Wednesday, 1 December 2004
That Old Aphrodisiac, Power »
We have no more say in the duration of our passions than in that of our lives.
Francois, Duc de la Rochefoucauld, Maxims
You know my views on David Blunkett by now. So let’s go over the defence.
Alice Thomson in the Torygraph (sorry, usual registration shenanigans).
Most would agree that Mr Blunkett should never have started an affair with a married woman, but he did, and he fell passionately in love with her. Kimberly Fortier should never have reciprocated, but she was fascinated by him. Both of them behaved badly, but both are trying to make amends. Meanwhile, Stephen Quinn, Kimberly Fortier’s husband has behaved impeccably. …
If either one or both of the children are Mr Blunkett’s, he can offer to support them financially, and will want some sort of access, so he can form a relationship with them. It won’t be an orthodox situation, but at least the children will know that they are loved by three very caring, remarkable adults.
My emphasis. I think the order is wrong: she reciprocated his interest, and then he fell in love. I hope I’m not being sexist here, but she behaved very badly: she was only recently married and she was bedding someone else; I’d condemn a man for that (well, unless the girl were very pretty) — no seven year itch excuse, just no attention to marriage vows. She had every reason to be flattered and say, “No” and she was neither stupid nor naive. David Blunkett condemns the 60s, but even then, girls said “No.” (I’m not saying that sexual responsibility devolves to women. Men are also responsible. In this case she was the married one, and she consented to unprotected sex. He’s a minister; she’s more famous that Fran-whassname on “I’m a Tosser …” What did she expect?)
Rachel Sylvester also writes a hagiography of David Blunkett (also behind the Torygraph firewall).
Politically, the Home Secretary is one of the toughest street fighters at Westminster. He has battled with Gordon Brown and Jack Straw to get ID cards accepted as government policy, he has taken on the police over proposals for an FBI-style organised crime agency and he has thrown down the gauntlet to the judges over just about everything, from asylum to sentencing.
And been wrong on every count.
Emotionally, however, Mr Blunkett has become vulnerable in a way he would never have allowed himself to do in his ministerial life. Love and loss, fatherhood and friendship cannot be dealt with through a quick quip at the expense of the “liberati”. He has made no secret of his relationship with Mrs Quinn and I am told that the Prime Minister is among those who have known for some time of the affair. “He talks about Kimberly all the time,” one minister, who is close to the Home Secretary, told me yesterday. “If he was just a politician, he would have left it all alone, but he is a human being too and he really cares about seeing the children. He believes he’s their father and they deserve to know.”
I happen to think it is rather admirable that the Home Secretary, a man who is driven by a strong sense of duty, wants to take responsibility for two children who even his former lover now seems to concede are his. Too often in the past, politicians have tried to shake off their “illegitimate” offspring — it is bizarre that Cecil Parkinson has never even met his daughter Flora Keays. It must be better for children to grow up knowing their father than to spend their lives trying to discover who he is. I am also suspicious of a mother who wants to prevent her children from having contact with their father in an attempt to make her own life, and her own marriage, more straightforward — particularly when she appears to be mounting an extraordinary media campaign to get her way.
Lots of children grew up after the last World Wars without having memories of their fathers, I’m not so sure that fathers are essential, rather than ‘nice’. Love seems the important factor, whether it comes from two men, two women, a single mother, or whatever. Why was he having unprotected sex? She was married. Course, it could happen to anyone.
Wagner’s real father is somewhat a mystery. Some believe that his real father was a police actuary named Carl Friedrich Wagner. Six months after Wagner was born, his legal father died. Later his mother, Johanna, married actor Ludwig Geyer, who also may have been his biological father.
More here. (It’s an argument from authority, but my favourite authority, and it suits my argument. “If Richard Wagner did not look like Ludwig Geyer, he even less resembled his father. You can hardly imagine a pear falling farther away from the apple tree than this hypersensitive extravagant artist and rebel Richard Wagner as the son of a very correct police official.")
After the women on Blunkett’s side (it’s like Antigone, this is) here’s the very sensible Vicki Woods.
I don’t know Kimberly. (We’ve met and shouted Hi at parties.) Don’t know David Blunkett either, though we met (also at a party) last year. He gripped my hand and pulled me slightly towards him, the better to hear, and I remember thinking that he smelt very nice. Ooh, I thought. Trumper’s Eau de Gentleman, or whatever. Very nice.
We didn’t bond, though - I don’t bond easily with Yorkshiremen. (That’s a joke, by the way.) I think Blunkett is an unbelievably illiberal Home Secretary. I object to his tossing out habeas corpus in order to keep uncharged and unproven “terrorists” languishing in Belmarsh at his pleasure. And his easy acceptance of evidence extracted by torture (not here in the UK, of course, but outsourced abroad). As for the benighted ID card lunacy, all in the name of citizen security and the War on Turr - don’t get me started.
I’m aware it’s not fair of me to opine on Love Triangle Torment when I only know one leg of the triangle. But Blunkett is tremendously press-savvy, and he must be pretty pleased so far with how he’s shaping up in the public prints. He comes across as a passionate swain (good), a cruelly wounded lover (heartbreaking) and a loving father who now wants nothing more than to “take responsibility for his children” (deeply admirable).
Is it admirable, though? He is being sympathetically backed by a lot of friendly commentators, who think he is very proper in pursuit of his “father’s rights”. But it makes me choke with rage. I keep reading stuff about how he wants to “make some financial provision” and to “set up some sort of access”. How dare he? How can he? What sort of “access” could that possibly be?
The poet Shakespeare:
Thou, nature, art my goddess. To thy law
My services are bound. Wherefore should I
Stand in the plague of custom and permit
The curiosity of nations to deprive me
For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines
Lag of a brother? Why “bastard”? Wherefore “base”?
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true
As honest madam’s issue? Why brand they us
With “base,” with “baseness,” “bastardy,” “base,” “base”—
Who in the lusty stealth of nature take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth within a dull, stale, tirèd bed
Go to th’ creating a whole tribe of fops
Got ’tween a sleep and wake? Well then,
Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land.
Our father’s love is to the bastard Edmund
As to the legitimate.—Fine word, “legitimate”!—
Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed
And my invention thrive, Edmund the base
Shall top th’ legitimate. I grow, I prosper.
Now, gods, stand up for bastards!
And now the blow:
Me, I think David Blunkett is behaving like a cad. The key issue for the Quinn family at the moment is that Kimberly Quinn is unwell, and not in a state to be facing off legal demands for “access” to her son and unborn baby.
In short, not a good lad. But we knew that. Let’s get him over his ambitions rather than his dalliances.
These 348 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:21am GMT Permanent link.
Britain Is Working »
I said so.
I don’t agree with all this guff, but some of it is true.
Not only is the public sector in the grip of the unions, with high rates of absenteeism (Tube staff were recently awarded 52 days a year holiday by Ken Livingstone) …
And there was me thinking that was the market negotiating for what it could get. Beastly market! Down!
Still, this is good clean fun:
Spare a thought today for the paper boys and girls. Wednesday is the worst day of their week, because they have to struggle up the nation’s garden paths, bent double under the weight of the Guardian’s public sector job supplement. They know that there is such a thing as Society — it is usually more than 100 pages long.
As Oliver Letwin, the shadow chancellor, points out opposite, poking fun at the Guardian’s baffling job ads for teenage pregnancy co-ordinators does have a serious political point. In April, the Chancellor promised to cut down on waste in the public sector, but this does not stand up to scrutiny. He said he was going to cut 90,000 civil servants, but this failed to take account of those he is simultaneously hiring.
These 40 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:20am GMT Permanent link.
International AIDS Day »
Chris Bertram has a comprehensive post on International AIDS day, though Fontanta Labs has a marvellous succinct open letter to HIV on World AIDS Day, with a link to the first article on Pneumocystis Pneumonia. The first sentence of that “In the period October 1980–May 1981, 5 young men, all active homosexuals, were treated for biopsy-confirmed Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia at 3 different hospitals in Los Angeles, California” surprised me (what business of the doctors was it that they were ‘active homosexuals’?) and reminded me of Al Pacino’s Roy Cohn in Tony Kushner’s superlative Angels in America refusing to answer such questions. Easily the best thing on television this century, and on DVD.
These 112 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:07pm GMT Permanent link.
The Courtesy Of The Lib Dems »
Too soft on crime, if you ask me.
Lib Dem spokesman Mark Oaten said Mr Blunkett was “innocent until proven guilty” but there was something “very unusual” about the passport application.
Strange concept, this “innocent until proven guilty.” You can’t have that, if you want to catch criminals and terrorists. Mr Blunkett would not approve.
These 32 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:44pm GMT Permanent link.
There May Be A Moral In This »
You know I’m born to lose, and gambling’s for fools,
But that’s the way I like it baby,
I don’t wanna live for ever
Ace of Spades, Kilmister
I just checked Political Betting, which says
William Hill are offering odds 7/2 against David Blunkett ceasing to be Home Secretary by January 1 2005. As yet the market is not available online.
The price seems tempting.
So I legged it round to the nearest William Hill’s. It wasn’t William Hill, it was sodding Coral.
Shows what I know about gambling.
These 31 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:56pm GMT Permanent link.
Thursday, 2 December 2004
Blunkett Coverage »
Nice to know that Nick can screw his courage to the sticking place when I can’t, and, I hope, has been down Hill’s.
The Indy has a pretty dodgy article on press coverage.
What one writer might see as Mr Blunkett’s understandable desire to see the boy he has long believed to be his son is to another vindictive and hurtful. The suspicion is often that politics—party more than sexual—governs the writer’s outpourings rather than a dispassionate analysis of the facts. And is it right that individuals make such sweeping statements on the private aspects of the affair?
Since the question doesn’t get answered, I’ll assume that it’s rhetorical (with an implicit “no") — but who else but individuals can make statements? and aren’t all journalists broad-brush writers peddling froth? Most of the commentary that I’ve seen in the Torygraph has been broadly supportive of Mr Blunkett. The case again isn’t being made by the harridans of Fleet Street, but by the press pack.
Prime Minister:
… He has been, is, will continue to be a first class Home Secretary. Last week he was tackling issues to do with antisocial behaviour, drug addiction and crime; today he is publishing proposals on identity cards. He is doing his job and he will continue to do his job with my full support.
…
Question:
Having two children by someone else’s wife, isn’t that antisocial behaviour?
Prime Minister’s Press Conference.
Asked that surely the whole point about the recent allegations surrounding David Blunkett were that they had not remained private, and instead were now very public, the PMOS clarified that he was not aware of how it had become public, but in terms of their public duties, Ministers had their responsibilities which were accountable to Parliament. Their private lives were not.
Asked if hypocrisy was one example which blurred that distinction, the PMOS said he was going to be very careful about using that word, even if it mean biting his own lip very hard.
David Blunkett/Alan Budd Review.
Back at the Indy, sisterhood is just a word to some hackettes.
Mrs Quinn has been on the receiving end of other withering and vitriolic attacks from women columnists. Apparently happy to judge her on the print evidence, The Independent’s Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, writing in the Evening Standard, demanded: “Will nobody condemn Kimberly Quinn? Even in these morally lawless times, when guilt and shame are emotions of interest only to anthropologists, the busy sexual arrangements of Mrs Quinn are quite spectacular.”
Vanessa Feltz, whose marriage dissolved under the public gaze, also applied the stripes to Mrs Quinn’s back. “By rights,” she wrote in the Daily Express, “… this unprincipled, self-serving woman should be eating the bread of affliction and pummelling on her husband’s locked door in tears and rags. If there was an ounce of justice in this world, this 21st-century harlot would be in the stocks at Piccadilly Circus, being pelted with rotten eggs by snarling yokels.”
Vanessa Feltz, never the sharpest knife in the box, seems unaware that Mrs Quinn isn’t some stay-at-home Anna Karenina, but a successful publisher who presumably buys her own clothes and food. I doubt the residents of SW1 care for being referred to as “yokels” but then, like the rest of the country, they probably don’t read the Excess.
Chris Dillow argues cogently why politicians’ characters matter.
For me, though, the hypocrisy angle is all you need. If David Blunkett was a teenage chav who played loud music down the phone to his ex-bird, he’d have an ASBO and probably a court order to stay away from the chip shop. As a minister, he’s entitled to his privacy.
These 236 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:34pm GMT Permanent link.
Friday, 3 December 2004
The Emotional, Manipulative David Blunkett »
Big Blunkett points to a story in The Register Populace asked: Do you like ID cards?
Do you welcome plans to tackle organised crime, illegal immigration, benefit fraud and national security through the introduction of ID cards?
As Big Blunkett points out:
With emotional, manipulative language like that you could replace “ID cards” with “purple porridge” and still get a majority in favour.
A YouGov poll in the Telegraph (not online) shows most of those questioned think that David Blunkett “need not resign” over his affair.
My view is closer to that of Tom Utley who starts with an anecdote showing the financial integrity of the proles and goes on to question the character of the Home Secretary.
Affairs of this kind are necessarily furtive - as witness Mrs Quinn’s habit of using the back door to his house, instead of the front. I reckon that the very last thought that would cross most MPs’ minds, in these circumstances, would be: “Ah, since I am bonking her, she must be entitled to first-class rail travel at the taxpayers’ expense.”
True, the rules have recently been relaxed to extend free rail travel to MPs’ “partners” or homosexual lovers. But how could any punctilious man regard another man’s wife as his partner?
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I ask you: is it really plausible that Mr Blunkett, a man whose entire working life is concerned with the intricacies of the law, was unaware that he was doing wrong at the time when he gave Mrs Quinn that rail warrant from London to Doncaster?
All you need to know of Mr Blunkett and the legal system: ’I know the law—I made the law’.
Some time in the third term, I’m sure they’ll pass a bill declaring ministerial infallibility, so even if a minister is shown to be wrong, he’s still right (about, you know, things like the cost of ID cards, or the existence of WMD).
These 138 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:41pm GMT Permanent link.
At Last, Revealed The Dark Side Is »
I’d quite like to get off the subject of the Home Secretary, but Peter Black AM’s blog reminded me of, and found the link for, the Daily Mirror’s story about David Blunkett’s fear of “dark forces". (How does he know they’re dark?)
One close ally of the powerful minister said: “David knows he has three or four serious enemies in Cabinet, let alone in the party.
“He’s a shrewd man toughened by decades in politics. He’d never underestimate the damage those dark forces could do to him.”
Those “dark forces” are “three or four serious enemies in Cabinet"? As Peter says, “It really is beyond parody.”
Title because it gives me a excuse to link to this splendid 14MB .mov Stars Wars III trailer in Lego.
These 81 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:40pm GMT Permanent link.
Where The Art Is »
Mick Hartley harrumphs that the art establishment is Taking the Piss according to a BBC article on “a poll of 500 art experts” who called Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain “the most influential modern art work of all time.”
So he should. Every fule kno Guernica is.
These 46 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 6:40pm GMT Permanent link.
New To The Blogroll »
I’ve added pas au-delà and theginpalace to the blogroll because they both seem like good lads.
I added Terry Teachout’s About Last Night a couple of days ago, for his great sense in quoting Reginald Hill here and Patrick O’Brian here.
I’m also quite taken with the blog of Count Olaf, but then he’s rumoured to be guilty of appalling things.
These 61 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 7:26pm GMT Permanent link.
University Politics »
Butterflies and Wheels RSS feed contained a post which read “Political views don’t show up in the hard sciences and engineering” with a link to Academia and Free Choice in the Washington Post.
Regarding George F. Will’s thesis that the leftward leanings in academia are the result of a “filtering” process to consciously or subconsciously admit only like-minded thinkers ["Academia, Stuck to the Left," op-ed, Nov. 28]:
In the hard sciences and engineering, a professor’s political views are rarely known to colleagues and are certainly not visible in his or her academic writings and research. So even if Mr. Will is correct in his insinuations, little to no bias should be found in the political leanings of professors in science departments.
Alas, the Santa Clara University study that Mr. Will clearly referred to without specifically identifying found the same high proportion of “liberals” in all college departments. Now, as insidious as liberal bias may be, it is difficult to see how it could be applied so effectively to cases in which political views are unknown and irrelevant.
(Link added for clarity.) As I was watching the “West Wing” just now, there was a trailer for the splendidly titled What We Still Don’t Know presented by Martin Rees. Rees, as well as being the Astronomer Royal writes books like Our Final Century?: Will the Human Race Survive the Twenty-first Century? which seems to me (I admit I haven’t read this one) like a political subject. The sole reviewer on Amazon seems to be Nick, who’s underwhelmed.
As Melanie Phillips never tires of telling us, the majority of scientists believe in global warming. That’s because science degrees are handed out to any candidate who can write “Meh, Me-e-h, Meh” over and over on their finals papers and have nothing to do with independent thinking. In Michael Mann’s superb The Insider Russell Crowe’s scientist is fired from a commercial job and ends up as a teacher for, essentially, a political stance. George Will’s argument that university teachers are selected by complacent academia is bull. Science lectureships are very dependent on publication, and it’s hard to get politics into the ‘structure of DNA’ or theories on pulsars, except, of course, the assumption that the universe has been around for a few billion years.
The more the right portrays itself as “godly” and demonises the left as “atheist” the more trained scientists will turn against it. You do realise that you’re reading this because a) the US military and universities built the original net servers and nodes, and b) Tim Berners-Lee, a British physicist working at CERN (funded by the EU), invented HTML. State funded scientists useful and clever.
These 300 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:17pm GMT Permanent link.
Saturday, 4 December 2004
Blunkett Press Conference »
Today, David Blunkett praised the Spanish security services. “This shows how effective ID cards are as a deterrent to terrorists,” he said.
([I]n Spain identity cards are compulsory from the age of 14 onwards…) Asked if he had plans to resign, Mr Blunkett said that he intended to remain Home Secretary until Britain was as secure as Spain.
The Home Secretary said he didn’t wish to spread alarm, but he thought that the press had a right to know that anti-terror operations were hunting two suspected conspirators, known only as Mr and Mrs Q. “The woman is particulary dangerous,” said Blunkett, “she’s been known to use the alias ‘Ms F’ and is a mistress of disguise, being able to pass herself off as ‘tall and blonde’ despite being neither.”
Asked if Tim Ireland’s decision to back the PM despite his record of calling for Blair to go had anything to do with the Home Office replacing the blogger with a brain-washed doppelganger, Mr Blunkett replied that he never commented on patently absurd nonsense.
These 174 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:52pm GMT Permanent link.
John Band May Punch Me Repeatedly In The Head For This »
Well, that’s what he threatens here. You see, I bought the Daily Mail today—the first time ever. Nosiness, not really a virtue, got the better of me. I saw that Stephen Pollard’s Blunkett biography is being serialised therein, and it’s not online.
I’ll save you the bother by giving the digested version, but first you should bear in mind the legal “battle” between David Blunkett and Kimberly Quinn.
Giving judgment in open court, Mr Justice Ryder disclosed that the Home Secretary’s former lover “does not accept” that he is the father of her son.
Stephen Pollard has some interesting observations on Mrs Quinn.
As I can testify, Quinn had used her solicitors, the Simkins Partnership, to close down coverage of the story. I had intended to publish details about her relationship with Blunkett in my biography of him [This is described as “extracted from David Blunkett by Stephen Pollard…” so why he doesn’t say “this book” I don’t know — DW] but two months ago, close to my deadline, my publisher received a letter from Simkins ‘to place you on notice of our client’s right to privacy’.
The letter warned that ‘there can be no justification for the publication of any detail concerning William Quinn in the forthcoming book.’ It added that ‘in the event the book does infringe our client’s rights, then you may anticipate that she will commence proceedings to prevent any sales or distribution of the book’.
The two paragraphs which immediately preceded these read as follows:
As for William, Blunkett has known from the beginning that the child is his, as a result of two previous DNA tests. Quinn herself was keen to have the first test — a matter of weeks after William’s birth — because she and her husband were undergoing fertility treatment at the time the child was conceived.
The second test, over a year later, was made because she, not Blunkett, wanted further confirmation. Both tests showed that Blunkett was indeed the father. He has now said that he is willing to undergo another test, but (as we shall see) for very different reasons to those previously presented in the media.
The reason is to get a legally binding test which will guarantee him access to his son. Pollard must feel on very strong ground here, because he has indeed mentioned William, he’s described Blunkett and Fortier going on holiday (without her husband) twice (which makes some of Mr Quinn’s position look wilfully ignorant), and he’s revealed that the Quinns were “undergoing fertility treatment” which seems to me to cross Simkins’ client’s “right to privacy.” William’s middle name is apparently Sanders — he’s named after Blunkett’s paternal grandfather, which is an awfully big tribute to a family friend. Just as the Telegraph lost the George Galloway libel action because it accused him of treason and because the documents they ‘found’ were always suspect, I wonder if Mr Pollard isn’t leaving himself open to a libel action: not from Mrs Quinn whom I trust he describes accurately, but from Mr Quinn who is having his marital arrangements dissected in the press.
It is instructive to look at this as a masterclass in spin. From the outset, [Kimberly] Quinn has been portrayed as the victim, a naive American at sea in the high-stakes world of politics and at the mercy of the dark arts of a hardened politician.
Yet newspaper coverage suggests that it is Quinn’s ‘friends’ who have complicated matters at every stage, smothering the real story with misleading impressions of events.
I think we can read this as a masterclass in character assassination. Mrs Quinn now appears to deny that her son is also Blunkett’s despite having had two paternity tests. (And what did she tell her husband about that middle name?) She comes over — between the lines — as indecisive, possibly self-deceiving, disingenuous to the press, and very likely having misled her husband. You’d think that David Blunkett was going for custody rather than access.
These 322 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 6:30pm GMT Permanent link.
Sunday, 5 December 2004
Irony »
The Torygraph site today:
Brain in a dish can fly
A “brain”, grown from 25,000 neural cells extracted from a single rat embryo, has been taught to fly an F-22 jet simulator by scientists.
And when you click on the link?
Error with processing of xml: java.lang.Exception: Failed to process [/ElectronicTelegraph/ETJhtml/ETXml/content/news/2004/12/05/wbrain05.xml] with [/ElectronicTelegraph/ETJhtml/ETXsl/news/newsdefault.xsl] - The element type “p” must be terminated by the matching end-tag “
”.
Computers are wonderful aren’t they?
These 16 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:04am GMT Permanent link.
Bend Sinister »
History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.
Karl Marx
It’s not just an album by The Fall, it’s a book by Nabokov.
Just don’t tell anyone at Harry’s Place.
These 20 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:24am GMT Permanent link.
Military Intelligence, An Oxymoron »
A jolly story on Yahoo! Navy Probes New Iraq Prisoner Photos.
At a minimum, the pictures violate Navy regulations that prohibit photographing prisoners other than for intelligence or administrative purposes, according to Bender, the SEALs spokesman.
All Naval Special Warfare personnel were told that prior to deployment, he said, but “it is obvious from some of the photographs that this policy was not adhered to.”
It’s also in the Geneva Convention, but who cares about that? (Except when we’re howling about the barbarous Iraqis of course.) At least one SEAL didn’t take any of those regulations in.
An Associated Press reporter found more than 40 of the pictures among hundreds in an album posted on a commercial photo-sharing Web site by a woman who said her husband brought them from Iraq after his tour of duty. It is unclear who took the pictures, which the Navy said it was investigating after the AP furnished copies to get comment for this story.
But then the wife isn’t too bright either.
The wife said she was upset that a reporter was able to view the album, which includes family snapshots. Hundreds of other photos depict everyday military life in Iraq, some showing commandos standing around piles of weapons and waving wads of cash.
The images were found through the online search engine Google. The same search today leads to the Smugmug.com Web page, which now prompts the user for a password. Nine scenes from the SEAL camp remain in Google’s archived version of the page.
I’d be so upset if I posted pictures on the internet and someone I didn’t even know saw them.
These 70 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:53pm GMT Permanent link.
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? »
I do. Suddenly, I’ve changed my mind about “super casinos.” Bring ‘em on! (Exit singing, “Nice work if you can get it.")
These 22 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:53pm GMT Permanent link.
Lessons For Tony, Yoda Has »
So I bought the trilogy from Fopp today.
Yoda: I am wondering, why are you here?
Luke: I’m looking for someone.
Yoda: Looking? Found someone, you have, I would say, hmmm?
Luke: Right…
Yoda: Help you I can. Yes, mmmm.
Luke: I don’t think so. I’m looking for a great warrior.
Yoda: Ohhh. Great warrior. [laughs and shakes his head] Wars not make one great.
Tony Blair take note, eh? And:
Yoda: Yes, a Jedi’s strength flows from the Force. But beware of the dark side. Anger, fear, aggression; the dark side of the Force are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will, as it did Obi-Wan’s apprentice.
Luke: Vader… Is the dark side stronger?
Yoda: No, no, no. Quicker, easier, more seductive.
Luke: But how am I to know the good side from the bad?
Yoda: You will know… when you are calm, at peace, passive. A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack.
All the morality you need, I think. Yes, mmmm.
These 23 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:27pm GMT Permanent link.
Monday, 6 December 2004
Regression To The Norm »
Norm wrote to me this morning to tell me that I had the wrong end of the stick. I’m happy to be corrected here.
Norm points us to a wise article on, ahem, women without men:
A SCIENCE fiction novel in which a totalitarian state forces females to have loveless sex with men and forbids them to own property or have jobs, has emerged as one of the books that women find most life-changing.
Silly girlies!
The Handmaids Tale, a 1986 satire by the Canadian author Margaret Atwood, is one of the top 10 novels that transformed women’s lives according to a poll by Woman’s Hour listeners on Radio 4.
“Canadian” is BBC for “communist”. Don’t worry people, it’s not infectious over the wibblenet! Unlike AIDS and homosexuality which are of course.
Women as Karl Marx knew should be weak. Women! Submit now! You have the choice of Osama bin Laden or inheritor of Karl Marx Norm Geras.
These 135 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:10am GMT Permanent link.
And Another Thing »
The Top 100 list included:
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
OK v.v. dubious.
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
I’ve attempted this three times, still old Leo taught me more than every British novelist put together with the bits I swallowed.
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
A big fave of the internet, so I’m told.
The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
Bloody great.
I missed a book which someone I cared about was reading.
Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Both fun stuff.
Catcher In The Rye by JD Salinger
If I were minded to shoot John Lennon, this would be the book I’d carry. Even if I weren’t, still genius. With books like this around, I can’t write.
Crime And Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The best novel ever? Not according to stuffed-shirt Vladimir Nabokov who famously gave it a “B-”. OK the second half drags, but it’s the best ‘moral’ book ever.
Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin
Dune by Frank Herbert
The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood
Emma by Jane Austen
The first of those is the best science fiction novel I’ve ever read. Dune is shit; I don’t know what it’s doing here, and I’ve read the whole series. Margaret Atwood and Jane Austen are possibly the best writers in any language, ever. There’s some guy called “Shakespeare” but he may be mythical.
The Grapes Of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The novel of the last century. Whatever “left” is, is contained therein.
Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Only a woman could think “42” was the “Ultimate answer” to the question of “Life, the Universe, and Everything.” We men know better.
Kinflicks by Lisa Alther
A beautiful book. Wrong on some points, but we are made of star-stuff.
Lady Chatterley’s Lover by DH Lawrence
Wee David was the best British writer since Will.
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Another book I never finished. Still Ford Madox Ford and Joseph Conrad both knew it by heart. (I named my unborn child Ford Madox; this is where a sick sense of humour gets you.)
War And Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Perhaps the best novel ever.
So, some lapses of taste, but the good stuff, contrary to the proverb, rises to the top. Women, whatever men may try to say, have just about everything that makes live good. This is a man’s world, but it would be nothing without a woman or a girl … As the wise man said.
These 315 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:56am GMT Permanent link.
Wednesday, 8 December 2004
Breaking News! Common Sense Too Much To Expect Of Politicians Shock »
Well dur. What a surprise. Comment is superfluous.
These 8 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:32pm GMT Permanent link.
Thursday, 9 December 2004
A Message For John Redwood »
Walking home just now, I passed a few young kids in the street. 3 boys and two girls, I think. One of the girls called out, “’Scuse me, sir,” and I thought she was going to ask for a cigarette, but kids never say “Sir” they say “Mate.” “I’m only twelve, and I’ve got three little ones,” she continued in a Cockney accent to gladden the heart of Dick Van Dyke’s elocution teacher. “We’re orl on benefits,” added a lad in an accent similarly wide of Bow Bells. Then they all fell about laughing.
I’ve no idea what this meant. That’s not going to stop me reading morals into it though. First, that kids in Cardiff clearly think it the South of England which is the home of teenage pregnancies and benefits spongers, not, as the erstwhile Welsh Secretary believed, Wales.
Second, that whatever our professed intentions, we all discriminate against outsiders.
These 152 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 7:12pm GMT Permanent link.
Triumph Over Philosophy »
Philosophy easily triumphs over past ills and ills to come, but present ills triumph over philosophy.
La Rouchefoucauld
Will Rubbish is down in the dumps. He’s a good lad, so leave a comment or send him an email; just don’t ask what’s wrong, as “it’s none of your bloody business.”
On a happier note, it’s not often that someone I know appears in the news pages of the Daily Telegraph (not without “Wanted: Dead or Alive” chiz chiz) so I was pleasantly surprised to see Anne Donald’s photo on page 2. Anne’s story isn’t particularly pleasant, though last time I saw her she was very positive about chemotherapy, and she’s blessed with the sort of nature which doctors say makes full recovery far more likely. Good for the NHS, etc.
A rather strange take on the “look on the bright side” front was on the front page of the Telegraph this morning £28,000 truffle rots in fridge. I wasn’t sure at first (I’m still not) if it was intentionally funny or not. I hope this was on purpose.
Mr Cassini said the chef, Andy Needham, had now buried the truffle in his back garden with full honours.
He said: “If I was a truffle, I would be happy to have been dug out of the ground, made famous then returned to the ground.”
Then there’s a leader on the fungus.
Last month, a coalition of the willing believed to have included Gwyneth Paltrow and Roman Abramovich stumped up £28,000 to help a favourite restaurant, Zafferano, acquire at auction a white truffle of fabulous consequence. It was brown on the outside, weighed nearly two pounds, and resembled an enormous knobbly potato. Contributors to the bid were to feast at the restaurant on dishes perfumed with this ambrosial fungus. Now, as we report today, they have been thwarted. Chef went on holiday, took the keys to the truffle cabinet with him, and the truffle rotted. It was returned, with ceremony, to the ground.
“Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,/And waste its sweetness on the desert air.” Thomas Gray’s lines — though ill-adapted to the musty and secretive world of the truffle — seem to acquire a poignant resonance in this case. But perhaps it was, nevertheless, for the best. The truffle — however delicious, however headily redolent of the genitals of the most attractive of female pigs — could never quite have lived up to the idea of the truffle. Its deliciousness is in the mind, not on the palate. Our celebrity gourmets have nosed the matchless champagne of anticipation without ever having to sip the sour cava of fulfilment.
That is what the fox said of the grapes which were out of his reach. And it’s total rubbish.
These 187 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 7:39pm GMT Permanent link.
Turner Different Corner »
We all have favourite cartoonists, and Nicholas Garland in the Telegraph is one of mine. I think it’s to the paper’s credit that he goes against the editorial grain so much of the time. As they don’t have permanent links to cartoons, here’s yesterday’s. If you don’t understand, the New York Times should help.
These 55 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 8:05pm GMT Permanent link.
Clothes Maketh The Man »
As Damian rightly says, the efforts of politicians are often serious and intended for the best. It’s just that as I linked to yesterday the story about bullying of anti-bullying children was so predictable.
As any fule kno, anything which makes a child stand out makes them a target. And a campaign based around a plastic writstbands (a fine tactic for raising money for cancer treatments) just looks cheap and nasty. (A proper journalist would work in “the government did the cheap, the bullies did the nasty” here.)
I suppose the idea had something of Zimbardo behind it: if children wore even cheap plastic bands identifying themselves as “anti-bullying” they’d then live up to the identity. Great for method actors, unconvincing for public policy.
I can believe that uniforms can make research students ham up “baddie” personas. I don’t think that they make anyone act well.
These 147 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 8:21pm GMT Permanent link.
Square Fellow »
Like Will, I’m deeply unchuffed. Here’s a sad story.
These 9 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 8:59pm GMT Permanent link.
Wrong Again »
I posted a comment to this (thoughtful, as usual) piece by Anthony Wells on Frank Field. After I thought for a bit, I considered posting again, or commenting again. The gist of what I would have said would have run like this.
- Labour will have a reduced majority next time round.
- Some current ministers are either “exhausted” or have been revealed as “lacking in talent”;
- The pool with be smaller in 2005
- Frank Field is popular with the conservative press and certain bloggers, something Millbank is always aware of;
- Frank Field has an intellectual base and a sincerity few MPs (of any party) can match;
- Frank Field has a very safe seat;
I’d have gone on to conclude that Mr Field was angling for “on-message” respectability and a cabinet post in the third Labour term.
Then along comes Yob culture ‘fuelled by Labour mums policy’. I’m an ass, but an ass with the sense to keep schtum.
These 159 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:17pm GMT Permanent link.
I Feel Persecuted »
I am the one, Orgasmatron, the outstretched grasping hand
My image is of agony, my servants rape the land
Obsequious and arrogant, clandestine and vain
Two thousand years of misery, of torture in my name
Hypocrisy made paramount, paranoia the law
My name is called religion, sadistic, sacred whore.I twist the truth, I rule the world, my crown is called deceit
I am the emperor of lies, you grovel at my feet
I rob you and I slaughter you, your downfall is my gain
And still you play the sycophant and revel in your pain
And all my promises are lies, all my love is hate
I am the politician, and I decide your fate.I march before a martyred world, an army for the fight
I speak of great heroic days, of victory and might
I hold a banner drenched in blood, I urge you to be brave
I lead you to your destiny, I lead you to your grave
Your bones will build my palaces, your eyes will stud my crown
For I am Mars, the god of war, and I will cut you down.
Orgasmatron, Motorhead
Damian laughs and so does Eric, but now Jamie adds:
Jedi Knights want nothing more than to seduce your twelve year old daughter. Jedi Knights smell of wee.
I think that I said on the 2001 census form that my religion was “Jedi Knight” so it’s nice to know that David Blunkett will defend me. (Guess my spiritual beliefs from the epigraph if you can.) All against me, you are.
These 52 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:46pm GMT Permanent link.
Blunkett Wins ID Card Argument »
Madrid-style attack averted in London, says police chief.
Every day I thank God that we have ID cards and those Spaniards in the works don’t.
These 25 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:12pm GMT Permanent link.
Friday, 10 December 2004
Things We Know We Know And Choose To Lie About »
Donald Rumsfeld caught in flat out lie. However, the money quote from the original Bloomberg article is this:
The main reason there isn’t enough armor is because the military has underestimated its own needs, said Meghan Keck, spokeswoman for Senator Evan Bayh, an Indiana Democrat. Bayh wrote a letter to Rumsfeld in October calling for a more accurate estimate of Humvee needs.
They underestimated because the Rumsfeld’s yes men are so stupid that they think that terrorists take all their ideas from Tom Clancy novels. But what if they don’t? Suppose Osama bin Laden really does have sharks with lasers on their heads? Or he’s on a secret island and recreating dinosaurs? Will there be in ID card scheme for velociraptors? Will the government produce a booklet on what to do if a Tyrannosaurus attacks you?
These 92 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:51pm GMT Permanent link.
Boris Tells It Like It Is »
Boris Johnson interviews Lord Butler of Brockwell with unconcealed admiration. (Not an opinion shared by Prime Minister Thatcher of the then Sir Robin, as I recall.)
In a way that is both inspiring and exhausting, Lord Butler of Brockwell, 66, has all the manly virtues. He took a first in Greats. He has a rugby blue, and he does not bother to list either distinction in his Who’s Who entry because he also possesses the virtue of restraint. He has consecrated his career to the impartial service of government, Tory or Labour, and all that time he never offered a single public opinion about the way that government was carried on.
The glow-worm politicians came and went, with their ludicrous antics and slogans, and Butler was there to pick up the pieces. He buttled on and he buttled for Britain. He was there in the Cabinet long before Thatcher was slain, and he was still there, trusted and admired, after Blair came to power.
Ah, Boris not only uses “buttled” twice in one sentence, he even observes ” … I realise, as the evening starts to rub its back against the window panes of Doughty Street” (a misquotation from here). Who but a man recently sacked as a front-bench spokesman could refer to “glow-worm politicians … with their ludicrous antics and slogans"?
It’s not until we get to the third page (on the online version) that the former civil servant lets rip.
’I would be critical of the present government in that there is too much emphasis on selling, there is too much central control and there is too little of what I would describe as reasoned deliberation which brings in all the arguments.’
If you were Blair what would you do about that?
’I think I would restore open debate in government at all levels up to the Cabinet. The Cabinet now — and I don’t think there is any secret about this — doesn’t make decisions.’
But wasn’t that also the case under Mrs Thatcher? ‘She was much more formal about this than her reputation is. She certainly wanted to get her own way, and she was very dominant, but she certainly took the view, as Harold Wilson did, that important decisions should be taken by Cabinet.
’I think what tends to happen now is that the government reaches conclusions in rather small groups of people who are not necessarily representative of all the groups of interests in government, and there is insufficient opportunity for other people to debate, dissent and modify.’
This agrees with David Blunkett’s views on Tony Blair as reported by Stephen Pollard in his biography which was serialised in the Mail this week. From Monday’s paper (not online; p20, third column):
” … And Gordon [Brown] only respects people who stand up to him.”
This contrasts him with Blair, who doesn’t like being stood up to.
Good for Gordon. I’m not much of a fan of dialectic per se, but argument is the only test of logic, and logic is the only test of facts.
I seem to remember that John Major first came to Thatcher’s attention when he argued with her. And in last week’s ‘The West Wing’ new boy Bill Bailey was tested on speaking the truth to power. (He failed.) But then the fictional President Bartlett and the real Baroness Thatcher are made of sterner stuff than happy-clappy trendy vicars.
These 224 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:37pm GMT Permanent link.
God's Own Country? »
The Creator, if He exists, has a special preference for beetles
I’ve take my eye off the ‘Proud of Britain’ site, but a big hello to Kate in Coventry for her suggestion. “The Beetles” A proud British entomologist in the making!
These 30 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 5:05pm GMT Permanent link.
Sunday, 12 December 2004
Conspiracy Theory »
An old wound reopens. Not the wound we were told it was.
These 12 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:47am GMT Permanent link.
Kicking When He's Down »
Stephen Pollard is something of a fan of the Sunday Torygraph’s Matthew d’Ancona. (See here.)
I’ve appreciated Mr d’Ancona’s intelligence without being persuaded to hold him in the same regard as Mr Pollard does. Still, Don’t kick others when you’re down, Mr Blunkett is nothing less than a treat.
Paragraph 467, subsection (1) vii, of Lord Hutton’s inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly had no special constitutional significance, but, politically, it fizzed. This was the precise moment that the journalists in the room started to snigger, as his Lordship suggested, in grave tones, that John Scarlett, then the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, might just, conceivably, without realising it, have been gently coaxed into ever so slightly exaggerating the Iraqi threat, by the fact that every senior figure in Downing Street was badgering him to do so. It was a bit like saying that Stalin “subconsciously influenced” his underlings to give Trotsky a hard time.
He goes on to condemn the lack of nuance in Hutton as having the effect of condemning all subsequent “enquiries” (my scare quotes, but read on, they’re inevitable) as “whitewashes.”
Even more dubious was the deployment of senior Home Office officials in negotiations between Mr Blunkett and Mrs Quinn as their relationship was drawing to a bitter close. It is not disputed that on August 13, at her lawyer’s office, Mrs Quinn met Mr Blunkett’s private secretary, Jonathan Sedgwick, and the Home Office’s head of news, John Toker. What, precisely, was said there is still hotly contested. Mrs Quinn tells friends that Mr Toker urged her to authorise a statement declaring her marriage to be over. Mr Blunkett’s spokesman vehemently denies this. The Home Office insists that the two officials were present at Mrs Quinn’s request and in their lunch hour - which is odd, since the meeting was held at 2pm. Two days later, the News of the World revealed that Mr Blunkett was having an affair with an - as yet unnamed - married woman. It must be asked: what, if any, connection was there between the meeting and this newspaper report? Were the two men helping Mrs Quinn, or subtly threatening her? And what were senior officials of Her Majesty’s Government doing there in the first place? These are questions which Sir Alan is not addressing in any shape or form. But a minute of the meeting exists. Sooner or later, this riddle will be solved.
Per my last post, will there be other civil servants showing up under bridges with their wrists slashed and a curious lack of blood?
Don’t forget Blair is pallsy-wallsy with Silvio “I’m innocent” Berlusconi the man who appoints fascists to his cabinet. And they’re capable of anything.
See here for another lesson.
These 132 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:18am GMT Permanent link.
Belle Waring Is Not A Bloodthirsty Lunatic Or Anything »
I’m with Belle here. I don’t think the link she gives tells the story adequately so I put “Staff Sgt Johnny M Horne Jr” into Google news and this Scotsman account seems fairer.
The charges relate to the killing on August 18 of a 16-year-old Iraqi found in a burning truck with severe abdominal wounds sustained during clashes in Baghdad’s Sadr City — an impoverished neighbourhood that was the scene of fierce fighting between US forces and Shiite rebels loyal to anti-US cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
A criminal investigator had said during an earlier hearing that the soldiers decided to kill him to “put him out of his misery”.
The kid’s been shot up, he’s probably got smoke inhalation and burns. That sounds like a humanitarian act to me. I’ve always understood that’s how soldiers treated their comrades.
These 85 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:03pm GMT Permanent link.
Khalid Mahmood Is An Arse »
Commenter Frank on John B’s site linked to the New Humanist where Khalid Mahmood, the Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, “argues that the proposed ‘incitement to religious hatred’ law is required to prevent Muslims from being hurt by ‘abusive’ speech and writing” on BBC Radio 4.
His words are on this MP3 file.
Khalid Mahmood: Well this law is not just needed now. This law became a real issue when the Salman Rushdie affair came into light. And there’s a huge amount of hurt that was felt by a lot of the Muslim communities. And the fact that they felt that they had no recourse …
Interviewer [interupting] So if we had this law, we’d have been able to ban the “Satanic Verses"?
KM: Well, what the scholars who’ve looked at the book at the time wanted was some editing of the very, very few minimal [?] amount of paragraphs within that which were just purely abusive …
Int: But is there not a difference between being abusive about a religion and inciting hatred?
KM: Well no; those two things apply, because what you do is by abusing, by being abusive about it is you actually incite those people and therefore those people go out in the street and take action, and therefore you’re inciting so the one follows from the other.
I’ve read the book; when I lived in London I used to see Michael Foot (who reviewed it in the Grauniad) walking his dog on Hampstead Heath. If anyone has photos of the former Labour leader flaying hapless imams with his walking stick having been “incited to go out in the street and take action” I’d be very happy to publish them here.
What. An. Arse.
These 120 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:50pm GMT Permanent link.
Talkin' About My Generation »
No matter how many times you save the world, it always manages to get back in jeopardy again! I feel like the maid; “I just cleaned up this place! Can’t you keep it clean for ten minutes!”
Mr Incredible
Norm observes that “Martin Jacques is sounding old” and so is Paul Morley in today’s Torygraph (not online, as far as I can find). His piece is so dominated by a sadly sweet archive photo of the original Band Aid crowd in the studio that reading it online without the scene being set by a nostalgic picture would be a different experience. In the picture, no one is really smiling; Bob Geldof is showing some teeth, but his eyes are closed and he’s sort of abstracted; there’s a black guy I can’t put a name to in the back who looks quite pleased, but that’s it for smiles. Simon le Bon looks like a schoolboy miming at assembly (that could just be the vicissitude of the camera shutter catching a full throated yodel at a gasp for breath); Bono wears a mullet and a hat, and looks self-conscious as well he might; Sting has the just-above-the-earlobe haircut which always suited Michael Heseltine better; Paul Weller could be waiting for a bus; closest to the camera is a Banarama (I think she’s Siobhan, but I wouldn’t stake money) with skin as clear as sunlight and hair that lost a fight with a hurricane. All look irresistably gorgeous as only 20 year old images of youth can to those from whom brightness has fallen. Turning away, the afterimage on my retina has added nimbi to all of them.
An inset picture of the current Band Aid choir shows the girls with their eyes closed as if faking an orgasm and the blokes with the sort of smiles I haven’t seen since the video for “Last Christmas.”
And Paul Morley sounds old. But how could he not after that?
In its original 1984 form Do They Know It’s Christmas was a heartfelt hybrid of jolly Christmas nonsense and agitated earnestness. …
The original Do They Know It’s Christmas was not so much a protest song, more a series of exhibitionist gestures and youthful pleadings embedded in a spirit of Christmas that is as much Dickens and Cliff as it is Dylan and Lennon.
The original was “exhibitionist” but it was also “heartfelt.” The people who sang really thought they were making a difference. Paul Weller was being very earnestly political at the time. Sting was namechecking Russian writers in song lyrics. (He even used a Shakespeare quotation in an album title, but I’ve still to punch him in the gob for that.) They thought they were knowing. Youth being entirely wasted on the young, that “knowingness” was to wise like a kitten’s hiss is to a tiger’s growl.
Something hard-nosed and knowing has replaced the original, stirring 1980s naivety. … It’s almost as if there’s a feeling that nothing will change, however much money is raised, but let’s go through the motions for the sake of appearances.
That paragraph drags with projections. Paul Morley and I now know that nothing ever changes, but we still go through the motions.
Perhaps that’s the difference between the two versions. Back then it didn’t seem that pop singers were just doing a job. Now it seems clear that being a popstar is just a job, where you have specific tasks to perform, like singing on charity records, and looking as if you mean it.
Perhaps I just miss those bells.
Perhaps I’m just old, but he’s right. The original crew had to be motivated by Geldof, and with their guards down because they believed their guards were up (how many people have you known burnt by love while saying that they were only fooling around?) thought they were saving the world for all time.
These 448 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:14pm GMT Permanent link.
Monday, 13 December 2004
Oh, Please (yet Again) »
What do you say to a sociology graduate?
I’ll have fries with that, please.
I think I’ve finally found a common thread among my favourite bloggers: they all read (either tense) science fiction. Sci-Fi (to the snobs, like me, “SF") isn’t just about events “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away” — it’s also about alternative possibilities.
In the Guardian yesterday Dylan Evans salute[d] Frank Furedi’s Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone? which wore the sentence
According to others, our grandchildren will curse us for having deprived them of all contact with the best that has been thought and said in the world.
Call me a materialist, but it strikes me as entirely likely that the “best that has been thought and said in the world” so far has been blinkered by religion and other forms of ignorance. It seems entirely legitimate to me to suppose that new forms of thought began 99 years ago in 1905 when modern physics was discovered. The ending of 2001 supposes what Thomas Kuhn was to call five years later a “paradigm shift.” Many otherwise sensible people thought that Freud overthrew all previous psychological thought. I lean toward “cognitive psychology” and believe that Freud was a fraud (his pupil Jung would have made something of the near-homonym). I believe that this century will unveil the world as it is: free us from the cave or whatever you believe in. Sartre was suspicious of Shakespeare because he was antic; and had the idea that all that was old ought to be destroyed. This century will finally see us over the wall, and kicking away the ladder as Wittgenstein had it. For the first time, we will be free of history.
Furedi bemoans the bureaucratic procedures that the government has imposed on universities and colleges which measure performance according to criteria that satisfy the demands of external auditors for numerical data, but which have little to do with genuine learning. And he skilfully identifies the central problem with this audit culture — namely, that it does not merely measure, but also radically transforms how educational institutions operate in ways that are mostly negative.
I suppose the Queen doesn’t ask her sprogs what they think their degrees are supposed to be good for, but most working parents do care if their offspring get a job after university. Leonardo and Michelangelo, rivals in everything, were both men of the world and men of business. Frank Furedi is Professor of Sociology. The government is wrong in its attack on universities, which has seen the death of Physics and Chemistry departments. Still an “instrumental” approach is what the taxpayers (who pay for the enterprise) want. Cut the fat! Culture is great, I admit. Chekov was a doctor. Dickens didn’t go to university. Nor did Shakespeare. Nor did Samuel Johnson (the “Doctor” was an honorary law degree). Keats studied medicine. Pinter was an actor. I could go on.
We need nuclear power. It’s the only deterrent. And it’s the solution to global warming. We don’t need sociologists. Or English departments. Our best writers got by without them. (Saul Bellow and Kurt Vonnegut, the only writers likely to remembered in 50 years, both studied anthropology.)
“My son the doctor” will always be a prouder boast than “My son the cultural critic”.
Go Charles Clarke! Let Mr Furedi (I know he’s a prof — but of sociology; he’ll always be Mr to me) fight on the free market.
Let a 1000 science departments bloom. The arts can look after themselves. Mozart learned from his dad. Scorcese learned by watching movies on TV. Universities are complete crap at teaching these things.
These 498 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:46am GMT Permanent link.
Know Your Onion »
Matt at Pas Au-Delà links to a Call For Papers: Theories/Practices of Blogging for the journal Reconstruction.
I know a spoof site when I see one. It needs to be a lot funnier if it wants to compete with The Onion though.
These 42 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:19pm GMT Permanent link.
Tuesday, 14 December 2004
Peter Lilley Is A Good Lad »
Not the easiest thing to type, I know. When Mark at Blognor Regis called him “one of the sensible ones” I thought he had to mean Peter Bottomley (whom I’ve got time for). Still he’s broken ranks with the Tory party (in reality, with Michael Howard’s views) on a matter of principle. So good for him.
Chris Lightfoot asks what kind of person needs two names?
Chris spells out lots of reasons for rejecting identity cards; he’s especially good on the principled objections. Apart from the government having a terrible record for implementing computer systems, and the cost of retina scanners and fingerprint readers being likely to soar when their users realise that for the system to work they need lots of backups and constant maintenance, there’s also the fact that people move house regularly (once in every seven years on average, I believe) not to mention theft and loss — and the government’s never been too quick with passport or driving licence renewals.
Spain has ID cards to go with its exemplary record on fighting terrorism and the integrity of former prime minister José María Aznar—another pal of “Honest” Tony.
These 191 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 6:40pm GMT Permanent link.
Ho Ho Ho »
I hate Christmas. I like the scene in Garden State where Natalie Portman’s family have a Christmas tree up in the fall because they didn’t take it down from last year. (I was going to say that the trailer is much better than the film; but the pervasive ennui leaves a really strong aftertaste which is both familiar and comforting.)
Anyway, because the mighty Giblets (all bow down before him!) redesigned his blog thing; I’ve tinkered with the style sheet. (And I rather like the result, if I say so myself.)
And here’s a blurry photo of a framed picture of the immortal Nye Bevan I took in a pub last week. (If you really must know, it’s in the Cayo which is still named after William Julian Cayo-Evans who, whatever his admirers may think, was still a terrorist. (I was going to say that the Guardian—along with all decent people—will tut-tut about a pub being named after a thug, but they’re removed the text from the relevant link.) Nye would have had little time for a poncey Fauntelroy like Cayo-Evans, I’m sure.)
These 185 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:12pm GMT Permanent link.
'Ello, 'Ello, 'Ello, It's The PC Plodders »
Michael J. Totten set himself Against PC Left and Right, brave as a Chinese student staring down a tank. (I think I found this comedy masterpiece through Pandagon, but it may have been some other cynic.) Here’s the Weird Beard:
Indeed Hollywood has long walked on eggshells regarding the topic of Islamic fundamentalism. The film version of Tom Clancy’s “The Sum of All Fears” changed Palestinian terrorists to neo-Nazis out of a desire to avoid offending Arabs or Muslims. The war on terror is a Tinsel Town taboo, even though a Hollywood Reporter poll showed that roughly two-thirds of filmgoers surveyed would pay to see a film on the topic.
Now, I can’t speak for Hollywood, but last I heard it was a free market. You don’t like the studios? Neither did George Lucas. Ditto Quentin Tarantino. The totalitarian mindset really did for their ideas, which is why you’ve never heard of either of them. (I’m never sure what ‘PC’ means, but I understand that it’s against the commercial exploitation of women. Never did the porn industry any harm.) I do know the BBC. I contribute to it, like most other British residents. Norm has his own thoughts on the BBC’s funding: I’m more against the poll tax nature of the licence fee. Still and all, the state-funded [insert “biased” “nannying” or other adjectives to suit] BBC produces Spooks, which has featured Islamic terrorists (they were the baddies if you need to be told; there was, quite correctly IMO, a Muslim “goodie” as well) and, last night, Iraqi terrorists too. Given that a Hollywood film can (local laws allowing) attack Muslims, and Muslims don’t have to see it, while nearly everyone in this country pre-pays for the BBC, showing a minority in such a light is far more controversial for the Beeb.
They got it right. Last night’s script was unequivocally anti-fascist (as a character used that F-word; and of course the villains had speeches — it’s called drama) without turning Muslims into BNP effigies.
These 265 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:44pm GMT Permanent link.
Leave No Child Behind »
Found via the Panda’s Thumb.
This message specially for the Rt Hon Tony Charles Lynton Blair, Esq, MP, PM, etc.
The truth shall set you free. No wonder TB’s against it.
These 32 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:15pm GMT Permanent link.
Wednesday, 15 December 2004
Intolerance And Judging Others »
He is a liberal, and therefore tends to intolerance and judging others.
T. S. Eliot's observation on meeting Stephen Spender, quoted by Marc Mulholland.
It had to happen: a Torygraph leader I agree with. Freedom of speech means being free to give offence.
Until we hear the case against Mr Griffin — if any is to be brought to court — there are three observations that ought to be made. First, why did the West Yorkshire police think it necessary to send four plain-clothes policemen to arrest the BNP leader at dawn at his farmhouse on the Welsh border, in the week before Christmas? Here is a man who has never made any secret of his longing to be arrested, and to have his martyr’s day in court.
The “if any is to be brought to court” is pertinent. In the Home Office’s Incitement to Religious Hatred FAQ we are reminded of how successful the law has been so far.
We do not expect a large number of prosecutions, just as there have not been a large number of prosecutions under incitement to racial hatred. In the past 3 years 84 cases have been referred to the CPS, of which 4 proceeded to prosecution, of which 2 resulted in convictions. However, the offence has provided a powerful response and a strong deterrent to the conduct of racist and other extremist organisations and individuals.
I’m happy to believe that the police got this right — there really were 84 cases of “incitement to racial hatred.” The CPS disagreed, rejecting 80 of those, and the courts only convicted two.
Freedom of speech means nothing, after all, if it is taken to mean only the freedom to express views approved by the Government, or those that nobody finds offensive. If the term is to mean anything, it must surely include the freedom to give offence.
There is clearly a cast-iron justification for our ancient laws against incitement to violence.
Incitement to violence should be a crime. No matter against whom — muslims, abortionists, catholics, stem cell researchers, vivisectionists, asylum seekers, gypsies, paedophiles.
If Khalid Mahmood is to be believed, the new law could have been used to bowdlerise “The Satanic Verses” despite the violence which followed its publication was entirely on the part of those seeking to suppress the book.
If there’s one outcome I don’t want, it’s Mr Griffin, having washed his neck and donned a suit for his day in court, punching the air and giving jubilant interviews. With the prosecution record under the present law, that seems all too likely.
These 189 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:30am GMT Permanent link.
Better Than IPods »
When two people you trust recommend the same thing, it’s time to listen. Nick Barlow likes Michael Bywater.
So does Andrew Marr.
Here are some things about Michael Bywater. He is not a friend of mine. We share no publisher, no agent and no agenda, either. We don’t walk in the same park and, if he has a dog, it hasn’t so much as sniffed the hindquarters of the dog I don’t have in the first place. He works, if you can call it work, for a newspaper that appears to regard me as persona non grata.
These are suspicious times: this is the necessary preliminary to stating, baldly (alas), that Bywater’s book Lost Worlds is the best thing about — better than iPods, the first rime of winter, salty porridge, Paula Rego, chocolate bars dusted with cinnamon and the Dandy annual.
Mr B writes so well it makes you want to cut your throat with a butter-knife, and yet so enticingly that you keep putting off the fatal act until you’ve finished the page, and the next one, too. You won’t get a better tip from this column all week.
Good to know that Andy is an admirer of Paula Rego too. But “better than iPods” isn’t that some kind of sacrilege?
These 44 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:57am GMT Permanent link.
To Fast-track One Visa May Be Regarded As A Misfortune; To Fast-track Two Looks Like Carelessness »
According to the Telegraph, David Blunkett is under fire over nanny’s second visa. As this is “being investigated by Austrian officials” it looks a lot more worrying for the Home Secretary.
However, it was the fourth paragraph from the end which really struck me.
However, Bob Marshall-Andrews, the Labour MP for Medway, accused the Home Secretary of being “quite seriously unbalanced” and called for him to quit.
So I looked up Mr Marshall-Andrews on theyworkforyou.com. He’s particularly good here, on the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill.
The first matter of general importance that I want to raise is the way in which the Bill began its introduction to the House. As a criminal lawyer—by that, of course, I mean a lawyer who has dealt with crime for most of my professional life—I have a small plea: let us stop talking up professional crime and professional criminals. Let us, as a matter of practice, stop telling each other, and the people, how good those criminals are, and how effective, big and dangerous they are. It is an unhappy fact that many law enforcement agencies, and, indeed, many politicians, have a vested interest in so doing. The more powerful one’s enemy, the greater the plaudits when one succeeds and the greater the mitigation when one fails.
I particularly like the clarification of his profession, but his point—that criminals are sad, desperate, and not as organised and dangerous as we are told too often—is a good one.
Then he moves onto my current bugbear.
I shall expend a little time on the other two controversial elements of the Bill. The first is the incitement to religious hatred. I have to say that the law will have difficulty with that. The job of the law is to interpret legislation, and the better the legislation, the easier it is to interpret. But juries and magistrates will have a problem with that element. The Attorney-General will have a problem in deciding what is and what is not to be prosecuted.
At root, the matter is philosophical; there is a profound difference between hatred based on race, sex or age—all of which are thrust upon us; we have no choice—and on religion, which is not thrust upon us. Religion is a matter of choice; it is a matter of what we do. It is intolerable, and should be criminal, to incite hatred of a man or woman because of what they are, but I have grave doubts whether it should be criminal, as opposed to merely socially unacceptable, to incite hatred of someone because of what they do. Religion is what we do, not what we are. We shall have grave difficulties with those proposals.
I join with ease in the plaudits to the Home Secretary for his motives, but motives must be thought about carefully. They pave not only the route to hell but the route to extreme difficulties in enforcing the law in society.
Julian Brazier, the Conservative MP for Canterbury then interjects.
The hon. and learned Gentleman is making some strong points, based on his years of legal experience. As it is already a criminal offence to incite violence, what possible interpretation, even in principle, could a court put on the Bill as adding to the existing law? What else could it possibly mean, except people objecting to other people’s beliefs? What innocent interpretation could a court put on the measure, given that there is an existing law against incitement to violence?
Mr Marshall-Andrews responds.
The truth, which goes to the core of the argument, is that there is no interpretation. The fact is that the Attorney-General will interpret the Act in a way that is not written in statute, and bring prosecutions only when incitement is not only to hatred but also likely to cause serious violence. That is not in the Bill, but that is how it will be interpreted and it is not a happy state of affairs. I take the hon. Gentleman’s point, which is well founded.
The House of Commons is still capable of informed debate, and the bits I’ve skimmed (it’s very long) show this to be one of the better ones.
These 140 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:16pm GMT Permanent link.
So Here It Is, Merry Christmas »
I hope Nick placed a bet as he said he would here. In the last comment here “jackyerbody” still doubted he’d go before Christmas. First I heard was Blunkett on Classic FM news in the car saying that if he was ever back in government, he’d do the same again.
It feels like Christmas.
Merry Christmas, boys and girls.
These 59 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 6:57pm GMT Permanent link.
May The Force Be With You »
Han Solo: Hey, Luke… may the Force be with you.
[Luke exits. Chewie growls]
Stephen Pollard puffs his book yet again. (I should say that the bits I’ve read are informative, sympathetic, and well-written.)
“Life force” is a phrase he has often used to describe his religious beliefs. Although trained as a Methodist lay preacher, he no longer calls himself a Christian.
It is in the countryside that he feels this “life force” to be clearest. “People call it refreshing the soul. I think other people feel it, too, but because they use their visual sense so profoundly, they miss out on it. Sighted people have to look for stimulation elsewhere. And if you get bored, you can gaze out of the window. I can’t switch off. I have nothing else to ‘look’ at but my thoughts.”
The Force has little time for identification.
Stormtrooper: Let me see your identification.
Obi-Wan: You don’t need to see his identification.
Stormtrooper: We don’t need to see his identification.
Obi-Wan: These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.
Stormtrooper: These aren’t the droids we’re looking for.
Obi-Wan: He can go about his business.
Stormtrooper: You can go about your business.
Obi-Wan: Move along.
Stormtrooper: Move along… move along.
(The IMDb saved me some typing.) ID cards: good for stormtroopers; not so good for rogue droids or Jedi knights.
On a certain ignorant git, the comments to this post are priceless.
“Camp Crusader” who rejoices in the email address limpwrist@conservatives.com (don’t bet on it working) says:
Thank you, thank you, thank you! Hopefully I’ll get to thank you personally when Blunkett appears in court facing charges for fiddling travel expenses — if it’s good enough for benefit cheats it’s good enough for the ex-Home Secretary, surely?
And the more prosaic Dave T (not the Harry’s Place David T, I suspect) asks:
You’ve written a book? How interesting. Does it have pictures too?
I’m in the market for a doorstop for my father for Xmas… one which he can kick on a regular basis as he sees a certain bearded bloke and I don’t mean Santa! Your book sounds as if it might fit the bill…
The ideal present for the curmudgeon in your life.
Deck the halls! Fa-la-la-la-la! Etc.
These 103 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 8:34pm GMT Permanent link.
Bully For Them »
Damian had a very serious post on bullying. He’s mentioned before that he’s been approached as a potential parliamentary candidate, and I hope he stands. As I said earlier today, I think debate in the House of Commons is immeasurably lifted when the subject is a matter of expertise of some of the participants. Damian knows his science, and science is important to, well, everything now. We need a House with more scientists; we have enough lawyers in Parliament as it is. Damian also comes over a sound sincere guy, which makes a change from most politicians.
But that’s a side issue. I was reminded of his words by Guido Fawkes’ rather smug post just now.
Believe that and you will believe anything. Blunkett abused his position, Blunkett bullied civil servants, foreign embassies, defrauded public funds and was disingenuous in extreme.
Then there was this Telegraph story over the weekend. Macho man’ Milburn is patronising and arrogant, say his female colleagues.
A senior female minister said of Mr Milburn: “He is one of the most macho politicians around. He is laddish, he is bullying and he is arrogant. He is not my cup of tea at all. We have got to focus on women in the run-up to the election.
And there was an old Telegraph story: Civil servants quit to avoid ‘bully’ Jo Moore.
Jo Moore, the former political adviser at the Transport Department, was described yesterday as a “classic” bully with no respect for the impartiality of civil servants.
Staff at the Transport Department “voted with their feet”, by leaving rather than work with her, a Commons committee was told yesterday by Jonathan Baume, head of the First Division Association, which represents senior civil servants.
There’s a theme here. I hadn’t heard of Blunkett as a bully until I read Mr Fawkes’ post. And whether the other stories are mere right-wing newspaper spin/lies remains to be seen. I’m not even sure I buy the Alan Milburn is a bully story. (I suspect he was right and is simply as strong-willed as you would expect a minister to be.) But “bully” is a word which is attached to New Labour rather a lot.
These 228 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:08pm GMT Permanent link.
Another For The Blogroll »
I’ve been aware of Guido Fawkes for a bit, but I’ve neglected to blogroll him. Let me say that this post on Stephen Pollard is superb. (The fact that I said in my last but one post that his book is well-written and I’d add well-researched doesn’t alter the point.)
Stephen Pollard manages to interview himself in the Times about his forthcoming Blunkett book. The headline quote above is taken from the article and its completely in context, just like all the Blunkett quotes that Michael Howard threw at a squirming Blair during PMQs this week. Well I suppose Pollard interviewing himself makes a welcome change for him from writing press releases for the pharmaceutical industry dressed up as “research”. Pollard always insists on describing himself as left of centre and a Labour party member. But what left-wing opinions does he hold nowadays, apart from despising the Tories? (Which is a pretty mainstream opinion judging by the polls). He describes himself as a blood thirsty warmonger, he writes for the Express, Times, Daily Mail and he is a senior fellow at the Brussels based free market think tank the Centre for the New Europe. Last time Guido bumped into him was at the Adam Smith Institute bloggers shindig, where he seemed amongst friends.
He is positively cackling about having stuck the knife into Blunkett with great finesse. So how is he left wing?
You need to go to the post for the links, but I’ve understood Mr Fawkes to be a Tory, and I’m as bemused as him.
Guido’s immediately prior post is Poll says Blunkett should go for fast-tracking visa which is the opposite of the one Jon Snow mentioned on C4 News earlier. I don’t think the visa thing was good; but I don’t think it was all that bad. I don’t think Blunkett should have left over it. I think it’s a stain on his integrity, but an understandable one. Slagging off his colleagues was much less wise.
If I’d been asked by a pollster, “Do you think David Blunkett should go …” I’d have said “Yes, and thrice yes.” But if I’d been asked “Do you think David Blunkett shuould go over the visa?” I’d have had to have said “No.”
Short of Blair stepping in front of a speeding combine harvester, things don’t get better than this though.
These 211 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:02pm GMT Permanent link.
Yglesias Catches Flew »
I should have linked to Matt’s post on Anthony Flew earlier, but the pun was painful even to me. Now that heavyweight Jonathan Derbyshire has added his approval, the bird has flew.
These 32 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:41pm GMT Permanent link.
One Of The Problems »
One of the problems of being on the “left” is the feeling of “I ought to support them.” I see a lonely copy of the Morning Star on the last rung of the paper rack of my local shop and I feel that someone should buy it out of solidarity. (I never have.) Still, they give a very decent review to The Dictionary of Fashionable Nonsense. The first sentence is interesting.
It’s called postmodernism and, among other things, it claims that all ideas are relative, that all science is baloney and that pretty much any reality is just a “social construct.”
I’m very sympathetic to postmodernism, though I don’t agree with anything after and including the first “and.” I’d deride that as a parody but for Hak Mao’s link to Julie Bindel’s bizarre Grauniad piece. Hak Mao has a more personal interest in this than I have, but neither of us can find anything which looks like evidence or argument in favour of Ms Bindel’s position.
You just have to look at the cries for Barbie dolls and Action Men from toddlers to see how masculine and feminine traits are taught to children almost from the womb.
That could have been lifted from Peter Cuthbertson as affirmation of inveterate sexual roles. There’s no argument as to how these things are taught: merely the assertion that they must be. Many of my friends have children, and most of them are “liberal” (to my face anyway, lest I bite them, I suppose). None have anything to report other than the obstinacy of their offspring in adhering to their so-called culturally determined roles.
Ms Bindel gives her email address on the Graun website, which gives away her employer. She’s a sharp one, according to their In the news for October:
News that legal action is being considered by councillors against colleagues who gave the go-ahead for a lap-dancing club. The proposed action follows research carried out by Julie Bindel, from the University’s child and women abuse studies unit, which looked at the link between such clubs and prostitution.
I practically gave myself concussion when I slapped myself on the forehead reading that. As Bertie Wooster once ejaculated to his manservant. “Incredulous, Jeeves!” (Jeeves replied, calmly, “Incredible, sir.") Holmes would never have suspected! The connection between lap-dancing clubs and prostitution, those fiendishly clever fiendish fiends!
Prostitution a crime? Tell that to Melania Knauss.
Still the Morning Star review is one for Ophelia Benson to be proud of.
And I seem to enjoy a link from this post modernist site. (Search for ‘spoof’ — that comment wasn’t me.) I knew it wasn’t a spoof — that was the tragedy. I read the bios of contributors. None were mathematicians or scientists. All were English majors or sociologists. None had learned a thing from Alan Sokal.
I’ll submit a paper all right.
These 366 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:37pm GMT Permanent link.
Thursday, 16 December 2004
Allo Janet, Got A New Motor? Allo Janet, Got A New Motor? Allo Janet, Got A New Motor? »
Columns they’ll regret later. In at number 1! Janet Daley.
Ms Daley manages not to mention that the ID card bill is — ostensibly — Labour’s. (Though Philip Johnston disagrees.)
Those who denounce the position that Michael Howard has had to coerce some on his front bench into accepting want the party to maintain the strict libertarianism that is one (but only one) strand of the Conservative tradition. Their interpretation of civil liberties is based on the absolute right of the individual to do as he pleases provided that he causes no serious harm.
I am somewhat reminded of the lissome Olga Korbutt.
So the same people who express contempt for Mr Howard’s stand on ID cards also tend to reject outright what they see as “nanny state” policies that infringe on people’s rights to smoke in public places, or smack their children, or eat too much fat.
Not that Ms Daley has her slender pulchritude.
There is indeed a sometimes absurd tendency for government to become involved in matters that were once regarded as strictly private, such as parental discipline and individual eating habits. But it would be a mistake for any politician to assume that voters automatically see such proposals as sinister.
But, you know, those anti-gravitational flips, those spine-bending contortions … who else comes to mind?
Shorter Daley: I don’t know anything about whatever witter I’m typing, but John Howard is a great guy. Michael Howard. Whatever.
Perhaps I am at a disadvantage in not being British-born, but what shocks me is not the introduction of ID cards, but the extraordinarily lax attitude in this country toward proper identification where the need for it seems to be palpable.
What shocked me in the US was the law being brought down on a pore homeless vagrant who just happened to be trying to hitch to Paris, Texas. In Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure the eponymous author gets a tattoo of his passport in Austin. Like a guy in his thirties looks underage to even a bouncer on Sixth Street.
What we’re seeing is the opposite of delegation. Bouncers can’t use their judgement. “Yes, Tony Blair looks 50” instead they need proof that you’re not under 21 “You may be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, but how do I know you’re old enough to drink?” Nor, increasingly, can policemen. It’s like a kind of arthritis in the limbs of state, with advanced arteriosclerosis in what passes for its mind.
Finally, La Daley makes sense.
Of course, identity cards won’t stop the organised criminal or terrorist, but they will slow down the amateur benefit cheat and the opportunist abuser of asylum rules. Yes, they can be forged, but so can £10 notes and we don’t give up on paper currency.
So ID doesn’t stop crime. (I don’t accept the ‘slow down’ part.)
Most voters now believe that they will add more than they will detract from public welfare. And, in a democracy, the people’s voice rules.
Most voters haven’t been exposed to the arguments. But then the German voters in 1933 thought the Jews were vermin. And, in a democracy, the people’s voice rules.
These 257 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:29am GMT Permanent link.
Award Time »
I’m not very good at voting or nominating for awards, as I’m tempted just to recite every name I know.
Still, I’m a regular reader of Recess Monkey and I’ve taken his advice and nominated him for the Guardian’s Backbencher blog award.
I haven’t decided yet whether or not the Guardian website’s Backbencher is amusing or irritating. I do know that if she keeps printing my words I shall have to start invoicing her for doing so.
I think Backbencher’s readers deserve to be disabused of the idea that she picks up gossip in smoke-filled rooms and learn that an internet trawl passes for her research.
This may be why the Monkey is leaving his employment as an MP’s Researcher to become a political journalist.
These 90 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:45am GMT Permanent link.
Neologism »
The Guardian reports that Collins launches online dictionary to debate new words. A new word popped into my head this morning. If bleg means “To use one’s blog to beg for assistance (usually for information, occasionally for money). One who does so is a ‘blegger’. Usually intended as humorous” I suggest ‘blug’ to refer to Stephen Pollard’s practice of puffing his book on his blog.
These 65 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:02am GMT Permanent link.
Blunkett Left The Home Office A Mess »
Just got tonight’s Snow Mail. The great man in not in a good mood.
Blue smoke coming from at least my bike tyres…just been to the Home Office following this huge judgement in the House of Lords in which eight judges-to-one have voted the government’s incarceration of nine foreign prisoners without trial at Belmarsh jail and elsewhere illegal. Breaks the European Human Rights Act and virtually every tenet of English law. So I go to the Minister responsible, Hazel Blears at the Home Office. Perhaps, understandably, the Home Secretary, following Blunkett’s departure, didn’t feel up to it. Ms Blears revealed she hadn’t read the judgement. Her minder dictated that I could have three questions and that she was anyway only doing ‘clips’. That, in plain man’s language, is ‘sound bites’. In other words, one of the most critical and far reaching judgements affecting the government’s ‘war on terrorism’, a judgement in which they have been found woefully at fault, meets a response of ‘clips’. The interview at seven — a splendid insight into the relationship between the rule of law, the law and ministerial office, not to mention Parliament. Oh and of course the nine prisoners in Belmarsh top security wing and Woodhill Prison, who’ve been without trial for three years and who are still there tonight.
Might be worth watching.
These 18 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 6:12pm GMT Permanent link.
The 1952 Committee »
Nick links to the 1952 Committee of “previously pro-Tory bloggers who have decided not to vote Tory because of their support for ID cards.” Good for them. I was very unlikely to vote Tory before, and now I regard Howard as a tactical imbecile. Boris Johnson and others (perhaps including Peter Lilley) are moving toward an political stance which is intellectually defensible, in line with core Tory values, and compatible with promises to shrink the state sector (necessary if they’re serious about lowering taxes). I can’t see why anyone would support a rabble which merely echoes the present government.
I used to the think that calling Michael Howard an “opportunist” was playground vilification. Now I’d call it a bullseye.
I don’t go the whole way with libertarianism (though I’d prefer atheist libertarians over anyone from a herd of sheep) and I don’t fully agree with the proposition that all government is bad (despite the evidence being pretty strong). As Chris Lightfoot says, “The government are our servants, not our masters, and we oughtn’t to let them forget that.” Both Blair and Howard have forgotten that.
These 185 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 6:57pm GMT Permanent link.
Backstabbing Coward »
Since when was the truth unparliamentary language? Hoon thinks he can cut Scottish regiments for the same reason that Michael Howard thought he could introduce the poll tax in Scotland: that the Scots are so overwhelmingly Labour that nothing the Tories do can win seats, and nothing Labour do can lose any. The SNP look lovelier by the day.
Some Labour MPs restore my battered faith in humanity. Clarke under Fire over Detention Statement.
Charles Clarke came under fire on his first full day as Home Secretary for using a written Commons statement to react to Law Lords’ ruling that indefinite detention without trial contravenes human rights laws.
The judgment leaves in tatters emergency legislation introduced by David Blunkett in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on Washington and New York.
Not fat Charlie the Safety Elephant, obviously.
Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn (Islington N) said: “I cannot understand why the Home Secretary cannot come here and make a statement.
“If he’s able to make a written statement he ought to be able to make an oral statement.”
Mr Corbyn was more forthcoming in his criticism on C4 just now. They’re not all pod people.
If the Scotsman is right that “[t]he judgment leaves in tatters emergency legislation introduced by David Blunkett in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on Washington and New York” then Tony Blair’s letter to him is worth saving.
It is with great regret that I have accepted your resignation from the Government this afternoon.
You have been a truly outstanding Cabinet Minister as both Home Secretary and Secretary of State for Education and Employment. You have made real and lasting change to Britain.
…
As Home Secretary you led radical change and reform to rebalance the criminal justice system in favour of the victim. You delivered record numbers of police and further falls in crime. You championed the Government’s drive against anti social behaviour that has blighted too many communities in Britain for too long, helping to put respect back on our streets. And it is thanks to the tough measures you introduced on asylum that applications are down over 40% and immigration is under control.
I have always valued your friendship and your honesty. The way in which you have conducted yourself during the last few difficult weeks is a mark of your character.
You leave Government with your integrity intact and your achievements acknowledged by all. You are a force for good in British politics and can take great pride in what you have done to improve the lives of people in this country. And that is what we are in politics for.
Those ‘achievements’ are about to become an election-losing liability. 300 years of rights fucked up the arse just as if they’d been hooded detainees in Abu Ghraib.
These 164 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 7:40pm GMT Permanent link.
Stunning »
He’s gone, but I’ve surprised myself with how angry he still makes me.
This is a sublime image and the sort of thing I ought to post more often. Big government can be good. It laid the backbone of the interwebthing and it builds magnificent telescopes to take images like this. It took me a while to work out, but Io is much closer than Callisto which is why the shadows aren’t where you’d expect if you’re thinking in two dimensions.
Remember if you read the Good Book, Joshua or some other creep stopped the sun in the sky. Ergo, the sun goes round the earth. Therefore, no other heavenly bodies have satellites. Let’s have a religious hatred law, and take filth like this off our clean interwebnet. I’m sure religion is part of some people’s identity, and they need to circumcise girls in the way the Spanish need to torment donkeys and the Italians have to swap sides at least once in every war. We on the left could side with these people’s “difficult to meet needs*” as Seamus Milne suggests in the Guardian (linked from almost everywhere); then again we could decide that a teenager has the right to an education and the right to keep her reproductive organs intact and those rights trump some inadequate’s need to mutter to himself several times a day.
*"Difficult to meet needs” was in a ‘Politically Correct Dictionary’ which a flatmate of mine had in the early 90s. It was illustrated with a mugshot of Charles Manson with the caption, “Charles Manson, a person with difficult to meet needs.” I’ve been wanting to use it for yonks, and I finally found an excuse.
These 283 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:57pm GMT Permanent link.
Friday, 17 December 2004
Robert DeNiro's Waiting »
Deleted: garbage.
These 2 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:37am GMT Permanent link.
Saturday, 18 December 2004
Is There An Election Coming? »
The Labour Party seem to think so, and they ought to know. Only last month they set up a website for you, the public (or you, the brown nosing party members), to tell that what makes you gag about this country.
Readers will remember Mary from Lancashire’s entry.
I’m a pensioner; this Winter I’m going to be warmer than before. I’m proud to be British under Labour.
Like I said, is there an election coming? The Telegraph this morning claims Millions face cut in winter fuel payouts.
The future of winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners was cast into doubt last night after the Government refused to rule out major cutbacks after the election.
“Refused to rule out” is just sensible civil service jargon. Of course they won’t commit themselves to anything not explicitly in the manifesto.
Malcolm Wicks, a DWP [Department for Work and Pensions] minister, indicated in a parliamentary answer to Mr [Steve] Webb ["the Liberal Democrat MP and pensions expert who discovered the spending plans"] that the Government could not be bound to give firm commitments on the level of fuel payments beyond the “lifetime of this Parliament”.
Of course they can’t.
“The projected costs of winter fuel payments in 2006/7 and 2007/8 reflect this,” said Mr Wicks. However, information disclosed at the same time showed that the Government was able to make a commitment that spending was due to increase in 2006/7 on pensions and on giving free television licences to the over-75s.
Mr Webb said: “If they can project future spending increases in those areas, and so presumably maintain how much they pay out, why can’t they do it with winter fuel payments?”
It was this government which introduced payments, so whatever they drop by (if they drop at all) they’ll be higher than they were under the Conservatives.
The fuel payments were introduced in 1997, the first winter after Tony Blair came to power, to tackle the scandal of some pensioners being unable to afford to keep their heating on. At present about 12 million pensioners receive the payments.
Still there’s a smell about this — it’s not hard to believe that the government would raise the payments before the election and lower them afterwards. Buying votes? Shurely not.
These 151 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:09am GMT Permanent link.
Strinker! »
Stephen Pollard just can’t stop himself plugging (or “blugging") his bloody book. Today, he’s found a review by Stephen Robinson in today’s Telegraph. As he says, it’s not online. If “strinker” means what I think it means, it’s certainly one.
Prescott has already got his retaliation in by accusing Blunkett of arrogance. But it seems worse than that: reading this book, one is struck by the capacity for self-delusion — in fact, by the end, one worries that the former Home Secretary might actually be a little mad.
The charge of self-delusion is levelled at the biographer too.
Stephen Pollard, an enthusiastic booster of the New Labour project, proves a reliably devoted and unquestioning biographer. He notes that Blunkett’s career has been characterised by sharp reversals of ideology, but briskly exonerates his subject of the charge of political opportunism. “His attitude changed,” Pollard solelmly asserts.
These 50 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:59am GMT Permanent link.
The Monday Club »
Apologies if you’ve heard this one before. The estimable Guido Fawkes posts on Tories and ID cards, as well he might. The unlikely source of the Telegraph’s gossip column yesterday had the dirt.
All eyes will be on new Home Secretary Charles Clarke during next Monday’s debate on the ID cards Bill.
But observers will also be watching out for a rebellion by Tory MPs.
For despite considerable opposition from within the parliamentary party, the announcement that Conservative MPs would be expected to back the Government came after a shadow cabinet meeting on Monday.
“We had a very good discussion about it in the shadow cabinet and we reached a conclusion,” Michael Howard told Radio 4’s World at One on Tuesday.
“That’s the way in which these decisions should be made,” he added.
However, after conversations with a number of Tory MPs, Spy has established that the decision was in fact made well before the shadow cabinet even discussed the issue.
“It’s preposterous to suggest that the decision was in any way collective,” says one. “The Chief Whip was phoning round dissenters some hours before the shadow cabinet meeting to suggest we absent ourselves from the vote rather than cause trouble.”
Could be a bit of a mistake on Howard’s part.
These 43 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:22pm GMT Permanent link.
The Man's Timing Is Impeccable »
Back in June, when brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet was due to stand trial for dictating brutally, all charges were dropped when he was found “mentally unfit” to stand trial.
Just as
Judge Juan Guzman ruled on Monday that the former leader was fit to stand trial on alleged human rights abuses during his 17 years of military rule
he suffers a stroke!
What rotten luck the guy has.
These 42 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 8:41pm GMT Permanent link.
A Chrimbo Pressie For Civil Servants »
It’s only a week until Christmas, and you’ve got all that last minute shopping to do? What do you buy the civil servant in your life?
We interrupt this advertisement for news just in! Michael Howard makes sense! (Alas, alackaday, too late for me.)
Tony Blair has been accused of fostering a cover-up culture after civil servants were ordered to delete millions of emails.
The Cabinet Office, effectively the Prime Minister’s department, says messages more than three months old must be wiped by Monday, it was revealed.
The deadline comes just 11 days before the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act comes into force.
Conservative leader Michael Howard has written to Mr Blair demanding an explanation.
“There are reports that your Government is engaged on a massive email destruction binge in order to get round the law which you yourself passed,” he wrote.
“How hypocritical can you get? What is your Government trying to hide ?
News? Anyone would think this is a political blog! I’m here to advertise!
Why not consider Amazon.co.uk for presents for your loved ones? Amazon offers free delivery on purchases over £20. But hurry! ‘Tis the season to be jolly.
How about the Origin Portable External 80gb USB2 & Firewire Hard Drive? It can back up all the files on your computer in no time!
Just the thing for anyone you know who works for Tony Blair. Did they say Monday? Try your local terminal-acne victim staffed computer superstore. And hurry! Remember, folks, democracy is at stake here.
Many officials, including those in the PM’s Strategy Unit and the offices of Alan Milburn and Cabinet Secretary Sir Andrew Turnbull, receive around 100 emails a day.
The Cabinet Office’s 2,000 staff have been told to print and file emails that should be disclosed but there will be no supervision.
A spokeswoman last night insisted the move was not about the new laws or “the destruction of important records”.
She said: “Paying to store outdated records which are no longer any use wastes taxpayers’ money.”
That’s why I use Gmail: it gives you “1000 megabytes of free storage so you’ll never need to delete another message”. That’s a lot of emails. And it’s free!
Still, it’s good to know the government is so parsimonious with the taxpayers’ money.
Shame Hoon bought those Eurofighters.
These 189 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:31pm GMT Permanent link.
An Obligatory Post »
Warning! if you read this blog regularly (and if you do and you’re not spy or a head doctor, why?) you don’t need to read this post.
Jamie quotes Chris Bertram who in turn quotes Lord Hoffmann (PDF file; 391KB).
This is a nation which has been tested in adversity, which has survived physical destruction and catastrophic loss of life. I do not underestimate the ability of fanatical groups of terrorists to kill and destroy, but they do not threaten the life of the nation. Whether we would survive Hitler hung in the balance, but there is no doubt that we shall survive Al-Qaeda. The Spanish people have not said that what happened in Madrid, hideous crime as it was, threatened the life of their nation. Their legendary pride would not allow it. Terrorist violence, serious as it is, does not threaten our institutions of government or our existence as a civil community …
…
[S]uch a power in any form is not compatible with our constitution. The real threat to the life of the nation, in the sense of a people living in accordance with its traditional laws and political values, comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these. That is the true measure of what terrorism may achieve. It is for Parliament to decide whether to give the terrorists such a victory.
I’ve been meaning to write a more fumbling version of the same. We had the Luftwaffe, we had the Cuban Missile Crisis, and now nine guys (that’s fewer than Arsene Wenger has on the pitch at full time) are such a threat we need special new laws? What are they — X-Men? Are they so hard that even giving evidence against them (and there is evidence, isn’t there? we don’t just pick people up because of their skin colour do we?) will turn respectable policemen into mindless pawns of al-Qaeda? Ditto judges etc. As you know, New Labour is Proud of Britain; it’s just the traitors everywhere—from the guy in the corner shop to the high court judge—whom they despise. Sadly these are hard times, we must panic; otherwise David Blunkett’s barminess will have been for nowt! (We know he had it hard. Tough upbringing, etc. So did Saddam, Hitler, Stalin. That’s one reason — but not the only one — we on the left want to eradicate poverty. We sympathise; but we also condemn.) As Mark Holland likes my movie quotes,
Darth Vader: I’ve been waiting for you, Obi-Wan. We meet again, at last. The circle is now complete. When I met you I was but the learner. Now, *I* am the master.
Obi-Wan: Only a master of evil, Darth.
Chris links to a page I found independently: Anti-terror ruling: Your reaction. As Manic says (no permalink), “be prepared to weep in places”.
What about my human rights, my right to be protected from a potential terror attack?
Gaynor Harrison, England
I’m sure Ms Harrison will survive (sorry, temptation). What about my right not to be killed by a drunk driver? Spill hot coffee in my lap if I place it on the dashboard and race away? Die from smoking when I was expelled from school for raping a teacher and can’t read the warnings on fag packs? Vitalstatistix (the brave chief of the village Asterix and Obelix came from) lived in fear that the sky would fall on his head tomorrow. What’t the EU doing to prevent that? This country survived attacks by more organised and better equipped enemies than we’re facing now. Parts of this island (hem, hem) even held off the Eye-ties (though my woad-coloured ancestors didn’t persuade them to change sides; mostly because the infidels were Germans, Gauls, North Africans, etc). Naturally the descendants of the armies who held off the greatest military power of the time are the same regiments Geoff Hoon wants to cut.
No they are not against human rights laws. We are at a high risk of a terror attack, and if someone is suspected of terrorism then they must be imprisoned as an emergency to protect everyone in this country[.]
Al, Norwich, UK
I sort of hope “Al” is short for al-Queda. Nothing wrong with his logic, except the small matter of a trial. I suspect “Al” of terrorism …
These 432 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:58pm GMT Permanent link.
Great News For Scotland »
Nicholas Wroe reviews Raymond Briggs in the Guardian.
Ernest, milkman and proudly working-class, is reading an article about the recently published Beveridge Report. “THE WELFARE STATE!” he cheers, waving a paper chain. “WE’VE WON!” But it is the way his enthusiasm is undermined by former housemaid Ethel’s instinctive conservatism and nigglingly astute scepticism — “it will all have to be paid for” — that typifies the series of tensions between dreams and reality that have animated and enriched Briggs’s work throughout his career. As Nick Hornby put it in a New York Times review of the book: “Social historians have said much less at much greater length, and with much less warmth and affection.”
I don’t know why exactly, but that so reminds me of a Steve Bell cartoon in 1988 or 9. A family of mice (hamsters? some other rodents?) living in Scotland (characterised by Bell’s wonderful ear for vernacular) in a tartan-wallpapered room. Male (whatever he was): Great news for Scotland! Great news for Scotland! They’re abolishing the rates!
His wife reminds him that the old system was progressive taxation, that it’s an English experiment, and that, anyway, they don’t pay rates! Steve was on the “What The Papers Say” Awards tonight. There are people with televisual charisma; he’s one.
These 106 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:19pm GMT Permanent link.
Benji Makes Sense »
Eric just posted a link to Benjamin’s comment on a thread of the Wierd Beard’s.
I am from England and I too like Orwell (although he’s not without faults.)
It’s noticable that various political groups claim Orwell as their own. I suppose that is an indication of the importance of what he had to say.
Two further points:
A common mistake is to regard 1984 as a prediction… It was actually partly satire, although containing a warning. But it was not meant to be prophetic.
And I always think a combination of the work of Huxley and Orwell render a more accurate possible future, or even present …
But don’t get too depressed - there’s always H.G. Wells, John Wyndham, Arthur Conan Doyle …
Eric comments:
This is a man beyond parody.
Well, I can’t see a thing wrong with any of those observations. However as “Mark Tapscott” enlightens me;
Like Orwell, Burnham was a former Leftist …
Curses! I never knew that George Orwell had followed the likes of SIAW into “former leftism.”
The smartest commenter is not Benji (though I came here to praise him) but a certain Katherine (whom some will recall writing the most important posts of 2004) who prefers Camus and has a better memory than me.
In this way the Right abandoned the monopoly of the moral reflex to the Left, which yielded to it the monopoly of the patriotic reflex. The country suffered doubly. We could have used moralists less joyfully resigned to their country’s misfortune and patriots less ready to allow torturers to claim they were acting in the name of France…. If I annoy anyone by writing this, I ask him merely to think for a moment about the divergence between the ideological reflexes. Some what their country to identify itself wholly with justice, and they are right. But is it possible to be just and free in a dead or subjugated nation? And does not absolute purity for a nation coincide with historical death? Others want the very body of their country to be defended against the whole universe if need be, and they are not wrong. But is it possible to survive as a people without doing reasonable justice to other peoples? France is dying through inability to solve this dilemma.
I usually use Christmas as a time for catching up on books. It’s time I reread The Plague. (Though Katherine, unfairly to my mind, deprecates the novels. I remember them better than the philosophy.) I’ll say this for Totten’s commenters. Some know a good paragraph:
War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it. Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homocidal maniac.
That was Blair, Eric. Totten goes on to argue with Katherine. I knew Socrates was described as a “gadfly.” I knew he rejected the term. Now I know what a fly attacking an elephant looks like.
Gadfly: I protest! You’re comparing me with Michael J Totten! I’m an insect! We’re better than microbes!
These 187 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:55pm GMT Permanent link.
Sunday, 19 December 2004
That's Some Catch »
Army blames Iraq for drop in recruits.
Senior army commanders have expressed fears that the increasingly vocal anti-Iraq war movement is discouraging thousands of young men from considering a career in the armed forces.
They blame high-profile campaigns against the war, often led by bereaved parents and supported by celebrities and political figures, for worsening recruitment problems, particularly into the infantry.
Lorna Martin, the Guardian’s Scotland editor seems rather credulous to me.
The impact of the anti-war movement has also made itself apparent in the United States, where there has been a sharp decline in volunteers from communities - such as the black community — that have traditionally supplied soldiers. In the US this has been tied to a sharp increase in desertions - a problem so far not seen in the UK.
This was covered in greater depth in the Telegraph yesterday. US military sees sharp fall in black recruits. Instead of taking the word of unnamed military sources, David Rennie (not credited on the web version) interviews some Americans.
Dolly Wilson’s father proudly served in the Second World War and her husband in Vietnam. But her children will not join the military if she has any say in it.
“We don’t want our kids to go into no war for nothing,” said Mrs Wilson, snatching a cigarette with colleagues outside her Washington office.
“Bush has two daughters. Let them go over and fight,” she added, to a chorus of “That’s not our war” from the others.
…
Mrs Wilson, Mr Golladay and Mrs Allen are not typical of America as a whole. But their views are enough to give the Pentagon cause for alarm. The reason? All three of them are black.
Mr Rennie looks for deeper reasons.
Prof Charles Moskos, an expert on the military and race at Northwestern University in Chicago, said the drop-off began even before the Iraq war, with the election of President George W Bush in 2000 in the face of overwhelming black antipathy, an attitude that lingers to this day.
Leaving the learned professor, though, James Golladay who “served in the US coastguard” has other ideas.
Asked why blacks chose rear-line units, Mr Golloday answered: “People looked to the military as a way of receiving benefits. People want to transition into a civilian life later. Being a chief gunner isn’t something that people will pay a lot for.” Then he laughed, and added: "And they don’t want to die.”
Good reasons.
These 80 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:06am GMT Permanent link.
Hoggart The Limelight »
Through Nick I read this News of the World story about the ubiquitous Simon Hoggart.
His adoration even led to him mentioning Kimberly once in his Guardian diary column …
It took a little digging as the Guardian’s own search gallicly shrugged its metaphorical shoulders, but there is an archived version.
The other day I was asked to appear on BBC4, the cultural channel, in Before the Booker, which is a cunning idea borrowed from the publisher Ion Trewin. A panel discusses a clutch of books, all of the same year, and decides which would have won the Booker prize if it had existed. I couldn’t do it, so I suggested my chum and part-time boss Kimberly Fortier, who is publisher of the Spectator. She went to Vassar and is, I think, the best-read non-academic I know. Her book would have been Wilkie Collins’s The Woman In White, up against other novels published in 1860, such as Great Expectations. She had read all of them several times.
The producer was enthusiastic and more or less booked her for the show. Then he called back, slightly embarrassed, to say that sadly, it had been decided she couldn’t appear because they would then have had an all-female panel. (Other guests were to include Hermione Lee and Carmen Callil.) She pointed out crisply that ever since she’d started watching television as a little girl she’d seen endless all-male panels, and what was wrong with all-women? The really spooky thing is that she has mentioned this idiocy to various people at the BBC, and they don’t seem to find it strange or offensive.
Nick suggested looking “back over any references to Blunkett in his parliamentary sketches for the Guardian, just to see if there’s any circumstantial evidence in there.” Well, there is some.
New Labour is a daisy chain of hatred. Start by plucking one flower at random. Jack Straw hates David Blunkett, who he thinks is trashing everything he, Straw, did at the Home Office. Blunkett is disliked and mistrusted by Gordon Brown, because No 10 is trying to build the home secretary up as Blair’s replacement.
See Downing Street Says for the fallout from their rivalry.
Asked if the Prime Minister accepted that the Home Office was “left in a mess” after Jack Straw left, the PMOS referred the journalist to the Prime Minister’s answer at PMQs last week when he said that Jack Straw had achieved many things during his time there.
When Blunkett defended Beverley Hughes, he wrote:
I thought Mr Blunkett was about to implode with the sheer intensity of his passion for Ms Hughes and her total wonderfulness.
“Has she been doing a first-class job? The answer is ‘yes, yes, yes’!” he exclaimed, and collapsed back on his seat.
But back to the News of the Screws.
The Spectator found itself branded the Sextator in the media.
The “media” here is a word which means “The News of the World.”
These 104 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:18pm GMT Permanent link.
Happy Is The Land That Needs No Heroes »
Hak Mao links to Lynn Barber’s interview with Peter Tatchell.
I subscribe to Auberon Waugh’s dictum that if you want to increase the sum of human happiness in the world, then the best thing most of us can do is just be happy, rather than wringing our hands every time we open the Guardian. Tatchell, of course, disagrees: ‘How can anyone be happy knowing that hundreds of millions of people on this planet are suffering terrible injustices? How can you just turn away and say, “I’m sorry, it’s not my responsibility."?’
’Well, lots of people do, including me.’
’But that’s the reason why suffering persists — because good, decent people don’t take a stand.’
Still living up to the sobriquet The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Count me as closer to Waugh that I am to Tatchell, though I see it as being faithful to the credo of Candide. (Oh no, I try to write about a gay man, and I’m breaking out in musicals! Whatever will they say?) So, unlike Comrade Hak and Norm I’m more disturbed by Ms Barber’s very odd allegation later on.
Anyway, it is hopeless trying to argue with Tatchell on the train — he just goes on reciting his speeches. In the Nineties, most of his campaigns were about gay discrimination in Britain, but now he has gone international and taken up causes all over the world. To me, there seems something promiscuous about his geographical range: it looks as though he is looking for battles to fight. Also, it annoyed me that, when he was talking about an old campaign to make Russell Square in London a police-free gay cruising ground, he said it was stymied by ‘local busybodies’. It turned out what he meant by busybodies was people who actually lived round the square and objected to the goings-on at night. But if they are busybodies, what is he?
There’s an internal logic there, but despite Mr Tatchell’s Saint Sebastian qualities he’s worldly enough to know that homophobes have a peculiar attraction to violence. A “police-free gay cruising ground” sounds like a calling card for queer bashers. Do I need to say that Mr Tatchell wants cruising to be free from police harassment, not a free-for-all? It’s discussed here on uk.gay.com messageboards and on the Rainbow Network.
“Over the last few years, a vocal minority of local residents have raised objections to assignations by gay men in the Square in the middle of the night.
“The number of gay sex acts witnessed by members of the public is negligible, according to he [sic] Metropolitan Police.
“OutRage! opposes closure of the Square at night and believes that gay and heterosexual liaisons should be permitted after dark, providing explicit sexual acts are not visible to passing members of the public and do not cause offence.”
Sounds to me like the police aren’t that bothered, and Peter Tatchell is hardly calling for some kind of intimidating red-light district in Fitzrovia.
Harry calls Tatchell’s guest column for Labour Friends of Iraq an “excellent article.” Which it is. I know that my moral position is confused. I don’t believe in “human rights” as having a Platonic existence; I think they’re a cultural construct: and they’re not an “either/or” issue, there are shades of degree. I opposed the Iraq war not because I have any intentions of being an apologist for Saddam, but for two reasons which I think are not mutually exclusive, but are still separable. First, I think war is always wrong; no good person ever starts wars; and all the bad ones have a record of invasion and subjugation. Second, as Orwell always comes up in this; I’d like to think that I’d have fought against Franco — but that doesn’t mean that I’d support everyone else who did so: Stalinist Russia was a terrible influence in Spain, as POUM found out. I’m not comparing Bush to Stalin, but I do think there are leaders whose “humanitarianism” is a sham, and Bush is among them. There are pro-war bloggers including Anthony Cox and Damian Counsell who support the war or whatever-we-call-it-now for good reasons (and I hope they’re right, because we’re stuck with it) but there are many others for whom the conflict is a vicarious macho adventure.
Peter Tatchell’s not a saint (they don’t exist anyway), but he is a hero (they do exist, if rarely). I’ve added a link to his site and a pdf version of his donation form to the bottom of the sidebar on the front page of this blog.
These 439 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:40pm GMT Permanent link.
Monday, 20 December 2004
Out Of Hand »
Michael Howard says he’ll cut taxes. Harrumph! He is economical — with the actualié.
The threat to life and liberty from terrorism is so great that it would, in my view, be irresponsible to dismiss out of hand any proposals put forward by the police and security services to enhance security without listening to what they have to say.
I have listened to the police and security service chiefs. They have told me that ID cards can and will help their efforts to protect the lives of British citizens against terrorist acts. How can I disregard that?
Michael, they can’t have told you that “ID cards can and will help their efforts” because the form ID cards finally take hasn’t been decided by Parliament, and because, like the rest of us, they can’t predict the future.
Dictionary.com defines out of hand thus:
- Out of control: Employee absenteeism has gotten out of hand.
- At once; immediately.
- Over and done with; finished.
- Uncalled for or improper; indiscreet.
I assume Mr Howard is thinking of definitions 2 or 4, and he wants us to think that the opposing MPs haven’t properly considered the matter. As the Torygraph reports:
William Cash (C, Stone), a former Tory law spokesman, said the scheme had overtones of 1984. Other leading opponents of ID cards include the former ministers Douglas Hogg and Stephen Dorrell and two former front-benchers, Eric Forth and Damian Green.
None of these are my favourite conservatives, but I credit them at least with having been exposed to arguments from both sides. In Clarke and Howard face ID cards revolt more convincing arguments appear:
Ministers insist it will help the fight against terrorism, organised crime and illegal immigration.
However, opponents say similar schemes in other countries have not prevented attacks like the Madrid rail bombing and that, in any case, the cards will not be introduced until 2008.
They also warn that the Government’s track record on hi-tech projects suggests it could prove a shambles.
For some reason Mr Howard’s friends in the police do not seem to have considered these.
Lastly, I heard this on Radio 4 yesterday, and was going to devote a post to it, but I couldn’t find a reference anywhere. The Telegraph has the scoop of the lot.
Lady Thatcher was reported over the weekend to have sided with opponents of ID cards. She was said to have told a private meeting of Tory MPs that they were a “Germanic concept and completely alien to this country”.
I think that’s parliamentary language for “Fuck off back to Transylvania, you authoritarian creep.”
These 186 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:39am GMT Permanent link.
Christmas Cheer »
These 3 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:06pm GMT Permanent link.
More Critical »
You can’t agree with all the people all the time department. Normally, not only do I like Bill Deedes, I admire his sagacity. Not today, however.
There is talk of opening the courts of law to television. Judges, beware! I remember the arguments I had with my friends in television, like Robin Day, about televising Parliament. It will bring politics into the home, they said. Politicians will become top of the pops. I haven’t noticed it.
In our present mood, television in the courts will make people not more appreciative of our system of justice, but more critical. That is the last thing we want just now.
Implicit in that is that the procedures of courts are practically occult to the woman on the Clapham omnibus. Dickens was pretty scathing about the justice system in Bleak House. “More critical,” I fear, would be hard. What opening Parliament to the cameras has shown is what lazy fuckers MPs are. Dennis Skinner used to go in every day because that was what was expected down a mine. Even he’s slacked off now. As Guido points out, Ruth Kelly has been on maternity leave for two-thirds of her parliamentary career. (Still, a point to Blair there: how many private sector employers would promote someone who’d been dogging off work for most of their contract?) Watching C4 News as Charles Clarke addressed the House, I was struck by the vacant seats. When something big happens, like Thatcher’s resignation, there isn’t room on those benches for everyone. So when they look deserted, the bastards really are staying away.
Luckily, ID cards, like foxhunting, hardly matter. No one will care if their MP was donning the nosebag in some swank restaurant while a handful of colleagues were filing into lobbies. Well, not until they’re told to buy an ID card for £85 (or, as I suspect, much more) or go to prison.
Parliament on TV is an unalloyed good. It hasn’t increased respect for MPs (with the exception of Mr Skinner) because none of them have tried to earn it. We, the people, pay for Parliament and the courts and nothing less than than complete transparency will do.
These 281 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:04pm GMT Permanent link.
Shall There Be Womanly Times »
Shall there be womanly times or shall we die? Are there men unafraid of gentleness?
Can we have strength without aggression,
Without disgust,
Strength to bring feeling to the intellect?
Shall we change or shall we die?
Ian McEwan, libretto for or Shall We Die?
Since I knocked Dear Bill in my last post, I ought to reflect on his other pensees.
While on the subject, let me air once again my pet theory about Africa. Nothing is going to get much better in that great continent as long as the dominant male culture prevails.
In much of Africa, girls are still lucky to get any schooling at all, let alone a place at university. Though they work harder than the men, they remain subject to the male whim militarily, sexually and financially.
But in today’s more open world, I scent a change. The tiny number of African women who have somehow got to university are not putting up with established ways. They are leading a slow march against them. More black Ruth Kellys are Africa’s best hope.
Again, I think that he’s wrong here — certainly about the choice of Ruth Kelly as exemplar, and possibly about the use of “black” which may be a useful designator of race in the US and Europe, but isn’t up to classifying Tutsis and Hutus. Nitpicking semantics aside, I’m not convinced that he feels the same way about women’s progress in this country. I find his opening piece incomprehensible.
In a grey political week I thought, wearing my non-partisan cap, that the news to notice was the promotion of Ruth Kelly, aged 36 and mother of four young children, to be Education Secretary.
I know of her only what I read in the newspapers, but I see in her a portent. Too many talented males in this country are too busy just now making money to find time for political service.
I don’t altogether blame them. Politics lack the prestige they once held and modern capitalism requires its sons to give their all. A man working in the City of London who said he wished to stand for Parliament would be shown the door. Being an MP, furthermore, is a dicey business. Many seats in this country can turn either way in an election.
Why could Ruth Kelly take the risk? Because her husband, Derek Gadd, has made himself the family breadwinner and left her free to incur the risk of a political career. It’s an example that will be followed and politics will be better for it.
Conservatives would do well to think on those lines. Their failure to get more women into Parliament is blamed on men. Wrong. Women themselves have often been the obstacle.
In years past I have attended a number of competitive Tory adoption meetings. When a woman appeared, the feeling among her own kind seemed to be: “She’s a wife and mother of two young children; Parliament’s no place for her”. That has changed. Blair’s babes, as they were called – Ruth Kelly among them – have helped to make the place a degree more accommodating to motherhood. And, dare I add, there are men today earning big incomes and also married to women abler than they are. Queen and country call upon such wives to serve.
I don’t know who he’s talking about. Not David Blunkett or Dennis Skinner — or even Tony Blair. All talented men work in the City? For one thing, they don’t. For another, even if they did, some (like George H. W. Bush) having made private fortunes felt the only career progress was public service (or “unbridled power” to the cynics).
The Tories could be recruiting more women, but not because their husbands are snorkelling in the gravy train. The men they should be after are business types who’ve made it, and need a new direction, and, if I can suggest it, working class lads made good (ie rich) — like ex-footballers.
I admire Bill, and I wish the Labour Party had a few old buffers of his calibre around to glance over some of the more radical proposals, but he’s out of touch here. He’s just remoulding gals from WI “do gooders” into Parliamentary “do gooders.” It doesn’t wash with me.
These 247 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:36pm GMT Permanent link.
Blasphemy »
It’s nice to know that when the Telegraph accuses George Galloway of treason (for some reason I can’t find that particular leader in their archive) they lose in court; so I’d never dream of following Guido Fawkes’ example of suggesting that Ruth Kelly listened to an ancient Pole in a city state located in the middle of Rome (a state many readers will be aware supported the Holocaust) rather than her constituents, and that might be considered treasonable by some.
I’m also sorry that a handful of rowdy Sikhs can get a play pulled by the management of a theare in Birmingham. C4 News reminded me that the 100th anniversary of Dublin’s Abbey Theatre is next week. Not only did one of my personal heroes, Yeats, write for it, but his contemporary and rival Synge attracted riots for “The Playboy of the Western World".
So, in the interests of freedom of expression.
Jesus Fucking Christ.
And for the Patrick who posted in defence of mass-murderer Mao on Anthony Cox’s site (he wasn’t coherent, so I suspect that he was drunk), just to show that I’m non-partisan in my iconoclasm, Chairman Mao is a holy cow.
That is all.
Except that’s not all. I went to a lecture given by the late Anthony Burgess once where he asserted that these lines (1922) are a rendering in words of this bassoon solo which caused a riot.
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
That is all, and bring the riots.
These 243 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:02pm GMT Permanent link.
Do They Pray Together? »
I found this great image on this page on Maurizio Cattelan.
I’m only asking.
These 15 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:11pm GMT Permanent link.
Read 'em And Weep »
Read ‘em and weep, the dead man’s hand again
ID cards plans pass first hurdle.
Former Tory Cabinet minister Douglas Hogg’s call for the bill to be rejected was defeated by 306 votes to 93 in a separate vote.
The figures suggest several Conservative and Labour MPs abstained.
A modest suggestion for our representatives: compulsory voting.
I had an email from a fellow blogger before the result, to whom I’d suggested that a rebellion was only minutes away.
“Indeed. The spineless fuckers won’t bother, for the most part, of course.”
Well, he was right.
These 40 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:37pm GMT Permanent link.
Tuesday, 21 December 2004
The Wisdom Of Crowds »
The Guardian/ICM poll (analysed yesterday by Anthony Wells) has an incredible finding.
The public is much more generous than some political commentators in its assessment of Mr Blunkett’s time as home secretary, with an overwhelming 67% saying he did a good job at the Home Office, including a positive verdict from 70% of Liberal Democrat voters. Only 23% say that they were not satisfied with the job he did.
I’m really out of touch.
The ICM poll reveals the country is split in its sympathies over the Blunkett affair, with 50% of women saying they feel sorry for the former home secretary but this feeling is shared by only 44% of men.
Stephen Pollard, who has written a book about David Blunkett, writes in the Independent today.
According to Mr Blunkett’s explanation, he forgot putting into his red ministerial box a letter about the visa application for his own son’s nanny. …
… If Mr Blunkett had stood up and said, on the day after the allegations were first made, that there had indeed been special treatment, but that it was, after all, for his own son’s nanny, then maybe he would still have had to resign. But he would have done so with his head held high, and with the understanding of most people.
I’d have thought that special treatment his own son (whatever Mrs Quinn now says about the identity of the child’s father) would have exonerated Mr Blunkett in most people’s eyes. Yet the poll shows that more people are critical of his human foibles than his paranoid and draconian reign at the Home Office. People are strange.
These 88 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:43am GMT Permanent link.
Humbug »
humbug … A noun. 1 A hoax, a trick. …
2 A deceiver, a fraud, a sham. …
3 Deception, pretense; nonsense, rubbish. …
Shorter OED
Humbug is a splendid word for rubbish and nonsense, so it’s a shame that it’s used so ironically at Christmas. It describes these idiots whom Harry rounds up. I want Mark Steyn to explain how “Winter Wonderland” celebrates the birth of a child in the lambing season in the Middle East. And is “Jingle Bell Rock” about anything at all?
For splendid humbug, just add Christians.
This week, a number of my fellow Christians took time from worship to criticize a column I wrote about the homeless. They didn’t write to tell me about their concern for the 8,000 homeless in Minnesota or the fact that half of them are women and kids or that 100 of them died this year.
No, they wrote to say that even though we will always have the poor with us, as Jesus said, that doesn’t mean those poor buggers shouldn’t get out of the way of our SUVs.
“These homeless are bums, nothing but leeches on society,” wrote a guy who signed himself Trav. “If we could push a button and make the homeless die and disappear without repercussions, nearly everybody would do it. I would. Good riddance.”
Found through The Poor Man. Meanwhile, Roy Edroso suggests some bearable Christmas songs.
"Santa Claus von Bulow,” The Reverb Motherfuckers. Alright, so I wrote it. A bum dying of hypothermia on the Houston Street traffic divider while dreaming of Lotto says “Christmas” to me.
"I Hate Christmas,” Oscar the Grouch. “I can’t think of anything that’s dumber/To a grouch, Christmas is a bummer!” This one’s for the kids.
Next time you say “Humbug”, say it like you mean it. And mean it to sting.
These 95 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:40pm GMT Permanent link.
Boris Johnson Is A Coward »
Boris Johnson is the nation’s favourite tory. That’s not a hotly contested occupation. There aren’t any others.
Still, a few weeks ago he wrote a piece in the Telegraph with the splendid title, “If I’m asked for my ID card, I’ll eat it” in which he declared that if he were asked for his Identity Card, he’d eat it.
Today his blog informs us Boris abstained (pressure from various sources).
What pressure? ID cards weren’t in the Tory manifesto, and Boris seems capable of persuading the good people of Henley to see things his way. The Tories aren’t going to win the election under Michael Howard, so he’s not going to lose much by openly defying the leader.
These 119 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:13pm GMT Permanent link.
Roll Of Honour »
Phil Cowley has produced a small pdf document on last night’s vote. (Found through Anthony Wells.) Here are the rebels from the main parties.
Labour:
- Andrew Bennett
- Michael Clapham
- Jeremy Corbyn
- Gwyneth Dunwoody
- Neil Gerrard
- Ian Gibson
- Kate Hoey
- Kelvin Hopkins
- Glenda Jackson
- Terry Lewis
- John McDonnell
- Alice Mahon
- Bob Marshall-Andrews
- Clare Short
- Dennis Skinner
- Llew Smith
- Robert Wareing
- David Winnick
Conservative:
- John Bercow
- Angela Browning
- William Cash
- David Curry
- Nick Gibb
- Damian Green
- Douglas Hogg
- Edward Leigh
- Peter Lilley
- Richard Shepherd
I knew Bill Cash and Peter Lilley would rebel (and I’m still unhappy that Boris Johnson didn’t). The Labour side might as well be a who’s who of real Labour — the only name missing is Robin Cook, and I’m disappointed that Frank Field didn’t rebel.
Harry of the Place and Stephen Robinson in the Telegraph tell it like it is.
These 117 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 6:18pm GMT Permanent link.
Wednesday, 22 December 2004
Light Posting »
Posting will be light for the next few days. Not because there’s anything good on telly, but because I’m using all available time in front of the computer having it out with regular expressions, the little horrors. Bad side: I may go completely mad. Good side: I may have working spam-proof comments and a search engine by the new year.
On the spam side of things the normally easy-going Chris Brooke asks if hanging is too good for spammers and Ogged links to Project Honey Pot, which may or may not be a good idea. Whatever, I’ve joined and there’s a tiny button on the sidebar. It’s a smarter idea than ‘Bot Bomb’ (whose URI can’t be found) which just attempted to poison spambots with fake email addresses. (I added some code, so I plugged it last year.)
Edward_ and von of Obsidian Wings and Jamie have sensible things to say about the season. More sensible than Rent-a-Curmugeon Lileks, anyway.
These 160 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 6:00pm GMT Permanent link.
Silly People »
Chris Brooke asks —
Don’t They Have Better Things To Be Doing With Their Time? “Calls for fresh Blunkett inquiry” from the Tories and the Lib Dems over at the BBC. Silly people.
Sarcasm aside, it is silly; not as silly as the Guardian’s straight-faced reporting from behind enemy lines.
Today’s Evening Standard reports “friends” of Ms Quinn as saying that she kept detailed handwritten and computer notes of her meetings with Mr Blunkett. The notes could now fetch up to £1.5m if sold as a memoir.
That’s “could now fetch up to £1.5m” as in “elephants with really big ears could fly.” Who’s going to pay that much? The Speccie perhaps, but then who’d look corrupt?
For half a million (after Max Clifford and tax) she’s better give us dirt as in Lady Chatterly, not the political kind. At least something on the lines of “David bade me an emotional farewell, before he hurried off to important affairs of state. Unfortunately, he walked into a cupboard which ruined the moment.”
On Blunkett’s lasting legacy of the wars on terror and organised crime:
The robbery of £22m from a Belfast bank was carried out by professional criminals who had “clearly done their homework”, police have said.
Professional criminals, I ask you! If they get away with it, they’ll never have to work again.
The real story in the BBC piece Chris linked to.
Home secretary Charles Clarke said there would be new rules drawn up on how ministers should handle cases brought to their attention.
Which would be well and good, but there were rules under John Major, as there have been since before Queen Victoria was born. Some of us believed that those “rules” were called “laws” and that laws are well-defined (those not drafted by Mr Blunkett anyway).
Stephen Pollard quotes Matthew d’Ancona huffing (no other word: only Peter Tatchell and Elton John can use outrage and its derivatives)—
Far from being a final humiliation for him, the Law Lords’ ruling on Thursday that the indefinite detention of foreign terrorist suspects is unlawful was a reminder of how right he often was about the judiciary. Rarely has there been such a decadent and depressing instance of introspective jurisprudence as Lord Hoffmann’s argument that “the real threat to the life of the nation… comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these”, and Lord Scott’s outrageous comparisons with “Soviet Russia in the Stalinist era”. Evidently these lofty jurists are not as troubled as the rest of us by the specific threats to Britain made by Osama bin Laden in his most recent video message, or the disclosure 10 days ago by Sir John Stevens, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, that at least one terrorist atrocity on the scale of the Madrid bombing had already been foiled, or by Sir John’s unshakeable belief that “an attack is still inevitable”.
The man who brought down Blunkett adds —
Talk about a Supreme Court and the Human Rights Act is now passe. The issue is no longer whether we might move to a situation in which judges are directly political, and more powerful than an elected government. They are already. The issue now is what we do about it.
Pollard is an ignorant git, but d’Ancona is deputy editor of the Sunday Telegraph. The comparison with Stalin’s show trials is not is inappropriate (or as Mr d’Ancona would have it, “outrageous, sir, an outrage!") as those trials were predicated on ignoring extant law, with such inconveniences as evidence and, indeed, “crime.”
Most wage slaves are, like Bob Cratchit, kept from oblivion only by the next pay packet, and all governments are a few laws away from tyranny.
Chris Dillow observes that “David Hume was an anarchist (sort of).” Brad DeLong reminds us that Hume was a man of letters.
I’m proud to be British Scottish.
These 324 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:29pm GMT Permanent link.
Thursday, 23 December 2004
Tout Comprendre »
The ID cards malarkey hasn’t gone down well with bloggers. Alex, the Yorkshire Ranter is forensically vicious about them. The other day, I was upset by Boris Johnson’s abstention on the vote. Melissa, his blog’s editrix noted: Boris was one of the ones who abstained and I have the impression that he will explain more fully on Thursday. Indeed he has, indeed he has.
That was sarcasm, BTW.
These 68 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:05am GMT Permanent link.
Stranger Than Fiction »
The Guardian is silly enough to bother itself with Blunkett: the unanswered questions.
During a Radio 4 Today interview which also featured Mr Howard, Mr Prescott attempted a counter-attack by reviving claims in the late Lord Wyatt’s diaries that, when Mr Howard was home secretary in 1996, he helped his daughter, Petronella Wyatt, to replace a stolen passport. Yesterday the Tory leader denied this.
British readers will know that Lord Wyatt was a defector from Labour who ended his career writing an column entitled with unintended irony, “The Voice of Reason” in The News of the World. His daughter didn’t need a passport when she introduced Mr Blunkett to Mrs Fortier as she recalls in her Telegraph review of Stephen Pollard’s biography.
It is not often that one is an eyewitness to political history, or indeed an inadvertent cause of it – I refer to the beginning of the Sophoclean tragedy which the life of the ex-Home Secretary, David Blunkett, seems to have become.
Three years ago, in my capacity as a writer for The Spectator magazine, I asked Mr Blunkett for an interview. He agreed on the condition that we have dinner afterwards. He specified that The Spectator’s vivacious publisher, Kimberly Fortier, as she then called herself, should be present. He had heard her on the radio and had apparently been entranced by her voice.
Clearly her powers of recollection are not as powerful as those of the former Home Secretary, as Mr Pollard’s book mentions a fourth diner, who later rose from the back benches to become Shadow Arts minister for the Conservatives before being sacked for lying to Mr Howard about an affair with Ms Wyatt.
You couldn’t make it up. Jeffrey Archer couldn’t make it up.
These 136 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:26pm GMT Permanent link.
Post Christmas Fun »
I’m knocking up a new look when regular expression munging gets me down too much. I suspect I’ll be using the sarcasm point rather a lot. I’ll add some regex to the comments to allow them to be used. (I don’t have comments? Really?¡¡ I am working on ‘em.) I may use images to denote how many comments there are too.
Not sure yet if this is a good idea.
There’ll be different backgrounds behind the title too (probably one for each day of the week). They may look like these (but considerably larger).
The style sheet with be much the same as this Christmas version but with fewer annoying green bits.
There’s a test version up on the referrer page.
These 129 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:47pm GMT Permanent link.
Friday, 24 December 2004
And Her Eyes Were Wild »
Chris Brooke disinters the “Politics Is Showbusiness For Ugly People” quotation. I don’t know who it was either; I can’t believe that Enoch Powell really made up “all political careers end in failure” — surely that was some wise Roman?
In the comments Dave Gwydion calls Simon Hoggart “Positively Rooneyesque.” But this is the man who cited this BBC story as evidence of Mrs Quinn’s being a “good-looking woman.” Her eyes are wild; full-beautiful she is not.
I’ve always liked Simon Hoggart.
"Kimberly seems to seduce unattractive men who have a propensity for finger-wagging" according to an anonymous writer in The News and Star who goes on
And his claims that he was resigning for love of a little boy were tosh. He was resigning because he had been found out fibbing and had lost of the backing of his cabinet colleagues because he had taken a scalpel to their reputations.
Those reasons not only aren’t mutually exclusive, they look a lot like the same story from different points of view.
The safely byline-free writer also calls Simon Hoggart “the balding, bespectacled writer with a reputation for being priggish” — he’s always struck me as particularly gentle and witty without being rebarbative.
Catherine Macleod writing for the more estimable Glasgow Herald comes up with a pun I missed in Ridicule among the glitterati will upset the flighty Quinn.
Kimberley Quinn may be a familiar figure on London’s glittering, if parochial media circuit, but she was hardly a household name. Until now.
Did I say Ms MacLeod wrote for the Glasgow Herald? I did? Well, you might have forgotten.
Free car window stickers calling on drivers to “honk if you haven’t slept with Blunko’s slapper”, were circulating widely yesterday courtesy of the Daily Star. At a gathering of hacks, only the women responded when the host said: “If anyone here has not slept with Kimberly Quinn would they kindly stand.”
All right-thinking lesbians will complain at the close-mindedness shown by the Grub Street sisterhood.
The story goes that she would often lead guests on to her Mayfair roof terrace, and with a expansive gesture, claim the panoply of London as her “own domain”.
Ah, the panoply of London. Yardies run wild in Mayfair. Either Mrs Quinn is part Mrs Malaprop or the envious Catherine Macleod is ignorant.
These 241 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:58pm GMT Permanent link.
Clonesome Tonight »
Above is Gordon the cat. When he pegs it (thanks to Will’s reminder), should I have him cloned? Little Nicky may be an exact copy of his DNA-donor, but Gordie was a stray for a couple of years and roughed it. I’m sure a clone would be just as strongly right-pawed, but can I be positive that the clone’s left ear would get the same battering? Gord likes having his ‘bad’ ear stroked. And what would I do while the clone had the hardening up that his progenitor went through? And suppose, just suppose that some heartless sods actually adopted the little mite! I’d be so upset. I spit on these unfeeling zombies who don’t recognise devotion and concern themselves with suffering which is none of their business.
These 129 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:49pm GMT Permanent link.
Saturday, 25 December 2004
Merry Christmas »
This seems to be what everyone else is saying today. Just a reminder what the US and old Europe can do when they chose to act together: Titan-Bound Huygens Probe Detaches From Cassini and its planned mission.
These 37 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 5:25pm GMT Permanent link.
Sunday, 26 December 2004
Boundless And Bare »
Salman Rushie on “the government’s response to Sikh protests that forced a play in Birmingham to be cancelled.”
In 1989, when The Satanic Verses was attacked, all political parties were united in their condemnation of the violence and their support for the principle of freedom of expression.
“It seems that the Blair government’s capacity to disappoint knows no bounds.”
These 18 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:19pm GMT Permanent link.
Monday, 27 December 2004
Three Wise Men »
John, the Middle Aged Curmudgeon posts his Curmudgeonly Blog Awards 2004, followed by The Next Batch and The Dirty Batch. Congratulations to the winners!
On the site which used to be call Huh? and now seems to be The wrong side of capitalism Tim has something of an epiphany on Labour’s Dorian Grey.
John Holbo is also a wise man, but the last of today’s triumvirate is Ezra Pound, quoted by the good professor.
All religions are evil because all religions try to enforce a certain number of fairly sound or fairly accurate or ‘beneficial’ propositions by other propositions which are sheer bluff, unsoundness, will-to-power, or personal or type predilections, regardless of the temperament or nature of others.
Happy holidays!
These 76 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:57am GMT Permanent link.
Tsunami »
As a death toll of 23,500 is beyond my imagination, this eyewitness account (found through Brad DeLong) moved me far more than brute numbers can.
Even the Telegraph embraces science in preference to tradition in its preferred nomenclature.
A tsunami (a Japanese term combining “tsu”, meaning harbour, and “nami”, or “wave”, and pronounced soo-nam-ee) used to be called a tidal wave. However, the devastation has nothing to do with tides but is caused by a sudden trauma in the ocean — an earthquake, volcanic eruption or meteorite impact. Yesterday’s tsunami was triggered by an earthquake of at least magnitude 8.5 on the Richter scale, sending tremors that could be detected with seismic instruments in the UK, 5,000 miles away.
A lot closer to the destruction, Hak Mao opines:
Clearly an effective tsunami warning system is needed for the Indian Ocean, although that would still probably not help residents of remote villages in Western Aceh.
I’m not sure you can evacuate tens of thousands at an hour’s notice. A warning system is a great idea, but it still leaves the problem of what you do with the warning. I don’t have much more faith in emergency measures than I have in Lembit Opik’s asteroid impact detection.
Spurious moral-drawing award goes to Juan Cole who titled a post Tsunami a Foretaste of Global Warming before adding a sensible disclaimer a paragraph in.
The tsunami was caused by an earthquake and was unrelated to climate change. But everyone should realize that global warming contributes to extreme weather events, causing more hurricanes and typhoons and stronger ones.
This may be true (though while I believe in global warming, I’m less persuaded by the evidence of recent hurricanes), but only a sizeable asteroid impact can rival a 8+ strength earthquake, and to piggy-back a sensible moral on a spurious comparison harms ‘our’ side of the debate.
These 171 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:33pm GMT Permanent link.
A Good Cigar Is A Smoke »
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
United States Declaration of Independence
I’m grateful to Jackie for reminding me of the United States law which prohibits US citizens from consuming Cuban goods anywhere. I had intended to remark on this in the comments to Gene’s post, but I couldn’t find the evidence I needed.
I’m a little surprised that a contributer to Samizdata feels that:
What this means is that the US government claims ‘ownership’ of its citizens. It extends its jurisdiction beyond the territory of the United States and imposes its restrictions wherever you are. If that is not the state’s way of saying it owns its citizens, I do not know what is.
The embargo on Cuban products (in effect, cigars) dates back to 1963, so they could just blame the Democrats, but it seems they don’t. However, going back a little further, Cuba was viewed by the JFK administration as the base for a nuclear strike on the US. Right-wing libertarians in the US view Castro as one of the nastier dictators in the world. And if you feel that the country is a threat to American freedom, smoking cigars from elsewhere (and denying Cuba revenue) seems a small forfeit.
As I couldn’t remember the details of the law regarding US citizens’ rights abroad when it came to buying stuff, I originally fell back on Bobby Fischer who’s been wanted since he played what the US “deemed an illegal chess match in Yugoslavia in 1992.” Given what was starting to happen in that country at the time, the US sanctions seem entirely reasonable and humanitarian to me, though they violated Mr Fischer’s right to the pursuit of happiness (or property).
Today, Jackie quotes Samizdata’s David Carr (she doesn’t link to individual posts, so I’ll take her word) on the bad-tempered back-and-forth between the Sammies and the Harrys.
How I feel about Africans is not relevant. Even if I hate them, it’s not relevant. Trade barriers are relevant, and removing them is crucial.
If I understand the hard libertarian argument, it’s that such barriers are always bad. I feel that this is naive. Impediments to selling Saddam munitions (like the Supergun) with which he could have attacked Israel (never mind his own people) seem only right and proper. Restrictions on trade with Yugoslavia (before it fell apart) look like the will of the American people.
This is a preamble to confessing that, like Jackie, I cadged a few puffs of a fat Cuban on Christmas Day. I think I finally gave up smoking 10 years ago after a couple of shared spliffs left me feeling really shitty during a cross-country race (I can’t say that they harmed my performance), and had it not been for the increasing threat of smoking bans everywhere and the accusation somewhere that those calling Rush Limbaugh a hypocrite had never smoked a good cigar, I’d have stayed given up.
One thing Jackie and I have in common: we don’t much care for being told what we can’t do.
These 418 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:48pm GMT Permanent link.
This Blog Is A Mess »
It’s just a silly phase I’m going through.
I'm Not In Love, Graham Gouldman and Eric Stewart
Yeah, I know that any integrity to the look of this site (pleasingly minimalist, if I say so myself) has been totally blown away. The quotation marks behind (ahem) quotations are a complete and utter failure for instance. The grey background makes the South Bank Complex look like the Sistine Chapel. I know, I know. It’s a phase. You don’t try, you don’t get. I thought I knew a bit about CSS, but the border beneath the image at the top confounds me. And that’s looking at it in Firefox and Safari on a real PC, so I can’t blame the old Gates of Hell for faulty implementation of standards.
I’ve set a deadline of January 1 for the final conversion of this site to a more imaginative look and full changeover to Python. It will comfort you to know that I’ve never met a deadline yet.
The present background image (from my Mac’s wallpaper, like all the others) is a tank on Salisbury Plain. It looks like it’s in sand, but that’s just the track it’s on. Photo by me.
These 182 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:51pm GMT Permanent link.
Tuesday, 28 December 2004
10 Songs »
This is a first draft at Norm’s Songs, songs, songs poll.
- Mack the Knife: Brecht and Weill; Frank Sinatra does it best; but it’s hard to get wrong.
- Teenage Kicks; O’Neill. Perfect pop.
- How Soon Is Now? Morrissey/Marr. The best song of the 80s.
- Anarchy in the UK; Lydon et al. Still a good idea.
- O Superman; Anderson.
- Whole Lotta Love; Page/Plant.
- Come As You Are; Cobain.
The first three are certainly in. After that it gets hard.
- Sex Machine: Brown?
- This is a Man’s Man’s Man’s Man’s World: Brown?
- Dock of the Bay: Redding?
- 300lbs of Joy; Howlin’ Wolf
- Purple Haze; Hendrix
- This Charming Man; Morrissey/Marr
- The Boy With The Thorn In His Side; Morrissey/Marr
- Bigmouth Strikes Again; Morrissey/Marr
- There Is A Light And It Never Goes Out; Morrissey/Marr. There will never be a better chorus than “And if a double-decker bus/Crashes into us/To die by your side, Is such a heavenly way to die/And if a ten-truck/Kills the both of us/To die by your side, Well the pleasure the privilege is mine."
- Grown So Ugly; Vliet? Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band
- On Tomorrow; Vliet? Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band
- Cruisers Creek; Smith; The (Mighty) Fall
- Hit The North; Smith; The (Mighty) Fall
- No Bulbs; Smith; The (Mighty) Fall
- Monkey Gone to Heaven; The Pixies
- Fitter Happier; Radiohead
- Creep; Radiohead
- A Punchup at a Wedding; Radiohead
- Myxomatosis; Radiohead
- I’m Waiting for the Man; Reed
- Won’t Get Fooled Again; Townshend
- Born to Run; Springsteen
- Heart of Glass; Harry/Stein
- The End; The Doors. How many pop songs reference the classics? “’Father.’ ‘Yes, son.’ ‘I want to kill you … Mother ….’"
- Riders on the Storm; The Doors.
- Shipbuilding; Costello: I prefer the Robert Wyatt version though — “Somebody said that someone got filled in/For saying that people get killed in/The result of their shipbuilding."
- Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye; Cohen
- I Am A Rock; Simon
These 322 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:35am GMT Permanent link.
Well, I Was Wrong »
Yesterday, I doubted Hak Mao’s call for an early warning system for earthquakes. I said, “I’m not sure you can evacuate tens of thousands at an hour’s notice.” From Butterflies and Wheels, I’ve learned that a 15 minute walk would have meant safety. (I’m sceptical, but I’m also several thousand miles away, and have been in one (1) earthquake in my entire life.) Clearly, even if the fifteen minute walk bit is not quite right (did anyone know where to walk to?) a lot of people could have been saved.
These 90 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:02am GMT Permanent link.
All The Obituary You Need »
So farewell, Susan Sontag.
Brain Gremlin: The niceties, Fred. The fine points: diplomacy, compassion, standards, manners, tradition… that’s what we’re reaching toward. Oh, we may stumble along the way, but civilization, yes. The Geneva Convention, chamber music, Susan Sontag. Everything your society has worked so hard to accomplish over the centuries, that’s what we aspire to; we want to be civilized.
[a Gremlin with a beanie cap acts goofy next to Brain]
These 9 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:41pm GMT Permanent link.
Wednesday, 29 December 2004
How To Do Irony »
I got books for Christmas mostly, but I still went to the sales on Monday and bought more. Of the ones I’ve finished so far, The Curious Incident of the WMD in Iraq was impressively researched and took me longer than 45 minutes to read, but that might have been because I laughed so much. I bought The Closed Circle by Jonathan Coe in hardback because it was half price in Waterstone’s. I was so struck by the following passage on page 344 that I typed it out this morning, but finding others’ views on Amazon to be surprisingly negative, I decided to finish it before blabbing about how good it is. What seems didactic in extract actually nudges a couple of plots on. (Square brackets in original).
At the same time, Paul was helping to draft the final pages of the report from his Commission for Social and Business Initiatives, which would, he was convinced, be well received by the leadership and generate considerable attention in the press. The report was prefaced by a quotation from Gordon Brown, taken from the Financial TImes of March 28th, 2002: ‘The Labour Party is more pro-business, pro-wealth creation, pro-competition than ever before.’ It strongly recommended that the role of private firms in the public sector be extended still further, with special emphasis on health and education. It advised that GP’s surgeries, for instance, should be encouraged to contract out their payrolls and support services to the private sector. Likewise, the governing bodies of state schools should start hiring privately run management teams. ‘The vital ingredient that the public sector continues to lack, and the private sector is equipped to provide [Ronald Culpepper had written] can be summed up in one word: management.’ The objection that such initiatives had notably failed in the recent past — in the case of the privatized railways, for instance — was rejected as ‘defeatist’.
The completion of the report was celebrated at a special meeting of The Closed Circle in the first week of February, 2003. The only absentee, on this occasion, was Michael Usborne, who was caught up in crisis talks with the board of Meniscus Plastics. Since his appointment as CEO, despite his radical programme of rationalization and forced redundancies, which had already involved closing down an entire R&D department at the Solihull Plant, the company’s share price had started to fall and operating costs appeared to be soaring. It seemed likely that he would have to resign again, and he was in the process of renegotiating the finer points of his compensation package.
The Closed Circle is as political as The Rotter’s Club was, if less so than What A Carve Up! Coe has a faultless ear for pastiche — of text message, email, skittish Peter Cook like parody, newspaper copy, constipated poetry, and letters home, and by the time I was two-thirds through I was taken by how much story there is in it. It doesn’t hurt that Coe’s opposition to the war and his disaffection with the shallowness of the media echo my own. There’s a lovely scene were an up-and-coming New Labour MP goes to a bash for the “50 Sharpest Men in Britain” where the press are all over a couple from a reality TV show and ignore a popular genetics writer and tip for a Nobel. Coe’s grasp on the faults of the 1970s contrasts well with the superficiality of the Blair years.
Total pleasure.
These 275 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:22pm GMT Permanent link.
Thursday, 30 December 2004
Someone To Blame »
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve neither forgotten nor forgiven Boris Johnson’s absence from the ID cards vote, but he’s pretty good in today’s Torygraph.
A magnificent article in yesterday’s Guardian argued that a chunk of the Canary Islands should be pre-emptively detonated, in case a landslip caused a tsunami to race across the Atlantic and destroy New York.
That would be A terrible warning not to do nothing by David Aaronovitch, which doesn’t quite say that.
Proof that this absence of urgency can be quite widespread is furnished by the apparent certainty that one day the volcano on the island of La Palma in the Canaries will erupt, triggering a rock-fall of several hundred billion tonnes and a tsunami that will take out New York. Writing in the New York Times yesterday the author Dennis Smith used the occasion of the Indian Ocean disaster to argue that now was the time to reduce the La Palma mountain in size, “to lessen the impact should it ever slide into Atlantic.” “But, who,” Smith asked, “will pay for such a huge reduction of a landmass?” Hmm. What country is New York in?
So it wasn’t Big Dave who argued for it, but Dennis Smith whose cringe-making opening paragraph (which does nothing more than speed up the NYT’s decline) must have be written by a sub-ed.
SCIENTISTS, like art teachers who have not mastered anatomy or drawing, often assume that what they do not know is not important. And, when it comes to earth science, what they do not know is the pattern of geologic time, particularly what has happened beneath the ground in the 4.5 billion years that we assume the earth has existed. What have been the consequences of large waves and water movement to whatever life existed on its surface?
I mean where to start? What the writer knows about scientists seems to be confined to lab coated models talking about protein/moisture/enzyme boosting hair conditioners. Mr Smith actually seems to have a pretty good grasp of earth sciences. What he argues seems to me to be wrong, however.
Since tsunamis are created in proportion to the amount of land that has fallen into the water, this event would likely create a wave mass never before known to written history, many times bigger than the wave at Lituya Bay. The wave would diminish a little as it crossed the Atlantic, but if it hit the Atlantic Seaboard it could be higher than the skyscrapers of Boston, New York, Washington and Miami. Scientists do not know if it will take one, four, or 10 eruptions to separate the landmass, only that the separation is inevitable.
The only good news is that volcanoes usually send signals before they erupt, and it would take eight hours for the wave to travel from Africa to the United States’ eastern shoreline. It is not sufficient time, however, to move all the people who would be in its path. In any event, surely the mountain on La Palma should be reduced in size, to lessen the impact should it ever slide into Atlantic. But, who will pay for such a huge reduction of a landmass?
As both Hak Mao and John Band have taken the time to inform me, Tsunami lose a lot of their force after a short distance inland. Since, to quote Futurama, “No one drives in New York, there’s too much traffic,” I suspect that New Yorkers could be persuaded to walk a couple of miles in eight hours (the time a wave is expected to take to cross the Atlantic). Evacuation may be difficult, but it doesn’t look impossible. His conclusion, however, is rubbish.
I hope for the future in the same way I hope when I step on to an air-plane. I hope the people in control are of sound mind and body, and that they know what they are doing. Yet I know that simply wishing this is not enough. Terrible events in the future are in-evitable. But I also know that we will continue to be unprepared for them if we don’t look more deeply into the past. By this, I don’t mean a fire last year or a volcanic eruption a century ago. I mean another past, in geologic time, that we simply don’t know enough about. Thinking about that ex-plosion on Sumatra 71,000 years ago is a good place to start.
Boris tackles this but, but as he does so by way of Mr Aaronovich, here’s what sets him off.
Similarly one day we will be hit by a gigantic asteroid if we don’t work out a way of intercepting them in space. Not soon, maybe (or maybe very soon), but it’s going to happen. But when Dubya confided his pre-election desire to restart the US space programme, he was widely laughed at.
The final sentence is silly. The space programme has never stopped; the manned space programme (which is the one Mr Bush called to be “restarted") has been largely wound down, but we’re still sending probes around the solar system, and there’s a magnificent telescope in orbit, which Mr Bush wants to stop funding. If we had an asteroid detection programme, unmanned instruments would be no less accurate and far better value for money. As for intercepting asteroids, do you really think they’re going to send Bruce Willis and Steve Buscemi? Most of our probes and warheads are computer-guided.
Boris almost redeems himself by demonstrating that he still has some common sense.
Well, perhaps this would indeed do more good than harm, and perhaps we should see whether there are any other suspect islands — Ibiza? — that could be usefully blown up; but it would do nothing, of course, to prevent further Indonesian earthquakes, and the same point could be made to those Euro-MPs now calling for the building of some Battlestar Galactica to fight off asteroids.
One can see that this is in the spirit of the hysterical precautionary principle that now bedevils our legislation, but it is mad. It may offend our species’ sense of self-importance, but when a thunking great hunk of rock comes hurtling out of space, to splat this planet like an egg, it is time to admit gracefully that our number is up.
A long time ago, an English king made this point, in the very matter of waves. He sat on the beach and ordered the tide to withdraw. Canute was not a megalomaniac. He was just showing that there are some things that are beyond the scope of kings, or laws, or regulation.
These 336 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:00pm GMT Permanent link.
'Tis The Season To Be Jolly »
Gary Farber has resumed posting! Despite his own recent health problems, he’s clearly pleased that Sir Arthur C. Clarke is alive and well. Sir Arthur suggests donating to Sarvodaya.
Alternatively, considering supporting Sarvodaya, the largest development charity in Sri Lanka, which has a 45-year track record in reaching out and helping the poorest of the poor. Sarvodaya has mounted a well organised, countrywide relief effort using their countrywide network of offices and volunteers who work in all parts of the country, well above ethnic and other divisions.
I’ve held off recommending donating (and donating myself) because I’m sceptical of charities, too many seem to have absurd promotional spending and other overheads, while some have explicit ideologies which I want nothing to do with. It’s better, IMO, to support concerned locals than patronising Western do-gooders.
These 76 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:31pm GMT Permanent link.
Have They No Taste? »
And tonight thank God it’s them instead of you
Geldof/Ure
I suppose London’s £1m New Year spectacular has already been paid for.
Final preparations are getting under way in London today for a spectacular £1 million firework display and light show to mark the New Year.
…
Then at 11.59pm a 60-second countdown to midnight is to begin, followed by a 10-minute firework display.
…
The whole event is being paid for by the Greater London Authority and organised by London Mayor Ken Livingstone.
My emphasis. £1 million was the UK’s original aid package to Sri Lanka.
I should own up to hating being in crowds and finding firework displays spectacular only in their unrivalled boredom-inducing property. I’ve no interest in arguing that one shouldn’t enjoy themselves while there is suffering, only that £1 million on ten minutes of explosions is out of all proportion while people are dying.
These 75 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:49pm GMT Permanent link.
Stranger Than Fiction (Again) »
Earlier this month, I wrote:
The Home Secretary said he didn’t wish to spread alarm, but he thought that the press had a right to know that anti-terror operations were hunting two suspected conspirators, known only as Mr and Mrs Q. “The woman is particulary dangerous,” said Blunkett, “she’s been known to use the alias ‘Ms F’ and is a mistress of disguise, being able to pass herself off as ‘tall and blonde’ despite being neither.”
Now John Band reports on Uber-cyber-stalking:
A UK national newspaper received an interesting tip-off last week… The source worked as a phone-tapper; he set up taps on the basis of requests from the police, MI5, and various other bodies — including David Blunkett’s private office. …
After all, there was no reason at the time for the name Ms Kimberly Quinn to ring any alarm bells…
I feel safe knowing that the ex-Home Secretary devoted resources to hounding this elusive terrorist. On the far side of the pond, von of Obsidian Wings worries about gang members prosecuted as terrorists.
Murder, after all, was just as illegal before 9-11 as it is illegal today.
Von is only a lawyer, so I’m sure Mr Blunkett would disagree. Without terror laws, how would anyone get convicted of, say, sleeping with Simon Hoggart?
These 70 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:51pm GMT Permanent link.
Boris Speaks Too Soon »
Well, I thought Boris was good today.
Of course, we are no longer quite so primitive as to think, with the writers of the ancient scriptures, that natural calamities may be causally connected to human bad behaviour. If there are any loonies out there who think that Phuket is being punished for being the modern Nineveh, they have had the good sense to keep it to themselves.
Loonies, eh? Boris, we live in senstive times. Dispatches from the Culture Wars has found a few loonies: Faiths Ask of Quake: ‘Why Did You Do This, God?’
Traditionalists of diverse faiths described the destruction as part of god’s plan, proof of his power and punishment for human sins.
“This is an expression of God’s great ire with the world,” Israeli chief rabbi Shlomo Amar told Reuters. “The world is being punished for wrongdoing — be it people’s needless hatred of each other, lack of charity, moral turpitude.”
Pandit Harikrishna Shastri, a priest of New Delhi’s huge marble and sandstone Birla Hindu temple, told Reuters the disaster was caused by a “huge amount of pent-up man-made evil on earth” and driven by the positions of the planets.
Azizan Abdul Razak, a Muslim cleric and vice president of Malaysia’s Islamic opposition party, Parti Islam se-Malaysia, said the disaster was a reminder from god that “he created the world and can destroy the world.”
Sheikh Ibrahim Mogra, a leading British Muslim cleric from Leicester in England said: “We believe that God has ultimate controlling power over his entire creation. We have a responsibility to try and attract god’s kindness and mercy and not do anything that would attract his anger.”
Many faiths believe that disasters foretell the end of time or the coming of a Messiah. Some Christians expect chaos and destruction as foretold in the Bible’s final book, Revelations.
Maria, a 32-year-old Jehovah’s Witness in Cyprus who believes that the apocalypse is coming said people who once slammed the door in her face were stopping to listen.
“It is a sign of the last days,” she said.
The Rapture Index comes with a handy disclaimer:
The Rapture Index is by no means meant to predict the rapture, however, the index is designed to measure the type of activity that could act as a precursor to the rapture.
You could say the Rapture index is a Dow Jones Industrial Average of end time activity, but I think it would be better if you viewed it as prophetic speedometer. The higher the number, the faster we’re moving towards the occurrence of pre-tribulation rapture.
An index over 145 is described as “Fasten your seat belts.” These are the highs since it started in 2001: 182; 2002: 179; 2003: 177; 2004: 157. (Notice that September 11, 2001, in which 3,000 people died was a greater sign of the end of the world than the recent tsunami which killed over 100,000. Those were brown people in a place most Americans hadn’t heard of after all, somewhere the more PC probably reflexively called “The Native American Ocean.” Harry Hutton has some earthquake and flood killer facts. If you don’t remember the world ending in 1228, 1290, 1642, 1693, 1703, and so on, you weren’t paying attention.
As Private Fraser used say,
We’re doomed. Doomed. We’re a’ doomed.
These 157 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 6:43pm GMT Permanent link.
A True Story Of Delinquency »
Matthew Turner reports that Peter Hitchens is angry (no change there then, but he’s a conservative, so that’s all right). Peter Cuthbertson lets fly in the comments, but doesn’t unleash his fury on his own site, which is rather a pity.
As you all know, society went to pot (tee hee) in the 1960s. Take this sociologically revealing document recently unearthed by concerned historians.
Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke,
You gotta understand,
It’s just our bringin’ up-ke
That gets us out of hand.
Our mothers all are junkies,
Our fathers all are drunks.
Golly Moses, natcherly we’re punks! …My father is a bastard,
My ma’s an S.O.B.
My grandpa’s always plastered,
My grandma pushes tea.
My sister wears a mustache,
My brother wears a dress.
Goodness gracious, that’s why I’m a mess!
The date given is “© 1956, 1957 Amberson Holdings LLC and Stephen Sondheim” but improvements in carbon dating (used to prove that the Grand Canyon in only about 5,000 years old) have revised this to 1973.
I’m much older than Peter, so I remember the 1960s (especially running home from school in 1967 for updates on the Moon Landing, and the first episodes of Star Trek). I should also confess that I went to the sort of school which Peter and his namesake, Mr Hitchens, frets about. Readers may have the false impression of me as someone who swears too much, drinks too much, but still had unto learning gone long ygo or something like that. No! The school I went to was well rough. It boasted how a pupil shot a bailiff (who died). This terrible event, the result of the decline of the nuclear family and the gay plot to overthrow the family is recorded here. (It’s a gif, so weird spelling may be in the original, or may be my typos.)
They ramforcit the doors of the said scooll, swa that thai refusit to lat in thair Maistir nor wthir man, without thai wer grantit thair priviledge, conforme to thair wountit use. The Prouost and Baillies and Counsell heiring tell of the same ordanit Johne Macmorrane baille to goe to the Gramer-scooll, and tak sum ordour thairwith. The said Johne, with certane officeris, went to the Hie Scooll. and requystit the scollaris to oppin the dores: thai refusit. The said Baillie amd officeris tuik ane geast and ran at the bak dore with the geast. Ane scollar bad him desist from dinging up the dore, wtherwayis, he wowit to God, he sould shute any pair of bullettis throw his heid. The said Baillie, thinking he durst not schuit, he and his assistaris ran still with the geast at the said door. Thair came ane scoller callit William Sinklar … and with ane pistollet schot the said Baillie throw the heid …
(I guess that ‘w’ is, as in Welsh and Greek, as a vowel, used for ‘long o’ ie ‘oo’ — think of ‘w’ in a cursive script, and see two open topped ‘o’s run together. Note that ‘u’ is used for ‘v’ as in Latin. Whoever wrote this couldn’t spell ‘Skool’ neither. Charles Clarke would have been well disappointed, yeah.) The play’s authors are two misfits called David Platt and Karl Miller. David Platt is not the footballer, though Karl Miller later gained some fame for describing Paul Gascoigne as a “priapic monolith.” The moral turpitude of my alma mater can also be seen in the resignation of another former pupil over the decision by the Government to go to war in Iraq. Hint 1: not Clare Short; Hint 2: short, Scottish, red hair, beard, Foreign Secretary, clever.
Shocking stuff, and the fault of the Welfare State, as you can tell by the atrocious spelling.
These 393 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 8:37pm GMT Permanent link.
Images »
OOPS, I deleted these by accident.
A couple more backgrounds for the heading. I did think of turning the css file into a php file and revising it every day, but it’s simpler as well as bandwidth-parsimonious to keep it the same and just use the cascade part by inserting the daily style in the top of each page. This has the bonus of giving archive pages a timestamp of sorts.
It does seem odd to me that an inner-city blogger should use pastoral scenes as decoration, and I fear that I’m giving away an ambition to retreat to bucolic surroundings. These are the photographs that I like and I use as wallpaper on my computer (which is smart enough to rotate them).
I like the horses, which are from a racing stable the brother of a friend works for, but I don’t think the picture works. The backgrounds will settle down before Christmas (or Kwanzaa) 2005.
These 153 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:46pm GMT Permanent link.
But Here's The Coolest Part »
Unlike Adam Yoshida, I didn’t get into Alias because Jennifer Garner was never that hot to me, plus it was really boring, you know. Through Long Story, Short Pier, I found Alias: The Lost Episode. (15 minutes of Quicktime, so download is rather slow, even over broadband.) If you don’t like camp comedy, gratuitous comedic violence, sexual references, or silliness, don’t watch. For everyone else, it’s hilarious.
These 67 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:18pm GMT Permanent link.
No Solutions, Just Complaints »
Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.
Auden, thanks to Ben
When I was younger and more foolish than I am now (if such a thing is possible) I joined the ICA because it was near where I worked, but more importantly, there was a lecture by Michel Tournier. (Amazon lists him as the author of The Ogre, though the translation I read had the title as “The Erl-King” after the Goethe song.) ‘Lecture’ is too strong. Tournier was interviewed by Julian Barnes (whose French is fluent) and interpreted by an Einstein-lookalike. In those days I was still concussed by Sartre and I asked the deliberately apolitical Tournier about “commitment.” I have felt a greater fool on many occasions, but they were all in my early teenage years.
I still recommend “The Erl-King” as a novel, even if I can’t rate it as highly as “Slaughterhouse 5” — the subject matter is very similar. There is one passage which sticks in my mind. (I no longer have a copy; I pushed mine on a girlfriend during one of my more evangelical phases.) When the German army is in retreat, some character rationalises than the ‘blond warriors’ of Nazism aren’t the sharpest pencils in the box (second hand Heidegger — who thought it was good — and Nietzsche, who hated the limitedness of the Germans) and concludes that stupidity is the mark of the master race (unlike the slippery Jews).
Here’s John Derbyshire extolling honest low-brows over cunning intellectuals like Susan Sontag, who being a silly cow didn’t realise that she had to defer to “brain dead” Derbyshire because he had (whisper it) ‘those thingumies down there’ (via TBogg).
Remember, low-brows are being crushed by “know-alls” with degrees. Hooray for George Bush and the Blond Beasts!
These 285 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:11pm GMT Permanent link.
Oh, I Forgot »
I should have left the last word to the gentle people of the Korner. Here it is: It’s So Unfair.
Western Civilisation is in safe hands. Just as it was under, say, Julius Caesar or Nero the fiddler.
I’m not accusing those dimwits of Nazism. I’m too lazy. Let them incriminate themselves.
These 52 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:28pm GMT Permanent link.
Friday, 31 December 2004
The Natural Impulse Of Gratitude »
Reading John Band’s post, Memo to self reminded me of a passage in one of my Christmas presents — Billy Ruffian: His Majesty’s Ship “Bellerophon” and the Downfall of Napoleon — A Biography of a Ship of the Line 1782-1836 by David Cordingly. On page 88, the ship is returning home from the battle on ‘The Glorious First of June’ in 1794. Sailing ships were cramped anyway, but they were carrying 198 French prisoners.
The service on the Bellerophon was led by the ship’s chaplain, the Reverend John Fresselicque …He used the occasion to give a lengthy sermon which he later published to raise funds for the benefit of those members of the crew who had been wounded and disabled in the three days of fighting.
Cordingly doesn’t give the whole text which the sailors (and presumably the prisoners) would have had to stand to listen to. He doesn’t say how long ‘lengthy’ is, but as ‘a lengthy sermon’ is a pleonasm, and as he’s too good a writer to commit such an atrocity, one suspects pretty long. Here’s the sentence he does quote which is the first after a verse from Pslam 115.
The natural impulse of gratitude in the mind of men, is never more forcible, or its effects more pleasant, than when the Heart is warmed by the pleasing recollection of the recent benefit; the disposition is always attended with the most agreeable sensations and the spontaneous effusions of the grateful spirit are given and received with equal condescension and favor in proportion as the declaration is made with sincerity.
You’ve got to wonder if anyone who bought the text out of charity got as far as that first full stop. Don’t believe everything the Village People tell you about life in the Navy.
These 175 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 5:59pm GMT Permanent link.