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George Orwell: Egg man (koo koo ka joob)

I've been riveted by the latest installments in the Orwell Diary blog, in which the Orwell Society posts one diary entry from George Orwell's 1938 journal every day as a blog-post. Since mid-October, the journal entries have been from a rented villa in Marrakech (sic), and Orwell's journals have grown increasingly obsessed with the number of eggs his hens are laying (not many). Every time I see an entry like this: "21.11.38: Two eggs," I crack up. 30.11.38: Two eggs. 29.11.38: One egg. 28.11.38: Two eggs. 27.11.38: One egg. 25.11.38: Two eggs. 24.11.38: One egg. Cylinder of Butagaz gave out yesterday. That makes 5 weeks. It has supplied pretty regularly 3 gas-jets (one of them higher candle-power ? I think 60 ? than the others) & a fourth occasionally. Where will it end? The suspense is killing me! 30.11.38: Two eggs. See also: Orwell's diaries in blog form...

Rachel Cooke talks to Jamie Oliver about his Ministry of Food

When Jamie's Ministry of Food screened on Channel 4 last month, a trail of newspaper columns and blogs flapped in its wake like discarded burger wrappers in a deserted shopping precinct. It goes without saying that most were wildly over the top. Some spoke out in favour of Oliver's mission to teach Rotherham to cook, one broadsheet writer acclaiming the series as 'the most powerful political documentary in years'. Others, including some readers of the Rotherham Advertiser, slagged him off for being patronising, for stereotyping northerners, for swearing too much, and for having a posh car. 'How much money did Mockney-boy get paid for this latest self-serving drivel?' wrote one visitor to a foodie website. 'What a phoney! Sainsbury's biggest profit margins come from the kind of processed foods he rails against - and yet he is still willing to endorse the company. The guy is an UTTER HYPOCRITE.' This kind of hyperbole always gets on my nerves, but in this case it was especially vexing. Television, in its 21st-century reality show-inspired form, is manipulative, and rarely subtle. Taking it too seriously either way seems to me to be a little daffy. It's on screen, you watch it, you talk about it with your friends, and then it's over: gone, faster than you can say stir-fried beef with black-bean sauce. Putting aside Oliver's human qualities for a moment, if a series claims to be concerned with effecting long-term change, as this one did, it's what happens after the cameras have gone that matters (usually, nothing). I'm from South Yorkshire myself, and highly sensitive to southern slights (you might say overly sensitive), but I decided to save my breath until I'd been up to Rotherham - and I mean a Rotherham now bereft of TV cameras, publicists and Jamie's shiny Land Rover. I wanted to catch his project - a walk-in centre on the town's main square offering advice and free cookery lessons to anyone who cares to sign up - on the hop. Would it be full of ex-steel workers basting chickens? Or would it be silent as the grave, a stage set in need of actors and a director? All of which is a somewhat long-winded way of explaining how I come to be standing mournfully outside Jamie's Ministry of Food on the coldest day of the year so far. 'Closed' says the sign on the door. Oh no! But the lights are on, so I bang on a window. A woman in a red apron - who, it turns out, is Lisa Taylor, a non-cook who became the Ministry's manager after answering an ad in the local paper - appears. I explain who I am. Are you closed? I ask, heart sinking, fingers possibly gangrenous. Yes, she tells me, the Ministry is closed to the public this Monday afternoon, but only because a class is shortly to begin. This is how it works: during the week, it offers classes to students who have pre-booked their places, and who are moving through a 10-week course together, as a group. But on Saturdays, when people are not at work or school, the place operates as a drop-in, with demonstrations for as many as can crowd inside. Are the classes well attended? 'We could fill every one 10 times over,' she says. 'Especially the Wednesday nights, which are led by Mick the miner [Mick Trueman, one of Jamie's novice cooks in the series, is now a born-again home chef]. Anyway, come in. You're welcome to watch. Would you like a cup of tea?'Today's lesson is led by 23-year-old Matthew Borrington, a bricklayer whom Jamie recruited to his original group after meeting him at Rotherham FC (Oliver went to the football club to illustrate, on a grand scale, the 'pass-it-on' principle, by which one novice learns one new recipe which he then teaches to two friends, and so on). Matthew works from 6am until 2pm, and then comes straight here to his students: Roger, a policeman; Steve, who owns a local pet shop; and Phil, a carer. The group has been together for eight weeks, and today Matthew is teaching them how to make chilli con carne. 'It's great,' he says. 'They're all men, and not one of them had cooked a thing before. Now they're dead keen, though we always have a bit of football chat, first.' But he doesn't only teach here. Matthew is a roving ambassador, involved with trying to persuade local businesses to start running pass-it-on classes in their workforce's lunch hours, and by going into schools. So his enthusiasm hasn't waned since Jamie's departure? 'Oh, no. It's as high as ever.' His new cooking skills have even helped him to bag a girlfriend. 'To be honest, it's better now the cameras have gone,' says Lisa. 'We can crack on - make it Rotherham's project, rather than Jamie's project.' When Rotherham Council takes over the Ministry from Oliver in a few weeks' time - it has agreed to fund it to the tune of £125,000 for another year, as part of its ongoing effort to tackle obesity and chronic poor health in the area - the scheme will employ two more members of staff, one full time, one part time, thus doubling its work force. When the men arrive - Roger is stuck at work, so only Phil and Steve are present - I ask why they signed up. Phil wants to be able to cook for his partner, whom he looks after full time. Steve was becoming increasingly frustrated that, on days when it was his turn to cook for his children, all he could come up with was chicken nuggets and oven chips. 'My perception of this place,' he says, looking round at the ovens and work surfaces, 'was that it was a gimmick to go with a reality show. You didn't really see it that much on the series, did you? Then one of my customers told me what was going on, so I came in.' Steve's new skills mean increased marital harmony at home, and two children whose palates grow more sophisticated by the hour. 'The other day, I made chicken and leek stroganoff. I wasn't hopeful they'd like it, but they were full of praise.' He wipes a tear from his eye, which I sentimentally take to be one of pure happiness. But no, it's the onions he is chopping for his chilli. Still, onions or no onions, there's no getting away from the fact this group is an adult educationalist's wet dream, ticking so many boxes funding-wise that it is hardly surprising that Rotherham council is keen to back it financially. The local Tory opposition has accused the council leadership of swooning at celebrity's feet. But the only star here right now is Matthew Borrington, the inspiration for the Rotherham fans' latest chant. 'Pass it on, pass it on, pass it ON...' they sing. 'I like a sausage roll at the game,' he says. 'But these days, as soon as I put it in my mouth, I get so much stick, you wouldn't believe it.'Before all this, I meet up with Oliver. This is the second time I have interviewed him: the first was when he was much younger (he is still only 33), and I can't say that I warmed to him. He was at the height of his 'bish, bash, bosh' phase and kept saying things like: 'I love it when the kitchen is pomp-pomp-pomp-pomp-POMP-ING!' Six years on, though, he is much improved: softer round the edges, more thoughtful, less arrogant, nice manners apart from all the swearing - and also (and perhaps this is the real reason I warm to him) mildly anxious, possibly even a little depressed.When I ask where he is going next with his Ministry - surely he can't leave the story here - he sighs, and says wearily: 'Everyone wants me to leave it. Everyone in my life, except my wife. My mum, my dad, my colleagues. Everyone.' Why? 'They think it makes me unhappy. Which it doesn't. But these things I do are hard...' His voice trails off. 'Sleepless... worry. I've had shit for the last week [the attacks in the Advertiser, and elsewhere]. I'm more than big enough to take it, but I don't need journalists to pull me apart; I pull myself apart. Programme one [which introduced us to Natasha Whiteman, a single mother who, until the arrival of Oliver, fed her children exclusively on kebabs and chips] had to be like that - and, by the way, that's the truth. It was a snapshot of Britain. If you don't like the smell of shit on your own territory, tough. It's there. It's a mile from any of us.'So will he try to expand the concept, roll it out across the country, keep nagging the relevant government departments, as he did so successfully with school dinners, or is he just going to walk away? He has already started on his next series for Channel 4, a road trip across America with - or so I'm guessing - the obligatory recipes for grits and fried green tomatoes. 'OK,' he says, as if trying to muster the energy to detail the full horror of what lies ahead. 'Are we small? Yes. Is it the tip of an iceberg? Yes. But in Rotherham, 1,700 people have attended demonstrations in the last month. We can give measurable results. We can monitor age, ethnic minorities, whatever. Rotherham is going to pay for it for another year. Other councils are queuing up [to replicate the idea]. So now, we have a new fucking problem. Everyone wants a ministry of food, 'cos they're great. So we say: go on, then! And then they say, well, we're not sure we want a government ministry of food. So I think: oh, yeah. What would a government ministry of food look like? So then I realise: I've branded it as Jamie's ministry of food. Ask Bradford if they want a government ministry of food, or a Jamie's ministry of food, and they'll say: Jamie's. But I've got enough staff, and enough worries, already.' Right. So... 'So what we've done is, we've started a non-profit making business, and I am paying two or three people who know about franchising, and the reason for that is that I have started something, and I have to continue it, otherwise it will turn into complete dogshit. I will just have to do a roll-out.' This commitment makes me want to clap, but the trouble with Oliver is that, when he thinks aloud, he gets muddled. Also, though he might not know it, he is a moral relativist to his very marrow. He tells me that he has no faith in the ability of local or central government to run with his idea. 'The reason the Ministry is working in Rotherham is because we went up there and interviewed 30 local boys and girls, and we're not fucking stupid. If they [local government] did it, can you imagine what the staff would look like? You could have anyone getting a fucking job! You've got to understand food, love food, and understand people skills. So, I am going to have to charge councils for this. If I can charge them, that's fine. But it's still another business I've got to look after.' All of which is fair enough, even if it does sound a bit, well, grand. But then he says: 'I can't stop thinking about all this. I'm not an academically bright person. I think about everything like my dad's pub [Oliver's father, Trevor, is an Essex pub landlord]. Go to Pret A Manger or McDonald's and ask them: have you got an inspiring boss? They'll say: yes. I know the bosses of those companies and they're fucking inspiring. They're really shit hot. They're visionary. Look at what they've done. Fucking hell!' Eh? What McDonald's does, Jamie, is sell cheap, low-quality food to poor people and children - and that's what you're supposed to be against. He was thrilled when some journalists acclaimed his Ministry of Food series, but he does not agree with their analysis that what people eat has more to do with their social class than anything else. 'I've been to some tough places, Sicily and Soweto, and I've seen happy people eating like kings as rich as anything. One of the most memorable meals I've ever eaten was with a road sweeper in southern Italy. Did he eat like a king every day? Yes. Was he happy? Yes. Equally, I know City boys, who are as miserable as shit, and who eat like Natasha.' He uses the example of Claire Hallam, one of the Rotherham women whom he taught to cook, who previously ate at least a dozen bags of crisps a day and who did not know what boiling water looked like. 'I know Claire. She's not thick. But she is ignorant, in the nicest possible way. No one taught her when she was a kid. Not at home, and not at school. No mentoring.' Was he shocked by what he found in Rotherham? 'Well, I did have a rant about it. It was... it confirmed that there is a new type of poverty. They've got walls, they've got heating, they've got a rain-tight house; they've got a plasma screen, a Sky box, mobile phones and Nike trainers. But they'll sit on the floor and eat out of Styrofoam boxes seven days a week. There's an oven in there that's quite good, but that never gets used. There's a new type of poverty, and it's fucking knowledge poverty. If you are on the dole, you can live quite good. You don't pay council tax, you don't pay rent, you get various other bits and pieces, too. So if you are wily, you can have central heating and eat well.' This is not to judge, nor to minimise the difficulties women like Natasha face. 'There are deep social problems out there. But there were [middle-class people] in the series who complained that they couldn't pass it on because they were too busy. That has nothing at all to do with money, and it's a load of bollocks.'Oliver sounds heartfelt when he talks about all this, and it is moderately plucky to speak of about plasma screens and dole money in the same breath as the need for what he calls his 'do-gooding'. Such a conjunction is unfashionable these days; most commentators either focus on poverty and ignore the plasma screens for fear of weakening their own liberal arguments or, in the manner of Richard Littlejohn, they see only the plasma screens and so are able to walk guiltlessly away from issues such as child obesity, muttering the words 'feckless' and 'benefit culture' as they do so. Sometimes, in fact, Oliver sounds so quaint, he could be some non-conformist member of the Temperance Movement circa 1853; all he needs are a set of mutton-chop whiskers, and a good line in Bible quotations. And yet... oh, and yet. There is still the problem - and it is a big problem - of his ongoing commercial relationship with Sainsbury's, which puts him in an invidious position every time he criticises the culture of cheap, bad food (earlier this year, Sainsbury's was furious when he criticised it for failing to appear at a public debate about chicken farming; he later wrote an open letter apologising to its staff). Wouldn't it be better now to walk away from this deal? Apparently not. 'If they sacked me... you saw what happened in January. That isn't the behaviour of someone who gives a fuck if they are sacked or not.' He then adds: 'I never really got to the bottom of that, but I was told not to talk about it, so... My contract is up in June, and I'm led to believe that they might sign me up again.' So why not tell them thanks, but no thanks? 'I promise you, I'd never work for a competitor.' But all supermarkets, basically, are the same. 'Sainsbury's is in my heart. It came from humble beginnings, it came from a small shop, and an element of that still lives and breathes. Our shortfall is that we are not savage and shouting about what we are already doing. We are quite conservative and nice, you know. Really. Being able to work with a supermarket in these times is a pleasure because all of them are doing the clean up, even the bad guys.' So, he never has any dark nights of the soul thinking about it? 'No, not at all. I know that they know I am a pain in the arse, but the people at the top are really good, and they love food, and when I started that wasn't the case. If I had shares [in Sainsbury's], I'd keep 'em.' He doesn't ever feel guilty then, given all that he knows about supermarkets (like, say, the way they have collectively driven down farmers' prices)? 'No, I don't. Nine years. It's the longest celebrity endorsement ever, swiftly followed by Gary Lineker [who does ads for Walker's crisps]. The only sexy thing [about giving it up] would be getting some time back.'This speech is disorientating, especially his use of the word 'our' as though he is a store manager, or a press officer. It is so at odds with his commitment to projects like Fifteen, which trains young people, often with challenging backgrounds, to become chefs; with his campaign for school dinners, which he pushed so high up the political agenda that universal free school meals are to be piloted in two local authorities (if this improves children's health, it will be extended across England; Scotland, meanwhile, is to offer free meals in all its primary schools); with his clarion call for a new Ministry of Food. As he says himself: 'I get my hands dirty. While everyone else knocks out their 20 shows a year, I spend two years making four programmes.' Last August, he told the Edinburgh Television Festival that Jamie's School Dinners cost him personally £350,000. I know he has to earn a living, but he is supposed to be worth £25 million, and counting. His shows are screened in 106 countries. People are queuing round the block to eat at his new restaurant chain, Jamie's Italian. His books sell by the shed-load. And then there is all the other... stuffIn the days after I meet him, someone sends me - why? - a Jamie Oliver Nintendo DS game. A week after that, I read that he is to open two new restaurants at the Jumeirah Golf Estates in Dubai. So what motivates him most: making money, or changing the world? 'Do I like working around incredible people? I do. I blossom. They give me permission to be better than I am.' So we can take it that he would be an excellent Pret A Manger manager. He laughs. 'I have 100 employees now. My wage bill is £5m. I have to make money. At the same time, I could retire. Money doesn't really turn me on. Doing things properly and being successful is important to me. But I don't think an extra million quid would make a difference either way. It's not about being good. I don't think I am any nicer than any nice person I've ever met.' His final word on this? 'I am a freak of nature.'Oliver believes passionately in the idea of 'pass it on'. He tells me that he hopes the phrase will pass into the language as shorthand for 'you know, coming over and learning to make spag bol'. In his mind's eye, he sees one man teaching his neighbours to make 'parmesan chicken breasts with crispy posh ham' and then - presto! - suddenly the whole of Britain can make it. I don't think this is patronising, but it is naive. In Rotherham, talking to Lisa, and to the men, it is clear that Jamie's Ministry is now working as a domestic science room: no one is passing anything on apart from Lisa and the other teachers. They are running what used to be called home economics lessons and, in this sense, perhaps Oliver's series was just so much televisual faffing. Rather than visiting single mothers at home, and inspecting their chocolate collections, he should just have hot-footed it to Ed Balls, the fast-blinking education secretary, and demanded to know why cooking is not part of the core curriculum. Whatever else I think about Oliver, he is right that this is not about money so much as skills. Since the series was aired, some people have made the point that the working classes have always eaten bad food; they could not afford to do anything else. By way of proof, they like to quote The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell, with its angry descriptions of cheap, sweet and processed foods, consumed by the weary as the best way of filling up fast. I am not sure that this is entirely fair. Soon after my visit to Rotherham, I read Round About a Pound a Week by the Fabian, Maud Pember Reeves; first published as a political pamphlet in 1913, it is about the working poor of Lambeth. The poor were poorer in 1913 than they are now, in absolute and relative terms, and an account of what they had to spend on food is enough to bring furious tears to the eyes. But still, they knew how to make stew and dumplings. When people link social class and food, I always think of my grandmothers, both of whom were working class and left school at 13, and one of whom - my paternal grandmother, having been widowed too young - was always poor. They could cook because they had been taught to. Neck of lamb stew might not be the loveliest dish in the world (though my brother has a Proustian reverence for it even today), but it is cheap, filling and it doesn't give you heart disease. No, this is all about education, and if our mothers and fathers can't teach us, someone else is going to have to. It's great that Jamie's Ministry is teaching adults to cook but, in the long term, there is a problem with this. Jamie's name, as he has pointed out, lends the project a certain something. What happens when this ceases to be the case? He knows that his celebrity might not last forever. 'I've been on screens in Britain for 11 years,' he says. 'But most people get spat out in three...' TV chefs, like tinned tomatoes, have a shelf life. This is why the government has got to act. The government has got to make sure that children learn to cook. Full stop. But change, however it is ultimately accomplished, is urgent. On this, at least, surely we are all agreed. On the train to Rotherham, I looked up from my book to find that a family of four had installed itself in the seats beside me. It was lunch time. Their lunch consisted of a family-sized bag of chocolate Minstrels, and several bags of crisps - and something told me that this was not a half-term treat. The little girl - she was about six - smiled at me, to reveal a row of tiny black pegs. Oliver, whose wife is expecting their third child, grasps this urgency, for all that he is so privileged, for all that he owns - if my eyes do not deceive me - an Aston Martin (I saw it when, as preparation for our meeting, I visited the Essex farm where he lives, and where he shot his bucolic At Home series). Will he return to this subject with another film, the better to agitate the people in Westminster? He looks anxious again, as tired as old bones. 'I dunno. There's no rules with me. I'm basically a fucking lunatic. I mean, I promised the public I'd follow school dinners until it was done, and now it looks like I might be fucking 50 before it is.' He sends me home with a plastic bag. 'That's for you, babe.' Inside, is a recipe for a beef stir-fry and everything I need to make it: sesame oil, spring onions, best organic steak - the lot. It's all from Sainsbury's, but I try not to mind too much.Jamie OliverFood & drinkguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

So Little Time, So Much Damage

On the day before Election Day, the NYT ran an editorial about eleventh-hour scrambling by Bush and aides to alter rules and regulations on the environment, civil liberties, abortion rights, and other issues. There are 75 days remaining for the Bush presidency, and they're evidently hard at work on change, too. Snip: CIVIL LIBERTIES We don?t know all of the ways that the administration has violated Americans? rights in the name of fighting terrorism. Last month, Attorney General Michael Mukasey rushed out new guidelines for the F.B.I. that permit agents to use chillingly intrusive techniques to collect information on Americans even where there is no evidence of wrongdoing. Agents will be allowed to use informants to infiltrate lawful groups, engage in prolonged physical surveillance and lie about their identity while questioning a subject?s neighbors, relatives, co-workers and friends. The changes also give the F.B.I. ? which has a long history of spying on civil rights groups and others ? expanded latitude to use these techniques on people identified by racial, ethnic and religious background. The administration showed further disdain for Americans? privacy rights and for Congress?s power by making clear that it will ignore a provision in the legislation that established the Department of Homeland Security. The law requires the department?s privacy officer to account annually for any activity that could affect Americans? privacy ? and clearly stipulates that the report cannot be edited by any other officials at the department or the White House. The Justice Department?s Office of Legal Counsel has now released a memo asserting that the law ?does not prohibit? officials from homeland security or the White House from reviewing the report. The memo then argues that since the law allows the officials to review the report, it would be unconstitutional to stop them from changing it. George Orwell couldn?t have done better. So Little Time, So Much Damage (New York Times)...

Lean times and hemlines: As the financial crisis bites, how will it affect what we wear?

It was well after 9pm on Monday September 15 this year when Gordon Brown made an appearance at the Downing Street reception being hosted by his wife, Sarah, to mark London Fashion Week. His tardiness surprised no one; after all, Lehman Brothers had filed for bankruptcy that morning. While the fashion editors, retailers and models in the room had gone from a marquee by the Serpentine and Luella Bartley's avant-garde party dresses to Paul Smith's catwalk show at Claridge's on their way to Downing Street, Brown had spent the day dealing with an unfolding financial crisis. He had made his way home from the Canary Wharf offices of Citigroup, where he had attempted to broker a deal with Sir Victor Blank, chairman of Lloyds TSB, to take over HBOS. If Brown looked a little tired and distracted as he made a swift circuit of the cashmere-clad, champagne-fuelled crowd and made a quiet exit, it was understandable. During this autumn's catwalk show season, not even the most determined fashionista could live in a bubble. There have been other fashion weeks over which the shadow of bad times has fallen, but this time show season collided head-on with financial meltdown. Crisis segued into catastrophe. The clothes on the catwalk had been conceived, in large part, during the early summer, when the talk was of whether we were headed for recession or mere downturn. But now, in early autumn, the world's fashion buyers had the unenviable task of committing to chequebook their judgment of what women will want to spend their money on next spring, at a time when a global run on the banks was not inconceivable, and recession looked certain. The question they grappled with was what, in these circumstances, would women want to wear?The oldest adage about fashion and the economy is that hemlines rise and fall with the stock market. In the boom times of the 20s and the 60s, skirts were short; in the 30s and 40s, they fell. Except that, on closer inspection, even this most famous theory fails to hold water. During the wartime years, arguably the period of greatest privation in modern history, hemlines were shorter than before or after the war; in the recession of the early 90s, hemlines fell. We cannot rely on skirt length alone to track the economy through fashion. "Fashion is in the sky, in the street. Fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening," said Coco Chanel. Arguably, the most compelling fashion designers have long been those who engage with the zeitgeist. In early September, Cathy Horyn, the fashion editor of the New York Times, saw a direct link between the tunics layered over trousers at Marc Jacobs' catwalk show and the pop-over aprons of the Depression era. Weeks later, as investors from London to New York scrambled to buy gold bullion, Miuccia Prada in Milan brought a new meaning to investment dressing by pronouncing that what women really care about "at a primitive level" is gold, dressing her models in Mad Men-esque skirt suits but in metallic gold linen. The December issue of American Vogue will focus on how to be stylish in a difficult economic climate, with editor Anna Wintour challenging designers to produce credit-crunch-friendly party dresses. (Phillip Lim's answer - a £405 full-length, limited-edition black ruffled silk gown dubbed the "Recessionista" dress - goes on sale at Selfridges this month.) The autumn 1930 Sears catalogue declared that "thrift is the spirit of the day. Reckless spending is a thing of the past." It's clear economic slowdown affects fashion in the most basic way - customers have less cash to spend. (Those in the luxury industry who like to insist that recession won't affect the top end of the market might be disquieted to hear that haute couture, which in 1925 was France's second largest export, had fallen to 27th by 1930.) In the 30s, the slowdown in spending was matched by a new down-to-earth attitude. The mannered, boyish silhouette of the 20s was jettisoned; by the early 30s "curves were admitted to exist and allowed to be seen... Fashions were easy, graceful, rather softly shaped, even to the point of limpness," writes Elizabeth Ewing in her History Of 20th Century Fashion. In the 70s and in the early 90s, recession once again appeared to effect a softening of the silhouette, a retreat into nostalgia, after the bold, angular shapes and futuristic aspirations of the 60s and 80s. Jo Hooper, head of womenswear at John Lewis, believes we are experiencing a similar change now. "What we're calling the 'fear factor' is causing a slowdown in what has been a rapidly changing silhouette." If she is right, the angular, armoured-looking torso shape - stiff jacket, and exaggerated shoulders - which has dominated the Paris catwalks for several years may be forced to beat a retreat. But the relationship between fashion and the economy is not a simple one. A change in economic fortunes can exert a directional pull, but in opposite directions. As Hooper says, anything that affects us on an emotional level - as the current level of economic uncertainty does - matters to retailers, because "you want to feel good about a purchase - after all, that's why you're doing it, really". Some retailers believe their customers are drawn to an aesthetic of restraint and comfort during lean times: Hooper identifies in the current vogue for round-shouldered shapes a desire for "cocooning, which is the feeling of wrapping up, of hunkering down. It's a basic human instinct."On the other hand, some observers point to the lure of escapism in straitened eras. As George Orwell wrote in 1937, "the girl who leaves school and gets a dead-end job can still look like a fashion-plate for a pittance. You may have pennies in your pocket and not a prospect in the world, and only the corner of a leaky bedroom to go home to; but in your new clothes, you can stand on a street corner, indulging in a private daydream of yourself as Marlene Dietrich." After 9/11, upscale New York boutiques reported a surge in demand for lower-heeled shoes: on the shopfloor, they said, women were explaining they wanted shoes they could run in if necessary. The financial crisis has not had the same effect: heel heights have been rising steadily for several years, and look set to continue their skyward trajectory next season. A downbeat stockmarket is not necessarily reflected in downbeat clothes. Indeed, according to fashion historian Valerie Steele, "this whole idea that fashion is a 'reflection' of the economy is a misnomer. It would be more accurate to say that fashion and art are as much a part of living history as the economy is." What happens on Wall Street, says Steele, "is mediated through the manners and mores of the time" before influencing the fashion aesthetic. In the 60s, for instance, what impacted on fashion was not so much a booming economy as "the anti-conventional youth movement" which flourished in a booming economy. "The hemlines theory was invented back in the 1920s. But it just doesn't hold up. Take the 20s - hemlines actually began to fall in 1927, two years before the crash. They were falling by 1969, two years before the downturn of 1971," says Steele. In many cases, fashion designers appear to have an ability to read the writing on the wall, without waiting for the newspaper headlines. Between 1936 and 1939 fashion began to pick up on the rumble of warmongering, with military-inspired square shoulders teamed with lower heels. Even nightgowns sported three-inch shoulder pads. At other times, we may misinterpret clothes in retrospect in the light of world events. Christian Dior is usually credited with grasping the mood of the moment with his joyous, full-skirted Corolle collection of 1947, which launched Dior's New Look - but in 1939, before the outbreak of war, the Paris collections of Chanel and Mainbocher were both modelled on a full skirt and a wasp waist. With the war came a dampener on fashion, and the trend did not catch on until Dior revisited it. Rosemary Harden, curator of the Fashion Museum in Bath, agrees that the notion of a catwalk aesthetic which straightforwardly reflects the economy "feels quite glib. It's much more complex than that, and I think it's important to unpack it a bit. The 20s and 60s were a time not just of boom but of liberation. The short skirts of the 20s were driven as much by the rise of sportswear as by the stockmarket. The sense of liberation cut across the social spectrum - there are photos of my grandma in south-east London wearing short knitted skirts. The 20s, like the 60s, was a time of opportunity, a time of people not feeling shackled. Opportunity led to newness and experimentation. It is connected to a buoyant economy, but the link is not as direct as people imagine."Simon Doonan, creative director of Barneys department store in New York and author of the memoir Beautiful People, is rather more blunt. The notion of fashion design reflecting the economic mood is "a total fallacy. Fashion people live in a creative hermetic bubble, and are rarely so tuned in to the political or financial vicissitudes of the world. The idea that they might have a Dr Strangelove conclave where they confer about hemlines and the economy is hilarious." Nonetheless, he says, "there is one certainty about recession, which is that fashionistas will buy less - by which I mean one pair of Louboutins instead of three."Those expecting to find Grapes Of Wrath chic in the stores - dungarees and grubby faces as the hot new look come spring - will be disappointed. Next season's clothes are, if anything, rather more upbeat than those on sale this winter. At John Lewis, recent weeks have seen an upturn in sales of miniskirts and opaque tights, rather than catwalk-led trouser styles. It seems we are in tune with Doonan, whose advice to customers "is always to dress up rather than down, in tough times. You owe it to your pals, family and colleagues to present yourself in an optimistic and fabulous way. Remember what Quentin Crisp said? 'When war broke out, I bought five pounds of henna.' "Fashionguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Now on CD: library's treasure trove of authorial voices

Rare recordings of some of the last century's greatest writers are to be released for the first time - from F Scott Fitzgerald reciting Othello to Tennessee Williams lambasting critics and Raymond Chandler drunkenly slurring his way through an interview with Ian Fleming.The British Library CDs are a literary goldmine, with recordings of 30 British writers and 27 from the US, most of whom are being heard for the first time since they were in front of the microphone. They include the only surviving recording of Virginia Woolf, the sole recording of Arthur Conan Doyle, battily explaining the importance of spiritualism and the existence of telepathy, and Gertrude Stein incomprehensibly explaining how she writes."We have opened up a real treasure trove," said Richard Fairman, of the library's sound archive. "The reason people love hearing the CDs is because we read these authors and we feel we know them through reading their work. But when we hear them speak it's like meeting them in person. It's not quite as good as having them walk up to you, but it's not bad."If you were to meet Vladimir Nabokov, it would be an alarming experience, on the basis of his broadcast. The author of Lolita answers questions in the style of a ham actor reciting poetry. He is asked if writing is a pleasure or drudgery: "Pleasure and agony while composing the book in my mind. Harrowing irritation when strolling with my tools and viscera, the pencil that needs resharpening, the bladder that has to be drained, the word that I always mis-spell and always have to look up."Tennessee Williams, on the other hand, sounds as you might expect, with a wonderful, warm southern drawl. In the 1959 edition of the BBC's Frankly Speaking he says people have taken advantage of him. "I'm an extremely malleable person. Almost anybody can twist me round their finger. And I've been twisted around so many fingers that I feel like a multiple pretzel."He concedes critics can kill a play. "It's a very humiliating experience and an unfair one because, if a play on which you've worked say two years or three years or even, in the case of Orpheus Descending, 17 years off and on, its fate can be decided in a couple of hours of reflection."One of the most poignant recordings is Joe Orton, a week before he was murdered by his lover Kenneth Halliwell. He explains he has done well out of Loot but wants to save his money "because I shan't always be young and I don't want to do anything grand with it, because there's nothing I particularly want to do, but I would like to sort of put it away so that when I'm not writing any more ... I shall be able to go away and do something else." He adds: "I only have so much inspiration. I think any playwright does. It's like a boxer, a really good playwright's career is quite short. A boxer's career is usually 10 years and then they start to get punchy, which I think playwrights do as well. Shakespeare's career was pretty short ... probably 15 years. And he wrote some pretty rum plays at the beginning of his life. I hope I've never written anything as bad as the early Shakespeares."One of the jolliest interviewees is PG Wodehouse, in conversation with Alistair Cooke in 1963. They talk jocularly about a new theory that automation is going to throw so many people out of work that by the year 2000 every middle-class family will need four servants to keep people employed.The drunkest interviewee is Raymond Chandler, who had been at the whisky before his 1958 interview with his friend Ian Fleming.The British Library CDs are the latest in its series of historic recordings. Fairman said there were still gaps in the sound archive, and if anybody had recordings of DH Lawrence, John Galsworthy and George Orwell they should get in touch.? The Spoken Word: British Writers and American Writers is released tomorrow by the British Library, price £19.95 eachIn their own words"Perhaps then one reason why we have no great poet, novelist or critic writing today is that we refuse to allow words their liberty. We pin them down to one meaning, their useful meaning. A meaning which makes us catch the train, the meaning which makes us pass the examination."Virginia Woolf, 1937"I've had a very disappointing life, I feel, but still it's been well worthwhile ... I think life's really, and has been probably through history, quite horrible, but it's great fun somehow."Rebecca West, 1958"Obscenity is something that I abhor. I don't think there's anybody more squeamish than I am about what is obscene. I cannot stand anything scatalogical, anything physically disgusting ... my plays are extremely moral in my opinion. I'm almost an old puritan."Tennessee Williams, 1959TheatreTennessee WilliamsVladimir NabokovVirginia WoolfRaymond ChandlerF Scott FitzgeraldArthur Conan DoyleJoe OrtonPG WodehouseAlistair Cookeguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Britain will make foreigners carry RFID identity cards and will put us in a huge, Orwellian database: the rest of Britain will be next

Earlier this year, I married my British fiancee and switched my visa status from "Highly Skilled Migrant" to "Spouse." This wasn't optional: Jacqui Smith, the British Home Secretary, had unilaterally (and on 24 hours' notice) changed the rules for Highly Skilled Migrants to require a university degree, sending hundreds of long-term, productive residents of the UK away (my immigration lawyers had a client who employed over 100 Britons, had fathered two British children, and was nonetheless forced to leave the country, leaving the 100 jobless). Smith took this decision over howls of protests from the House of Lords and Parliament, who repeatedly sued her to change the rule back, winning victory after victory, but Smith kept on appealing (at tax-payer expense) until the High Court finally ordered her to relent (too late for me, alas). Now, it seems, I will become one of the first people in Britain to be forced to carry a mandatory biometric RFID card in a pilot programme being deployed first to foreign students and we spousal visa holders (government is looking to curtail spousal visas altogether, capping all visas at 20,000 per year, including spousal visas, denying Britons the right to bring their spouses into the country once the quota has been filled). The card will be eventually linked to all of the national databases -- credit, health, driving, spending. These are the same databases that the government has been repeatedly losing and haemmorhaging by the tens of million (literally). My family fled the Soviet Union after the war. They were displaced people (my father was born in a refugee camp in Azerbaijan) who destroyed their papers to protect themselves from the draconian authorities who sought to limit their travel and migration. I used to think it was ironic that my family had gone from Europe to Canada and back to Europe again in a generation, but now I don't know how long the Doctorows will be staying in Europe -- or at least in the UK. The green and pleasant land has suspended habeas corpus, instituted street searches without particularlized suspicion, encourages its citizens to spy and snitch on each other, and now has issued mandatory universal papers that will track we dirty immigrants as we move around our adopted "home," as part of a xenophobic campaign to arouse fear and resentment against migrants. Many of my British friends act as if I'm crazy when I say that we must defeat Labour in the next election. We're all good lefties, and a vote for the LibDems is considered tantamount to handing the country over to the Tories. But what could the Tories do that would trump what Labour has made of the country? The Labour Party has made a police state with a melting economy, a place where rampant xenophobia makes foreigners less and less welcome -- where we are made to hand over our biometrics and carry papers as we conduct our lawful business. The only mainstream party to speak out against this measure is the LibDems, and they will have my vote. To my friends, I say this: your Labour Party has taken my biometrics and will force me to carry the papers my grandparents destroyed when they fled the Soviet Union. In living memory, my family has been chased from its home by governments whose policies and justification the Labour Party has aped. Your Labour Party has made me afraid in Britain, and has made me seriously reconsider my settlement here. I am the father of a British citizen and the husband of a British citizen. I pay my tax. I am a natural-born citizen of the Commonwealth. The Labour Party ought not to treat me -- nor any other migrant -- in a way that violates our fundamental liberties. The Labour Party is unmaking Britain, turning it into the surveillance society that Britain's foremost prophet of doom, George Orwell, warned against. Labour admits that we migrants are only the first step, and that every indignity that they visit upon us will be visited upon you, too. If you want to live and thrive in a free country, you must defend us too: we must all hang together, or we will surely hang separately. "We all want to see our borders more secure, and human trafficking, organised immigration crime, illegal working and benefit fraud tackled. ID cards for foreign nationals, in locking people to one identity, will deliver in all these areas," she added. The UK Border Agency will begin issuing the biometric cards to the two categories of foreign nationals who officials say are most at risk of abusing immigration rules - students and those on a marriage or civil partnership visa. Foreign national ID card unveiled, Support NO2ID and oppose the surveillance state...