'three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree' - t.s. eliot, ash wednesday.
'perch'i' no spero di tornar giammai ("because I do not hope to turn again") how eliot begins the poem. eliot lifts this from cavalcanti (or from rosetti's translation of him).
the three leopards are supposed to represent the world, the flesh and the devil. they immediately attracted horsemouth's attention (as did the juniper tree).
(as did the singing bones later).
horsemouth is reconciling himself to the notion that he will be leaving the communal endeavour with not as much communally owned property as he would like. the wave has rolled up the beech but it must perforce roll back. conditions have changed - there is the need now to fund all of the insulation of the houses up to EPC C and there will almost certainly be the need to pay for section 20 works on flats at some point.
in a way horsemouth thinks it is a poor short term decision but he sees the appeal of it. (and anyway it may not come to pass).
... and in rochdale by-election news
election day - leap day - 29th february.
well labour had to drop their candidate azhar ali. his views range from the actually anti-semitic ('people in the media from certain jewish quarters'), to bog-standard conspiracy theory ('the egyptians are saying that they warned israel 10 days earlier … '), to a belief that seems to horsemouth merely factual (that israel wishes to clear gaza and seize the land).
for labour to delay in dropping him was foolish. for him to have spoken incautiously on this matter is the sign of a poor candidate. the point that is worth considering is that views critical of the actions of state of israel in gaza are widely held.
the 'labour supporters' vote is now split between azhar ali (still on the ballot paper - what happens if he gets elected?), disgraced former labour MP and reform party candidate simon danczuk ('exchanged explicit messages with a 17-year-old girl'), and george galloway (ahem). two local labour party officers are backing radical action on climate change candidate mark coleman.
horsemouth would gladly see the rise of an electable party to the left of labour, but he does not see it happening. first past the post is simply too effective a filtering mechanism to permit this.
'... under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining...'
No comments:
Post a Comment