Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Early Morning Paranoia

If I was feeling paranoid I would point out this represents a nice distraction for Nu Labour from this and this.

Fortunately I am not feeling paranoid so I won't.

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Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Lord Levy Arrested. Again.

See here for details.

Charges are coming, a trial looms. As far as I can see Blair is now in deep shit. And you know what? It couldn't have happened to a more deserving person.

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Self-Deception

Tony Blair, quoted here: "I think in many ways actually, the last eighteen months has been our most radical, most bold on the domestic agenda."

Not entirely sure you can ever use the words "radical" and "bold" in the same sentence as the words "Tony Blair". "Self-absorbed", "deluded" and "pointless" would be better words, I think.

Although I concede this - the last eighteen months, with cash-for-peerages, Prezza dipping his wick with anyone who isn't his wife, Charlie the Safety Elephant being sacked and John Reid doing even worse at the Home Office, have been the most entertaining months of Nu-Labour. In that awkward, "can't take my eyes off the car crash", kind of way. It is odd, but if the last eighteen months of our terrible excuse for a governement had been a plotline on The Thick of It then we would probably all be praising the genius of the writing. The problem is Nu-Labour is it is actually happening rather than being a story on a sitcom...

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Monday, January 29, 2007

Songs to Listen to

In my not so humble opinion the best songs at the moment to listen to are:

Everything Will Flow by Suede. Epic, awesome, and with a brilliant sense of perspective.

Eleanor Put Your Boots Back On by Franz Ferdinand. Would mean more if I was in love with someone called Eleanor, but still good.

Mongoloid by Devo. Don't ask because if you were there you know why.

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Things Can Only Get Worse

This is a really rather wonderful deconstruction of our incumbent government and their issues. Not sure things can only get better for Blair - as this (via Mr Eugenides) rather wonderful picture shows. Wouldn't it be great if Blair ends up in court? Especially if he is positioned in the dock.

Oh, and the Devil's Kitchen highlights a great petition that everyone should sign up for.

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Saturday, January 27, 2007

Tony Blair Must Be Forced From Power

In the book that arguably created modern Conservatism, Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke criticised those who would fundamentally change society by means of revolution. He argued society was an organic construct to a large extent, and that those who tried to build or rebuild a society based on an artificial blueprint would destroy that society, and the end result would be anarchy and/or despotism. The French Revolution proved him to be correct, as has the descent of all revolutions since into brutal dictatorships.

However this is no longer a relevant analysis for modern Britain. No-one with any credibility seriously calls for revolution anymore, and the Labour party - the supposed party of the left - is a centrist party with very little to link it to the party of Clement Attlee, Nye Bevan or even Tony Benn. The problems with this Labour government lies not in their desire to fundamentally change the state - put simply, they do not have their desire. The real problem lies in their approach to the law.

Ignoring (for this post anyway) the apparent feeling amongst the ruling Nu Labour elite that the law does not apply to them, the relationship between Nu Labour and the law has always been concerning. They have a tendency to ignore the existing laws in this country when a problem arises, and throw new legislation at it in the desperate hope that more and more laws will make everything better. This is, of course, utter bollocks, as the ID card legslation proves. ID cards apparently save us from identity fraud and terrorism. We actually already have legislation against identity fraud and terrorism, and it would make more sense for Nu Labour to try to implement those laws. But this is government by headline, government by gimmick. For Nu Labour, the real point of government is to appear to be doing something rather than actually doing it.

Which is bad enough, until you consider the events of the past few weeks within the Home Office. The scandal around sentencing in the UK shows an unprecedented event in our history - our government actually stopping the laws of the land being implemented. We now have judges unable to give the custodial sentences they would normally give to the likes of paedophiles because of the failings of the Home Office. We have the Home Secretary writing to judges and asking them not to sentence people to prison unless they absolutely have to. Judges cannot implement the law because the Home Secretary has asked them not to. Nu Labour is no longer over-legislating, it is preventing the implementation of existing legislation. The law is ceasing to exist under Nu Labour.

It is now clear to most right thinking people that Reid should resign, and if he won't resign, he should be sacked. However Blair won't do this - he can't risk further instability in his cabinet. Which brings us to the other major area in which Nu Labour is currently destroying our country. In today's Times Matthew Parris sees 2005-2007 as an odd twilight time in British Politics - a time beween two leaders, and a time of government paralysis. This is the key problem British politics has today. We don't have a leader, we don't have a Prime Minister, we have a dead man walking. Someone should be in charge of the country. Someone should be sacking Reid, and trying to put someone capable in his place. But whilst Blair clings on, there is no-one to do that.

President Truman famously had a plague on his desk saying "The Buck Stops Here". The buck doesn't stop anywhere in Britain today. There is a void in Number 10, a vacancy at the very top of the British government. Whilst Blair sleepwalks his way to retirement, nothing will get done. And as the Home Office crisis so vividly shows, we need someone to be in charge.

So it falls to the Labour party to take action and remove this lame duck Prime Minister. It has to be done, so we can have some sort of actual government - even a flawed and idiotic government - back. We have to have someone who is going to try to sort the problems of this country out. The only way for this to happen is to force Blair out of Number 10. Now.

As they approach their tenth anniversary in power, the message for the MPs that make up the Labour government is simple: for fuck's sake, govern.

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10 Great Truths Of Movies

1. Any film made by or starring Dan Aykroyd made before 1985 is a comedy classic. Any film made by or starring Dan Aykroyd after 1985 is not worth watching*.

2. Hannibal Lecter was mildly scary in The Silence of the Lambs. Since then he has become a cliche, like a camper version of Christopher Lee's Dracula. Which will, no doubt, make Hannibal Rising eminently missable.

3. David Lynch makes his best films (The Elephant Man, The Straight Story) when he isn't trying to be purposefully weird. David Cronenberg makes his best films (Shivers, Scanners and Videodrome) when he is trying to be purposefully weird.

4. Bill Murray is not as funny as he, or everyone else, seems to think he is. However, he is still *quite* funny. In Groundhog Day anyway.

5. Any successful slasher movie is the kiss of death for cinema for the next few years owing to the number of crappy copy cat movies that dominate the silver screen. Witness Scream being followed by the terrible I Know What You Did Last Summer, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, Scream 2, Urban Legend, Final Destination 1-3, Scary Movie, and Scream 3.

6. Any successful superhero movie is the kiss of death for cinema for the next few years owing to the number of crappy copy cat movies that dominate the silver screen. Witness Spiderman being followed by Hulk, Daredevil, The Punisher, Elektra and Fantastic Four**.

7. Roger Moore should have stopped being James Bond after Moonraker, and Timothy Dalton should have taken over from For Your Eyes Only onwards. I mean, A View To A Kill would have been a much better film had Christopher Walken's Nazi engineered super villian not been best by a Bond with poorly dyed hair and a need to wear baggy clothes to hide both the substantial girth around the waist and the saggy old man's tits sported by Moore in that film.

8. The phrase "Wes Craven presents" before movie title is a 100%, absolute guarantee that the movie in question will be total, indisputable shite.

9. 96% of people claim to love Withnail & I. Of that 96%, 77% only like the movie because one of their mates said it was really cool***.

10. Oliver Stone, John Carpenter and Briand De Palma were all great directors. The operative word here being were. Whatever talent they had, it has long since gone.

* The one exception is Grosse Point Blank. Although John Cusack was the star of that. And one exception in 22 years is not great.

** No doubt Batman Begins and Superman Returns will have similar shite being produced in their wake.

*** I made that statistic up, believe it or not. Although it does sound about right.

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Friday, January 26, 2007

Bad Taste Jokes (you have been warned)

Why did Diana cross the road?
Because she wasn't wearing her seatbelt.
***
What do Diana and Pink Floyd have in common?
Their last big hits were The Wall.
***
From here. Sorry, but they really appeal to my ever sick sense of humour.

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Thursday, January 25, 2007

So why not UKIP?

It is a question that has been bothering me ever since Cameron’s lurch to the left brought about my hasty and undignified departure from the Conservative party.

On the face of it, UKIP should be the natural home to someone like me. I am against the European Union - I see it as monolithic, undemocratic, grossly corrupt and of no tangible benefit to our country. The concept of a European Common Market is one thing, the concept of a European Union is completely different. I can support the former, but I cannot see anything good emerging from the latter. And UKIP are the only party to take a clear stance against Europe.

And, as the UKIP manifesto shows, they are now more than just a single issue party. If you don’t fancy trawling through the manifesto, then take a look at Nigel Farage’s online conversation on Manifesto UK. As far as I can see, he speaks lot of sense and is arguably more conservative that the Conservative party these days.

So why not join? Why not transfer the energies and efforts I put into campaigning for the Tories to UKIP?

The answer is not so much what UKIP stand for, but rather what they are perceived to stand for. A lot of people still see UKIP as a single issue party, something they do not help by maintaining the pound sign as their symbol. And because that issue involves moving away from Europe, it is easy to tarnish UKIP as Little-Englanders or even racists*. What really bothers me is the popular perception of UKIP as simply an anti-European party. I think this perception is false, but as a friend said to me just before Christmas “don’t join them - not because of what UKIP are, but rather what they are perceived to be.”

I also accept the point that if I really wanted to change the way UKIP are perceived then it would be far easier to do so from within the party than from the outside. But as it stands, I cannot bring myself to join UKIP. Whether that changes in the future depends on both the Tories and UKIP – if the Tories ditched Cameron and overcome their current identity crisis, then I would probably rejoin them. But if UKIP manage to build themselves up as a credible Libertarian party, then I would probably join them.

But for the meantime, I am in the political wilderness. Which is not ideal but has its’ upside as well – I don’t have to pay any party membership fees and I don’t have to get up early on Saturday mornings to go tramping the streets handing out leaflets and banging on people’s doors.

*Not that I am claiming that the people in UKIP are racists. I am sure there are a few, but the same is true of the Tories and Labour. Hell, the Lib Dems even have their own pet anti-Semite.

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Search terms of the day

Funniest - "lembit opik retard".

Most concerning - "hazel blears prime minister". Surely no-one sees that hamster faced shrew as a potential Prime Minister? Perhaps it was Hazel herself doing the search. In which case I hope she stumbled across this post, where I call her (quite rightly in my not so humble opinion) a "troll faced baboon".

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Headline

I'm not a big fan of The Sun, since I think it prides itself on uninformed ignorance and is basically The Daily Sport, only with less tits. However the headline of this article made me smile.

Where is John Reid's brain? Buggered if I know. But did he ever really have one? I thought he was this big old bag of pseudo alpha male bluster, a wannabe macho thug who accidentally wandered into politics inbetween fist fights with enemies, friends, neighbours and loved ones.

The headline is so good that the Moai is expounding his theory that The Sun is actually written by geniuses. It is just that they are using their genius for nefarious purposes...

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Tuesday, January 23, 2007

"Do I Deserve To Get My Windows Smashed?"

Asks Jade Goody.

Well, frankly, yes.

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Monday, January 22, 2007

A Nu Labour Timeline

News that the Home Office may be split into two departments fills me with a certain apathy.

At least until I think about the tangled events that have led to the government deciding to split a department that has been managed reasonably successfully under all previous administrations (both Labour and Tory). Think about it – it is all so painfully Nu Labour.

April 2006: It emerges that there is a serious problem in the Home Office. The Prime Minister expresses his full confidence in his Home Secretary.

May 2006: Prime Minister sacks the Home Secretary and replaces him with a tabloid friendly trouble shooter in a blaze of publicity. Said trouble shooter abdicates all responsibility for his new role by claiming his department is “not fit for the purpose”.

June 2006 to December 2006: Mutterings from the Home Secretary about sackings and restructuring hide the fact that not a tremendous amount is actually being done in the Home Office to solve any of the problems.

January 2007: Another crisis, owing to Home Office incompetence, rears its’ ugly head. The Home Secretary holds urgent crisis meetings in the hope tht it looks like he is actually doing something. The government is faced with a choice – invest time and money in sorting our the Home Office, or going for some sort of gimmick like splitting up the Home Office and hoping that no-one realises dividing the Home Office actually does nothing to help the immediate problems and as such is just a colossal waste of time. And what do Nu Labour do? Go for the expensive gimmick.

And that is what we are reduced to – government by gimmick. Nothing will get better in the long term because our leaders are obsessed by the short term. A responsible government would look calmly and soberly at the Home Office, and realise that solving the problems will require a lot of hard work and could take years. Our government sees a quick headline and the chance to make a lot of noise without actually achieving anything, so, of course, they jump at that opportunity.

It would be funny if it wasn’t so important.

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Saturday, January 20, 2007

Look at the talkbox, with renewed frustration

I have been trying to avoid Celebrity Big Brother in a way that resembles someone trying to avoid a virulent stomach plague. My flatmates watch it, so I evacuate the living room in plenty of time before it comes on. People talk about it at work, so I use my selective hearing and tune out from the Big Brother chat. And I blank all tabloid front pages at the moment (which is no bad thing, generally speaking), as I have no burning desire to see the latest exclusives from the house.

However, despite my best attempts to bury my head in the sand and hope this winter bout of Big Brother goes by without affecting me, one story has attracted my attention. Yep, it is the Shilpa vs Jade saga.

Jade Goody's behaviour has shown her to be the sort of reprehensible idiot I always thought she was. From what I have seen and read, she comes across as ignorant, uneducated, boorish and utterly odious. The sort of person you would cross the street to avoid. However, taking all that into account, I am not sure she is a racist.

Sure, comments like "Shilpa Poppadom" would suggest otherwise, and I wonder whether Goody would have the same antipathy to Shetty if she was white. But I rather suspect she would. Because the problem Jade has with Shetty is best illustrated by having a look at the pictures over at Mr Eugenides - put simply, Shetty is a strikingly attractive and successful actor. Goody is a rotund cross between trailer trash and a warthog - famous for being famous and nothing else. Goody is just plain jealous of Shetty, and because she is so stupid and so poorly educated Goody cannot express her feelings in anything other than violent arguments and ignorant comments. If you want a racist, look no further than wannabe footballer's wife Danielle Lloyd, who has come out with such gems as "She should f*** off home. She can’t even speak English.” (A charge that could be levelled at both Ms Lloyd and Ms Goody...) Goody is jealous, pure and simple. But not racist.

I don't know how much damage this debacle will do to Big Brother, or to Endemol, or even to Channel Four but I think the debate will rumble on for a while yet. So all I will add is this - Big Brother and then Celebrity Big Brother have given a weak, stupid and ignorant person a national platform to speak and be heard. So they really shouldn't be fucking surprised when said weak, stupid and ignorant person says stupid, ignorant and unpleasant things.

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Thursday, January 18, 2007

Things that I never thought would happen

Apologies for the lack of activity on here of late. I have been knocked out by a nasty illness that had a lot of the symptoms of the 'flu but clearly wasn't the 'flu*.

Along with the phrase "and pigs might fly", I thought the phrase "and Lembit Opik appears in Hello with a third rate pop singer" was a rock solid way of expressing the absolutely impossible. How wrong I was.

I don't know whether he will ever warrant one, but whoever does become Lembit Opik's auto-biographer should have a whale of a time. What with his valiant fight for Spaceguard, his compelling defence of Charles Kennedy this time last year and his sterling support of Mark Oaten** coupled with his love of weather girls and the musically challenged, Opik's life should make for a compelling research project.

*Can't have been the 'flu. I had a 'flu jab less than a month ago. And I refuse to believe that I went through the trauma of having a flu jab (bearing in mind I hate needles) only to get the sodding illness a few weeks later.

**Come on, to be the only one out of 52 MPs supporting Oaten shows a certain dedication.

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Friday, January 12, 2007

The Palace

Our version of the mighty The West Wing is set to arrive in the form of The Palace. And I am not convinced.

It is not just my natural antipathy to the Royals either. Part of the appeal of The West Wing was that Jed Bartlett was the most powerful man in the world. The decisions he made would impact on the world. He had to make choices about going to war, about the future of Cuba. He negotiated with China and tried to negotiate with North Korea. Sure, he always seemed able to make the right decisions and also often managed to do it in a way that allowed a obvious and patronising moral truth to be revealed, but his choices had a massive effect on the whole world in The West Wing.

And there in lies the problem – our Royal Family have no power. What is the series going to be about? The difficult choice of which charity gala to go to? The awfulness of life in the eyes of the paparazzi? The calamity of having to make a speech to the nation on Christmas day? To Play The King is an excellent fictional account of what would happen if the monarchy tried to get involved in politics in any other way other than being the ceremonial Head of State.

Somehow I can’t see The Palace having the same urgency as The West Wing.

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Begging for Saddam

The headline of this story threw me for a moment – “Hussein's niece pleads for father's life”. A bit late, surely?

Thuraya Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, niece of the late dictator, apparently doesn’t want her family members to be executed. Which, when you think about it, isn’t that surprising. I’d be fairly peeved if the US and Iraqi authorities wanted to execute my uncle. But my uncle has not, to my knowledge anyway, committed crimes against humanity. Unlike Hussein and his cronies…

According to the no doubt lovely and well-adjusted Thuraya, Saddam:

"...had not tortured or punished anyone unjustly. All those who say that my brother was executed or this or that was tortured (should know) there was a reason ... a big reason."

The big reason was, presumably, that he just didn’t like the people he tortured and executed. With omnipotent, brutal dictators justice tends to become a highly subjective term and the fact that there is no-one who can challenge the dictator’s idea of justice means atrocities are committed. There may well have been “a big reason” – that doesn’t mean that reason is just or even valid.

Apparently:

“Hussein had a duty as president to defend the country, she said. He tolerated opposition but not those who "harmed the country".”

Harmed the country? How did the victims of Saddam harm the country? By not agreeing with him? By being Kurdish? And how about the argument that Saddam harmed the country? Aside from killing his own people, he also got his country into a long, brutal war with Iran. He then got his country into a war with America and other Western powers by invading Kuwait. That was before his brinkmanship with the UN led to over a decade of crippling sanctions against his people. And to top it all off he then goaded the US into invading his country. The regime of Saddam Hussein is littered with war and murder. He did far more to harm his country than any of his supposed opponents. So if harming the country warrants execution, then Saddam got what he deserved.

And Thuraya's comment to the victims of Saddam?

"I have nothing to say."

Ah, the arrogance of (fallen) power. It really is an astounding double standard – Saddam is a martyr, executed by a harsh and intolerant regime that is propped up by America. Those executed by Saddam’s (at times American backed) harsh and intolerant regime are not even worth a comment.

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Thursday, January 11, 2007

Search Term Of The Day

"Faecal obsession."

Slightly worried that they found my blog - possibly some of my comments on Gillian McKeith or Mark Oaten attracted them...

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Not Fit For The Purpose

No, no, not the Home Office. I'm talking about John Reid. And it isn't so much that he is not fit for the purpose, but rather I cannot work out what his purpose is.

This is the man who sometimes calls himself Dr John Reid. His Phd? In Economic History, with a particular bent towards Marxism. Which kind of makes sense, since Reid was a member of the Communist Party (which, according to Wikipedia, he joined at the age of 26). No doubt he is a man of his convictions, since he is now so communist that he has become a fascist home secretary of the most right wing Labour government in history. You can't help but respect someone with deep rooted political convictions, who fights for them at all costs. Which is one of the reasons why I have no respect for Reid whatsoever.

And Reid is the man who has famously held seven cabinet posts in seven years. Where I work, someone who has had seven jobs in seven years is, more than likely, written off as a failure, not given increasingly senior appointments. I guess Reid must have a detailed record of success in all of his roles. Oh, wait, no. The opposite is true. Secretary of State for Scotland - a part of this country that now wants to leave the United Kingdom. Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, where his contribution to the peace process was *precisely* nothing. Labour Party Chairman - clearly laid the groundwork well for the present chipmunked face retard to drive the party into the ground, with ever diminishing membership numbers and a financial crisis that has forced the Labour Party to turn to crime to pay its’ way. Leader of the House of Commons – oh, good, a position that is normally seen as a demotion (Cook, Straw). Secretary of State for Health – hmmm, that may be part of the reason why the NHS is in utter crisis. And interestingly, as Health Secretary, Reid opposed the one positive step (for health anyway – the civil liberties argument is another issue entirely) that Nu Labour have made for health- the smoking ban. Secretary of State for Defence – must be proud of this one, given how poorly equipped and over-stretched the British Army is in Iraq and Afghanistan. And now, as Home Secretary, he seems to have adopted the strategy of blaming just about anyone else for the problems of the Home Office rather than him. God forbid that he should actually take some responsibility for the department he is currently running… As Reactionary Snob points out, it can only be a matter of time before he blames the previous Tory governments for the latest calamity to befall his department.

Reid is spoken of as a troubleshooter – a roving minister who can go into failing departments (which is just about every department under Nu Labour) and turn them round. I have no idea where this reputation comes from but it does not seem to be based on reality at all. Reid is just a bully – a borderline thug who uses his alpha male and pseudo-macho tendencies to intimidate those around him into thinking he is doing a good job. If Blair had an ounce of courage about him he would sit down, assess how little Reid has ever managed to achieve, and then sack him. But I guess wishing for courage from the spineless weasel running this country is like wishing for snow at Christmas – never going to fucking happen. This is the only reason why we should be wishing for Prime Minister Brown is that he will almost certainly sack Reid and condemn him to the fate he so richly deserves – stomping around the back benches like the third rate, over the hill, strip club bouncer he so closely resembles.

John Reid – totally and utterly fucking pointless.

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Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Pointless Speculation...

...about the 2008 US election. I know it is just under 2 years away but the US does seem to be drifting towards a state of continous electioneering so the time is always ripe for a bit of mildly informed speculation.

Obama will be the early leader in the Democratic primaries and will look like he is about to defy expectations and steal the nomination from Hillary Clinton. However the Democrats will panic again, as they did with Howard Dean, and will end up nominating Senator Clinton. To unite the party, she will invite Obama to join her ticket as the Vice-Presidential candidate. He will accept, and prove himself to be a formidable national campaigner. Better, in fact, than the headline act on the Democratic Ticket.

The Republicans will select John McCain as their candidate, realising the the US needs a more moderate Republican after 8 years of Bush Junior. With Rudolph Giuliani as his Vice-Presidential candidate, McCain will wage and aggressive campaign based on two key fronts - firstly, that he and Guiliani are a much less gimmicky and more experienced ticket than Clinton/Obama, and also that he is a decorated, principled war hero and Senator who is going to be far more capable than Mrs Clinton in dealing with the Iraq war mess. He will also come across as more amiable and charming than the intense, often shrill Clinton and the deciding factor will be the debates, where McCain will easily defeat Clinton. As a result, the next President of the United States will be John McCain.

Just to push this a bit further, let's speculate on 2012. I reckon McCain will struggle as President. He will find being a fiscal conservative very difficult to balance with equipping troops for and fighting the war in Iraq. His attempts at campaign finance reforms will meet with silent - but lethal - opposition from both parties and the Christian Right will desert him, leaving him with diastrous mid-term election results. By the time of the 2012 election he is seen as the Republican equivalent of Jimmy Carter.

In the meantime, the close election result in 2008 and the gains in the House and Senate in both 2008 and 2012 give the Democrats a determination to win the White House back in 2012. Obama is now nationally - and internationally regarded - as a electoral force and he is the presumptive nominee in 2012. Owing to his popularity - and the lack of faith in the McCain administration, Obama wins the White House easily in the November elections.

Of course, this assumes a great deal and no doubt things will radically change over the next six years. But if it was based on careful research and if I did have any sort of idea what would happen over the next 6 years then this wouldn't be pointless speculation, would it?

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Tuesday, January 09, 2007

BBC Bias

I've long suspected the BBC of a pro-Palestinian bias, so maybe I am reading too much into this. But nonetheless I find the way this article is written as quite a striking example of this subtle, almost subliminal, bias.

The headline is “Captured Israeli 'in good health'”. Good news, I hear you say. But for me the real story is only mentioned in the fifth paragraph – with the militant’s statement of "We are ready to keep him for years so long as our demands are not met." And it is only in the sixth paragraph (of nine) that we hear what compromises the Israelis have made – “Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has offered to release "many" Palestinian detainees, if the Palestinians free Cpl Shalit and set up a national unity government that would recognise Israel and renounce violence.”

So, in summary, this is the first announcement since Gilad Shalit was seized last summer about his condition. And yes, it is great news that he is in good health. But I can’t help but feel that the poor sod would also be in good health if he was at home with his family. I would imagine his primary concern is not the fact that he is good health, but rather that he is a hostage, a prisoner of war. And I think the threat of keeping him for many years in spite of the generous and eminently sensible deal offered by the Israelis should be the focus of the story. Not the fact that Shalit is in good health and doesn’t have a fucking cold.

The real headline is "Militants threaten to hold hostage for years". Unless, of course, you are biased towards said militants...

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Eurovision...

Apparently we might have an extremely unlikely entry into this year's Eurovision - Stephen Patrick Morrissey.

So the former lead singer of the Smiths, the man who wrote such sing-a-long greats as "Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me", "You Just Haven't Earned It Yet Baby", "We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful" and "You Have Killed Me" will be representing is at the cheese fest that brought us "Waterloo" by Abba, "Congratulations" by Cliff Richard and "Making Your Mind Up" by Bucks Fizz. Riiiigggghhhhtt, that sounds like a well thought through plan. Perhaps I'm wrong but I can't help but feel those who watch Eurovision perhaps will not appreciate songs such as "I Have Forgiven Jesus", "Life Is A Pigsty" and "The Boy With The Thorn In His Side".

Still, perhaps it makes sense to have a quirky, off beat entry this year - after all, Lordi were hardly a conventional choice last year. And even Morrissey at his most depressing and morbid is bound to be better than Daz pissing Sampson...

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Monday, January 08, 2007

Defending Ruth Kelly

As much as it pains me to say it, Ruth Kelly has done nothing wrong in sending her child to a private school. I'm grimacing as I type, but I have agree with Blair's spokesperson when they say it is a matter of individual choice. As much as I may dislike Ruth Kelly, I have to concede that if she has the right to spend her money as she wants. Even if it is on fees for a private school.

However it does indicate something about the complete lack of Labour success with the education system that a minister has to send her child to a private school to get a decent education. Just as the Labour Party Chair protesting at the closure of a maternity ward in her constituency indicates how badly Labour have done with the NHS.

Funny, isn't it, how Nu Labour only manage to grudgingly acknowledge their failings when their ministers are personally going to be affected by those failings...

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Charges Against Saddam...

...have been dropped.

Erm, am I missing something? The guy is dead. He was hanged by the incumbent Iraqi government. It is arguably quite harsh to execute him - to execute him and then put him on trial again is somewhere between extremely harsh and utterly farcical.

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Sunday, January 07, 2007

V For Vendetta

Just watched the film adaptation of the classic graphic novel V For Vendetta. And, as always seems to be the way with any adaptation of an Alan Moore story, I was really disappointed. In fact I would go as far as to say that the film version is a "bag of shite."

Oh, and there are spoilers below.

The original graphic novel is a bleak but compelling piece of work. Set in the aftermath of a limited nuclear war (partly due to the Labour Party winning the 1983 General Election), Britain is living under a totalitarian dictator, who in turn is in the thrall of a computer. Most people live in a quiet, poverty stricken despair - Evie is driven to prostitution (hence her meeting with V). V is a difficult, awkward character - traumatised by what has happened to him, he is a terrorist. He is more of an anti-hero than a hero. He is enigmatic and disturbing. He brings down the government - aided by a well placed assassin. The ending is ambigious - the totalitarian regime has fallen but V is dead, and there is no guarantee of a better tomorrow. It is a film noir on paper, a strikingly visual and surprisingly literate comic book.

Whereas the film seems to be a comic painted on the screen. The Matrix was darker than this failed attempt at a dystopian nightmare. Hell, Caddyshack was darker than the V For Vendetta film. In the film, the USA seems to be lost in some sort civil war. Britian - after a biological terrorist attack - has fallen under the sway of a dictator who used to be (inevitably) a Conservative under-secretary. Evie meets V on the way to meet a man who turns out to be gay. She was not driven onto the streets by poverty and in fact seems to have quite a cushy - albeit dull - job. The country is not suffering from the Norsefire regime too much - in fact Norsefire seems to be more of an inconvenience rather than anything else. And V - as played by Agent Smith from the Matrix films - is just fucking irritating. Dedicated, elusive and enigmatic revolutionary the film V is not. Someone you would like to punch repeatedly in the face the film V certainly is. The government suffers a coup d'etat, sponsored by V, but undermined by V killing those involved in the coup. And then we get a fireworks display and a hopeful ending.

There seems to be a complete inability to produce a decent big screen version of an Alan Moore story. I hope the adaptation of Watchmen proves me wrong, but somehow I doubt it will. The movie version of V for Vendetta is a massive disappointment that will not stand the test of time - we could have had a cinema classic, instead we have a film just dying to be forgotten.

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Saturday, January 06, 2007

And the next Leader of the Conservative Party is...

…Boris Johnson.

No, really.

Over at Conservative Party Reptile there is a strong case for a high profile role for Boris in the Conservative Party. I would go one step further – I would argue that Boris Johnson would actually make a great leader of the Conservative Party.

I know from experience that people tend to scoff at this idea, and I can understand why. Ignoring Boris’s idiosyncratic way of speaking and his bumbling public persona, there is also his propensity to get himself involved in tabloid pleasing scandals. But if he can keep his trousers up and if he is really serious about politics (as his resignation as editor of The Spectator would suggest) then the Tories could have a winner in the tousled haired former public school boy.

There are three reasons for this. First of all, he is a highly identifiable figure with the general public. His appearances on Have I Got News For You show someone with a sense of humour, who is happy to laugh at himself and is also happy to be criticised. This is very different to the completely controlled environment that Blair, and increasingly Cameron, exist in. And whilst people liked Blair (and seem to like Cameron) because of his charisma in front of the camera, this was all based on the fact that Blair appeared non-threatening and was detached from the scandal ridden Tories of the time (again very similar to Cameron at the moment). People seem to like Johnson for different reasons – he appears intelligent and likable – someone who you would want to go for a drink with. In spite of his privileged background, and despite his eccentric personality, people seem to see a connection with Johnson. Add some gravitas, and I really think people would vote for him for Prime Minister. Hell, they might vote for him without the gravitas because he is so different to the other MPs out there.

Also, his scandals may be embarrassing for the party but they are no longer terminal for a political career – because his problems have been based on his private life. No handing out peerages in return for election funds or driving a weapons expert to suicide for Boris. Just the plain old inability to keep his pecker in his pants. As Clinton proved in the more socially conservative America, an extra-marital affair is no longer the death knell for the career of a political leader. And let us not forget that Johnson was sacked by Howard for lying, not for having an affair. So even if Boris hasn’t learnt his lesson and manages to get himself embroiled in a sex scandal as Tory leader, it could turn out to be little more than a passing scandal, as long as he doesn’t lose himself in a web of lies.

And finally, there is a precedent for an unlikely – but highly effective – leader, again from across the Atlantic. Ronald Reagan, star of Bedtime for Bonzo and other cinematic *greats*, was always a long shot as President. He was an old man when he ran for office, a divorced man often seen as quite simple. He had run a spoiler campaign against Gerry Ford in 1976, arguably handing the White House to Jimmy Carter in the process. Had you said in 1979 that Reagan would come to be one of the most effective and popular Presidents since FDR, you would probably have been laughed at. But look at the perceptions now – Reagan won two landslides, helped end the Cold War and rebuilt pride in the USA for many of his fellow Americans. Albeit with the help of some formidable advisers, the unlikeliest of candidates proved to be a vote-winner and a success as a national and world leader.

Boris has one advantage over Reagan – he has a formidable intellect, and beneath the bumbling bluster there hides a passionate and curious mind. Get Boris to concentrate on the issue at hand through focussing on his conservative convictions and I do not doubt that you would have a formidable debater – someone who would wipe the floor with almost all likely Labour opponents.

The Tory party have elected unlikely leaders before now – Thatcher was hardly a credible candidate when she stood and ended the Heath leadership, for example. In Johnson they have a highly intelligent, likable vote-winner – so they could do far worse than looking in his direction the next time there is a vacancy at the head of the Tories.

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Friday, January 05, 2007

General Election 2007?

No, I don’t think so – it is always fun to speculate, but I don’t think that Gordon Brown will be going for a snap election this year.

Sure, there is a good case for going to the country early. When (and I think it is a case of when rather than if) Brown wins the premiership, he will experience some sort of uplift in the polls that will not last beyond a brief honeymoon period. Furthermore, by hinting at an early election through the genetically modified squirrel currently chair of the Labour party, Brown et al may finally be able to force Cameron into making some sort of policy pledges – pledges that Labour can either tear apart or (more likely) steal. And the appetite for another change in Prime Minister so soon after Brown grabs the keys to Number 10 may not be there with the British people. He *could* win a narrow victory later this year, and the chance to gain his own mandate (which would allow him to drag the party away from Blairism) may prove to be irresistible.

But I don’t think it will happen. I think Brown will wait, and in doing so will allow the Labour party to continue its’ decline from exhausted husk of a party into an unelectable, squabbling mess. Like the Tories between 1992 and 1997.

The reasons are simple – first off, it looks like Brown will have to fight for the Labour party leadership. All indications are this will not be a coronation. He will lose votes from the left owing to the rogue campaign of John McDonnell. But this is nothing to the New Labour challenge – most likely, given his recent speech about New Labour sticking with Blairism – to come from Clubber Reid. I don’t think that McDonnell stands a snowball’s chance in hell of getting anywhere in the election, and I equally don’t think that the Labour party is ready to elect a wannabe-macho thug to the Premiership just yet. However, this much seems clear to me – Brown will have to fight a brutal campaign to get to Number 10, and will emerge from said campaign battered and bruised. His party will be divided and split into warring factions. He will want to take some time to try to repair the wounds inflicted by the leadership contest. Labour is behind in the polls now – after they have finished tearing themselves apart in order to chose the next PM, they will be even further behind. Brown runs the risk of emerging as a compromise (and compromised) candidate – like Alec Douglas-Home, or John Major.

Furthermore, to fight a good General Election campaign you need an army of foot soldiers – people willing to go out and tramp the streets for you. The Labour party – by the admission of their own MPs – is facing a membership crisis. As a new leader and as one who is (in theory) much closer to old Labour, Brown might be able to reverse the decline in membership and have a good volunteer work force ready to fight for him in a couple of year’s time.

Also, there may be change in the leaders of the other two parties in the next 18 months. Ming the Merciful’s position looks far from secure, and his recent pleas of “I’m in charge” only fuel my feelings that he could be on the way out. And whilst it maybe wishful thinking on my part, there are increasingly audible rumblings from within the Conservative party about the direction Cameron is dragging the Tories in. By waiting Brown does run the risk of the Lib Dems finding a charismatic leader and also runs the risk of Cameron becoming more popular, but he can also hope that infighting in both the Tories and the Lib Dems will deflect from the ever present threat of civil war within the Labour party.

However the main reason is because a snap election would not gain the approval of one of the most influential figures in British Politics – no, not Tony Blair, or Michael Howard or even the Queen, but rather Rupert Murdoch. And he has already warned that he might switch his support to Cameron, and would feel cheated if Brown went straight to the country. As The Scotsman reports, he has said:

But for no reason other than the dynamics of British politics, we would like to see at least a year to 18 months' stand-off between Gordon Brown and David Cameron so we can decide which of those most coincides with our views. I think the British public would be cheated if they only got a month or two's warning."

And Brown cannot afford to lose the support of the Murdoch Empire if he is to win an election.

So my prediction for 2007 – there will be no General Election, simply because Brown will not risk losing the crown he has waited so long for. He will take the gamble, and hold onto his beloved Premiership until at least 2008, if not 2009.

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Thursday, January 04, 2007

Word of the Day

Kleptocracy.

Read the definition - Nu Labour, anyone?

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Deals with the Devil

I’ve not really commented on the execution of Saddam Hussein – I briefly thought about putting a cheap shot on here about it when I heard that he had gone but I decided against it. Instead I settled on sending the Moai a text commenting that the Iraqi government did not hang about with Saddam.

But Prescott’s comments that the leaking of the video was deplorable (hell, if ever a man would know about being deplorable it would be Two Jags) have roused me from my post New Year’s Eve stupor and into commenting.

Sure, those in the execution chamber did not give Saddam a dignified exit from this world and I agree that they should have conducted themselves with a little more decorum (even if the executions conducted in Saddam’s name were very similar Saddam’s own death). And I agree that there is something really ghoulish and seedy about filming someone’s death on a mobile and then posting it on a website - it is actually because I find it so ghoulish and seedy that I am not going to link to one of the copies of the video. They are out there if you want to find them. But I actually find the circumstances of Saddam’s demise – as unpleasant as they are – quite ironic given both the nature of capital punishment and what the ensuing scandal about the mobile video indicates about the state of Iraq at the moment and how foreign policy works.

I’m not sure how I feel about the death penalty. On the one hand, I think that some people probably do warrant the death penalty (Saddam being a very good example) but I am not sure what the willingness to put its’ citizens to death says anything positive about said state at all. But I would imagine that, when you are stood, like Saddam, on the trapdoor with a comedy sized noose around your neck then your focus lies elsewhere rather than on what the witnesses are doing. Sure, the jeering and lynch mob attitude shown on the mobile phone video are unpleasant and sickening – and very different to the cold and clinical way in which the US puts its’ citizens to death – but scratch away the baying of the mob and you get to the real crime – the actual execution, the actual state sponsored murder. By all means have a debate about the execution of Saddam Hussein, but let’s focus on the key event that happened in that execution chamber – which was, as obvious as it sounds, the execution. Forget the mob atmosphere – that is very secondary to the fact that a man died.

But even if you are most shocked and stunned by the taunts of the crowd, why would you be surprised? This was the death of a hated man, in a hastily arranged execution, in a country that has a legacy of undignified, and often far more brutal, executions. The execution of Saddam Hussein was an act of revenge – regardless of whether you think that revenge is justified or not. And given it was revenge, it could have been a lot worse for Saddam.

And ultimately for me, the real dark side to the death of Saddam is less about the fact that the Iraqi state put him to death (as mentioned above, I would say he is probably deserving of the sentence) but rather what it says about International Relations and foreign policy. One dictator dies for his crimes against humanity. Others - like Pol Pot, Saparmyrat Nyýazow, and Pinochet – die of natural causes, unpunished for their crimes. And others still – like Kim Jong-Il, Muammar al-Gaddafi and Fidel Castro – sit in their palaces, untouched, still persecuting their people. The Coalition of the Willing took on Saddam Hussein (and the Taliban in Afghanistan) because they were (relatively speaking) easy to defeat. Nyýazow and Pinochet were allowed to go on because they offered some sort of support at some point to the West. Castro and Jong-Il are tolerated because they are (or have been) too difficult to take on. The death of Saddam simply indicates the brutal and disheartening compromises inherent in any sort of foreign policy – we attack one dictatorial regime and allow the leader to drop to his death through a trapdoor, but have to leave others to go on as they are, suppressing their people, confounding and compromising the supposed democratic ideals of the West. For me, the undignified and unseemly end to Saddam may be one small piece of human evil leaving this world, but it cannot hide the evil still ruling over so many countries in this world. All this death shows is the awful unethical compromises and the deals with the Devil that make up the reality of foreign policy.

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Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Scrounging MP Bastards

According to The Times Sir Philip Mawer, the parliamentary sleaze watchdog, wants a tightening up of the rules relating to MPs expenses. Apparently there is just too much of a disparity between the expenses being claimed by MPs. Well, I would argue that there is far too much of a difference between the expenses claimed by MPs and people who reside in what I would like to call “the real fucking world”.

Last year, I reckon I would have spent less than £2,000 on expenses. Last year, Alex Salmond (SNP) spent £157,844. Last year, Jacqui Smith (Labour – in fucking Redditch, of all places) spent £158,313. Last year, Ashok Kumar (Labour) spent £161,049. Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat) spent £161,815. Eric Joyce (Labour) spent a whopping, eye-watering £174,811. That is nearly a million pounds on the expenses of five MPs. And we have over 600 of the fuckers larking around Westminster. Ok, the five listed are the highest spending five, but the next time you look at your wage slip, think about all that lovely tax money you earned going to Eric Joyce up in Scotland.

Take a look at what they are spending our money on – second homes, first class travel for families, over £80,000 to hire staff (including family) and on not only fucking car journeys (40p a mile) but also on bike rides (20p a mile – I’m sorry, what? 20p a mile for riding a shitting bike? Jesus Christ, I’d been cycling everywhere if I was an MP. Or if I had a bike). What do I get expensed for my job? Only things directly related to my job. I have to pay for my own accommodation (I just have the one home, I find that works for me, I just live close to my place or work) and my own travel (ok, I walk to work, but I do know people who spend a small fortune on getting to work). And I don’t get to employ my family members using tax money. Maybe I should run for Parliament, jump on this gravy train. Or maybe our elected representatives should just be made fucking responsible for pissing our money away. Perhaps Mawer could help…

But what is his suggestion? MPs should provide receipts for all expenses over £50 rather than £250.

Frankly, that is not good enough. Not even close.

MPs should provide receipts for every single thing they claim back from the tax payer. Every. Single. Thing. No exceptions. Nothing. If they don’t have a receipt, they lose the money (again, like people in the real world). Fuck ‘em. The fact that they have managed to win some seat somewhere to follow a party whip in Westminster against both their better judgement and the best interests of their constituents does not allow them to waste hundreds of thousands of pounds on their expenses.

Sure, there may be a lot of legitimate expenses out there. I would imagine it costs a fortune to travel from the Northern areas of Scotland to London. But let us see what these expenses are. Provide receipts. And then it should fall to Mawer to publicise exactly what MPs have spent our money on. Not “place in the public domain” or “register” or any other euphemism for “sweeping information under the carpet” the wankers in Westminster use. They should be broadcast across the national media, and any MP who has been wasting our tax money should be named and shamed. Hell, named, shamed, and banned from ever running as an MP. Or worse still – made to run in their constituencies at the next election for Veritas.

There is a lot of talk about how we restore public confidence in our elected representatives. Quick suggestion – make sure that MPs have to obey the same rules as us. Maybe if they have to live in the real world, if even for a bit, they will see why we are so fucked off with them.

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