Friday, 1 April 2005
Splendid »
Guido on Jamie Oliver.
These 4 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:30am GMT Permanent link.
A Land Fit For Heroes »
While it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, fall be’ind,”
But it’s “Please to walk in front, sir,” when there’s trouble in the wind,
There’s trouble in the wind, my boys, there’s trouble in the wind,
O it’s “Please to walk in front, sir,” when there’s trouble in the wind.You talk o’ better food for us, an’ schools, an’ fires an’ all:
We’ll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don’t mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow’s Uniform is not the soldier-man’s disgrace.
Kipling
Fontana Labs notes without comment Bush’s “The essence of civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak.” (Full transcript here.) So it is.
As many as one out of four veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq treated at Veterans Affairs hospitals in the past 16 months were diagnosed with mental disorders, a number that has been steadily rising, according to a report in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine.
Records show that 20 percent of eligible ex-soldiers came to VA hospitals for medical treatment between October 2003 and February 2005. Overall, 26 percent of them were diagnosed with mental disorders, say Han Kang and Kenneth Hyams of the VA.
Mental disorders on the rise among Iraq, Afghanistan veterans. Of course, it’s entirely possible that you have to be nuts to join up. (Some people get messed up.) It’s much safer to fight your wars at a keyboard in your pajamas.
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
(Joseph Heller, pinched from here, to save typing.) If you’re the wrong age and in good health, go AWOL if enlisted; otherwise oppose war with your Trot mates until you’re middle-aged and fat, when being a jingo becomes irresistibly attractive.
Perhaps when the next great war comes we may see that sight unprecedented in all history, a jingo with a bullet hole in him.
George Orwell (also in Homage to Catalonia).
Back to the Veterans Affairs.
On the other hand, fear of being stigmatized was a key reason that traumatized soldiers didn’t seek help while still in the military, an earlier study showed. So these post-duty numbers could more accurately reflect the final toll, says Harvard psychologist Richard McNally, a PTSD expert.
So far, VA hospitals can easily meet the challenge of mental health care for Afghanistan and Iraq war veterans, Kang says.
But large funding cuts in VA psychiatry programs and the limited number of doctors trained in PTSD could signal big trouble ahead, cautions Bruce Kagan, staff psychiatrist at the West Los Angeles VA Hospital.
Prayer and candlelit vigils for a vegetable. Cheap. Looking after soldiers, and going to their funerals. Priceless.
(I discussed the funeral thing here.)
These 144 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:20am GMT Permanent link.
Lirpa Sloof »
Like Norm, I scored 8 out of 9 on the Guardian April Fool quiz — I got the Speer question wrong if that’s any help if you haven’t tried yet. It’s possible that the profile in Norm’s immediately prior post is some kind of spoof, too.
Most of the hoaxes in the quiz appear in the Top 100 April Fool’s Day Hoaxes of All Time. For reasons I’m sure regular readers can guess, I like #24.
An article by John Dvorak in the April 1994 issue of PC Computing magazine described a bill going through Congress that would make it illegal to use the internet while drunk, or to discuss sexual matters over a public network. The bill was supposedly numbered 040194 (i.e. 04/01/94), and the contact person was listed as Lirpa Sloof (April Fools backwards). The article said that the FBI was going to use the bill to tap the phone line of anyone who “uses or abuses alcohol” while accessing the internet. Passage of the bill was felt to be certain because “Who wants to come out and support drunkenness and computer sex?” The article offered this explanation for the origin of the bill: “The moniker ‘Information Highway’ itself seems to be responsible for SB 040194… I know how silly this sounds, but Congress apparently thinks being drunk on a highway is bad no matter what kind of highway it is.” The article generated so many outraged phone calls to Congress that Senator Edward Kennedy’s office had to release an official denial of the rumor that he was a sponsor of the bill.
They’re all funny (warning: you could waste a whole day on this stuff). As is the Nature story in the Panda’s Thumb.
These 98 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:22pm GMT Permanent link.
Saturday, 2 April 2005
Out Damned Spot Fine! »
Quick post before I go out. I considered this yesterday, but Mark got there first. I hoped it was an April Fool, but Mark read it in the Hate Mail, and my RSS reader found similar stories in the Grauniad: Bar staff face fines for serving drunks, and the Torygraph: Bar staff serving drunken clients face £80 fine. Mark is outraged because he thinks it limits freedom (he’s probably right there) and that landlords have an interest on what happens on their property. I’m upset because this, typically for New Labour, puts the onus for decision making on the lowest skilled and the lowest paid. I imagine the thinking is that as the fine is at least twice a shift’s gross pay, it’ll really deter bar staff. Because the poorest are the most intimidated by flat fines, let’s scare them into being good.
This doesn’t solve the problem of drunks, you note. Because our drunk merely isn’t served if he’s deemed drunk — he doesn’t become magically sober; now he has to go somewhere else to be abusive. Good move.
Last year, on a weekend away, I went out for a meal with a friends’ brother’s colleagues, one of whom turned out to be an outrageous alcoholic. He was normal when we sat down, after he’d drunk half a pint of lager he started raging at everyone and then fell asleep during the main course. The beer set off the vodka he’d had earlier or something. But I couldn’t have told that he’d be like that, and I doubt the waiters could. Perhaps a wise old retired policeman would have spotted something, but like all the dipsos I know, he was a tightwad as well, and never went near the bar.
Right, I’m off to get rat-arsed on Belgian beer.
These 300 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 8:42pm GMT Permanent link.
Monday, 4 April 2005
Chain Of Fools »
Jamie, curses be upon him, has handed me the black spot.
You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
Naturally, I fell at the first hurdle. I read Fahrenheit 451 about 30 years ago, and thought it fairly silly then. I wasn’t sure it wasn’t merely an artsy way of asking “What’s your favourite book?” for people who are too sophisticated to have favourites. It could have been “Which book best represents you (other than the one you haven’t written yet)?” Norm answered “The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levi,” which could be either. (I read enough of Norm to know that Levi is a favourite author of his and also that the subject matter is very important to him.) On the other hand, Tim Blair, whom I hardly ever check, answered, “Michael Moore’s Stupid White Men, because then I’d deserve to burn.” So is the question badly worded, or a very subtle personality test? The sheep on one side, as it were, and the goats on the other. One side taking the positive view, and the other for the flames? I’m not sure that a small ‘D’ democrat can countenance the burning of books, but Mr T Blair supported the Iraq venture so he must be a democrat. (Tim Blair got the stick from Michael Totten, who didn’t understand the question either, but in a less ‘glass half empty’ way.)
Being anal that way, I traced the meme back to The Pink Bee who found that she had to explain herself.
Very few people seemed to understand the Fahrenheit 451 question. Apparently almost no one has read this book. I thought it was completely standard fare as I remember reading it in Junior High and I think it was even required reading.
To explain, in Fahrenheit 451 firemen are people who burn books instead of putting out fires. Because they are living in a culture that is destroying all the great works of literature, people have gotten together and they are memorizing books so that they can be passed down to future generations who hopefully will not live in a culture which despises books. When the protagonist meets these people they are introduced to him as being the books they have memorized: This is Jane Eyre, That is Heart of Darkness. The point of the question is, if you could only SAVE one book from being forgotten forever which book would you save?
Once I knew that, my answer changed. My first thought was The Very Hungry Caterpillar, because I found it in the toilet of a Youth Hostel last year, and read it twice while having a crap, so I pretty much have it by heart. Then I rejected works I’d read in translation, because translations are ephemeral (who reads Chapman’s Homer now we have Christopher Logue?). That still leaves some Nabokov, and while I like the thought of introducing myself as “Lolita” that’s not really an answer. In the end, I come down to The Road to Wigan Pier, for all the good things associated with Orwell (actual feet-on-the-ground research in journalism, shock!), and it’s witheringly funny, so having it by heart or rote may serve to put off gloom and fear in the cells (because the society is a police state in Fahrenheit 451).
Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character? Not that I can think of, though crushes are a sort of passing madness, and like dreams, pretty much incomprehensible when they’re over. I do like Lenin’s answer, which I think wasn’t far wrong for me, at that same age. Of what I’ve read recently, I think Pauline in Anne Tyler’s The Amateur Marriage is crush-worthy.
What are you currently reading? The Princess Bride by William Goldman. You have to ask why? Inconceivable!
The last book you bought is: See above.
The last book you read (I understand ‘finished’ by this) is: Martin Bell’s An Accidental MP.
Five books you would take to a deserted island: Gosh, this is hard. I never finished (or got very far with) Robinson Crusoe so that. Bowell on Johnson, superb funny stuff about a funny, flawed, great man. I’d say Candide, but as it’s unexpurgated in The Portable Voltaire, and this a real book (as in, it’s on Amazon), I’d take that instead. The Feynman Lectures on Physics. And The Origin of Species which is sort of dated, given the knowledge Richard Dawkins had, just as Feynman will be dated when Geordi La Forge’s The Engines Will Take It: Warp Field Mechanics for Idiots comes out, but still the presence of a great mind.
Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why? I’m tempted to say, “This buck stops here!” but I suppose that’s no fun. So Matthew Turner, because he’s escaped so far, and that’s clearly wrong. James Hamilton because he’s worthwhile disagreeing with, and Jonathan Derbyshire because he’s literate, and, blogging wise, needs a kick up the arse.
These 684 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:14am GMT Permanent link.
I Wanna Be A Republican »
You bring the elephant suit and I’ll bring the big trunk. Oh, the depravity of state-funded television. (Just add imagination!) Found, almost inevitably, via Ogged.
These 25 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:10pm GMT Permanent link.
Tuesday, 5 April 2005
I Blame John Band »
Thanks to him, I found grouphug.us.
my boyfriend had this sex toy called thon17 and he wanted to use it on me. he used it on himself to show me it wouldnt hurt and now he is in hospital
I retracted my foreskin the other day and a strong fishlike odour filled up the air.
I was supposed to go get dinner an hour ago but I can’t stop reading this site.
Someone should do something about this. It’s too addictive. I’m really starving, but I’m still here!
America really is the greatest country on the planet. I nearly posted this at 1am, but you’d just have thought I was drunk. (I wasn’t.) Don’t go near, it really is too addictive.
These 46 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:35am GMT Permanent link.
No Surprise »
Blair sets 5 May as election date (and I think the BBC is cutting back on graphics as demand increases).
Craig Brown writes a guide to those key marginals.
Diss
Callow, S.
Campbell, A.
Robinson, A.
Wales, P of
Effingham, E of
Allen, K.
Fayed, M.
Oliver, J.
Osborne, O.
Pinter, H.
Street-Porter, J.Barking
Bjork
Fayed, M.
Redwood, J.
Thatcher, Lady.
Widdecombe, A.
Winterton, J.
These 29 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:34pm GMT Permanent link.
The Curse Of April 9 »
Here at Backword, we (meaning, we suppose, ‘I’), don’t believe in curses — well only the vituperative kind. Last year, I predicted, not entirely seriously, that the Rapture would fall on my birthday. It didn’t. I can’t remember what did happen, though I recall ending up in Chapter where I kept losing my mobile phone, thus starting a new trend in Cardiff celebrations.
So, this year, a clash with a non-event beckons.
These 72 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:21pm GMT Permanent link.
Wednesday, 6 April 2005
Need We Say More? »
i said i see no joy
i see only sorry
i see no chance of your bright new tomorrowso stand down Margaret
stand down please
stand down down down down down
down down down down down
Stand down Margaret, The Beat
We showed them the first few moments of the recent White House press conference where President Bush and Mr Blair stood side-by-side and talked about “a clear way forward” in Iraq. The dials plummeted. Never in 17 years of moderating people-meter sessions have I seen an audience react so negatively even before the first word had been spoken. Every dial fell.
I can see it now: Lib Dem posters plastered throughout traditional Labour constituencies of a smiling Tony Blair looking wistfully at a smirking George W. Bush over a simple four-word slogan: “Need we say more?” Trust me, it would work.
Frank Luntz, US pollster, assesses the mood of voters. Via Jamie.
These 12 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:07pm GMT Permanent link.
Full Body Transplant, Then? »
The wonders of the 21st century! A medical miracle! Camilla will be ‘elegant, glamorous and feminine’.
These 16 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:32pm GMT Permanent link.
Quel Surprise »
I wasn’t happy when four Yorkshire policemen went to North Wales to arrest Nick Griffin in December last year. Now, nearly four months later he’s been charged. I still think that the greatest recruiting sergeant for the BNP is the British tabloid press which gets great milage out of asylum seeker scare stories under the flag of “realism” and what “Guardian readers won’t tell you.”
I said then:
If there’s one outcome I don’t want, it’s Mr Griffin, having washed his neck and donned a suit for his day in court, punching the air and giving jubilant interviews. With the prosecution record under the present law, that seems all too likely.
And today, according to the Telegraph:
After leaving the police station today, he told supporters: “We have been told within the Crown Prosecution Service that this is a New Labour scam to win back the Muslim vote and it’s likely to be dropped after the General Election.”
This is the Telegraph, which is neither left-wing nor New Labour.
The BNP has tried to gain mainstream political support by claiming to be a reformist rather than a racist political party.
However, the bragging by BNP members that were caught by the BBC about putting faeces through Asian letterboxes and fantasising about shooting “Pakis” with “about a million bullets” as they left a Mosque have exposed the party’s true motives.
If Griffin gets convicted of race hate, he’ll treat it as martyrdom — if he’s let off, he’ll claim that it shows he was right. (We already know he fools some of the people some of the time.) Those four officers’ time would have been better spent chasing the bragging members.
If the government wants to go for a Mr Big, can I suggest Richard Littlejohn?
These 151 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:56pm GMT Permanent link.
Why I Hate The Sun »
Pursuant to my last post, I think the BNP are a collection of unpleasant individuals (many of whom have been convicted of crimes even they themselves wouldn’t describe as ‘PC’), and their perception of reality is even more distorted than Robert Kilroy-Silk’s. I simply don’t believe in taking them seriously as a political force. I don’t deny that there’s a certain fear of difference or newness in certain communities, nor that we’re all capable of prejudice. I do think that the reason the BNP have any kind of foothold is not their comical campaigning but because the tabloids have (oh, let’s use a buzzword in the wrong context, pretend I’m a proper journalist) groomed their readers for fear and hate.
I direct the reader to one of my better posts from last year. Remember, the “Swan Bake” story was on the front page of The Sun.
I don’t think Nick Griffin is a good guy. I do think he has freedom of speech. I take exception to The Sun because I think that Trevor Kavanagh is an excellent journalist, and the paper gets several scoops. Unless you’re anal about it, or in the media yourself, you won’t know “good” Sun reporting from “bad” (ie fictional) Sun story-telling. Almost any fool can see through Nick Griffin. We have hate-speech laws. I’d believe in them a lot more if they were applied on the right culprits.
PS Before I hit the ‘post’ button, I do know that The Sun may switch to the Tories. They’re bastards either way, IMO.
These 257 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 8:30pm GMT Permanent link.
Saul Bellow »
He became his admirers.
Auden
I won’t miss Saul Bellow, because I never met him. I know him in the same way I know the long deceased, Plato, Machiavelli, Shakespeare, Dickens. No one spoke of his “great dignity” toward the end, or of the way he faced death. He forbade no one birth control. He never morally equated Auschwitz with Hiroshima. He has gone nowhere, and is nothing. More than a decade ago, he abandoned the position of ‘greatest living North American novelist’ to Philip Roth, and dried up like a leaf in November.
Still, I’m sad. The world is a smaller, lighter, place.
These 99 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 8:49pm GMT Permanent link.
A Pet Peeve And A Rave »
I hate this crap: Millions mourn man who changed papacy forever. Forever is a pusillanimous way of saying “as long as I live.” I’ve been around long enough for Radio 1 not only to stop playing the Beatles, but also punk (not that they ever did play it) — because both have slipped behind the 25-year event horizon of antiquity (and turned to the black hole of music: “classic rock").
And a rave. I waited for Nick to say something first, because he’s the fan. Will Howells did instead, and, biased as I am (living in Cardiff, and wanting BBC Wales to do well), it was very fine. When the trailers said that the world would end in the year 5 Billion, I thought, “but the world is already 4.5 billion years old!” But they got over that, and the millions of years expansion of the sun, and continental drift — not perfectly, but enough to make the story work. Then I worried there was no plot in the story: I was wrong again. And it had the “Dr Who” element of minor characters dying, but this time, we’d begun to know them; they weren’t merely extras. And then there was the ending, which Will, rightly, picks holes in. For me, we’re back to the best years of Dr Who, where the assistants were human, all too human, and the Doctor was colder and alien. We’re supposed to feel with Billie Piper (and, IMO, we do). I feel less than Will about the death of Cassandra, because I was already sick of the Terri Schiavo and Pope nonsense. When you really gotta go, you really gotta go, as The Stranglers once sang. We’re all going to die one day.
These 289 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:33pm GMT Permanent link.
Thursday, 7 April 2005
The Marathon Des Sables »
I don’t understand, and neither does Ben it seems, the personal websites on the Marathon Des Sables site. I’ve two friends, Dick Brewer, and Terry Caveney running The Marathon Des Sables. If I have the remotest clue as to how they do, I’ll post something. Hi too to Mike Johnson, whom I trained with long ago (and in a gym, ahem, up the road).
These 116 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:21am GMT Permanent link.
David Aaronovitch Is Moving To The Times »
Drunk post deleted
These 222 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:15am GMT Permanent link.
It's Michael Jackson! »
The Guardian: UK cardinal may hold key to papal election, yep it’s good old Cormac Murphy-O’Connor. MJ: rich, fondles boys. It’s a done deal, I tell you! Pilgrims to the Vatican! Watch out for falling babies!
These 36 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:26am GMT Permanent link.
Where There's Life There's Hope »
[the Black Knight continues to threaten Arthur despite getting both his arms and one of his legs cut off]
Black Knight: Right, I’ll do you for that!
King Arthur: You’ll what?
Black Knight: Come here!
King Arthur: What are you gonna do, bleed on me?
Black Knight: I’m invincible!
King Arthur: …You’re a loony.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
First there was Aznar.
Then there was the infinitely corrupt host of our beloved PM and his beautiful wife Silvio Berlusconi:
Voting for regional governments across Italy yesterday produced results that were almost as dramatic as the death of a Pope. The right-wing coalition of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was battered in a vote that was widely described as a seismic shift in Italian opinion.
And now there’s an election for arse-licker Blair. I see a pattern.
These 33 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 5:14am GMT Permanent link.
Politicians, Bah! »
Image from Perfect and The Blair Watch Project. Just because you’re the first blogging MP doesn’t mean that Tim Ireland won’t make mock. Tom Watson took it very well. Read the comments, especially Dan’s.
Forgotten man lay dead in flat for six years. A council flat, if you’re interested. I’m sure these people are. That’s someone with a dog on a string who could have had their own front door for the last five years. I’m guessing that as the flat is “in Carless Street, Caldmore, an area just over half a mile south of the centre of Walsall” it’s in South Walsall, which has a conservative council and a Labour MP from what I can glean from here. I’m a little surprised at the Cons leaving a source of revenue for so long.
Elsewhere, the Today programme is experimenting with weblogs. I like Derec’s. He’s been doorstepped by the Labour Party, and told the “nice man” he can’t vote for them.
“OK,” he says, “no problem sir. Would you like to sign our petition?”
“Oh,” I say, a little taken aback, and pause, waiting for him to elaborate.
He shows the petition to me and explains: “It’s about road safety, they’ve taken away our school crossing patrol officer.”
Then he closes the door, and a thought occurs.
Then I think, hang on, who’s this ‘they’ he referred to — the ‘they’ that got rid of the poor Lollipop Person. Surely that ‘they’ is them, they’re the government after all. Then I start to get suspicious. Is this the result of some spin-doctor’s latest stroke of marketing genius? Has the order been issued: ‘Find a local issue — start a petition or something - distract them from the big issues — make them feel involved … ‘
Matthew Turner liked the post I deleted this morning. He doesn’t know though that there is another drunken post about David Aaronovitch, one I wrote at three in the morning on Sunday, when I got in from the pub. I’d like to say that I was wise enough not to hit ‘post’ but the truth is that I just didn’t finish it.
I agree with David Aaronovitch. No really, read this shot. (I’m in the comments.)
As reported or argued in articles, reviews, interviews or diaries, this story includes the following necessary elements: Labour would have won in 1997 anyway without Tony Blair; Labour are now pretty much the same as the Tories, that’s why there is so much apathy; Blair has no social vision, he just wants power for its own sake; new Labour is in hock to America for strange psychological reasons to do with power and weaponry; Labour wishes to privatise the public services; Labour hasn’t achieved anything of any note; Labour represents a unique threat to our ancient liberties; Blair is a pious, lying hypocritical warmonger; he is trying to scare us unnecessarily; there is no such thing as a terrorist threat – or if there is such a thing, then it’s no worse than when the IRA was active, or if it is worse, then it’s the consequence of Western arrogance and globalisation.
Up to the word active, I agree with every word. And I thought he was a fat trot who was anti-war while there was a remote chance he might get called up himself. Now comes the fun.
Then comes the list. ‘War, tuition fees, house arrest, wholesale subservience to American foreign policy, talk of services being “swamped” by refugees, the deliberately manipulative use of fear, the introduction of ID cards, the suspension of habeas corpus — and these are the good guys. What happened?’
The list, of course, is hugely partial and the description of each of the items within it is carefully slanted. Not necessarily wrong by the way, but artfully constructed — Lanchester is a writer I admire and the LRB is well-edited.
It doesn’t matter if the list is partial — whether or not this is a subset of Labour policy amid a larger set of “good” policy. What matters is whether it is justifiable. Does increasing the average spend on the ingredients of school dinners from 37p to an unquestionably generous 51p counter the abolition of habeas corpus? It’s worth asking.
Another nostrum is the dimness of Blair. Doris Lessing said it a year ago, the philosopher Ted Honderich said it again a fortnight ago. He hates Blair because ‘he is always asking to be judged by the morality of his intentions. He doesn’t understand that no one cares about his fucking morality … In any case, his morality is so muddy and ill-considered. I’m increasingly coming to the opinion that Blair’s main problem is that he’s not very bright.’
Honderich, we were told by his interviewer, was the son of a Mennonite German father and a Scottish Calvinist mother. Oedipus, Schmoedipus.
Davy boy, you’re the man when it comes to farting your way out of a wet paper bag, or cheering the troops in your jim-jams, but this is not an argument. You don’t like Ted Honderich. Fine, but you might bother to engage with his arguments. I would, but I agree with his thesis.
I wanted to know what Eyre made of a recent study showing that Britons visit more plays, concerts, libraries, museums and art galleries than their counterparts in France, Germany or Italy. How does it come about that, in a country run by philistine New Labour, you can just walk into the Tate, whereas the visitor to the Gare D’Orsay in Paris must queue for an hour, even in the bitter cold, to pay a fortune to see the art on display?
The Britons who do, unless I’m very much mistaken are the same people Big Dave has been so dismissive of earlier. I know my working class, and I don’t see many of them in the theatre. Strange that “you can just walk into the Tate” it’s nothing to do with the bloke who with his mate Lyle had some sugar refinery. And I walked into the Tate under both Thatcher and Major, so nothing will chalk that up to bumsucker Tony Blair.
Let’s take Asbos. They are problematic because they’re new and could be abused.
That’s actually two reasons. The first would, of course, be a bad argument — had anyone actually made it, like Pope’s translation of Horace.
I lose my patience, and I own it too,
When works are censur’d, not as bad but new;
While if our Elders break all reason’s laws,
These fools demand not pardon but Applause.
The second reason is interesting. Could Asbos be abused? Of course not; never, ever.
That was where I went to bed. Asbos sound pretty silly to me. But Mr Aaronovitch believes in them.
But one quote from my local paper last week should show Lanchester why so many people support them. A resident of King’s Cross, until recently a gigantic al fresco drugs mart, told a reporter: ‘If you look at the difference where I live it is massive. Two years ago people’s doorways were constantly being used by drug dealers and users, but the problem has dried up.’ The man felt, perhaps for the first time in years, that the law was on his side and protecting him.
But great good fortune, I have a contact with his feet on the ground in that very manor. Daniel Davies has some critical remarks in Jamie’s comments.
The dealers at King’s Cross were not suppressed by ASBOs; they were cracked down on the old-fashioned way, by bumping up the police presence. The building works for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link also helped, because as a result of them the whole area is much better lit and the local streets are much more crowded. That’s why this bloke’s “doorway” is clear.
Daniel also claims that what happened is that the dealers moved north into Somers Town. I lived there 20 years ago. I can believe that. Daniel does say in favour of Asbos:
ASBOs did help a hell of a lot, when targeted against known crack dealers with convictions. By making them intrinsically criminal people (if they were hanging around in Somers Town), it became possible to round them up and put them away without having to catch them red-handed (which feat of policing there simply wasn’t the resource to pull off on a regular basis). I personally don’t think that the drug problem in Somers Town could have been brought down to survivable proportions without ASBOs.
Unless Camden Council has changed beyond recognition since I lived in London (and Daniel’s remarks suggest not), it’s a lot closer to old “Looney Leftism” than New Labour. When I lived a little further north in Tufnell Park, I used to attend branch meetings held in a stockbroker’s chic house. The only ‘incident’ I recall from those was an old local guy who held up a meeting for ages haranguing the councillors over their spending on some Lesbian and Gay schemes. We all got mightily bored trying to explain that the money wasn’t that much in the larger scheme of things. The Camden Councillors I knew were very much members of the “bruschetarati.” The Labour policies which work, IMO, are made by the people Aaronovitch is slagging off. New Labour, well they’re all for blaming bad old anonymous “them” for taking away a lollipop lady in a Labour controlled council. It won’t wash. Blair has to go.
These 754 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:59pm GMT Permanent link.
Friday, 8 April 2005
How I'll Remember Him »
Tim Ireland says Goodbye, Pope John Paul II.
Sure I didn’t like the old bastard, but ‘The Man Without Qualities ably dissects Christopher Hitchen’s latest idiocy.
(1) [The Pope] is chosen for life, by God himself … That would be news to the College of Cardinals, who waste a lot of time and effort thinking they are actually choosing Popes. It has always been my understanding that the Pope is chosen by the men in the College of Cardinals as much as they choose anything else. Isn’t the Catholic Church pretty big on the consequences of free will? Could Mr. Hitchens be confusing Catholic doctrine with something of his own invention, but akin to the protestant doctrine of “double predestination?”
These 29 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 5:01pm GMT Permanent link.
Saturday, 9 April 2005
I Blame Chris Brooke »
He reminded me of this drivel. I couldn’t go to sleep until I’d responded. Matt Turner, I’m sober and won’t delete this, though I’ll still regret it in the morning.
Enjoy. Or, of course, not.
That smell! The fragrance of cordite
Again attempting to excite
My stirring stunted stalactite.She said she was a Mammonite,
I knew she’d fall to cellulite,
Before that day, I would alight
Her pounding transports of delight.
She used to call me, her ‘hoplite’
And would discuss the plebiscite --
Ballot box or Armalite
Abu Ghraib and 'torture-lite'
Stem cell repairs of aged dendrite
The price of fish and anthracite
Or effects of potato blight.
She planned to launch a satellite
And contemplate the infinite
(She held that Blair was not too bright)
Or frolick with my catamite
While sailing round the Isle of Wight
Put pictures on a porn website.
She thought I was an anchorite.
She only served to expedite
My eviction on Election night.
Update: I said that I would regret this, and I have. I worried that “hoplite” had three syllables, and I appear to have invented the word “Mammonite”. Other, even more painful rhymes came to me as I drifted off last night, and I have added them in italics.
These 35 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:06am GMT Permanent link.
Epithalamium »
Sorry, chaps, but Andrew was feeling a bit iffy this morning, something to do with the butts of wine these laureate laddies take for pay. I’m his less well-known and unhappily named brother, Bowel. I don’t really do this verse stuff, I’m an accountant, you know, but blood’s thicker than water, what?
Charles “ties the knot” with his Camilla
I hope they’re off to see Manila
And dance to Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’
(I’d rather watch ‘The Driller Killer’).
She’s not as scary as Godzilla
But not as hot as Phyllis Diller.
Are they kinky or vanilla?
Right, that’s that wrote, now to bill ‘er.
Suggested by Edward.
These 55 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:06pm GMT Permanent link.
Now That's What I Call Justice »
Man gets nine years for spamming. At times, I regret my opposition to execution on ethical grounds.
These 17 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:10pm GMT Permanent link.
Now That's What I Call A Research Budget »
The truth is out there
Agent Fox Mulder
Long ago, in a country far, far away, a professor at the University of Texas wrote a polemic partly intended to encourage Congress to build a proposed large particle collider (bigger than CERN; trivial research spin-off, the interwebthing). Daddy Bush wanted to spend the money from the new taxes he promised not to raise on the military-industrial complex.
Somewhere out there, they have different priorities. (Or, of course, not. I’m kidding, I just read a lot of Carl Sagan when young.)
These 81 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:26pm GMT Permanent link.
The Cardinal Virtue Of Careful Rebuttal »
Back to old the Catholic church, I’m afraid. Nick commented on the Chuch’s reaction to the Da Vinci Code.
’The book the Vatican thinks is a bit rubbish’ doesn’t really make for much of a selling point.
Indeed. Mr Brown has written other books — these appear to be popular as well, to my very great surprise. CERN appears in Mr Brown’s Angels and Demons.
Dan Brown’s book “Angels and Demons” is a detective story about a secret society that wants to destroy the Vatican using an antimatter bomb.
In the book, the antimatter is stolen from CERN.
Read it if you want to know what CERN stands for, and why. And whether nuclear scientists (who mostly do maths, of course) really wear chemistry lab coats and hurry hither and thither carrying files mysteriously.
And the plot McGuffin? You know, mixing matter and antimatter — “The engines willna take it, Captain,” and all that.
How is antimatter contained?
With very great difficulty.
Einstein himself once said something about expressing oneself as simply as possible. Overall impression, Mr Brown’s book “is a bit rubbish.”
John Langdon’s ambigrams, however, are very fine.
These 131 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:02pm GMT Permanent link.
Monday, 11 April 2005
More Rite Than Righteous »
[Vizzini has just cut the rope The Dread Pirate Roberts is climbing up]
Vizzini: HE DIDN’T FALL? INCONCEIVABLE.
Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
The Princess Bride, William Goldman
999 times out of 1000 I want to scream when I read Polly Toynbee Stephen Pollard. But whatever I might think of her his politics, she he is a class act as a columnist blogger. Today it’s that 1 in 1000 column post when I want to cheer.
Still, Stephen can lavish praise when it suits him, and Enough already on Polly Tonybee’s splendid essay on the Pope is a shining example.
The Vatican is not a charming Monaco for tourists collecting Ruritanian stamps or gazing at past glories in the Sistine Chapel. It is a modern, potent force for cruelty and hypocrisy. It has weak temporal power, so George Bush can safely pray at the corpse of the man who criticised the Iraq war and capital punishment; it simply didn’t matter as the Pope never made a serious issue of it or ordered the US church to take strong action.
Not just that but many of Bush’s co-religionists are fervently anti-catholic. See Tim LaHaye:
How can you, as an evangelically trained scholar justify what I saw with my own eyes in Mexico City at the Shrine of Guadalupe? Natives (on some Holy Day) supposedly to be saved, crawled on their hands and knees for three miles to the Catholic Cathedral. Naturally they were bloodied by the exhausting experience that found them finally at the foot of (not Jesus) but an idol of Mary! I have seen similar sights in pagan India and China, and I tell you it was anything but Christian. Yet it is done annually with the sanction of the Catholic Church.
Or everyone’s favourite looney evangelical cartoonist, Jack Chick.
Semiramis promoted baby sacrifices and celibacy for priests, foreshadowing Roman Catholicism.
No I don’t know when Catholics ever sacrificed babies, either. I do understand LaHaye’s criticism.
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:
Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: …
Exodus, 20:4-5. On the other hand:
And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
Matthew, 16:17-19. You can either believe that the Catholic church has thrown away the Commandments God gave to Moses and is evil as LaHaye believes, or you can believe that the Catholic is the only true church, the one especially sanctioned by Jesus, and the one with “the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” If Bush (or Prince Charlie for that matter) took this sort of stuff at all seriously, he’d have to belief that if the Pope is in heaven, he’s going to hell, and vice versa. A mushy third way where everything is true is only tolerable by ignoring the words the Christian faith is supposedly based on.
This is why I don’t understand Norm’s reaction.
But how she [Polly Toynbee] can speak in so trivializing a way of world-wide reaction to the death of the head of a church whose ‘deeper power’ she herself characterizes as lying ‘in its personal authority over 1.3 billion worshippers’ is mystifying to me.
The “world-wide reaction” was another symptom of the Disneyfication of everything. Another stop for the atrocity exhibition world tour. I’ve far more sympathy for the collective howl fest that followed Prince Di’s death. At least she was a youngish woman on the brink of happy prospects after a miserable marriage. Her death was something which a Stoic would call ‘sad’ and a tabloid hack would call ‘tragic.’ Pope John Paul II was a 83-year-old man who’d considered retiring three years ago and had been too ill to perform any proper duties for months, at least.
The millions pouring into Rome (pray there is no Mecca-style disaster) herald no resurgence of Catholicism. The devout are there, but this is essentially a Diana moment, a Queen Mother’s catafalque. People queue to join great public spectacles, hoping it’s a tell-my-grandchildren event. Communing with public emotion is easy now travel is cheap. These things are driven by rolling, unctuous television telling people a great event is unfolding, focusing on the few hysterics in tears and not the many who come to feel their pain.
This is why I don’t understand Norm’s opening paragraph either, especially:
Every time there’s an event that brings forth a manifestation of religious belief by large numbers of people, some militant secularist or other will give out an opinion that would be jejune coming from an intelligent sixth-former.
But it’s not a “manifestation of religious belief” nor anything like one. I’m a bit of a “militant secularist” myself, and the word “intelligent” jars here. Jejune means “Intellectually unsatisfying, lacking substance, shallow, simplistic, dull” (Shorter OED). Here, it’s the presumption that the past week has seen anything other than mass hysteria that’s jejune.
(All links found through Mike Power.)
These 399 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:46pm GMT Permanent link.
True Words In Jest »
Jack: If they want to drink Merlot, we’re drinking Merlot.
Miles Raymond: No, if anyone orders Merlot, I’m leaving. I am NOT drinking any fucking Merlot!
I haven’t changed my mind about Peter Hain, but I agree with him for once.
“He’s got the message. The really important message to send with your cross on the ballot paper is to say to the Tories that this sort of rabid right-wing platform is unacceptable.”
Hain lashes out at liberal middle-class dinner party critics. I think Guido got there first, but I’ll certainly be voting against the “rabid right-wing platform.”
The leader had ‘got the message’ about their displeasure, Hain said, arguing that those who still disagreed over Iraq or civil liberties should reopen the arguments after the election.
Suppose there are members of the People’s New Labour Party who disagree over civil rights. What goes in the manifesto of the winning party becomes, eventually, law. As I understand democracy, that is. I give you that Tony Blair is younger than Mr Howard, has more hair, and a bigger smile, if you like those sort of things. But, to sound like the old Bennite I used to be, what matters are ishoos.
’There’s now a kind of dinner party critics who quaff shiraz or chardonnay and just sneeringly say, “You are no different from the Tories”, ’ he said. ‘Most of the people in this category are pretty comfortably off: it’s not going to be the end of the world if they get a Tory government. In a working-class constituency like mine, this is a lifeline. It’s not a luxury.’
It is mere coincidence that David Aaronovitch (that free-thinking independent journalist) used the same stinking ninth category jab in the Observer blog? Once more, and it’s a meme. (I plan to follow it.)
It’s true that Labour is spending millions of tax-pounds trying to rescue the ailing Rover. Would the Tories have flung in the towel? (Of course, not every one who supported the Iraq War at dinner parties, supports trade links with China.) Right now, giving up, and not throwing any money away, looks like the wiser option. If we’re going to talk about the old horny-handed sons of toil, Peter, get talking about Rover. I doubt many denizens of Neath work in Pontypool (though it’s a trivial commute compared to the trek many in the Home Counties make), but it’s more than likely their families do. Before you ask if I want Rover to collapse — I don’t. There aren’t similar industries to take up the slack, so we’re talking about skilled and well paid men looking for unskilled and degrading work. No one who ever voted Labour could regard that as anything other than a disaster. On the other hand, I can’t imagine anyone who ever voted Labour viewing any deals with a repressive country like China as exactly welcome, either. We invade bad old Saddam for being a murdering torturing bastard, but China’s too big to take on militarily, so well pay them to take over our industries. You know it makes sense.
There’s one quality I really admire in the Tories. I don’t recall it in any Labour politician except Denis Healey, and I used to regard him as a right-winger. Peter Hain (the Paul Marsden of the 70s; now a Liberal; now Labour) could learn to keep the foam-flecked insults down. I found this looking up a quote.
That was typical of the manner in which he [William Whitelaw] survived, until the cruel workload brought him down. His failing powers were shown up when he had to give up shooting after he accidently peppered one of the beaters. A stroke in 1987 led to his retirement to his sumptuous home in Scotland, except that he played a part in the overthrow of Thatcher in 1990, when he advised her to drop out of the leadership contest after her too narrow victory in the first ballot. When the assembled media hacks asked him then whether he was one of the men in grey suits who were said to be plotting to bring her down Whitelaw’s reply showed him acting at being stupid again: “I don’t know what you mean; in any case I haven’t got a grey suit”
It’s on the worldsocialism.org site. I don’t know what Mr Hain means. I’m something of a Cabernet man myself, though I like a good Pinot.
These 442 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:41pm GMT Permanent link.
Tuesday, 12 April 2005
Should Be, Not Is »
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride
Via Norm, I’ve learnt how I ought to feel:
Any Left liberal at this election who, even by default, acts in a way that gives any more power to Howard than he has already because they are still in the spasms of some hissy fit over Iraq should be ashamed.
Damian Counsell. I like him (he’s generously linked to me, even in my madder moments) but he’s wrong on the “should” here. It’s not a hissy fit either, nor a giving power to Howard. I had the following very nice letter (which I haven’t asked to reproduce) a few days ago. It may yet change my vote. (I think it was in response to this.)
Well said David - politicians! — by their actions shall you know them! This was the first newsletter we’ve had from Alun Michael in five years, paid for out of the vast allowances MP’s have — just a coincidence that it arrived just before the election. Doesn’t he look uneasy cleaning up litter — bet it’s the first time he’s seen dog-shit for years, since he’s so infrequently in Penarth.
If you want to vote for an honest politician (if that isn’t a contradiction in terms) - well then, an honest candidate, try Jason Toby, Plaid Cymru’s candidate for Penarth and Cardiff South. Born in Grangetown and still living there, he’s what you as an ex-Labour man might appreciate — a real socialist, 26 years old, degree in economics and poilitics, works in his familiy’s small business in Grangetown. He’s worked for a credit union, and is active in community groups (treasurer of 2), led the fight against redevelopment of the Red House pub on the so-called Sports Village. (By the way, the Sports Village now of course won’t get off the ground because Blair’s super-casinos have bitten the dust, and it was only the super-casino scheduled for the front of the site that was going to pay for the whole thing). Cardiff’s weak-kneed Liberals are trembling in case anyone finds out.
Plaid has established itself as the party of social conscience in Wales — between fighting for ASW pensions, affordable housing and attewmpting to impeach Tony Blair. I’ve gopt a vested interest, of course — I’m Plaid constituency secretary. Any info you want for your blog, let me know. Want to argue - let me know that too.
Most of my friends plan to vote Plaid. I’ll work for the Lib Dems, but I think I’ll vote Tory. As someone else said of Alun Michael “Well, he’s a cunt” — hardly shows his face in the constituency, thinks his employer is Tony Blair rather than the “hard working” (oh, I read the Labour Party ‘lit’) electorate; I fall asleep every night to the prospect of patting his little head in “sympathy” on election night — “Aw, you poor dear, you bum-sucked the wrong guy.” (Plays imaginary fiddle.) Fuck the people of Wales, works for the bosses in England, some socialist Alun Michael is. Paul Flynn was saying in 1999 that Labour was ignoring Wales for the same reason that Thatcher had: she thought there was nothing to gain; smarmy Pete thought there was nothing to lose. We’re the poor huddled masses. We loves you Tony, you do so much more for us than the other bastards. Do the words “Suck on this” mean anything?
These 241 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:15am GMT Permanent link.
Why Can't I Be Like Everybody Else? »
Yet another reason not to vote Labour. The First Labour Broadcast is available on the webthing, in Windows formats only. (Bah, the Tories are just as bad.) At least the Bush campaign had the right idea. Still that’s the price of being a Mac user. You spend half the time telling everyone how much better your PC is, and the other half complaining that no one understands you.
Update: see Well, I'm An Idiot.
These 68 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:34am GMT Permanent link.
We Don't Do Dog »
Chicken Yoghurt got an email from Alastair Campbell.
… the vile (interestingly an anagram of evil) Daily Mail.
God is an anagram of dog, you know. Anything to help Alastair in these difficult times. (Interestingly, times is an anagram of smite, mites, items, and emits. All good stuff for election emails.)
These 41 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:53am GMT Permanent link.
Subtle As A Brick »
I posted this as comment on John Band’s site (and you should be reading him anyway, he’s funnier than I am). John is probably right about Julie Burchill, who is mad.
I nearly choked reading La Burchill’s first sentence. “I wouldn’t be without my Sky Plus, but I do occasionally come over all nostalgic when I think about old-time television.” Oh, lookee she’s writing in the Times (prop. R Murcdoch) and promoting Sky (prop R. Murdoch). I can’t wait for David Aaronovitch. “Dear Deirdre was really fascinating this week …” “As I read Russell Grant’s predictions for the day, my mind turned to…” “Did you see that film on Sky Movies the other night?” “I always say, if you want good coverage of politics on TV, Fox News is your man …” “That splendid studio, Fox searchlight, have made yet another wonderful movie, which I urge you all to see at once …”
Comedy gold. I couldn’t read any more.
These 160 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:06pm GMT Permanent link.
Well, I'm An Idiot »
Chris Brooke emailed me in response to my lonely Mac User rant. I didn’t know that RealPlayer works on the Mac. Downloaded it now. Thanks, Chris. Hey, now I can catch the Radio 4 things I missed.
And the PPB? I thought it was very good, until Gordon Brown started his “Every child is different, and every child is special … ” spiel. Fingers down throat, sorry.
These 67 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:06pm GMT Permanent link.
Seeing Is Believing »
Channel 4’s Factcheck is very, very cool. I’m speechless, there really are no words for this Tory idiocy.
These 18 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:21pm GMT Permanent link.
Wednesday, 13 April 2005
Horowitz Is A Hoot »
If you write a blog, where there’s no one with fresh eyes to spot your typos, the odd mistake is tolerable. If you claim to run a “magazine” getting easily checkable facts wrong is highly uncool. It’s sloppy. It’s the sort of thing bloggers like to pull apart. Now I know that Michael Bérubé has a name with silly diacritical marks in it, and this may confuse Americans who’ve never met a Spanish-speaking person, or visited Canada or any other exotic locale. Still if you can manage to call him Bérubé four times, would it hurt to spell his name right the other three times you use it? Or do you think that “Berube” is sorta close enough?
Probably the latter, if this laughter fest is anything to go by.
In the final round, when Prof. Berube emailed his final response, he did not put his answer at the bottom of the exchange by his name as is the procedure at Frontpage Symposium. Instead, he inserted his comments in an interlineated format which answered Horowitz’s comments point by point and he put his very last paragraph below his name. He did this without flagging his interlineated replies throughout the text or informing the moderator, Jamie Glazov, of what he did. The moderator therefore scrolled down and assumed the final paragraph was Prof. Berube’s final answer.
Poor Dr Glazov, imagine having to read a contribution to his magazine. And shock, horror! an academic who answers “comments point by point” — the fiendish fiend. In the brave new scholastic regime of David Horowitz, only hand-waving and ad hominems will be allowed.
However, clearly it was not Prof. Bérubé’s final answer, and we learned this from his recent post on his blog in which he stated that we had cut his replies from the exchange and then criticized him for not giving a more complete answer. We wish, of course, that he had contacted us before launching this attack to ascertain what had gone wrong.
What had gone wrong was Dr Glazov couldn’t arsed reading Prof Bérubé’s submission. As Michael Bérubé says, with some logic:
Likewise, I wish they had made absolutely sure that I hadn’t replied to any of Horowitz’s many, many, many arguments before they charged me with “intellectual laziness” — and then went ahead and built the entire column around the premise that the entire Left is intellectually lazy because it dominates American culture so thoroughly …
“Intellectual laziness” — this from an editor who “scrolled down and assumed the final paragraph was Prof. Berube’s final answer.” Oh dear. And then Dennis Perrin weighs in on the intellectual honesty of David Horowitz.
Don’t forget that Horowitz is coming to London. They’ve less than two months to go and the itinerary is still “tentative” the deposit is still $500 and the full price is still not disclosed. “Space is limited.” But not so much that they’re full.
Also via Michael, a rather lovely dissection of Horowitzian Truth Standards.
Here’s something From the Desk of David Horowitz — it ends “sincerely David Horowitz” with a image of what looks like a signature. It’s in his own magazine. I may be a cynic, but it looks like Horowitz wrote it.
Over the last two years, I’ve spoken at more than 30 colleges and universities, and I’ve come to this powerful conclusion:
Our institutions of higher learning must have an Academic Bill of Rights that stresses intellectual diversity, that demands balance in reading lists, that recognizes that political partisanship by professors in the classroom is an abuse of students’ academic freedom, that the inequity in funding of student organizations and visiting speakers is unacceptable, and that a learning environment hostile to conservatives is unacceptable.
Universities should not be indoctrination centers for the political left.
You think “I’ve come to this powerful conclusion” means something like “here’s something I wrote earlier, get ready, it’ll knock your socks off.” To you, maybe.
You insist I have, and refer to a later article, in which you say I quote the same passage. In fact, the text you cite is not an article but very obviously a direct mail solicitation and was written not by me by but by a direct mail firm I hired to raise money for my Center. I plead guilty to not paying more attending to my fund-raising mail. …
You go on to other examples, which are equally spurious, including a second quotation from the same direct mail solicitation to the effect that the Academic Bill of Rights will require colleges to “promote balance” in regard to the allocation of funds for speakers.
If it comes from your office, and bears your name, whether it’s fund-raising or filthy jokes, it looks a lot like your responsibility. You know if I had a spare few thousand dollars (and hey, won’t the exchange rate shock the Yanks?) I’d love to go on this “5 Star Athenaeum” trip. Horowitz is a hoot.
These 406 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:40am GMT Permanent link.
Heh »
Good for Robin Grant. He inspired Chicken Yoghurt.
Well, we’ve had the avalanche of emotional blackmail from New Labour and its supporters to bring us back into the fold. When that didn’t work, David Aaronovitch - so Labour he’s about to take the Murdoch shilling — and Peter Hain decided insults and smears might be a better tactic. Again, no joy.
(A couple of final words on that Aaronovitch piece. Here’s Rupert Murdoch’s latest pride and joy.
Let’s take Asbos. They are problematic because they’re new and could be abused.
Asbos: not new and being abused:
Asbos are a punitive measure that can criminalise people for behaviour that is not criminal. Asbos are imposed under civil law, and can be made solely on the basis of hearsay evidence — even though breach of an asbo can result in a jail sentence.
We are concerned that asbos are being served on vulnerable people who need help and support. Around half of all asbos are served on children and young people aged under 18. Many others are served on vulnerable adults, such as people who are mentally ill or have drug, alcohol or other social problems.
But enough of this folly.)
Mr Yoghurt calls Labour’s latest conciliatory move a wide-ranging smorgasbord of humanitarian pledges. He’s unswayed by the government’s backing of Paul Wolfowitz’s nomination. I’m troubled by this.
Labour will work for the effective implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention and for a strengthening of the Biological Weapons Convention. Labour will ban the import, export, transfer and manufacture of all forms of anti-personnel landmines. We will introduce an immediate moratorium on their use. Labour will not permit the sale of arms to regimes that might use them for internal repression or international aggression. We will increase the transparency and accountability of decisions on export licences for arms. And we will support an EU code of conduct governing arms sales.
Yes, it’s the 1997 manifesto, the one I was so enthusiastic about. I wrote about landmines, but I’ll save the reader the whole post. Extract from Martin Bell’s An Accidental MP.
By then I was beginning to get the hang of things. The way to make things happen in the House of Commons is to get the government’s attention outside of it. … I was invited to discuss the ratification [of the land mines treaty] issue with George Robertson, the Defence Secretary [on the Today programme]. … George recited the usual reasons why, with the best will in the world, nothing could be done. I countered that it could be done — indeed it had to be done. MPs could forfeit a day of their long recess, and come back to ratify the treaty on 31 August, the anniversary of the Princess’s death. What better way to honour her memory?
Manisto pledge: “We will introduce an immediate moratorium on their use.” George Robertson, defence secretary, two years later: “nothing could be done.” I can drop kick a cannon ball further than I trust these wankers.
“Labour officials admit that Iraq ‘comes up regularly’ on the doorstep,” says the above Guardian piece. Really? That’s not what John Reid’s been saying when he’s wheeled out to smear humanitarians. Or Jack Straw. So which is it? It can’t be both. Ah, silly me. This is New Labour we’re taking about. Of course it can be both. A fish rots from the head down and the stench of Tony Blair’s bifurcated mind hangs over all.
I’ll tell what can be both. David Aaronovitch’s dinner party straw men bitch about New Labour over human rights. Here in Wales we feel screwed by New Labour as it pursues Mondeo man and woman in the South-East. Can both be right? They sure can. New Labour fuck everything. They’re only in it for themselves.
I used to admire Gordon Brown, but even his leadership wouldn’t do it for me now.
These 199 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:21am GMT Permanent link.
I Can Hardly Believe It »
We all know that politicians are professional nice guys who work hard, are open-minded, and have the interests of the country at heart. So these horrible, horrible slurs on Bush’s nominee for ambassador to the UN, John Bolton make me just want to put my fingers in my ears, and sing, “La la la la.”
Democrats on the Senate foreign relations committee argue that the incident, and others like it, showed that Mr Bolton was a bully who tried to shape intelligence to fit his ideology.
What a vile man. Interestingly an anagram of evil. We don’t have any people like that here.
More from Kevin Drum and von.
Bolton pic, should you wonder about Matt’s comment. Incredibly, he’ll be ambassador to something which doesn’t exist.
These 95 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:45am GMT Permanent link.
Manifesto, Part 2 »
Factcheck is simply brill. “Labour has no plans to introduce tuition fees for higher education.”
When that failed to impress, he appeared to adopt a third line, telling the students that even if they were correct and the manifesto pledge had been breached, sometimes it was necessary for governments to change course: “There will be occasions when politicians do have to do something different to what they said they’d do because circumstances change,” he told them.
Circumstances do change of course. These ones hadn’t. Not only liars, then, but proud of it, too.
These 32 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:12pm GMT Permanent link.
Who Should You Vote For? »
Via John Band.
Your expected outcome: Liberal Democrat
Your actual outcome:
Labour -20 Conservative 9 Liberal Democrat 22 UK Independence Party 26 Green 33
You should vote: GreenThe Green Party, which is of course strong on environmental issues, takes a strong position on welfare issues, but was firmly against the war in Iraq. Other key concerns are cannabis, where the party takes a liberal line, and foxhunting, which unsurprisingly the Greens are firmly against.
Take the test at Who Should You Vote For.
Sadly, I’m pro-hunting, but otherwise not a surprise.
These 20 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:16pm GMT Permanent link.
I Was Won Over To Labour By That Alan Milburn On A Party Political Broadcast »
Another link for my growing collection of Labour sites. Vote for Alan Milburn. Stephen Pollard chronicles the Incredible rise and rise of Alan Milburn, man of many ideas; Matthew Parris is simply splendid in his profile of Alan Milburn.
Every prime minister needs a milburn or two by his side. For Margaret Thatcher, men like David Waddington, Kenneth Baker or Cecil Parkinson were her milburns. When John Major succeeded her, David Mellor, Michael Howard and Brian Mawhinney became his milburns. These ministers look strong until the political suns they reflect, go out. Then they fade.
Do not confuse your milburns with your hoons. Prime ministers need only a couple of milburns but dozens of hoons. Hoons aren’t even muscular, just limply reliable. A hoon is liable to break up in a storm, whereas a milburn helps you to weather it.
Ooh Matthew, they must love you in the Conservative party. (He could be right about M Howard, though.) Matthew supplied the title, BTW. He wasn’t impressed with Milburn’s ministerial career either.
Anyone could see that Milburn never answered the question about PFIs; anyone could see that ring-fencing is a ridiculous way of handling budgets unless you don’t trust the professionals, because something has to be on the outside of a fence; and nobody who was sick gave two hoots whether the Tories could find us a penny piece more, because the Tories were not the Government.
The Alan Milburn fan site considers Alliance Medical.
Alan Milburn was paid £30,000 to sit on the advisory panel of Bridgepoint Capital who are part owners of Alliance Medical. Alliance Medical have been given £95 million of tax payers money in 5 year deal to provide an MRI scanning service, increasing capacity by 15%.
…
Furthermore, Alliance Medical is outside the NHS clinical governance framework so no one knows who is accountable when mistakes are made. So much for New Labour’s claims to put patient safety first.
Much as I like Matthew Parris, Good reasons for not voting Alan Milburn has the best line.
By his own principles he should be given no stars and be replaced by an MP from the private sector.
These 95 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:04pm GMT Permanent link.
Vote Liar »
Seems like a nice man, ooh, “I’ll make your breakfast, mow your lawn, and fix your roof.” You don’t get promises like that everyday.
Found on the Blair Watch Project. Original on spunk.org.uk.
These 34 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:24pm GMT Permanent link.
Labour Manifesto »
Lenin thinks it is obviously a fake. Chris Brooke attempted to get through it before lunchtime. (He’s posted since, but not on that.) Jon Snow’s latest Channel 4 email:
Crumbs what a contrast: Labour’s telephone directory of a manifesto versus the Tories’ wedding invitation.
Whatever else you want to accuse New Labour of there’s no shortage of detail in their manifesto. The launch was odd… like a set from ‘The Weakest Link’ and a kind of succession of intonations from different Secretaries of State reminiscent of an early nineteenth century prayer meeting.
(Ellipsis in original.) Chris helpfully gives a link to the Labour Manifesto (pdf). It looks like hard going.
I don’t understand the Guardian’s claim (other than they needed a headline) First blood to Tories in battle of the broadcasts. I used to watch Labour PPBs out of loyalty, but not watch them too carefully in case they made me realise that I wasn’t all that fond of the party. I never watched the Tory ones. What was there to learn? I knew what the Tories were like. They were in power. I got enough of Mrs Thatch on the news without seeing her gloating and simpering. Despite what Peter Hain says about a redistributive future (and I don’t see how that squares with all the ‘opportunity’ stuff), we pretty much know what Blair’s third term will be like. There’s no significance in viewing figures.
Hmm. I’ve tried reading it. It’s like swallowing a grand piano. Not that I’ve ever tried that. And I doubt I’ll get much further with this.
Update: Cartoon added. With a wink to Tim Newman.
These 199 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 6:23pm GMT Permanent link.
Obligatory Ed Matts Post »
I didn’t expect this to take off the way it has. Ming Campbell makes sense to me —
Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrats’ deputy leader, said Mr Flight was sacked for telling the truth. “Ed Matts should be sacked for telling lies.”
It’s very sad. I’ve been turning over jokes in my mind about Ed Matts passing the police checks, his financial accounts being in the black, his tax payments being regular, nothing embarrassing in the tabloids … except there’s no evidence that he’s a racist. There’s only three weeks to the general election. How can he prove he’s a racist?
But it doesn’t really work for me. The sad, stupid thing is that he was so close to being cogent and (perhaps) the only example of whatever it is the Tory poster says about opposing immigration and not being racist. He had the evidence, and then he fudged it, like he was a guilty priest covering up paedophilia. I find that really unforgivable.
These 140 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 7:06pm GMT Permanent link.
Another Post On Horowitz »
I don’t know much about David Horowitz, and I don’t think I want to. What I do know reminds me of the strident sort of PC left-winger who was embarrassingly mockable, and no one with any sense hung out with. James Hamilton emailed me this morning and when I replied, I mentioned that I’d post again on Horowitz. I’m not desperately keen to do so. So this post isn’t about him or FrontPage or Jamie Glazov. But I bet he thinks it is, doesn’t he, doesn’t he, doesn’t he … Or something. Make your own mind up.
The “fusion pioneers,” as Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann were called by the Salt Lake Tribune were to be the star witnesses. Barely a month had passed since the announcement of the discovery of cold fusion. They seemed like an odd couple, the urbane sixty-two-year-old Fleischmann, with his not-quite-identifiable European accent, and the younger, nerdish-looking Pons, whose accent betrayed his roots in a small rural town in the hills of North Carolina. Elected to the Royal Society, a very high distinction in the United Kingdom, showered with honors, Fleischmann radiated brilliance. Ideas on every subject seemed to spew forth effortlessly from his fertile brain, but few of these were practical. Pons had been a student of Fleischmann’s at the University of Southhampton in England. What Pons lacked in brilliance, he made up for in aggression and energy.
But despite superficial differences, they were too much alike to be effective collaborators. Neither had much taste for slow, careful science. They were both scientific gamblers, given to playing long shots. Together they could be almost manic. It is a pattern we will see repeated. The junior collaborator, dazzled by his famous mentor, believes him to be incapable of error. The older is confident that if he has made a mistake, his clever young friend will surely catch it. Thus are self-doubts suppressed as they carry each other along on an intoxicating ride.
Robert Park, Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud, p92–3. (I’d recommend it to fellow bloggers interested in such cons as homeopathy or flying saucers, but I’m sure they’re all ahead of me in this.)
I feel a bit bad for raising this post of Mick Hartley’s, but, really, cold fusion is rubbish. In Mick’s comments, I mentioned a control experiment.
Pons returned to Utah from the meeting in Dallas, seemingly eager to try the try the “light-water” experiment …
Two things here: the control didn’t occur to him, as it ought to a diligent scientist, and “light-water” is “not-heavy water” ie water.
… suggested by Furth, but a few days later when he was asked by a reporter what the response had been , Pons’s only comment was a muttered, “We did not get the baseline we expected.” Apparently the experiment behaved the about the same with ordinary water as it had with deuterated water [ie heavy or radioactive water]. Pons and Fleischmann would never mention the light-water experiment again.
(Park, p 24.) If you know anything about science, you should have two reactions here. One is that “experiments don’t fail, because they find the truth, in the way a trial doesn’t fail, when a defendant is found not guilty” (the OJ trial may give you pause though) the other is excitement: that means that cold fusion (or whatever it is) will be really, really cheap. Water, for most of the world, is in very great supply. Sadly, this pretty much rules out fusion, so the excess energy, if any exists, almost certainly comes from chemical bonds, and isn’t nearly as sexy — or as powerful — as matter-to-energy conversion.
There were other problems: the by-products of deuterium fusion, in addition to helium [harmless — DW], are neutrons [remember the neutron bomb], tritium [an unstable isotope of hydrogen], and gamma rays [oh my!]. At the power levels claimed by Pons and Fleischman, their test cell would be expected to emit lethal doses of nuclear radiation. Yet here were two beaming chemists, in a photograph that appeared on front pages around the world, in jackets and ties, proudly holding their cell up for the cameras. As nuclear physicist Frank Close commented, it should have been the hottest source of radiation west of Chernobyl. There was skepticism even in the Physics Department of the University of Utah, where a dark joke making the rounds asked, “Have you heard the bad news about the research assistant in Pons’s lab? He’s in perfect health.” If this was fusion, it was of a sort never before seen in which the energy is carried off as heat with little radiation. [This makes no sense. Heat is radiation. Gamma rays are, to be very very brief, like something extremely hot, which is what you would expect a fusion reaction to be. Never mind the neutrons and the tritium, you ought to be baked just by being close.] If it could not be explained by nuclear physics, the two chemists seemed to be saying, so much the worse for nuclear physics.
(Park, p18.) In short, I’m not happy with this New Scientist piece which, IMO, maliciously misled Mick. Cold Fusion hangs around for the very bad reason that if it’s true, it’s money for nothing, and what entrepreneur doesn’t slaver at that?
Still, I must say have a sort of crush on “The Pioneer anomaly” (number 8 on the same New Scientist page).
They [Pons and Fleischmann] have fallen out and no longer speak to one another.
(Park, p124.) To get back to my original idea, it seems to me that David Horowitz is impressively fertile, and Jamie Glazov is an able and clever young man. Sometimes, that’s not enough.
These 387 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 8:36pm GMT Permanent link.
Horowitz Again »
Ah, the good old statist BBC. Read some history, Horowitz! I agree with the suffrage of women, the abolition of torture and so on. I agree that Saddam was a bad guy. So I’m with the FrontPage crowd. England wasn’t created civilised; it became civilised. We learned, through protests, to give the vote to women, the working class etc. We learned to stop state torture and execution. 400 years ago, the England David Horowitz, callow Californian that he is, wants to visit was a land cruel as Iran, Iraq, North Korea, or China. Take your pick. You think Shakespeare would have written so well?
Harry Lime: Don’t be so gloomy. After all it’s not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love — they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long Holly.
Dum de dum de dum de dum. On the other hand, I thought the FrontPage guys were spreading “democracy and peace”. In a burst of serendipity (or BBC forward planning) here’s Dish and Dishonesty:
E: Well, Mrs. Miggins, at last we can return to sanity. The hustings are over, the bunting is down, the mad hysteria is at an end. After the chaos of a general election, we can return to normal.
M: Oh, has there been a general election, then, Mr. Blackadder?
E: Indeed there has, Mrs. Miggins.
M: Oh, well, I never heard about it.
E: Well of course you didn’t; you’re not eligible to vote.
M: Well, why not?
E: Because virtually no-one is: women, peasants, (looks at Baldrick) chimpanzees (Baldrick looks behind himself, trying to see the animal), lunatics, Lords…
There is an England which gave the vote to women, the lower classes, which built great architecture, passed fair laws, prohibited slavery, encouraged Adam Smith and Karl Marx. But Horowitz doesn’t want to see any of that. The promoter of “democracy” elsewhere blocks his ears.
These 210 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:56pm GMT Permanent link.
My Hero »
I could carve a better man out of a banana
Theodore Roosevelt
I applaud the Goliath who hit this David. Good shot, sir!
These 11 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:18pm GMT Permanent link.
I Almost Like Tony Blair »
monstrum in fronte, monstrum in animo.
Rooney for Prime Minister, say children. Yup, that’s “who ate all the pies” Wayne Rooney, shagger of old slags … but I’m getting ahead of myself here.
For those of you already on a desert island, Wayne Rooney stylish short-arse pug about Manchester (where he has competition, I have to say) slapped (or for those without tabloid training, “hit” or “beat up") his girlfriend, Coleen McLoughlin.
One said: “She’s got to get rid of him — he’s got no respect for her and treats her like dirt.”
The nightclub bust-up heaped further humiliation on Coleen after revelations last summer that Rooney had slept with £45-a-night prostitutes, including a granny.
And the friend added: “It’s bad enough he went with prossies, if he hit her as well then that’s bang out of order.
“She’s trying to shrug the whole thing off as Wayne being Wayne, but hitting a woman is the lowest.
This is the Mirror dressing him down!
The Manchester United striker was said to have pulled Coleen’s hair and thrown a drink over her, before slapping her.
It was claimed he was upset because he wanted to spend some time alone with her before she flew to Cyprus.
He stormed back into Cheshire nightspot Brasingamens after waiting for more than an hour at home for Coleen to return.
United team-mates, including Rio Ferdinand, allegedly calmed him down after the blazing row. But spokesmen for both Rooney and Coleen deny he hit her. And yesterday her parents put on a united front for their daughter.
Rio Ferdinand? That break away from coke (well, why else duck a drugs test?) must have done him some good. Ah, Wayne (class name, lad) “pulled [her] hair and thrown a drink over her, before slapping her.” He’s class that Rooney, could be royalty. Ye see, your common or garden thug slaps and then pulls her hair. You see the difference. Oh yes, a man of distinction. Labour member Alex Ferguson can see that.
These 147 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:45pm GMT Permanent link.
Thursday, 14 April 2005
A-S-B-O »
Young man, hold down your luncheon,
Here comes Charlie with his small truncheon.
I said, young man, ‘cause you’re in New Labour
there’s so much you can munch on.
Young man, there’s a place you can go.
I said, young man, when you’re short on your dough.
You can stay there, and I’m sure you will find
Many ways to have a good time.
It’s fun to serve an A-S-B-O
It’s fun to serve an A-S-B-O
They have everything for you men to enjoy,
You can hang out with all the boys …
Young man, eat up your porridge
Young man, see what you can forage
Young man, I wrote this while drunk
Young man, tell me what you have thunk
It’s fun to serve an A-S-B-O
It’s fun to serve an A-S-B-O
These 116 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:45am GMT Permanent link.
We Get Mail »
From Boadicea, no less.
What a lot of rubbish you spout about the English Democrats. Fascism? So what is political correctness if it isn’t fascism?
And what is wrong with having strict immigration controls? Why do you people attach the “racist” tag to anything and everything you can’t find a sensible answer to? FACT: this country cannot absorb any more without damaging the infrastructure irrevocably — and can ill afford to keep the bands of terrorists that settle here on £400 a week, whilst they cook up all kinds of foul schemes to destroy our nation.
I can only assume that you ARE one of the politically correct brigade. If that is so, then you are responsible for the BIGGEST upsurge ever, in racism. PC itself IS racism — it singles out Middle England as an easy, sitting target. The same Middle England that has sat quietly and watched while our country has been pillaged by anybody and everybody with some sort of minority cause — and Middle England has FINANCED those selfsame causes. Racist my ass.
You people make me laugh, you are so brainwashed that you cannot present a proper argument to anything without using that mealy-mouthed word, racism.
People are bored with hearing it now, even the Asian and black population of this country are sick to the back teeth of people like you spouting off. It insults their intelligence.
So English people aren’t allowed to be patriotic then, without being labelled? Every other country in the world can fly its flag and follow its customs and religions WITHOUT criticism from people like you.
Leave the people of England ALONE and go and find some other high horse to hitch yourself up on.
Naturally, I offered her a Gmail account. Well, I am a gentleman, even if I am a fascist.
These 22 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:21am GMT Permanent link.
I Know Why »
From the worthy Louise Ellman blog:
Louise ellman, stated her surprise today, at findings that 52% of voters in the north west don’t know who there MP is.
Louise Ellman said “I am surprised by this survey. I know that a lot of people know who I am because they come to see me, they talk to me and they write to me.”
note: despite a large majority (54.7%), The low turnout in riverside meant that only 24.32% of the electorate actually voted for Louise Ellman in 2001 …
The Telegraph says Labour’s biggest opponent this time is the Won’t Vote Party. I’ve been saying this for a while now.
Anyway, I found Muslim vote trumps pink vote through David T of Harry’s Place. It’s very simple. Gays vote. Muslims don’t. Labour wants the non-voting 50%. Only a percentage of gays will defect. If most Muslims turn out, they could swing seats to Labour.
These 71 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:04am GMT Permanent link.
Never Did Me Any Harm »
Doctor Who ‘too scary’, say parents. Just wait for the Daleks. I’m still scared of Daleks. The point is it’s scary. Read some Hans Christian Andersen.
These 26 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:22pm GMT Permanent link.
Vote For Us Or We'll Kick Your Head In »
Via John Band’s site, I’ve discovered that Garry Bushell is a candidate for the English Democrats (yes, the title (and the url) does spell his name ‘Gary Bushall’).
Garry was born and raised in South London and started his journalistic career on the rock weekly Sounds. He managed hit rock band The Cockney Rejects, discovered platinum-selling glam rock stars Twisted Sister and managed shock rockers The Blood. He also sang and played rhythm guitar with cult punk band The Gonads who topped the Indie Charts and reformed in 1997, recording the come-back single Nutter and the album Back And Barking.
Those titles are too tempting. But what about his earlier singles? What sort of titles did they have? Garry is a helpful chap, and includes an essay on Oi! on his site. The discography is at the bottom of the page.
Angelic Upstarts: The Murder Of Liddle Towers, Last Night Another Soldier, I’m An Upstart, Teenage Warning, Police Oppression, Never ‘Ad Nothing, Shotgun Solution, England, Guns For The Afghan Rebels.
The Angelic Upstarts weren’t bad, actually, that last single looks a little embarrassing now though, doesn’t it?
Cockney Rejects: Police Car, Flares & Slippers, Bad Man, The Power & The Glory, Oi Oi Oi, Ready To Ruck, Fighting In The Streets, Join The Rejects (Get Yourself Killed)
Flares & Slippers was a class single, the rest as you can gather are pretty much hymns to violence.
The Blood: Megalomania, Stark Raving Normal, Gestapo Khazi, Such Fun, Mesrine, Se Parrare Nex.
I’ve never heard of this lot. Not sure I ever want to hear “Gestapo Khazi” either. Still if Garry managed them, they must be alright, eh readers?
And then his own band.
The Gonads: I Lost My Love (To A UK Sub), Jobs Not Jails, Tucker’s Ruckers Ain’t No Suckers, Eat The Rich, The Joys Of Oi, Got Any Wrigleys, John?
“Eat The Rich” I do like the Motorhead version, can’t say I remember anything else.
No mention of Garry’s political past: he used to be in the SWP (interview in French, tolerable Google translation here.)
One thing about “working class” (if you call being a journalist working class — if you even call it working) Garry, he’s not a chardonnay swilling NW3 dinner party type.
These 195 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:41pm GMT Permanent link.
One Way Or Another, This Is A Scandal For Someone »
Me, I try to keep an open mind. The Western Mail this morning led wih Storm over doctor’s email.
THE shocking extent of the crisis gripping Welsh accident and emergency units appears to have been revealed in a cry-for-help email from an NHS doctor to politicians.
…
In the graphic expose of life at the frontline of the NHS in Wales, the sender of the email introduces himself as an A&E doctor revealing disturbing gaps in care which, he claims, are endangering patients’ lives on a daily basis.
He asserts:
Patients have died in emergency departments while in corridors when there is no room for them;
Staff are forced to ask patients in severe pain to sit on the floor of corridors when there are no chairs;
The reality of “third world” emergency departments where patients regularly wait 90 hours on hard trolleys for a bed;
Feelings of utter inadequacy that he and other staff are unable to help patients who come to A&E — many of whom have dental problems but are unable to find a dentist;
Nursing staff are so busy they cannot meet even the basic needs of their patients.
In the email the doctor says, “One day I was driven to tears when I overheard a nurse saying to a delightful elderly lady, ‘I am so sorry, but I have to stop this other patient bleeding, you will have to wee in the bed and I will help you when I can’.”
Inquires by the Western Mail suggest the email originated from a web site run exclusively for UK doctors. To be eligible for an email address with the site, applicants must be qualified as doctors and provide proof of their General Medical Council registration.
But naturally Labour denies all this:
Health Minister Dr Gibbons said last night, “The Liberal Democrats want to conduct the health debate through anonymous emails rather than evidence. They have produced this as a political stunt. We demand they produce evidence for the assertions contained in the email they have published. They would rather talk down the health service and undermine patients’ confidence than engage in real debate.
“We would ask patients in Wales to answer the obvious question. Do these assertions match your own experience of NHS treatment? The fact is that the four-hour target is met in Wales in nearly nine out of 10 cases. It is simply not true to assert that ‘day by day, week by week, the service for patients worsens’.
“As a doctor, I know that it is nonsense to suggest that patients over 90 years of age are routinely left on trolleys, ‘for days on end’.
“Children are not left ‘dying in the arms’ of emergency department staff. I challenge this doctor to come out and back up this assertion. This is an extraordinary, shocking and cruel distortion.
…
“Publishing this anonymous email is irresponsible, unprincipled politics.”
Someone’s going to get burned by this. Hard to tell who just yet.
These 38 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:57pm GMT Permanent link.
A Well Hung Parliament »
generalerection.co.uk. No prizes for guessing who I voted for. Hmmmmmmmm.
These 10 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 8:36pm GMT Permanent link.
Friday, 15 April 2005
Insults »
John B complains that he doesn’t get the same quality of letters from mad people as me.
The Guardian election blog has an extremely high quality comment from a mad person.
Just read it. [Labour Party Manifesto: this may explain the deranged nature of what follows - DW]
Throughly impressed, as you’d expect.
Of course, your great British PM graced page four.
Versus the Tory, “Above all, we recognise that there is a vital thread that links open markets, free trade, property rights, the rule of law, democracy, economic development and social progress. We will use our global influence to champion these principles in the interests of the developing world” and NEVER mentions either terror OR terrorism!!! What about 11 Sept, 11 March, and the rest you bloke?!?!?
“You bloke?!?!?” is going to be my insult for the weekend. I’m not sure yet how to do the “?!?!?” probably with a horizontal-finger-to-lips wibble. Not to stand up for Michael Howard or anything, but page 18 of the Conservative Manifesto (709KB PDF) says HTML version:
A Conservative Government will place the highest possible priority on combating the threat from terrorism. This requires a coordinated response right across government, including funding for the intelligence services, training for the emergency services, robust anti-terror laws, controlled immigration and rigorous arrangements for the extradition and deportation of terrorist suspects. That’s why we will appoint a Homeland Security Minister to co-ordinate our national response.
You can’t beat an American idiot. (And now I’ve written to him to query it. See what John’s started.)
Anyway, while I’m being insulted by our colonial friends, here’s a dig:
You follow the religious traditions of men, yet reject our belief in traditional Christianity, “the faith once delivered”, because you love the world more than God.
Actually, I don’t follow the “religious traditions of men” but I do “love the world more than God.” Utterly barmy.
Anybody who has ever had a pet that they love, should be able to see it is not hate to admit that they were not given many characteristics of a higher species.
Actually, my cat has laziness, greed, and selfishness. He’s not as smart as me — you won’t catch him trying to read Proust. But, until the vet got to him (before I had him) he could wash his balls with his tongue. That’s what I call a “higher species.” As Gary Farber would say, read the rest as interested (and if you can take vilely anti-Semitic cartoons).
Via The Guardian via Green Fairy.
These 202 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:42pm GMT Permanent link.
Spite »
Nick says it all about Polly Toynbee and the stupid stick. But now I’ve read Ms Toynbee’s nose-holding post and the follow-up, I’m struck by how negative her reasoning is.
From angry emails I get, from talking to people on doorsteps, from following canvassers about, there is what some pollsters are calling a “byelection” feel about the mood.
I’m not sure why she’s “talking to people on doorsteps” is this as a newspaper or a party hack? While she mentions Labour successes in her first article, she seems to dismiss them in her second.
Make this the last election when anyone needs nose pegs. Join Make Votes Count to campaign for proportional representation. I am sick of politicians trying to think up clever ways to re-engage with the voters without offering the one blindingly obvious solution (it would be turkeys voting for Christmas for most of them). PR means the two big coalition portmanteau parties can break up into their natural divisions. What do you vote now if you are a pro-EU Tory? What do you vote if you are anti-war Labour?
I admit I’m a FPTP diehard, because I think the direct responsibility of MPs to their constituents is the foundation of representative democracy. Bugger Iraq and all that, if I’m in danger of being deported to Malawi, I want my MP out protesting. But Ms Toynbee’s system, by current polling (as ever, see Anthony Wells for details) would let the government (presumably led by T Blair) do exceptionally little. It has the benefit of denying Mr Howard and Mr Kennedy any power — but at the cost of doing the same for Labour. Right now, and presumably after the election, Labour has a majority of MPs and can put through any legislation it likes — this ought to ensure some correspondence between the manifesto (which I naively continue to believe is what we vote on) and policy. Under PR and multi-party horse-trading, God alone knows what would happen. This is a sensible path for third-and-higher parties to follow. But I can’t see why any Labour supporter would welcome it.
These 235 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:23pm GMT Permanent link.
The Party I'd Vote For »
Just once in my life, I’d like to vote for a party with sensible policies.
We pledge to reduce class sizes by making the pupils sit closer to one another and issuing them with smaller desks. Any MP whose constituency sells off a school playing field for development will be required to relinquish their own back garden as a replacement sports facility for the school. All future Deputy Prime Ministers will be required to be fluent in at least one language to encourage the education system.
Can’t argue with that, can you?
We intend to make free university tuition available to all students named Grant.
Any student who says the word “Like” when not grammatically called for, as in, “Hey, I’m .. Like, going down the… like, pub”, or, “I was, like, don’t do that” will be made to go and stay with George Bush for a week in order to discourage them from other stupid ‘Americanisms’.
They should do the same with Prime Ministers who, you know, say, you know, “You know” a lot. You know, he does spend a lot of time with George, you know, Bush …
We will replace the House of Lords with the House of Cards, to make it easier for the Government to deal with.
…
Government Whips will only be used if a politician has been really bad. Minor offences should receive the political slipper.
Good on transport too.
Drivers will be allowed to drive over roundabouts when there’s nothing about. This will make driving through Milton Keynes much more fun.
That goes for Merthyr Tydfil as well.
Traffic wardens will be re-named Dick Turpin because, let’s face it, it’s daylight robbery.
Would Ruth Kelly come up with these?
All food shall be clearly labelled “Recommended for Oral Use”.
All fast food will be clearly labelled “May contain traces of real food”.
And this makes me proud of Britain.
In future the National Anthem will be ‘Bring Me Sunshine’ as sung by Morecambe and Wise. It is quicker, more tuneful and people know the words. On state occasions Prince Philip will juggle his spectacles up and down and say, “Hey!” before the whole of the The Royal family do the dance off at the end. If the music can not be found because it was left in the pub then it may be substituted by ‘The Hippo Song’ by Flanders and Swann.
Via Mick Hartley.
These 82 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:12pm GMT Permanent link.
Another Chris Lightfoot Quiz »
http://politicalsurvey2005.com/
These are my results. I said I wasn’t sure who I’d vote for because I plan to vote tactically: the Lib Dems are a little ahead for me, but Plaid appeal, and I’d vote Tory to get rid of Alun Michael (I’d pull out several teeth to get rid of Alun Michael). I’m not sure I buy the validity of an axis with “socialist; anti-war” at one end and “free-market; pro-war” at the other. Over on the blogroll, both Arthur Silber and Jim Henley are “anti-war” but “free-market.” I’m a little surprised to find myself in the centre. The other scale is fine by me.
These 106 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:47pm GMT Permanent link.
Nobody Wants To Interview Meee »
Sods. My friend Simon Nurse is on Dermot O’Leary’s Radio 2 programme tomorrow.
The show’s producer rang after looking for running clubs that have an emphasis on long distance running, experience of doing ‘alternative’ races/distances and an active social side. They were attracted by Dave’s excellent website (well done Dave!!) and the references to the Castles Relay, The Beaujolais Run (Well done Lynne!), London, MDS, Barry 40, Karrimor and Lowe Alpine Mountain marathons. After a 15 minute conversation he asked if I’d be prepared to be interviewed on Saturday (Dermot O’Leary is running on Sunday). In return, they will be putting a link on the Radio 2 website to ours. So, a good opportunity for some extra publicity! I might ask for some notes on Thursday if that’s ok e.g. how many other London ever presents, total miles raced last year by our club etc. etc.
Do they ask to interview me? No. Sods.
Not that I think that the BBC understands the London Marathon anymore. I don’t think the London Marathon understands the London Marathon anymore. (Actually they’ve amended the news page since I last looked, and they finally mention the elite race — that’s the race part.) The BBC News Magazine’s Running battle sort of explains where it’s all gone wrong.
Alan Buckingham, a senior lecturer in sociology at Bath Spa University College and a long-distance runner, says some professional runners are concerned about the direction the Marathon is taking.
…
“In 2003 the fastest British male marathon runner was eight minutes slower than in 1985 — and that’s a chasm in running terms.”
…
Buckingham says the problem is not over-participation as such, but rather that the “ethos of achievement”, of running to win, is increasingly being undermined.
“Taking it easy and avoiding pain has become the hallmark of modern running”, he argues.
“Labels on treadmills attempt to scare runners into jogging gently by warning the user to stop if they feel dizzy or feel pain; races become ‘fun runs’ where completion rather than winning is what matters; the best-selling shoes are now designed to help avoid injury and aid comfort rather than speed.”
Buckingham thinks the transformation of the Marathon from a tough race into a fun day out is symptomatic of a society that doesn’t much care for the “competitive spirit”. The varied competitors are also evident of a shift from the hardcore no-pain-no-gain ethos of the 1980s to a society that’s into fitness but not into killing themselves to be in shape.
But the author is using ‘professional’ (in the first paragraph) in a whole new way here.
Professional runner Craig Davey will run his first London Marathon this Sunday, and is aiming for a finish time of 2 hours and 37 minutes (having achieved 2 hours 43 minutes in the Berlin Marathon last year).
There’s absolutely no prize money for anyone running at that pace. Not ‘not enough to live on’ — none at all. Bridgend took the male team prize a few years ago (I think it was ‘99) when their fourth runner (Derek Scarborough) ran around 2:37 or 2:38 — and they only got away with that because their first (Steve Brace) was sub-2:15. (But he was a professional runner in those days.)
Matthew Parris ran faster than that as a serving MP. (That fact is right from memory; the second one “But only 30 of those runners have competed in every one of the races” isn’t: there are only 29. I suppose one out isn’t bad for a journalist.)
And, for what it’s worth, the bookies are being unkind to the Olympic champion.
These 230 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:22pm GMT Permanent link.
You Know You Want It »
Guido says the number — 08705900200 — isn’t for a male prostitute but “Labour’s saucy Northern call centre.” He also calls the stunt “not as naughty as an illegal war.” The jolly prankster is collecting photos of the cards.
I hope the volunteers staffing the phones can close their eyes and think of 98,000 civilian dead. That should make them feel so much better.
These 65 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:54pm GMT Permanent link.
Does He Ever Sleep? »
Public Whip offer yet another voting quiz. This one takes my living in Wales into account, and suggests that I vote for Plaid Cymru (who don’t have a manifesto yet).
These 30 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 6:22pm GMT Permanent link.
Local Knowledge »
I’ve seen (counts on fingers) six general elections as an adult (five as a voter), but I’m still learning what a complex operation the whole thing is. If there’s one virtue to blogging, it’s local knowledge, because it’s very tempting to stereotype whatever areas of the country you’re unfamiliar with.
Through Nick’s General Election blog roundup #5 I found Cardiff Central Watch, which describes itself as “a non-partisan look at the General Election campaign in Cardiff Central.” Now you may know that Cardiff Central (where I lived when I arrived as a student in 1991; I’m in Cardiff South and Penarth now) is a marginal.
Marginal seats vulnerable to the Iraq factor include several in middle class suburbs and those with a high number of younger voters. In Cardiff Central, Labour’s Jon Owen Jones is defending a majority of 659 in a constituency with more students per head than any other — a group that tends to be anti-war.
The Guardian, Labour plea to anti-war voters found through Cardiff Central Watch. I think this is a little confused, and suspect that Jon Owen Jones won’t get that much support from Millbank, as he largely opposed the Iraq war and ambiguously defended the government in response to Ken Clarke.
I thank the right hon. and learned Gentleman for giving way, but I cannot agree that the Government will be extremely vulnerable on Iraq in the lead-up to an election. My Government certainly would have been vulnerable if he had been elected leader of his party. In those circumstances, we would have been extremely vulnerable, but as that is not the case—perhaps it should have been—we are not vulnerable at all.
From reading the Guardian, you might be left with the impression that Cardiff Central is a natural “left-wing” seat, and its loss to the Liberal Democrats (if it happens, of course) would be symptomatic of the defection of a certain sort of erstwhile Labour supporter.
This is not the case. The MP when I arrived was Ian Grist, whom the Guardian obituary called “independent-minded.” When I expressed surprise to friends who knew the area that the MP was a Tory, they usually assured me that he was a good constituency MP.
Politics.co.uk’s Constituency Focus on Cardiff Central misses a crucial point with its illustration and caption “The Millennium Stadium is a monument to Cardiff’s renaissance.” All very well, but when Wembley re-opens next year, the Millennium Stadium could become a monument to fiscal over-optimism.
One of the most striking changes while I’ve lived here is the growth of the number of pubs. Those licences were granted by council under Labour control.
The sitting MP [Jon Owen Jones] believes that the number of large scale drinking establishments in Cardiff city centre should be cut, believing an ever-growing number of bars and nightclubs is “not a sustainable way to regenerate a city centre.”
That’s not taking into account the number of students, and the demand. The Lib-Dems could pull a few votes on this issue — if they didn’t agree with the incumbent.
We had technically ‘won’ Cardiff Central in the Euro vote after losing it in the Assembly vote. The seat has never been safe for any party. Tory Minister Ian Grist was replaced as MP by Labour’s Jon Owen Jones in 1992. The Lib-Dems, who have long had a strong local authority presence in Cardiff Central, gained the Assembly seat in 1999, Jenny Randerson defeating Labour’s Mark Drakeford.
Paul Flynn considers the battles between the three parties. (I’m not sure the site is supposed to be up — check the url. The home page says “This website is suspended during the election period. It was compiled by Paul Flynn when he was an MP. It was last updated on 8th April 2005.") He quotes an unnamed party worker:
There was no effective Key Seat strategy. Jenny Randerson picked up extensive media coverage as a ‘Spokesperson’ for the Lib Dems. Labour candidate Mark Drakeford, though by far the most able candidate, was never given an opportunity for media exposure. I was struck by how many times in media debates we put up Alun Michael and Peter Hain and how few chances were given to our key Assembly candidates. Ironically, the frequent appearances of Alun and Peter were, in my view, often counter-productive, since they served to remind people about the Leadership issue. The ‘Rhodri’ factor undoubtedly cost us votes.
Chalk that up as a Labour member not best pleased by the choice of Peter Hain and Rhodri Morgan to launch the Welsh Labour Manifesto. As for my own MP, Paul Flynn is merciless:
In electoral terms Rhodri was a positive factor: Alun, a negative one. If Rhodri had been Leader, it is a statistical certainty that Labour would have won Llanelli, Islwyn, and Conwy. That would have given Labour an overall majority in the Assembly. Control of the Assembly was the main political price of the stitch-up. Using the election to boost Alun as Leader was accentuating the negative and driving voters into the hands of Plaid. How could the fabled electoral skills of New Labour crash so abjectly? …
The report identified the prime reason for electoral failure as the “‘perception’ of a fix, a stitch-up” arranged by London, Millbank and Tony Blair. There was an acknowledgement that our core vote resented ‘apparent’ interference in what should have been a Welsh choice for Welsh elections.
I think that’s another nudge toward a tactical Lib-Dem vote for me.
These 451 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:31pm GMT Permanent link.
Saturday, 16 April 2005
The Real Conservative Manifesto »
Craig Brown is a genius.
These 5 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:00pm GMT Permanent link.
When Politics Was More Robust »
I bought the Guardian today, but I’m reading the good stuff in the Torygraph online. Frank Johnson offers some political history.
That yob in the 2001 campaign probably represented the last of a British tradition of election-time egg-throwing. The art was much practised in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was accompanied by the throwing of dead cats. In the absence of more egg-throwers in this campaign, Mr Prescott may hope for a revival of the dead cats, though in my experience I find dead cats hard to fit into the pocket.
The last campaign in which there was much egg-throwing was as recent as 1970. Its first week was marked by a series of eggs thrown at the prime minister Harold Wilson all over the country. Oddly, it was the first campaign in which a prime minister’s movements had been kept a secret until he was actually at the place where he was speaking or canvassing.
This prompted the then Conservative leader, Edward Heath, to make his only known joke. It meant, he said, that many people were going around with an egg in their pocket on the off-chance that they may unexpectedly come across Mr Wilson.
Throwing comestibles (Oi! that dead cat was my tea!) used to be the preferred method of critical expression in the music halls. Odd that so-called “conservatives” (whom I understood want to turn the clock back) object to some harmless fun.
These 61 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:11pm GMT Permanent link.
Nihil A Me Alienanum Puto »
Chris Lightfoot comments on his own blog.
Yep. A couple of people have said similar things; the best generic explanation seems to be that it’s something to do with the extent to which people fear/loathe outsiders — who might be foreigners, criminals, poor people, chavs, or whatever. People on the right hand end of the axis think that these people are essentially unlike them and should be dealt with by hanging them, keeping them out of the country, not giving them money, etc. People on the left think that everyone is essentially alike and that these extreme measures aren’t necessary. Or something like that.
Richard Dimblebly broadcast the first radio report from Belsen (MP3 5.7MB, strong stuff). Via Mike Power.
Here a video (Flash, ~1MB) dedicated to Peter Hain, who used to care.
We’re all the same. Some days it’s harder than others to say that, but it’s still true.
These 53 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:40pm GMT Permanent link.
Little Trip To Heaven »
Via Mark, Jonathan Shipley pays a trip to Portland, Oregon.
I spent a few hours skimming through books on the area in Borders but I didn’t find anything that really appealed, although there’s a book by Chuck Palahniuk (who wrote Fight Club), entitled ‘Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk Through Portland, Oregon’, which sets out to focus on Portland’s capacity for supporting an alternative lifestyle; in fact it just seemed to chronicle his various experiences with sex-workers and strippers. Wooo.
You know, I could live with that.
Oregon’s most successful company employs most of its workers abroad. I’m fairly ambivalent about them.
Oregon is also where I would most like to live (other than where I do).
These 47 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 5:19pm GMT Permanent link.
Does He Drink Chardonnay? »
David Aaronovitch heroically refuses the nosebag:
Meanwhile, in shuttered dining-rooms in Holland Park, Highbury and Kennington, in converted barns in Herefordshire and flagged kitchens in Brittany, in the pages of the London Review of Books and at publishing parties, the British intelligentsia collectively creates, reproduces and conforms to its own, narrow narrative of what is happening on the planet.
As reported or argued in articles, reviews, interviews or diaries, this story includes the following necessary elements: … Labour are now pretty much the same as the Tories …
(My emphasis.) Richard Branson, non-graduate, dyslexic, billionaire, and balloonatic:
There would be little difference for businesses between a Labour and Tory government, says Richard Branson.
Asked which party would be better for business, the Virgin tycoon said: “Arguably, it doesn’t matter.”
Comradely doff of the cloth cap to Lenin.
These 23 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 5:35pm GMT Permanent link.
All Bourgass And Gapers »
There was no ricin:
Yesterday’s conviction of Kamel Bourgass for terrorism offences prompted some spectacular spin from the security services, an al-Qaeda ricin feeding frenzy in this morning’s press and - of course - claims from Home Secretary Charles Clarke that the case highlighted the need for ID cards. The snag is that there was no ricin, the security forces’ case for an al-Qaeda link had been discredited in an earlier court case last week, and a further eight individuals claimed as co-conspirators were cleared or had charges against them dropped.
Yet Charlie “the Safety Elephant” Clarke calls for ID cards after imagining huge poison terror ring.
Breaking the government’s preference for apologising for things which happened long ago and in other countries, the Home Office says sorry to suspects for ricin blunder.
And there was no al-Qaida link either.
Simon Jenkins (whom the Guardian Group is getting after presumably blackmailing someone at News International — whatever, it’s a very advantageous swap for Big Dave) calls it a Hysterical overreaction.
There is not the faintest convergence between the Bourgass case as revealed in the Old Bailey this week and the crazed media and political coverage of it. The BBC’s 6pm news on Wednesday night was a disgrace, worse than anything during the Gilligan affair. But because it served Downing Street’s purpose it will doubtless avoid censure. Nor was the press any better. Mention the word terrorist and sanity flies the coop.
Tony Blair claimed at the time of Bourgass’s arrest just before the Iraq war, in flagrant contempt of court, that he was intent on launching “weapons of mass destruction” with “huge potential”. This was allegedly evidence of an al-Qaeda plot, with Bourgass’s Wood Green refrigerator a “factory in London and Manchester”. Government spokesmen said material from the factory had “tested positive for ricin”. Peter Hain predicted a “ricin attack”, whatever that is, on the House of Commons. All this was garbage.
Bourgass’s hope, as both judge and jury concluded, was to use his kitchen concoction to spread panic. Here he was on firmer ground. His co-conspirators were not al-Qaeda but Mr Blair, David Blunkett, Mr Clarke, various newspaper editors and London police chiefs frantic to suggest that Britain faced a “9/11-style” chemical attack — and from an organisation linked to Saddam.
Via Mike Power, who also discovers that yesterday was Stephen Pollard’s turn with the stupid stick.
There’s also a discussion in the comments of the always-readable Mark Holland on the term “asylum seeker.” My worthless contribution is that the tabloids use the phrase intentionally to make it seem like a euphemism for “illegal immigrant” (as in, we’d say “illegal immigrant” but we’d have to put “alleged” to keep lawyers happy) or indeed to imply that the very idea of seeking asylum is a scam and a lie by the stinking ninth category. (Oh dear, back to the Murdoch pawn again.)
These 183 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 6:03pm GMT Permanent link.
Why Are Spammers So Incompetent? »
I just got this in my gmail (which correctly marked it as spam, but as I saw ‘Edinburgh,’ which is where I grew up, I looked inside).
From ELIZABETH Office
Bank of BENIN
10th Hill layout
Church Road Street
Edinburgh EH8 3PE
17TH April, 2005.For your kind attention,
Transfer of fund/Investment cum joint venture
I discovered a dormant account in my office, as Group
finance director with Bank of Benin. It will be in
my interest to transfer this fund worth 15,000,000
million Dollars in an account offshore. If you can be a
collaborator to this please indicate interest
immediately for us to proceed.Do respond as soon as possible for details and
directions to;Regards and respect,
Mr. ADAMS ELIZABETH.
Group Finance Director
Bank of BENIN.
Sent from Edinburgh, which, last I checked was on GMT +1. Dated tomorrow. ELIZABETH Office? 10th Hill layout? Huh? Church Road Street? Good Christ! Postcode wasn’t recognised by multimap.
And the signature was:
Mail sent from WebMail service at PHP-Nuke Powered Site
- http://yoursite.com
I always thought PHP-Nuke was dodgy. I seem to remember that there’s a correlation between stupidity and criminality, but why can’t stupid crims just stick to breaking and entering and mugging? It doesn’t even promise me the usual riches.
These 99 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 8:25pm GMT Permanent link.
Dr Who And His Double Entendres »
The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between
Michael Brooke agrees with me — in greater detail and more knowledgeably, of course — about Dr Who in What’s wrong with a few Victorian zombies? I just wanted to reiterate what I said in his comments with the benefit of a preview button to correct solecisms.
First, I remember being scared by the first series I watched: we didn’t have a television until I was at least four, so that may have meant the end of William Hartnell. So scared that I remember my parents turning the set (it was still called a “TV set” in those days) off. And I had nightmares. I still wanted to watch it. And, as I said on Michael’s comments, I think the “BBC were responsible then: it was on quite early — a long time before even a five-year-old’s bedtime, and much blander fare, like Val Doonican, followed.” One thing that’s different was suggested by Michael’s immediately prior post In Praise of Brum (and this is not a criticism of him in any way; he just reminded me how prevalent TVs are now):
No, not the fetching Midlands model village (here’s your source for that kind of thing), but a programme on BBC pre-school channel CBeebies that I discovered today when I heard my son laughing so hard that I honestly thought he’d rupture himself (yes, I’m the kind of dreadful parent who straps him into his high chair and leaves him to eat breakfast on his own with the telly while I grab a precious 15-20 minutes to myself - so sue me).
It made me think (and I’ve no way of knowing either way) — did the “scared” kids watch with their parents? Because when I was young, “Doctor Who” wasn’t just appointment television, it was just about the only television. And parents naturally watched it, which (I’m guessing again here; I had about two lectures on child psychology) may have made the whole thing more “play scary” than “real scary” for most non-dysfunctional families (assuming those exist).
Anyway for those of you with RealPlayer the BBC offer a web broadcast of the 60s Who Years. It mentions the real history they brought in (Culloden, where Jamie joined the Doctor, which in turn made me watch the BBC recreation of the event, based on the Stuart Prebble book, a few years later—I read the book then too; and the Crusades — I can laugh at George Bush’s ignorant speeches — he merely had the finest education dollars could buy; I grew up with public service broadcasting) and how scary the Cybermen were. And through the site I found an old Pertwee episode Planet of the Daleks which has RealPlayer videoclips of the Doctor and Jo (still one of the horniest assistants) pursued by Daleks (scary) through weird poison-spitting vegetation (also scary). Despite the artificiality, it still works.
I mentioned parents watching with their children. And I think there was a BBC masterstroke here. The same BBC site prints quotes, including double entendres (this is an example from the next episode). When I discovered the Who site I thought these were “nudge, wink” stuff of male fans with too little else to do. Now I think they’re in deliberately, as they are in panto, to keep the adults entertained. And that lends Who further kudos, because it suggests that there may have been more to old episodes than you remember, and they may pay revisiting. (Actually, not a bad definition of literature.)
The new series is great. Last week’s with the zombies was utter brilliance. It sneaked in pedagogy (for readers in Newport, that is not child abuse) with the Dickens stuff, and so well, that these concerned parents missed it completely. I’d like to see how sales and library borrowings of Dickens have done this last week. Bet Google registered a tremor of interest. Even more than that, Rose’s conversation with the servant girl emphasised that people in the past weren’t just fools in old-style hats and coats but had different beliefs and morals. (Conservatives may reject this, but look at Shakespeare’s “jokes.” We know enough of genetics to know that we haven’t changed in genotype; so cultural change is pretty much the only remaining explanation.) Now that’s the beginning of education.
This week’s was even better. The jokes were ambiguous. Was the Doctor’s being 12 months rather than 12 hours out funny or tragic? Was Ricky’s (or is his name Micky?) line about not seeing anyone else “mostly because they all think I murdered you [Rose]” funny or not? I laughed, but black bloke in London, girlfriend vanished, you see the problem? And the aliens, like malevolent versions of ET. And the false encounter with the pig reminded me of “Jaws” (when the kids with the shark fin scare the whole beach). And fart jokes! And the undermining of authority figures! One of the pleasures of the Simpsons is Homer’s inveterate stupidity. I’m sure kids love that: Bart smart, Homer dull. How like life. The general and the PM turn out to be impostors, but everyone trusts them. And only the dowdy old very junior MP knows the truth. As the Doctor would say, “Fantastic!”
These 786 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:20pm GMT Permanent link.
People Died For Your Right To Vote »
… and if the cunts in government get their way their successors (oh sorry David Aaronovitch, you’re doing a great job looking constipated and manning personning that keyboard, but we don’t mean you) won’t enjoy the same.
Thousands deprived of election vote; that’s “thousands of service personnel” does the government think its loyal troops are (as I believe Comrade Hitchens frequently hinted) too stupid to be entrusted with any kind of mandate?
(Cartoons by Matt, of the Daily Torygraph.)
Don’t forget, we invaded Iraq to spread democracy. Because of our overwhelming force, no one got to check our credentials. Under Tony Blair, those look increasingly shaky.
These 108 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:32pm GMT Permanent link.
Third Person Neuter Pronoun Watch »
Will the left end up on ‘the wrong side of history’? Michael Costello in The Australian thinks that because of its Bush and Vietnam obsessions, it may do. (Thanks: Jim Nolan.)
Blinks. Was that “its” not “our"? I applaud his swift-footed move: Like the toreador who dodged the bull at the last milisecond, he escaped being gored. Bravo sir, we throw flowers — when our reactionary market allows us to buy the buggers.
Updated: Norm replies; and I’ve replied.
These 44 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:47pm GMT Permanent link.
Deek-She-Horn-Ary »
There’s a sucker born every minute
Phineas T Barnum
The Grauniad review, p29: (advert for the Grauniad Stylebook) … ‘At last — a book that tells everyone the difference between balk & baulk’ Ronnie O’Sullivan.
On the same edition’s page 13, Andrew Motion reviews an account of some stupid book …
These 43 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:04pm GMT Permanent link.
Sunday, 17 April 2005
Delightful »
Harry’s Place hate George Galloway. I hate Tony Blair. I was trying to work out the difference between us. I hate those in power. I look up, and others see the stars; I see the shit up our leader’s arses. Perhaps we can both cheer this lovely story: Anti-speed police chief clocked at 82mph in 40mph zone. One rule for the party; another for the proles.
These 66 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:05am GMT Permanent link.
Monday, 18 April 2005
Snark Comes Back At Me »
Heh. And triple heh.
So here’s a sort of explanation. AFAIK (and the philosophy of history isn’t an area I claim any knowledge), a concept like “the wrong side of history” is an exclusively Marxist one. I’m sure there are many on the (Christian, rapture-oriented) right with a teleological view of progess, but I doubt they’d put it like that. So, for me, that very statement says “I am on the left” which the use of the “its” immediately pulls away again. That looks like verbal legerdemain to me.
I should perhaps explain my feelings about “the left.” I think I’m emotionally or sentimentally leftist and pragmatically centrist. Mark Holland quoted William Rees-Mogg last week: “socialism is morally sympathetic, but intellectually mistaken.” I agree with the first part: whenever I hear a committed Tory talking about morals, I can’t help thinking that the heart is an indispensable organ, and they really should try to get hold of one. I’m in pretty broad agreement with the second most of the time, depending on how I choose to define “socialism” at the time. Roughly, the further from “social democracy” the less credible I find it. I’m sure I count as an “unconscious socialist” if Blair and Clinton are examples. (Rees-Mogg reminds me of Wittgenstein’s aphorism, “Philosophy is finding bad reasons for what we know already.” His conclusion may be largely correct — how he claims to arrive there is a pyramid of piffle.)
By the early 90s, I considered myself to be on the right of the Labour Party. I largely supported the reforms of the later Kinnock years and believe John Smith was taking the party in the right direction. I don’t know how reform of the Party which peaked with OMOV which broke the absurd dominance of union leaders ended with the concept of “being on message.” I’ll quote Paul Flynn on where the Party in Wales went wrong.
I was struck by how many times in media debates we put up Alun Michael and Peter Hain and how few chances were given to our key Assembly candidates.
My emphasis. (I wrote this at greater length on Friday.) I think I — barely — belong in the Labour party; I just happen to hate New Labour with the zeal of a convert.
Back to my view of history. I don’t buy this “right side of” stuff. History is just brutality. The winners are the people with the best weapons, or the best generals, or the most luck, and they get to write accounts which put it down to the justness of the cause of some such balls.
Hurrah for revolution and more cannon-shot!
A beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on foot.
Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again!
The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.
(William Yeats.)
If that wasn’t enough, I also think Norm has constructed a straw man which would shame David Horowitz. Does the left have a “Vietnam” obsession? I can’t say I’ve noticed. Since “the left” here covers the anti-war movement, I’m sure many on the left do cite Vietnam as an ideological war waged in impossible terrain half way across the world. And rightly so, IMO. It was a crassly stupid waste of life.
Does the left have a Bush fixation? Given that he’s the most powerful man in the world and his say-so determines where we fight next, who’s on our side this time (Saudi Arabia still seems to be; Russia looks wobbly though). Despite how I may come across, I’d don’t think Bush is as bad as all that. I rate him as only around 95% evil. He seems to be nice enough to his daughters, resists the homophobes in the Republican Party, has an impressively racially mixed cabinet, and Lance Armstrong likes him, which counts for a lot with me. On everything else, though …
The Republicans were obsessed with Clinton. Maybe I blinked and I missed their period “on the wrong side of history.”
So that’s my reasoning. I’ve reread Norm’s Left divided? and while I don’t agree with much of it, all I can say is “Indeed.” I don’t think the left has changed post 9/11: there’s been a sort of internal migration and the population of factions has changed, but that’s mostly it. There have been apologists for all sorts of terrorists and dictators as long as there’s been a left. As “the left” as a whole (which includes Norm from what he’s written) isn’t obsessed with Bush or Vietnam, and, as there’s no single thing called “the left” I don’t see how the post I objected to makes any sense at all.
I feel the way I imagine a Christmas-and-Easter Catholic would after the death of the Pope. Sure he may never have seen him, and John Paul II didn’t seem to have being doing a lot lately, but if someone gloats about the Pope’s demise, he’s not going to take it well. I wrote in anger, and I my tone and language were intemperate, and for those I apologise, but not for what I meant.
As Norm points out, I did indeed say “Snark comes back at you.” I didn’t say I ever had the sense to take my own advice. And, see, I was right.
Now what does “Bevakasha” mean?
These 829 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:59am GMT Permanent link.
Mostly Armless »
A funny thing happened to me today. (Yesterday, to be literal about it.) I had a seizure — possibly an epileptic fit (though that is unlikely). I was watching the London Marathon in a friends’ house, looking out for people we knew, Paula Radcliffe had won, and the coverage had turned to the more interesting mens’ race. Looking back now, I remember that I found the picture very strange and irritating. The next thing I remember though was finding some strange people in the room asking me questions I couldn’t understand. You know when you dream and you know you’re dreaming — it was a lot like that. And in dreams sometimes details of things are really there, because your mind hasn’t filled them in. Everything was a lot like that too.
And I found myself in an ambulance, on oxygen (which seems more than anything else to have brought me back). The A & E doctor couldn’t give a explanation for what happened, but I’ll be drinking less, and spending very little spare time on the PC, so blogging will decline dramatically.
It did give me a chance to see the NHS — and on a day when Man U played Newcastle in the Millenium Stadium (there were fewer neds with wounds than I’d have expected, though the ambulance crew said there were a few about). The floors, like everything, were clean. I doubt I picked up MRSA from the paper cup of Knorr vegetable soup that a machine sold. (Death by salt remains a possibility though.) I really did wait in a corridor on a trolley. That happened. I seemed to be the only patient doing so at the time though. Then the trolley went into what I assume was an A & E ward. And I waited for a long time there with two friends. Fortunately, one went out to buy the Observer, because waiting gets boring quickly. I have little sense of time of this afternoon. I don’t know how long I was in the corridor, how long after that I saw a doctor (by this time my friends had left, one giving the other a lift home, before coming back for me) or how much longer it took for the blood tests to come back. I think I went in around 12:30. I came out at 5:30. Five hours isn’t bad, since I wasn’t dying. Boring yes, but I can’t complain.
It was only when I was being driven home (in my car — we got flashed by a speed camera: damn) that I realised I still had electrodes attached to my skin. And the needle of the blood thing in my arm.
Are they supposed to do that?
These 455 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:04am GMT Permanent link.
Swing The Vote! »
I read The Myth of the Tories getting in by the backdoor on The Partially Fictitious Adventures of Ian (he must have commented on someone’s site) and Vote Lib Dem, get Conservative? and I thought, ‘this is probably a testable hypothesis.’ It’s not only testable if you trust Peter Snow’s Flash Swingometer, the results are bloody brilliant. Not only is a conservative majority highly unlikely (though the swingometers don’t take local swings to more than one other party into account at any one time), but a ‘mere’ 11.5% swing to the Liberal Democrats and Charlie the Safety Elephant has to hang up his plastic helmet and look for work!
In order not to make the page too big, I shoved the screen captures here.
These 124 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:29pm GMT Permanent link.
Tuesday, 19 April 2005
If Voting Changed Anything, It Would Be Illegal »
Blair retreats from EU vote. What’s the point of holding an election if the voters make the wrong decision? If any pollster asks me, I’m pro-Labour and of course I’ll vote ‘Yes’ on the constitution.
The Tories responded by promising to hold a referendum within six months of a general election — even if France rejects the treaty.
Score one for the Conservatives.
Commenting on the crisis in France, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, Menzies Campbell, said: “If the French vote against, then I think it is very unlikely that there’ll be a referendum anywhere else and, in particular, in the UK because the French vote against will bring the process to a halt and there will have to be reconsideration.”
The shadow foreign secretary, Michael Ancram, said: “Today we have seen more mixed messages from Jack Straw which suggests that Tony Blair might again plan to say one thing but then do another.”
In other words, the French vote means something — ours is just a rubber stamp.
Berlusconi resigns in bid to avert elections. ‘Resigns’ has a special meaning here, not usually found in dictionaries:
The move will allow Mr Berlusconi to return to office with a parliamentary majority that may see him through another year. …
I believe the technical term is “The Third Way.”
These 82 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:10am GMT Permanent link.
Wednesday, 20 April 2005
Well, I Was Often Warned Against Thinking Too Much »
I’ve now got an eye-witness account of my seizure/fit to take to my GP. It does look a lot like my limited knowledge of epilepsy.
Seizure started at approximately 11.45am. Initially the seizure was quite violent with Dave lapsing into a prone position on the sofa, with legs extending, body shaking violently, eyes rolling and face contorted. We eased Dave onto the floor into the recovery position. At this stage he was making gurgling groaning noises. The seizure began to subside and he started to breathe more shallowly and he fell into an apparently deep sleep. This phase lasted approximately 5 minutes. Dave then lay quietly for a further 5 minutes before regaining consciousness. When he did so, he was unable to speak and was very frightened and confused. Gradually the speech returned, but the confusion lasted a further 30 minutes, with he returned to normal after accepting and receiving oxygen in the Ambulance. The whole episode lasted approximately 45 minutes.
The oxygen certainly worked. I vaguely remember trying to refuse it several times, and being “normal” almost immediately the mask went on.
I’m told that the thing in my arm was a “tap” and they weren’t supposed to leave it in. Taking the plaster off was the hardest part, the tube just fell out of the vein which had healed in the meantime.
Not an experience I want to repeat.
These 95 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:30am GMT Permanent link.
The Old Referrer File Joke »
Strangr visitors of late:
paula radcliffe shit in street uk, paula radcliffe having a shit, paula radcliffe shit pic, radcliffe shit marathon, paula radcliffe shit, did paula radcliffe poo?, paula radcliffe call of nature london marathon, paula radcliffe london marathon stop poo 2005, paula radcliffe london 17th april takes shit
I didn’t say anything … I spent the afternoon in hospital …
Mark Holland is unimpressed with Melanie Phillips. And what’s wrong with the eighteenth century anyway? American and French Revolutions, Johnson, Voltaire, Hume, Mozart … “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive …” Ah, I see Ms Phillips’ problem.
These 102 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:30pm GMT Permanent link.
Oh, For Fuck's Sake! »
Via The Returning Officer, a transcript of John Prescott’s visit to Wales.
Mark Choueke: How did you and your cabinet colleagues react to Peter Law’s decision to quit the party after 35 years service to Blaenau Gwent as a Labour politician?
John Prescott: It didn’t even register with us. The voters just have one choice, vote Labour otherwise they’ll end up with a Tory government. It’s unfortunate that some of our decisions upset some people.
MC: But this isn’t about upsetting Peter Law, it’s about upsetting the many thousands of Labour voters in Blaenau Gwent who helped you form a strong government: they feel alienated.
JP: Why are you asking me about this, I don’t care, it’s a Welsh situation, I’m a national politician.
If you’d asked me at the last general election, I’d have conceded that Prescott is not the most winning politician, but now I think he’s just a patronising twerp. “The voters just have one choice” forsooth! “… it’s a Welsh situation, I’m a national politician.” Grrr.
MC: Are you too big to care about the Labour voters in Blaenau Gwent? Do you think there may be something in your party’s methods of working that require a rethink when a politician chooses to stand against you after 35 years service to Labour?
That’s a fair point. I can’t say this enough. Up to 1992, Wales and Scotland weren’t electing Tories, yet they were ruled by Tory politics. In 1992, the Tory vote collapsed. Now Labour take Wales and Scotland for granted, and think if they scare us with the Tory bogeyman we’ll jump. I dimly remember a time when the People’s Party tried to be democratic at the local level.
These 126 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 7:24pm GMT Permanent link.
We Don't Do Heroes »
… but if we did, Derek Cattell would be one.
Derek Cattell, a party member for 30 years, member of Labour’s local executive committee and prominent local trade unionist, said: “I have become increasingly concerned by a growing number of issues associated with the leadership of Tony Blair, and none more so than the decision to go to war with Iraq.
“I’ve decided that the prime minister’s integrity is so much under question over Iraq that I cannot work or vote for him, particularly since the emergence of Reg Keys, a serious candidate who lost his son in an unjust war.”
Just for one day, of course. We could be heroes.
These 20 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:38pm GMT Permanent link.
Thursday, 21 April 2005
I Immature With Age »
Boris Johnson has just discovered the Political Compass, prompting me to take it again. I came out -6.88; -8.05. I took it last nearly two-and-a-half years ago when I was a more centred -6.00; -7.90. Nice to see I’m just about as far from Tony Blair as possible.
These 48 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:24am GMT Permanent link.
Oops. That Didn't Go As Planned »
I was cooking and flitting over to the computer to read blogs this evening. I’d read Nosemonkey on John O’Farrell’s charming campaign effort, and was somewhere in the comments in Justin’s post about Charles Clarke’s letter to his partner, when there was a knock on the door. If I’d thought about being canvassed at all, I’d planned to assure every candidate that I’d support them. For no particular reason, I was wearing this T-shirt, and the New Labour drone holding an Alun Michael flyer told me he had the same shirt. This, just after I’d read Charles Clarke’s apparent condemnation of the Lib Dems: “Charles Kennedy actually said Ian Huntley and other killers should be allowed to vote …” (they can’t? what about their human rights?) “… and the Liberal Democrats have made clear they would end all jail sentences for drug possession.” I suppose I’d accepted that some campaign literature would persuade me which way to vote; I didn’t think a letter from Charles Clarke would convince me that I had to vote Liberal Democrat. That’s a 100% copper-bottomed pure common sense policy, and Labour are boasting they’re against it?
I spat out “There’s no way I’m ever voting for that cunt,” and slammed the door.
Not my most diplomatic day.
These 212 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:12pm GMT Permanent link.
Tuesday, 26 April 2005
Well, I Can Hope »
Ale man, ale’s the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world’s not.
Housman, A Shropshire Lad, LXII
They’re all the same beer, according to ratebeer.com’s Asda Political Beers. Not that that bothers the copywriters, who describe the “Lib Dem Lift-Off Bitter” as:
A cheeky young and pretentious beer, plump and humorous.
Perhaps promises more than it can deliver. It has strong European flavours and is itching to be taken seriously.
Nicely balanced beer than could hold more power than expected.
The alternative pint.
And, remember, this is the same drink, the “Plaid Cymru Independence Ale":
From a fiercely independent brewery [not named: the only hint is “Exclusive to Asda"], this is a heady mix of purely local ingredients. The nose has a strong regional accent and it’s brewed only for local consumption.
Strong undercurrent of grass roots and just desserts though it may not travel well!
The independent pint.
It’s not just the politicians who are liars. (I suppose both statements could be true: it could be brewed in Wales from local ingredients and still taste ‘European’ but as I suspect that the same blurb graces the SNP Independence Ale, the word ‘local’ is being stretched at the very least.) Tom Cannavan says they are all the same — and if I’d found him first I’d have saved some typing.
As I’m writing about beer, I discovered one of the best pints I’ve ever tasted, in Yorkshire over the weekend. Should you ever be near Skipton, I recommend Copper Dragon Scotts 1816 very highly. The Copper Dragon website starts with a dodgy Flash animation; but the copywriters at least know the product — “the choicest British malt and Continental hops” and “the brewing water (known as liquor) is sourced from the hills of the Upper Wharfedale area close to Skipton, North Yorkshire, gateway to the Yorkshire Dales National Park” — something there for every political party.
These 206 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 8:09pm GMT Permanent link.
Being Leftwing And Pooterish »
Ignorance, madam, pure, ignorance
Samuel Johnson (on his definition of a horse, or oats, or his omission of the word “sausage”, or some such thing)
Uncut as well, if you must, but I’ll try not to drag the AUT and Palestine thing into this particular post. (Boom! Boom! Mark Lawson had a column to write and nothing to say, so he almost-researched blogs and then didn’t. Via Jamie.)
Since uncut (to be personal about it), leftwing, and Pooterish bloggers Lenin and Victor S have mentioned the Dupe’s Slating of the Labor Party, I’ll have a dig too. (I meant to chuck in a reference in my last post; if the Walmart (ahem!) family can spell “Labour” correctly, it being a proper noun, not just a word, why can’t Bill Gaits?)
It’s especially interesting that Hitchens can’t spell the name of Kier Hardie’s party correctly (when a simple Google search would help [and I should have checked; Dave Heasman yet again corrects my spelling, dur]), because he links to his earlier rant about Paul Thing, reading all sorts of prejudice into anyone who sees the letters “t” and “z” together and assumes that they’re reading a German proper name, and adjusts “w"s to suit. This assumption reveals anti-semitism the way a Rorschach blot of a butterfly fucking an elephant reveals a dirty mind. And if I were Hitch, I wouldn’t draw attention to the limitations of my prose style quite so grandiosely.
True, there is in both countries a huge mass of media and showbiz and academic liberals who take the very name “George Bush” as permission to bid adieu to common sense.
On the “Labor Party.”
Why else, when the very name of Paul Wolfowitz is mentioned, do so many people bid adieu to the very notion of objectivity?
On Paul Wolfowitz (whom I didn’t realise was Jewish, Paul being rather blatantly a Catholic name).
I think Victor is particularly fine on Hitchens’ shortcomings, though Lenin is good on Oona King’s electioneering in Bangladeshi areas (puffing New Labour Muslims, not uncut, not leftwing, though possibly Pooterish). Victor also mentions the bruschetta chomping Reg Keys, who don’t you know has the support of Martin Bell. Not that the man who unseated Neil Hamilton thinks it’s easy:
“You can’t just do it on your own with a few mates — it needs many people on the ground,” says Mr Bell.
Which is news to his own campaign team:
Martin Bell’s campaign in Tatton had a limited aim: the sitting MP, Neil Hamilton, had misused public office for personal gain, yet was insulated from political cost by the size of his majority. Mr Bell’s campaign was a ramshackle affair inspired by local disquiet, not national machination; the only outsiders involved in its political direction comprised the candidate’s publisher, cameraman, daughter and nephew (me).
Oliver Kamm. The people on the ground were mostly Labour and Liberal Democrat activists: Mr Kamm is right to insist that thet played no part in Mr Bell’s “political direction” — they were interested in removing an oppenent whom they couldn’t hope to beat otherwise; if that meant promising free beer and immortality, they didn’t care. Mr Kamm condemns the impeach Blair campaign from his vantage point as a Bell supporter in 1997. It’s a shame that Martin Bell himself doesn’t see Mr Keys’ candidacy as “merely an affront to representative democracy that coarsens the political culture and misunderstands its supposed precedent.” Clearly he should have consulted his political adviser and stayed on-message.
These 404 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:59pm GMT Permanent link.
Wednesday, 27 April 2005
Unjust »
I suppose if you read enough, a certain serendipity is inevitable. Sebastian Holsclaw posts on A Court of Law, where he says something very interesting (and not at all “leftwing” or “Pooterish” and possibly more profound than anything written by a professional commenter today):
The quote combined with [Oliver Wendell] Holmes’ intellectual legacy is interesting because it reminds me of one of the reasons I have a strongly conservative tendency. Reformers are a product of their cultures, they can rarely see the destructive capability of their ideas because they subject their ideas to informal limits which are often a result of the culture they wish to change.
The quote was “This is a court of law, young man, not a court of justice.” The serendipity comes from the Guardian’s report on [Tessa] Jowell’s husband faces tax and cash charges which he described as “unjust.” I can’t help finding a lawyer complaining about injustice comical. Anyone can see Berlusconi is a criminal (the charges against him which are likely to make it to court alone make Robert Maxwell look like George Washington); the only injustice is that he’s not in jail.
In related news, I just had a call from the vets’ after Gordon went back in ostensibly as a test subject for their new scanner and also for a couple of blood tests. The result? He has FIV. Now, that’s unjust.
These 168 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:32pm GMT Permanent link.
What Education Is All About »
Only in America: Kilt-wearing student banned from prom.
An American teenager was banned from a high school prom parade after he turned up wearing a kilt.
Eric Schulzentenberg was stunned when school chiefs in Alexandria, Minnesota, ruled his Highland dress did not comply with their dress code.
Still, he was prepared to fight for his right to party. (NB, the article says, “John told Minneapolis-based WCCO TV …” but the only John mentioned is “John Peterka, the school superintendent” who ruled against the kilt; therefore I believe that the “He” below refers to Eric Schulzentenberg.)
He said: “They should be able to accept other cultures and other ideas. That is what education is all about.”
But he said he was determined to make a difference.
“You have to set an example, be able to stand up for what you believe in. I made the stand, even though it’s a kind of sacrifice.”
Spoken like a true Scot.
These 62 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:43pm GMT Permanent link.
Thursday, 28 April 2005
So Here's To You, Maggie Gyllenhaal »
Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee!
The Rev John Donne
I used to be an existentialist. I possibly still am, but I’ve had it with labels. I had problems with Husserl and the lads: I was never sure what mind was or I-ness was or will was or thinking was really. It did seem like a short cut to craziness: everything is true! nothing is permitted! boy am I guilty! (Or is it the other way round? If only I hadn’t read “Cities of the Red Night” at the same time as “Also Sprach Zarathurstra.")
Are we responsible for our lives? We’d like to think so. The alternative is worse. There’s a Dashiell Hammett novel which ends with the revelation that the criminal is a guy who was narrowly missed by a falling brick (or something like that) and decided that his whole life could be different. Maybe you know the feeling.
Sad to say, Oliver Kamm is in my RSS reader. He doesn’t rate Maggie Gyllenhaal among Political theorists of our time. I’m scratching my head here. Like every other Guardian reader I believe (but see above) that “the US was ‘responsible in some way’ for the terror attacks of 11 September 2001.” Gene of Harry’s Place wonders what the hell is the supposedly freedom-loving George Bush doing holding hands with the ruler of one of the world’s most repressive regimes? (15 of the terrorists on 11 September, 2001 were Saudi.) I think the US was hugely wrong to support the Shah; nonetheless, I believe that the regime in Iran is inhumane, oppressive, and whatnot. All the same, funding and arming Saddam was a pretty grotesque error of judgement, even given the provocation, as was support for the Afghani fighters against the Soviet invasion. I’ll quote the same three paragraphs Oliver quoted:
Actress Maggie Gyllenhaal has prompted outcry after she remarked that the US was “responsible in some way” for the terror attacks of 11 September 2001. Gyllenhaal was speaking at an interview promoting her new film, The Great New Wonderful, about people living in New York in the aftermath of 9/11. In a subsequent statement issued by her publicist, she defended the comment.
“Not to have the courage to ask these questions of ourselves is to betray the victims of 9/11,” the 27-year-old said.
In the statement, Gyllenhaal said 11 September was “an occasion to be brave enough to ask some serious questions about America’s role in the world”. She added: “It is always useful as individuals or nations to ask how we may have knowingly or unknowingly contributed to this conflict.”
I can’t see what’s wrong with a syllable of that. Asking questions is one of the things that we do; any problem can be turned over and analysed. Set answers are what the theocracies of the Middle East and the flyover states have. “Asking some serious questions” does not mean arriving at a different conclusion from Mr Kamm (unless he has reason to believe that his certainties are grounded in bad faith). It merely means working things out for oneself, which I think is a duty of every citizen. Mr Kamm lays out the case for the prosecution.
The amount we contributed to this ‘conflict’ unknowingly is moreover a matter on which it is unnecessary to speculate, for we already know the answer: it is zero. The theocratic totalitarians who attacked the Twin Towers and the Pentagon did not leave a suicide note, but their leader has made no secret of his ambitions. As he explained to the BBC in an interview in 1998, he regarded “holy war against Jews and Christians” as a duty. We could adopt every single policy laid out in the 2004 election manifesto of Ralph Nader and still be the target of holy war by our declared Islamist enemies.
Some of us, ok me, might think that it’s worth asking why Osama bin Laden “regarded ‘holy war against Jews and Christians’ as a duty.” (During the Crusades, Richard the Lionheart thought that “holy war against Islam” was a duty. Was he nuts?) If he were younger, perhaps Michael Jackson had … [let’s not go there, m’kay?] Perhaps bin Laden is crazy and his followers are no better than the Heaven’s Gate cult, but it’s still worth asking why did they believe this? And Mr Kamm goes on:
There is no negotiated solution possible in such a conflict — only military victory for our side or theirs.
But they are fighting a guerilla war, and we aren’t and can’t. In the UK, we’ve had to negotiate with the IRA. I don’t know (and neither, as far as I can tell, does anyone else) what a “military victory for our side” would look like, short of genocide. We could withdraw from certain holy places. Whether this would last, I doubt. I doubt as well that the people we might negotiate with represent anyone beyond themselves. But I still reject the Hitchens solution.
And to paraphrase Christopher Hitchens, this is just as well, because what their side objects to about us is everything — everything — that distinguishes our societies from the clerical barbarism that they represent: democracy, pluralism, liberal political rights, sexual equality, religious liberty, homosexual rights and so on.
Chris Brooke noted the passing of Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen who, if his obit in the Torygraph is to be believed, opposed all those things. I might confess to an admiration of the late Enoch Powell, who was an exceptionally clever MP, as well as one of very fixed principles and biases, and who said what he thought — the first and last of those being qualities I wish every Parliamentary candidate possessed.
I’m reading John Harris’s So Now Who Do We Vote For?. I haven’t got very far, but I’d like to share a tired joke on page 8.
His boasts ran as follows, ‘All employees with the right to a paid holiday. Leave for parents to take time off for a family crisis. The right for union members to have their union recognized. Maternity grant doubled … Seven million families with the largest ever rise in Child Benefit Britain has ever seen.’
All of which brought a lump to my throat when I heard it first. The style — note the absence of verbs — is pure Blair.
(According to one apocryphal Labour Party story, after each achievement, a stoic Gordon Brown quietly turned to the person next to him and whispered, ‘He opposed that.’)
I don’t have to go abroad to find the “enemy within.” There are lots of people in this country who, as is their right, oppose any kind of progressive politics.
I’m afraid a military solution is impossible. Even if it were, my conscience gets it the way. Oliver Kamm agane, reflecting on ‘She also expressed her grief for “everyone who suffered and everyone who died in the catastrophe’.":
With the phrase “everyone who died” she includes — if I may employ a Gyllenhaalism, “knowingly or unknowingly” — the bigots and fanatics who carried out these monstrous acts of terror.
I hadn’t thought about this before, but now that I have (and I don’t wish to speak for Ms Gyllenhaal) I express my grief for “the bigots and fanatics who carried out these monstrous acts of terror.” If they hadn’t died, lots of people now dead would still be alive — and regardless of what they did, I glory in no one’s death. That is the difference between me and David Blunkett who said he’d open a bottle on hearing of Harold Shipman’s suicide. That is the difference between Colin Powell and Martin McGuinness to me, though I assume both have intentionally killed in the past. Powell, though I disapprove of much of the party line he supports, seems to feel bad about aspects of his past, so I could vote for him. McGuinness, though I believe he has a cause, lacks that compassion (IMO), and I could not vote for him whatever.
Mr Kamm concludes:
I trust that in conveying that judgement, she will find that the exercise of free speech that her country protects will nonetheless not be commercially costless to her. That is as it should be.
With the phrase “everyone who died” she includes — if I may employ a Gyllenhaalism, “knowingly or unknowingly” — the bigots and fanatics who carried out these monstrous acts of terror.
Indeed. The case of “Donnie Darko” is glaring at me from my untidy shelves. I won’t buy it again. Perhaps I’ll buy it for all my friends. It’s very good.
So here’s to you, Maggie Gyllenhaal.
These 948 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:04am GMT Permanent link.
Burning Bright »
I’m a tiger, I’m a tiger …
Lulu
Survival of the fittest? Tiger is ‘iPod peripheral’ - MS exec. This from a bunch of wankers who wouldn’t know know an operating system from their right hands. Microsoft fires employee over G5 photos, blog. It’s like life: you can follow those who know, or those who haven’t a clue. I’ll believe in the market when you all recognise the once and future Operating System. Only one is the mighty UNIX. Only the one is secure, with real firewalls. Only one stays up for weeks. As in my politics, I don’t mind being in the minority. I’ve preordered through Amazon. Now, I don’t believe in god, but is it a coincidence that Tiger and THHGTTG are released the same day? To use Oliver Kamm’s typically eloquent phrase, I hope that this will “not be commercially costless.” May the best programmers win. Not to hint or anything, but the OS of champions.
Send me the bill. Gates of Hell, forsooth!
These 159 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:19am GMT Permanent link.
Killer Fact! (with Apologies To Harry Hutton) »
84 percent of Serengeti lions harbour FIV [Feline Immunodeficiency Virus]. It says so in The Truth About Cats and FIV. I bet those lions regret their nights out in San Francisco bath-houses now.
FIV is a cat-only disease. This immunodeficiency virus (like all immunodeficiency viruses) is very species specific — so specific, in fact, that the virus domestic cats have is different from the kind the big cats have.
I tried looking up James Anderton’s notorious quote about “swirling around in a human cesspit of their own making,” instead I found a Channel 4 page on the history of HIV/AIDS (written in 2003).
Cardinal Ratzinger of the Roman Catholic Church described homosexuality as an abomination, recalling the destruction of the biblical citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah as a punishment for licentious behaviour. Cardinal Basil Hume insisted that ‘people must cut out sexual permissiveness and promiscuity if the AIDS epidemic is to be contained’.
If there’s one thing more ridiculous than my lazy, neutered, gentle cat having an immunodeficiency virus, it’s taking sex advice from celibate old fools.
(According to today’s Torygraph — not online — George Bush said “He’s a man of great wisdom and knowledge” of Pope Benedict XVI. For a bigoted Nazi, perhaps.)
These 119 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:40pm GMT Permanent link.
Cracking Hoax »
It seems that the Alastair Campbell blog is a fake written by a bloody woman. (Via Tim.) Never mind, this sounds more like Alastair Campbell. (Via Chris.)
The problem is solved now, however. I crushed his trachea with my mind, and promoted Piett to command the fleet.
These 27 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:54pm GMT Permanent link.
Fake Terror - Ricin Ring That Never Was »
(Like John, I’m reprinting the Guardian article on the government’s venal lies which they chickened out of archiving on their website.)
Yesterday’s trial collapse has exposed the deception behind attempts to link al-Qaida to a ‘poison attack’ on London By Duncan Campbell The Guardian—UK 4-15-5
Colin Powell does not need more humiliation over the manifold errors in his February 2003 presentation to the UN. But yesterday a London jury brought down another section of the case he made for war—that Iraq and Osama bin Laden were supporting and directing terrorist poison cells throughout Europe, including a London ricin ring.
Yesterday’s verdicts on five defendants and the dropping of charges against four others make clear there was no ricin ring. Nor did the “ricin ring” make or have ricin. Not that the government shared that news with us. Until today, the public record for the past three fear-inducing years has been that ricin was found in the Wood Green flat occupied by some of yesterday’s acquitted defendants. It wasn’t.
The third plank of the al-Qaida-Iraq poison theory was the link between what Powell labelled the “UK poison cell” and training camps in Afghanistan. The evidence the government wanted to use to connect the defendants to Afghanistan and al-Qaida was never put to the jury. That was because last autumn a trial within a trial was secretly taking place. This was a private contest between a group of scientists from the Porton Down military research centre and myself. The issue was: where had the information on poisons and chemicals come from?
The information—five pages in Arabic, containing amateur instructions for making ricin, cyanide and botulinum, and a list of chemicals used in explosives—was at the heart of the case. The notes had been made by Kamel Bourgass, the sole convicted defendant. His co-defendants believed that he had copied the information from the internet. The prosecution claimed it had come from Afghanistan.
I was asked to look for the original source on the internet. This meant exploring Islamist websites that publish Bin Laden and his sympathisers, and plumbing the most prolific source of information on how to do harm: the writings of the American survivalist right and the gun lobby.
The experience of being an expert witness on these issues has made me feel a great deal safer on the streets of London. These were the internal documents of the supposed al-Qaida cell planning the “big one” in Britain. But the recipes were untested and unoriginal, borrowed from US sources. Moreover, ricin is not a weapon of mass destruction. It is a poison which has only ever been used for one-on-one killings and attempted killings.
If this was the measure of the destructive wrath that Bin Laden’s followers were about to wreak on London, it was impotent. Yet it was the discovery of a copy of Bourgass’s notes in Thetford in 2002 that inspired the wave of horror stories and government announcements and preparations for poison gas attacks.
It is true that when the team from Porton Down entered the Wood Green flat in January 2003, their field equipment registered the presence of ricin. But these were high sensitivity field detectors, for use where a false negative result could be fatal. A few days later in the lab, Dr Martin Pearce, head of the Biological Weapons Identification Group, found that there was no ricin. But when this result was passed to London, the message reportedly said the opposite.
The planned government case on links to Afghanistan was based only on papers that a freelance journalist working for the Times had scooped up after the US invasion of Kabul. Some were in Arabic, some in Russian. They were far more detailed than Bourgass’s notes. Nevertheless, claimed Porton Down chemistry chief Dr Chris Timperley, they showed a “common origin and progression” in the methods, thus linking the London group of north Africans to Afghanistan and Bin Laden.
The weakness of Timperley’s case was that neither he nor the intelligence services had examined any other documents that could have been the source. We were told Porton Down and its intelligence advisers had never previously heard of the “Mujahideen Poisons Handbook, containing recipes for ricin and much more”. The document, written by veterans of the 1980s Afghan war, has been on the net since 1998.
All the information roads led west, not to Kabul but to California and the US midwest. The recipes for ricin now seen on the internet were invented 20 years ago by survivalist Kurt Saxon. He advertises videos and books on the internet. Before the ricin ring trial started, I phoned him in Arizona. For $110, he sent me a fistful of CDs and videos on how to make bombs, missiles, booby traps—and ricin. We handed a copy of the ricin video to the police.
When, in October, I showed that the chemical lists found in London were an exact copy of pages on an internet site in Palo Alto, California, the prosecution gave up on the Kabul and al-Qaida link claims. But it seems this information was not shared with the then home secretary, David Blunkett, who was still whipping up fear two weeks later. “Al-Qaida and the international network is seen to be, and will be demonstrated through the courts over months to come, actually on our doorstep and threatening our lives,” he said on November 14.
The most ironic twist was an attempt to introduce an “al-Qaida manual” into the case. The manual—called the Manual of the Afghan Jihad—had been found on a raid in Manchester in 2000. It was given to the FBI to produce in the 2001 New York trial for the first attack on the World Trade Centre. But it wasn’t an al-Qaida manual. The name was invented by the US department of justice in 2001, and the contents were rushed on to the net to aid a presentation to the Senate by the then attorney general, John Ashcroft, supporting the US Patriot Act.
To show that the Jihad manual was written in the 1980s and the period of the US-supported war against the Soviet occupation was easy. The ricin recipe it contained was a direct translation from a 1988 US book called the Poisoner’s Handbook, by Maxwell Hutchkinson.
We have all been victims of this mass deception. I do not doubt that Bourgass would have contemplated causing harm if he was competent to do so. But he was an Islamist yobbo on his own, not an Al Qaida-trained superterrorist. An Asbo might be appropriate.
________________________________________________________
Duncan Campbell is an investigative writer and a scientific expert witness on computers and telecommunications. He is author of War Plan UK and is not the Guardian journalist of the same name
These 1121 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:37pm GMT Permanent link.
For Mark Holland »
Yes Mark, Cardiff Central is Dave Weeden territory: where I used to live anyway, and I’ve seen Captain Beany’s car a few streets from me. I can’t vote for him even though I like his policies.
It’s a shame he’s not in Cardiff North, which the Western Mail thinks holds “the secret of the overall election result across Britain.” (Typically for Wales, the Conservative candidate is a “J Morgan” and the Labour incumbent is also a “J Morgan.") The print version detailed how affluent Cardiff North is: 29% of adults have a degree (against 17% overall in Wales); 0% don’t have central heating (7.5%); 83% of properties are owner-occupied (71%) … What the online version also omits will probably infuriate Mark.
For Jonathan Morgan and the Tories [the council election results were] a sign that the seat was ready to revert to the old [pre 1997] pattern and elect a Conservative MP.
But the large number of civil servants living in the constituency may well have swung the balance back to Labour.
While both main parties say they will cut civil service numbers, the Conservatives are threatening more swingeing cuts than their opponents. …
Many civil servants living in the constituency will understand that the battle is essentially a straight fight between Labour and the Conservatives. From a self-interested point of view, the bulk of them may well have decided to back the lesser of two evils.
And for Justin McKeating, another “back door” reference, this time by David Blunkett.
FORMER Home Secretary David Blunkett visited the fifth safest seat in Britain to admit Labour had concerns about the “popularity poll” being run in Blaenau Gwent by Peter Law.
Mr Blunkett urged Mr Law to stand back from campaigning for the good of the party he recently quit, insisting, “You have made your point”.
Earlier in the day Mr Blunkett urged disgruntled Labour supporters not to vote for “dilettante” candidates warning protest votes could allow the Tories into power by the back door.
Mr Law quit the Labour Party to contest the seat as an independent candidate in protest over all women shortlists which saw union official Maggie Jones selected as a successor to outgoing MP Llew Smith.
With a majority of 19,313, the safest seat in Wales is unused to attracting any party “big hitters” at election time and Mr Blunkett conceded his visit suggested Labour was worried about the threat posed by Mr Law’s challenge.
I’m not sure that Ms Jones understands our democracy.
Ms Jones admitted her ex-Labour rival was causing problems but not enough, she predicted, to cost the party the seat.
She said, “At the end of the day people will have Labour values and I am pretty sure they will want to vote for a government, not one individual.”
I’ve never voted for a government in my life, and neither have you.
These 156 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 6:25pm GMT Permanent link.
Who Are You Calling Satirical? »
Earlier today, I was impressed by Captain Beany’s manifesto. There’s an intriguing floating voter manifesto in today’s Torygraph. My favourite paragraph was:
Even “bugger off, you amateur” — John Prescott’s witty riposte to a Welsh journalist — failed to rouse me to anger at his rudeness and stupidity. (A digression: did anyone else notice a resemblance between the erstwhile Labour front bench and the Slitheen, the aliens who disguised themselves as politicians, in last week’s Doctor Who?)
Nick Barlow wrote about Doctor Who so I’ve put off adding my enthusiasm. (Just so you know, the cabinet room was the council chamber of Cardiff University and some of Number 10 was shot in the museum.) Apart from the obvious satirical stuff, the UN resolution, the WMD ready in “45 seconds” and so on, there was, I thought, a more subtle political message.
Sorry to mention Oliver Kamm yet again, but here’s something else that had me seething.
Sedgemore is, in short, a man of neither ability nor attainment who held a safe Labour seat for 22 years (he was out of Parliament between 1979 and 1983) for no obvious reason except that constituency Labour parties of the 1980s were largely uninterested in ideas, and few talented people other than Blair and Brown chose to become Labour politicians at that time.
(My emphasis.) As John says, “Oliver Kamm is clearly an intelligent and articulate man,” and here he intelligently articulates New Labour arrogance. The problem with the Labour Party, and the reason why even with a huge majority, Peter Hain has to have two jobs, is that there aren’t enough talented people! Pull the other one. I’m with Nick 100% here.
Finally, there’s Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North who not only continued the run of great guest stars in this series (come on, who wouldn’t want Penelope Wilton as their MP?) but brought up an interesting political theme. While the other authority figures we saw assumed their power based on their position, she explicitly referred to being the representative of the people and it was that role that gave her the authority to order the Doctor to launch the missile.
And at the start of the first episode, she was hanging about in Downing Street trying for a brief audience with the PM, and being ignored. At the end, she’s elected Prime Minister for three terms and leads Britain into a golden age. Good for Russell T. Davies.
These 210 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:40pm GMT Permanent link.
Friday, 29 April 2005
Serendipity To The Rescue »
In my last post, I quoted Oliver Kamm’s statement about the state of the Labour party as he sees it, “…constituency Labour parties of the 1980s were largely uninterested in ideas, and few talented people other than Blair and Brown chose to become Labour politicians at that time.” I read this as meaning that there are few talented backbenchers in the Labour Party in their 40s and 50s — the ages when they’d be likely to be ministers. (I believe something close to the opposite, I think that talent is everywhere, and just needs to be nurtured. Being an MP is difficult, and it takes years to grow into the role effectively. IMO, MPs are very much made rather than born.)
I think that Tom Utley in today’s Torygraph is simply splendid.
I would not exactly call him a liar for keeping us all in the dark about his plans. That is too simplistic a word to explain the way in which his mind works. Mr Blair is not setting out to deceive voters. It is just that he doesn’t trust us to know what he is thinking, because he doesn’t trust us to agree with him.
We voters must not feel singled out by the Prime Minister’s refusal to lay the full facts before us. He is treating us exactly as he treats Parliament and his own Cabinet. He does not trust them, either, to come to the same conclusions as he does, on the basis of the facts available to him as Prime Minister. So he edits those facts — or gets Alastair Campbell to edit them for him - in order to steer other people’s minds in the direction that he is convinced is the right one.
A pattern is emerging in his behaviour, into which his less-than-frank election manifesto fits perfectly. First, he gets it into his head that he is right about something — right to believe, for example, that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, ready for use within 45 minutes, or that there are no legal objections to invading Iraq.
Then he tells himself that, because he believes these things, they must be true. So he sets about Tippexing out any facts that may point others towards conclusions different from his own. The idea of this is not to deceive, but to steer everyone else towards the conclusion that he believes, in all honesty, to be the right one.
In Mr Blair’s philosophy, Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is incapable of telling a lie, because if ACLB believes something, it must be true. Peter Oborne, in his cerebral new book The Rise of Political Lying, extracts of which are published in this week’s Spectator, has tracked down a quote from the Prime Minister that perfectly encapsulates the Blairite view of truth.
Attempting to explain the allies’ failure to find WMD in Iraq, Mr Blair said: “I only know what I believe.” In other words, he knew that there were WMD in Iraq, simply because he believed it. In my book, this is a form of madness.
Of course, Tom Utley is a right-wing writer on a right-wing paper, so let’s have a little BBC-style balance in the form of a left-wing former minister interviewed by a left-wing writer for a left-wing book. Take it away, John Harris (this site really doesn’t like Safari, BTW). On page 70 of his book, Mr Harris visits Portcullis House.
On the condition that we talk off the record — that is to say, I leave my tape recorder in my bag and frantically take notes—a serving Labour MP who is also an ex-minister had agreed to spend an hour talking to me about the government and its possible fate at the next election. I knew that this ex-minister would express biting dissent, and perhaps acknowledge the fact that voting Labour now seemed so counter-intuitive that the party all but deserved to suffer heavy electoral losses — but what he actually said went way beyond any of that.
On page 71, he largely confirms Mr Ultey’s and Mr Oborne’s theses.
’All our traditions are breaking down,’ the ex-minister went on. ‘At the 2002 conference, I was heartened by what happened : the party’s voting on Iraq, when there was an anti-Blair majority split 60/40 between those who insisted on UN backing for military action, and those who disapproved of military action no matter what. I thought, “This is the party I love.” But it didn’t count for anything—because Tony’s way of running the party is to dismiss everything it does.’
Justin McKeating posted on Brian Sedgemore.
Blair dismissed him to the voters as “someone they have never heard of”. John Prescott apparently said, “Whoever heard of Brian before?”
And he prints an email from William, a reader:
Actually he was my MP for six years… and a very good constituency MP, if a bit eccentric sometimes.
But to Tony and John backbenchers are a bunch of people no-one’s heard of.
As many of the 97 intake are unlikely to become as well known as Brian Sedgemore was, do you think they might be a little pissed off at their role being so completely dismissed?
He was a responsive constituency MP who did that part of the job well.
Nosemonkey in the comments points out that similar beliefs cloud the Conservatives too:
Similar to the Tories with their “bed blocker” thing from a while back. One of those on the list was the MP I used to work for. Absolutely stereotypical Tory country MP. Everything you’d expect. (We didn’t agree on everything politically or philosophically, shall we say.)
In parliament 30+ years — of which 22 were in government, yet ne’er a whiff of a ministerial position. Why? Because he spent pretty much every waking hour dealing with constituency matters and facilitating charitable work in Westminster. In the office 7am every day, not leaving until 11pm. Every letter from a constituent replied to within two days, and usually followed up two weeks later.
Meanwhile, all those poor sods who have an MP who’s a minister and revelling in having been “heard of” find themselves screwed. Is it any wonder that Sedgefield consistently ranks in the bottom 10% of constituencies for employment, public services, quality of life, life expectancy, job security, etc etc?
Needless to say, it’s those things which I think MPs should concentrate on.
These 738 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:06pm GMT Permanent link.
Serendipity To The Rescue, II »
While I’m writing about John Harris’s So Now Who Do We Vote For?, I’d like to mention his very sensible opposition to Private Finance Initiatives (PFIs) or Public Private Partnerships (PPPs). Not only does he detail the demoralising effect they have in hospital staff, and their long-term expense, but their short-term drawbacks. He quotes School books returned to library after PPP fiasco.
Funnily enough, the Tories also believe in this remarkably stupid policy. Alister has a good story:
Heard a good one about a hustings in Edinburgh’s Muirhouse estate which, for those who don’t know it, is not exactly Morningside. The candidates all faced questions and one came up about PFI/PPP schemes. The chisel-jawed ex-SAS tory candidate did not shrink from answering. "It’s just like having a mortgage, I mean we all have mortgages right? Everyone here has a mortgage."
Cue howls from the majority of council tenants at the meeting.
Even the most committed right-to-buy-er would give a mortgage in Muirhouse a miss. I’m sure the people originally responsible for the tower blocks meant well, but more godforsaken architecture is hard to imagine.
These 112 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:28pm GMT Permanent link.
Booing Blair »
Did the Lillian Bayliss kids really boo Tony Blair? New Labour sources claim they were “boom"-ing. As it was an “education campaign launch,” perhaps they were calling for books. Guido heard boos, so did I on the BBC video.
What I don’t believe is Guido’s allegation that the little terrors also sang, “Mr Blair, we don’t care, you’re wearing Cherie’s underwear.” That’s highly unlikely. I can’t see Cherie keeping her maternity clothes, and TB is turning into a right porker these days.
These 82 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:19pm GMT Permanent link.
Saturday, 30 April 2005
Old And New »
This was a better photograph when I thought of it coming back from the paper shop than it is in execution. I should have waited for a clearer day so the white masts of the Millennium Stadium would contrast with the sky rather than blending with the hazy cloud. I can never remember what the building with the plate on top is called.
The stadium (finding the postcode was hard work; I had to use the cinema next door in the end) is marked on this Google Map; the photo was taken in Rutland St. If you want an election theme (and this was intended as a deliberate break), I was outside the church hall that will be the polling station five days hence.
These 125 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:18pm GMT Permanent link.
Fings What I Ought Ter 'ave Said »
I wish I’d read Bob Herbert’s On Abu Ghraib, the Big Shots Walk before I wrote Free The Ali Baba Three. (Though that I wrote my post two months before Mr Herbert made that rather difficult.)
And I wish I’d had the benefit of Fontana Labs’s fine prose last year when I wanted to dig at Martin Kettle’s principled attack on journalists.
What’s moderately awesome about this is that, of course, Gelernter’s a fucking Yale professor, a fact that’s pointed out at the top of the column. (Can’t wait to see the minutes from the next departmental meeting— “So, Dave, you think we’re all Marxist pricks who look down on our students, eh?” “No, I didn’t mean you guys, I meant those professors, the bad ones, I think mostly in English— you know, the ones Reynolds is on about.") But what’s completely and totally awesome about this is that right after a display of massive intellectual arrogance ("You must be crazy to disagree!") he accuses the other side of massive intellectual arrogance. So. Fucking. Cool.
What’s so fucking cool about Martin Kettle is his Grauniad hackwork now comes with a correction. So Mart, I’m sure you didn’t mean anyone you actually know, just, some guys out there.
These 94 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:20pm GMT Permanent link.
Books And Banners »
The Guardian: Mailer sells archive to Unversity of Texas.
The author, who found success with The Naked and the Dead and went on to win the Pulitzer prize for The Armies of the Night and The Executioner’s Song, described how the strength of the Republican party in Texas alarmed him.
“My concern is that there is this great divide in the country and that is one of the elements I thought about obviously with the paper,” he told Reuters. “I thought, well, my God you end up with an archive in a state that could really go berserk at any given point, berserk politically. In other words, there could be a point where some damn fool legislator, Texas legislator, could stand up and say what’s this Ransom library doing with that atheist Norman Mailer?”
This isn’t Mailer being oversensitive, US states really do go “berserk politically.” Banning Books in Alabama.
“I don’t look at it as censorship,” says State Representative Gerald Allen. “I look at it as protecting the hearts and souls and minds of our children.”
Tossers.
(It’s not particularly clear in the photo on CT, but at the Bristol blogger bash, I was wearing a University of Texas t-shirt—bought, like all university shirts, as a tourist).
These 56 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:51pm GMT Permanent link.
Divided By A Common Language »
I suppose you’ve noticed that US political bloggers have barely noticed our upcoming election. (Pity really, I was hoping to convince the Little Green Fedayeen that Islington was a swing district, full of namby bruschetta eaters who need their spines stiffened by a nice email from over the water reminding them what a top-hole chap Blair is. Sadly, most of them think we all live in service to the local lord, and while we can’t vote, even our butlers have butlers, which is some compensation.)
Now Kevin Drum follows ex-pat Andrew Sullivan in blogging British Campaign Ads. Sullivan: “They’re really, really good.” Unlike his journalism. Read Kevin’s correction.
Bring on the Euro.
These 112 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:04pm GMT Permanent link.
Who'd A Thunk It? »
I’ve wanted to post properly on Dr Who for a while now. Dr Who And His Double Entendres was a start, and Who Are You Calling Satirical? a sort of follow up, but as Mark Holland has found some other blog comment (How to ruin Doctor Who; Biased-BBC; and Natalie Solent), I’ve got some well-articulated negatives to worry about. I think most of Natalie’s points are well-observed and foreshadow mine. IMO, she’s very wrong about Russell Davies not being a “scriptwriter who was fully on the job and not wasting his very considerable talents kissing the BBC top brass better after the Hutton Report” and about the ethical dilemma she finds so weak. It makes some dramatic sense to me, but the more important element was didactic. (I think some of what I’m about to say follows from the BBC’s Reithian principles, but it also comes from very good children’s writing in any sector.) By “losing you [Rose]” the Doctor implied that he’d survive (which is sort of consistent with Time Lord regeneration). Rose actually lived because she remembered that people can survive earthquakes by sheltering under door frames which are the strongest part of a house. This episode snuck in two heavily didactic segments — that one, and the Doctor’s little speech on 10 Downing Street — the implicit moral is, it’s good to be smart and know things. Rose is a clever girl, and that’s portrayed as desirable and strong.
I didn’t see anything of 9/11 in the saucer crash. Again, as I said before the fakery reminded me of Jaws. We were deceived and the characters were deceived. There was a dramatic element in that it brought the action to the Houses of Parliament; a technical element — as the interiors were actually filmed in Cardiff, the outside scenes helped suspend credibility; and an entertainment element — explosions are fun.
I’d say more, but I’ve got to watch the one with John Birt. I realise that I haven’t answered all Natalie and Patrick’s points — time, lords, ladies, and gentlemen.
These 343 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 6:56pm GMT Permanent link.
Five Facts »
While Doctor Who was on, a couple of leaflets came through my door. If you think I was inarticulate the last time I met a canvasser, I’d hate to think what one would have got if they’d knocked. Both were Labour (at least, I rather think both were; I’ve let all the crap pile up). The second, glossy, one (which wasn’t put through the letter box carefully; hello to all you burglars out there) detailed “The Lib Dems In Their Own Words.” Now, if the Tories had stooped to really dirty tricks, and employed Saatchi employees with the collective brain-power of Leonardo, Mozart, Einstein, Shakespeare, and a few other likely lads, they might have come up with a bogus Labour leaflet like this.
- The Lib Dems would allow 16 year olds to buy alcohol. Which of course doesn’t happen at present. Ewan Blair got legless by someone spiking his herbal tea. Buying alcohol is what 16 years olds do. Get used to it.
- The Lib Dems would give the vote to jailed killers, rapists and paedophiles. We’ve all heard of miscarriages of justice. Also we’re depriving them of plenty of important freedoms; the right to vote threatens what? It makes politicians accountable to those who are at the mercy of the state full time. I’m gobsmacked that they can’t vote now.
- The Lib Dems would end all jail sentences for drug possession. This is supposed to convince me not to vote for them? See Ogged’s MP3 file.
- The Lib Dems would hike up income tax for hard working families. a) I’m not a family, so fuck you too. b) I believe in the state, you know, health care and all that. (See below, you enemy of tax.)
- A vote for the Lib Dems helps the Tories win. … It only takes one in 50 people to switch their vote from Labour to Lib Dem and the Tories will win. Or possibly one in ten or whatever other numbers you pull out of your lying arses.
And while I’m on it, you tell me. You’re against taxes. Also, there’s a logical upper limit on spending, yes? After a point a car is just a car, and so forth. Perhaps the Tory spending plans are, like Mummy Bear’s porridge, just right, and Labour’s merely fill the boots of some robber barons and fund a few extra layers of middle management. Good for the Graun for printing a sensible article: When you can’t see a GP alongside an utterly ludicrous leader. You know why patients wait less time to see a GP? It’s because anyone who waits longer than 48 hours isn’t bloody recorded. It’s called cooking the books, lying in other words. What government ministers and Graun hacks do for pay, and still do so very, very badly.
Believe me, when the Labour Party adopts the first four Lib Dem promises, I’ll rejoin. In short, I don’t want to make Ewan Blair a criminal; voting is a human right; drug possession is not a crime; and I want a decent Health Service and education system.
These 516 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 8:33pm GMT Permanent link.
The Only Dalek In The Village »
Oh, gosh, I can’t wait to read what the right-wingers think of Dalek. I thought it was superb. If it had weaknesses, they were limited to the special effects. Torturers in orange jumpsuits — what will they read into that? Note that the Dalek fell to earth like a meteorite, and the creature inside looked like my conception of the Martians in The War of The Worlds. And wasn’t there a bit on “virgins taming unicorns” in the ending?
I thought last week’s was great writing, taking into account that children really do hide behind the sofa, the aliens could smell Rose and Harriet hiding behind curtains. This week, Rose thought Daleks couldn’t go upstairs. Fantastic!
I so want someone to say that this episode confirms my prejudices. I think it dramatizes my beliefs. I’m against torture. Even more so (if ‘twere possible) against the death penalty. Yet I’ve felt anger at being robbed. I know the drive. The conclusion was right.
The satire element was spot on too. Straight outta Citizen Kane.
No one would have missed Salt Lake City though. It’s been a long time since I was there.
These 191 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:10pm GMT Permanent link.
There Ain't No Black In The Union Jack »
Long long ago, when I worked and lived in London I had a colleague and best friend from the Valleys. He went on several Miners’ Strike protests, and he told me of one where some lads (not, I think, from South Wales) saw a couple of black faces and chanted the title of this post. The other miners turned on them and shouted them down. The moral? There are always some idiots if your group is large enough, and the Labour leaflet I mentioned in the post before last was pandering to bigots. Labour used to be about social justice, fairness, equality, freedom, brotherhood. When did it start recruiting the Sith?
Labour for Labourites. Go Sieg Heil somewhere else.
These 119 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:38pm GMT Permanent link.
Good To See You, Darren »
Alister has the sensational first photograph of one of my faves, Darren of Inveresk Street Ingrate. Remember that face, we’ll be asking questions later.
These 24 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:51pm GMT Permanent link.