No, I am not going to wear it out and about - but the cognoscenti among you will have realised that I am modelling here the latest in political headgear. Not so much political tat (though it's that as well) as political titfer (rhyming slang, tit-for-tat = hat).
This is the 'Aam Admi' cap - as sported by supporters of the anti-corruption party which powered to a dramatic win recently in the Delhi state elections, and then imploded when the AAP chief minister stalked out of office after little more than a month. The style is also known as a Gandhi cap - though in Gandhi's day it was made of khadi, homespun cloth, and this is, I'd guess, of synthetic material and there are suggestions that the caps have been mass produced in China. This version is without the AAP election symbol, the broom, but it has the party's slogans - on one side 'me hu aam admi' ('I am a common man'), and on the other 'mujhe pahiye puri azadi' (which comes up on Google Translate, entirely unconvincingly, as 'I have complete freedom wheels' - please somebody out there help me improve on that). In the Delhi state elections, supporters of the Congress party complained that AAP rivals were breaching Election Commission rules by sporting these caps. The Commission ruled that as long as the caps didn't show the party symbol or carry the party's name, they escaped the ultra-strict regulations about electioneering. For lovers of political ephemera and kitsch, this is a gem. Thanks, Sanjoy!
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OK, so someone has painted out 'HOPE'. The rendition alongside the railway bridge as you head north up Highgate Road has gone. Just like that. A mass of black. And it's been done in the last few weeks. No laws broken - no act of sacrilege - but I miss the lost 'HOPE' all the same. This is what it used to look like, on the right - one of scrappier renditions around here. If you look at the photo on the left above, you can just about make out the remnants of the 'H' and 'O'. And if you are coming new to the subject of 'HOPE' in NW5 (and around), this is where to start reading. The good news is that three other versions of 'HOPE' all within a short distance of the one now lost are still extant - and all the photos below were taken on this wonderfully sunny, almost spring like, Sunday afternoon.
An unlikely purchase, perhaps, from a book store in San Francisco specialising in gay pulp and Trotskyism - but what a nice pamphlet! The striking cover is what first attracted me. It was designed by Ivor Owen - whether this is the children's book illustrator of the same name, I don't know. The pamphlet dates from 1955. Gwynfor Evans was at that time the president of Plaid Cymru (the party of Wales), and a local councillor - in 1966 he became the party's first MP. The issue behind the pamphlet is an interesting one - Plaid Cymru's battle to be allowed party political broadcasts in Wales. Only parties putting up at least fifty candidates in a general election were entitled to a party political broadcast. But there were then only thirty-six Welsh constituencies in total. So you can see the problem. The Welsh Broadcasting Council proposed that any party fighting at least three seats in Wales should have political broadcasts, two a year between elections not simply at election time, either in Welsh or English. The Post Master General took the highly unusual step of vetoing this initiative, abetted by the London national HQs of the main parties. 'It is worth noting', Gwynfor Evans argued in this pamphlet, 'that in words and action the Parties refused to acknowledge Wales as a national entity whose needs and rights may differ from those of English regions. |