July 11, 2022 - 5:40pm
Westminster
This lunchtime I would estimate that the temperature in the Churchill War Rooms, where Tories were gathering for the relaunch of Conservative Way Forward, but were actually there to watch several leadership contenders make stump speeches, was 27 million degrees. About the same as the sun’s core.
It was hot. It was so hot that Nadhim Zahawi’s head shone like a new lightbulb. It was so hot that I was worried Mark Francois would overheat, tremble, and simply explode in a pink sleet of scalding blood and shardy bone, taking an entire generation of Tory think-tankers with him. It was so hot that all the present Tories looked like they were hallucinating. The same thing: Margaret Thatcher. She was in the room. A living presence.
Conservative members have (incredibly) enjoyed the last three years less than the general public. Do they want to level up, expand the state and summon its interventionist powers, raise taxes? Well. Would Margaret Thatcher? The priority is to take us into the future by going back to the past. It’s Thatcher or quits.
So the MPs trudged into the sauna-bunker, pestered by Beth Rigby. “It’s getting nasty isn’t it Mark?” she shouted after Francois, who snorted. Below, a journalist tells me she was eating lobster at the weekend. It’s what everybody in the looks like. The competition for sweatiest man in here is a brutal free-for-all. Anybody could win.
This is, said Steve Baker, “literally the hottest event in Westminster.” Speeches are made. Pledges follow them, like tails. Nadhim Zahawi (13 MPs) is going to get hacking away — he will lower the base rate of income tax to 19p next year and 18p the year after; some VAT will be vaporised; he will reverse the corporation tax hike. He praised Rishi Sunak. When Rishi rolled out furlough the public understood it, because a free lunch is always comprehensible. Now, the new Chancellor said sadly, nobody “understands our plan”. So he will cut taxes, and free lunches will fall from the sky. And under Zahawi there will be freedom. To buy petrol. To buy “chocolate bars”.
Suella Braverman (11 MPs) told the melting candles in the crowd that they shouldn’t vote for her because she’s brown. “Vote for me because I love this country and I’m a conservative”. Freedom is the product of a smaller state, lower taxes, and money in people’s back pockets.
She was a better speaker than Zahawi, but no poet. I think of Churchill’s description of Tory democracy, a society “in which there should be no limit to which any man might rise, but a limit beneath which no man might fall”. Braverman is more interested in Thatcherite cuts than Churchillian limits. So are the rest of them.
The sun was burning in the room. And the sun that burns above the Conservative party, still, is not Churchill or Johnson — it’s Margaret Thatcher. It’s a shame for them they can’t seance her back into Westminster. On this evidence, no one else matches up.
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SubscribeInteresting perspective on deafness by Mr. Hockney. I wish, though, he’d elaborated on this statement: “The one good thing about my deafness is it has made me perceive space quite differently…. And since I am deeply interested in perception and depiction, of course I’ve noticed this.”
How does an artist of his caliber perceive space differently now he’s deaf? Maybe he’ll address that question in a subsequent essay.
I enjoyed that thank you. Until I have recently lost some hearing, and for a while went completely deaf in one ear, I had greatly underestimated the condition. Sometimes I now guess at what people are saying, often I just nod and smile and hope it was just a pleasantry, God knows what I miss. The bit that doesn’t change is the company of dogs. As ever, peaceful and undemanding. And yes I enjoy my own company even more.
I’ve noticed that and it is difficult to know what to do. Sometimes repeating gets the response that they heard.
Yes this is an intriguing subject, but there is so much more to say on going deaf and how it affects a person’s view of the world, raises perceptions in other ways; and increases a sense of isolation particularly in places where the rest of the world seem so relaxed. Deafness and sight deficiency are not treated equally, as others cannot “see” or as easily comprehend the consequences of partial deafness. Two people speaking at the same time, or simply too quickly, can become create a real problem. Learning languages which I love is a much greater problem, as are understanding the languages you though you knew. Pitch too is often an issue. Hearing aids can even make this worse in certain situations. Face-masks currently make it very difficult indeed to follow conversation with a wearer. David Lodge’s book “Deaf Sentence” has lot to say, but I really want to hear an artist’s view on going deaf, and what David means about perceiving space differently. Love to hear more on this.
If you think about it, deafness (or blindness) is like being in permanent lockdown – or much worse. Many older people lose their hearing to a certain extent and it is often treated as a bit of a joke.
If we are in lockdown for a year and the world keeps talking about ‘mental problems’ what must those mental problems be like when you are cut off by deafness?
A good reminder from Mr Hockney.
Restaurant and pub noise has always been problematic for me, and I have good hearing.
Pipedown.org.uk is one organisation campaigning against recorded background noise/music..
Likewise. I often ask staff to turn down the volume. I remember being in a fairly posh restaurant in a Norfolk coastal town, all the patrons were like me of a certain age, yet the blasted sound system was playing rap. The music is chosen for the staff not the customers.
Quite. I also suspect the music is chosen BY the staff. I love finding bars and restaurants with no piped music or televisions and will always give such places my patronage. Wonderful. The one thing I will entertain, however, is a juke box in a seedy dive. At least then it’s the paying customer who decides the soundtrack.
A jukebox running vintage 45rpm singles – fine.
I can subject other customers to the joy of obscure B-sides.
A digital jukebox allowing one customer to put unlimited tracks on – no way.
Any jukebox containing Hotel California … take appropriate steely knife action!
I was totally deafened in a mountain accident in 1972. In 1991 I had a cochlear implant fitted. This enables me to talk to one person in a quiet environment, though not for too long. It is a boon – still one develops solitary pursuits.
In the later days of apartheid in SA there was something called a banning order which restricted the banned person to meeting with one person at a time. It seems Hockney, like me, has a lifetime banning order.
People think deafness = silence. It does not. One is beset by random noise generated internally – call “tinnitus”. Deafness is a noisy world.
People would like to help and be kind – but this requires communication and they can’t do that, so they retreat perplexed.
People have an erroneous view of lip-reading. With very few exceptions (usually people who went deaf slowly while they were acquiring language) lip-reading without audible clues is not possible. In the 50 odd years I have been deaf I have heard about two such people.
“Deaf” means to most hearing people “hard of hearing” so they tend to think it a mere nuisance (and shout). “Blind” is taken to mean totally blind, though few blind people are.
Maybe in twenty to thirty years there will be way to regrow a damaged hearing system. Until then cochlear implants are marvellous – and being fitted to younger people, and more quickly after trauma, they work much better.
Hockney is consistently interesting!
I often think that deafness is worse that blindness, partly because it is less obvious, but we also tend to think that people with hearing aid can hear normally which is not true as explained. I also think the deaf are being ripped off with promises that expensive private hearing aids are significantly better than the NHS aids. I only know one person who was persuaded to buy expensive hearing aids and she has gone back to the NHS. The article discusses background noise but there are also problems with telephone calls.
I agree with your first sentence. Blind people tend – quite rightly- to get a lot of sympathy. Deaf people are often seen simply as a nuisance or stupid. Humans are social animals, and deafness deprives the sufferer of human contact through conversation.
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My hearing is normally fine but I can’t pick out individual conversations in noisy places and never could.