Scotland
in the
heat
Quintin Jardine
I would like to congratulate the BBC, its allies and its enemies in the UK media. They have united to make me feel (slightly) sorry for a banker.
A couple of days ago when I heard Susanna Reid announce that Stephen Hester, the CEO of RBS, was coming under ‘increasing pressure’ to renounce the share bonus, worth almost £1m, to which he was entitled under the terms of his employment with the bank, I knew as well as the next man that he need not plan on collecting it. But who orchestrated that pressure? The media, of course, and chief among them the BBC itself, in sending reporters out to vox-pop men and women in the street, of whom none were seen to have a rolled up copy of the FT under their arm, putting the simple question, ‘Do you believe that Banker X should receive a bonus of a million pounds?’, then screening the begged response.
If any of those interviewees had seen the individual’s contract of employment and the bonus triggers built in, their opinions would have some merit. Those who had not might as well have been shouting up the chimney for all their views were worth. Thus our lavishly-funded public broadcasting service is becoming to the improvement of standards in public debate as Pol Pot was to population growth in Cambodia.
I have no specific view on Stephen Hester’s subsequent decision, as I am not an RBS customer, and I haven’t seen his contract. However I do believe that it is reasonable for a person’s reward to be related to the size and performance of the business which he or she runs, or to the profit that she or he generates for an employer by his or her efforts. It’s even more reasonable when that reward is in shares, thus motivating the recipient to work even harder to grow the business in question, and increase its capital value.
Finally, two people stand out in current debate as positively dripping in ordure. One is Sir Philip Hampton, the chairman of RBS, who isolated his colleague, some might even say stabbed him neatly in the back, and made his decision inevitable, by declining his own bonus and climbing on to the moral high ground as fast as he could.
The other is Ed Miliband, the pigmy who currently leads what is left of the Labour Party, a man who as a vassal of the former prime minister, Gordon Brown, was part of the government that gave its approval to Mr Hester’s deal. Remarkably, Red Ed is now berating the prime minister for not welshing on the agreement that he himself nodded through. This demonstrates clearly that his word cannot be worth the paper on which it’s scrawled. Also, it leaves me observing that every time he opens his mouth, he makes David Cameron seem statesmanlike by comparison – quite an achievement.
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Islay’s Scotland
Barman, champagne bar, Grand Central Hotel, Glasgow. I go there occasionally for some reason…
This film could have put
me off sex. Not for too
long, hopefully
Barney MacFarlane
A paradox: that often the smallest words carry the heaviest weight. Or burden. Words of one syllable, such as sex, hate, sin, ban, blame – not least when they appear juxtaposed, as can confront the Calvinist-influenced psyche of the occasional Scot – have the facility to drag us into a common culpability.
In problems ‘concerning the laws of nature and nations’, according to David Hume, ‘it will be with regard to the universal approbation or blame which follows their observance or transgression’. So it’s blame, then, if you don’t get it right.
Another weighty word that rhymes with blame is exercising both critics and others who have seen a particular film on current release – ‘Shame’. The conceit of Steve McQueen’s art-house offering, set in New York, is sex addiction and the demons pulling the strings of its two main characters, a brother, fixated on extreme sex for gratification, and his self-harming sister, who appears, on at least one occasion, to use sex as a means of grabbing the attention of her sibling.
The male lead, played convincingly in glacial, facial expressions by Michael Fassbender, relates early in the proceedings that the siblings were born in Ireland and emigrated to the US as youngsters. This, one suspects, is to avoid the irritation of American audiences on hearing the suspect accents of Fassbender and Carey Mulligan who plays his sister, Sissy. Ironically, it is Fassbender, brought up in Killarney, who makes a better fist of the American vowels than the Londoner Mulligan.
McQueen, who apart from directing, also shares screenplay rights with the omnipresent Abi Morgan (‘The Iron Lady’, ‘The Hour’, ‘Birdsong’), made his name as an artist working in film; one such installation won him the Turner Prize in 1999. In a Guardian interview publicising ‘Shame’, he confessed to having felt an unspecified sense of loss and sought to explore intense subjects such as sex, not discussed properly because of the stigma attached to it. He is also credited on the BBC’s ‘Hard Talk’ with suggesting that sex addiction ruins people’s lives.
The movie could just as easily have been set in McQueen’s native London, yet, with family in New York and having studied at film school there, he plumped to film it in the cold, harsh and brooding atmosphere that the city oozes. And presumably to snatch a bigger audience in the process. Basking in the adoration of many critics, for all ‘Shame’s’ pretensions to explore the damaged lives of those afflicted, the condition of sex addiction is one of questionable provenance. Addictions to alcohol or gambling are surely far more damaging to health and hipper.
Perhaps it’s time to have some movies that actually celebrate the sexual
urge – not just the vapid rom coms – and remove the small words surrounding it: for glum let’s hear exultant, for shame let’s hear fulfilment.
And I’d like to have had some back story by way of a reason for the two main protagonists’ behaviour. Both Brandon (Fassbender) and Sissy are clearly severely damaged psychologically. Though Sissy does say in one exchange: ‘We’re not bad. We just come from a bad place.’
You can’t blame everything on the Irish, can you?
Brandon’s one ‘normal’ attachment in the film is brief, yet touching and tragic: following a date with a co-worker the coitus is interrupted by his inability to perform.
An earlier scene shows Brandon’s boss berating him for a welter of porn found on his office computer. Little is made of this, yet in real life such an offending employee would have faced the sack. The details, too, would have spread like wildfire through the office, presumably denying Brandon any possibility of a date with a female on the staff.
And ‘Shame’, while a gut-grabbing small word with great implications, is just that tiny bit inaccurate. Another five-letter word sums up the movie for me: guilt.
That’s certainly the emotion I felt as I trudged back along the cold, damp streets of south London after watching it. If you were of a susceptible nature, it could put you off sex. Not for too long, hopefully.
The sexual urge is one to be celebrated – where would we be without it? At a recent visit to an exhibition on postmodernism at the V&A Museum we had to excuse ourselves to get through one of the aisles whose passage was blocked by a throng gathered at a particular exhibit. I assumed it was some artistic delight or other and strained to see between the keening heads what was attracting them. It was a TV screen installation which I was unable to view. I did read, however, the legend placed beside it: ‘Video contains adult scenes’.
All those culture vultures massing on a revered south Kensington institution and when it comes down to it, one of the biggest draws is the sexy bit. Perhaps it’s time to have some movies that actually celebrate the sexual urge – not just the vapid rom coms – and remove the small words surrounding it: for glum let’s hear exultant, for shame let’s hear fulfilment. For sin let’s hear wow! Still short – but sweet.
For all the McQueen film’s faults, however, it sure beats the pants off ‘The Iron Lady’. Oops, sorry…I could have put that a little more delicately.
Barney MacFarlane is a former journalist, now involved in PR
and freelance editing
