Today’s inaugural Spot The Difference competition comes to you courtesy of Photoshop Disasters, in association with Metro and The Sun. Click on the image for a full-screen view. First correct answer wins no prize.
So, has Banksy finally been unmasked? More importantly, who cares? Not I. I’m afraid I’m going to have to demur from the popular opinion that Banksy is our most finest graffitoist.
Let’s start with a couple of his recent topical daubings that have regularly appeared on news reports, often without being specifically referred to, as if the image alone speaks volumes. First there was that “comment” on the government’s 10p tax travails, where Banksy decided to draw a 10 pence piece with – gasp – Gordon Brown’s face where the lion should appear! Because, it is a 10p tax, and Gordon Brown removed the 10p band, and he is now the prime minister, and…oh, if you don’t get it, just forget it. Then Banksy’s satirical gaze moved to the Glastonbury festival; there had been some controversy as Michael Eavis, organiser fo the festival, invited a rapper, Jay Z, to perform at what has historically been a rock and folk affair. Banksy’s inspired painting: Jay Zeavis! Yes, Jay Z, and Michael Eavis, put them together and taa-daa! Er, that’s it.*
Of course, these are just two off-the-cuff recent paintings from Banksy’s conveyor belt of talent; like all artists we should perhaps judge him by some of his timeless classics. So what of them? Well there’s
Sigh. I mean they’re fine, they’re alright, but no more than that. Even when you take a Banksy painting I quite like – that one of a workman cleaning a wall of graffiti that is in fact an ancient cave painting – it is at best a half-decent half-thought, albeit one beautifully rendered. As for the majority, whether a picture of a dove of peace wearing a bullet-proof vest, or of a rioter throwing not a Molotov cocktail but a bunch of flowers, this stuff has all the intellectual depth of something you may find on twitter – “wot if a child frisked a soldier not the other way around lol!” – but coming in at well under the maximum 140 characters.
Why Banksy gets the praise he does I cannot tell, but equally surprising has been the reaction to these stories of his supposed unmasking where an emphasis has been placed on the shock discovery that Banksy may be a former public school boy. Again, I don’t care, but what were people expecting? Banksy’s pieces scream to me of being the work of a sniggering prankster playing at being a notorious, anti-establishment figure. Clearly a technically gifted artist and quite probably an alumnus of some art college or other his work puts me more in mind of Pulp’s “Common People” than Public Enemy’s “Fight The Power”, such is the “look at me, Mum, aren’t I being naughty” nature of his work. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Banksy has come from a privileged background but I would personally be far more amazed if it turned out that he is in fact some hard-nosed, dragged-up kid from the streets who “turned to the art of stencilling…whilst he was hiding from the police under a train carriage,” man. As it is, if it is ever confirmed that Banksy did receive a public school education then I wouldn’t bat an eyelid.
* Update: A question of attribution. Since conducting some rudimentary research following writing this rant I’m not now sure whether either of these pieces are in fact authentic Banksy’s. Pure laziness and assumptioning on my part I’m afraid. Still, they are pathetic enough to pass for the Master’s work, so the general point still remains.
I have forgotten more about economics than I ever knew, and I hope to demonstrate that here today. While many people seem to be losing their heads over yesterday’s rise in the inflation figures, I’m long enough in the tooth to remember a time when such statistics would have been viewed with envy. Certainly inflation is high by recent standards and heading in the wrong direction, and the price of some household staples and essentials has risen by far more than the headline inflation rate – perhaps I am complacent because my recent shopping basket included two plasma-screen TVs, so presumably bringing my personal inflation rate down even as the rise in the price of milk and bread popped a few quid on the top of my weekly shop – but I still don’t think the current situation quite deserves the media’s hyperbole, even if over time it may do. After all, if it is generally held that Labour inherited a fairly benign economic situation from the Conservatives in 1997, and if inflation is now at an 11-year high, then from a different perspective aren’t we are back where Labour came in, in fairly benign times? My fears are reserved for the precarious future, rather than the somewhat over-egged present.
But my main thought today is for Alistair Darling’s response to those inflation figures. While obviously trying to play down concerns, alleging that the British economy is well placed to weather this economic storm, an assertion for which there is no evidence whatsoever, he was still anxious to stress that the recent rise in prices emphasised how important it is to bear down on wage increases in both the public and private sectors so we can avoid a horrific wage-price spiral.
True enough, in principle; but if, as is generally believed, the current inflation is largely due to the rise in commodity prices, then in the first instance inflation will continue to rise regardless of any wage restraint. If inflation is running at 4-5%, do we really need to be talking about pay rises of around the 2% mark to fight the good fight on inflation? If anything isn’t the opposite the case, that such a cut in real wages, while being marginally anti-inflationary, could cause more problems as people have even less cash to spend at the shops, so tipping us further into recession, and that rather than donning the hair-shirt we should be looking at reasonable rather than restrictive pay rises? We can overdo this wage restraint lark, can’t we?
I can assure you that you can forget any idea that I am motivated in saying this by the fact that my wage negotiations are starting soon and the Chancellor’s inflation line is bound to be mentioned as once again we are likely to get offered 0% of bugger all (now look who’s indulging in a little hyperbole.) Similarly, you can dismiss any thought that Alistair Darling’s statements are in any way predicated upon wanting to keep some sort of lid on the public finances, rather than purely fighting the doughty fight against the inflation menace.
What of our Shadow Chancellor then? George Osborne was on Newsnight last night and in a rush of blood to the head appeared to offer a policy. The government should cut tax on fuel, he said, so to help hard pressed families. How to square that with the Conservative’s green agenda? Well, with a piece of nonsense called the “fuel stabiliser” Osborne said a Conservative government would then raise fuel tax as the price of oil falls. For a Tory, a Tory, to suggest a policy that so neuters the price mechanism seems quite astonishing to me, but this went unchallenged by interviewer Gavin Esler. I have little faith in this Labour government, but the prospect of the Conservatives in power quite scares me; not because their ideology is repellent, and not because they have generally run scared of announcing what they would do if or when they form the next government (which seems a perfectly reasonable political strategy,) but because whenever they are asked what could or should be done about the problems we are facing at the moment, when the silence isn’t deafening their response is so utterly fucking clueless.
I drive my own car. I fill it up at the pumps, and when diesel hit 121.9p per litre, which I paid outside Chipping Norton a couple of weeks ago, it really struck me that there was an intriguing advert on the forecourt of the filling station.
“A great way to start your day,” the advert announced (or something like that), and it featured a picture of some breakfasting suggestions, purchasable, one presumes, in the little shop. There was a washed-out looking photograph of an arrangement of some common-or-garden morning staples; a coffee, a croissant, a sweet Danish pastry…but then, somewhat disturbingly, a fresh, folded copy of the Daily Mail and two cans of Red Bull.
And I’m scared, frankly. Scared that someone thinks that those last two items taken together are a suitable and safe way for someone to start their day. Scared that perhaps the creator of that advertisement personally kicks off their morning by necking a couple of cans of Red Bull while devouring the latest ravings that the Mail has to offer. The possibility that someone, once fully breakfasted in such a style, and no doubt swivel-eyed, delusional and frantically gibbering Daily Mail stock-phrases to boot, could then embark on a full day’s work doing, well, anything really, anything at all, quite petrifies me.
Am I wrong? Naïve? Am I the one out of step? Is a double dose of adrenaline and bigotry a popular way for people to begin their day? Perhaps, but I have to believe that it is not, that the constituent parts of this lethal cocktail are kept at a safe distance from each other for the most part, and that the only person who thinks that the Mail and taurine should be freely mixed is also the person solely responsible for this advert.
Clearly I need to take action. I don’t want that advertisement putting ideas in people’s heads and so I will be contacting the oil company – Total – myself and demanding its immediate removal (I will play the corporate responsibility card, that they should do the right thing, as well as the self-interest one, advising them that they could be sued if a high-as-a-kite customer snaps their wrist in a green-ink frenzy.) My main concern, however, is for the person who created the advert; but is it a Total staffer or an employee from an advertising agency? We need to know, because we need to track them down. Whether the author personally imbibes Red Bull while reading the Melanie Phillips column – a chilling thought – or just thinks it is a socially and/or medically responsible thing to do, here is someone who is clearly a danger to themselves and others.
But how do we do it? How can we identify this trouble soul? There were no clues on the advert itself; no credits, no copywrite symbol, no identifying marks of any kind as far as I could see. We don’t even know when this specific advert was made; the date on the copy of the Daily Mail was obscured, and the banner headline, “‘Why the English middle classes have had enough,’ by Simon Heffer” doesn’t narrow things down at all. They publish a similar article every other week: the specific article in question, if even uniquely identifiable, could have been from anytime in the last twenty-odd years.
Can you help? Please? A Red Bull drinking Daily Mail reader is a ticking time-bomb that will eventually blow, and when it does I want to know that I have done everything humanly possible to have prevented it.
The Obscurer 