I have no opinions about Stochausen [sic] but I have opinions about Oliver Kamm
I caant [sic] help thinking that there is a connectioon [sic] between Kamm’[sic] Jewish heritage and his anti German opinions. I imagine if Stockhausen was Israeli we would be reading a [sic] eulogy
Maybe its [sic] time Kamm changed the record as his extremist agenda and constant calls for wars against Iran etc are grating
Almost universally, the Afghans I know see the presence in their country of foreign military and assistance workers as a necessary means to an end. Some of them even agree that if the foreigners left today, Afghanistan would collapse tomorrow.
Current hate figure asks himself “coagulated whale spunk shoved through a sieve — will it go with beans on toast burnt in a squirrel trap for four days with hay harvested by pixies from a former Peruvian lavender field?”
whatever we might think about Martin Amis’s views on Islam or high-profile literary lobbying of international summit meetings, there is one compelling reason why these voices should be heard. Broadly speaking we inhabit a society in which certain political and cultural topics have more or less disappeared from public discussion, such is the anxiety with which politicians contemplate their approach. Amis elsewhere describes his self-consciously fearless statements on religion and “demographic questions” as ventures into otherwise “undiscussable” territory. And at a time when the population of the UK is predicted to increase by as much as 17% by 2031, it is perfectly legitimate to enquire what the consequences might be for our national identity, and yet fear of playing into the hands of the lunatic right means scarcely any politician dares initiate a debate on the subject.
In half a dozen current causes célèbres, whether specific (the attacks on Monica Ali, say, for having the cheek to write a novel about the Asian communities of the East End), or general (the future of public service broadcasting, the continuing trivialisation of our cultural life) one looks for a political response and finds nothing more than a hole in the air. Only the other month I chanced upon the spectacle of the housing minister Yvette Cooper outlining the government’s long-term plans for housing development, a series of pronouncements which could have been summarised by the slogan “We are going to do this whether you like it or not” and a kind of masterclass in illiberal and anti-democratic smugness.
In cases like these the writer becomes a politician by default, colonising territory from which politicians have effectively retreated. Curiously enough, in a world where only certain things can be said (usually for fear of offending people who would prefer hardly anything to be said at all) the man or woman at the desk seems a much doughtier defender of tolerance, freedom of expression and social justice than the pin-striped reality-softeners of the Westminster chamber.
