The Peterloo Massacre: flying the St George Cross has accompanied the success of Anarchy, Murder and Fraud in internal politics and always has. Below the equivalent, which Shelley might have described as the chanting of: ‘Anarchy, to thee we bow,Be thy name made holy now!’ As we peer through the dark of our current political … More Elon Musk poses as Success Embodied and looks like the epitome of Shelley’s Anarchy, feeding his lapdog, Yaxley-Lennon the bodies of the naive and self-oppressed: “And with glorious triumph, they / Rode through England proud and gay, / Drunk as with intoxication / Of the wine of desolation”.

I am no great fan of ‘success’. Hence the Gore Vidal quotation. But whilst we are on Gore Vidal’s sayings we might strike a note of caution. The better known quotation of his (which may well turn out – as much he mouthed or wrote did – to be someone else’s saying) seems to suggest … More ‘It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail’.