Had an afternoon nap, with my legs up on a chair rather higher than the one I was sitting in: woke up in excruciating pain from my right knee (I'm not really a softy: when I say excrutiating, Gawd love a duck it was).
Hobbling around on two sticks, hoping it'll be gone after a night's sleep. I do have arthritis in my knees, and many other places; but have never had a pain like this before.
I don't want sympathy - just send money and chocolate.
I am not a supporter of the Green Party - so why am I commenting on its policies? Because I'm also not an anti-Semitic racist; and one has to stand by one's principles, in a world in which principles can be so readily discarded.
The Green Party's annual conference has been taken over by the anti-Semites who came into Labour, under Jeremy Corbyn's period - for the record, I don't think that Jeremy Corbyn himself is any kind of racist or anti-Semite. But Labour was infiltrated in his time by pseudo-revolutionary sects of one kind or other, and like the Greens' leader today, he was too weak in yielding to them.
There are almost as many evil, stupid, and deluded people on the political left as there are on the right: but the leftist element has a tendency to cloud its prejudices in the mists of virtue - claiming to be against racism, while expressing blatantly racist opinions. Zac Polanski should have saved the energy he's expending in the Holborn and St Pancras by election to shape his party so that it may become, in time, ready for government. As it is, he is now handicapped by a policy resolution which is blatant in its racism. He has to repudiate it.
Zionism was the cause which led to the establishment of a Jewish state in the area of the Middle East in which Judaism was already a prominent feature, and had firm historical roots. We all surely know why Jews felt it necessary to return to their traditional home - they were being exterminated by design just about everywhere else. Now the Green Party's official position is that they are to be driven out of that state as well. That is just not a position which any British political party should be advocating. I never thought I'd see any mainstream British political party endorse crude - and ignorant - anti-Semitism. I have friends in the Green Party - well: I had. I'd hate to lose them - but this is a step way too far from any principle I hold dear.
The visit to this country - in fact a return to its place of construction - of the Bayeux Tapestry has somehow sparked a conversation about returning the Elgin Marbles, purchased from the Ottoman Empire in (I believe) 1816, by the Earl of Elgin. That debate, if it can be called that, crops up every 5 years or so. "I want my marbles back," said the then Greek Minister of Culture, Melina Mercouri, on a visit to London. The present Prime Minister wrote a piece years ago recommending their return; so did Boris Johnson, who later changed what passed for his mind.
And now, Sir Simon Jenkins, the Guardian's last remaining centre-right columnist, has called for their return, in a Guardian article today.
Well we're all entitled to an opinion (an arguable proposition, given the opinions some people have, but we'll let that stand): so here's mine. Were it not for Lord Elgin's purchase, it's perfectly possible, and likely, that the Marbles would no longer exist. The Turkish Ottomans didn't want them, appreciate them, or care for them. Nonetheless, the Ottomans weren't Greek - modern Greece has long wanted to reunite the Marbles with the remains of the Parthenon, from which they were taken. There's no doubt that they would care for them at least as well as the British Museum, which presently houses them.
I last saw the Marbles at least 60 years ago; my attachment to them is not, therefore, strong. I'd return them - I see all the arguments against: they're safe where they are, probably more people see them than would if they were returned to Greece; once you start examing the provenance of articles held in museums, and not only in Britain, you're on a vertiginously slippery slope. All of that is true - at least, the second part is arguable - there is a dedicated museum next to the Parthenon site which is visited by many people, and would probably attract many more if the marbles were present.
But they really aren't ours - and they'd mean so much more in situ, and not only to the Greeks. Frankly, I doubt that many people in the UK would give a damn'; whereas, or so it seems, the Greeks really want them back. So sending them where they'd be truly valued, not only by museum managers and historians, but by a large swathe of the population, just seems like the right thing to do; it might even help Greece's fragile economy, without harming ours. It would also bring an end to the endless round of speculation, campaigning, spilled ink - it would help our relationship with Greece (which, granted, is not a major partner of ours in economic terms) and, trumping all of that, it'd be the right thing to do.
So - let's do it?
