new year party when he was doing his red piano thing (I snapped it above), and once when we got out of the elevator at the wrong floor and stumbled into an Elton John party at Kensington Roof Gardens.

And this story of Elton (played by Taron Egerton), with Bernie Taupin (played by Jamie Bell) through the early years fairly zoomed along. There were so many good songs to choose illuminating the story and they were reasonably handled by the cast in a manner that didn't scream 'musical number' at every turn.

I enjoyed the simple story-telling and was quite happy to suspend disbelief whenever required. Yes, and we came out singing the tunes.

As for the other movies about pop stars. Electric Church (Hendrix) was playing in the same cinema later in the evening. I saw the encrypted and tracked film stacked in the corner of the foyer. Atlanta in the unforgettable Band of Gypsys era.

But that's not all, how about "Blinded by the Light", the 2019 British comedy inspired by journalist Sarfraz Manzoor's obsession with Bruce Springsteen? Not set in Asbury Park, New Jersey. Oh no, try Luton in the 80s.

And then, imagine. Imagine if a freak event wiped the collective global memory of every Beatles song. That only one person remembered. Yes, it's Yesterday.

I may need a season ticket to the Picturehouse.

fast cars go slow

Above is my quick recreation of every episode of Top Gear Grand Tour, which is being heavily promoted at the moment. I honestly thought that the three middle aged men with dressing up disorders had been banished to the tumbleweed of Dave and Youtube.

I somehow doubt that they will lead with the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) story about car production volumes. SMMT described as “extraordinary” that just 70,971 vehicles rolled off the UK production lines in April, down 44.5% from 127,970 in the same month of last year.

The SMMT’s figures show that for the year to date, car production in the UK is down 22.4% to 441,260, with exports hit hardest – down 23.3% compared to an 18.5% fall in production for the domestic market.

Mike Hawes, SMMT Chief Executive, said,

"Today’s figures are evidence of the vast cost and upheaval Brexit uncertainty has already wrought on UK automotive manufacturing businesses and workers. Prolonged instability has done untold damage, with the fear of ‘no deal’ holding back progress, causing investment to stall, jobs to be lost and undermining our global reputation.

"This is why ‘no deal’ must be taken off the table immediately and permanently, so industry can get back to the business of delivering for the economy and keeping the UK at the forefront of the global technology race."

production values #felfie

It is fascinating to watch the current leadership bids, not least because of the variable production values being used.

At one end we can see colour corrected wide screen scripted sound-bite pieces with lower thirds titles and background music. In the middle we get camera-stabilised bulleted-list voice-to-camera with hasty subtitles. And then we get the pretend hand-held videocams with blustery background effects and rock solid stabilisation. I can't work out whether it tells a story about the funding of the various campaigns too, nor of their authenticity.

"Come visit me for a chat," tweeted one old-Etonian candidate, from within Kew Gardens,(entrance fee £16.50). In fairness, he added "It's all fake," when asked about the video selfie.