backword
Tuesday, 1 November 2005
Something Must Be Done! »
I’d love to have an opinion on the state of British blogging (but Jamie’s said many good things; and I don’t agree that blogs should be this thing or that thing, or at least I agree with that idea as much as I do with the one that says all novels should be set in Hampstead in the 1950s and have a happy ending), but I really can’t be bothered having opinions about anything.
However, I think I can beat away the drowsy numbness long enough to make an attempt at the British blogging record for tardy commentary on tehgrauniad group. I noticed a few other bloggers picked up on the ‘New Puritan’ thing, which struck me as typical magazine chewing gum, flavourless, calorieless pap, there to make gaps in the adverts and lull the reader into the delusion that there are actually articles. There aren’t. The prose always turns into “Lorem ipsum, etc” after the fourth paragraph, but you just never skimmed that far down. Well, maybe not: that article did say this:
But you can guess that a New Puritan does not binge drink, smoke, buy big brands, take cheap flights, eat junk food, have multiple sexual partners, waste money on designer clothes, grow beyond their optimum weight, subscribe to celebrity magazines, drive a flash car, or live to watch television.
On the original page, “have multiple” is at the end of a line, and I filled in “orgasms” before my eyeballs saccaded to the next line.* But that’s probably more than you needed to know. Nah, the good bit is “a New Puritan does not binge drink”. And here lies the reason for my being eight days late with the old whatever it we bloggers do with newspaper pieces we feel smarter than. Well, the reason for six of those days, the other two are pure indolence. Saturday’s Torygraph had a workmanlike Vicki Woods column Last orders at my beloved village pub, which contained this:
But why can’t they be responsible for themselves? “Search me.” Search me, too. I bemusedly read a piece in the Observer last Sunday: “Barman served enough alcohol to kill me.” The author wasn’t even drinking the murderous “units”, but pouring them away. Nevertheless, the leader page bristled with outrage and hypocritical oohs and ahs about the naughty barman. I don’t get the logic here.
And I’m, did it? So I searched and found it: One bar, three hours - I was sold enough drink to kill me, It does pretty much say that. And it is rather strange.
This is what we ordered: a bottle of wine; four bottles of a vodka-based alcopop; four vodka shots, each a different colour; two more bottles of vodka-based alcopops; three double sambucas; a double gin and tonic and a double vodka and tonic; three double tequilas; a second bottle of wine; four vodka alcopops; two double tequilas; two more double gin and tonics; two more double sambucas.
It totalled 64 units, 32 each. The barwoman recognised our faces and thought the drinks were for the two of us. But she never stopped serving - enough alcohol to kill each of us. We did not drink it all, but handed it on to customers in the bar. We had to.
Now, I don’t know what they teach trainees at tehgrauniad, but mind-reading isn’t taught at Cardiff’s post grad journalism course. How anyone can write with a straight face, “The barwoman recognised our faces and thought the drinks were for the two of us” and “[we] handed [them] on to customers in the bar” in the same paragraph is frankly beyond me. Perhaps tehgrauniad writers are encouraged to believe that bar staff are a) extremely stupid; b) the vulnerable working-classes who need protected from hostile secondary smoke; and c) responsible for the well-being of every stuck-up hack who leaves their credit card behind the bar. And “We had to"? Call yourself a journalist? Mind you it would be wasted on Anushka Asthana; ethanol helps, but it needs raw material: your Hemingways, your Fitzgeralds, your Behans, your Bukowskis, and so forth. You have to have the talent for it.
We left at 11.30pm, the end of our typical night in a pub in England. People drinking until stupefied before spilling out into the street, fighting, shouting, drunk in the gutter. It was mayhem, fuelled by bar staff and a pub industry all too willing to serve drink after drink after drink. No questions asked.
God, how awful. Those nasty bar staff. Good job Anushka Asthana has a nice job her mother would be proud of.
’You bought 32 units each,’ said McNeill from the IAS. ‘That is a bottle of whisky, and that could kill you.’
Yes, if it was dropped on your head. People drop dead playing squash, running, or having sex. Better avoid those too.
There’s a reason to love tehgrauniad there. One section berates these dull-as-dishwater types, and another is written by some ingenue who is shocked, shocked at consumer culture.
’I’m so pissed,’ shouted one woman — or perhaps a girl — gleefully.
Did the Graun really fight the good fight for feminism for that?
*Oops! “Saccaded” may be yet another accidental Backword neologism. saccade is a real noun, and in the OED.
These 559 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:17am GMT Permanent link.
Upping The Anti- »
Chris, who was innocently searching for beavers, found a letter from Nietzsche to Brandes quoted in Nietzsche’s Anti-Darwin.
It’s been years since I read Fred passionately. (I come back to him, all the time; how can you not?) But some of this, even if presented to the “11th annual conference of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society, Emmannuel College Cambridge, [on the] 8th September 2001” must be wrong.
Nietzsche reiterates Stirner for whom the retreat from egoism is a form of mystification. Stirner, was influenced by the economic philosophers Adam Smith and Say, whom he translated. Nietzsche too defends a position which, like theirs and Darwin’s, involves invisible hands. Egoism and invisible hand go together. Get certain basics right and you can do what you like. Selfishness is to do no harm, on the contrary it promotes progress. … Much of the beauty of Darwin’s theory, like that of Adam Smith’s economics, derives from this. The will to power theory belongs with these. If it did not one might have to agree with those critics for whom Nietzsche’s whole philosophy is destruction and madness.
My emphasis. If I understand this, it boils down to “Greed is good” (a thesis, btw, which I don’t dispute). But Nietzsche would never have argued that “Selfishness is to do no harm.” He was better than that. Of course it can do harm. The point is harm to whom. Nietzsche, like a good Darwinian, sees the statue emerging from the lumpen stone. If it promotes progress, it is because it exterminates (harms) some of humanity.
For Nietzsche the suppression of strength by mediocrity and decadence is as important a fact as any other.
Nietzsche is too clever to believe that if X “suppresses” Y then Y can be “stronger” than X.
Thus even in nature he sees not so much realised possibilities of healthy, triumphant life, but the constant suppression of that. That might suggest a vision as pessimistic as that of Malthus.
He was still too smart not to see a triumph in X even if it was “mediocrity.” I know all my Malthus through Darwin, and as result, he can’t be all that pessimistic.
At Will to Power §680 Nietzsche writes:-
“I am opposed to the theory that the individual studies the interests of the species or of posterity at the cost of his own advantage: all this is only apparent. The excessive importance which he attaches to the sexual instinct is not the result of the latter’s importance to the species; for procreation is the actual performance of the individual, it is his greatest interest, and therefore it is his highest expression of power (not judged from the standpoint of consciousness, but from the very centre of the individual).”
This seems to have some bearing on Dawkins’ metaphor of the selfish gene, with its suggestion that even our instincts do not always operate in our own interests, or towards the survival that we presumably ought to prize.
It does “have some bearing on Dawkins’ metaphor of the selfish gene” and Nietzsche is wrong, not because subsequent scientific fashion has deemed him so, but because he hasn’t sufficiently considered what “individual” or “studies” properly mean. How does an individual study and what with? “Darwinism” (I prefer “Biology") has evolved through studying individuals from thousands of species, and sex is not the highest expression of power: what about male preying mantises for instance? (And mantises were studied in the rarely anachronistic Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander by Stephen Maturin.) Surely it’s too anthropomorphic to assume that insects or even pigs or apes know they’re procreating? Shakespeare was obsessed in the early sonnets, but the means, not the end, interested Andrew Marvell. Anyway, why is behaviour Z an expression of power? Is it purely convention? And is having 22 sons (and calling them all “Dave” like Mrs McCave in the Dr Seuss poem) really an expression of individual power, compared to, say, Ted Heath, who had no children? Nietzsche was close to seeing that there is no “very centre of the individual” — he just didn’t have have the corelatives for an appropriate metaphor, like an event horizon or a fractal.
I could go on. Instead, I should go to bed.
This will bother me for days.
These 410 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:03am GMT Permanent link.
New Look »
Not sure I like it. I have absolutely no ideas at present, so a redesign was in order, that and working on improved blogging software (yes, yes, with comments).
Background idea from Eric Meyer’s splendid complex spiral, some font ideas (I may scurry back to Verdana) from Jason Kottke.
These 49 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:46pm GMT Permanent link.
OK, Needs Work »
Redecorating is, as I believe General Sherman had it, hell, isn’t it? No wonder they named a tank after him.
After “finishing” the mess I’ve made so far (and I haven’t dared check the result in IE, let alone on Windows. I can probably save some bandwidth if I slice Gordon up differently. And then I had the bright idea of changing the basic look (background pic and colour) each day of the week, and ditto for each month in the archives. I need an Atom feed. And a tag line.
These 91 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:43pm GMT Permanent link.
Wednesday, 2 November 2005
The Pause Is Everything »
I made a terrible mistake when I was young, I think, from which I’ve never really recovered. I wrote the word “pause” into my first play.
HAROLD PINTER, interview, Oct. 1989
I’ve had my doubts about Matthew d’Ancona in the past, but he really is one of the best political commentators in this country at present. The job of journalists is to report, not to invent. The task of columnists is to somehow be original. The two go together much like a field mouse and a combine harvester. The talented find originality in synthetic truths. Take one thing from here, another seemingly unrelated and put them together. The art is the two truths that tell a new truth,
Matthew d’Ancona shows he has another ability beyond mere wit in Blunkett has chosen a bad time to risk upsetting Blair, he may have mastered the opening sentence. Given his title, he then starts somewhere else, brilliantly.
In politics, as in Harold Pinter’s plays, the pause is everything. When Gordon Brown was asked during the election campaign whether he would have gone to war with Iraq if he had been Prime Minister, the heartbeat that passed before he answered was much more eloquent than the Chancellor’s (obligatory) “Yes”.
There’s nothing wrong with cliche, when the cliche is true. There is the old joke about the full backing of the government.
On Monday, the Prime Minister’s features froze as he was questioned about David Blunkett. You could hear the whirr and hum of political calculation, the internal hedging of bets. “I do give him my confidence,” said Mr Blair, finally. He did not sound very confident.
It’s been a long time since Blair lost control to the extent where he didn’t sound confident. After a condensed version of Blunkett’s cabinet career, we have:
In truth, however, Mr Blunkett’s prospects have little to do with ethics and everything to do with collective embarrassment. Having brought his ally back into the Cabinet with a speed some found unbecoming, Mr Blair relied upon him to stay out of trouble. Nobody seriously suggests that Mr Blunkett has behaved wickedly. These are the mishaps of a M Hulot, not the dark schemes of a bearded Mephistopheles. But those mishaps have made Mr Blair look ridiculous. And to adapt the rant by the Hollywood producer Jack Woltz in The Godfather, “a man in his position can’t afford to be made to look ridiculous!”
There’s an interesting (to me) philosophical point. M Hulot was ridiculous in the way only a striving little man can be. His was the pathos of the series of defeats, the struggle of the fly in marmalade, the sisyphean struggle of “Fail. Fail again. Fail better.” Mr Blair, however, is in the opinion of many, a highly successful statesman, one who has won three elections (even if in the last one, his party received a lower percentage of the poll than it did in its most catastrophic defeat), he has steered two US Presidents, and he may have changed British politics. He should have a large counterweight to any impression of ridiculousness. Neil Kinnock falling over on a beach was an image which after all underlined his failure to win at the polls (never mind that he may have saved the Labour Party, which was unforgivable, not least by the party stalwarts). There’s something rotten in the state when Blair looks ridiculous for supporting a friend* but not for spinning dodgy intelligence.
Matthew d’Ancona is the Sunday Telegraph’s Deputy Editor. George Jones is the Telegraph’s Political Editor and he seems to feel that the Blunkett story is more than “mishaps.” Blair ignores his own guidelines to keep Blunkett in the Cabinet.
Tony Blair abandoned his “purer than pure” approach to ministerial conduct yesterday in an attempt to keep David Blunkett, his close friend and political ally, in the Cabinet.
Yes, but that started during the Tory “sleaze” years. Things are different now, The press hounded the Tories because they were corrupt. It hounds New Labour because it is institutionally biased against government.
Labour sources say Mr Blunkett was keen to take up business appointments after resigning as Home Secretary to recoup the high legal bills in the paternity battle over the children of his former lover, Kimberly Quinn.
A leading family solicitor said he would have paid lawyers up to £50,000. Mr Blunkett was represented in court by a leading QC, Peter Jackson, whose fees would be added to those of the solicitors.
I think more questions should be asked of the companies which hired Mr Blunkett, Unlike Kenneth Clarke, he doesn’t have a business background, what did they think they were getting? The cynic in me thinks contacts, inside information, and a name. And here’s something I didn’t know.
Update: Matthew Turner has pointed out that Ken Clarke was a QC, so he no more qualified as a company director than David Blunkett. This is confirmed by Wikipedia and his profile on the Conservatives’ site. I should have checked.
Labour sources say Mr Blunkett was keen to take up business appointments after resigning as Home Secretary to recoup the high legal bills in the paternity battle over the children of his former lover, Kimberly Quinn.
A leading family solicitor said he would have paid lawyers up to £50,000. Mr Blunkett was represented in court by a leading QC, Peter Jackson, whose fees would be added to those of the solicitors.
£50K? Blimey.
*Ah, but are they? After I wrote last month about the Heads of Government exhibition, I thought that two parallel columns of pictures — one of Blair and Campbell and the other of Blair and Brown — would be an interesting exhibit. But I don’t recall that many of Blair and Blunkett together.
These 519 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:17am GMT Permanent link.
I Found The Tagline »
Searching for Harold Pinter’s thoughts on the pause, produced Harold Pinter Quotes. This is perfect.
I don’t give a damn what other people think. It’s entirely their own business. I’m not writing for other people.
These 15 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:27am GMT Permanent link.
One Bastard Fewer »
Blunkett resigns! Let there be dancing in the streets, fireworks, and much debauchery. Killer line:
Only yesterday Mr Blunkett declared he would not allow his critics to drive him out of office.
I dug out Nick Cohen’s Pretty Straight Guys the other day. David Blunkett is on the cover, but he only gets a few mentions in the book, and his biggest role regards the Dome.
David Blunkett was ‘deeply against it, frankly’, because ‘the design had no vision.’
Page 139-40.
An unctuous Blunkett forgot his declaration that he was ‘deeply against it, frankly’ and told the PM that the Dome was ‘an enormous challenge. We should be congratulated for moving so quickly.’
Page 141. Just thought I’d share that with you.
These 61 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:31pm GMT Permanent link.
A Good Memory Is One Of The Pleasures Of Life »
And enough books (nothing like so many as Chris Brooke seems to have), to back it up. PooterGeek’s dad wrote to tehgrauniad:
Maybe I’m naive, but what kind of socialist buys shares (Blunkett faces new conflict of interest claims, November 1)?
I posted a sort of answer in his comments and Chris Dillow’s (where I found the link).
“I have, which will surprise you, been speculating — partly in American funds, but more especially in English stocks, which are springing up like mushrooms this year (in furtherance of every imaginable and unimaginable joint stock enterprise), and forced up to quite an unreasonable level and then, for the most part, collapse. In this way, I have made over £400 and now that the complexity of the political situation affords greater scope, I shall begin all over again. It’s a type of operation that makes small demands on one’s time, and it’s worth while running some risk in order to relieve the enemy of his money.”
Karl Marx to Lion Philips, 1864. Quoted in Francis Wheen, Karl Marx, p268. Wheen notes that “some scholars have assumed that Marx simply invented the story” but concedes that “it may be true.”
These 72 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:32pm GMT Permanent link.
Fabrication And Fiction »
tehgrauniad: Blunkett complains of press’s role in his downfall and David Blunkett’s resignation speech.
I have no grumbles about that other than to say that the so-called revelations of Max Clifford are just that — they are complete lies.
One day — but obviously not now — they will be dealt with.
Ah, the old biased press story. Nasty Mr Clifford. Was it really nearly nine years ago that the Torygraph could publish ’Mad Max’ Clifford protests too much?
MAX Clifford, the publicist who specialises in the sins of Tory MPs, seized the headlines for himself yesterday when he squared up to a senior Tory backbencher in a BBC television studio, minutes before the Kilroy show was to go on the air.
He had to be restrained after glowering at Roger Gale, chairman of the Tory backbench media committee. “I moved closer to enjoy Gale’s admiring gaze,” he said later. “I do not like the man, I find him utterly repulsive.”
The BBC profile of Max Clifford:
And while he is a Labour supporter and an admirer of Tony Blair, this did not stop him tipping off the Mirror that Cherie was pregnant.
But Mr Clifford is a much more complex character than just a purveyor of sleaze, as many of his victims have branded him.
While he makes a very good living for his business, what motivates him is much more than just money.
He cannot stand hypocrisy in public life, and reserves a particular disgust for lying politicians.
That disgust certainly helped John Major leave Downing Street. I’m not an admirer of Max Clifford, but I enjoy seeing Blunkett bashed, and it looks like I’ll be seeing a lot more. I know which of Blunkett and Clifford has the better lawyers, the better contacts, and thinks before acting.
Stephen Pollard calls Blunkett’s behavious “shoddy". Mr Pollard is one of many columnists (Jonathan Freedland and Tom Utley are two others) who seem to think that Blunkett lost it some time in 2004. I think he’s been misguided since his nuclear-free Sheffield days.
Jonathan Freedland in tehgrauniad:
At Sheffield council Blunkett was known for a burning temper, throwing tantrums when he didn’t get his own way. Later he hinted that these outbursts were calculated; other people could not have got away with being so rude, but he knew that few people would relish a shouting match with a blind man.
No special intellect or judgement, just tantrums and terror. You’ll go far if you realise that life is all play-acting, and David Blunkett’s career has been like that bloke in Catch Me If You Can. I don’t follow tehgrauniad’s columnists, so I’m not sure where Mr Freedland fits, but I find the word “tribe” odd here.
At the Home Office Blunkett’s grip began to slip. His tough talk on immigration, including a reckless use of the word “swamped”, and his hectoring of ethnic minorities alienated the Guardian tribe long ago.
Is it me, or is that a tad supercilious?
But all this is to dodge the elephant in the room. The simplest explanation for the shift may well be the most personal: that Blunkett fell in love and lost his head. Suddenly he was introduced to a Spectator set that valued none of the earnest diligence that appealed to both Mail and Guardian types.
That’s the Tom Utley explanation in a nutshell. It has a flaw. What exactly are the “Spectator set” and “Guardian types"? And which stereotype does the hard-working Simon Hoggart fit? When he’s not on Radio 4, he’s reviewing wine for the Sextator and during the day he writes parliamentary sketches in tehgrauniad. Maybe it’s his glasses, but Simon Hoggart has always seemed pretty earnest to me. Boris Johnson could bear being called “diligent,” while there have been Labour MPs (Tom Driberg for instance) who have been short on both “diligence” and “earnestness”.
Max Clifford might like to point out that most of his clients are the tackier celebs, but he’s still the uxorious straight-arrow type.
He just fell in with some bad company. My arse!
These 334 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:19pm GMT Permanent link.
Thursday, 3 November 2005
More Blunkett »
Best Blunkett story so far: Staff fear Wade could lose job following alleged 4am assault. (Via Guido, appropriately.)
Sun editor Rebekah Wade spent around eight hours in police custody today following an alleged assault on her husband Ross Kemp.
…
It is believed that Wade and Kemp had been out last night commiserating with sacked Home Secretary David Blunkett.
The Sun has recently been running a campaign against domestic violence.
I make that two ASBOs: drunk and disorderly, and assault. God, I wish some reporter had the good sense to phone David Blunkett, and ask a few questions about his ministerial career, laced with compliments like “You were a great Home Secretary, we owe the genesis of ID cards and ASBOs to you … ” etc and quietly drop in, “What would you do with a woman who assaulted her husband when legless?”
And now the Dave Blunkett chav song: “They may get up, but we knock them down again.” It’s different for the chattering classes, of course.
She’s now been released. Will Rebekah “the slap-the-slaphead slapper” Wade go the ball, er the “Women of the Year Lunch"?
I don’t always agree with Nick Cohen, but his London Evening Standard column is spot-on on DB.
IT’S faintly repellent to see people who bowed before David Blunkett when he was full of pomp and power kick him now he is down.
The former flatterers should have noticed that his fatal flaws were on full display when they were talking of him as the next Prime Minister.
I’ve covered seven other Home Secretaries, and none could match his wild impatience of criticism. People who stood-up for this country’s liberties were “airy-fairy” do-gooders. Judges who questioned the legality of his decisions didn’t “live in the real world”. After one left-wing journalist I know signed a petition against one of his draconian policies, the Home Office wouldn’t return his calls.
David Blunkett always was a politician who had to have his own way. He never could stand restraints whether they came from law of the land or the Ministerial Code of Conduct.
He then pretty much blows it with a reprint of a Staggers column from last year: Beware a girl who calls herself Kimberly.
Class hatred once provided the “Stop!” signs of the left. If you were invited to entrust your money or your heart to someone who was rich, you would know to make an excuse and leave, because tradition ruled that no good could come of the relationship. The gut reaction was based on three arguments whose wisdom had been proved by long experience.
I sort of agree with this, but only if you add “because they are rich” to “someone who was rich”. Fancying Mr Darcy because he was a good-looking bloke, who might be a decent guy under it all, is OK. Fancying him because he has a stonking house in the country is not. Nick Cohen opens with P.G. Wodehouse, but the liaisons in the Jeeves stories are always between poor-but-honest girls and rolling-in-money earls, and they always work out to the satisfaction of both parties.
Political. No just country can be created while extremes of wealth persist. It is wrong to allow the wealthy to believe that the rest of society finds their existence desirable or even tolerable.
I happen to believe that this country is pretty much “just” and one of the most just in the world (the same goes for much of the US as well). If the “rest of society” does not find the existence of Madonna and Rupert Murdoch “desirable or even tolerable”, they have a funny way of showing it.
Aesthetic. The wealthy are vulgar. They waste their money on the art of the Chapman brothers or the fashions of John Galliano and use their domination of taste to silence the little boy who says the emperor has no clothes, or, rather, has gauche and ill-fitting clothes.
Er, Bill Gates; massive donator to charity. If he wastes his money on designer clothes, he doesn’t wear them in public. I agree that some of them waste their money — on ownership of the New Statesman. Maybe it’s the masochism of the Islington set we hear so much about.
Then a sort of light dawns.
Equally, I can’t explain why I am happy to meet Tory aristocrats, but uneasy with the millionaire Marxists who run New Left Review. Some friends from university have dedicated themselves to a life of poorly rewarded public service. They’re no better or worse than they ever were. Others went into the City and made a fortune. They’re still the same people and still friends. By the standards of most people in this country and the overwhelming majority of people on the planet, I am rich. But I would be shocked to be snubbed as a result.
I don’t know what Nick is saying or trying to say. This doesn’t undermine his previous arguments as much as he seems to think. There’s a difference between working for a living, no matter how well remunerated, and being rich, and money essentially breeding in your share accounts.
Regardless of my earlier comments about Elizabeth Bennet and whichever of Bertie Wooster’s friends who married a chorus line girl, Kimberley Fortier sounds like bad news — as a human being.
In a sympathetic piece, Catherine Bennett of the Guardian wrote that the fault may lie with his civil servants, who from the best motives may well have skipped the lifestyle pages when they read the newspapers to him. Blunkett may therefore have missed the piece in which Fortier described how she used the pull of her husband, publisher of the brainless fashion magazine Vogue, to jump a nine-month waiting list for an £11,000 Birkin bag. He “moved heaven and earth to get her a Birkin within two months”, reported the Observer, “sneaking her into the shop one night after closing to allow her to examine the bag, only to have her say: ‘It’s the wrong one. It’s light brown. I want the dark brown one.’”
The current issue of Vogue includes Burberry’s creative director, Christopher Bailey, promising “to enjoy the countryside”, the designer Nargess Gharani, declaring that she needs a “bigger house to fit in all her clothes”, and one Lara Bohinc announcing with an iron resolve that she is “determined not to buy any more heels over 11cm”.
It is not class hatred but mere good taste to pass on the pleasure of such company.
Happily, Blunkett’s dog ate the damn bag. If you want to carry stuff, supermarkets have perfectly decent plastic bags for nowt.
There’s a lot of coverage in the Telegraph, and probably everywhere else, but Philip Johnston is the best value.
It started with the Ecclestone Affair. Within weeks of Labour taking office, it was disclosed that Bernie Ecclestone, the Formula One chief, had donated £1 million to Labour.
The Government postponed a planned ban on tobacco sponsorship for motor racing. Mr Blair said a mistake had been made, denied a connection, paid back the money and declared himself to be ‘’a pretty straight sort of guy’’. But it did not stop him taking freebie holidays from Silvio Berlusconi and Sir Cliff Richard. Sometimes the vacations were linked to a political meeting to allow official flights to be taken.
This week it was disclosed that the Blairs received gifts of 18 luxury watches, as well as bracelets, necklaces and earrings from Mr Berlusconi, Italy’s prime minister. These cannot be kept unless paid for, but the quantity led the Italian media to call the Blairs “The Sultans of Bling”.
…
Some 80 per cent of the money raised from individuals by Labour has come from people whom it has subsequently honoured.
That alone gives Blair’s “You leave government with your integrity intact” an interesting new meaning. Integrity to Tony is being on his side.
And Alice Thomson calls David Blunkett An old warhorse brought down by love and money. She also seems to believe that Blunkett recently went mad, but she accidentally provides ammunition against that case.
He was an old Labour politician, of 30 years standing, who earned his battle scars as a “loony Leftie” on Sheffield council, but who also has dinner regularly to discuss Middle England with journalists from the Daily Mail.
There were two things worth hating in the 1980s, the smug Thatcherite Middle-England Daily Mail, and the smug disconnected loony Left like Derek Hatton, Ken Livingstone, and David Blunkett. What exactly did he do as a minister? He seems to have talked the big talk about “radical” reforms, but all he ever did was fiddle about, and produced nothing to compare with the great Labour advances of the past like comprehensive education or the Open University. Kids are still illiterate, A-levels are still unsatisfactory,
Ministers resign every few months in this Government for some misdemeanour — Ron Davies, Geoffrey Robinson, Peter Mandelson, Stephen Byers, Estelle Morris, Beverley Hughes.
But when they leave most are relieved to see the back of them.
Glad you said that Alice, because Ron Davies had plenty to say to the Western Mail. It’s one of those odd pieces that don’t explain where they came from. Presumably the paper rang Mr Davies and interviewed him.
“He had made his reputation very much as a left-wing firebrand, but very rapidly adopted the clothes of New Labour. In fact it went further than that - some people did that as some kind of temporary expedient, but with him you had someone who adopted all the attitudes and mannerisms of New Labour with great enthusiasm. When he was Education Secretary, he initiated the policies of student loans and tuition fees, for example.
“When we were in Opposition together, I never found him the easiest person to deal with, though some would no doubt say that of me as well. He always had his own agenda, playing his cards close to his chest. He was clearly very much a member of Blair’s inner circle and adopted right-wing policies with relish.
“As Education Secretary he was one of the least co-operative Ministers in terms of devolution. He was never intellectually committed to devolution and wanted to take all the decisions himself. He was absolutely furious when we in Wales used the powers we had to scrap nursery vouchers in advance of England.
“He was always very conscious about his image, the media and his own profile. He always thought very highly of himself, a view that was not shared by all his Cabinet colleagues.”
I agree with Blunkett on devolution. It was one of the worst mistakes in the 1997 manifesto, but I’ll write about that some other time. Otherwise, powerful stuff.
These 700 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:51pm GMT Permanent link.
Poet's Corner »
(That’s actually the name of the least salubrious pub round here, which is saying something, but this is about rhyme.)
The Telegraph asked was Blunkett pushed? This is splendid:
Bye bye Blunkett
with your tendency to flunk it
You had it all in your mitts
Now it’s nout but the pits
That ship of dreams? You’ve sunk it
Think on. A Baker, Skipton
In the blue corner we have prose:
Poor David Blunkett, basically a hard-working, honourable man who has fallen because he began to believe that he was above “the rules”. Maybe he believed that he was indispensible, maybe he was seduced by power. Whatever, it’s a tragedy that he has been lost to politics. Yes, he had to go and in going he did the last honourable thing open to him. He deserves our sympathy! Brenda Ellison, Bath
I was going to do “Poor Smeagol, basically a hard-working [what the hell was he?] who has fallen because he began to believe he was the servant of Sauron. Maybe he believed that he was immortal, maybe he was seduced by the ring.”
All that glitters is not gold;
Often have you heard that told:
Many a man his life hath sold
But my outside to behold:
Gilded tombs do worms enfold.
Had you been as wise as bold,
Young in limbs, in judgment old,
Your answer had not been inscroll’d:
Fare you well; your suit is cold.
Cold, indeed; and labour lost:
Then, farewell, heat, and welcome, frost!
Portia, adieu. I have too grieved a heart
To take a tedious leave: thus losers part.
The Merchant of Venice, Act 2, Scene VII. It’s called Edewkashun.
O, poetic justice!
These 93 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 8:12pm GMT Permanent link.
Well I Hope I Don't Die Too Soon »
Or, Poet’s Corner, II. My thoughts on David Blunkett should be obvious when I tell you that the following popped into my head as the best poetic expression of how I feel about him. Like all song lyrics, it’s a lot better sung than it is on the page.
Elvis Costello wrote the best song to a right-wing politician: Tramp The Dirt Down:
I saw a newspaper picture from the political campaign
A woman was kissing a child, who was obviously in pain
She spills with compassion, as that young child’s
face in her hands she grips
Can you imagine all that greed and avarice
coming down on that child’s lips
Well I hope I don’t die too soon
I pray the Lord my soul to save
Oh I’ll be a good boy, I’m trying so hard to behave
Because there’s one thing I know, I’d like to live
long enough to savour
That’s when they finally put you in the ground
I’ll stand on your grave and tramp the dirt down
May you burn in hell* you authoritarian right-wing bastard.
*Not that I believe in hell, the afterlife, or any of that monotheistic shit.
These 86 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 8:28pm GMT Permanent link.
Hearts Of Stone »
One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.
Oscar Wilde
Or, Poets’ Corner, III. Reading Stephen Pollard, I was reminded of two things. One is the epigraph the other is Nick Cohen, whom I’ll quote again, because he’s right.
IT’S faintly repellent to see people who bowed before David Blunkett when he was full of pomp and power kick him now he is down.
The former flatterers should have noticed that his fatal flaws were on full display when they were talking of him as the next Prime Minister.
I’ve covered seven other Home Secretaries, and none could match his wild impatience of criticism. People who stood-up for this country’s liberties were “airy-fairy” do-gooders. Judges who questioned the legality of his decisions didn’t “live in the real world”. After one left-wing journalist I know signed a petition against one of his draconian policies, the Home Office wouldn’t return his calls.
David Blunkett always was a politician who had to have his own way. He never could stand restraints whether they came from law of the land or the Ministerial Code of Conduct.
Blunkett was good at being impatient as Ron Davies (also previously quoted) said “He was absolutely furious when we in Wales used the powers we had to scrap nursery vouchers in advance of England.” Jonathan Freedland:
At Sheffield council Blunkett was known for a burning temper, throwing tantrums when he didn’t get his own way.
I voted Labour in 1997, as I’d voted Labour in every election before that. I don’t believe that even New Labour is devoid of talented people with principles who aren’t bullies: Clare Short, Glenda Jackson, Bob Marshall-Andrews, Frank Field, Kate Hoey, and Anne Clywd (the first person Blair sacked) for instance. It’s just that they’re all backbenchers. Principles, intelligence, spine, guts — those things don’t get you two Cabinet jobs like Peter Hain. It was worth the election result to see Blair pinned and wriggling on the wall. I don’t want him to go any time soon. I want him to suffer as long as possible.
These 171 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:07pm GMT Permanent link.
Putting Out Fire With Gasoline »
There’s nothing on telly, eh? Well, there’s Spooks. I know I said way back here that “I don’t think I’ll watch the next series.” And I did (though that’s someone else’s fault — she watched it, ergo I did; love is, above all else, stupid). The fourth series has been particularly fine, but an episode with a “USS Enterprise” (which I took to be a reference to the real incident with the USS Cole) and a company called “Cardassian something” (my hearing stopped at “Cardassian") and a baddie called Pollard. Either I’ve taken up sleep-writing or someone’s been reading my mail. Very heaven, and bloody good.
Sadly, it was followed by a TV Licence advert. (I’ll admit they’re less bad on TV than they are on posters.) So they have every address in the UK on their database? And? I’ve lived without a TV several times in my adult life — I gave up this time for Le Tour, but that doesn’t mean I like this presumption of guilt they have.
Even more sadly, then there was the news. The Americans may be the Cardassians, but the Government are the Borg. Feh.
But last night there was the glory that was Rome (or even Rome). Which was more splendid than one could have hoped. Christopher Howse curbed his enthusiasm.
Every age is given to the “If I were a horse” fallacy. If I were a horse what would be my views on hunting? If I were an ancient Roman, I’d get down to some rumpy-pumpy and never blush.
But would there really be so many fit women available as there are on the HBO/BBC set? Yet no one planning an evening of TV sex would bother with Rome. Although one could hardly say that nothing improper occurred, it was all en passant. Fine.
Conventions in the real Rome were so very different from ours. A Roman citizen transported to the television armchair would be puzzled by the lack of real animal slaughter and real human death footage on the screen.
I believe Mr Howse is a far more qualified classical scholar than I am (rudimentary Latin from school, where I was advised not to continue, and self-taught in my late teens under the influences of Camus and Eliot; a little Caesar, nothing difficult — it made all the big words in Evelyn Waugh easy though). He’s still wrong. Slaughter was expensive, animals need to be bred; any farmer will tell you that’s not easy. Even when we were mad for hanging …
[Fuck me! We interrupt this post. Lemmy is on the Welsh news. He visited the Assembly, where they did that wand thing to him before letting him in, Then he smoked, until someone found a hole punch for him to grind his fag out on (he took a final taste of the cooling embers). Apparently he was there to tell the AMs that the government’s policy on heroin had failed. This is how relevant the Assembly is. Even the local media don’t report it unless someone you may have heard of goes through the doors. Lemmy: “[The present policy] isn’t working. It isn’t working. Heroin’s not off the streets.” He’s right, of course.]
As I was saying, Even when we were mad for hanging, there weren’t that many on a weekly basis. Rome is supposed to be a realistic depiction, not a circus of highlights. And he’s wrong about the look, which is fantastic, even down to the graffiti (no "Romanes eunt domus", shame), which leads me to his third mistake:
Why do servants say, “Certainly, Dominus"? Were the poor slaves so overworked that they never got as far as the vocative in their Hillard and Botting?
Because “Dominus/a” doesn’t translate. The closest isn’t “lord/lady” but “[my] boss”. We don’t have a word for that — calling someone “boss” is insolence, not subservience. So the Latin has to do. English has a rule: where there’s not a word, we borrow. Mr Howse and I may recognise the vocative and imperative voices, but that’s snobbery, not education. So, the women were great. It is in Italy, so you sort of expect that, The “hero” was played by that guy from Trainspotting. tehgrauniad’s critic is anonymous (but it must be the Sainted Nancy) but she said Rome is a meaty treat, with animal sacrifices, full-frontal nudity and bar-room brawls — and then there are the dormice.
This is not, perhaps, one for the ladies. Whores are pulled on and off like Wellington boots and wives are passed around like slowly disintegrating parcels. Except for Octavian’s mother, Atia, who is a player not a pawn.
When Lucius returns to the wife he has not seen for eight years, she is standing in a shaft of sunlight with a baby in her arms. It is, she says, his grandson. Quite. Titus gets into a furious bar-room brawl and kills a man. Domus, there’s no place like it.
It’s a meaty treat, with an obscene Roman comedy, an orgiastic sacrifice of a bull, much full-frontal nudity and some thoroughly peculiar food. “More tench?” says Atia hospitably. “A dormouse, perhaps?”
Christopher Howse (unlike Nancy, a man) saw a different strength:
Rome was more convincing on Roman violence. Life could be nasty, Brutus, and short. Last night, haughty teenager Octavian (whom we last saw in Master and Commander bravely having a limb sawn off) casually buffets slaves and bludgeons enemies, without a hint of studied cruelty.
Oh, and you’ll be wanting an explanation of the title before I go, I suppose. At the end of Spooks, where we’ve learned that Harry owns a dog (which should have died of neglect way back), Harry takes Adam and Adam’s son to the Walthamstow Dog Track. Leaving, the son says that his dad doesn’t know anything about dogs, he’s a cat person. “That explains it,” deadpanned Harry. This may explain why the furtive glances from cat owner Ruth never went anywhere. (And I love the fact that Ruth can’t drive.) Though there were signs in the last scene of the dead bird leaving its cage.
These 704 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:25pm GMT Permanent link.
Friday, 4 November 2005
I Still Like Rifkind »
I know he’s out. I saw part of the debate between the Davids tonight. (I still prefer Wee Malcy, ane o’ us, ye ken?) I keep seeing this flaw in democracy. I don’t like the idea of paying MPs. It’s not the expense (which boggles the average purse of course): compared to a Trident missile, MPs salaries are a bargain (unless you think nuclear death a good thing, and compared to the current shower, it almost is). I was reminded by The Economist: A Blunkett judgment:
Ministers and backbenchers, whose ambitions and livelihoods depend both on Mr Blair’s successor and the condition of the Labour Party when it next faces the electorate, are bothered that the pace that Mr Blair has set seems to them to be governed more by his personal timetable than the long-term health of the government.
This is almost an argument for the House of Lords. Malcolm Rifkind, you see, took a pay cut to be an MP. He made more as a barrister. Glenda Jackson strutted and fretted upon the subsidised stage, but it paid well. These people made a sacrifice. The other creeps want a leg up. This bothers me hugely as a democrat (as I am, once in a while at least). Of course, I want “working class” MPs — I also want those who are above patronage. (I’d prefer through courage, like Rifkind and Jackson, but I’d take the super rich.) These are incompatible. My Platonic Ideal is Dennis Skinner. Thing is, he’s a one off. And that Plato, he was a bit of a fascist.
These 211 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:14am GMT Permanent link.
Friday Poet Blogging »
A favourite and an influence.
Robert Lowell, Skunk Hour: For Elizabeth Bishop
Nautilus Island’s hermit
heiress still lives through winter in her Spartan cottage;
her sheep still graze above the sea.
Her son’s a bishop. Her farmer
is first selectman in our village,
she’s in her dotage.
Thirsting for
the hierarchic privacy
of Queen Victoria’s century,
she buys up all
the eyesores facing her shore,
and lets them fall.
The season’s ill —
we’ve lost our summer millionaire,
who seemed to leap from an L. L. Bean
catalogue. His nine-knot yawl
was auctioned off to lobstermen.
A red fox stain covers Blue Hill.
And now our fairy
decorator brightens his shop for fall,
his fishnet’s filled with orange cork,
orange, his cobbler’s bench and awl,
there is no money in his work,
he’d rather marry.
One dark night,
my Tudor Ford climbed the hill’s skull,
I watched for love-cars. Lights turned down,
they lay together, hull to hull,
where the graveyard shelves on the town…
My mind’s not right.
A car radio bleats,
’Love, O careless Love …’ I hear
my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,
as if my hand were at its throat …
I myself am hell,
nobody’s here —
only skunks, that search
in the moonlight for a bite to eat.
They march on their soles up Main Street:
white stripes, moonstruck eyes’ red fire
under the chalk-dry and spar spire
of the Trinitarian Church.
I stand on top
of our back steps and breathe the rich air —
a mother skunk with her column of kittens swills the garbage pail
She jabs her wedge-head in a cup
of sour cream, drops her ostrich tail,
and will not scare.
Sir Philip Sidney:
With how sad steps, O moon, thou climb’st the skies!
How silently, and with how wan a face!
What! may it be that even in heavenly place
That busy archer his sharp arrows tries?
Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted eyes
Can judge of love, thou feel’st a lover’s case:
I read it in thy looks; thy languished grace
To me, that feel the like, thy state descries.
Then, even of fellowship, O Moon, tell me,
Is constant love deemed there but want of wit?
Are beauties there as proud as here they be?
Do they above love to be loved, and yet
Those lovers scorn whoom that love doth possess?
Do they call ‘virtue’ there - ungratefulness?
Steven Gould Axelrod’s interpretation of Lowell is particularly good. Sir Philip Sidney (and, as some wit said, other heroes of that kidney) must passeth without understanding.
These 41 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:15am GMT Permanent link.
In Deedes »
Perhaps I’m drunk ("Perhaps … ?!!!! — Ed) but what’s up with Bill Deedes. Two weeks ago, I should have blogged this:
I have been mulling over some of the countless letters that have been sent to Members of the Lords, imploring us to kill the deplorable Racial and Religious Hatred Bill. But why do they write to us, I muse, the unrepresentative, undemocratic Upper House, which New Labour detests and would abolish, if it dared?
This is why. Tony Blair and his whips have so effectively reduced the power of the House of Commons to control the executive that a wretched Bill, designed by Labour mainly to win the Muslim vote, becomes law unless the unelected Lords kill it. And that won’t work much longer, as Blair’s desire to unfetter the executive from parliamentary — and Civil Service — control leads to further constitutional “reforms”.
We are rapidly becoming almost as undemocratic as we accuse Europe of being. In this mood, mourning the power of the Commons to stop follies such as longer detention without trial and this stupid Bill, my mind reverts to Enoch Powell and Hola Camp.
Hola Camp? Yes, that was a grand speech, as wise as the speech on race that got him sacked from Ted Heath’s shadow cabinet was not; so naturally it is more easily forgotten. Hola Camp was about the death of 11 Kenyan detainees, killed brutally and then covered over with lies.
Sitting just in front of Enoch, I was lucky enough to hear the speech well after midnight - we sat long hours in those days - and it was the first time I had seen a backbencher dominate the House by illuminating a blunder of his own government.
Revealing a mindset totally different from that well-remembered speech on race, Powell flayed a Tory MP who had sought to mitigate the Kenya offence by suggesting that black Africans were sub-human. Then he rounded on the defence that had been put up, “that this was Africa, that things were different there”.
We were not free, argued Powell, to use different standards in different parts of this world. “We cannot say, ‘We will have African standards in Africa, Asian standards in Asia and perhaps British standards here at home.’ We have not that choice to make. We must be consistent with ourselves everywhere.”
It was an electrifying speech, throwing light on a dark subject and running a shock through his own front bench.
Furthermore, Powell’s attack on colonial maladministration — this was in the late 1950s — sharpened the mood for surrendering our colonial empire, as we proceeded to do. So the speech could also be described as epoch-making. For good measure, no racist could have made it. The back benches of the Commons — that’s where, as Lloyd George and Churchill well knew, governments could be taught a sharp lesson … and by their own side.
And where are they now? What would happen if a Labour backbencher made a Hola Camp speech on the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill? He could be quietly de-selected — and lose a salary and expenses running into six figures. Ah, there’s the key to power.
Great stuff. And quite right (IMO). But what happened last week? In general, I find commentary on racial matters is ill-advised, so I avoid it, This should have been cut.
It may well be that a false cry of “rape” sparked the Birmingham disorders at the weekend. But I am told what fuelled the rioting was the feeling among many Afro-Caribbean citizens, who were first in Birmingham, that Asians were usurping their businesses, both legitimate and illegitimate.
If true, that is ominous, for it recalls what happened in East Africa in the mid-Sixties. The governments of both Kenya and Uganda adopted a policy of Africanisation. Perceiving that the Asian population was prospering at the expense of Africans, they took over the businesses of Asians and handed them to Africans.
Bereft of their livelihoods, the Asians turned to us. They found they had an entitlement to a British passport. To the embarrassment of Jim Callaghan, then the home secretary, thousands arrived here — penniless. To their credit, most made good. But what created that crisis of the Sixties now afflicts us.
What’s that Australian proverb about the tall poppies being cut down? Is Bill really advocating state-imposed limits on business success? And as a knee-jerk republican I disagree with this:
Naturally therefore, Camilla, who has taken pains to be a worthy consort to the heir to the throne, arouses less excitement. Much of our own press, taking its cue from the republican Rupert Murdoch, tend to report this visit either as boring to America or a burden on our taxpayers.
Me and Rupe, we’re like that, you know.
That is not fair. This is the most testing royal tour of America since King George VI and Queen Elizabeth responded to President Roosevelt’s invitation in 1939, on the eve of war in Europe. I was fond of Diana, because we shared the dream of ridding the world of anti-personnel mines, so cruel to poor people living off the land; but I admire Camilla for her courage. This is a brave trip that she and Charles are undertaking. We should forget our prejudices and wish them well…
See, I agree on the land mines, but the rest is mush. Bill is smart, but if Chas had died in that tunnel, and Diana were our Queen, I’d be closer to being a monarchist. Charlie is wrong on everything. We don’t live in whatever century he thinks civilisation stopped in; we have the Lloyd’s Building. Most architects may be wankers, but some are great. (The blood pours down these chutes and the mangled flesh slurps into these….)
These 167 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:48am GMT Permanent link.
Let's Glorify Terrorism »
I seem to have left a couple of interesting comments on Chris Brooke and Talk Politics. So …
A long time ago, in a country far, far away … There was a man called George Washington, who came from Virginia which was pretty close to the centre of gravity (or however you want to put it) of the thirteen colonies of the British Empire.
[The scene slips down from the star view to a planet bounded by an atmosphere, just as we appreciate this, a spacecraft shoots across the screen. It is pursued by a much much larger space ship firing god knows what. Aboard the little space craft (revealed to be not so little) men are hurrying along corridors and taking positions. Two robots are moving down the corridors …]
Meanwhile in Boston: A protest. Citizens wave placards which read “No taxation without representation”
A blogger writes: “The Withouters claim that they can be free of the British Empire! Ha! and again Ha! As if a bird can be free of the air…” 380 comments mostly starting with “Ha ha” and damning the “Withouters” follow.
Jesus Christ, wouldn’t it be awful to live in that parallel universe where “democracy” won? Representation, they giggle, we’ll give you representation. By the-wiser-than-you-bastards!
Elsewhere in the multiverse: the Battle of Bunker Hill. In infinite universes, the Colonies win, and in infinite more the British do.* You’re in one of the first lot. In the second lot, racial conflict never happened. The wise British Empire ended slavery in the early 19th century. Technology and science spread like ivy, Nah, just kidding. People were bastards in those universes too. Just bastards with better bombs.
Where was I? Oh, yes. Once there was a cruel and vicious king … and the people rose up. Well to be honest, most people were too depressed or drunk or whatever to give a shit. And most of the rest were passionately loyal. Hail King George the Sane! (As they styled him, noting his common sense, beautiful wife, good nature, and common touch.) There were a few who dissented, and against enormous difficulties fought a War of Independence. The British Government declared them all to be terrorists.
[Darth Vader: the force is strong with this one.]
Terrorists or not, George Washington pushed the British mercenaries back, and his friends declared their independence: “We, the people … ”
[Han Solo: Great shot, kid. One in a million. Now, let’s go home.]
Oh bastard, I’m not only glorifying terrorism, I’m glorifying Hollywood when it wasn’t as dull as Roger L Simon’s pitiful scripts. Why do I always side with the losers?
Moral: when you wake up in the morning and think “Do I get up, or do I hide under the covers?” Choose the latter. It’s all the same in the end and this is a lot easier. You may starve to death, which I grant is painful and unpleasant, but the other options are worse. Trust me. But if you must, I’ll be at the bottom of the street in the balaclava with the van with “FUR TONIE BLIAR” on the side. That’s to confuse the cops. I know you’re British, and guilty, but can you consciously accept guilt for the necessary murder, eh? Why now, you ask? Because the government is collapsing. Read Christoper Hitchens’ old Slate columns. Saddam was going to lose power, he argued. Therefore it was imperative that we move in. And it’s like that now. The British Government has WMD. Let’s roll.
*Don’t blame me, I didn’t invent physics.
These 593 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:00am GMT Permanent link.
A Radiant Vision Of Grinning New Labour Complacency »
Ssssion Ssssimon: yessss Massssster. tehgrauniad will regret shedding subeditors to pay for whichever columnist they hired this week. But what crap is this?
Blair is not trying to “stop Brown” because he “wants Miliband”. Or Alan Johnson, or John Reid, or Bruce Forsyth, or whoever it’s supposed to be this week. The notion is politically illiterate. The succession is the reverse of in Blair’s gift, and he knows it. Only a fool takes anything for granted in politics (ask David Davis), but Gordon Brown will be the next Labour leader unless something astounding happens.
My secret NuLab decoder ring exploded at that. It sits, not quite dead, but buzzing like a bluebottle under a pint glass, its battery acid eating away the carpet. “Only a fool takes anything for granted in politics … but … X is granted.” Well Sion Simon is a fool then. Most of us didn’t need tehgrauniad to declare it quite so loudly.
And as for all this “Cameron is Blair’s preferred heir” nonsense: rarely has the temptation to think it through been so defiantly resisted. For one thing, as anybody who understands anything about Blair realises, he hates the Tories with the passion of a man who first stood for parliament in 1982.
Quite right. Being a bit older than Mr Simon, not quite old enough to vote in 1979, but almost, I know what that hatred is like, I hate the Tories like I hate the planet Pluto, the element Molybdenum, and the Incas. Give me an abstract entity, not don’t tell me yet, I have to read your mind, take a grapefruit from a box at the back of the stage, cut in half, show you your card, and then hate. And boy can I hate. Oh I hate … what was it again? Yes! I really hate that!
Just like Tony hates his dead Tory father, and Sion Simon passionately hates all his former beliefs while he worked at the Torygraph and the News of the World. You can see him investigating call girls with the red hot anger of a true socialist! And then making his excuses and leaving! How Kier Hardie would be proud.
Thus the chatterati consensus. That’s pretty much what you think, isn’t it? He’s lost the plot. It’s only a matter of time before there are pets in the cabinet
Don’t get your hopes up. It’ll be horses, beavers, and platypuses before cocksuckers like you. Nice try. Order of the Brown Nose for the decade. That’ll be on your gravestone.
Boris, now: Ecce homo.
These 277 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 6:04am GMT Permanent link.
Saturday, 5 November 2005
Free Trade »
Washington Post: Bush Seeks to Keep Free-Trade Vision Alive.
On the final day of the Summit of the Americas, Bush was hoping to keep his trade proposal alive despite opposition from five key countries that has persisted through years of negotiations.
The meetings were being held within a security zone, protected by barricades and security guards, because of violent protests aimed at Bush’s trade and Iraq policies.
Mexican President Vicente Fox said 29 of the 34 nations gathered in this seaside resort for the summit are considering putting together their own free-trade pact — without opponents Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay.
Yesterday in the Telegraph: Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles talk[ed] to David Gritten about getting to grips with John le Carré’s thriller The Constant Gardener.
“Every week something happens in Brazil,” he says. “It’s always the same story - pressure from the US government on our government. A few weeks ago I was reading that the Brazilian government was trying to renegotiate the price of an [American] anti-Aids drug. But the US State Department started complaining, and they put a 60 per cent tax in the US on Brazilian oranges. So our government had to step back. That’s why this is a hot issue.”
Death and taxes, eh? Viva Diego Mardona!
These 41 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:50pm GMT Permanent link.
Plagiarism »
Guido is running his Press Plagiarist of the Year Award.
Here’s a nomination: DT middle leader yesterday, Don’t back the Bill.
The Prime Minister’s wife once said that in view of Israel’s occupation of Arab land, she could “well understand how decent young Palestinians become suicide bombers”. Some will take Mrs Blair’s point, others will see it as evidence of a casual anti-Israel prejudice on the British Left. But that is not the issue here: the question is, should such a remark actually be illegal?
And here’s a blogger, last week, New Terrorism Bill — Clause One.
I know this is regarded by my chums as being bizarre to the point of fetishism, but I have a soft spot for Cherie Blair.
No, when I say a soft spot, I don’t mean a bog in the west of Ireland. I mean I kind of like the look of her. I even like her new Rod Stewart hairdo, and her lipsticked Liverpudlian sassiness. Unlike so many of my Tory pals, I have no desire to see her locked up.
The trouble is, the way things are going, I can increasingly envisage the circumstances in which the Prime Minister’s wife could be banged away for quite a while.
Yesterday in Israel another 20 people were killed or wounded by a suicide bomber, a poor deluded wretch who is encouraged by his political masters to believe that this disgusting act is the only way he can protest, and that he will thereby additionally obtain heavenly bliss in the carnal form of 72 virgins.
In their rage and their grief, one can imagine that Jewish relatives, some of them undoubtedly living in London, may look around for those who have in any way glorified or given encouragement to such behaviour.
(Did he say “72 virgins"? Funny, there’s a book called Seventy-Two Virgins. Must be one of them co-incidences.) As the blogger, actually blogged his own Daily Telegraph column, maybe it’s not eligible.
It’s still lazy.
These 68 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:05pm GMT Permanent link.
Blair Announces Abolition Of Elections »
Blair announces abolition of elections (via The Sharpener). Horribly plausible.
Home Secretary David Blunkett, whose return to front-line politics has caught Westminster by surprise, said that “middle class do gooders are putting our lives at risk”. Speaking to the Sheffield Echo, he said “They complained when we abolished trial by jury. They complained when we introduced detention without trial. They complained about the introduction of ID cards. They wanted us to stop using evidence obtained by torture and to end rendition. But the vast majority of hard-working families up and down the land don’t want all these procedures: they want speedy and effective justice. They are fed up with the civil liberties lobby crying wolf.”
In the light of English tradition, the government’s claim that the law lords should allow it to use evidence that foreign torturers may have collected appears outrageous. It is as much an offence to the enlightened opinion of the 17th century as the 21st, and the Lords should throw it out.
Cases do not get to the House of Lords because they’re simple, however. If the Lords go against the government, all evidence from, say, Egypt will be inadmissible because the Egyptians may have used torture. The result will be a paradoxical inversion. The authorities will be able to deport a harmless Egyptian cabbie who came to Britain as an economic migrant, for breaking immigration rules. But they won’t be able to send back a member of Egyptian Islamic Jihad as he “may” be tortured on return.
Nick attempts to dazzle with his knowledge of medieval English (snort!) law, and his claim that
… England is an odd country, and one of the peculiarities of the English is our abhorrence of torture.
He may like to explain this:
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
Amendment VII
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
Amendment VIII
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Liberal through and through: speedy trial by jury, the right to defence, and as Amendment V specifically mentions “except in cases … in time of war or public danger” and Amendment VIII says, without conditions, “nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” It carefully does not say by whom. Of course, it’s just us wimpy liberals who object to torture; it’s a bien-pensant gesture only the decadent bourgeoise would allow themselves.
See also Tim Ireland, Consider Phlebas, and Talk Politics on the Labour Party’s attempt to “poll” god knows who on fighting terrorism.
These 127 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:35pm GMT Permanent link.
Sunday, 6 November 2005
One Of Those Things That Are Meant To Happen In Breweries »
Former rugby international and now, er, doctor (surgeon, in fact), JPR Williams talked to Gavin Henson in Teh Observer.
JPR: You won the grand slam in Cardiff by beating Ireland on the final Saturday. The next day, Brains, the sponsors, laid on a reception in one of their old breweries. It turned into one of those things that are meant to happen in breweries, didn’t it?
GH: I’m not a big drinker, though I do think the idea of bonding over a few beers still has an important role in the professional game.
Not to worry lad, your girlfriend makes up for you. Though “not a big drinker” is a movable feast it seems: whoever defined “binge drinking” as “more than one shandy” would be shocked:
GH … It would have been rude to refuse. I’m not sure what happened later, but I heard I had to be thrown out.
JPR: You young professionals don’t drink as often as we did [he laughs]. Which means it hits you harder when you do.
And there’s good news for Chris Brooke’s kitten, Enkidu:
GH: Well, when I was 17, I broke my leg. 13 September 1999, it was. I missed five months because of that injury, which is a long time for a young man desperate to start his career as a professional. In fact, I had surgery on the leg in your hospital, the Princess of Wales, in Bridgend.
Of course, we can but hope Enkidu doesn’t take to shaving his legs.
Good lad, really.
These 77 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:12am GMT Permanent link.
Tuesday, 8 November 2005
A Listening Government »
Simon Hoggart watches Hazel Blears.
Which brings us to New Labour’s answer to Mr Sarkozy, Hazel Blears. I don’t know what she does to the bombers, but by God she frightens me. When she said, “and we are a listening government, yes, we are a listening government”, I felt like someone hearing Genghis Khan talk about being responsive to our consumer base.
Pictured Gene Hackman listening in The Conversation. Larger version.
These 15 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:12am GMT Permanent link.
I Write To The Sun »
You read that right! Tim Ireland reads the People’s Paper:
The Sun — Spotted a great blog?: HAVE you spotted a great topical blog on the internet? We are launching a new regular feature to exhibit the best of the online diaries on the web. The blog could include a first-hand account of a news story, a funny take on recent events, or tell an inspiring story. Send the link to yourviews@the-sun.co.uk and we will put the best ones on the website.
The People’s Paper and the People’s Party should team up. Perhaps there could be a “fair and balanced” questionnaire like Your views on fighting terrorism (I’ve given mine! admittedly as “Sadie Guide-Dogg” and giving David Blunkett’s constituency post code and email) with question such as “Will arson attacks on pediatricians deter child molestors?” [Yes/Not sure] This is the new democracy! Where the government listens (sorry but Hazel Blears walked into that one as Rebekah Wade would say of Ross Kemp and a open door).
So I sent them an email and nominated five blogs.
http://pastit.blogspot.com/ Over the Hill and far away, a blog for oldies!
http://5thnovember.blogspot.com/ Topical — in more ways than one!
http://www.nickcohen.net/ Astute political commentator
http://www.recessmonkey.com/ New Labour insider lots of dirt!
http://www.bloggerheads.com/ Right up to the minute commentary!
yours gleefully
Dave Weeden
I used technorati search for a couple. But Nick Cohen is an astute political commentator. Sometimes.
I don’t want to be too prissy — all politicians have to accept invitations from the editor of the Sun; she might pull a knife on them if they refused.
Now that’s what I call a great blog.
These 128 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:56pm GMT Permanent link.
Police Demands »
BBC: Goldsmith warning on terror plan.
The detention plans were put forward after senior police officers argued they needed extra time to question suspects.
…
However, the Press Association quoted a Whitehall source as saying that Lord Goldsmith, the government’s most senior legal advisor, had delivered his warning after taking part in discussions on the new legislation.
Lord Goldsmith reportedly advised that judges would have to ensure that no suspect should be held for an “excessive” period of time in relation to the case against them.
Via Talk Politics, who says:
Clarke, so it is believed, privately harbours serious reservations about handing the police the blank cheque of ninety-day detentions without charge yet with ‘his master’s voice’ ringing in his ears he finds himself forced in making statements such as this; “"We want 90 [days’ detention], not 80 or 100, because that is what the police want.”, without any shred of irony in recognition of the fact that it is parliament that is the sovereign body of the United Kingdom and not the Metropolitan Police.
Today, in an exclusive scoop, we have a list of other police demands.
Hello, hello, hello,
I am writing as I sit facing a Northerly direction in my office in New Scotland Yarb. I am using an HB pencil, with a fresh eraser on the end, so I don’t leave any mistakes.
A policeman’s lot is not a happy one, as I believe Sun Tzu said. That is what the nice man in the PR for Policemen classes said he said anyway, and he had an honest face. We need several things to make our lives easier. Criminals are dangerous, each officer on patrol should be equipped with 1 (one) Glock hand pistol; 1 (one) taser stun gun; 1 (one) rubber truncheon of the sort what don’t leave no marks; 1 (one) thick beech truncheon of the sort what breaks bones; optional: 1 (one) Kalashnikov; 1 (one) bazooka (that’ll teach them Yardies); and those rhino whips the South African police used to to use on demonstrators looked wicked.
Recognition of criminals. We think ID cards are a great idea, though we’re less happy about the computers which go with them as studies have shown you can never clear incriminating evidence off the hard drives. We need to be able to recognise criminals quickly and easily.
###### Gays should wear some kind of badge, like a pink triangle, that would make them easier to spot in the public lavs, so there’s less hanging about peeking through a hole drilled in a cubicle door counting shakes.
Hoodies should be illegal. If it’s raining and there’s a girl walking toward you with a hood up, you can’t tell if she’s pretty or not without doing this … and then you look weird, so we don’t like them.
I know this will be hard to make law, but black men should be banned from buying expensive cars. We look right tits when we stop someone like Linford Christie, and, frankly, it’s embarrassing.
We like the new laws on smoking. We want more crackdowns on pubs. Publicans should be afraid of the police so when the local bobby pops in for some light refreshment he is served most speedily and finds that his money is no good in the bar for drinks are on the house on account of the great job he is doing serving the community.
Foreign students. Can’t we just send them back? ######## Perhaps all students. Even if they came from here in the first place. Either that or being a student could be an arrestable offence, that should show the drug-taking little toe-rags,
well that’s a few demands to be going on with,
your humble public servant,
Ian Blair
PS can we have nice Porsches like the Swiss?
PPS as the man on the PR course the home office sent me on suggested, I an cc-ing this to the editor of the Daily Mail, who is On Our Side.
These 24 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 6:41pm GMT Permanent link.
Wednesday, 9 November 2005
Happy Trails »
I’m off to Berlin for the riots a stag weekend on Friday.
And I’ve just got a reassuring email.
This is food for thought as we fly off to Berlin: If you see an RAF jet close up, chances are it’s there to shoot you down: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4351622.stm
Worst thing is, when I was at Uni I knew several guys who joined the RAF as pilots — one in particular was a right chump and now he flies Tornado F3 — the ‘air defence’ version shown here.
What worries me is if the airline pilot has so much as a sticky radio, these guys get scrambled! And even more terrifying, if you’re with easyjet, your Captain is probably canned up enough to say ‘come on then, if you’re hard enough!’: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4167161.stm
So much for Southampton Uni’s Training Corps or whatever they were called (which my friend flew with).
We’re doomed! We’re a’ doomed.
These 41 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:10pm GMT Permanent link.
If It's Good Enough For Mr Decency-Trousers ... »
Via Tim Ireland, Capitol Hill Blue: White House keeps dossiers on more than 10,000 ‘political enemies’. (I’m not sure about this story: it fits the pathologies of the Bush administration, but I’d still like to see it confirmed elsewhere.)
Bush is not the first President to use the FBI to keep track of his enemies. Richard M. Nixon used FBI files to try and discredit his opponents, including Daniel Ellsberg, the Department of Defense employee who leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times. Bill Clinton used the FBI to compile dossiers on critics like Conservative Congressman Bob Barr and legal gadfly Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch.
But worried White House insiders say the intelligence gathered by the Bush administration is far larger, more extensive and potentially more damaging than the excesses of previous occupants of the White House. Even worse, it dovetails into a pattern of spying on Americans that has become commonplace since Bush took office.
“We’re talking about Big Brother at its most extreme,” says one White House staffer. “We know things about people that their spouses don’t know and, if it becomes politically expedient, we will make sure the rest of the world knows.”
Tim “asks":
OK, hands up everyone who *doesn’t* think that ‘retired’ PR guru (and national-security/intelligence consultant) Alastair Campbell keeps a list just like this one?
On Campbell see Andrew Rawnsley:
The retired sultan of spin has been making a more stalwart effort to defend the Prime Minister and deflect the attacks on the government than many of those who are officially employed to do the job. That is the double-edged point. What his presence in the TV studios unhelpfully underlines is how few ministers and Labour MPs have been prepared to rally to Mr Blair’s shaky barricades. When Ann Clwyd, the chairwoman of the parliamentary Labour party, also has to be wheeled out to issue an appeal for calm, then it looks like time for Number 10 to start to panic.
One of the increasingly obvious fault’s of Blair’s personality and his management style is how few people he trusts. Campbell has had to come back because Blair doesn’t have much faith in his replacements. Same for Blunkett, Mandelson, and so on.
If Campbell does keep such a list (and it wouldn’t surprise me; he seemed work astonishingly hard to learn as much as he could about everyone, and of course, he tried to influence every journalist he met), he won’t be short of sources. I’m sure journalists everywhere (especially those who like to spout about “solidarity") will be thinking about some rival “not only did he fail to get his round in at that Christmas party in 1998, but I’m sure he’s slagged me off behind my back, and his girlfriend’s a frigid bitch who turned me down at that Private Eye lunch” and, not long after, “what the hell, Orwell did it, and I have principles like him (hic!)”
These 206 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:11pm GMT Permanent link.
Thursday, 10 November 2005
The Sun Has Lost It »
Dear, oh dear. But so have most of the papers. The BBC covers the Media frenzy over Blair defeat.
The Mirror recounts how MPs were dragged from Commons bars to support the Prime Minister in his hour of need.
The Guardian says Mr Blair’s face froze after being told the outcome of the vote by Chief Whip Hilary Armstrong.
Both of those sound like hackneyed accounts written by a foreigner who learned everything she knew of the British Parliamentary Process from Jeffrey Archer novels. The Mirror may well have said that somewhere, but its leading article: Blair Blow As 49 Labour Mps Reject Terror Law says:
Ministers had been ordered back from abroad and one MP told to leave his sickbed to avoid such humiliation.
The “sickbed” angle is a little dramatic, but Gordon Brown and Jack Straw did fly home for the vote (which the large majority in the previous two terms had rendered unnecessary before). tehgrauniad even more dubiously has Three-point plan failed on each count (surely there’s a “reverse gear” “three-point turn” joke hiding in there):
Moments before the result of last night’s vote on 90-day detention was announced the chief whip, Hilary Armstrong, walked in to the Commons and sat on the bench next to Tony Blair. She whispered the outcome and his face froze, stunned not just by the defeat but by the scale of it.
The good point: nice observation. At least one of Julian Glover and Patrick Wintour was so eager to know the result that he contrived a way to find out “[m]oments before [it] … was announced.” The bad point: Blair looked miserable; beyond that is silly speculation. Why oh why do even the serious papers indulge in a sort of cousin of the pathetic fallacy and act as if we can’t understand that these are big shifts in politics without having to dip into the cheap novelist’s thesaurus of emotion?
But what has happened to Trevor Kavanagh of the Sun? When I saw the headline “Traitors” in the paper shop, I thought that Rebekah Wade would do anything to change the subject from domestic violence. But Terror bill defeat (note less histrionic web headline) is by the political editor.
TREACHEROUS MPs betrayed the British people last night by rejecting new laws to combat terror.
They IGNORED the wishes of the vast majority of Britons and HUMILIATED Tony Blair by inflicting his first Commons defeat.
Gutless Tory MPs were joined by up to 47 Labour rebels as they wrecked the PM’s bid to hold terror suspects for 90 days without charge.
The vote went against Mr Blair by 322 to 291. And the limit was slashed to just 28 days by an even bigger majority — despite police warnings this could leave the nation dangerously exposed to terrorists allowed to roam free.
As I didn’t buy the paper, I don’t know what it says inside, but the web version (I don’t think the Sun caches pages for long, so you may get a 404 error or something even worse) lists Osama bin-Laden, al-Zarqawi, David Davis, Clare Short, Ian Paisley, and David Cameron, sarcastically, as “winners.” The “losers” are all victims or family of victims of the July London bombs.
This seems to set Mr Kavanagh and his paper against both Tory candidates. Now the Sun’s political editor is 62 (Wikipedia profile: Trevor Kavanagh), so he may well have retired by the next election. Still, after calling the next leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition a traitor (the only capital crime left), where does he have left to go? (There’s an interesting New Statesman profile from April 2001, in which Simon Hoggart calls Kavanagh a “herbivore.") He may have been referring only to Labour rebels as “traitors.” But I doubt it.
Mr Blair’s supporters were livid last night. Labour MP Tom Harris said: “Britain is a safer place for terrorists today. All this will do is give reassurance to people planning to blow up bombs on the Underground.”
You would think from that that MPs had passed some kind of “Cat and Mouse” bill, where suspects would be released automatically after 28 days. This ignores the trivial matter of a trial. And I thought MPs voted to double the detention period. I agree that this makes Britain less safe than it was yesterday. But not for the reasons Mr Harris seems to believe.
These 481 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:13am GMT Permanent link.
Friday, 11 November 2005
Booing At The Radio »
Oh bummer. I’m away this weekend and according to Stephen Pollard, he’s going to be on Any Questions tonight along with my MP. Good job the BBC cache programmes on the interweb for a week so I can boo them both at my leisure.
(If you’re of a sensitive disposition or offended by strong language, I suggest not calling round until I give the all clear.)
More seriously, Stephen Pollard is (gulp!) not only right but says something succinctly and well that I’ve been struggling to find words for in The game is up for Mr Blair (Daily Mail).
Has it really come this? When Tony Blair said yesterday that it was better to do the right thing, and then lose, than not to do the right thing at all, he was in effect signalling the end of his purpose in office, and of the entire New Labour project. The whole point of New Labour was winning. It was the left, and Old Labour, which valued glorious defeat.
As so often, the “real world” and “reality” are used to mean “how I see things.” But apart from that, and his conclusions, Pollard’s analysis is pretty good. I never liked Blair when I was in the Labour Party, but he looked like he might actually win elections. If you think Blair has any place now he’s contracted the Old Labour condition of losing on principle (and a particularly nasty principle to start with) then I have a catalogue of household items which may interest you: chocolate teapots, chocolate fireguards …
These 190 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:21am GMT Permanent link.
Bad Language »
Simon Hoggart is really good today:
I chatted to a few Labour MPs. One was a loyalist, though his loyalty had been stretched over the past few days. “What a [bad word]-up!” he said. “What a [second bad word]’s breakfast! Why didn’t Charlie Clarke stand up to him and say ‘[first bad word again]-off, Tony!’? You [worst bad word of them all]!”
He said he had regretfully voted for 90 days because he couldn’t vote in the same lobby as “the [first bad word again]ing Tories”. Many survivors of the old international brigade in the class war feel the same way.
Well, those who are poseurs. It didn’t stop Dennis Skinner, though the very idea seems to discombobulate Polly Toynbee (via Chris Brooke, as I can’t say that I normally bother with her):
Many will be celebrating last night’s mighty defeat for Tony Blair — an unholy alliance of Labour’s natural enemies and those within Labour who brought it about.
Some might think that the business of politics is persuasion and compromise and alliance forming. Somehow I had the idea that Ms Toynbee was in favour of the EU and PR. I must have been wrong, the notion of minority parties (such as you find in PR-elected assemblies) horse-trading and dealing and forming temporary alliances is clearly offensive to her. Still Ms Toynbee’s ancestors have been fighting the good fight in the harsh conditions of Oxford, while Dennis was just a miner. The things she could teach him about suffering and class! The stories Arnold and Philip could tell of gas explosions at the High Table. ("Dear boy, I told you to pass on the beans.")
Since I’ve left the Labour Party, I’m not really in a position to criticise its internal dealings, but I continue to find this attitude strange, even alien.
Cui bono? Not Labour and not Blair’s natural successor, flown back in a flurry of panic from his Middle East tour.
See, I thought the left did away with kings and inheritance and succession. Tony Benn resigned his inherited title because he wanted to be in Parliament on his merits, not because of who his father was. Natural successors? What kind of madness is this? There’s a window for political leadership, which covers roughly one’s fifth and sixth decades (or 40s and 50s for non-mathematicians). David Cameron is still young. Margaret Thatcher grew old in office, and Gordon Brown is getting there. Brown may be the best next leader, but an election, rather than a handshake and wink is a better method of succession.
Yet despite all that, Labour MPs know they need a smooth transition of power.
I don’t know how Ms Toynbee knows what all 356 Labour MPs know, or indeed what a “smooth transition of power” is. Maybe it’s something to do with engines and Jeremy Clarkson would know. Someone always gets shafted in power games. The transition of power from the King to Hamlet’s uncle looked smooth to Claudius, somewhat less so to the Prince of Denmark. The day after a UK general election, if the incumbent PM has been unlucky the removal vans call whether he’s packed or not. In the US, they wait almost two months, which in 2001 gave the Democrats time to remove the “W” keys from every keyboard in the White House. One of these may be smooth, but both seem to have their drawbacks. Some might even think that by “smooth” Ms Toynbee means “without asking awkward questions.” Whatever, I believe that the Labour Party (like every party) deserves the best possible leader it can find. And the only way to be sure of that is to hold an election. And those aren’t smooth. Otherwise … Well have you ever had that feeling after buying something expensive that you should have gone for the other thing, but you’ve used it so you can’t take it back?
Simon Hoggart again:
“There isn’t a chance he can get this [same bad word]ing education bill now. If he tries, then Gordon will have to turn up with a couple of suits and tell him to ‘[yes, that word again] off’.” (I should explain that “suits” is political slang for senior members of a party who can be formed into an informal lynch mob. My friend was not suggesting that Mr Brown should appear like a tailor, offering a choice of styles and cloth.)
I thought the Men In Grey Suits (or in Willie Whitelaw’s case, a nice blue suit) were a Tory thing. Anyway, who would Gordon take? Surely not “Buff” Hoon.
Geoff Hoon said he was “full of admiration for the robust nature of the government whips’ office; they do their job extremely well”, which I assumed was biting sarcasm, given Wednesday’s result, but with old Geoff you never quite know. After all, you wouldn’t expect sarcasm at a Rotary Christmas lunch.
Perhaps Simon has been mixing with the Spectator crowd too much.
They all seemed more concerned with the September sitting. This was a two-week session which came after the school holidays and before the party conferences. This year it was abandoned because, we were informed, we needed a security screen in front of the public gallery. But as always with New Labour, nothing is quite as we are told, and though the screen is in place, there is still no September sitting. Mr Hoon said it was meant to fit in with the party conferences.
Such cynicism from a gentleman of the press.
These 543 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:52am GMT Permanent link.
Tuesday, 15 November 2005
Education, Education, Education »
I’m not really back to speed with the news, and, especially, blogs, so this may well be very old news to many of you. I don’t know how good a prediction the last paragraph on this Wikinews story on the Tony Blair suffers first Commons defeat on anti-terror bill is.
If the government looses [sic] again with the key education bill comming up, which is central to the third and current Labour term, a vote of no confidence may be called. If the government looses it will signal the end of Tony Blair’s Premiership.
Well, I really don’t know if Blair will be brought down by an education bill, but if he is, he deserves to be — according to Nowhere in the manifesto in tehgrauniad.
This month’s white paper on education was billed as a pivotal moment in Tony Blair’s drive to reform public services. Another pivotal moment is coming soon — the one in which ministers have to persuade unsettled MPs that its most controversial proposals were indeed those they campaigned for in May.
Perhaps before this “listening and learning exercise” starts, ministers in the hit squad should go back and read their own manifesto. Though many of the good proposals in the white paper - personalised learning, extended schools and better discipline - were spelled out in the little red book, which incidentally doesn’t mention the phrase parental choice once, others were not.
(A quick search of the PDF of the manifesto confirms that “parental choice” is not mentioned.) And this is, as they say in all the worst movies, personal.
On Saturday, Martin Kettle described the potential education bill rebels as inhabiting a “howling intellectual wilderness”. The real intellectual black hole lies at the heart of a white paper that simultaneously promises a valuable overhaul of the way children’s services are delivered, yet proposes doing this through essentially independent, unaccountable institutions that in a competitive market will have a strong incentive to select which pupils they admit.
But that isn’t the interesting thing. The interesting thing is that the article was written by Fiona Millar. Now, both Fiona and Millar are common enough names (in Scotland anyway). But last month tehgrauniad had a profile of Andrew Adonis which included this telling paragraph:
But Lord Adonis has remained a shadowy figure, with no set-piece newspaper interviews and little in the way of public announcements. Yet this week’s white paper on secondary school reform is infused with his thinking. Fiona Millar, the former Downing Street aide, says: “It almost looks like it’s been written by two different people.” The first half — promoting private intervention, looking to all but abolish local authority involvement in state schools — reads as almost unadulterated Adonis. “He obviously thinks as Tony does,” says the former education secretary Estelle (now Baroness) Morris. “If push comes to shove Andrew will always make sure middle-class interests are protected. Another branch of Labour party members will make sure that if push comes to shove the poor and disadvantaged kids are protected.”
I’ve quoted more than I needed to there, but it is interesting that Baroness Morris believes that Andrew Adonis “obviously thinks as Tony does.”
Now, the Fiona Millar who wrote in tehgrauniad today and the “former Downing Street aide” seem to me to be the same person. Now I haven’t read the bill, so I can’t say whether it agrees with the manifesto or is entirely different. I do know that Fiona Millar is an insider who knows a great deal about how Downing Street works, and her partner has been spending a lot of his time running around defending the Prime Minister, so it would be a pity if she were to undo all his efforts so easily.
These 274 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 7:36pm GMT Permanent link.
Berlin And So Forth »
I’d forgotten how much I like Berlin. Much of it is very weird: I don’t like the squatter art, which seems to me like talentless loons let loose with spray paint and metalwork. And obviously the history is a bit mixed, and the potential is there for some real headbanging political correctnesses, and other lunacies. But the beer is very good (and more or less hangover proof) — entirely down to German snobbery over EU open-ness. The stuff you buy is the old pure beer, brewed and fermented by anal-retentives from ancient recipes.
I’ve been twice before. Once 20 or 21 years ago before the wall came down, and the east still had plastic money, crap beer, and an attitude problem (which made life difficult for a lefty like me), and again in 1997 to run the marathon there (just after my dad died, and I was talked out staying home — correctly — by very good friends; in other circs 2:57 is very poor).
Well, the all-night drinking thing. It certainly works for them. They have graffiti and thuggery of course, but I didn’t see any trouble at all. I don’t know that it would work here. The culture is different. The word “open” keeps occurring to me, though I don’t know what I mean by that or whether I can justify it. This may be well off the argument, but I think that if our pubs were more interested in selling decent drinks and being somewhat pleasant, and breweries were like the Germans’ rather than thinking up new flavours and ways to maximise profit all the time, liberal licensing laws might just be a goer.
I’ve got some photos on my other blog.
These 285 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:11pm GMT Permanent link.
When Norm Is Right »
I’ve come to disagree with Norman Geras more frequently over the past year, but he can be dead right sometimes as in Indecent realities 2. This isn’t a new point: other supporters of the War on Terrorism/War in Iraq have made it, but it bears repeating: torture is barbaric. If we accept, as I believe Norm does, and Christopher Hitchens aspires to, “Enlightenment values” (I don’t know exactly what those are; do they include slavery or a lower social status for women?), we ought to accept the sanctity of the body. John Cole, Jim Henley, and god only knows how many other sensible US Republicans have made the point that torturing suspects is contrary to the principles of their country.
I was a little disappointed to learn in Berlin (I should read books, rather than chatting up tour guides, but I’m just a simple blogger) that we did “abuse” some Nazis, which somewhat deflates my argument that if we could fight WWII without barbarism, we can hold off a rabble of alienated youth with ideas, deranged leaders, and ad hoc bombs, ditto.
If you think 7/7 was bad, remember that the Luftwaffe dropped far more explosives every night for years. Of course, if someone has to get hurt, I’d far rather it were someone I didn’t know and was possibly a bad guy rather than me, or someone I did know.
But that is part of the US Administration’s deliberate blindness to torture. Donald Rumsfeld seems to feel that it’s not torture if it doesn’t maim physically. Yet I remember that in Vietnam the CIA used to take two suspects up in helicopters. They threw one out. The other always talked. He had no scars though. And in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Winston broke when he said, “Do it to Julia.”
The word torture is a euphemism. It means this and this and this. (Left to your own imagination.) And those are wrong acts. (Long long discourse on what you are responsible for, and what you aren’t, omitted.)
Coda: on a similar note, I read a defence of Rebekah Wade recently (I’m sure it was in tehgrauniad, and I’d be very grateful if any reader could locate it, so I can name the former Mirror Group employee and Robert Maxwell bumsucker and henchman I’m sure wrote it), which said that there was nothing hypocritical about Ms Wade’s punching her husband and her domestic violence campaign. This suggested that he considered domestic violence like the cutting off of the policeman’s ear in Reservoir Dogs, something so horrible that it can’t be imagined or described. A punch on the lip may be quite continental, however. Even if one can imagine that a week of the same may become oppressive, and a year of it may drive you close to madness. Ross Kemp is a big bloke and he can look after himself. And that, you see, is exactly his problem.
These 486 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:42pm GMT Permanent link.
Wednesday, 16 November 2005
H's Place's Game »
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.
There are those who said that Harry’s Place suffered with the loss of the eponymous blogger, but I’m starting to regret taking it off my RSS feed now. The comments here are brilliant.
“The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgement of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist.”
Winston Churchill
“Those who have nothing to hide, have nothing to fear.”
The last was presented as a “non-sequiter” — except it’s very much a sequitur. I increasingly admire Benjamin for fighting so hard on away ground. And we’re all aware that the absent Harry used to be a Communist; now he’s a totalitarian.
Peter Cuthbertson may be the smartest person in the comments, however. I still like Kimmitt’s suggestion of election of PM by lot. If Andrew Adonis is prepared to bugger about with the manifesto after only six months, that seems increasingly tempting. Since a large slice of the electorate can’t be arsed to vote (what a third, two fifths, half?), let’s save them the bother. Let’s have leaders by lot. (This is easy for me, as I don’t believe in intelligence, and I’m sure that Alan Dershowitz is really as clever as David Beckham.) Mind you, I also think we should put LSD in the water supply and hand out Kalashnikovs to dole claimants. All this would be “people power,” but that probably wasn’t the question. “Democracy” means voting every four or five years and then doing what you’re told. And we all support that.
These 219 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:46am GMT Permanent link.
The Fall Of Kitty Ussher »
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: “It might have been!”
I know that Nosemonkey has posted on Kitty Ussher as has Talk Politics on Kitty Ussher. But, well, I can’t help myself.
Let’s be clear about this …
I’ve suffered many political meetings, and in my opinion anyone who says “I’m going to keep this short” should be greeted with a volley of tomatoes (preferably still in their tins, for readers in Glasgow), while anyone who says that they’ll be “straight”, “honest”, or indeed “clear” should be dragged off to the stables and torn apart by horses forthwith. George Orwell once wrote an essay on deception in political essay-writing and speech-making and since then every shyster on the landscape has proclaimed himself an “Honest Orwellian”. It’s a lot like living next door to a cupidinous second hand car salesman. Anyway, here’s “Down to Earth” Kitty.
Let’s be clear about this: this country is a less safe place because of the actions of the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and, yes, a minority of our own side, last Wednesday. I very much hope that we will never have another terrorist atrocity in Britain. But if we do, and if it happens because the police have not had sufficient time to accumulate enough evidence to charge the perpetrators, then the Tories, the Lib Dems and our own rebels will have blood on their hands.
“Less safe place” than what? If an increase in detention period made one safer, surely you got it. Oh. Ms Ussher means, “less safe than it might have been.” Alas, such is life. Think of the poor wee US troops going forth into battle with the arms they have, rather than the arms they might have. Except Kitty doesn’t think of them.
These are strong words, but they are justified by the dangerous times in which we live.
Hold on. No fuck it. I can’t find my bloody thesaurus.
Computer hard drives have to be decoded (in one instance, I am told, the data involved, if printed out, would be 66,000ft high).
You haven’t seen the mess on my Mac. Actually, god knows what this means. I bet Kitty doesn’t. Or your average plod. Or me. That’s a lot of 1s and 0s, but I bet I have more. Also, “So … don’t they have decoding algorithms?” Uh-oh big word.
Suitably convinced of the need for action, the arguments then turned to the motives of the police. What if they decided to use this new legislation to be lax and lazy and take the easy route of banging up anyone they felt like? When the government made clear that the police would have to go in front of a high court judge every seven days to seek permission to continue holding someone without trial, I was convinced. That was a sufficient check on the system for me.
So, Ms Ussher supports seven days in the cells on police … well christ knows what. Hardly “liberal, Guardian-reading lefty” speak.
Tories and Liberals voted to make the country a more dangerous place in order to score a cheap political point over the prime minister. A small minority of our own side - for whatever spurious reason — did the same. So, as I said at the outset, in the horrific event of a crisis that I hope will never happen, it’ll be their fault, not mine.
Many of my esteemed blogging colleagues have laughed at this. But they’ve also noted that Ms Ussher is a Blairite, and they’ve missed an intellectual connection. As I understand it, our beloved PM is prepared to make the dive into Catholicism. And a good Catholic (and many bad ones) believes that he is responsible for his actions. Suppose Guido Fawkes had blown up the Houses of Parliament. Who would be guilty? Guido? The Pope? God? Or Parliament for going about in ruffs and not outlawing Morris Dancing? [The answer is “Guido”. ] But Ms Ussher answers to a higher power. We are all guilty. Except her. Here am I, working on a tortured Graham Greene type novel about a psychologically afflicted suicide bomber, torn between his guilty past and his guilty future. And now, thanks to Kitty Ussher, he is as morally free as a wasp. It’s all the other parties’ fault. Well, that’s that plot buggered.
These 427 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:11am GMT Permanent link.
Oh Jesus H Christ »
I don’t believe it. Telegraph: Police used ‘dum dum’ bullets to kill de Menezes:
The Brazilian man shot dead by police in the mistaken belief that he was a suicide bomber was killed with a type of bullet banned in warfare under international convention, The Daily Telegraph has learned.
The firing of hollow point ammunition into the head of Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, is believed to be the first use of the bullets by British police.
OK the explanation is somewhat rational:
It is believed the decision was influenced by the tactics used by air marshals on passenger jets — where such bullets are designed to splinter in the body and not burst the fuselage. They have been assessed as posing less risk to people around the suicide bomber than conventional bullets but the effect on victims is devastating.
This means that if whoever was holding the gun with that magazine fired, he fired to kill. Oh dear god. A few months ago, I was cycling to the gym, when I passed a skinny, dodgy looking white guy, er, triangulated by three black guys out of The Wanderers. Sense told me to cycle on. I stopped. He was a burglar. I still got slapped. I provoke that kind of reaction (happily the police arrived at that point). I kind of wade in. I have this neurotic aversion to being shot. That goes so much more for exploding bullets.
Edited.
These 277 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:56am GMT Permanent link.
Friday, 18 November 2005
When Morning News Shows Go Interactive »
In Oliver Burkeman’s tehgrauniad piece on bloggers, The new commentariat (I think you get thrown out of the Bloggers’ Guild if you don’t mention this article), Perry de Havilland says:
(Update: negative omitted by mistake.)
I got sick of breaking televisions by throwing things at them[.]
(And I thought he’d just shoot them with his collection of antique firearms. Throwing things! How uncouth.) For all of you who shout at the TV: Tuesday’s Medium Large: When morning news shows go interactive. The comments are fantastic too.
The worst thing about that piece was that I find myself in agreement with Oliver Kamm on the parasitic nature of blogs. Of course, most media are parasitic: other people do things; journalists just report them. But then journalists do give something back, usually.
You may care to notice that Perry de Havilland is unhappy about the article, especially the description of his home, while Norman Geras has no such complaints. Whether this is related to hostility to tehgrauniad as Perry seems to imply, I leave to you.
These 157 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:29am GMT Permanent link.
I Have Between One And Two Billion Readers »
This word was hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:52pm GMT Permanent link.
Save The Cameo »
Save the Cameo (it’s an independent cinema in Edinburgh), via Alister, who says:
I used to live above the Cameo and believe me that Tollcross needs a cinema more than it needs new bars. I used to see a fight at least once a week as bold binge drinkers weaved there way home and that was before Edinburgh became a big stag night destination.
I’m sure he’s right about that. Tolcross was always more unpleasant than it needed to be. There is another independent within (quick guess) a quarter of a mile, perhaps less, in the Filmhouse which looks like it’s still going strong. 20 years ago the Filmhouse was new and very comfortable; I’m not sure what it’s like now, though it’s website indicates that it’s still showing arty films to shiraz drinkers, so no change there.
Of no interest to anyone, unless you think you’re not a proper blogger unless someone you know became an MP, is that the Scotsman reports:
Edinburgh Central MSP Sarah Boyack has also backed the campaign and is seeking a meeting with the council’s culture convener Ricky Henderson and culture minister Patricia Ferguson.
She said: “I strongly believe that these plans threaten the future of the Cameo as a venue for international and alternative cinema.
“Independent cinemas are a vital part of our entertainment and artistic culture.
“For over 90 years the Cameo has been an important part of Edinburgh’s cinema heritage as well as the Capital’s cultural scene generally.
“I will therefore be objecting to these proposals.”
Well good for her, and she was a year above me at school and her younger brother was in my year. I remember his politics, so I guessed hers. Strange that her website makes no mention at all of her party; you have to go to the Scottish Parliament to find out.
These 164 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 7:18pm GMT Permanent link.
The Vonnegut And The Curt »
Let me begin with: I really admire Kurt Vonnegut. He was a sort of lighthouse in my adolescence. Along with others, of course, but Vonnegut has lasted for me. He may be less fashionable now, but he’s still one of the greatest writers — both in prose style and content — in the English language, still living.
And let me follow with: I know a good writer when I read one. David Nason is a very good writer.
We shake hands and I get another surprise. Vonnegut is an average-sized man but he has massive hands. They hang from the sleeves of his ragged coat like the entrails of a freshly slaughtered animal. The veins that crisscross the backs of these monsters are as thick as knitting needles.
There are tricks you can learn: bringing in death, murder, and corporeality are all probably taught at any good journalism college. But the “knitting needles” is out of nowhere, and brilliant. “Write about death,” as I have in my unpublished masterpiece, Advice to a Teenage Poetaster, “and all the girls (or boys, should you choose to follow the conquests of Alexander the Great) will think you’re dead clever. That was a pun, or play on words.”
However, Mr Nason is also a shit. This pretty much goes along with writing well. It also goes along with the profession of journalism, but writing well really rubs it in.
(BTW, as I can’t think where else to squeeze this in, this is via Norm.)
OK, here’s a few things which smell pretty off to me. Mr Nason may claim that the parrot is only sleeping, but I think the condition is more permanent.
Take the paragraph quoted above. I know Australian men tend to come in economy size, but my memory tells me that Vonnegut is 6’2+. (A quick google gets that he’s well over 6 feet). Also old men shrink a little; their hands, feet, and ears don’t. Didn’t Mr Nason learn this at school? You sigh, “does this matter?” Well, yes, it does to me.
As we talk, Vonnegut sits hunched forward and speaks softly and carefully. He has rested one of his huge paws on top of the other on the table in front of him and his goggle eyes, which must give him fantastic peripheral vision, dart around the room as we speak.
The “peripheral vision” periphrasis reads real nice: it just happens to be utter bollocks.
And, for me at least, there’s at least one important clarification. I was always under the impression that Slaughterhouse-Five earned a cult following in the 1960s and early ‘70s partly because Vonnegut had written it while on LSD.
I loved Slaughterhouse-Five as a teenager, and not because of the drugs thing: but because I thought it was good. (If anything, I was rather priggish about drugs because Philip K Dick died through kidney failure through overuse.) This may sound Holden Caulfield-ish, but you can tell a phoney when they think other people like arty things because of some attribute of their creator rather than intrinsic merit. Beethoven was deaf! Well PC points for him.
But as A Man Without a Country reveals, nothing could be farther from the truth. Apart from a few joints with the Grateful Dead one night, Vonnegut has steered well clear of drugs. His poisons are the grog and those unfiltered Pall Malls.
As most of Vonnegut’s later work is nakedly autobiographical, and cigarettes are plentiful, and drugs scarce, this shouldn’t surprise.
Vonnegut allows me to tape the interview, which begins like this:
Review: Let me say at the outset that I enjoyed reading the book.
…
WHEW, big start. And so it went on. Any hopes I had that Vonnegut might rise above the gloom of his book and provide me with an unforgettably entertaining lunch were quickly snuffed out.
My emphasis. There is some chant, popular among small children, about inflammable trouserings, which seems apposite at this point.
Mr Nason does display the odd glimmer of sympathy and something close to understanding.
His conversation reflects this. Often he just repeats his book. It’s almost as if he has deliberately memorised his best one-liners so he can weave them into whatever conversation he’s forced to endure.
Erm, David, you’re a bloke. You think I’d want thrusting young male authors interview me, were I as famous as Vonnegut? Not a hope, lad. Send me the pretty young ones. The endurance is the same, but it’s a little easier.
And Mr Nason is, if you’ll excuse the term, crass.
It seems a good moment to begin my exploration of Vonnegut the soldier.
[Section break in original]
“WERE you a brave man in war?” I ask him.
No one asks soldiers that. Those who weren’t, regret it. Those who were, do too.
Perhaps the only possibly answer is, “No, I was an abject fucking coward, you jumped-up half-witted little cunt.” George Orwell writes as well as anyone (almost anyone as I type this, Wilfred Owen wasn’t bad either), on this. He was shot in the throat in war, and he wrote of refusing to shoot someone as a sniper. No one with half as much decency as a grain of salt takes pleasure or finds good in killing. They leave that to poets and journalists, helpfully free of such impediments.
And now we come to the bit Norm likes.
Next I ask him about terrorism. It’s not for any particular reason. It just seems a relevant thing to ask a writer who has seen war, who has written of war and who lives in New York City, where terrorism’s horror is understood so well.
Well, I’d ask, “understood by whom?” Is 9/11 better understood by someone in say, Harlem, who knew no one who was killed, and for whom Manhattan was geography rather than personal experience than by someone in say, Manchester, who lost a friend in the attack? This is rhetoric, and more than that, projection, and it should sound like the fart a trombone makes when the reed dies.
Like Vonnegut, I’m depressed. I remember the light before the tunnel, but these days I’m incredulous that anyone intelligent wouldn’t be depressed.
EARLIER in the conversation Vonnegut talked about French writer Albert Camus. “He got a Nobel Prize for saying essentially - among other things - that life is absurd, so the only philosophical question is whether to commit suicide or continue to participate in absurdity.
“But I feel absurd is too weak a word. I think life is preposterous.”
That’s a matter of opinion, but if Vonnegut in his old age persists in defending terrorists, preposterous may be precisely how people remember him, and that would be unfortunate.
I don’t think Camus did think that: I think he thought life was fine if you were young, male, and healthy. “Health” bothered Plato, “male” is pretty uncontroversial, and “young” is merely a matter of opinion according to the Rolling Stones. But “life is preposterous” is a “matter of opinion"? Is there anyone who thinks that’s NOT a platitude?
Update: the bits I forgot to post. I knew there was more.
But meeting Vonnegut face to face on this beautiful autumn day in New York, I am taken aback yet again. Before me is not the debonair, gentleman writer I had expected but an unshaven, dishevelled man with wild, curly grey hair and frayed clothing.
He looks as if he has just crawled out from under a bush in Central Park.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind how people look and I often give money to beggars on the subway. It’s just that in researching Vonnegut on the web I came across several still shots from recent television interviews. These introduced him to me as a scrubbed, clean-shaven, elegantly dressed man old man with carefully groomed hair. The Vonnegut in front of me couldn’t have looked more different if he’d tried. But straight away I can sense that this Vonnegut, not the one on TV, is the real McCoy.
Still the nice writing. But you can imagine Margo Leadbetter in the Good Life saying “I don’t mind how people look” can’t you? My first impression of Kurt Vonnegut was a photo on a penguin Slaughterhouse 5 which showed a sleazy-looking curly haired guy inside a skin which had been passed down through careless owners since Magna Carta. And that was at his peak. As for the “scrubbed, clean-shaven, elegantly dressed man old man with carefully groomed hair’ what about AM in Doctor Who villain mix-up? I’ve met Rhodri Morgan, I’ve shaken hands with Rhodri Morgan. He is not a tree, but he would have appeared on TV as one. The camera lies and lies and lies. I pretty much learned this as a student journalist. Why hasn’t Mr Nasal?
And there’s:
I’m about to raise the issue of these prohibitions when Vonnegut suddenly declares that the last time he ate with “Ossies” was in Dresden in World War II. Once again I’m taken aback.
To me, “Aussies” means our Antipodean friends, what comes from our criminal stock, while “Ossies” refers to those Germans on the sunrise side of what Winston Churchill once called the “Iron Curtain.” And it’s probably not true, as Vonnegut is well travelled as an author. Still, his interviewer told an off-white lie to him. Touchy, as the Frogs have it.
These 746 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:20pm GMT Permanent link.
Monday, 21 November 2005
Txt, Txt »
Well, good god, I agree with Oliver Kamm again. I actually heard him on Radio 4, and he was better than John Sutherland in every sense. I have a book by Sutherland, which is one more than Oliver’s publications. It’s got Laurence Olivier as Heathcliffe on the cover (I think; it might be Larry as somebody equally dashing, or somebody else as Heathcliffe, or I may have the details completely wrong). Whatever, I think it was pretty good, but I’d struggle to tell you who did what to whom on the inside.
Sam Leith, who’s a genuinely clever chap under his superficial cleverness asked What’s educational about saying Satan tempted man with an apel?.
It somewhat undersells the theology, of course. But it also perpetuates a sophomoric error about the poem that, you’d hope, a professor even of modern literature would have spotted. The fruit of the tree of knowledge — described as “downy” at one point — wasn’t an apple. It’s only once so described — by Satan when he’s boasting to his pals in Hell about the episode afterwards — and the context doesn’t invite us to credit Satan as either a reliable witness or an authority on divine botany. So: no quotes ("woe unto mankind” isn’t Milton); not much of the “key plot” (whatever that is); and one error. It’s education, Jim, but not as we know it.
If kids (can Prof Sutherland really intend this for students?) hate literature so much, it must be kinder to all parties to just not bother teaching it to them. In Ian McEwan’s Atonement a character wonders what the point of her daughter going to university to read books she could just as well read at home is. As Sam Leith suggests this may be a great game for those immersed in certain books, but it’s not a way in for beginners.
These 195 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:56pm GMT Permanent link.
Thursday, 24 November 2005
Without Fire »
Jamie is smokin’ at the moment, and has a couple of good posts up today. (Ah, one seems to be yesterday now.) I’ll happily second his point in sustaining vices:
Those doing the discrimination say that it’s the habit that they’re discriminating against. But habits don’t smoke. People smoke, and it’s impossible to discriminate against one without discriminating against the other.
So here’s to the Smoker’s Liberation Front. Yes, the site is a bit silly, a bit given to over-reaction, and a bit laddish and sexist. But if the government wasn’t oppressing them, I would have to defend it. It’s better that we’re all free, than that we’re all politically correct.
This doesn’t quite fit here, but isn’t it funny how New Labour like some freedoms and not others? The police weren’t keen on extended drinking, but they’re only experts in terrorism. The cabinet sensibly consulted MI5 on after- hours mayhem. The spooks gave the thumbs up. (Thus proving the old adage: “It’s not what you ask, but whom.") Torygraph: Supermarkets are the biggest beneficiaries. In Interested parties, a brewer feels distinctly flat.
Ask Jonathan Neame, chief executive of the country’s oldest family brewers, what benefits he expects the new licensing laws to bring to the pub trade and he bluntly replies: “None.”
The extra costs involved in longer hours for the 370 Shepherd Neame pubs in the South East are unlikely to be recouped in extra takings, Mr Neame, pictured, fears.
“The effects will be, at best, neutral and, at worst, negative,” he says. “Within that mix, though, there are likely to be some pubs that win and some that lose.”
Already, the cost to the brewers has been high: £227,000 to get the new licences and about six months’ labour by 15 people at the company’s HQ in Faversham, Kent.
Plus approximately £100,000 in implementing the various health and safety changes associated with the legislation.
Shepherd Neame originally opposed the Bill for 24-hour opening. “The objectives were unclear,” says Mr Neame. “More flexible closing times could have been achieved by deregulation.”
Supermarkets? Oooh: Sainsbury pledges Labour £2m (1999). Billionaire boosts Labour Party funds by £ 2.5m (2003). Tesco says it made no political donations during 2003. During the year the group made contributions of £44,713 (2003 - £31,282) in the form of sponsorship for political events: Labour Party — £14,368; Conservative Party - £5,502; Liberal Democrat Party — £6,340; Plaid Cymru — £1,300; Fianna Fail — £1,203; Usdaw (the main union for Tesco employees) — £16,000.
Of course, Bernie Ecclestone once gave teh bastards The New Labour Party a generous investment bribe donation, but they had to give it back. What a strange co-incidence it is, to be sure, that we have a ruling party that favours supermarkets and penalises smokers and brewers.
Still, good news if you’ve spent the last ten years training in oncology. Blair’s bringing nuclear power back. Cancer will stick around for a while yet. Try to protest that the government is ruining your health with its selfish pleasures and see how far you get!
Both Jamie and Boris Johnson want to know more about the Bush and al-Jazeera story.
We all hope and pray that the American President was engaging in nothing more than neo-con Tourette-style babble about blowing things up. We are quite prepared to believe that the Daily Mirror is wrong. We are ready to accept that the two British civil servants who have leaked the account are either malicious or mistaken. But if there is one thing that would seem to confirm the essential accuracy of the story, it is that the Attorney General has announced that he will prosecute anyone printing the exact facts.
Well, facts are just too much! Print the rumour, print the legend, if you’re Roy Greenslade (now of the Telegraph, which will dent my purchases of that paper) print craven lies. But never print the truth!
Thanks to Peter Robbins, who correctly guessed that I was thinking of this typical Greenslade slime the other week. He also found this wonderful Stephen Glover piece on Roy Greenslade. If Bush wants to bomb a propaganda station, he should start with that other Maxwell cocksucker, al-Astair Campbell. What do you call a large shit that floats? Bob Maxwell. Campbell didn’t like that one, and nor did Greenslade. Fine suck-ups to a tyrannical bully, thief, publisher of lies, and all-round criminal. And for once I don’t mean Bliar.
Greenslade on Wade:
The day the flame-haired temptress editor was nicked while her EastEnders hard-man husband nursed a cut lip will be remembered only as an amusing postscript in Fleet Street history. Nothing more.
Ah, if only Cap’n Bob had asked his right-hand man (wink, wink) to toss him off, he’d have been around to answer charges for looting the Mirror Pension Fund. Too bad it was a literal minded prostitute. That was an amusing day in Fleet Street history. Why did tehgrauniad ever employ that despicable creep? His former colleagues Simon Hoggart and Michael White for some reason can’t get enough of those jokes. And neither can I.
Tim Ireland gets back into form with The World According to Leo Blair.
Despite its questionable recents hirings (the other being Simon Heffer), the Torygraph still has the best columnists, in the shape of Johnson B, previously cited and Armando Iannucci:
Letter from Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott to Chairman, Press Complaints Commission, Sir Christopher Meyer:
Dear Sir Christopher, I’m furious. I’ve just seen in the Sunday papers a private letter I wrote to you complaining that your recent book, DC Confidential, was a load of tat and that you should stand down as Chairman of the PCC. I wonder if, in your role as Chairman of the PCC, you could look into this leak, and see whether there’s a case for the Sunday papers to be censured?
And it just gets better from there. And did I say columnists? There’s none better than Craig Brown.
The Way of the World Journalism Hall of Foam was unveiled by Lord Archer in a lavish ceremony last night. It is designed to recognise the achievements of the men and women who have shaped modern newspaper journalism.
To those of us who worry that the Telegraph might become too like the Hate Mail (ie unreadable tosh), it’s some comfort that the first of these is:
John Littlebrain: “The only journalist brave enough to have called for his own execution twice in the same column, Littlebrain represents all that is best in thoughtless opinion. Particularly memorable was his column calling for Pope John Paul II to be succeeded by Big Brother star Jade Goody. And who but Littlebrain would have been brave enough to put his head on the line and predict that Edwina Currie would be Prime Minister by the year 2000? Littlebrain’s classic columns in The Daily Oaf will be remembered long after they have been forgotten.”
Though my favourite is:
Charlie Chuckles, OBE: “Who can forget the immortal comic creations of the legendary humorous columnist Charlie Chuckles, OBE? The merest mention of Fred Grumble, the militant trade unionist, Daphne Pert, the buxom secretary, or Professor Nutcase, the mad scientist, is enough to set breakfast tables a-roar with good-natured laughter. Furthermore, they have made generations of ordinary decent Britons glad to be alive. For Chuckles, timing was everything. He turned out fun-loving jokes of the very highest calibre right up until his untimely suicide last year.”
“glad to be alive” … “timing was everything” … “untimely suicide”. Brilliance.
These 642 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 5:37pm GMT Permanent link.
Friday, 25 November 2005
A Beautiful Man »
“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.”
Oscar Wilde
Kieran Healy has an excellent post on fellow Northern Irishman, George Best, The Golden Boy. I’m considerably cooler than lukewarm on tehgrauniad obituary, though it contains facts I didn’t know, so it’s not a total loss. It does have the word “infinity” twice, which sensible stylists reserve for either pure mathematics or theology. However, the obit and their photo gallery, treat Best’s life as some kind of moral fable. So he was a sick man; aren’t we all — and isn’t our sickness fatal? “What goes on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening?” asked the Sphinx.
In 1991, he caused a public outcry when he appeared drunk on Wogan.
The sensible reader may, like the apocryphal judge, be inclined to ask, “Who or what is a Wogan?” And the answer is, “a smug diddy man you need to be pissed to talk to.”
No, this won’t do. The Telegraph’s Henry Winter is less finger wagging in Blessed with talent only gods bestow. His writing is better too. Compare tehgrauniad:
Sometimes, you could hardly blame him. After United, in Buenos Aires in 1968, met Estudiantes de la Plata in the first leg of the so called Inter-continental Championship, Best admitted that, with a quarter of an hour gone, he simply ceased trying to play because the Argentines’ endless, largely unpunished, fouling made it impossible. In the return match at Old Trafford, his temper snapped and he was sent off.
With Winter’s:
Brave, too. In one brutal game against Estudiantes, a conflict that shocked even Paddy Crerand, who could look after himself, Best observed that some “of their tackles fell just short of murder”. His patience with his Argentine assailants finally snapped in the Old Trafford return leg, and he punched one of his stalkers.
Brian Glanville in tehgrauniad allows a dying fall with words like “sad” and “downhill” in every paragraph. Henry Winter doesn’t shy from the darkness appearing, but keeps it in context:
Yet no dark detail from Best’s extraordinary odyssey of an existence can be allowed to mask the memory of his brilliance, not even the slopping-out duties during a spell in Pentonville for butting a policeman, nor the awful reality that by the end he had ruined a donated liver, having polluted his own years before. Best ranks among the legends of the game, up there with Pele and Diego Maradona, despite being deprived through the lottery of birth of eligibility for a side capable of international prominence. The World Cup stage was never graced by the Northern Ireland luminary. Friends argue that is why he poured his prodigious flair into the pursuit of glory for United.
They can’t take that away from him. The beauty and spirit of the man, I mean.
But the Torygraph has two more rabbits in its hat. Its photos of George Best are superior. tehgrauiad’s cropping of this Best with Danish girlfriend Eva Haraldstad is inexplicable.
But the best article is Michael Parkinson’s My friend had no regrets.
George Best was sometimes a difficult man to defend in the aftermath of a drunken episode.
What was never a problem was to talk of his genius as a player and to love him as a friend.
The whole thing is a credit to Parkinson, and goes some way to explain his longevity as a chat show host. From tehgrauniad you might learn that Latin Americans were horrendous brutal cheats (as you might expect from a continent which spawned Galtieri and Pinochet). From Parkinson, you learn that nothing human is alien to the English.
British football in those days was no place for players of a nervous disposition. The fainthearted had nowhere to hide. At Highbury, Peter Storey awaited, at Chelsea, ‘Chopper’ Harris clattered all comers, Tommy Smith bossed Anfield and at Elland Road, if Norman Hunter didn’t get you then there was a fair chance Billy Bremner would, and there was always Jack Charlton on hand to mop up.
Brian Glanville:
The moustache and sideburns he affected in his earlier days with United might have been seen as a challenge to a more sedate older generation, but he never evinced the louche and loutish behaviour of stars as would follow him, such as Paul Gascoigne, with whom he was destined to cross swords.
Gazza had a biography (not like other ephemeral stars, a ghost-written autobiography) by the great (IMO anyway) poet Ian Hamilton. Some of us feel that “loutish behaviour” is the natural preserve of poets and Greek heroes like Alexander, and it gladdens my fanatic heart when a mere plebian adopts aristocratic mores so naturally.
Parkinson, who I usually consider a cricket writer, doesn’t let his admiration of Best spoil his contempt of the modern game.
Bobby Charlton was another who was completely two-footed. Few of the current crop of forwards are. You might think that with upwards of £50,000 a week coming in, they would bother to learn. After all, they have nothing else to do. Best was the complete player. The most naturally gifted Busby ever saw. When he was at his most sublime, he was unstoppable and irresistible. After a virtuoso performance against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, the crowd stood and applauded him off the field. His love of showboating often led to frustration among team members who would spend the afternoon running into support positions, only to watch Best being indulgent.
And he manages to find insight:
He gave us a wave and then stood, foot on ball, awaiting the arrival of the Newcastle defence. Three of them approached and, just when it seemed they had him cornered, he flicked three wall passes off their legs, chipped over their heads, collected the ball, turned and gave us a bow. He was a man in love with his virtuosity, certain of his ability because he had taken nothing for granted.
But all this misses the other special thing. Women liked him. He had looks, he had charm, he had talent, and he had bags of money, of course. But he had other virtues.
At first, he was having a lovely time. The football was magical, and the Sixties a perfect time to be single, good-looking and horny. Sometimes, when he wanted to escape, he would come and stay. He spent most of his time in the garden playing football with my sons. One of them was asked by their teacher to tell the class what he had done over the weekend. “Please, Miss,” he said, “yesterday I played football with George Best.” She gave him a dressing down for telling fibs.
Kind to children, see. (No obituary is complete without mention of the “two-touch/one-touch” rules at Man U practice.) This was a man who virtually played with himself (if you’ll excuse the term) in practice with some of the best players in the country, and knew when to be generous. That is what I call a man.
These 484 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:07pm GMT Permanent link.
Sunday, 27 November 2005
Sunday Catblogging »
Gordo has new friend/enemy. He watched Gordon sitting in the garden from the shed roof, and finally decided a flying leap was too risky. So he came down and tried to stalk my cat by drawing an imaginary line between them and then walking the other three sides of an imaginary square, but he kept getting distracted. “What’s this? A blade of grass. It smells interesting! It tastes good too! Where was I? Stalking. This is curious! Can I eat it?” So I think he’s too young for territorial struggles. Gordon is unimpressed.
His tail looks like it should belong to a much bigger animal. But there are few cats round here similarly endowed. There’s a female I call “Doris the Duster” because her tail is fluffy and about the size of the rest of her. She only comes through the garden when she has a kitten in tow. So it’s probably a genetic thing. Hmm. Maybe I’ll call him “Captain Peacock.”
These 164 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:47pm GMT Permanent link.
Ruth Kelly Press Release »
An exciting interactive challenge!
- Read Austin Mitchell on the Education White Paper.
- Take note of the Press Release.
- Search Google News for parental quotes. Here are a few I made earlier (no luck so far).
Via Nosemonkey and Jamie. I’m so keen on this, I’ve put a copy on the front page sidebar.
These 80 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 6:49pm GMT Permanent link.
Monday, 28 November 2005
What The Hell Is Wrong With Our Papers? »
Incredible stories that deserve to reported, part 1: Sam Leith.
We are, by now, accustomed to the idea that our elected leaders are prone to staggering outbursts of craziness. One such, which we take in our stride, is that George W Bush might have had to be talked out of bombing al-Jazeera.
I find it hard to imagine that anyone will have been wholly set at ease by the Government’s insistence that it is at once wholly untrue and an Official Secret.
The idea of bombing al-Jazeera is as nothing, though, to the little-noticed story published earlier this week about the Falklands war. François Mitterrand’s psychoanalyst has written a book in which he claims that Margaret Thatcher threatened to launch a nuclear strike on Buenos Aires.
The prospect, according to Ali Magoudi, in his book Rendez-Vous, was so disturbing that Mitterrand was 45 minutes late for his shrink’s appointment, and could thereafter speak of nothing else.
“What an impossible woman,” Mitterrand said, and one can imagine him throwing his hands up in a gesture of Gallic exasperation. “She’s threatening to unleash an atomic weapon against Argentina if I don’t provide her with the secret codes that will make the missiles we sold the Argentinians deaf and blind.”
Magoudi says Mitterrand gave in and surrendered the missile codes, rather than, in his words, “provoke a nuclear war for a few islands inhabited by three sheep as hairy as they are freezing”. Mitterrand, according to Magoudi, planned to exact his “revenge” by building a tunnel under the Channel: “I’ll succeed where Napoleon III failed.”
What on earth are we to make of this? Qualified though my admiration for Lady Thatcher may be, I find it hard to believe that she’d have nuked Buenos Aires just to make a point. We must conclude either that Mitterrand was as mad as a box of frogs, or that his psychiatrist is madder. Neither thought is encouraging.
I’m with Sam here. Though Mrs Thatch had her faults, I can’t believe that she’d seriously consider detonating the first nuclear strike in anger since 1945. Even though I think politicians should do everything they can to support troops in time of war, an atomic weapon causing hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of civilian casualties is too much. Even though I don’t believe it; I’d like to see her cleared.
The other thing you notice is that the French kept the codes on the missiles they sold. Since we sold Iraq quite a bit of ordnance when it was on our side (ie against Iran), I wonder if we did the same — just in case they proved hostile? That would alter our understanding of Gulf War I a little wouldn’t it?
Should you care to read them, here’s a link to the Thatcher ‘threatened to nuke Argentina’ allegations.
These 159 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:57am GMT Permanent link.
Dave The Paparazzo »
Hell, I forgot that I had a letter through the door which said that the BBC would film here today. I was offered an ear thing by a technician who asked if I was “walking through” — but I was honest and told him I was walking through because I lived here, and I was going out. And then I called one of the actors “Mickey” even though that’s not his real name of course. That’s his name in the role, so he didn’t seem too bothered.
I have no idea who these people are.
These 102 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:49pm GMT Permanent link.
Bloggers And Fame »
Jarndyce has a pretty good post Didn’t I used to be a blogger? which is approved by Chris Dillow. (I’m usually an admirer of Chris’s, but I’ll demur here. When he says, ” … they are, rather contemptibly, begging for jobs with the traditional media.” I feel obliged to note that he’s said before that he’s “Within 15 years of the dissertation, I’d paid off the mortgage on a flat in Belsize Park, and become almost semi-retired.” In other words, he doesn’t need a job. Well, other people do: and there’s nothing wrong or contemptible with that.)
I’ve also got some time for Recess Monkey’s compaint. I’ve detected tokenism in tehgrauniad before.
But this is a sort of preamble to the PajamasMedia name change I read about on Mike Power this morning. Good god, they take themselves so seriously. And given that Charles Johnson was, last I heard, a web designer, the site is rubbish.
What’s wrong? They asked supporters for their opinions. Glenn Reynolds was first. (NB the logo changed shortly after he wrote this.)
Okay, it’s a bit early, but I’ve got family everywhere, a turkey in the oven, lamb waiting to go, and here’s a moment free in front of the computer.
My thoughts on the site: (1) It’s too sterile and corporate-looking; (2) The logo — which I guess will be obsolete — is similarly sterile and corporate-looking — Pamela of Atlas Shrugged said it looked like the logo for a women’s health clinic; (3) I like the newsfeeds, but I agree with Jeralyn Merritt that they’re not optimized for the kind of things that bloggers want.
The page, overall, has too much mainstream news content. And it’s too short — keep scrolling with a blog, and you see new stuff. Keep scrolling with this, and it stops!
I think that overall the Pajamas / OSM operation has relied too much on the services of consultants and experts. They know stuff, but the results tend to be, well, corporate and sterile. And don’t even start me on the “branding” experts. I hope the check hasn’t cleared yet. …
Later, he added:
Yes, I think we should be a portal to the blogosphere, not another MSM entity. And I think that the content should be much bloggier, with the emphasis on sending traffic out to blogs of all sorts.
Both of those are very sensible, constructive criticisms. It’s just that they seem to mean … “be more like Instapundit.” And that is PajamasMedia’s problem. The successful blog already exists. Even if PM makes money, even if it makes more money than Glenn’s present online presences, it won’t make as much money per head or anything close. Radical, subversive … these things mean “small audience” — and so does blogging in general. But then I think hating anything as diverse as “the media” is pretty stupid. Somehow bloggers always find columnists or newspapers they like.
I’d like to be able to comment more on the thread that Glenn dominates (intellectually, if not in word count), but one of his co-threaders, Tammy Bruce, is guilty of:
When I first spoke to Roger L. Simon about this adventure, one of the things I warned him about was the tendency to routinize a revolution.
I don’t know what “routinize” means, but it’s ugly. I skimmed her other contributions. Let’s just say I’ll go tap dancing in a minefield before I read any more of her management-speak. Nature abhors a vacuum; Tammy Bruce merely articulates one.
These 345 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:46pm GMT Permanent link.
Tuesday, 29 November 2005
More Doctor Who Filming Photos »
This is the house Mickey walks to. It seemed impolite to get closer because of the number of lighting people there.
This is Mickey/Noel fooling around at his start position.
This guy may have been an extra, but I think he wasn’t. He has a thing in his ear.
I don’t really know what this is.
Two more of the lighting crew.
The woman may be a producer or something. She arrived in a car, and looked everyone over.
These 85 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 7:27pm GMT Permanent link.