No less a critic than AN Wilson describes this as the most perfect biograpy imaginable.
Jeremy is born of an obsessive, adoring mother. Mummy sends Jeremy to Eton. Mummy sends Jeremy to Oxford. At Oxford, Jeremy is flamboyant, as they used to say, his only female visitor his Mummy. Jeremy plots and cheats and steals and blackmails his way into the Presidency of the Oxford Union. One of his victims and rivals, Robin Day, is so disgusted by Jeremy that he calls the cops. Not for the last time, the cops are unable to prove Jeremy's crimes. Using other students' notes and essays, Jeremy scrapes a bum third in law. A lawyer himself, author, Bloch, dazzled and sympathetic throughout, concludes that Jeremy didn't really do much harm. Not as though Jeremy was working class. I don't know and I care less whether Bloch was a Bullingdon boy or not, but he thinks and writes like one. However repulsively crooked Jeremy demonstrates himself to be he is redeemed in Bloch's eyes by his great political gifts. And his love of parties.
Jeremy is popular with the homos and child molesters in the Liberal party and succeeds Jo Grimond as leader.
Some electoral success follows and Jeremy, like so many of his fellow travellers is invited, in this case by the Cottaging Grocer, Heath, to enter coalition. Unlike his successors, the revolting Steel and Clegg, Jeremy declines, playing a longer game.
Rumours circulate about Jeremy. Nasty journalists compile a dossier. Jeremy has solicited political donations which he trousers and pays to the eventual dogshooters, that they might rid him of his former rentboy, Norman Scott. Having done their best to protect Jeremy the authorities are left with no choice but to prosecute him for conspiracy to murder.
The only funny part of the book is that brief section in which Bloch describes Liberal worthies fleeing from Jeremy at the speed of light,
Cyril Smith, of all people, declaring that he wouldn't touch him with a barge pole and the arsehole, Boy David, telling him he wasn't welcome at party fixtures.
At his trial, the judge famously ordered the jury to acquit Jeremy on the grounds of his status and reject the evidence of poor Norman, a man whom lawyer-writer Bloch describes as a parasite; his subject Jeremy, of course, having ponced his entire life off his mother, his wives, his electors, party members and donors was spared this calumny, even though he the more richly deserved it; Norman Scott was a hysterical dissembler, one who traded as best he could on the then anti-homosexual climate which victimised him far more that it did Jeremy Thorpe, no reason for public schoolboys to attempt his murder. The concept of justice for all seems entirely alien in Bloch's partial and snooty book.
The last section of this comprehensive biography deals with Jeremy's decline after the trial. Many "bravely battle" not only one but multiple chronic illnesses; it is not a matter of valour but of necessity and desperation, who would not rather live than die? Thorpe's contraction of Parkinsons's Disease is - as by now you would expect from this book- uniquely tragic, suffered as it is by a gobby, idle, worthless tosser, but an Oxbridge one. After his trial, Jeremy seeks and expects prestigious appointments, unable to realise that even though acquitted, his trial revealed him to be utterly rotten and completely dishonest. Amnesty International board members resign in droves at the thought that he might be given a senior appointment to which he felt entitled; Robert Mugabe, yes, him, fucked Jeremy off from some position he sought in Zimbabwe; at one time Jeremy was confident of standing again as MP for North Devon and had to be persuaded of how ridiiculous an idea this was. Steel & Co rejected him. In his last years Jeremy hustled for a peerage - purely to get back into parliament, y'understand, and display his dazzling gifts of gabshitery; when his claim to a nonsensical Mediaeval baronetcy evaporated he lobbied unsuccessfully for a life peerage.
|The nerve of some people, who do they think they are?
I generally feel some sympathy for human villainy as long as there is an element of remorse in the villain. Thorpe was as much victim of parental expectation as was Scott of parental neglect; both were fantasists, both, at that time, criminal deviants, abiding in the demi-monde of rough, urgent buggery and showy - flamboyant - I Dare You masquerade but from those to whom much has been given, much is expected and in this as well as in his lifelong denial of his criminality, Thorpe disappoints. He has enough sympathisers I was never one but Bloch's book, well worth borrowing from the library, comfirms my hostility to he and all of his ilk.
It might be worth noting that Thorpe's perverse acquittal - one of the jurors later said Oh, he done it, but he and his wife had suffered enough - and shamlessness set a new benchmark for dastardly conduct amongst politicians, none now resign, all now, like Cameron insist that they take responsibility whilst doing nothing of the sort,
all trouser others' money, all serve wealthy benefactors rather than the nation, many are gleefully, audaciously degenerate and decadent
- flambolyant, in Thorpe's time.
I saw Chris Underpants, MP, on Question Time last week.
mrs ishmael was amazed, this is that bloke who posed in his pants and sent the picture all around the world, seeking casual gay sex
and now he's on Labour's front bench and here on the telly, moralising at us?
Yes, dear and before that he was an Amglican priest.
Still, at least he's not a Liberal, doesn't go around trying to murder his embarrassments, like they do.
45 comments:
I always used to think that was why they were called "The Liberals".
Not as though it is correct to use the past tense, mr alphons, all of them have recently colluded in Smithgate, with Oaten, with Huhne and with Laws, not to mention Lord Grope and that other cunt, Hancox, is it, down in the SouthWest, beasting his mentally ill constituents. All Jeremy"s children, bless.
The great Auberon knew how disgusting he was of course and there is indeed a strong case for holding the Liberals in all their forms as the scummiest of the scum. A shameless collection of prigs and freaks, the High Priests of the most repellent consequences of permissiveness.
Tendencies, Bloch calls them, of mutual benefit to both Jeremy and the nameless, coarse, working class youths upon whom he preyed; one must hope that this is not the Bar's official view of the sex trade, then or now. When we set Thorpe's attitudes alongside those of Boothby, Cyril Smith and all of those currently under investigation, the nudge-nudging by the Establishment at Thoroe's predations actually does bracket homosexuality in that predatory form with the tendencies which have led to the beasting of so many young. It is worth a look, mr bungalow bill, just to see how little attitudes have changed among members of the charmed circle, in which I would locate the author.
Yes as we have said before it is the entitled fucking of the powerless or less powerful which is at the disgusting heart of all this. As we know from our Marx, the body and the body's abuses are always political but we don't need Marx to grasp that. Common human decency, a tired phrase of course, is enough.
Yes as we have said before it is the entitled fucking of the powerless or less powerful which is at the disgusting heart of all this. As we know from our Marx, the body and the body's abuses are always political but we don't need Marx to grasp that. Common human decency, a tired phrase of course, is enough.
Sorry for the repetition. Age and stupidity.
I wonder if Channel Four will be doing a 'Green: The First 100 Days' or maybe a 'Labour-SNP: The First 100 days' (the latter being a more likely scenario) funded by the taxpayer and sponsored by Lexus NX? I have re-designated 'Whitechapel' as 'Ethnic-Chapel' on my Monopoly board in anticipation... We can all be reassured by the sight of the State and Globacorp using a sledgehammer to crack a few nuts...
It is a world I only know at one remove but it does seem so vile and loveless, Thorpe's. I often rant here about the disappearance of the queer and his replacement by the gay-demanding-to-be-straight; it's hard to know but I guess things're better now, for those on the meatrack, although culturally speaking I would light-up ten thousand Steven Frys the better to see one Quentin Crisp, one Alan Ginsberg. Some years back I read a chunk of new gay fiction, Edmund White and such, unsurprisingly, it wasn't fof me, far too comfortable.
The odd thing mr sg, is that regardless of what we are told to think about Greece, for instance, many on the normally redneck MSM messageboards understand and express perfectly that not only do the Greeks have no option but that the rest of us need them to prevail. There is, again, a counterculture, a cyber diaspora ofthose who refuse to believe as they are instructed.
Yes Mr I - there may be a small chink of light in that...
One of the most cultured and intellectually able individuals I worked with in the City in the 80s was a greek. Coincidentally, the man now in charge of the Greek Government's asset privatisation under orders from the Troika. Its no coincidence to see that he has offloaded bugger-all.
One of my best maths tutors at uni was a Greek.
There is a stratum of highly educated, well travelled and capable people in Greek society. The current Greek finance minister seems one example, whether you agree with his politics or not.
It seems to me the dumb buggers in the EU currently trying to shaft the Greeks have bitten off more than they can chew. Here's hoping.
Regarding the world of 'one remove' - terra incognita for me but I am intrigued by The Duke of Burgundy. I may just get round to visiting the accursed Multiplex:
https://vimeo.com/106584379
If I were Greek, and notwithstanding the odd colonel and some spasms along the way, I would humbly offer for consideration the incalculable originating gift that their ancestors made to human civilisation. Brutal bastards in many ways, of course, as much as the Romans and everything else that came after, but fucking hell it's a bit ripe for the Frau 70 years on to be lecturing Athens on anything, least of all the anal virtues of sound banking, set against a world's worth of mathematics, science, art, literature and philosophy. Even Ludwig, Richard and some of the Austrians of The Greater Germany don't equalise.
It's all along time ago though and the Parthenon will never make a bank. Further, it looks like Mr Leathercoat will suck Eurocock and know what's good for him.
Yes, here's hoping. Another thing I have noticed is that when they choose to, the Greek representatives, despite being political novices can speak DiploShit as fluently as any of the greysuit EuroDicks. Y'know, as if they are making a concession, gettin' down with the yoof. Only ever knew a few Greeks, myself, in the restaurant trade, but I loved the culture, the handshaking, the embrace, the courtesy and hospitality. Sure rubbed off on me, as a young man. I shake people's hands if they've been out of the room for five minutes.
The other night, youtubing, I watched a dozen versions, including Glenn Gould's and Ashkenazy's, of the adagio from Beethoven's Emperor Concerto and I though to myself There is simply nothing comparable in Greek poetry or drama, those things cannot do what Beethoven does, yet Beethoven surely stood as much on Homer's shoulders as he did on Haydn's.
On creativity's continuum, though, Frau Hausfrau and her kin are more vandal than virtuoso.
Careful, mr sg, that you don't find yourself slippin' and a-slidin' into Fifty Shades of Spanking, or whatever it is.
No risk of that. All that Fifty Shades nonesense leaves me cold...
I'm not so sure about the Greeks sucking Eurocock or rather Hermanweiner quite yet. In 2008, there was much of a rumpus about Italy being in the shit but nothing much changed because people hardly used the government and I suspect much the same of the Athenians. With tax evasion ad corruption being a subjective notion of control - well, it becomes a different matter when the tax man wanders up and says 'look you - it's not for my banker bosses that you're paying your taxes but for Mrs Pollokredis, your 4th form teacher, ya tool' which should engage a bit of wallet finding. Bankruptcy, default - ah, just a state of mind under an azure sky.
It's the entitlement of their supposed superiority that corrupts them - Kinnocks as much as Thorpes. "My qualification for political leadership is that Jack Straw was my dad." Fuck me.
We now see a lot of bollocks being talked about receipts for tradesmen. As if a bloke clipping a hedge for a cash tenner was a sin of some sort. Would we rather that he sat on his arse and the hedge went unclipped? Poor Ed Balls, for twas he, now has to endure his expenses claims being reprinted so that we can see once again the outlandish size of the snout - and the depth of the trough. Dickhead. But it had never occurred to Balls that it was about him too. Yes, you, you useless bastard. You - and your not-quite-worthless missus - are become the problem. A perfect cameo played and not a hint of self-awareness to darken the delicious morning. Everyone hates Ed Balls and need he now ask why?
Likewise you can tootle over to the Grauniad and read the comments of proper fevered trots and commies, Party-men to the last, and they all want Greece to "pay her way" and "honour her debts". Four legs good, two legs bad, and orthodoxy now printed through their spines like sticks of rock. Same as the old boss. They are all Thatchers now. Little Kinnock warriors with ipads in their craft-fair satchels and not an original thought in their collective, co-op head.
I hope Stavros hangs on for his notional draw. A good ticking off from Miss - no grinning! - and the debt kicked way down the ground to some other tomorrow. I think that he will and with that the Euro dies as a currency and becomes something else.
I think that we'll be needing some inflation soon. Or a proper war. Shrove Tuesday and not a moment too soon.
I just get the feeling that the EU will have ensured that one of their blokes is running the show in Greece…now or in the near future.
You can’t bring integrity or honesty and doing what’s best for the people and absurdities such as that into these things.
Thorpe wouldn’t have got into power even if the liberals could scratch together a majority. He was too unpredictable.
Not like today’s politicians.
Beat me to it, mr mongoose, with Blinky Balls and his mrs and the sorts of things one should never say if one wants to avoid drawing attention to one's own sins. The ineptitude is staggering, I saw it on that KiddysNewsnight show, the Bill Somebody Supporters' Club gaffe and now this nonsense. All he needed to say was that these things are a matter of individual choice, but no, he had to preach, the Godless heathen fuckpig. One must assume that card-carrying Labour members are determined to dismantle their party, otherwise their front bench would consist of very different people.
I didn't complete enough answers in my English A level to merit any sort of pass. I wrote two essays, the one was about Somerset Mahgham's Of Human Bondage and the other was on the history of the Manchester Guardian. They gave me an A.
Ah, rock'n'roll, I gave you the best days of my life.
I'd punch that Will Straw in the face if he came 'round here.
Since Jo Grimond, mr sg, there has only been Nick Clegg and Ming the Ancient to whom no personal scandal has attached; Steel, Pantsdown and Kennedy are all tainted,as are many in the PLP. I think If he hadn't been exposed Jeremy might've become the first Deputy Prime Minister. Who knows? He was an empty-headed sonofabitch but as you say, they all are, now.
As I said, I dunno about Greece, except that I wish them well. Down with the EuroReichsters, down with les Micawbers Guardianiste, down with Globacorp's kleptocracy. Je suis Stavros.
Here in North Devon Thorpe`s approved heir, Sir Nick Harvey ( knighted as compensation for standing down to let fucking Laws return) sent, the impertinent cunt, a leaflet through my letterbox telling me I had to vote for him to stop Gideon Osbum, his Junta bumchum he`d been working for the past five years. I wouldn`t dishonour my posterior by using it for toilet paper.
Fat Little Balls is going on about hedge cutters to distract people from the crimes of the banksters, whom he hopes to be serving again soon, the greasy little bastard.
I hope Stavors defacates comprehensively in front of the EU, the Troika, the banksters, all the other worthless fucking cunts and says, That is more real than your magic money, your zombie banks, your greasy grubby spiv clerks.
Stavros. Perhaps the Guardianistas are shitting themselves because they`re beginning to realise Stavros might do what Poundland Monobollock won`t and rip the EU apart.
A genuine populist uprising ? They`re more concerned with how it might affect property prices.
According to RT and alJ, mr yardarm, there are many large demonstrations, all across Europe, in support of Stavros; you can see them, tens of thousands of people, just not on skymadeupnewsandfilth.
That cunt Rusbridger, at the Guardian, pays himself a million a year from revenues classified as charity status income, tax evader, crook and stooge, the greatest liberal voice in the world. My i-thing won't handle the Guardian without me doing something to it. I haven't..
I saw SpermFace in Europe today, squeaking about his plan for long-term whatever it is; we must be a laughing stock, a wasted, posh rentboy as a finance minister.
Is Foster still a LD MP down yoir way? ms lilith had similar choice things to say about him.
I see that Oborne has quit the Telegraph. He explains why over at Fawkes' place:
http://order-order.com/2015/02/17/breaking-oborne-quits-telegraph/#more-187569
Interesting!
Shame for the poor darling, took him all this time to figure out that the Filth-O-Graph is the Filth-O-Graph, that the Bizarro Twins are even worse than Conrad Black, good job he was never employed as a journalist, finding things out, eh?
Still, on the upside there will be more space for Byrony et al now! I'm surprised that Booker still clings on there.
I think he died, some years ago, and they just use some anti-EU software to write his columns, may as well.
It is fucking awful, the 'paper, used to have such fine writers, once upon a time. Black and Amiel started the decline but this gang, well....
Didya know it was Hague ennobled crooked Conrad, John Major wouldn't touch him with a bargepole?
The old mainstream papers are crap now. I read the articles by people I know but that must be a dying of the light measured in my days. Kids don't buy or read newspapers; they have aggregators - as do I, in fact. But these things are reinforcers of existing interest and prejudice. Nobody's getting any wider. Sitting eating your lunch with a paper and leafing through to fill the 20 mins left with a find of something already dismissed? That's not going to happen again.
As you say, Mr Ishmael, The Guardian especially is a rag-mag. An embarrassment compared to what it once used to be. "Join the Guardian"? Do fuck off.
The obits are the only bit of the DT worth reading now. I can't help the conclusion that today's people are no match for yesterdays people. Looking forward to Blair's obit. Though I can't imagine comments will be open on that one.
Reading the Filth's obituaries, back in the 'nineties, mr mike, it quite changed my view of the then older generation, especially those who had fought in the German wars; such modesty, such achievement, service and sacrifice. And such fine writing. It might be that Death's lens is in soft focus but I think you are right, yesterday's people were wrought from metals less base, sterner stuff and they inspired me. Moving up to Orkney for the first time and having just joined the M6, our trailer overturned, the car spun and halted, across the motorway, facing three packed lanes of oncoming Bank Holiday Monday traffic; it all stopped with centimetres to spare - the overturning and spinning had happened almost in slo-mo - some lorry drivers jumped out, righted the trailer and got us onto the hard shoulder, together with the spilled contents and after a few minutes and a bit of sledgehammering on the trailer we continued with the journey. A younger relative, travelling in convoy with us, a bit behind, said Fuck me, you're carrying on? Most people'd wanna go into counselling after that. Nah, we were lucky, no harm done, 'snot as though we been at the fucking Somme, like the old boys. That's proper trauma. That was the Telegraph obituarists talking, levelling my head and easing my mind.
The science and nature writing, too, was always impressive; now, as mr sg says, we have Bryony Slut, her thoughts and attitudes, where once was AN Wilson.
It is easy to say, as I often do, mr mongoose, that Rupert Murdoch and Andrew Neil started the rotting of the UK press but we shouldn't forget that, daily, millions of our fellows buy that shit. Tits'n'ass, TeeVee, Sport and Bigotry now the national diet, people gorging on it, mentally obese, while GlobaCorp burns the libraries, trashes the hospitals, exterminates the sick and buggers the children. The fourth estate, they call it, people like Hislop, a free and vigorous press, the cornerstone of our liberty, the horrid fat cunt.
It has been said before that the money loaned out to the Greeks and, indeed, to all of us via quantative easing (A joke on us if ever there was one) all forms of personal and public credit, all forms of aid to those in bongo-bongo land, who, under the guise of development aid for clean water and suchlike would rape their country of natural resources including people (Special thanks to Bob and Bozo for that one) is not real. Out of thin air..and it is.
That’s as may be but the money used to pay back these loans is real. And it comes out of the pockets of ordinary people. That’s the tragedy.
If the incumbent Greek premier can stick it to them for that, I would applaud. Show me the fuckin’ money you lent us.
The suits in the EU can’t let that happen or Spain will follow and the rest…the whole house of cards will come down.
I’m waiting for the various governments of those countries lacking the balls that the Greeks have to announce foreclosure of pensions funds.
I’m beginning to think of pensions as a fukin’ ponzi scheme anyway.
Yeah and meedja will back them all the way as there is not a journalist, in the true sense, left. When was the last time a journalist campaigned for a wrongdoers balls to be presented on a plate for public examination?
The corruption of discourse, for corruption it is, Mr Ishmael, is touched upon in the Sony/DT/Oborne business. The separation of news from comment was once clear and unequivocal. A paper howeevr base would at least strive to get the facts right. Now that everything is electric and flows by link and click, all is just words. And that means that it is all ammo for the unscrupulous and/or the lame-witted. Go and read any newspaper column and then visit the comments below. After a day or two it becomes clear who the nutters are, yes, but also it becomes clear who is motivated to parrot a particular line, or perhaps who is just a cunt. The stats must have been done, of course, but it is dispiriting how discourse is undermined by the ingress of whores and phonies. As I say, it is too late for the paper press.
And that is why I come here, mr mongoose.
The pension thing has already been piloted, mr sg, all across the United States municipalities have welched on pensions and it would be among the firsf strategies of an incoming GNU to say that pensions are unaffordable, apart from their own; we already accept that disability is fiscally unacceptable. Their needs to be an uprising, akin to our Civil War or the French Revolution. Up against the wall, motherfuckers.
I think you may have me confused with Mr Shoulders, Mr I. But no matter - I fear that he is right about the pensions and the precedents you point to are not encouraging. They are of course 'invested' in all the shit that we have been discussing, from time to time, on our collective journey along this road. I expect to find that I have been given a severe 'haircut' when the time comes to collect what's left of mine.
The fate of the Telegraph is sad and sorry indeed but in step with much of the rest of our 'civic architecture', to borrow Oborne's phrase. As for Booker, I take your point, though I'm not sure he's quite dead yet.
The Telegraph is a great loss, its demise is significant because it is typical of the debasement of the right. Just as the Left has been mocked by the Miliband shambles and the Kinnock-Blair collapse preceding it, so civilised libertarian Toryism has been subjected to the reign of dirty merchants and Thatcher's revolting cultural legacy.
The old Telegraph was something delightfully out of step, writers like Michael Wharton and the others we know. Now it is a sad shell like the rest of our journalism. I can think of nothing among our papers or journals which is courageous, honourable or other than an adjunct of the New Tyranny.
The Tom Bower book on Conrad and Barbara Black is instructive on the demise of the Telegraph, having Thatcher AND Kissinger signing-off your larceny is some going; I think the Barclays have only completed the process. I would say that, as mr mongoose points out, there is an element of inevitability, the new technology undermining the dead tree press, in the ruination of the Telegraph but I would also say that if it had maintained its quality I would daily have made the twenty mile round trip to collect it from the nearest stockist, in fact I did used to make the journey to buy the Herald, the Guardian and the Telegraph; wouldn't have any of them in the house, now.
Sorry, mr sg. And mr doug shoulders.
No apology necessary Mr I!
In other 'news' I see that 'Lord' Kinnock has released an emission equating the burden imposed by Labour's proposed Mansion Tax to the price of a rich man's lunch. I feel that he is well qualified to draw this comparison.
Talking of the DT, this has to be a new high/low - take your pick - in international corruption:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/tony-blair/11421856/Tony-Blair-to-advise-Serbian-government-16-years-after-bombing-Belgrade.html
No problem here Mr Ishmael.
I used to read the telegraph after my dad read it… the Glasgow Herald too. (My dad could complete the wee stinker before the solution came out) We read the Observer then switched to the Sunday times for some reason…might have been when they lost Mckilveny.. I went back to read the observer when I left home. The onset of interweb put paid to newspapaers in my house. Conspiracy theorists and revisionist history beckoned and thence I took a jaundiced and cynical view of everything…and I mean everything that was uttered from mainstream press.
Pare back the trees to see the wood and read between the lines often gets the real story.
I laugh heartily when I see the new PBC million dollar news room with all those reporters running around full of self-importance. PBC news is entertainment..they work in a studio…a stage Strutting and fretting for an hour or so… nothing to report…..
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