This is Northumberland Calling 31.05.24

The Omni-cause Strikes UK Literary Festivals edition

Hello American (Particularly Central Ohio) this is Northumberland Calling

The Omni-cause, that coalition of Islamo-gaucherie combined with the terminally woke, managed to strike a body blow to the UK literary festival industry this week. First Hay caved into pressure including rumoured threats of escalated activist disruption which they did not have the security to deal with in place. Then yesterday, The Edinburgh International Book Festival ended its decades long association with Baillie Gifford, mainly due to the threats of activist disruption. Fossil Free Books has indicated that they will keep targeting book festivals which have accepted Baillie Gifford sponsorship. Capitulation has only encouraged rather than discouraged.  The thing is that ethical investing states under 5% of funds invested in fossil fuel industries. Baillie Gifford are at 2%. They are also not about to stop investing in Israeli companies, Nvidia currently has a market cap greater than all of the FTSE 100 combined and is 3^rd in the world behind Microsoft and Apple. Nvidia makes the chips which power AI. There are other investment companies which sponsor book festivals etc with far worse track records than BG.

As this whole thing started with Greta Thunberg pulling out of Edinburgh last year and I have to wonder if she misheard BG for BP and then being Greta couldn’t backdown and it has spiralled from there.  Book festivals are typically run on a shoestring and they are omni-cause leaning for a number of reasons(aka they had a tendency to not to invite openly GC authors)  but they do provide an important source of income for some authors. The dirty secret being that most authors speak for the publicity and only the big names are paid. The sponsorship from BG did help to alter that a bit. Sponsorship also helped to pay for outreach programmes to poorer communities and schools, often times including a free book along with the talk by an author.   The book festival industry is about to change if it can no longer rely on corporate sponsorship, particularly that sort of sponsorship which has strived to meet ethical targets.

It remains to be seen what other changes a handful of anarchists manage to impose on the publishing industry as a whole, an industry which is very concerned about sustainability and reducing its carbon footprint. Books do use fossil fuel in production and distribution as they are a  physical product. Of course digital uses fossil fuel as well as it is a huge consumer of energy.

This is the Edinburgh International Book Festival statement: https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/news/an-update-on-our-partnership-with-baillie-gifford

This is the Telegraph article on the matter: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/baillie-gifford-hay-festival-boycot-row/ or https://archive.ph/QFV9D

The General Election campaign kicks off in earnest next week on 4 June (the final date of registration for candidates). Labour National executive Committee has very quietly done a purge of ultra left wing candidates. Some like Diane Abbott are resisting. Others like Llyod Russell-Moyle (a complaint about behaviour from 8 years ago – what did he do?) are not. They have also been parachuting candidates into safe seats where MPs decided not to stand for re-election (Luke Akehurst who runs the We Believe in Israel and is a long time Labour mover and shaker has been selected for North Durham, for instance).  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/30/angela-rayner-has-dealt-a-devastating-blow-to-keir-starmer/ or https://archive.ph/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/30/angela-rayner-has-dealt-a-devastating-blow-to-keir-starmer/

Ed Davey seems not have read the Douglas Murray piece on Margaret Thatcher being ‘not for the jumping’. Instead the leader of Lib Dems seems to be on a mission to make a tit of himself (falling in paddle boarding, crazy bike riding, participating in slip and slide). Basically making the Lib Dems in to a joke party. There are times I really feel we have entered the theatre of the absurd but I don’t expect serious political parties to go for the slapstick infantilization. There again perhaps he wants to distract from his failure to meet with the sub-postmasters when he was in government and could have done something about the scandal.  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/28/liberal-democrat-ed-davey-is-worse-than-a-clown-hes-a-fool/ or https://archive.ph/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/28/liberal-democrat-ed-davey-is-worse-than-a-clown-hes-a-fool/

Sunak just continues to be wet but is looking towards ‘Whitby Woman’ for salvation. I suspect Whitby Woman is a TERF but she will be undecided and may decide to sit things out. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/05/30/whitby-woman-the-voter-who-could-save-the-tories-from-elect/ or https://archive.ph/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/05/30/whitby-woman-the-voter-who-could-save-the-tories-from-elect/

Certainly Victoria Atkins did what she said she would earlier this week and put in an emergency Puberty Blocker ban which covers all new prescriptions for Gender Incongruence related prescriptions. The ban is for private prescriptions is for 3 months as they do need to do a consultation. Wes Streeting (her most likely successor) has said that he welcomes the ban. The government press release: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-restrictions-on-puberty-blockers

The Princess of Wales is still recovering from her cancer treatment and will not do her first Colonel’s review of the troops in the lead up to the Trooping of the Colour. The king will review the troops from a carriage. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2024/05/30/princess-of-wales-first-colonels-review-trooping-the-colour/ or https://archive.ph/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2024/05/30/princess-of-wales-first-colonels-review-trooping-the-colour/

The Pompeii dig continues to bring to light more frescoes and graffiti. This week it was a fresco of a child in a hood and stick figured graffiti perhaps by children. The Telegraph said that this showed children attended gladiator matches, but there has been evidence before that children, particularly young boys went. For example, there was a good trade in gladiator figurines. These were the sports stars of their day. The concept of childhood innocence doesn’t really start until the Victorian era. You did occasionally have the purity of holy maids (see the disastrous Children’s Crusade) but there is no reason why boys would not have gone to the matches. It is thought the matches to the death where rarer than depicted in novels and on stage and screen simply because gladiators were an expensive investment. Rome had more fights to the death because the emperor sponsored the matches to keep the population sweet. Bread and circuses were a thing for a reason in Roman politics. Before I wrote The Gladiator’s Honour (which was the first Roman set historical romance to be published by a major publisher in 2005), I did a lot of research on gladiators and the surrounding milieu. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/05/28/pompeii-stick-figure-drawings-children-gladiators-death/ or https://archive.ph/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/05/28/pompeii-stick-figure-drawings-children-gladiators-death/

Here, it has been five years since I started the ‘rewilding project’ because I read Rebirding by Benedict MacDonald. The insect life has grown exponentially and the bird life in the garden has significantly increased. Nature if given a chance will fight back. Being a little less ‘ecologically tidy’ can pay big dividends. Because of ‘shifting baselines’ we really do easily forget the amount of insect soup which has been lost.  Even though it is a small act, I do think it is doing something more than simply giving into despair or participating in acts of civic disobedience which simply virtue signal and irritate others (see above on the book festivals).

A meme which captures my impressions of Paddy who is 23 months

Because there are so many fledglings I have to keep a close on Paddy who has a strong prey drive and a keen sense of smell. He doesn’t want to hurt them, he just wants to pick them up and carry them. This behaviour is rather distressing to his owner. We are going on lots of walks and I am working on his training but…

And ta dah, yesterday I pressed send on my latest manuscript to my editor. She let me know that she will get her thoughts back to me by the 14^th. She is very good at saying what is working and what is not working with the story. The key is to get the best read for the reader so I always welcome her feedback. It can be hard sometimes because I am too close and know so much about the characters. However, the reader can only know what is on the page and may get the wrong impression.  In the meantime, I will work on my contemporary women’s fiction. It helps to channel my imagination into my work, rather than into my life so to speak.

Hopefully everyone else’s week was a good one. I look forward to seeing you in the comments.

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