backword
Wednesday, 1 March 2006
The Worst Disease? »
In which I am revealed, yet again, as an illiberal liberal, or liberal illiberal or something.
David T of H’sP (sometimes he’s “the sensible one"; sometimes just “the one who went to Oxford") reproduces An Open Letter to Clare Short re Hizb ut-Tahrir from Peter Tatchell.
Dear Clare Short,
I read with alarm that you are facilitating a meeting of the misogynistic, homophobic and anti-Semitic Muslim fundamentalist group, Hizb ut-Tahrir, at the House of Commons today, Wednesday 1 March, at 5pm in Committee Room 17.
I don’t know about the opening. Well, “Dear Clare Short” is uncontroversial enough. But writing this blog, I’ve become aware of readers like Mark Holland and David Duff who largely regard words like “racist” as “lefty abuse” rather than denoting a substantial belief. Ms Short doesn’t fall into their category, but as she’s agreed to meet Hizb ut-Tahrir (or is “facilitating a meeting” with them — which is a really nasty way to say the same thing), I doubt she’ll be persuaded.
As Peter Tatchell devotes so much energy to his campaigns, however, I rather trust his knowledge of Hizb over Ms Short’s.
In the comments, Wardytron saves me the bother of adding anything:
Hizb are an unpleasant bunch, but the point of this meeting according to Clare Short is “so that Parliamentarians can decide for themselves whether the organization should be banned”. In that case, is it so outrageous in principle that they should be allowed to defend themselves?
Clare Short is an MP, and big enough to make up her own mind. I hope that she publishes (see, another good reason for MPs to have blogs) her version of the meeting. I assume that she’s big enough to say “I was wrong and Peter Tatchell was right”, if this turns out to be the case.
Mr Tatchell also wrote:
Hizb ut-Tahrir is no more appropriate to be hosted at the House of Commons than the BNP.
The BNP are not banned or an illegal organisation. So the same thing applies. If Ms Short were to meet the BNP, I can understand some of her constituents being upset and writing to her to tell her so. This is democracy, see? We don’t ban organisations, but we do make our elected representatives answerable for their actions.
It’s a pity that Peter Tatchell can’t attend the meeting. His appearances usually add to the gaiety of nations. Still, his objections to the thuggery of Hizb ut-Tahrir seem to me to be perfectly sound.
A different gay rights group has criticised the ‘Caveman’ BBC for homophobia, citing in particular Anne Robinson and Jeremy Clarkson. The Torygraph splendidly illustrates the latter with the caption: “Clarkson: lesbian fantasies”. Apparently he hates lesbians so much he fantasizes about them.
And Jeremy Clarkson, presenter of Top Gear, was criticised for his habit of unfavourably describing cars as gay, or using lesbian sexual fantasies as a metaphor to express enthusiasm.
Of one vehicle, he said: “Now this, for me, when I was little, was, kind of, Jordan and Cameron Diaz in a bath together”.
To the best of my knowledge, neither Ms Price nor Ms Diaz is attracted to her own sex.
Anne Robinson is not funny, but Jeremy Clarkson is. Either way, they should be allowed to say what they think; which in Mr Clarkson’s case doesn’t seem to involve any homophobia whatever.
Focus group participants singled out the BBC as the least successful broadcaster at capturing the realities of gay lives, with one interviewee calling it a “caveman” compared with Channel 4.
…
Viewers in focus groups said that gay characters were rarely developed in BBC soap operas, and that their sexuality completely defined their role.
Channel 4, erstwhile home of Graham Norton, whose sexuality completely defines his character. If that’s sophisticated, I can leave it. C4’s only gay comedy that I can remember was The High Life which, while excellent, relied entirely on camp silliness.
The corporation “seems reluctant to present lesbian and gay people in everyday scenarios such as stable relationships or family life”, the report said.
Well, there was Colin in EastEnders in the 80s. What next, a focus group bemoaning the lack of gay roles in The Sound of Music and other Broadway shows? Boy, those really are the pits.
These 481 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:43pm GMT Permanent link.
About To Drag Me Down »
On A Monday I Was Ar-rested (Uh Huh)
On A Tuesday They Locked Me In The Jail (Oh Boy)
On A Wednesday My Trial Was At-tested
On A Thursday They Said Guilty And The Judge’s Gavel Fell
I Got Stripes — Stripes Around My Shoulders
I Got Chains — Chains Around My Feet
I Got Stripes — Stripes Around My Shoulders
And Them Chains — Them Chains They’re About To Drag Me Down
Johnny Cash
It’s not often that I’d wish to see a topical drama delayed from being screened, but I hope Channel 4 takes some time over making A very social prime minister — Channel 4 follows Blair out of office.
“The only thing we are worried about is the timing — whether we can make it before Blair goes.
“Robert [Lindsay] is keen to do it because it lets him off the leash a bit. There’s a slightly mad, frenetic quality to him, which you saw in GBH, and which comes out in his portrayal of Blair.”
There’s some way to go before Blair leaves a legacy.
Actually, the previous effort — on David Blunkett — could do with a revision. David Blunkett resigned (the first time) on Wednesday, 15 December 2004, or almost halfway through the month. Oh, yes, I really hate Blunkett. And what’s this? Scotsman: Government denies Mills probe claim.
According to [The Times], prosecutors made a tentative request to extradite Mr Mills in December 2004. But the Home Office responded by going to the Ministry of Justice in Rome — via the Italian embassy in London — rather than dealing with the prosecuting authorities.
It is claimed that that meant they involved the government of Mr Berlusconi, which had a direct interest in the case.
The Times itself writes on David Mills ‘in secret talks to cut a deal’ over claims of corruption. But surely as the husband of that nice Ms Jowell he hasn’t done anything wrong — so how can he offer to cut a deal?
Legal sources said that if Mr Mills were guilty of an offence and collaborated, he could expect a symbolic sentence of less than a year in prison — possibly suspended. Sources close to the investigation said they believed that Mr Mills could provide evidence damaging to the Italian leader, especially if he agreed to plea bargaining.
Signor Berlusconi’s defence has repeatedly described Mr Mills as a “hostile witness”.
I can’t see him taking out life insurance after that. But I thought Signor Berlusconi had denied even meeting Mr Mills. The old boy couldn’t be getting paranoid could he?
Given that I regularly accuse the Murdoch-owned media of being complicit with Maximum Tone, I’m really pleased that they’re pursuing this. I especially like the Sky News Weblog with Adam Boulton: Tessa Jowell: How Hot Is The Roman Water?
Italy’s independent magistrates have targeted Mr. Berlusconi for many years, in what he regards as a politically motivated vendetta.
My emphases. That’s good writing.
His affairs and those of this advisors, including David Mills, have been repeatedly subject to legal scrutiny and trial. Mr Mills has been cleared of all charges thus far, although he has had to bear thousands of pounds of legal costs.
I like “thus far” too.
Torygraph: Blair promises Jowell husband extradition investigation.
Tony Blair has promised to investigate claims that the Home Office mishandled an extradition request from Italy involving David Mills, husband of the beleaguered Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell.
He told the Commons: “We will, of course, examine any allegations that are made and reply to them fully.”
But I’m reminded of earlier promises to investigate the government and the unhappy case of Elizabeth Filkin described by the BBC as “a watchdog too watchful for their [MPs] liking”.
BBC: How bad is it for Jowell? Answer: pretty bad. Half of this money is now hers.
FT: David Mills’s difficult year as Italian legal investigation spreads to Britain.
March 23 2005 Italian media report prosecutors asking for a further six months to investigate allegations. Mr Mills says: “With regard to the receipt of a payment, I have provided [the prosecutors] with irrefutable evidence that this allegation is false and that Berlusconi had absolutely nothing to do with it.”
I’m having problems squaring that with The Full text of David Mills’ letter which includes:
It [the $600,000] was put in the fund because the person connected to the B organisations was someone I had discussed this fund with on many occasions, and it was a round about way of making the money available.
That smells to me.
Craig Murray Run of the Mill.
It is a sign of our appalling times, and the arrogance of New Labour, that Blair clings on to his loyal muppet Jowell, while Sir Gus O’Donnell, Cabinet Secretary, earnestly enquires whether there is anything in the Code of Conduct for Ministers that specifically precludes multiple acts of money laundering. (link)
Well, Sir Gus, there is certainly this; the Code precludes acceptance of gifts. That is what Mills claims this money was. As this “Gift” (note the use of a capital ‘G’) went to pay off a mortgage which was 50% in Jowell’s name and which she had signed, she also accepted it. She should be out. But doubtless the Cabinet Office are working overtime on how to Hutton their way around this one.
In the meantime, the Blairite cheerleaders in the media bravely try to save her. In particular Britain’s worst journalist, the wholly odious Michael White (Political editor of the Guardian), argues against all the evidence that Jowell and Mills’ finances are separate. (link)
That man White is so far up Jack Straw’s rectum that for years he hasn’t had any daylight to report by. He also seems not to know that the ministerial code specifically covers gifts to family members.
Whatever happened to “whiter than white"? I think both Mills and Jowell are lying. I want them to continue to do so, preferably in Parliament and in court.
These 336 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:13pm GMT Permanent link.
Linda Smith »
She was brought up in Erith, a town by the Thames where Kent edges towards London, which she said “isn’t twinned with anywhere, but it does have a suicide pact with Dagenham”. This was a comment that attracted the wrath of her local paper, but she defended herself by pointing out that the same paper ran a competition the following week to come up with the best name for the new Erith leisure centre, which was won by the entry “The Erith Leisure Centre”.
After Erith College and Sheffield University, where she read English and drama, she lived in the city for many years. Despite a strong south-east London twang, she had a very Yorkshire way with words. She was very particular in finding (often in an instant) the most precise and elegant language. I think she also absorbed a lot of Jewishness from Warren Lakin, her partner for 23 years.
And Jeremy Hardy again.
Linda was diagnosed with ovarian cancer three and a half years ago but she really didn’t want people to know.
She was a very proud woman and she hated the cancer. It annoyed her because she loved life.
She wanted to live. I think she thought that by talking about the cancer she was giving it a platform that she didn’t think it deserved.
Her death is sad and shocking.
These 14 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 6:19pm GMT Permanent link.
Thursday, 2 March 2006
Grauniad Innumeracy Strikes Again »
tehgrauniad’s Guardian Unlimited RSS feed
The title bar reads:
Guardian Unlimited Money | News_ | £22,000 a year to keep Boxer
Though the actual article headline has changed to:
£22,000 to keep Fido
But it starts:
A can of Winalot here and a new lead there may not cost much, but according to Churchill, keeping a dog from puppy hood to the end of its life costs Britons an average of £22,000.
One year and the lifespan of a dog are different things. If their money correspondent doesn’t know what “a year” is, can she be trusted on anything financial?
These 49 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:39pm GMT Permanent link.
Friday, 3 March 2006
Goddamn FBI Don't Respect Nothin' »
O happy day! You’re not-a happy? So many of you aren’t. Chris, Tim, Craig, Guido, Justin, Owen, Devil Chris among many many others.
I’m happy because it means I can join Craig (and if I’d posted earlier I’d have said it first myself) in saying this: Tessa Jowell is a liar.
I recently paid off my mortgage. That involves paperwork. It also involves the deeds of the house being sent from the mortgage company. This is a very careful and important transaction, and the mortgage company will make absolutely certain that it has the agreement of all parties to the mortgage as to where the deeds are being sent. Paying off a mortgage in your name is simply not the sort of thing you can miss happening.
Absolutely. I paid off mine and received a large parcel/small sack of paperwork. It’s not a small thing. Perhaps there are Tory wives who delegate all the important issues like this to their husbands, like Mary Archer, Margaret Thatcher, Christine Hamilton, Edwina Currie, Norma Major, but a “Blair Babe” who is a minister, etc, and who is completely unaware of her husbands’s doings? Can’t you just see David Mills whispering, “It’s all above your pretty little head"? Well yes, I can, now I think of it, but I still think that she’s lying. Or incompetent and stupid. Whichever, she’s not fit to be an MP.
This was a boil which could have been lanced. Tessa Jowell could and should, at the very least, have declared the “gift” and let her department’s civil servants rule on conflict of interest and, of course, tax. But she didn’t. Which was a stupid mistake which there is no going back from. Not if “whiter than white” means anything.
So, again, Tessa Jowell is a liar.
All I know is what I read in the papers about Tessa Jowell and David Mills.
Tessa Jowell and David Mills bought their home in Kentish Town, north London, without a mortgage in 1979, the year of their marriage. The house is now estimated to be worth around £700,000.
Land Registry records show that in 1987 they took out a mortgage on the property with Allied Dunbar.
On March 22, 1991, the couple changed their mortgage provider to Coutts and Co.
The records show that they paid off that mortgage on May 17 1996.
On Sept 27, 2000, the couple took out a mortgage with S G Hambros Bank and Trust Ltd.
They paid off this mortgage of £408,000 on December 1, 2000.
On Feb 19, 2002, the couple took out another mortgage with Mortgage Express, part of Bradford & Bingley. Land Registry records then show that they changed their mortgage provider to Alliance & Leicester on 22 July 2004. The loan is still outstanding.
David Mills bought the couple’s weekend home near Shipston on Stour, Warks, outright in 1984.
My emphases. You know what these banks and building societies are like with competitive rates. One day you take out a mortgage, the next, you’re like “Oh my god! I could have saved 0.0000314159% per century!” And so for a trivial fee (+ VAT) you switch lenders. Several times a week. In a normal person, this might look like money laudering; but in a minister … Wait! This is time wasting stuff! Wht wasn’t she doing her fucking job, which she was being paid for, rather than shaving interest of her private accounts?
I’m sure spending more time in court is just what she really needs right now.
I wonder if she listens to topical comedy.
However, as a resident of Cardiff, I’d like to thank Ms Jowell for fucking up Wembley Stadium so royally. She’s been a marvellous Minister for whatever, thing, and the other stuff.
BTW her husband is a criminal. And Tony Blair is a friend of criminals. The Prime Minister wishes to go down in history. He should recall that Richard III certainly did.
Getcha News, all the latest News! Everything a democracy needs! Except some stuff concerning the People’s Party. Is news laundering part of the English language yet?
These 442 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:40am GMT Permanent link.
Long Post Coming »
I had a weird conversation in the pub tonight with DL. It was fiercer than seemed appropriate for our Thursday evening chats, which are mostly a sort of mutual back-rubbing: either sounding out kinks in work or relationships or in what we know of mutual friends; this divorce or that racial harrassment. (Whatever I post on here, I’m dead PC in real life.)
I can’t remember what started it. It was something to do with the 60s/70s/early 80s Marxist paragigm (for want of a better word). He believed that “we” used to believe in the Proletariat. Ah, I know what it was. His 15-year-old daughter was reading “The Time-Traveller’s Wife” (a book I’ve never wanted to read; ‘The Time Traveller’ sounds interesting — but who cares about his wife, his dog, his Sunday-School teacher, his mother, etc? I read books about people who do things; not those tenuously related to them. “With all his honours on, he pined for one… yada yada yada” but who is the pome about?) which apparently mentions the proles eating the top-hatted capitalists or some such rot. He thought that was an almost forgotten-language from happier days. I thought it was specious bollocks. From memory:
Walking home late, I listened to a friend
Talking excitedly of final war
Of proletariat against police:
How one shot girl of nineteen through the knees.
They threw that one down concrete stair.
Till I was angry; said I was pleased.
Auden, somewhere. Probably a copy of his early poems thrown on a bonfire by Nazis and then knawed by rats would be more accurate.
I said that the British Labour Party never believed in Marx. Harold Wilson (with a 1st in PPE or Economics [laziness and fatigue strike]) claimed he’d never read “Capital” (not plausibly). Denis Healey went to the States after leaving Oxford and came back “very right wing” (Wilson, if memory serves). The real world never believed that stuff. “If there is hope, it lies in the proles” died in 1949. People who saw Communism close to early on, such as George Orwell, took against that rubbish immediately. We never took that crap seriously, I said, look at Wolfie Smith. Marxism may have been what was taught in Manchester when he went there (there was a Prof Geras there at the time), but no one in the real world took it seriously. Hayek had won the economic arguments back in the days of Heath when only Keith Joseph and Enoch Powell were believers. By the time Healey was Chancellor and accepted IMF supervision, it was over. The only believers in the “proletariat” were people who had no contact with them.
DL didn’t accept any of this. I can’t see why not to the point where I can’t even represent his arguments.
I still think of myself as on the left, BTW. That is the left which hates bullshit, as Jonathan Swift and Voltaire did. So that bypasses Hegel and his hand-waving followers. I’m against the “ban this” part of the left. I don’t even recognise it. The good thing about Lenin, for instance, is that he promised to free his country of bishops and princes and similar shit. I’m with that, of course. I’m against war, which is always the poor dying in the interests of the rich. The left I’m part of was ne’er so well express’d as “Don’t follow leaders/Watch the parking meters.” As I said at the top, there’s a long post in this.
These 539 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:16am GMT Permanent link.
F-F-F-From His Own, From His Own, From His Own Mouth »
N-N-Newsnight, N-Newsnight presents:
Nick Cohen, author of Pretty Straight Guys a book about the Labour government (and despiser of the BNP to such an extent that he has adopted their signature haircut, the better to inflitrate them), Nigel Evans, and Tessa Jowells’ PPS Huw Irranca-Davies.
Kirsty Wark (for it is she) turns to the near unpronouncable Huw Irranca-Davies who blusters about the PM’s clearing of Mrs Jowell.
“Now that for many people was what they were waiting for.”
Was it? Which people? How many is many? More than, say, two? On Mrs Jowell* he said:
Is she furious? Yes she is. She’s also adamant, I have to say, that, whatever happens in terms of her husband, he will be proven guilty, eh, innocent …
Is she furious? Yes she is. She’s also adamant, also adamant, also adamant…
I have to say, …
I have to say, that, …
I have to say, …
I have to say, that, …
I have to say, …
I have to say, that, …
whatever happens in terms of her husband, he will be proven guilty,
he will be proven guilty,
he will be proven guilty,
he will be proven guilty,
he will be proven guilty,
eh, eh, eh, eh
eh, innocent …
eh, innn-o-o-o-cent, innocent
he will be proven guilty,
he will be proven guilty,
he will be proven guilty,
he will be proven guilty,
eh, innocent …
eh, innn-o-o-o-cent, innocent
guilty,
guilty,
guilty,
he will be proven guilty,
Freudian slips are great, aren’t they? Mr Thing-Davies, don’t be surprised to received a pearl-handled, th-th-that’s a p-p-pearl-handled rev-rev-revolver in the m,m,m,mail.
Otherwise Nick Cohen was great, and Huw Thing made me ashamed of Wales. I’ll be following Huw Irranca-Davies closely. What a tedious supercilious buffoon. I thought he was a civil servant. He’d have shamed the BNP or the Italian Fascist Party. That he’s an elected member of Labour shows how deep the cancer has grown.
*I used to refer to the ‘Minister for Something, Some Other Thing, and Something Totally Different, but it all makes no difference because she knows fuck all about anything’ as “Ms Jowell” until I learned that Jowell is her married name. If you use your husband’s name, IMO, you lose the right to be called Ms. If Mrs Tessa Jane Helen Douglas Palmer Jowell Mills is a feminist, I’m Wonder Woman.
These 232 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:08am GMT Permanent link.
Straight To Jowell »
The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison wall.
It’s the story that will not die.
Guido quotes La Repubbica:
Documents seized in David Mills’ office and sent to the Italian prosecutor in Milan directly contradict claims by the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi that he has never known the British lawyer. In particular, Mills’ notes contain details about a phone call from Berlusconi in November 1995: “When I spoke to Silvio Berlusconi on Thursday [23 November 1995], he insisted on the fact that the latest accusations are politically motivated.” In addition, computer files from Calkin Pattison, responsible for Mills’ finances, reveal that £500,000 from Italian cases could not be collected before the end of Berlusconi’s trial.
Berlusconi does rather go on about any question of his behaviour being “politically motivated” as if there could be no other reason for investigating him. The good thing is that this proves that Signor Berlusconi is a liar. We can but hope that that will damage his credibility so that if the police don’t get him, the polls will.
Phil of Actually Existing has a good post on David Mills, liar.
tehgrauniad:
Critics are expected to seize on a number of peculiarities in her statement, notably how she appeared to be unaware of the injection of £350,000 into the household finances for four years despite having made a subsequent joint mortgage application on the same property 18 months later.
Note that “joint mortgage application”. There are two possible explanations. Jowell is a liar, or Mills forged her signature on several mortgage applications and kept her in the dark. I quite like the second of these at present.
Mr Blair in a statement said: “I accept Tessa’s assurance that she did not know about it (the gift) until the issue was resolved with the Inland Revenue. In these circumstances, she is not in breach of the ministerial code.”
But it is clear from Sir Gus’s report that, after being informed in August 2004 by her husband that he believed he had been in receipt of a disclosable gift in 2000, she took no steps to tell the permanent secretary. In his narrowly drawn report, Sir Gus implicitly criticises Ms Jowell for not taking greater interest in her spouse’s financial dealings. He pointedly stated that he will remind permanent secretaries that the notification of “personal financial interests of ministers and their partners remains the individual responsibility of ministers”.
This initiative is likely to be seen as a clear reminder to Ms Jowell that, under the code, she had a personal responsibility to be familiar with the full financial activites of her husband, and then report them to the civil service.
C4 News has a different take on the matter being “resolved with the Inland Revenue” — Jowell outcry over home loan ignorance.
Ms Jowell claims her husband waited four years to tell her about the cash and only told her when he was forced to pay tax on it.
Heh. I like “forced.”
The Scotsman: Jowell urged to face critics.
Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell is under mounting pressure to confront critics in the Commons and explain her husband’s finances.
Tony Blair’s ruling that Ms Jowell has not broke the ministerial code of conduct has failed to silence demands for her to go.
Now Ms Jowell faces calls to make a statement to MPs about the dealings that have landed husband David Mills in the Italian courts.
Even her Parliamentary aide, Huw Irranca-Davies, suggested she should offer an explanation in the House.
Well yes, but he also suggested that Mills was guilty on Newsnight. He’s a blithering idiot.
I’d love Jowell to repeat her “story” in the House. Since it is unparliamentary for one member to call another a liar, I suggest that they heckle with merry cries of “Wembley Stadium” or “Roll on the 2014 Olympics” instead.
BBC: Critics attack Jowell ‘whitewash’. Perfect headline: says it all in four words.
The BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson said some people were questioning the credibility of the ministers’ code, when a decision could be made by the prime minister concerning a “political ally”.
While friends and supporters say Ms Jowell has cleared up the matter about the gift, her enemies say “not good enough”, he added.
However, Chancellor Gordon Brown has offered Ms Jowell his backing.
Good, good. I love it when a plan comes together.
The Sun says:
Why didn’t she query his relationship with Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi after newspapers began running stories about it?
Didn’t she wonder why corruption investigators raided their home for evidence?
If she did not, is she fit to be a Cabinet minister?
Come to that, why didn’t the PM himself begin making a few inquiries sooner?
Mills is clearly a chancer. It’s how he makes his living.
He has ducked and dived at every twist and turn of this sorry saga, once in courtroom testimony.
He has abused Tony Blair’s friendship by using the PM’s name under false pretences.
Naive Tessa may have assumed he was doing nothing wrong.
But when does ignorance amount to turning a blind eye?
And what does future boss Gordon Brown feel about a minister whose family fortunes are used to exploit the tax loopholes he is determined to block?
Telegraph: Mills is merely a means to an end. It’s Berlusconi they want. Which is illustrated with a photo of Berlusconi presumably taking an oath, though it’s hard not to mentally add the caption: “Silvio Berlusconi checks his wallet is still there after chatting to David Mills”. The actual caption:
Silvio Berlusconi dropped David Mills ‘like a lead balloon’
Which is also splendid.
Telegraph again: Blair fails to halt outcry over Jowell’s home loans.
Telegraph Leader: Jowell jury is still out.
There is a weirdness about the affair of Tessa Jowell, her husband David Mills, and the matter of the £350,000 “gift” from a mysterious Italian benefactor that has ensured that it won’t just go away.
The Downing Street propaganda machine whirred into action on Wednesday, suggesting that Miss Jowell was to be exonerated by the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Gus O’Donnell.
In fact, Sir Gus did no such thing, making clear that (as we argued yesterday) it would not be constitutionally proper for him to decide whether or not a member of the Cabinet had breached the ministerial code.
Moreover, he did make it clear that the code had been breached on at least one front: the mysterious £350,000 gift paid to her husband in 2000 was not reported to Miss Jowell’s Permanent Secretary, as it should have been.
Miss Jowell’s explanation for this is that her husband did not tell her about the gift for four years, by which time it had been reclassified as earnings, and “I did not therefore consider it necessary to make any reference about any of this to my Permanent Secretary”.
In other words, by Miss Jowell’s own account, even when she realised the code had been breached, she did not own up to the error.
No one apart from Miss Jowell and Mr Mills can know how they share responsibility for the family finances, but it does seem odd that, when Mr Mills asked his wife to sign the documents for a mortgage on their house, she did not ask him what he might be doing with the money.
If Miss Jowell was angry or puzzled that her husband neglected to tell her the news that he had received a £350,000 windfall from Italy, she kept that to herself.
Tony Blair offered his friend and close political ally a temporary lifeline yesterday by choosing to interpret Sir Gus’s equivocal report as an exoneration.
But with further embarrassment for Mr Mills to come from impending court proceedings in Italy, it is difficult to see how Miss Jowell can long survive in the Cabinet.
Let’s recap. According to C4, Mills was “forced” to pay tax. That’s his wife’s salary he was trying to avoid paying, or money for Culture and the other things she’s supposed to be responsible for. Maybe he thinks all revenue should be raised via the lottery or giant casinos. And Jowell did not own up to being in error.
Even better, both Bliar and Brown are backing her. The cancerous growths may be cut from the Labour Party sooner than anyone dared hope.
These 392 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:08pm GMT Permanent link.
Private Investigations »
Tim posts a scanned Private Eye article, but images aren’t searchable, and, as he says, this deserves to be online.
While other newspapers gave plenty of coverage to the latest news about Tessa Jowell and David Mills this Monday, the Grauniad buried it at the foot of page 6. But it did run a cartoon portraying the culture secretary as a blameless victim.
One would expect nothing less. David Mills and Grauniad editor Alan Rusbridger are good friends, regular dinner companions and occasional golfing partners, who both have weekend cottages in the same Gloucestershire village. And Tessa Jowell’s best friend, whom she first met at Edinburgh University many years ago, is Lindsay Mackie — Rusbridger’s wife.
BTW, if you haven’t yet watched Thursday’s Newnight (available until about 10:30 pm GMT today, Friday 3 March), I recommend it. Some papers are making hay with Jowell’s PPS’s defence of her. Torygraph: Jowell aide calls for explanation to House. He didn’t “call” for anything exactly. But that may be headline writer frenzy.
Huw Irranca-Davies, MP for Ogmore and Miss Jowell’s Parliamentary Private Secretary, suggested last night that the minister should offer an explanation in the House.
“My personal feeling is that I wouldn’t mind if Tessa did that,” Mr Irranca-Davies told BBC2’s Newsnight.
Kirsty Wark done him up like a kipper. Hooray for the BBC! And can you imagine David Mills and Alan Rusbridger as golfers? That’s just hilarious.
Various tehgrauniad headlines: Wolves kept at bay by popularity of culture secretary. Hear that? I’m a wolf! If you’re reading this, you are too, probably. And popularity? — with whom exactly?
But amid widespread concern among Labour MPs at the size and frequency of Ms Jowell’s mortgage applications, she may none the less be protected by her popularity at Westminster.
Some contrasted her position with that of Peter Mandelson, who found little backing on the backbenches before his pair of resignations. “I think she will be all right because she doesn’t have enemies - that’s important in this case. But with 20/20 hindsight it would be better if it had been handled differently,” said a backbencher, normally loyal to the government.
What is this? MPs are elected representatives. We pay them. We decide to vote (or not) for them partly on the basis of what they say. And tehgrauniad gives us “Some …” and “a backbencher, normally loyal to the government.” The only person the writer can name is Peter Kilfoyle. These loyalists aren’t up to much are they? “I-I-I’ll stand up f-for my f-f-friend, if you promise not to give my name” piped one backbencher, not known to be the owner of a spine.
An MP, especially a left-wing MP, who doesn’t have enemies isn’t doing her or his job.
Simon Hoggart manages not to mention the Jowell affair at all — in fact, he seems not have written about her since November last year. Keep that finger on the Parliamentary pulse, Simon!
More Private Eye goodness on the Virtual Stoa.
These 271 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:41pm GMT Permanent link.
Well, Duh »
Anthropos politicon zoo-on
Aristotle
BBC: Altruism ‘in-built’ in humans. Er, I can’t be bothered to even enumerate this, but: “altruism” and “helping” are not the same thing. ("Altruism” is hard to define, and harder to spot). “Infants as young as 18 months show altruistic behaviour, suggesting humans have a natural tendency to be helpful …” But humans aren’t always helpful, are they?
“The results were astonishing because these children are so young — they still wear diapers and are barely able to use language, but they already show helping behaviour,” said Felix Warneken.
How do you think children learn? Infant rearing is predicated on “helping behaviour” by the parent. And that’s not a learned trait. (Well, the details partly are; but the instinct to do something for a baby rather than, say, regard it as a useful source of meat, isn’t.) It’s not that babies have some special short lived “cute” or “awwww” pheromone which somehow compels adults to look after them. It’s that we all are programmed to look after babies. That’s what we were selected for. And these are the first symptoms, if you will. Nothing more.
These 155 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:47pm GMT Permanent link.
A Break From Jowell Blogging »
The last post was an attempt at that. So is this. The Magistrate’s Blog (as we must now call it, and I will update the sidebar [links] soon) posts on a successful arrest:
In return for their co-operation the defendants (who went off to the Crown Court for sentence of course) will get far lower sentences than would have been the case otherwise. So long as they have been frank with the police they will no longer have to worry about old cases coming out of the files to haunt them (and in the DNA age that happens a lot).
Nothing to do with David Mills here. Move on, please.
These 43 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:05pm GMT Permanent link.
Linda Smith, Again »
Radio 4 broadcast a “Tribute to Linda Smith” this evening. It can be downloaded (in RealPlayer format) from the News Quiz page. There are many well-chosen clips. She was not only funny herself, but brought out wit in others. Usually wits are adversarial or antagonistic. Listening to her banter brought back an image from dull maths classes a quarter of a century ago and looking out the window to watch rugby training and groups of four passing a ball continually while running lengths of the pitch. She had a generosity which shared her talent.
She was a humanist, and so am I. I didn’t know her, but I want to express my sincere condolences to her bereaved partner, Warren Lakin.
These 120 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:21pm GMT Permanent link.
I Am Ahead Of The Pack »
Atrios has a post about the “For Rent” sign on Roger L. Simon’s fedora, his inability to get certain salient details right.
Oh now I get it. It’s not like I posted on Roger L Simon, Crime and Mystery Writer and his cavalier and, frankly, lazy approach to research last year, is it? (Warning: linked post contains a worrying quotient of typos and solecisms. One of me better efforts though.)
These 50 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:35pm GMT Permanent link.
Bollocks »
I’m watching Newsnight where the redoubtable (a cool word for cool) Gavin Esler is interviewing Cristina Odone and some other bloke over Tony Blair’s faith. That would be pursuant to: Blair ‘prayed to God’ over Iraq.
Hands, do what you’re bid
Bring the balloon of the mind
That bellies and drags in the wind
Into its narrow shed.
Yeats. Ms Odone said something about “what sounded sincere in 1997, sounds insincere now.” But the difference is Alastair Campbell and “we don’t do god.” Blair’s faith guided him, but it was contained or articulated by his press officer. What’s insincere now is the absence of that cynical, realistic, editor.
No, there’s more than that. Bush is presented as a “Christian” but, if church attendance is anything to go by (and it’s not demanded in Scripture to my recollection), he is less of one than his predecessor. And Major used to say “God bless” and mean it, but that was spun as weakness.
I think, and I don’t really know anything here, if you’re at all sincere in your religious beliefs, you don’t flash them at everyone; you’re confident about them, and, like your parents, they’re just there to fall back on. Blair uses his; Bush uses his. You don’t have to be a genius to spot a phoney.
These 195 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:56pm GMT Permanent link.
Saturday, 4 March 2006
Headlines You Never Expect To See, Part Whatever »
Goldie to set out Tory strategy.
Sadly, the text refers to “Scottish Conservative leader Annabel Goldie” and not the Walsall born musician. I really think the Tories missed a chance with the young people there, you know.
These 37 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:56pm GMT Permanent link.
Stand By Your Man »
tehgrauniad: Tessa Jowell and husband to separate.
Culture secretary Tessa Jowell and her husband David Mills are to separate after their marriage was put under “strain” by the controversy over their finances, his lawyer said.
My emphasis.
BBC: Tessa Jowell splits from husband uses the same source. (Torygraph: Press statement made by David Kirk, solicitor, Simon Muirhead & Burton. The other papers don’t give the lawyer’s name.)
Both Mr Mills and Ms Jowell have denied any wrongdoing.
Mr Mills and Mr Berlusconi could now face a corruption trial in Italy.
Mr Mills denies the money came from Mr Berlusconi, saying it was from another client.
Oh that’s right, isn’t it? Torygraph: Mills is linked to corrupt land deal.
David Mills, the husband of the Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell, was linked to a corrupt land deal involving the Italian businessman the couple claimed provided them with £350,000 to pay off the mortgage on their London home.
Italian prosecutors said yesterday that Mr Mills, a corporate lawyer, was the “administrator” of an Isle of Man company that bought into the deal in the port of Salerno in 1992. The chief beneficiary of the deal was Diego Attanasio, a Neapolitan shipping magnate.
Mr Attanasio was later jailed for his part in the Salerno deal, which involved the bribing of local officials.
…
Mr Mills said the money was a reward from Mr Attanasio for managing his investments. Mr Attanasio denies this.
My emphasis. It’s all very confusing isn’t it? The media and the Italian police think the money came from Silvio Berlusconi. Signor Berlusconi denies ever meeting David Mills. Except he has. Mr Mills says the money came from Signor Attanasio. Who denies it. Perhaps Mr Mills found it lying on the pavement.
Times editorial on Tuesday:
Thankfully, British ministers are not yet disqualified from holding office according to their choice of spouse. Ms Jowell, therefore, does not have to answer for her husband’s actions. But the disclosure of her own signature — despite earlier denials from Mr Mills that she had played any part in his business transactions — does raise questions about her role.
Mr Mills denied “that she had played any part in his business transactions” and funnily enough this turned out not to be the case.
These 132 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:16pm GMT Permanent link.
Funny Because True »
Blairwatch post on the strange case of the man who heard voices. In the comments, Martin suggests:
Tony’s Prayer:
Dear Lord,
I know you’re, like, on the record as being a bit opposed to violence. “Thou shalt not kill”, “Turn the other cheek” and other old-fashioned stuff like that. But what you’ve got to realise God is that the world has moved on. In modern Britain you need to be a bit more flexible about these things now and its time to draw a line under these outdated practices.
So I was sort of wondering God if I could just start a couple of wars. Nothing too major, just a few thousand dead on a flimsy pretext that won’t stand up to any real scrutiny. And that UN resolution? No need to worry about that? Great! Thanks then God. I’ll just get on to George and tell him you said to make the bastards suffer.
Oh and one more thing God. It’s that thing about it being hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. My friend Tessa wants to know if it applies to women as well. Thanks alot God. I’ll talk to you soon when I’m running short of self justification again.
Amen
The langauge is exactly right. Less than an hour ago as I write the BBC reported on Blair urges unions to modernise. It’s Bliar’s solution to absolutely everything.
“The world has changed. The role of trade unions must change with it,” he told delegates from over 40 unions.
Not particularly on topic but, via Mike Power, Papist or Rapist?. I got 7; Jamie scored 15. Front page of the South Wales Echo yesterday: Judge ejects priest from court.
A PRIEST was ejected from the public gallery of a courtroom for shouting at the judge during the sentencing of his son, it emerged yesterday.
Judge Stephen Hopkins QC ordered Canon Paul Vann to be escorted out of the proceedings at Cardiff Crown Court for causing a disturbance on Thursday afternoon.
The priest of 30 years, who preaches in the Machen parish of Caerphilly, took offence as Judge Hopkins sentenced his son Nicholas to nine years imprisonment.
Nicholas Vann, 37, who lived with his parents at The Rectory, Machen, was convicted of six counts of rape, three counts of causing actual bodily harm and one count of common assault during his trial last month.
The judge disqualified him from working with children for life and ordered him to register as a sex offender for life.
Sadly, the Echo doesn’t tell us what hizzonor said which enraged the father. BBC: ’Bible’ rapist’s nine years’ jail.
A bus driver who forced a woman to read the Bible before raping her has been jailed for nine years.
Cardiff Crown Court heard that vicar’s son Nicholas Vann, made the woman read from the Old Testament before forcing her to submit to his sexual demands.
Judge Stephen Hopkins called him a “sexual bully and sexual deviant”.
I can imagine that that would have upset his dad.
These 104 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:14pm GMT Permanent link.
The Elephant In The Room »
tehgrauniad is sometimes praised for having the best website of the British dailies. It’s easy to access, archives stories consistently (and with reliable urls) and it’s free. One thing it doesn’t do is make it easy to find readers’ letters, which are one of the joys of any newspaper. This is tehgrauniad Comment page. I can’t work out how to find yesterday’s letters; and maybe it’s not possible. These are the headings for today’s letters: Pro-fliers fall into a tourist trap; Smart solutions to water shortages; Songs of praise for music education in schools; Stage censorship; Ming’s dynasty. One topical subject seems to be missing.
Here are the Telegraph letters. Some are very good indeed, and I’ll get round to quoting those.
Here is Martin Kettle: We should not make a meal out of Jowell’s misjudgments or “It may have been wrong not to declare the gift, but the centre-left needs to be more honest about wealth”. Translation: it’s all your fault readers. He gets one thing right.
Some reports this week have said that the cabinet secretary, Sir Gus O’Donnell, cleared Jowell. But he didn’t. At no point in his letter to Theresa May on Thursday does O’Donnell say that Jowell did not breach the code. What he says is that Jowell has stated that she did not breach it, and that Tony Blair has agreed — which is a significantly different thing. O’Donnell pointedly adds that it remains ministers’ responsibility to disclose their own and their partners’ interests. But, as O’Donnell is at pains to say, it is not his role to police the code — or to make rulings about compliance — but to gather facts. The verdict, he says, must rest with the prime minister.
Indeed, Mrs Jowell has only been cleared by Tony Blair; and that may have been, to use a phrase of the Prime Minister’s friend, Silvio Berlusconi, “politically motivated.”
But we also need to be clear why he acquitted her. It was because, in the end, these are political decisions - just as Ken Livingstone is arguing in his fight against suspension as London’s mayor. You and I (and Gus O’Donnell) may conclude that Jowell failed to observe the code as she should have done. But a prime minister is judge and jury in the case — and perhaps has to be (which is why I don’t think you can defend Livingstone against suspension and then call for Jowell to go). Blair made the decision he did because he judged that the damage involved in retaining Jowell was less than the damage involved in losing her. She is, if you want to see it this way, the beneficiary of Blair’s own current weakness.
I don’t trust Mr Kettle’s mind-reading act. We don’t know what motivates Maximum Tone. But there’s that small word, begins with “D” ah yes “Democracy.” Ken Livingstone should not be suspended, because he was elected mayor by the people of London. I’ve yet to hear anyone demand that Mrs Jowell should lose her job as an MP, which was the, ahem, gift of her constituents. She should be sacked as a minister and by the man who appointed her, because she has disappointed him, Tony Blair.
I am clear that she was wrong not to declare the gift. But on the whole, I think people deserve second chances and some space to learn from their mistakes — so I would probably side with the Jowell-should-stay camp.
Time for one of those Torygraph letters. Richard Jenkins of Frankfurt, Germany writes:
Sir — OK, I think I’ve got it. It was a gift, and then it wasn’t. So when she had to report it, she didn’t know about it. And when she knew about it, she didn’t have to report it.
That’s all right, then.
Martin Kettle:
With his network of directorships, off-shore investments, tax avoidance schemes and hedge funds, Mills (and thus Jowell) appear to many to inhabit a world in which it can sometimes seem that taxes are for the little people, greed is good, and there are no proper limits to how much an individual can earn or possess. …
This is, though, a world to which very many people aspire in some way, including Labour voters. Was Adam Smith not right, after all, when he said that “every man, so long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interests in his own way"?
I like the Adam Smith quote. Very good Martin. But it seems to me to imply that a person who does “violate the laws of justice” should not be left free.
tehgrauniad: Mills linked to mafia go-between.
Fresh doubts about the business affairs of Tessa Jowell’s husband emerged yesterday with the discovery that he set up a company whose directors included a man acting as the intermediary between Silvio Berlusconi’s political party and the mafia.
David Mills, a corporate lawyer, carried out the appointment of Marcello Dell’Utri as a director on the board of Publitalia International, a London-registered media advertising agency on the day of the company’s incorporation in 1985.
I wrote about Signor Dell’Utri here.
Mr Mills confirmed yesterday that he had carried out the appointment of Mr Dell’Utri to the board of Publieurope (as Publitalia International was later named), and that he had made no checks on the Sicilian’s background. But he said he had never met Mr Dell’Utri and that he had agreed to the appointment at the request of one of his clients in Italy. That client was Fininvest, owned by Mr Berlusconi.
“I have never met him in my life,” Mr Mills said. “My client asked me to appoint somebody, and I trust my client. I have no idea about him at all, I’ve read what you have in the newspapers.”
Er, a company told you what to do? How?
Mr Mills set up Publitalia International in 1985, and served as company secretary for 12 years. It was wound up 11 days ago, but its most recent accounts, in 2004, show it making an annual profit of more than £2m. There is no suggestion that Mr Mills was aware of Mr Dell’Utri’s mafia associations, but the disclosure appears certain to intensify the growing unease at Westminster about his business affairs.
Funny that, I’ve never met the man either, but I was aware of his mafia connections. In the post linked above, I quoted from Cosa Nostra: A History of the Sicilian Mafia by John Dickie.
In 1974, Berlusconi was looking for a groom and major-domo for his Ancore estate near Milan. He turned for advice to Marcello Dell’Utri who, after a prodigiously rapid rise through the Sicilian banking world, had recently moved to Milan to become Berlusconi’s business factotum. (Dell’Utri later became the head of Publitalia, the highly profitable advertising arm of the Berlusconi business empire; it was he who came up with the idea of Forza Italia in 1993.) Dell’Utri’s recommendation for the post of major-domo was a fellow Palermitan, Vittorio Magano, who filled it for two years. Mangano died of cancer recently, a few days after being sentenced to life for two murders. This ‘major-domo’, it transpires, was a man of honour from the Porta Nuova Family of Cosa Nostra.
tehgrauniad:
Mr Dell’Utri was convicted in 2004 and given nine years. He is appealing against conviction, and is not in prison. Central to the prosecution case was that he mobilised the mafia vote for Mr Berlusconi in 1994, before he became premier.
But this allegation also passed Mr Mills by.
Martin Kettle:
But I am more interested in a larger issue, which is whether left and liberal politics in this country can learn to be more honest, more modern and more consistent about the balance between individual and collective wealth in the kind of society we are all likely to live in for the foreseeable future. The elephant in the room in the Jowell affair is not really Silvio Berlusconi. It is the fact that a Labour minister is married to someone who moves with assurance, and makes a very large amount of money, in a world that is alien (though not necessarily unacceptable) to most Labour voters.
I have not the first idea what the first sentence in that paragraph means. The final sentence means that most of you lot are poor or poorish so David Mills’ life is alien to you, but it’s just a different lifestyle, and you shouldn’t judge. Time for another Telegraph letter, to lighten the mood.
Sir — I am surprised at the interest shown by the press in the affairs of Miss Jowell and her spouse in what is quite a common and normal situation.
Indeed my wife often forgets to tell me of the numerous occasions when foreign gentlemen offer her unsolicited gifts of several hundred thousand pounds.
So says Dr Jim Filby of Sheffield, proving Mr Kettle’s point. No, wait …
The Telegraph has more news for Martin Kettle. What would John Stuart Mill have made of David Mills and the Italian connection? I don’t think it would be “leave him alone, you beasts!”
Diego Attanasio is a shy man with a lot to be shy about. Born on the island of Procida in the Bay of Naples, he has built a considerable business empire based on property and shipping companies, and owns homes in Naples and London. He is also the man on whom David Mills may have to rely to clear his name.
…
To prove his innocence, Mr Mills has said that Mr Attanasio, who he has described as a friend and business associate, was the source of the money. The trouble is that Mr Attanasio denies he was.
And not only that. When his history is examined, he appears to be every bit as unsavoury a character as Mr Berlusconi, whose business dealings have been the subject of repeated investigations.
No one who has looked at Mr Attanasio’s dealings over a patch of land at the eastern end of Salerno would consider him the kind of man who should be bankrolling the home of Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. Even worse, Mr Mills himself appears to have been connected with a deal that ended up in a corruption trial in Italy involving 21 businessmen and officials, although he was not a defendant.
I make no claims for mind-reading powers comparable to those of Mr Kettle, but didn’t Mill say something about “laws of justice” and not violating them?
On that alien life, the Telegraph has more on the Intricate web of company directorships.
Mr Mills currently holds five posts as director or company secretary of four UK-registered companies, the purposes of which are unclear.
But this number has diminished significantly since the 1990s, when he accumulated more than 100 company appointments. He has since resigned from 46 and 54 have been dissolved.
Among the many companies with which Mr Mills has been associated are several with a distinctly Italian flavour: Fininvest, Silvio Berlusconi’s holding company (from 1992-98); Silvio Berlusconi Entertainment Ltd (1992-95); Renault F1 Team Ltd (1991-2000); Benetton Retail Ltd (1993-2004); and Pizzarotti Construction Ltd (1991-92).
So despite having been associated with Silvio Berlusconi Entertainment Ltd, the two men hardly know each other. Yes, I believe that.
And now our final Telegraph letter, which may yet save Mrs Jowell. Miss Carol Imlay of South West London thinks:
Sir — Having watched Miss Jowell on television last night, I wholeheartedly agree that she could not possibly have known that there was a large sum of money available. If she had, she would have purchased a suit that fitted.
And yet no reader of tehgrauiad has written a letter to express any kind of opinion. Very strange.
These 595 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 7:12pm GMT Permanent link.
Sunday, 5 March 2006
Omerta Is Golden »
tehobserver: The strains that ripped apart the golden couple.
Everyone thought it was a true love affair. But yesterday Tessa Jowell and David Mills announced they were separating, after their partnership was destroyed by a political storm
Who is this “Everyone"? It’s a damn funny name to me. Why does her opinion count, anyway? So, Tessa Jowell, what first attracted you to millionaire David Mills?
You know, it’s funny. No one who’s been a train at any time in the last 20 years can have failed to overhear someone telling their spouse or partner that they’re “on the train” and that “it’s late” and quite possibly of their love.
Yet David Mills spends 10 hours in a police interview after which he signed a confession, which he later claimed was made under duress. But he didn’t tell his wife. Or if he did, she didn’t ask what he chatted to the constabulary about for all that time.
Update 1 I’ve been sent a link to a partial transcript of that interview. Thanks to Maureen Lister.
Three months later, one of the strongest and most mutually supportive marriages in Westminster is in ruins: a distraught Jowell is holed up with friends, her cabinet career hanging by a thread, while David Mills may face charges this week over his links to Silvio Berlusconi. More poignantly, it will be the first time in almost three decades that they have faced a firestorm without each other to lean on. It is not a decision she took lightly.
Gaby Hinsliff, political editor of tehobserver doesn’t appear to have asked Mrs Jowell. Like all really good reporters, she just “knows”. And she doesn’t see the need to be vulgar and name names. Her sources are: “one minister who knows her well”, “[a] fellow minister”, “one colleague”, “one family friend”, “one minister close to her”, “one of those dinner party guests”, “[o]ne former party staffer”, “another cabinet minister”, and “a close friend”. These could all be the same person (a minister would be a ‘former party staffer’ for instance). “Tony Blair is said to be absolutely behind her.” But we’re not told who said this. It could be Ms Hinsliff. Perhaps she looked up from her keyboard, said to the newsroom “Tony Blair is absolutely behing Tessa Jowell” and then typed in all good faith that it had indeed been said.
Update 2. So strong and mutually supportive was their marriage that she never asked about his work, and he never cared to explain to her what she was signing. Both updates: 12 noon.
The Sun yesterday (I read it in the local takeaway): Tessa rap from own MPs. Andrew Porter is less shy about naming names. It seems that Ian Gibson and Alan Simpson were happy to speak to him.
Everything Ms Hinsliff asserts is contentious. Starting with the unsourced allegation of “a true love affair” and the suggestion that “their partnership was destroyed by a political storm”. Not by his lying then? Not everyone believes that Tessa Jowell really was shocked, shocked by the “allegations”. Vicki Woods yesterday.
The Tessa Jowell firestorm was fanned into flames by the brilliant Jenni Murray on Woman’s Hour on Monday. What a fantastic interviewer that woman is.
Soft-voiced, smiling, unhurried and holding a dagger coated with cream: “As the feminist you are,” she said, “are we to believe that you signed for a mortgage loan on your house for your husband, without knowing exactly how it was going to be paid back?”
As the feminist I am, I immediately thought: how do you get out of that one, Secretary of State? And of course she couldn’t, not as a feminist, no way. She could only burble her way through it as little Mrs Mills, putting her name to hubby’s business arrangements.
…
Whether her action was “unusual”, I think most of the audience of Woman’s Hour would agree that it was. Eye-poppingly unusual. The six-figure sums that are borrowed and paid back again within weeks seem “unusual”, especially for the “hard-working families of Britain” that Jowell speaks for.
But Martin Kettle yesterday argued that the Mills just have a different lifestyle and only our priggishness condemns them. Mr Kettle would no more judge the rich than he would complain about the animal screams coming up through the floorboards from the halal butcher’s in the flat below.
Also in yesterday’s Torygraph, Frank Johnson says “You can’t get a good whitewash these days.” Oh you can, just call Kettle and Hinsliff, whitewashers and bum-suckers to quality.
These 433 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:33am GMT Permanent link.
Friends Of Italian Opera »
Nick Cohen was good on Newsnight on Thursday. I was going to say “splendid” but he wasn’t quite. I think he unwittingly acted “bad cop” to Kirsty Wark’s “good cop” and Huw Iranaca-Davies was so relieved to get a soft question that he immediately offered up his boss, Tessa Jowell, to the House of Commons. Tessa Jowell still insists that she knew nothing of her husband’s finances, despite her signature being on the mortgage applications. That generally means “I have read and agree to the above” but she’s only a woman. See Gaby Hinsliff: “She would not be the first woman working a 70-hour week to lose track of the paperwork.” My emphasis. When it all goes tits up, remind them that you’re the weaker vessel.
Labour laid low by the love of money is Nick Cohen at his best.
The other night on Radio 4’s The World Tonight, I was up against an apologist for Tessa Jowell who turned out to be — er — the new editor of the Spectator, which I had always taken to be a Conservative magazine. Anyway, the Tory or Blairite or whatever he was cried that she was the victim of a ‘lynch mob’.
This would be Matthew D’Ancona, deputy editor of the Sunday Torygraph, advisor to Demos, yada yada yada. He’s an admirer of Bliar too.
Tricky word ‘mob’. I would steer clear of it if I were a supporter of Ms Jowell. This is a politician who invited ‘friends of Italian opera’ in Las Vegas to bring their super casinos to Britain. When the police proposed sensible restrictions to prevent money laundering, she and her civil servants fought them all the way.
Well spotted, Nick. That connection passed me by. When fellow MPs investigate Ms Jowell, I hope they interrogate her about the bearing (if any) of her husband’s dealings on her department’s decisions.
Berlusconi is not only a billionaire media monopolist, of the sort Labour people traditionally avoided. His power base includes the Italian neo-fascists and mobbed-up political hacks from Sicily. Decent conservatives condemn him as Europe’s leading crony capitalist. But not Ms Jowell and Mr Mills, or Tony Blair and Ms Booth.
This scandal is not about why the great feminist never bothered her pretty little head about all those mortgages. Nor does it turn on whether the prosecutors in Milan can prove that Berlusconi bribed her husband to lie. It is about the collapse of Labour’s morality.
Indeed, see my previous post about Ms Jowell’s “feminism.”
Good stuff, Nick.
Oh how could I forget Maximum Tone’s view of the “friends of Italian opera"?
Modern organised crime is really ugly, with groups, often from overseas, frequently prepared to use horrific violence.
These 222 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:58pm GMT Permanent link.
Free Press? »
Peter Preston pulls the other one.
One pleasing thing is that the press, both written and broadcast, has done a formidably energetic job. That applies from the right (the Sunday Times and Telegraph) to the left (the Guardian and Independent) to the BBC at dead centre.
I’ve argued enough in recent posts that tehgrauiad has been as “energetic” as stuffed parrot.
One slightly more clouded thing is the way the case has been made via Italian prosecutors with a political agenda dumping tonnes of damaging but untested material on eager British reporters. Is this, at last, true trial by newspaper in an ad hoc court of no resort where European systems (and motives) mix?
I wonder if Mr Preston is able to substantiate that “Italian prosecutors with a political agenda”. The source of this claim is of course Silvio Berlusconi. If the material is “untested” how does Mr Preston know it is “damaging"? and to whom? Much of the material I’m reading comes from journalists, ahem who are not connected with tehgrauiad, going back through earlier stories concerning Mr Mills (such as his involvement with motor racing — he was a director of Benetton Formula 1 — which was overshadowed by the Bernie Ecclestone affair), or looking up his directorships through Companies House. But Mr Preston wants to divert us. I wonder why.
These 130 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:33pm GMT Permanent link.
I Am Afraid I Cannot Possibly Comment »
Sunday Torygraph leader: The simple truth will do.
To listen to Labour ministers is often to get the impression that they do not think that ordinary codes of behaviour apply to them. After all, if you asked the person who delivers your newspaper in the morning, or who comes to clean your house: “Do you have a bank account?” you would not expect the answer: “I am afraid I cannot possibly comment.”
Yet this is the reply the Sunday Telegraph received when we asked ministers whether they, or their spouses, had any money in offshore accounts. Only two ministers answered with a simple “No": the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, and Des Browne, his number two. Every other minister insisted that they “could not comment”.
Why not? It seems that a diktat went out from Number 10 that no minister should answer any such question on his or her financial affairs. That is a curious attitude at any time, but doubly so when the need to reassure the public — by being totally transparent about ministers’ financial affairs — is exceptionally pressing.
In a rival Sunday paper, last weekend, a premier who shall be nameless wrote:
This government has introduced … the Freedom of Information Act, the most open thing any British government has done since the Reform Acts of the 1830s.
Open, yeah.
In that rival paper, Andrew Rawnsley comes good.
The alternative view [of the Jowell-Mills “split"] is that this is just another cynical twist in an already convoluted plot. Tellingly, you could hear that expressed from within the jaundiced ranks of New Labour itself. As the news was breaking yesterday morning, a Labour MP was on the phone to me. He observed: ‘It’s a sad day when you have to lay down your husband for your cabinet job.’
…
At a deeper level, the level at which politicians calculate the longer-term consequences, this leaves her position just as fragile, perhaps more weakened than ever. For even if it succeeds in making Ms Jowell seem more innocent, it does so at the cost of making her look like more of a fool.
…
To some, pleading ignorance is a demeaningly dumb excuse in mitigation from an experienced member of the cabinet who is also Minister for Women. One of her cabinet colleagues sniffily describes this as the ‘I’m just a housewife’ defence.
…
The trouble for Ms Jowell is that she can only assert her integrity by putting it into opposition to her credibility. She needs to be able to maintain that she was blissfully unaware of how her husband was using her name. But that leaves her exposed to the charge that anyone so careless about her own finances cannot be the proper person to be in charge of negotiating with casino bosses, regulating the drinks industry, dealing with media tycoons and handling the £12bn budget to make London fit to host the Olympics.
It’s great isn’t it? She’s either incompetent or corrupt. Or of course both. It looks like she’s playing the “I’m just a housewife” card (see Mr Rawnsley’s colleague and Jowell apologist Gaby Hinsliff). The best outcome is for Mrs Jowell to resign and admit that she cocked up Wembley stadium, disappointed half the population in her specious “Minister for Women” role, only got the Olympics through Seb Coe and because an IOC member voted the wrong way, and is generally even more useless than one would expect a former Camden Councillor to be.
Then the Italians can put the screws on David Mills in the ‘secret talks to cut a deal’.
Legal sources said that if Mr Mills were guilty of an offence and collaborated, he could expect a symbolic sentence of less than a year in prison — possibly suspended. Sources close to the investigation said they believed that Mr Mills could provide evidence damaging to the Italian leader, especially if he agreed to plea bargaining.
Mills previously confessed to receiving a bribe from Berlusconi
Besides, the letter speaks for itself and requires few explanations. I wrote this letter in the context of a fiscal enquiry in Great Britain: having to explain why, in particular, I received the sum of 600.000 dollars. I don’t think that many words are necessary: I have been questioned several times in investigations and trials regarding Silvio Berlusconi and the Fininvest Group and although I have never lied, I have tried my utmost to protect him and to maintain wherever possible a certain reserve concerning the operations I carried out on his behalf. It was in this context that in autumn 1999, Carlo Bernasconi, who I am sorry to bring into in this story, because he was truly a friend of mine, told me that Silvio Berlusconi had decided to give me a sum of money in recognition of the way I had managed to protect him …
The man Mills claims gave him the money, Diego Attanasio, of course denies it. Sadly for the Mills-Jowells, his story makes sense.
The timing of the alleged bribe to Mr Mills is thus a subject of great debate. The Milan prosecutors believe Mr Berlusconi paid money to Mr Mills 1997 — while Mr Attanasio was in detention.
But in a letter to his London accountants, written in 2004, Mr Mills volunteered that he had received the money in 1999. That in turn was contradicted in his wife’s statement issued this week, when she said: “I first became aware in August 2004 that my husband had received in September 2000 a sum of money which he thought he had reasonable grounds to believe was a gift.”
In his statement to the Milan prosecutors, Mr Attanasio said: “I remind you that around mid-July 1997, I was arrested accused of corruption, which was a very traumatic time for me. I was in the Fuorni prison in Salerno for two months and frankly, to think I would give instructions to Mills from prison would have been not just almost impossible, but very risky, because the investigators in Salerno were particularly interested in my relations with Mills.”
These 174 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:19pm GMT Permanent link.
Monday, 6 March 2006
Harold Be Thy Name »
Thanks to a link from Crooked Timber, Chris Bertram has reminded me to post on Harold Wilson.
Chris Dillow posted approvingly of Francis Wheen’s The Lavender List.
In both respects, much has changed in the last 30 years. Neither Blair nor Thatcher would ever have done something so homely, on their first day in office, as walk the dog.
Sadly, this homely belief had already been shot down in the Torygraph, by one of that paper’s most unlikely contributors — Joe Haines.
The sight of Wilson having to break off from what he was discussing on the night of his return to Downing Street in 1974, to take his wife, Mary, and his dog, Paddy, for a walk, presumably in St James’s Park, is laughable.
Security may have been laxer in those days, but not that lax.
Was this merely fanciful dramatic licence?
The facts are true: the details are not. By my count, and perhaps befitting a writer who has spent much of his journalistic life working for Private Eye, Wheen’s script has at least 53 inaccuracies, mistakes, errors, or whatever, which disqualifies it as a drama-documentary, though not as entertainment.
An error of my own, in some ways the most notable, makes that total 54. After I had committed to print my description of Lady Falkender’s notepaper, I showed an example to my wife. “That’s not lavender,” she snapped: “that’s lilac.” Had I known that, the Lilac List might have gained equal prominence, but no one is going to change to it now.
To make matters more confusing, John Cole, the former Guardian, Observer and BBC political reporter and long-time defender of Lady Falkender, snorted with rage on Radio 4 and triumphantly declared I was wrong and that the notepaper was pink. That says something about the glasses through which he always viewed politics, if not his knowledge of them.
Mr Haines may not know lavender from lilac, but he knows purple prose.
When she [Marcia Falkender] got into a temper, which was not infrequent, she lighted the political sky like the aurora borealis. By comparison, Barbara Castle in a spat was a pussy cat.
I like “lighted” which is somehow more active than “lit” would have been. Enormous fun.
At a sort of tangent, Simon Heffer wrote something so strange in the Torygraph a week ago that it was almost unsporting to point it out.
The Tories, for example, always used to believe in low taxation and low spending. Now they steal Labour’s clothes on that front. Labour, in return, has broken the Tories’ long-standing monopoly on financial scandal.
Now, IIRC spending went up under Thatcher, as did the overall tax burden. (They believe in low income taxation, as a rule.) But it’s the second sentence which really jars. The Tories had a monopoly on financial scandal before 1997? The cliche always ran that Labour had financial troubles and the more uptight Tories had the sexual ones. Good God, if you can be apparently the Torygraph’s senior columnist and not know about John Stonehouse or Joseph Kagan, perhaps education really is going to the dogs.
These 196 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:01am GMT Permanent link.
A Worthy New Blog »
I wish to welcome a blog for The Friends of Tessa Jowell.
Welcome, friend to this site set up to hymn the worth of Tessa Jowell. The Rt Hon Tessa Jowell MP, Secretary of State for Culture, Media & Sport, MP for Dulwich and West Norwood since 1992. Tessa Jowell, feline glamourpuss. Tessa Jowell the gambler’s pal (and who better to integrate the financial practices of Government and casino owners?) Tessa Jowell, Olympics Minister, Tessa Jowell, Minister for Women, Tessa Jowell, Blair Uberloyalist, Tessa Jowell, loving wife of the financially audacious David Mills (Stop Press, not sure on last bit).
Whichever Tessa Jowell tickles your fancy, leave your message of support in her hour of need. We don’t care, be you a mysterious but VERY influential Italian with £350,000 to give, running some sort of elaborate off-shore Caymen Island-based highly tax efficient hedge fund with esoteric financal knowledge, or just a Labour voter wishing to say thank you and donate a few quid of their benefit, all welcome.
Helpfully illustated with pictures which show the Minister for Culture, Media and Sport’s unparalleled grasp of her brief — at one stroke she’s comforting the Friends Of Italian Opera [Culture], being photographed [Media], and playing a game [Sport].
For some reason Ms Vicki Woods a self-proclaimed “feminist” does not support the Minister for Women.
Having been loudly praised for helping to clinch the Olympic Games for 2012, she does nothing whatsoever to promote school sport, apart from endlessly repeating that “between now and 2010, every child will have two hours’ organised sport or PE”. Oh, really? That’ll get the medals coming.
I think two hours sport in four years is very generous of Ms Jowell. Those playing fields can be sold off to Mr Prescott to build houses on. The time kids could be wasting playing in the mud and running is better invested in PlayStations: think of the share price! I mean the effect on the economy.
So remember: support Tessa Jowell and show you care.
These 132 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:52am GMT Permanent link.
The Prisoner's Dilemma »
Warning: this post isn’t about The prisoner’s dilemma (so if you’re looking for stuff to rip off for your essay, please go right ahead). It is about co-operation, though. One aspect of the prisoner’s dilemma is could be described as “getting your story straight.”
So here’s a thing.
Hate Mail: Mills flies to US as Jowell faces critics. That looks so good. He’s on the run. Can we or the Italians extradite him?
Now here’s another thing. Gaby ‘Whitewash’ Hinsliff wrote in tehobserver:
Everyone thought it was a true love affair. …
… one of the strongest and most mutually supportive marriages in Westminster is in ruins …
But the Mail sees things differently.
Friends say that faultlines had existed in their marriage for some time and they do not believe Miss Jowell has dumped her husband for political expedience.
“She adores her children and you wouldn’t put them through what they are going through now if it was just for a short term political fix,” said one.
Instead, Miss Jowell’s intimates described a woman who has long suffered the crass and overbearing behaviour of an intellectually arrogant husband, whose own star had waned dramatically as hers was rising.
“David had become an utterly uncontrollable loose cannon who can be very embarrassing,” said one friend.
“Tessa was very indulgent of him, like a naughty child, and would sigh and roll her eyes when the subject of his Italian problems came up over dinner, or when he made yet another public gaffe.
’Whitewash’ Hinsliff:
’His money enabled her to entertain people in the political world: she has benefited politically,’ observes one colleague. They entertained not only editors and political friends such as Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor, and his lawyer wife, Marianne, but well-known figures from the arts such as River Cafe chef Ruth Rogers. In these circles, Mills was a natural. He is, says one of those dinner party guests, ‘very very able, very bright’, with an incisive mind, but also good company: ‘He’s very urbane, very knowledgeable about opera: he’s learnt to play the flute and the piano.’
Getta your stories straight.
Sunday Times: Mills wanted to use wife’s name to deflect Revenue. This repeats the C4 allegation made last week (in emphases, which are, of course, mine).
Documents seen by The Sunday Times reveal that Mills wanted to use his wife’s name, without her knowledge, when attempting to explain a suspicious £350,000 payment he had failed to declare to the taxman.
…
Mills, a corporate lawyer, was forced to pay tax on the sum, having initially claimed it was a gift. Yet there is a puzzle as to why the Revenue failed to prosecute him, as it should for tax professionals suspected of tax dodging.
For some reason, I doubt he’ll be asking “Do you know who I am?” for a while.
These 138 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:16pm GMT Permanent link.
Tuesday, 14 March 2006
Hello, Hello I'm Back Again »
Hello, hello, it’s good to be back
It’s good to be back, hello, hello
It’s good to be back, it’s good to be back
Hello, hello, hello!
Gary Glitter
So I disappeared. And now I’m back.
I think I have the choice of writing a really long post and try to catch up, or simply saying “Bugger it”, and not bothering.
I’m going for the latter. Here are some cartoons: Dilbert, Doonesbury, and Medium Large.
The Doonesbury is a repeat, but it’s still very funny. I particularly like the way that almost everything in Medium Large either occurs in a bar or on television. I think it’s the only cartoon ever about what someone watches on television.
These 91 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 6:50pm GMT Permanent link.
Gay About Trifles »
Chris Brooke has a series of extracts from Manchester Guardian ads from the past. Start here and read up. His brother Michael (who is back blogging, having said in Chris’s comments recently that he’d given up for good) calls them fascinatingly bonkers and distinctly archaic. Those aren’t necessarily demerits in advertising, and the paper does sound worth buying, and a lot better than its current incarnation.
The best Guardian advert, IMO, will always been the skinhead, the businessman, and the ton of bricks one. (Mid 80s, mostly in cinemas, IIRC.) Guardian readers (like myself) knew that skinheads were fascist thugs, and the ad played to that. If you haven’t seen it, it’s something like: posh gent in suit walks down street; skinhead turns and looks; skinhead charges; pause for voice over; skinhead pulls guy out of the way of falling bricks. It said, we give you the whole story; not just selected facts, and we’re prepared to challenge your prejudices. It worked for me, though I was a regular buyer in those days.
The title, BTW, is from one of those bonkers adverts. And now for something not completely different: Jowell: BBC must ‘take fun seriously’.
The BBC must “take fun seriously” by placing entertainment at the heart of its schedules, the Government has said in its White Paper on the future of the Corporation.
The article goes on to say, in effect, that the corporation does. (Yes, I am disappointed that she didn’t recommend that it broadcast Italian gameshows.)
Oliver Kamm defends the Beeb from Stephen Pollard. As is not untypical of him, he makes one very sound observation.
To abolish the licence fee would mean a BBC reliant on advertising revenue, with market forces determining what programmes are made. Stephen knows and welcomes this. But he makes a ruinous confusion between competition for advertising and competition for audiences. They are not the same thing.
And then he has to say:
The problem with the BBC is not that it is a public service broadcaster, but that it isn’t very good at it.
Here, I completely disagree. I don’t know what Oliver thinks being “good at it” would look like, but I think the BBC is as good as it gets. It’s far from perfect, but it is “gay about trifles, serious about serious things.”
These 290 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 7:49pm GMT Permanent link.
I Can See Your House From Here »
Thanks to those clever people at Google, this blog is the first to offer an ariel shot of the residence Melanie Phillips.
(In the interests of the environment, please feel free to recycle this joke.)
These 35 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:05pm GMT Permanent link.
In Today's Telegraph »
This is a blatant steal from Matthew Turner. Matt cites Max Hastings. Sir Max has many enemies. He’s a great tall bastard, he’s rich, his wife is blonde and fragrant. I hate him already. The only way to defeat such a bastard, wrote Stephen Potter in his unpublished classic work “Blogsmanship” (sadly ahead of its time) is to “cry out, ‘Anti-Semitism’ and fall over dramatically. Wriggling about with cries of utmost agony heightens the effect. If no one notices, rise, cry ‘Argh’ and fall again, kicking the legs energetically. This method has been road-tested by no less than Roger Simon and Charles Johnson. The latter, while not Jewish himself, continues to deflect criticism this way using the ‘some of my best friends’ gambit (see p 79).” Potter also suggested that mentioning Vietnam was a “sure sign of being stuck in the past. So we lost. And lost horribly to a Third World Nation fighting with untrained civilians. However, anyone who mentions this is clearly no patriot or gentleman (don’t get me started on Jane Fonda). The solution is booing. ‘Boo. Boo. Boo.’ The serious patriot does not recognise fatigue. He can boo ‘all of the day and all of the night’. Arguments do not deter him. He is resolute, steadfast. Unimaginative. Bloody stupid. These are his virtues. They had better get him through. He doesn’t have anything else.”
This is another quote from a British security contractor: “The American way is not my way. I don’t mind a scrap but I draw the line at mooning the enemy and inviting him to shoot at my backside, and that’s virtually what the Yanks are doing. I’m also convinced that many Americans hate the Iraqis, not just the insurgents but all Iraqis… What a mess.”
Those last lines are taken from a rather good new book about the experience of Iraq today, Highway To Hell, written by an ex-SAS man who signs himself John Geddes. My point in all the above, is to show that Ben Griffin, the former SAS soldier who vents his dismay about what is happening to Iraq in today’s Sunday Telegraph, is not a lone voice.
There is a widespread belief in both British special forces and line regiments that American tactics are heavy-handed and counter-productive; that firepower continues to be used as a substitute for a “hearts and minds” policy; that local people will never be persuaded to support Coalition forces unless Americans, in uniform and out, treat ordinary Iraqis vastly better than they do today.
Clearly, Sir Max’s support for British troops and disdain for brave Yankees is nothing but racism. What we want is patriotism that recognises that where you were born is of no import. America is the best. Allegiance the the Stripes and Stars is the only patriotism there is. Anyone who thinks different might as well be a Nazi.
I’m clearly wandering here. There is good stuff in the Torygraph as promised.
Many of us would be moderately pleased at having had an affair with an unmarried blonde woman. The aspiration to have affairs with unmarried blonde women is, indeed, what gets millions of young men out of bed in the morning. Entire industries are based around that blameless aspiration.
That was yesterday. Today we had:
David Mellor underwent a sex change and now works as a nun among the starving children of Calcutta, and Cecil Parkinson is regularly to be seen in jeans and waders mucking out the kennels at Battersea Dogs Home.
And even better:
Meanwhile, Jeffrey Archer proclaims himself a huge success at manning the Samaritans’ phone lines. “Since I came on board, calls for help have gone down 50 per cent,” he reports, proudly. Edwina Currie was last seen distributing improving leaflets among the loose women of Tyneside. The leaflets contain a special two-for-the-price-of-one offer on her previous two books of sexual revelations, plus a half-price deal on the next.
If I didn’t hate Max Hastings so much, I’d hate Sam Leith and Craig Brown (for it is they, dread words, etc) even more.
These 332 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:12pm GMT Permanent link.
Wednesday, 15 March 2006
Chess »
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation
Thoreau
In fact-checking the last post (yes I do check spellings; typos are a different matter), I came across Stephen Potter on Chess. Serious chess players play “without the pieces” all the time. Even I can play blindfold chess. Not well, of course, and the last time I did, I played my dad when I was 11 and we were in France on holiday. I lost.
He was a very good chess player. Not good enough to quit his job, and probably at his ceiling even so. But he was the Edinburgh Chess Champion for a few years in succession and again when I started to play (which would have been at 7 or 8; he’d have been 52 or 53). He came to my school chess club and beat everyone in a simultaneous match (15 or 16 boards, IIRC).
In the famous Fischer-Karpov game, he wanted Karpov to win. Which was a surprising choice for a missile-programmer for Ferranti.
In the way of children, I underestimated him. Chris Dillow posted on being an outlier. I’m a very classic example of regression to the norm, but my dad was about four standard deviations above the norm. (IIRC, IQ 174; Isaac Asimov was in the 180s.) I don’t mind being middle-class, but, now there’s Google, and so forth, we was robbed.
I borrowed money from him and joined CND as soon as I could. He’d have hated Perl (text-mangling is trivial), so if he were born 50 years later, he could be in the same job — thank god the world has moved on and might actually pay. Sadly he retired at exactly the moment that his talents became commercially viable.
He was born in Salford. He went to Manchester Grammar.
I miss my dad. As you do.
These 381 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:48am GMT Permanent link.
Fair Comment »
Oliver Kamm today is tickled by the Indy’s gossip columnist Pandora.
Page 29 of yesterday’s Guardian took a pop at Oliver Kamm, “banker and part-time Times columnist.” Page 30 carried a bombastic column by… Oliver Kamm. Wakey, wakey!
(I like the word “bombastic” there.) It is surprising to see Oliver Kamm in tehgrauniad — after all, according to a post yesterday, he, David Aaronovitch, and Francis Wheen are still chasing the paper for a correction to its “demonstrably incorrect ‘correction’ to the interview with Chomsky.”
But what did tehgrauniad actually say? Diary (by Jon Henley; I read that as Jim Henley, but sadly, no, as they say).
Heartening to see that even the freethinkers at Progress (aim: to promote “open debate and discussion of progressive ideas and policies” in the Labour party) are still so solidly behind our leader’s Great Iraqi Adventure. For a moment there, the group’s March 21 talk — Three Years On: the Lessons for Labour from Iraq — looked like it might actually yield a spot of dangerously off-message debate. Thankfully, however, we see the three panelists are: a) pro-war MP Gisela Stuart, who backed Bush because Kerry would only encourage the suicide bombers; b) Oliver Kamm, banker and part-time Times columnist, who recently told Hove residents to vote Tory because their Labour candidate opposed the war; and c) Gary Kent, director of Labour Friends of Iraq, who once thought it was “a fair assumption” Saddam had WMD, and still thinks Blair “could be right” about the war. Lots of progressive ideas there, then.
Even more amusingly, the web version now carries a correction:
In the article below, we seemed to be suggesting that all the speakers scheduled to talk at an Iraq event organised by Progress were supporters of the war in Iraq. We overlooked the name of the anti-war MP Sadiq Khan in the panel of speakers. Another anti-war MP, John Denham, had also agreed to speak but has since withdrawn due to other commitments.
Which rather makes Mr Henley’s sniping look a bit silly. As far as I can tell, the Indy had a go at tehgrauniad for having a go at the Times. Does anyone actually care?
If Mr Henley’s story had been correct, he would have had a point. I’d forgotten about Gisela Stuart.
To save you reading that “bombastic column” Jamie has the good bits.
These 154 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:15pm GMT Permanent link.
The Pub With An ASBO »
This story is doing the email rounds today: My ASBO Pub Hell.
“It was dreadful - there would be fighting in the street from people who had been drinking in the pub.
“Twice I’ve had to wash blood off the front of my house.
“People would urinate through my letter box — every morning I would be cleaning the floor by my front door.
“Cars were vandalised regularly — windows were smashed, aerials pulled off, tyres slashed.
“A couple of times you would see people coming out of the pub with sticks and they would walk down the road smashing the windows of every car they passed.
Actually it’s an earlier story which mentions the ASBO.
The pub had earlier been closed under an Anti-social behaviour order (Asbo) for three months following incidents inside and outside.
I don’t understand why it takes an ASBO to shut down a pub; that’s why they’re licenced, so the authorities can close the trouble spots.
After years of trouble, she complained to the police and rallied neighbours for support which resulted in enough evidence being compiled.
Here’s a Google map showing Clifton Street. (It’s the one running roughly north to south.) The Tredegar is at the corner, two blocks down from the marker. On the other side of the road, three blocks up, is the police station. But they didn’t notice any of this fighting or drug-dealing, apparently.
One of the emails about this (and a mooted pub crawl of Cardiff’s ASBO pubs) contains the corker:
I used to play rugby with several of the current Fairwater team, one of whom was imprisoned for 6 months after biting off the ear of some unlucky passer-by in Caroline Street. Not even his famous ‘I thought he was my chicken kebab’ defence got him off.
Caroline Street is the place to go in Cardiff if you want chips and a fight after 11 pm, and avoid at all costs otherwise. I must try to find the South Wales Echo’s photograph of a rat in the window of one of the chippies.
These 162 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:39pm GMT Permanent link.
The Government We Deserve »
I’m very late in linking to Rachel North’s Charles Clarke post, which just confirms what an absolute bastard the Home Secretary is. Devils’ Kitchen who I really must add to the blogroll if he’s not on already, says many splendid things about Charles Clarke.
Charles Clarke, The Safety Elephant: a fat, authoritarian cunt with absolutely no redeeming features whatso-fucking-ever. This man is such an utter bastard that, frankly, seeing him hanged with piano wire from the nearest lamp-post would only count as natural justice.
…
The real problem, though, is that he completely fucking useless. Can you think of one competent thing that he has achieved? All of his legislation is bogged down, toing and froing between the Lords. We all of us know that all of the legislation is, at the very least, deeply flawed, if not outright fascist. Furthermore, all of these laws are unnecessary; all of the things that Clarke is trying to cover in his Terrorism Bill are actually covered by age-old laws. But there is no point in having laws if they are not policed, and that is really where the problem lies.
Clarke, however, is busy alienating all of the police forces in the country (starting with Wales, obviously) and so they are unlikely to wholeheartedly support any measures which Clarke may throw his not inconsiderable weight behind. Which is why his legacy will be that of a man who, whilst introducing some fearsomely draconian laws into our green and pleasant land, had absolutely no effect on those on whom he was trying to crack down.
Because he is, actually, a useless politician he has to rely on bullying and intimidation which does not endear him to his colleagues, let alone those on the Opposition benches, on whom the government is increasingly having to rely in order to pass legislation.
I posted last month on the Welsh Police merger. Justin thinks that Charles Clarke may be unwell. That’s putting it mildly. He’s a total headcase.
Guido reveals that David Blunkett has finally left his “Belgravia grace and favour mansion”.
“I’m flying on my own now, but I was there eight years and it did take a little time because I couldn’t oust somebody from their flat, I had to wait until they moved out and I’m very grateful to the Prime Minster for allowing me that breathing space and a civilised society allowing me to move out in a civilised fashion doesn’t seem to me to be too much to ask.”
Civilised? What the hell is he talking about? That’s the way things work. When the votes get counted, if the resident of No 10 Downing Street’s party doesn’t have more than the others, the removal men call. And he better be packed. If you lose your job, the company car goes back. But perhaps that’s the real world. The civilised thing to do would be to say, “Right ho. I screwed up royally, I lost my job through being an insensitive knobhead who was fucking someone else’s wife, and abused my office. I will clear out of my free flat tonight.” Does Blunkett do that? Does he hell. He wants others to be civilised to him. Not a hope of getting any fucking civility back. And if Tony really does think digging in for an extra year at the taxpayers’ expense is civilised, how are we going to get the buggers out of the Prime Ministerial residence? I’m really having visions of the police evicting them, and Cherie hanging on to the door frame and screaming.
Justin also posts on the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill. Another worthy cause: Save Parliament.
Tim Worstall on Hillary Armstrong and the Abolition of Parliament Bill. Tim has Ms Armstrong’s letter to a constituent as a large pdf. Here’s the text.
Thank you for your fax dated 8th March 2006 regarding The Legislative andReform Bill.
It may be useful if I outline the purpose of the Bill, this legislation aims to make it quicker and easier to tackle unnecessary or over complicated regulation whilst maintaining standards and protections. It ensures that whilst we look to cut red tape we maintain important existing regulation that protects employees, customers, families and the environment.
The Bill seeks to broaden the power already contained in the Regulatory and Reform Act 2001 which allows the Government to amend outdated or overcomplicated legislation; The Bill is intended to be used for measures identified in the departmental simplification plans (due at the end of 2006), uncontroversial Law Commission Recommendations and structural reform of regulatory bodies.
However, there are important safe-guards built in to the Bill that ensure a balance between the removal of “red tape” and proper parliamentary scrutiny. There will be four processes in place to check the appropriateness of the power. There would be a requirement to consult, for example businesses, unions and charities affected by any changes. Ministers would also have to lay down an Explanatory Document before Parliament setting out why the power was to be exercised and how any change would contribute to better regulation. Finally, Parliament will have the right to securitise and veto any change. We are currently looking at amendments to further reassure people that powers in this Bill will not be used inappropriately but only to reduce to burden of regulation on business.
Labour is committed to a culture change in government to remove needlessadministrative burdens that hold back enterprise, especially small business, whilst protecting the hard-won standards of protection obtained by working people.
I hope I have been able to reassure you about the Bill. If you have any furthercomments on this or any other issue please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Yours sincerely
PP Hilary Armstrong
Note especially: “We are currently looking at amendments to further reassure people that powers in this Bill will not be used inappropriately but only to reduce to burden of regulation on business.” They want to “reassure” us — it’s just a PR issue to the Chief Whip. I don’t want “reassurances"; I want things properly debated.
Philip Johnston in the Torygraph: A Doomsday Machine for Parliament.
Instead of bringing forward a measure that has the potential to undermine centuries of parliamentary efforts to curb executive power, ministers could simply abandon their fetish for making laws on everything under the sun.
Get your own Einstein blackboard pic. (Via Jamie.)
These 375 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 6:54pm GMT Permanent link.
Thursday, 16 March 2006
Stephen Pollard's Latest Wheeze »
I can’t sensibly explain why Stephen Pollard’s RSS is among the blogs Safari searches for me. This morning, however, he has a post more enjoyably nutty than usual.
Not content with using its comment pages to push the views of terrorists, advocates of a European Caliphate and those who glorify terrorism, the Guardian has now come up with a new means of giving space to the truly sick.
You get the feeling that he really doesn’t like tehgrauniad here, don’t you?
The comments on its ‘Comment is Free’ blog are, apparently, moderated — which makes all the more shocking the views which it allows to be published.
Really, this is a desperate comment on the horrors of tehgrauniad’s Comment is Free. These horrors include giving space to George Galloway, an insult which clearly greatly outweighs the space given to Glenn Reynolds for instance.
Pollard then quotes an anti-Zionist rant in full, and concludes:
The Guardian, it seems, is happy to allow its new site to be used as a free for all by the world’s racists, bigots and aasorted Jew-haters — who happen, surprisingly enough, to be Guardian readers. Can it sink any lower?
Hmmm. Well, speaking of moderated newspaper blogs, howzabout David Aaronovitch of the Times? He moderates his own comments — and he gets anti-Semitic, not just anti-Zionist, bile. Only last week, he felt the need to explain further.
Someone asked under the last heading what my definition was of moderating, given the comments I allow to appear. Well clearly by “moderating” I don’t mean taking, say, a pro-Galloway comment and turning it into support for Ming Campbell. Even if I think that’s what some people will do over the next few months. I have cut out a rather explicit joke, but I left in two Anti-Semitic comments from a “GK”, simply to remind us of what’s out there, and because it represents one small strain of e.mail that I do receive pretty constantly.
Now, I happen to think that David is misguided here, and leaving such comments in will only attract more nutters. But his reasoning is worth considering: he clearly doesn’t intend to host a “free for all [for] the world’s racists, bigots and asorted Jew-haters”. And why should he? Harry’s Place does that already. If the “Jew-haters” are all tehgrauniad readers, why do they sally over to David Aaronovitch? Couldn’t the commenter on “Comment is Free” by a Times reader on holiday as it were?
These 208 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:45am GMT Permanent link.
Martin Kettle Writes ... »
We should not help the enemies of our staunchest ally in WWII. Nor should we forget the millions of Russian lives sacrificied in the defeat of Hilter. Yet time and again claims surface in other newspapers that “Uncle Joe” was responsible for the deaths of some 20 millions of his countrymen. These reports are no doubt exaggerated, and we should ask what motives lie behind their being made at all. Many of these people are disaffected former communists, who for one reason or another, have lost their faith in the improvement of their fellow men, and expressed their bitter disillusion in mischief-making at a great statesman’s expense.
We do know that there have been so-called “show trials” and that these would not be tolerated in this country, and perhaps Guardian readers are alive to the ethical difficulties this sort of justice presents. Yet we cannot be certain that Comrade Stalin had any choice in the difficult years following the Revolution, nor that his motives may not have pure.
There’s no denying that the “Man of Steel” used what seems like excessive force in bringing about his reforms, but we need to know more facts before we leap to judgement. Liberals and the centre-left would do well to “understand a little more” and not condemn with the unseemly alacrity of so many conservative commentators.
…
Many in the yellow press are very pleased at the prospect of the forthcoming trial of the eminent psychiatrist, Dr Hannibal Lecter. They indulge themselves with playground name-calling, and have given the defendant the moniker “Hannibal the Cannibal.” Liberals and the centre-Left would do well to hestitate and consider all sides of this case. Delicate stomachs may question Dr Lecter’s choice of chianti to accompany a census-taker’s liver, but this newspaper believes that such matters of taste are best left to the individual.
The psychiatric profession is a noble one, but not for the faint-hearted or the easily put-off. Like many a hard-working professional, Dr Lecter worked long hours in the service of his patients and was no doubt tired and under stress. I know many people who harbour secret anxieties of intending to offer a nice cup of tea to a client, but instead accidentally garotting them and eating their brains. Like the jury, we must listen to the evidence, and we should be concerned that his captors have confined him in a straightjacket and placed a mask over his face. This must not lead the court into thinking that the good doctor could be dangerous.
Read more of Martin Kettle’s opinions.
And don’t judge Sir Ian Blair, “London’s modernising police chief,” just because he tells a few porkies.
These 445 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:21pm GMT Permanent link.
Friday, 17 March 2006
The First Jowell »
Here we go for more “The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws” fun. Torygraph: Jowell falls foul of her own music law.
When Tessa Jowell led a sing-song to mark International Women’s Day early last week, she broke a law which she herself introduced, it has been claimed.
The Culture Secretary joined a rendition of The Truth Is Marching On in front of a statue of Emmeline Pankhurst in Victoria Tower Gardens near Parliament on March 8.
But because Victoria Tower Gardens is a Royal Park, a licence is required for any musical performance under the terms of last year’s Licensing Act — and Miss Jowell did not have one.
But this is all right. The licence is to deter bad people, such as Muslims, single mothers, the homeless, students, and insect creatures from Venus.
The council’s attention was drawn to the singing by Hamish Burchill, a musician who has campaigned against the Act’s provisions on public entertainment.
He said the Act had led to the cancellation of musical events and gigs because a licence was now required for performances which previously needed none.
Bloody hell, for centuries we let the proles sing without permission. It’s a wonder the sky didn’t fall on our heads. Happily, the modernising Ms Jowell has granted the people of Britain the freedom from unwanted singing. Hooray!
These 89 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:40am GMT Permanent link.
Follow Up »
Now tehgrauniad reports on Jowell’s howls. The story remains as in my last post.
Ms Jowell’s breach emerged as a select committee report gave a damning verdict over the handling of the introduction of 24-hour drinking by her own department.
Ms Jowell’s [sic] has just emerged from a tough couple of weeks over whether she knew her husband David Mills had paid off mortgage loans with money he allegedly received as a bribe from the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi.
The cross-party select committee said that pub landlords, councils and residents were put under “unnecessary stress because of late guidance, inconsistent advice and unclear information from the department”.
Committee chair Phyllis Starkey said that the “dilatory” approach of Ms Jowell’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) was “completely unacceptable” and concluded it “failed to administer the transition period effectively”.
A certain newspaper previously reported Wolves kept at bay by popularity of culture secretary.
Mr Blair said: “Tessa Jowell is an excellent minister who is widely respected. I have full confidence in her.”
It’s like he’s talking about another person entirely. Useless, “dilatory” (I like that), “inconsistent advice and unclear information” and the woman who signed several mortgage applications and then denied all knowledge. Paging NuLab apologist and brown-noser extra-ordinaire Martin Kettle, your party needs your obscurantist powers.
And where is David Mills? BBC: Berlusconi, Mills get court date.
Court hearings on whether to indict Italy’s prime minister and the husband of the UK’s culture secretary on corruption charges begin on 5 June.
…
Judge Fabio Paparella in Milan will decide whether they should face trial.
International lawyer Mr Mills, who has announced his split from Ms Jowell, and Mr Berlusconi deny any wrongdoing.
Investigating magistrates last week asked the judge to indict the men. Hearings on the indictment call are themselves likely to last weeks.
The second last paragraph is old news, but worth repeating.
Following an investigation by Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell, Prime Minister Tony Blair ruled Ms Jowell had not breached ministers’ code of conduct because she did not know about the gift.
Of course she didn’t, she only remortgaged her home several times with that money.
These 108 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:57pm GMT Permanent link.
Chuck Norris Changes Trains »
This is one of those posts where I see a sort of connection between various ideas, and try to weave them together. First up, Jim Henley. Jim is off to see V for Vendetta with a few other libertarian DC bloggers because, if they don’t, the terrorists have won! (V v clever link text there, Jim, take someone else’s stock phrase, and turn it on them.) That link goes to horrowshow Front PageMag.com, so you know you’re going to get a real art-for-art’s sake review.
Roger Ebert’s site features a rather glorious game: Ann Coulter? Or Debbie Schussel?
I planned to post a review of ‘Bareback Mountain,’ … er, ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ the gay cowboy romance movie, today. Only I can’t. I went to the screening, last night, only to be turned away despite reservations. Why? Gay activists, gay non-activists, and other sundry gays had been camping out at the theater all day—for hours to see this movie. And they took my seat. This movie is apparently the Xbox 360-esque craze of the gay community, this season.
Way to go Debbie or Ann, that’ll teach those limp-wristed Hollywood directors to make more Chuck Norris movies. That quote was “professional” movie critic Debbie Schussel and here she is on Chucky.
Also, check out Chuck Norris’ Code of Ethics. We especially like this part:
I will always remain loyal to God, my country, my family, and friends.
If only the rest of Hollywood would adopt this particular ethic.
Reminds me of Nick Cohen’s The Concerned Parents Guide to Sectairainism [sic].
Dear me, it is not brave in liberal Hollywood to oppose Bush. The brave thing to do in liberal Hollywood is to make a film supporting American policy, which is why no one does.
(This is an infinitely fungible concept, note. Make a movie set in virtual reality in a future where humans are harvested by robots for bio-energy or something, and you’re not supporting American policy. Pride and Prejudice does not support American policy. The bastards! The Last Temptation of Christ does not mention the Marshall Plan at all. The bastards! The A-Team was critical of American policy, four innocent veterans were wrongly convicted by a military court. Call that television? I can it indoctrination of eight-year-olds! It’s not only futigives from the law who can make working tanks from toilet rolls! Er, hold on …)
But you have to love Mr Norris’s patriotism. So here’s another quiz.
Without checking either Chuck’s Code of Ethics as a jpeg image or The sayings of Hu Jintao (Torygraph) can you guess which is which? (NB to make it sporting I’ve changed the Hu Jintao sayings into the first person, so the grammar is the same as Mr Norris’s.)
- I will give so much time to the improvement of myself that I will have no time to criticize others.
- I will be disciplined and law-abiding instead of chaotic and lawless.
- I will know plain living and hard struggle, I will not wallow in luxuries and pleasures.
- I will maintain respect for those in authority and demonstrate this respect at all times.
- I will forget the mistakes of the past and press on to greater achievements.
1, 4, 5 Chuck; 2, 3 Hu Highlight for answers.
Looks like I’m going to see V for Vendetta soon. Mind you, outside of the Star Wars prequels, no 130 minutes ogling admiring Ms Portman can be counted as 130 minutes wasted.
These 426 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:50pm GMT Permanent link.
It's Great Having A Blog »
Really. You should get one. It keeps your random jottings together in one convenient place, and I write as one who renewed his car tax only when they started clamping untaxed cars round here (and there are lots) because I’d lost the bleeding form. (It was down the side of the sofa. Of course.)
Earlier I quoted tehgrauniad’s quote of a certain Western leader on one of his ministers.
Mr Blair said: “Tessa Jowell is an excellent minister who is widely respected. I have full confidence in her.”
I juxtaposed this with tehgrauniad’s recent opinion of Tessa Jowell.
Ms Jowell’s breach emerged as a select committee report gave a damning verdict over the handling of the introduction of 24-hour drinking by her own department.
Ms Jowell’s has just emerged from a tough couple of weeks over whether she knew her husband David Mills had paid off mortgage loans with money he allegedly received as a bribe from the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi.
The cross-party select committee said that pub landlords, councils and residents were put under “unnecessary stress because of late guidance, inconsistent advice and unclear information from the department”.
Committee chair Phyllis Starkey said that the “dilatory” approach of Ms Jowell’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) was “completely unacceptable” and concluded it “failed to administer the transition period effectively”.
Anyone else watch the Apprentice? “You’re a very, very bad manager. … You’re a lightweight. You’re fired.”
Why am I repeating this? To recap:
Mr Blair said: “Tessa Jowell is an excellent minister who is widely respected. I have full confidence in her.”
BBC: Reid denies troops hate Iraq war.
Defence Secretary John Reid has denied UK troops do not want to serve in Iraq because they disagree with the war.
I believe him. Everything New Labour says is true. Everything New Labour says is true. Everything New Labour says is true.
Cerebrotonic Cato may
Extol the ancient disciplines
While the musclebound marines
Mutiny for food and pay.
Face it JR, you gave up at cere-something. You knuckle-dragging disgrace to the Labour Party.
These 146 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:21pm GMT Permanent link.
Saturday, 18 March 2006
A Special Anniversary »
(Shorter Backword: fuck you you reactionary heads-buried-in-the-sand religious god-bothering morons, fuck off now.)
tehgrauniad: The Selfish Gene’s Birthday. And if you haven’t read it, why not? Still this is tehgrauniad so we had:
Ian McEwan extolled the book’s role in the tradition of literary science writing …
That would be the Ian McEwan who was convinced that Alan Turing was a sexist woman-hating pervert. Sad to say, 20 years before Mr McEwans’s television production, Professor Turing was tried for gross indecency under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 [ie buggery] — in other words, Alan Turing was gay: he lost his job at the University of Manchester and killed himself. Ian McEwan’s extensive research into his subject failed to uncover these recondite facts. I mean, poor Ian McEwan was only an Oxford grad, and who can expect the Bodelian to harbour the fucking obvious?
We know genes are digital but do they have to be that way? Does evolution have to be based on molecules? And if so, what else has to be the case?
Er, yes, yes, and Jesus Christ! No seriously, everything is digital. Well, there ain’t nothing smaller* darling. And what the fuck?
*Of course there are things smaller than molecules. That is if you think C250H252 is a molecule. He is also a molecule. H2 is one too. Do I think life is based on leptons? No.
Look, everything is ones and bloody zeroes. That’s true here, in eleven dimensions, and so forth. Life is “based” by definition, on the smallest bits, and those happen to be molecules.
Still Richard Dawkins rocks. No amount of knee-trembling, Blair, means anything other than “God is dead!” At last you are free.
These 243 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:08am GMT Permanent link.
Blogs Are Shit »
Gah. More drunken sweary posts. Sod them.
I’m in a really foul mood because I’m finally translating the code this thing’s written with from PHP into Python. I’ve been using a Python script to paper over all the cracks for a bit now, and I might as well go the whole hog. Unfortunately, this means reading the old code and howling “Why the hell did I do it that way? I’m such an idiot!” every five minutes and storming off in an abject funk.*
Blogs. I hate them. Software, I hate even more.
I’ve tried to leave a comment on David Miliband’s blog. Specifically, on this post. He is, perhaps, the worst writer of English, like, ever.
I am speaking today at a brilliant celebration of how children can take responsibility for their local environment.
Not, mark you, a celebration of children who have taken responsibility for their local environment. But a celebration of “how.” Let’s celebrate abstract concepts. Besides, as my comment mentioned, children aren’t responsible by definition. Responsibility for the Environment is Mr Miliband’s department’s job.
Community Kids is a Sunderland based initiative that over six years has helped 7,000 young people go through an eight week programme designed to give respect and get respect.
The project is run by Sunderland Housing Group in 31 schools and is a prime example of how effective housing policy is about more than just buildings.
The relevant page on the Sunderland Housing Group isn’t easy to find (I googled Community Kids sunderland) but it’s here.
The Group’s Community Kids programme, delivered through local schools, promotes citizenship and community. During the 2004-2005 academic year 1,097 pupils became certified Community Kids (2,500+ to date)
I make 2,500+ to be approximately 4,500 fewer than Mr Miliband’s stated 7,000. But who cares about numbers? 7K sounds good.
“[A]n eight week programme designed to give respect and get respect”. Well, good for the programme, but what of the children? (I suspect he forgot to include “to teach them to” but I can’t be sure.) The programme is “designed to” — he doesn’t seem to care whether it actually does or not. And the “initiative” has “helped” as if it was a crammer for some extant schooling like O-levels (or whatever they’re called these days). As fas as I can tell, the “initiative” is a course. But Miliband can’t just say “Community Kids is a course in Sunderland that teaches young people to give respect.” (I don’t believe that you can teach someone how to get respect.) He needs a few fluffy buzzwords, otherwise you might think, “What are the schools teaching then? Isn’t that just part of bringing up kids? Why is a Housing Association trying to teach, when it should leave that to flaming teachers?” Arse.
*"[A]n abject funk” is in Heart of Darkness. I always thought it would be a good name for a band. As I haven’t got a band, I’m using it here.
These 391 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:31pm GMT Permanent link.
Sunday, 19 March 2006
Devolution »
I caught part of the new “Breakfast with Frost” this morning. It’s now known as Sunday AM and I’ve only just got the joke. Andrew Marr was joined by a very cross looking Clare Short MP and David Yelland (former editor of the Sun). Yelland appears to be a New Labourite but he struggled to defend the PM. “He introduced devolution…” “No he didn’t, that was a long-standing Old Labour committment.” “He allowed a chink of light into shadowy proceedings…” (Particularly cheeky that one; Labour has introduced reforms to party funding-raising, and apparently found ways around those reforms — and the (ahem) buck for this stops with TB, as neigther the treasurer of the Party nor senior figures (like Gordon Brown or John Prescott) knew.) “No he didn’t …” He finally said, rather weakly, “I’ll accept that.” Blair’s acolytes and bum-suckers really shouldn’t try to defend him on his politics. The rule is simple: if any legislation has had any benefit at all, Tony was against it. Here are acceptable well-worn defences of God’s co-pilot:
- He’s friends with Mr Bush
- He believes in God
- He smiles a lot
- He looks like Bambi
Come to think of it, I’m still against devolution (and I don’t buy the its giving away power argument: it’s creating more government, which is the opposite). Devolution has given Wales a national poet — as if having a Poet Laureate wasn’t bad enough. She’s attacked ‘joke’ WRU in verse. And it’s a rubbish poem. The metre seems to be an inept attempt at trochaic tetrameter (with added syllables on most lines), the rhymes collapse by the fourth stanza, and the subject verb agreement in lines 12 and 17 suggest that “you” is used in the plural, while it drops to the singular in the last line.
Last year, she mentioned Gavin Henson’s hair in a poem (scroll down). So I thought I’d have a go.
Gavin Henson’s Hair
(A tonsorialist speaks)
What can I say?
It’s a bit gay.
He must get stick:
He looks a dick.
I’m going to spend the rest of the day by the phone waiting for the arts council to call.
These 358 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:16pm GMT Permanent link.
The Secret Of Success In Showbusiness »
The secret of success in showbusiness is honesty and sincerity.
Once you learn how to fake that, you’ve got it made.
Marx
Matthew Parris says No more excuses. Just hand in your homework and go, Prime Minister. (Via Jamie.)
My ancient doubts are less important than new doubts among new Labour’s friends, but let me put my own opinion delicately. I believe Tony Blair is an out-and-out rascal, terminally untrustworthy and close to being unhinged. I said from the start that there was something wrong in his head, and each passing year convinces me more strongly that this man is a pathological confidence-trickster. To the extent that he ever believes what he says, he is delusional. To the extent that he does not, he is an actor whose first invention — himself — has been his only interesting role.
…
Small things as much as large have formed my view. What kind of a man would walk out of the Chamber as his former ally, Frank Field, rose to offer a patently heartfelt explanation of his reasons for standing down? Knowing what we do today about Mr Blair, would he still get the benefit of our doubt over the Bernie Ecclestone affair? What kind of a man would employ Alastair Campbell as his mouthpiece to history? What kind of a man would have given journalists on a plane to China the clear and false impression that he had had nothing to do with the outing of Dr David Kelly?
What kind of a man makes Silvio Berlusconi his friend and incurs a personal debt of gratitude to that bad, bad man? What kind of a Prime Minister neglects the courtesy and gratitude owed to his man in Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, quitting early after heart trouble? What kind of a man leaves friends as different as the late Roy Jenkins, Paddy Ashdown, and his own Chancellor privately despairing that they can ever rely on the Prime Minister’s word again?
I think there’s a partial answer in Blair’s moronic slogan “give respect and get respect”. Messrs Field, Meyer, Jenkins, and Ashdown were simply no longer useful — there was nothing Blair could get from them that he wanted. They had nothing to trade. Ergo, no respect.
Nine years is a good long run, though. Les Mis stayed on for longer, but that’s showbiz.
These 80 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:00pm GMT Permanent link.
Monday, 20 March 2006
Wonders Unceasing »
As mentioned on Saturday, I tried to post a comment on “odds on next Prime Minister” David Miliband’s blog. And it got through moderation. Ye gods!
The comment immediately before mine (it must have been in the queue when I posted) reads:
Excellent — the whole idea of citizenship and ownership of our communities is very important to the sustainability and development of our nation — particularly within inner city areas
After the first “the”, I have no idea what that means. Like Mr Miliband, the writer seems to think that ideas have some kind of causal power. However, if “inner city areas” counts as one phrase, I make that 6 vacuous buzz words or phrases in one sentence. And special mentions for “important” and “our nation”, which can be used like starch in the limpest paragraph. Well done that man.
Update to the NuLabour dictionary:
important im-por-tant, adj: not important
These 122 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:39pm GMT Permanent link.
Damned Lies And Statistics »
Chris Bertram sayeth, “joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth"* on the occasion of Johann Hari’s exposure as a non-Decent.
Can it really have been in November 2003 that Harry himself wrote:
Recently Independent columnist Johann Hari has also begun to provide guest blogs and I am most grateful to him for bringing his talents to this site. When I started the site I never imagined that one of my favourite columnists would become part of the venture.
My emphasis. Today, a forlorn and broken man, Johann Hari is only a “London-based journalist”. How sad to read Mike in the comments:
If Hari thinks that stoppers opposed the war becuase they thought the Americans would screw things up he has been badly advised — precisely the opposite is true.
Badly advised? But by whom? Not the pirhana tank of cutting edge opinion that is Harry’s Place? Marcus quotes from What the Iraqi Public Wants (472KB PDF file) three statistics.
- 64% think their country is heading in the right direction
- A majority do not approve of attacks on US soldiers
- 77% think the hardships resulting from the overthrow of Saddam Hussein have been worth it.
I was rather intriqued by the second of these. 64% and 77% are majorities, and Marcus quotes the numbers. He was shyer on the second statistic. I wondered why. Page 3:
Nearly half of Iraqis approve of attacks on US-led forces—including nine out of 10 Sunnis. Most Iraqis believe that many aspects of their lives will improve once the US-led forces leave, but are nonetheless uncertain that Iraqi security forces are ready to stand on their own.
P4:
A substantial portion of Iraqis support attacks on US led-forces, but not attacks on Iraqi government security forces or Iraqi civilians. Ethnic groups varied sharply on these questions.
Marcus, to give him credit, reads the report correctly. The question asked (the graphs are on page 5) is:
Do you approve or disapprove (strongly or somewhat) of attacks on US-led forces in Iraq?
47% approve. Which leaves 53% (a majority) who do not approve. Remarkably, only 7% approve of “on Iraqi government security forces.” So some 40% think attacking Americans is fine.
There is support for Marcus’s position in the report on pages 7-8:
Overall, 64% of Iraqis say that Iraq is heading in the right direction, while just 36% say it is heading in the wrong direction. This represents a sharp upward movement from when the International Republican Institute asked this question in November 2005 and just 49% said that Iraq was headed in the right direction and 36% said the wrong direction. The only other time that IRI has found such a high number expressing such optimism was in April 2005 — also just after an election — when 67% said the country was headed in the right direction and 20% the wrong direction.
Hold on. Is Iraq heading in the right direction? Jan 2006 (when the report was researched): yes 64%. Nov 2005 (two months earlier) yes 49%. April 2005 (six months before that) yes 67%. That’s pretty volatile.
The worst news is for the war we actually fought (rather than the counterfactual war Robin Cook and others may have supported).
Iraqis also express support for the UN, not the US, to take the lead in the economic reconstruction of Iraq. Overall, 59% express such a preference, with just 21% favoring the US taking the lead. Kurds have the highest percentage favoring the US taking the lead (43%), but the majority (53%) of Kurds favor the UN. Shia express the strongest support for the UN (64%). Only 22% of Shia support the US taking the lead in reconstruction.
Even the Kurds favour the UN over the US when the latter supposedly liberated them. Why if someone gave me little lapel pin in the shape of the Kurdistan flag, I’d stamp on it. The ingrates!
*Quotation marks for the benefit of Gary Farber ;-)
These 284 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 6:20pm GMT Permanent link.
When You're A Boy »
Heaven loves ya
The clouds part for ya
Nothing stands in your way
When you’re a boyClothes always fit ya
Life is a pop of the cherry
When you’re a boyWhen you’re a boy
You can wear a uniform
When you’re a boy
Other boys check you out
You get a girl
These are your favourite things
When you’re a boyBoys
Boys
Boys keep swinging
Boys always work it outUncage the colours
Unfurl the flag
Luck just kissed you hello
When you’re a boyThey’ll never clone ya
You’re always first on the line
When you’re a boyWhen you’re a boy
You can buy a home of your own
When you’re a boy
Learn to drive and everything
You’ll get your share
When you’re a boyBoys
Boys
Boys keep swinging
Boys always work it out
David Bowie, Boys Keep Swinging
Via Mike Power, I read tehgrauniad’s edited extract from Self-Made Man: My Year Disguised As A Man, by Norah Vincent. Mike starts:
I approached this piece in The Guardian Weekend with a weary and cynical sigh.
Well I often felt like that; it was why I stopped buying the paper. Once you drop a peanut down the automatic garbage disposal in the sink and lose your arm up to the elbow trying to get it back, you tend to be more cautious in future. Mike calls it a “well written and sensitive piece” and I can second both of those, though I think Ms Vincent’s observations are more sound than her logic.
If you have never been sexually attracted to women, you will never quite understand the monumental power of female sexuality, except by proxy or in theory, nor will you quite know the immense advantage it gives us over men. Dating women as a man was a lesson in female power, and it made me, of all things, into a momentary misogynist, which I suppose was the best indicator that my experiment had worked. I saw my own sex from the other side, and I disliked women irrationally for a while because of it. I disliked their superiority, their accusatory smiles, their entitlement to choose or dash me with a fingertip, an execution so lazy, so effortless, it made the defeats and even the successes unbearably humiliating. Typical male power feels by comparison like a blunt instrument, its salvos and field strategies laughably remedial next to the damage a woman can do with a single cutting word: no.
Take the first sentence — this may be true of gay men, but I doubt it. Male drag artists understand the “monumental power of female sexuality” and gay writers like Tennessee Williams did too. And quite a few women understand the power. Let’s survey “the damage a woman can do with a single cutting word: no.”
“Let me tell you a story,” he said. “When I was in college, there was this guy Dean, who got laid all the time. I mean this guy had different women coming out of his room every weekend and most week-nights, and he wasn’t particularly good-looking. He was fat and kind of a slob. Nice guy, though, but nothing special. I couldn’t figure out how he did it, so one time I just asked him. ‘How do you get so many girls to go out with you?’ He was a man of few words, kind of Coolidge-esque, if you know what I mean. So all he said was: ‘I get rejected 90% of the time. But it’s that 10%.’ ”
She also writes:
Sex is most powerful in the mind, and to men, in the mind, women have a lot of power, not only to arouse, but to give worth, self-worth, meaning, initiation, sustenance, everything. Seeing this more clearly through my experience, I began to wonder whether the most extreme men resort to violence with women because they think that’s all they have, their one pathetic advantage over all she seems to hold above them.
And earlier:
“I remember when I was in the army,” he’d say, “and I was drunk off my ass as usual. And there was this huge guy playin’ pool in the bar I was in. And I don’t know why, but I just flicked a beer coaster at him, and it hit him right in the back of the head. And he turned around really slowly and he looked down at me and he said in this really tired way, ‘Do we really need to do this tonight?’ And I said, ‘Nah, you’re right. We don’t. Sorry.’ So he turned around, and fuck me if I didn’t just throw another one and hit him again, right in the back of the head. I don’t know why I did it. No fuckin’ idea. And I knew when I did it that he was gonna kick my ass, so I turned around and tried to run, and I slipped in a puddle of beer and fell on my face, and he just picked me right up and bashed the shit out of me. And the funniest thing about it was that the whole time he was punching me, he kept apologising to me for having to do it.” This was a source of hilarity to everyone, the stupid crap you felt compelled to do as a guy finding your spot in the scheme of things.
At first I thought those two were contradictory, but they can also be complementary. Some guys are violent, and many of those who are violent to everyone. (Look at Mike Tyson.)
Still, if you’re a woman and wondering what it’s like to be a man, checking out (heh) popular crooner David Bowie’s 1979 smash hit Boys Keep Swinging is probably a lot easier. I’ve never entirely seen the point of Mr Bowie (or Mr Jones as he may be better known to revenue collectors in Switzerland), though I went through a Bowie phase around the time of that disc. I have known girls who’ve liked him (or to be more PC, women), and for some reason they’ve all been very tall.
Bonus tracks. Favourite cross dressing females: Debra Winger in Made in Heaven and Meryl Streep in Angels in America.
These 299 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:06pm GMT Permanent link.
A Miliband Update »
Curiously, I missed the “best comment so far” on David Miliband’s blog thing (link and quote from Tim Ireland).
If you intend this to be a personal blog why are you using your Government Department’s website?
How much civil service time is spent drafting/vetting your ‘personal’ comments?
Doing this via a Government website is a misuse of the taxpayers money and also renders the claim of it being a genuinely personal blog suspect.
If you want to run a blog why don’t you sort it out for yourself like everyone else rather than scrounging one off the taxpayer?
(NB David Miliband’s blog is hosted on the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister site.) Harry is quite right. Blogging may be a way to canvas for the PM’s job, but that’s Labour Party Politics. I can’t think of a politician’s blog (or indeed her life) which isn’t governed by internal party politics. Whatever Mr Miliband has to say in a personal/blogging capacity is not going to be for the good of his constituents. It’s all self-promotion. Blogging MPs are good. In the right place. This isn’t it. If the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has something to say, it has a press officer to say it. Some while back, a bloke called Adam Smith wrote a book which included a long (and frequently quoted) passage about the division of labour. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has people who make policy, and people who promote and write about said policy. If the person who makes the policy also wants to hone all the other possible skills (as self-employed artisans did in Adam Smith’s day, before being beaten down by industrialisation), he may find that his productivity declines dramatically.
Further down, there’s a reply:
Ignore Harry’s cynicism — it’s great that we have a Minister who is willing to embrace what is a growing method of exchanging comment and opinion … I hope you can find a way to wax lyrical about ODPM policy, but also about Government policy more widely, without treading on *too* any toes! Good luck!
Oh the medium! Ignore the message. Imagine my relief when I discovered that writer wasn’t that Rob Newman.
Again the NuLabour speak: “it’s great [a trendy vicar writes for the kids] … embrace … willing … growing method … exchanging …” Oh the gerunds! Never “is exchanging” (Mr Miliband has yet to reply). He’s “embraced” a “method” which could … and that is enough. David Miliband’s opinions are so diluted that even a homeopath couldn’t tell them from distilled water.
These 295 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:49pm GMT Permanent link.
You're Not Going To Wembley ... La La La La »
Torygraph: Wembley stadium evacuated after roof collapse. (Misleading headline alert: that should read “Wembley stadium building site evacuated after roof collapse.")
Workers have been evacuated from the Wembley stadium site after a roof rafter fell 3ft as it was being welded.
…
“Something has happened with the roof above certain workers. It was an isolated incident. Standard procedures were used to withdraw people from the situation.
Speaking on behalf of the people of Cardiff, I’m pleased that no one was hurt. Keep up the good work guys!
A long time ago in a stadium far, far away:
The basic building cost will be £352m and the total project cost will be £757m including the full fit-out of the stadium, which will open in early 2006. All parties, including the main partners, The FA, Sport England and the Government, welcomed today’s announcement.
Adam Crozier, The FA’s Chief Executive, said: “It has been a long haul to reach a successful outcome. I would like to offer my personal thanks to all the key parties involved - not least the banks and the design and construction company, Multiplex - who have helped to piece together a deal which delights everyone. It is great news for everyone involved in football. Players and fans can now look forward to enjoying the facilities at what will be the best stadium in the world.
“There’s no doubt that Wembley is an icon — wherever you go in the world people want to talk about Wembley and they want to see a new stadium there. Anyone who’s ever played football wants to play at Wembley and we’re absolutely convinced that that the new stadium will become an even greater icon. It’s vital that we have a world-class venue to stage showpiece events like The FA Cup final and England internationals.”
Wembley is popular — just like Microsoft and Nike. It’s obvious, innit, why it needs government money.
Tessa Jowell, Secretary of State for the Department of Media, Culture and Sport, said: “Work on the new stadium can now start. It has been a long and, at times, painful journey to this point. But the project has, as a result of the concerted efforts over the last year, proved itself to be worthy of attracting commercial finance.
“There is still a lot of work to do. But the FA’s new management team at Wembley National Stadium Limited can now, finally, concentrate on what this project is all about — building a national stadium.”
So she sort of got it.
More recently, Ms Jowell said:
Although Multiplex, the builders, are working hard to finish Wembley Stadium as quickly as possible, it is the FA’s judgement that the risk that it may not be ready to host the Final itself is just too great. I therefore welcome the FA’s decision to put in place now a firm arrangement on which fans can plan and avoid any further speculation or uncertainty.
Wembley Stadium is a huge and complex project; it will be the best stadium in the world and a great piece of construction engineering.
Millions of people will enjoy Wembley Stadium and the whole country will take pride in it.
The builders were also betting against its completion. Why do politicians talk such bollocks? The “best stadium in the world” right now looks like the Melbourne Cricket Ground which, besides the obvious, hosts Aussie Rules Football, and the Commonwealth Games Athletics.
“Tomorrow it will be Tuesday” seems like a reasonable thing to say, to me.
“X will be the best stadium in the world and a great piece of construction engineering” is an accident waiting to happen. Am I right or am I right?
I’m enjoying Wembley Stadium. I like a good laugh, me.
These 174 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:27pm GMT Permanent link.
Humphrey RIP »
I had an email this morning As a cat lover I know you’ll be distraught at this news….
The 10 Downing Street cat Humphrey has died, a spokesman for the prime minister has confirmed.
The black and white feline passed away at the home of a Cabinet Office worker who took him when he “retired”.
I like the quotation marks around ‘retired.’
Humphrey was adopted by Number 10 after wandering into the building as a stray while Margaret Thatcher was PM in 1989.
He moved out six months after Labour’s 1997 general election win, with Tony Blair’s wife Cherie denying reports her dislike for the animal was to blame.
It’s a pity that BBC pages are anonymous, whoever wrote this pinned the New Labour style. Not “Cherie didn’t like the beast” but “Tony Blair’s wife Cherie denying reports her dislike for the animal was to blame.” So much more fragrant, vapid, and meaningless, we’ll take it. I like ‘blame’ too, which, almost unnoticed, apportions guilt.
I’ve been getting hits on an old post about Cherie Blair, who may consider cats unhygenic. I’d recently read Francis Wheen’s Yada Yada and more Yada. P 131:
The Blairs were offered water melon and papaya, then told to smear what they did not eat over each other’s bodies along with mud from the Mayan jungle outside.
Cats wash themselves — with their own tongues! Disgusting! Of course, Bliar is a Christian and almost ready to convert to Catholicism — except the one true church is too intellectually rigorous to accept all his New Age crapola. If Mrs Thatch could adopt a puir cat (though from what I’ve read, Humphrey never let “I dare not” wait upon “I will” like the animal in, as they say, the adage), she’s a better woman than I ever gave her credit for. If Humphrey was a stray in 89 and only just died, he was likely neutered. Just like the rest of cabinet. Fnarr, fnarr.
These 214 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:59pm GMT Permanent link.
Tuesday, 21 March 2006
Kill It Captain, Quickly! »
When I was about 13, I was a huge Carl Sagan fan. I wanted to be an astrobiologist — partly because like being a lollipop man, I’d have to wait a long time to start. I’m starting to appreciate how hard a profession it is.
BBC: Earth could seed Titan with life. (That should be “could have seeded” BTW.)
Terrestrial rocks blown into space by asteroid impacts on Earth could have taken life to Saturn’s moon Titan, scientists have announced.
See? Note past tense. And we (that is, NASA) were worried enough to crash Galileo into Jupiter.
And where there’s water, there may be life. In fact, NASA decided to crash the Galileo spacecraft into Jupiter to make sure it didn’t collide with Europa and scatter Earth germs all over it.
The Earth, for those at the back, is 4.5 billion years old. Life may have been around for the last 2 billion years. Asteroid impacts occur … often. Maybe every 100 million years. So there may have been 20 (pessimistic estimate) like the one which (may have) killed off the dinosaurs. Although Jupiter and Saturn are very very far away, a million years at any pace also takes you a long way. The question is — can bacteria survive for a million years?
I’m very doubtful about panspermia. I can’t say why exactly, it just seems too hand-waving and full of “ifs”.
OTOH: Water discovered on Saturn moon.
The orbiting Cassini spacecraft has spotted what appear to be water geysers on one of Saturn’s icy moons, raising the tantalizing possibility that the celestial object harbours life.
Again life is likely to be bacterial, but who knows? I’d like to think that they took our germs, and went straight to the fight over the water pool and the bone smashing thing, and conquered the galaxy soon after.
Astronomy Picture of the Day: Super-Earths May Circle Other Stars.
Assuming the planet’s parent star is normal red dwarf, the brightening is best explained if the planet is about 13 times the mass of the Earth and orbiting at the distance of the asteroid belt in our own Solar System.
I used to know the basic Newtonian maths for calculating the strength of gravity on a given planet, but I’ve forgotten them. Anyway, it would be a lot. There has to be a maximum strength that muscle can give, and moving about on land under 5Gs seems impossible. So any life could only survive in the sea (if any; a red dwarf would be cooler than our sun, so 2 or 3 or 4 AU would be pretty frigid). So much for new civilisations.
These 318 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:05am GMT Permanent link.
Pants On Fire »
Through Mike Power (again), who cites an Observer interview with Ian Blair.
I attended meetings with senior officers later that day. When I left, I had no indication that the wrong person had been shot, I did not learn the truth until the following day… There wasn’t even a sniff of the fact that there had been a tragic mistake,” he said…the (firearms unit) officer’s mood was buoyant because they initially were convinced they had just shot a terrorist…
Really? Last August I quoted the Times.
The report also reveals for the first time that a member of the surveillance team, who sat nearby, got involved and grabbed Senhor de Menezes before he was shot: “I heard shouting which included the word ‘police’ and turned to face the male in the denim jacket.
“He immediately stood up and advanced towards me and the CO19 officers … I grabbed the male in the denim jacket by wrapping both my arms around his torso, pinning his arms to his side.
“I then pushed him back onto the seat where he had been previously sitting … I then heard a gun shot very close to my left ear and was dragged away onto the floor of the carriage.”
“[S]hot a terrorist” in the interview omits “in cold blood”. Even if Mr de Menezes had been a terrorist, they could have arrested him. I know those officers are under huge stress, and probably scared close to shitless (I would be). That was murder. If they were “buoyant” so much the worse for them. I am really at a loss how they could think that, because execution was beyond their remit.
These 90 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:37am GMT Permanent link.
Aw, Mom You're Just Jealous »
tehgrauniad carries an unusually critical profile of a NuLabour stalwart: There was once a jolly bagman. If anything, it made me like Lord Levy even less.
In 1973 he launched his own label, Magnet. Exhibiting a fine stoicism against critics who sneered at his strange passion for the extremely middle-of-the-road — criticisms echoed with varying degrees of snobbery and relevance years later over his choice of, for instance, home decor or party politics — he backed the likes of Stardust, Darts and Chris Rea, and, cannily enough, was soon commanding close to 10 per cent of Britain’s pop market. Despite punk, turbulence, anger, New Romantics, Thatcher — his trust in the longevity of MOR paid handsomely: he sold Magnet in 1988 to Warner Brothers for around £10m.
I was going to say critical things around what was on iTunes at present (The Smiths, Beefheart, The Doors), but Mr Levy is Jewish, and any criticism of a Jew carries the tincture (© C Hitchens) of anti-Semitism. So here’s why I hate the bastard.
Born in the summer of 1944 into what was even then the wrong part of Stoke Newington, the family living in the same room until he was nine, he was the only child to a devout Jewish couple, his father the attendant at the local synagogue, his grandfather a rabbi. Levy’s devotion continues; he is refreshingly free of restraint in making it known that he won’t be going near business when the Friday-evening meal looms, ever.
Devout, live on their knees, god bothering bastards. Here’s some Jewish life.
You pop caught you smoking — and he said, “No way!"
That hypocrite — smokes two packs a day
Man, living at home is such a drag
Now your mom threw away your best porno mag (Bust it!)
It was about this time, as he and his wife Gilda — to whom he has been married for 39 years — moved to a specially rebuilt home in Totteridge, complete with tennis court and swimming pools, that he was first asked to become involved with Jewish Care, then a small amalgam of charities attempting to provide better social conditions for British Jews. [Er, what’s a Labour Party supporter doing improving conditions for one disadvantaged group over the rest? When did ethnicity triumph over class? Elsewhere, we call that racism. Oh, I’m very sorry, Palestinians are killing Israiliz. That is so our fault. We so made you invade their their country.]
Don’t step out of this house if that’s the clothes you’re gonna wear
I’ll kick you out of my home is you don’t cut that hair
Your mom busted in and said, “What’s that noise?"
Aw, mom you’re just jealous — it’s the Beastie Boys!
I saw the Beasties in Brixton with Run DMC in the 80s and they were fan-fucking-tastic. That was when a huge penis came up through the stage. Wonderful, splendid show. Mind you, anything’s better than the mush Little Lord Levy promotes.
So he grew up in poverty. So did James Brown. So did John Lydon. They didn’t make shite records. Who remembers what Alvin Stardust sang? Who remembers “Get up, get on up-ah: Get up, get on up-ah …” or “I am an Anti-Christ"? Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Lord Levy, the perfect partner for talentless hollow NuLabour.
These 293 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:13am GMT Permanent link.
Simon Hoggart Gets It Right »
Via Paul Davies, tehgrauniad’s sketchwriter (in other words the cheeky, mock-making one as opposed to the weighty journalists who take everything seriously, themselves most of all, and go native within five years) Simon Hoggart is splendid today.
The Tories have had a real problem with this cash-for-peerages row, since all the parties have been up to similar tricks. It’s as if the light has been snapped on to reveal everyone’s hand in the cookie jar.
Quite right. This is the sort of thing which makes you wonder about democracy. Politicians all end up alike.
But part of the reason why the government should be in more trouble than the other parties is because it is the government. The others only tried to corrupt the system. Labour succeeded.
Moments later, in the Commons, a statement was being made by Bridget Prentice. And no, you haven’t heard of her. She is a junior minister in the Department for Constitutional Affairs. And why was this blamelessly obscure person speaking on such an important and sensitive matter? Because her boss, Harriet Harman, is married to Jack Dromey, who revealed last week that he hadn’t known about all these millions of pounds loaned to the party of which he is treasurer.
And Tony Blair still can’t work out why the whole thing stinks!
Paul also discovered Bridget Prentice’s site. As he says, Eeek. Blameless obscure Bridget may come to regret her Young Persons Guide to Parliament.
I work in the House of Commons and am elected by the people of Lewisham East, my constituency. The members of the House of Lords are not elected. Many of them are Lords because their ancestors were large landowners. The system of who sits in the House of Lords is being changed to remove these hereditary peers. Exactly how this will happen has not been decided yet. You can follow it in the news.
Neither Paul nor I can work out who this page is intended for. It’s not wrong exactly, but she does err by omission in the cause of simplicity.
The Home Secretary, who looks after policing, community safety, protecting children …
The Education Secretary, who looks after schools
Both are true, but both posts are somewhat more complex. And this is too simple as well.
The laws of the country are debated in the House of Commons. You may have seen some of the debates on the television. The Speaker of the House makes sure that the debates are held fairly. Then all the MP’s vote. If there is a majority the law is sent to the House of Lords for them to discuss before it becomes a law.
Note that the role of the House of Lords is reduced to having a chat about a law before it’s enacted. It’s one of those funny things grownups do, children! It’s like having to be nice to granny for a few minutes before she’ll give you your Christmas present. You can’t see the point of the chat but it’s polite to go through with it.
Right now, I wouldn’t like her job for all the tea in China. Or even all the tea in Assam which is the stuff I actually drink.
These 249 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 5:15pm GMT Permanent link.
Wednesday, 22 March 2006
The Red Baron »
Or, he would say that. There’s a letter in tehgrauniad from one Philip Gould.
The Guardian displayed the names and photographs of 12 people who had given loans to the Labour party in a dramatic full page that made them look like criminals at worse, wrongdoers at best (Report, March 21). The subtext that surrounds political donors is that they have done something wrong.
…
But we cannot allow good people trying to do the right thing for their party to be turned into malign individuals trying to subvert the political process. It is wrong and it simply isn’t true.
Who can this Mr Gould be? Is he an impartial observer of events, a mere commoner penning epistles to the Islingtonians? He has a Wikipedia entry.
He was made a life peer in 2004[.]
To put it another way Labour dominates new peers list (BBC, just under two years ago).
Labour names dominate the 46 new working peers being appointed to the House of Lords on Saturday.
Tony Blair’s pollster Philip Gould and controversial Labour donor Paul Drayson feature in the 23 new Labour peers.
Not long after Michael White of tehgrauniad reporteed On May 1 Paul Drayson was given a peerage. On June 17 he gave Labour a £500,000 cheque.
Paul Drayson, the biotechnology entrepreneur who gave the Labour party £100,000 while successfully bidding for a lucrative government vaccine contract, also gave it another £500,000 within six weeks of being made a life peer, the Electoral Commission revealed yesterday.
…
Lord Rennard called for a cap on individual donations “to avoid the suspicion that money is buying influence or favours”. Instead Labour has imposed a system of transparency whereby donations must be declared if they exceed £5,000 at national level or £1,000 at constituency level.
What exactly Lord Drayson may or may not have got for his donations has been a matter of dispute. The National Audit Office and the Commons science and technology committee investigated the smallpox vaccine contract and both cleared all parties.
I share tehgrauniad’s plebian dislike of titles. On this occasion, reminding the reader that Baron Gould had been ennobled would be the honest thing to have done. I’m sure it was only modesty which prevented the noble lord himself from mentioning it.
These 124 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:31pm GMT Permanent link.
Accounting For Tessa »
Gordon Brown’s apparently in the news today, for some reason or other. He got a lower key mention in tehgrauniad this morning for a different reason, but, yet again he was “being distanced” from the story. MPs scathing over soaring cost of Diana fountain.
The memorial fountain to Diana, Princess of Wales, was criticised yesterday by MPs, who said it was “ill-conceived and ill executed” and would leave the Royal Parks Agency with a maintenance bill that will total £25m over the next century.
A memorial fountain — that sounds like a job for the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport! Dinna dinna dinna dinna Tessa! But like McCavity, she’s not there!
The committee’s report says that part of the blame lies with Gordon Brown, who promoted the project and chaired the Memorial Foundation Committee.
The Treasury yesterday distanced the chancellor from the controversy, saying that although he had chaired the committee and acted as a co-ordinator, he delegated decisions to other individuals and to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. But, according to the report, the delegation proved disastrous.
As Oliver Hardy once remarked, “He gave it to her and she gave it to him and he … HmmmPH!”
A sub-committee chaired by Diana’s friend Rosa Monckton, set up to oversee the project, could not agree on a designer and never met again to check progress, according to the report.
Tessa Jowell, the culture secretary, used her casting vote for the design, but her ministry did not monitor it properly either, it said.
As a result, the costs soared. The MPs say: “The problems with the fountain reflected basic project management failures. The fountain was a small scale project, yet there were multiple stakeholders whose roles, responsibilities and accountability were not clear.
One word in that third paragraph tells you why it went tits up. Stakeholders. Why oh why are we ruled by these idiots?
These 117 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 7:32pm GMT Permanent link.
Thursday, 23 March 2006
David Lloyd George »
David Blunkett, the much-disgraced former Home Secretary, has joined tengrauniad’s Comment is Free. He chose to kick-off with the unintentionally ironic Let’s not undermine democracy.
Of course there is no point in coming up with excuses — anything that is perceived as modern day Lloyd George-ism, is bound to result in acrimony. And it is a simple fact that people rightly expect more of the Labour party than they do of our opponents.
Well I gave up expecting anything of the Labour Party. I almost hope I receive more begging letters now that Labour [is] to sell its HQ to stave off bankruptcy.
The move was revealed as Sir Gulam Noon, a fast food magnate who loaned the party £250,000 last year, placed further pressure on Labour’s finances by saying he wanted his money back. He is the sixth millionaire to ask Labour for his money to be repaid.
Quite right. As we have what Mr Blunkett calls “the most transparent and honest system in the world”, we know that these were “loans.” Lenders want their money back. Anything else would suggest they were trying to buy something. I’m sure there’s a word, are lots of words in fact, for taking money without intending to deliver any goods in return. Fortunately, we have “the most transparent and honest system in the world”, so if there’s any of that, we’d know who to blame.
Mr Blunkett’s piece has the great advantage in that, even with Labour party membership in six, five, four (surely it’s higher than three, MPs must be members mustn’t they?) figures there is no one willing to take his case. Why can that be?
Pictured: the statue of David Lloyd George in Gorsedd Gardens, Cardiff. (There are more details on the Public Monument and Sculpture Association.) I’ve long considered those clenched fists to be risible, but here’s an extract from the Wikipedia article Mr Blunkett links to.
Lloyd George represented Britain at the Versailles Peace Conference, clashing with French Premier Georges Clemenceau, American President Woodrow Wilson and Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando. Lloyd George wanted to punish Germany politically and economically for devastating Europe during the war, but did not want to utterly destroy the German economy and political system the way Clemenceau and many other people of France wanted to do with their demand for massive reparations. Memorably, he replied to a question as to how he had done at the peace conference, “Not badly, considering I was seated between Jesus Christ and Napoleon” (Wilson and Clemenceau). He was also noted to have said, “We shall squeeze the orange until the pips squeak,” in favor of reparations.
Lloyd George’s coalition was too large, and deep fissures quickly emerged. The more traditional wing of the Unionist Party had no intention of introducing these reforms, which led to three years of frustrated fighting within the coalition both between the National Liberals and the Unionists and between factions within the Conservatives themselves. It was this fighting, coupled with the increasingly differing ideologies of the two forces in a country reeling from the costs of war that led to Lloyd George fall from power. In June 1922 Conservatives were able to show that he had been selling knighthoods and peerages for money. This led to a major attack in the House of Lords on his corruption resulting in the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925. The Conservatives also attacked Lloyd George as lacking any executive accountability as prime minister, claiming that he never turned up to Cabinet meetings and banished some government departments to the gardens of 10 Downing Street.
The attack his lack of “any executive accountability as prime minister” has a modern echo. Like Tony Blair, the selling of peerages is only the lever which can be used to prise him out of office; the dissatisfaction runs much deeper. Lloyd George was wittier and more perceptive than the present crowd — can you imagine a recent Prime Minister calling the US President “Jesus Christ"?
Maybe if David Blunkett falls under a bus, they’ll build a statue. To the bus.
These 308 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 8:42am GMT Permanent link.
Well Do You, Punk? »
Via CT’s Harry Brighouse, Michael Gove in the Times writes on two great divides in British society — punks v hippies, and Marmite lovers v haters (God save the punks. We mean it, Mary Ann). Harry is perfectly correct to observe:
As for scraping the last bits out of the jar; I’m a bit disappointed in a future Tory cabinet minister not knowing what to do: pour in a little boiling water, shake it up, and use the liquid for stock, sir. They should put that on the jar, perhaps.
Doesn’t everyone do this? Michael Gove claims unconvincingly that he is a punk (and that Matthew Parris is one too; well it must beat talking about Section 28, Mike). Sadly, the Spectator (a cough Tory publication, we hear) has archived Dark side of the Hoon, in which Buff, the eponymous Defence Secretary, came out as a hippy. He only mentions Pink Floyd’s original vocalist, Syd Barrett, to say that he turned up at the recording of “Dark Side of the Moon”, a reference which will annoy other fans, and confuse non-afficionados. So we have to leave Craig Brown to analyse Mr Hoon’s tastes.
How odd, then, that boring old Geoff Hoon should have written a full-page article for the current Spectator extolling the delights of equally boring old Pink Floyd.
At one point, he even admits to queueing up at 10 o’clock in the morning outside a record shop to get the first copy of their lead singer Dave Gilmour’s new solo album.
“This is music for mature grown-ups — elegant, sophisticated and superbly played,” he enthuses.
He came to Pink Floyd in 1972, he boasts, claiming that he was an early bird. Back then, they “were not yet mainstream — still less known around the world”.
I wonder if we shouldn’t urge Lord Hutton to set up an inquiry into this mysterious claim.
By 1972, Pink Floyd had been going for a full six years (the equivalent of 72 in pop star years). They had achieved top 10 positions in both the album and singles charts as early as 1967. In fact, they started going out of fashion in 1968, when the inventive Syd Barrett was replaced by the droney Dave Gilmour, and have been going downhill ever since.
It goes without saying that Mr Hoon should be such an enthusiast, but he would be best advised not to boast about it.
Ouch.
These 146 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:24am GMT Permanent link.
The Earth Moves For Tessa Jowell »
Will Cardiff host the FA Cup in 2007? 2008? The Olympic Games in 2012? Their loss is our gain. Now, Wembley hit by sewage pipe setback. The reason? The earth moved.
A worker on site told The Sun: “Pipes buckled because the ground around them had moved. Water and waste from flushed toilets would have backed up and overflowed if no repairs were done.
“On match day, when tens of thousands of people use the toilets at the same time, that just doesn’t bear thinking about.”
The ground moved? In that well-known tectonic fault zone of North West London?
Steve Kelly, of the GMB union, said: “It’s just one disaster after another.
“When the pipes are laid, they have to be supported properly underneath, especially where they join. But it doesn’t appear as if this happened and the pipes have dropped, causing them to become buckled.
“Apparently they are now going to have to dig up the pipes and repair them but that is a process that is going to take months.”
Look, either the architect got it wrong or the builders did. Someone is supposed to be in control on building sites, and someone is supposed to watch how money is being spent. Wembley has been subsidised by the taxpayer, and now they want to dig it up again.
All I can say is, “Bwahahahahahaha!”
These 98 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:21pm GMT Permanent link.
Friday, 24 March 2006
Another Angry Donor »
I like this:
OH FOR GOD’S SAKE!!! So much for — — —. I sent you 45 pounds in donations. How about sending it back?
Not a cut-price lordship buyer who felt cheated, but a donor to the March for Free Expression. Supported by “Various branches of UKIP”. And Oliver Kamm.
These 29 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:03am GMT Permanent link.
Tuesday, 28 March 2006
Bum! »
I’m rewriting the look of this sad excuse for a blog, and I wasn’t going to post until I finished. But I wanted to post a drunken comment alert (I realise that everyone who reads me does so in the hope that I’ll either say “cunt” or something stupid). I posted a comment on Comment is Free — specifically on Frank Furedi’s cookie cutter post, but Furedi isn’t listed as a contributor, so I fear it’s been eaten. I didn’t keep a copy either, though I was rather proud of:
Things were so much better when cricket-jumpered undergrads fell in love with their sad-eyed social betters and backward into fountains.
I mentioned Furedi’s far left past too.
The word for Furedi (a graduate of that rigourous academic discipline, Sociology), I believe, is tosser. Sociology joke variant: is that with or without “vacuous and ignorant"?
These 124 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:25pm GMT Permanent link.
Wednesday, 29 March 2006
Dancing In The Street »
Da blogger is back!
These 4 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:20am GMT Permanent link.