Bookbenchers: Gloria De Piero MP
Fleur Macdonald 6:13pmThis week’s bookbencher is Gloria De Piero, the Labour MP for Ashfield. She has a soft spot for Wuthering Heights and Karl Marx’s Das Kapital.
Which book's on your bedside table at the moment?
Race of a Lifetime. I'm half way through it. It's a behind the scenes tale of the last Presidential race. It has real fly on the wall stuff on Barack and Michelle, Hillary and Bill, John and Elizabeth Edwards and John and Cindy McCain. It covers the highs and the lows of their campaigns as well as their personalities, their foibles, their strengths and the tensions between their staff. It's written by two US journos so it zips along and is really good fun to read.
Which book would you read to your children?
I don't have children. My sister in law has 2 young boys who talk about Moshi Monsters a lot. Do they do books?
Which literary character would you most like to be?
DCI Jane Tennison from Lynda La Plante's Prime Suspect. Ballsy, successful, beautiful and a bit flawed too.
Which book do you think best sums up 'now'?
A Policy Network pamphlet written by the best thinkers from the Left around the World. It contains essays which map out some solutions to the global financial crisis. There's exclusive polling in
there too. It’s called 'Priorities for a New Political Economy: Memos to the
Left', and even though It was published over a year ago it's still the best I've read.
What was the last novel you read?
I read a Ruth Rendell called The Bridesmaid over
Christmas. The blurb said it’s probably her best book, but I think Thirteen Steps Down is much creepier and much better.
Which book would you most recommend?
You have to read Andrew Young's The
Politician. No really, you have to. I couldn't put it down. Where do I start? It’s written by the trusted, long suffering aide Andrew Young who does everything for wannabe President
John Edwards, and that ultimately means agreeing to take the flak for his illegitimate love child during his campaign to be the Democrat nominee. Why did Young agree to say he was the father? Why
on earth did John Edwards think he could get away with it and how the hell could he betray his terminally ill wife? It doesn't just cover a massive news story, it also tracks Edward's decade long
positioning as champion of the poor, though Young recalls he didn't seem to like them much. Tina Brown says it’s like a Hitchcock thriller; she's right: it's as compelling as it is
disturbing.
Given enough time, which book would you like to study deeply?
Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women, said to be the first feminist book. I studied her thoughts at Uni but never read the original text.
Which books do you plan to read next?
The Hacienda: How Not To Run a Club, by Peter
Hook. I've just read Shaun Ryder's autobiography. He was in the Happy Mondays, a massive Manchester band in the early 90's, and last year he was runner up in I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of
Here. He went to hell and back as a pop star. To say he lived to excess is an understatement. As someone who grew up in the north of England, it gave us pride to have the best bands, the best
clubs and even lead the way in fashion in the early 90's. The Hacienda was absolutely central to that. I wasn't cool enough to have actually gone there, though.
If the British Library was on fire and you could only save three books, which ones would you take?
Karl Marx's work had a huge impact on me as a teenager. The World has changed, politics has changed and I've changed, but his ideas have made such an impact on the world that I've decided to save Das Kapital which he wrote in the British Library. Ideas still matter.
DH Lawrence's Women in Love. Lawrence was born in Eastwood, which is the community I represent. God forbid the burning down of the British Library; but if the worst happens, come to Eastwood and see the copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover, his most famous and controversial book, that was used in court at the famous obscenity trial in 1960, at our DH Lawrence Birthplace museum and Heritage centre.
Wuthering Heights, in my view the greatest love story ever. My mate Lindsey and I read it on hols in Corfu straight after we'd done our A levels.
Previous
Benton Marder
January 28th, 2012 6:54pm Report this commentPerhaps the lady needs to read 'A Modest Proposal' by Jonathan Swift. Another is 'The Way We Live Now' by Anthony Trollope. Both are still and ever relevant.
alan scott
January 28th, 2012 8:01pm Report this comment"I studied her thoughts at Uni, but never read the original text" (ref "A Vindication of the Rights of Women").
So reading someone else's abstract of the author's thoughts suffices? On that basis, anyone who has read Reader's Digest's and similar abstracts can claim to have read and digested same?
That is not what I call adequate for degree level work. Distinctly second-hand.
And I would have thought a desire to learn more about the problems of the people of GB and what might be done about them is of greater immediate relevance than breath-catching stuff about US politicians, and pop bands.
But then, the world has changed. Real life now is about showing how you really are part of real life now, even if it is as close to reality as Dr Who.
Nicholas
January 28th, 2012 8:07pm Report this commentAre people like her churned out in some kind of lefty clone with every lefty cliché in the world factory somewhere? Karl Marx? In 2012? You couldn't make this crap up.
Ideas still matter, love? Yeah, that's about it. All Labour has is ideas, which mostly either don't work or screw things up. Come on Speccie I've had enough of these people to last me several lifetimes - feature some real CONSERVATIVES for God's sake!
Why is it always about Labour with you lot?
Maria
January 28th, 2012 8:20pm Report this commentWhat an educated person she is!
Peter From Maidstone
January 28th, 2012 10:42pm Report this commentWhy are you wasting our time with socialists? What is it with you people? Are you being driven by some sort of diktat from your owners? I can think of no other reason for a business to act with such contempt for its market?
GDS
January 28th, 2012 11:05pm Report this commentDas Kapital? So she'd rather pander to the socialist idiots than reveal her intellectual capacity. By doing thus, she inadvertently has! What a pillock.
daniel maris
January 28th, 2012 11:19pm Report this commentIs Marx irrelevant? As Lord Chalfont of blessed memory was fond of saying: nine out of ten points in the Communist Manifesto have been realised (I seem to recall it was only militarisation of the agrarian population that had been missed off).
And with millions being made poorer by a combination of inflation and pay freezes while bankers award themselves ever-increasing bonuses, perhaps Marx still has some relevancy?
Austin Barry
January 29th, 2012 1:23am Report this commentIt should be mandatory for every kid, and certainly every neophyte politician, to read the entire canon of George Orwell. But I suppose we should be thankful that these piety spouting idiots can even read. Although, come to think of it, I’d rather illiterate cockney realist and successful businessman Harry Redknapp ran for Parliament than these muppets.
What did we do to deserve the unwarranted transcendence of these patronising sixth form revolutionaries?
Holly ......
January 29th, 2012 9:23am Report this commentMoonfleet,Anne of Green Gables & a thesaurus
I've probably read others, but these are the one's I remember, the thesaurus I still use today...Timeless eh.
As for Gloria...Well least said soonest mended, as my old mum used to say.
Simon Stephenson.
January 29th, 2012 11:03am Report this commentNicholas : 8.07pm
We can't live without ideas. What we need to look at is how we go about considering and selecting ideas for preferment. To my mind, what's happened in recent years is that we've accentuated the bias in national decision-making whereby ideas that are intuitively attractive are subjected to far less critical enquiry than are ideas whose attraction is more nuanced, or which require bad-sounding things to happen . We've had 20-odd years of being told that we are perpetually moving forward - that all policy is about improving what is already good, never about correcting something which is bad, nor about preventing something from becoming bad.
We've spent so long kicking the can down the road that there is a general feeling that this can go on for ever - that the correct way for society to organise itself is to take the least unpopular actions which remove the sting from the immediate problems with which we are faced.
Austin Barry : 1.23am
"What did we do to deserve the unwarranted transcendence of these patronising sixth form revolutionaries?"
What we did was to allow the tabloidisation of our culture whereby all complication and unintuitativeness in decision-making was derided as being ivory tower irrelevance, to be replaced by the sort of smart-arse simplisticism and illogic aimed at winning the favours of the opposite sex in the rituals of teenage posturing.
Nicholas
January 29th, 2012 11:27am Report this commentSimon Stephenson : 11:03am
Did I write that we could live without ideas? No. The Left have operated on the basis that all that matters is ideas. That as long as the ideas conform to their vision of how things should be, the reality and consequences are somehow of no import. It is an absolutely feminine approach personified by De Piero. Labour in this country have transformed dubious ideas into appalling results without ever having been properly held to account for them.
Which is, I guess, similar to that which you have written. Although, in addition, the disregard of experience, the rise of the cloistered wonk and the embrace of ageism has exacerbated the can kicking march of "progress".
Kennybhoy
January 29th, 2012 11:29am Report this comment"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."
H.L. Mencken
Simon Stephenson.
January 29th, 2012 11:32am Report this commentde Piero should be, I believe, del Piero.
Simon Stephenson.
January 29th, 2012 12:04pm Report this commentNicholas : 11.27am
I'm a radical to the extent that I believe complacency to be as big a danger to society as discontent. No situation is unimprovable, and if we wish to keep pace with other nations we need to recognise this. But we seem recently to have fallen into the trap of thinking that improvement is just about bettering single consequences, and that other, more unwelcome ramifications are no more than potential embarrassments which don't need to be included in the quantification.
Adversarial politics doesn't really work when the contestants cheat to win - and knowingly pretending that secondary consequences are irrelevant is intellectual cheating.
David L
January 29th, 2012 12:13pm Report this commentAustin Barry @1.23; some good news. Last week I donated some books to the Regents Canal Book Barge. The consignment included several Orwell paperbacks. The chap from the barge said that Orwell books fly off the shelves. So obviously the message is getting through to some people.
Nicholas
January 29th, 2012 12:34pm Report this commentWhy "complacency" vs "discontent"? Why is it that the choices are always polarised and then demonised from each perspective? I don't believe that conservatism is "complacency" but rather seeking to conserve that which is proven, which works. Or, alternatively, not throwing the baby out with the bathwater - or "of it ain't broke don't fix it".
yohodi
January 29th, 2012 12:56pm Report this commentGloria de/del Piero
There...thats says it all..
Kennybhoy
January 29th, 2012 2:24pm Report this commentSimon Stephenson wrote:
"But we seem recently to have fallen into the trap of thinking that improvement is just about bettering single consequences, and that other, more unwelcome ramifications are no more than potential embarrassments which don't need to be included in the quantification."
Indeed. Appreciation of this spillikins effect is the basis of much popular conservatism.
What do you mean by "recently"?
Simon Stephenson.
January 29th, 2012 3:15pm Report this commentKennybhoy : 2.24pm
"What do you mean by "recently"?"
Since Murdoch indoctrinated the masses that tabloid simplisticism was the essence of how a successful society should be run.
Simon Stephenson.
January 29th, 2012 3:35pm Report this commentNicholas : 12.34pm
Why polarisation? Because adversarial politics, combined with unreason, dishonesty and cheating, leads to arguments being pitched from the extremities rather than the centre. As both sides grow to realise that reasoned argument's got no chance, they focus on not losing - not conceding an inch - rather than on trying to reach an accommodation with those who hold different points of view.
It's not all about compromise, but neither is it all about defending positions that are opinions, not certainties. But the holding of opinions as certainties is where our politics seems to be moving.
Brendan Wignall
February 1st, 2012 11:22pm Report this commentOh for goodness' sake: Wuthering Heights is not a 'love story'. Even the Guardian (not normally known for its intelligence) has dealt with this absurd claim: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/aug/11/comment.bookscomment.
I will, of course, wash my hands after pasting that link.
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