Friday, December 21, 2007

Brown-bashing: The Top 10 Political Moments of 2007

Since this will be my last day of blogging before Christmas (and maybe before 2008) I thought I would do one of those tiresome "Top 10 of 2007". Don’t worry, I’m not going to do a Personal Top 10, which would be tremendously tedious for anyone who does not know me, but rather a political one. And you may see a theme emerging in the list...

10. Good Riddance Day: Oh what a happy day it was when Blair finally left Number 10, taking his shit eating grin with him. It wasn’t as nice as him leaving in the company of the police, or after a humiliating election defeat, but it was good enough for me. Plus it allowed Gordon Brown to take control of the Nu Labour government, and lead his party into a nosedive in the polls.

9. The non-election actually creating an election – for the Lib Dem leader: Yes Ming was treated shabbily by his party and yes, the subsequent election was dreadfully tedious. But the sudden, undignified departure of Ming the Merciful was tremendously good to watch, and buried any claim the Lib Dems might have to being a nice party.

8. David Cameron’s conference speech – Now I am no fan of Cameron or of his conference speech, but I am increasingly in the minority on both. But his speech was an audacious political gamble, and worked so well in his favour. It also confirmed for many of us what we already new – namely that Brown is a spineless coward.

7. Northern Rock: Economic competence my arse. The first run on a bank in living memory, shattering any residual delusions that Brown and his puppet chancellor are capable of running the economy. It is going to cost the tax payer money, but it is also going to cost Gordon Brown dearly. And anything that costs Gordon Brown dearly is fine with me.

6. Calamity Clegg: The only interesting moment in the Lib Dem leadership campaign came when Chris Huhne, with that raw, naked lust for power blazing in his eyes, shafted the man who is now Lib Dem leader. The tag "Calamity Clegg" will not just stick, but will become a stick to beat the gormless Clegg with at every available opportunity.

5. Stalinist Brown: We now know the irony – Brown is no Stalin. As evil as he may have been, Stalin was simply more capable than Brown.

4. Donorgate: Cash for peerages was nebulous corruption, and difficult to pin down. None of that under Brown! Who couldn’t raise a smile of mild disgust but also guilty glee at the wonderful sight of senior minister after senior minister confessing to accepting illegal donations?

3. From Stalin to Mr Bean: Vince Cable not only proved himself to be the man who should be Lib Dem leader with this comment, but also gave a very potent image of our dithering, awkward PM. The only difference is Mr Bean is a more sympathetic character. And that's saying something!

2. HRMC and those discs: Like Northern Rock, it could hurt people in this country. Badly. But as a great way of illustrating the mind-numbing incompetence of Brown, it couldn't be bettered. After all, this is the department he ran for 10 years and now headed up his that skunk faced puppet chancellor of his. And it happened on his watch as PM. The buck stops with Brown, and those affected should remember this when they come to put their "x" in a box at the next election.

1. The Non-Election: Brown takes the leadership and takes a lead in the polls, and throws it away. He shows himself to be a liar, a coward and an incompetent in one easy step, at the same time as losing the support of the media. He confirms the very worst opinions of everyone, and shows he is not capable of holding the highest office in the land. This was the moment when the Labour party should have dropped Brown like a shitty stick. But in case they didn't get the message here, there have been countless other examples for the Labour party to heed since then.

You could read the above list and accuse me of political myopia because, barring a little Lib Dem baiting, most of the above events are laying into Gordon Brown. And this list is on top of another two posts today laying into the dour drip. But it is, in the case of Gordon Brown, deserved.
He has shown himself to be the worst Prime Minister in living memory. He is arrogant, aloof – in this democracy he believes he has a right to the position he has grasped without consulting anyone. And he is simply not capable of doing the job – both in terms of his skills and his personality/psychology. He is leading his government from crisis to crisis, and his party to defeat in that next election. He comes across as a bully, as a coward, and as a deeply unpleasant man. That he should be heading up this country is a national disgrace. Losing the next election and the party leadership is far too soft a punishment for this egregious cunt. The fate I would advocate for Gordon Brown is nothing short of drowining in a vat of his own rectal filth.

2007: the year Brown proved he was as bad as many of suspected he was.

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Conceding Defeat

I've had a number of conversations about Gordon Brown with my good friend the Moai. My predictions (such as "he'll be too much of a coward to call a snap election") about that spineless shit have generally been proved to be correct. So here's another one, published to the limited readership of this blog.

Gordon Brown will not be Prime Minister after the next election. Cameron may not get an overall majority, but the Clegg led Lib Dems will run into the waiting arms of Cameron in the event of young Hug A Husky needing to form a coalition. But that is not my prediction - my prediction is about how Brown will behave in the event of losing the election.

Brown has waited his entire adult life to be Prime Minister. He has had to live in the shadow of his much more capable (and calling Blair capable really shows the incompetence of Brown) and charismatic colleague for over a decade, watching that man in the job he feels he is owed. Now he has the job, his arrogance is such that he does not even feel the need to be elected by anyone. Can you imagine how he will feel if he loses the prize he has coveted for so long?

I think he will go into meltdown - suffer a Nixonesque mental collapse. He won't be calling Cameron to concede defeat in the election - a subordinate will do that. He won't be making a speech on election night: a senior Labour minister will make that speech for him. There will be no gracious concession speech, no "when the curtain falls it is time to get off the stage" moment. He will disappear into the woodwork, vanish up to Scotland in a way that will make Ming the Merciful's vanishing act look positively dignified. Grace and dignity will not be seen from Brown after the next election.

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Christmas Cheer

At least the latest poll data, via Sky News, makes me very cheerful:

The current YouGov poll for the Daily Telegraph gives the Tories a solid 12 point lead - on 43% to Labour's 31%.
There is room for intelligent analysis. However, this blog is not the place for that. This blog is for revelling in the misfortunes of Gordon Brown. So my comment is:

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah. Hahaha. Ha. Ha. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahah. Haha.

I particularly like this stat:
More than half (51%) believe Mr Brown has been poor or very poor, against 14% who praise him as good or very good.
Come the next election, (barring a miracle) Brown is fucked. Couldn’t happen to a nicer chap. Blair may have been incompetent, but he was a confidence trickster so fooled enough people into thinking he was ok. Brown, however, is not even competent at being a confidence trickster.

Have a good Christmas, Mr Brown. Because I doubt your new year will be that happy.

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Thursday, December 20, 2007

2 yrs 4 a txt

The CPS is now considering a sentence of 2 years in prison if you use your mobile phone whilst you are driving. The immediate response is to note that the laws are more than a little draconian in this area, and those who are proposing them are a bunch of totalitarian fucks. And that one of their number would now be facing two years in the slammer.

It is also worth noting that the "research" that compares mobile phone use whilst driving to drink driving is not that meaningful. As the BBC states:

"According to the research, a driver on the phone is more distracted than one who has drunk as much as the legal alcohol limit."
So driving whilst on a mobile is more distracting than driving having consumed a legal amount of alcohol. That is a meaningless stat: driving whilst on a mobile (illegal) is more distracting than driving having consuming a little alcohol (legal). Whatever next? The revelation that driving whilst on your mobile is less distracting than having consumed 10 pints of beer and seven shots of sambuca?

But when I think about it there is some merit in the laws. Large numbers of people still drive whilst using their mobiles/sat navs* which would indicate that the existing penalties are not working. And I favour treating causing death by dangerous driving as manslaughter, at least from the perspective of the victim’s family and friends. After all, it doesn’t really matter if the perpetrator killed someone accidentally in a fight or accidentally in a car. You’re still lost a loved one through the idiocy of someone else.

The reason why many people will probably get irate about this is because of the discrepancy in sentencing. You can get two years for sending a text whilst you are driving. You could also get two years** for possessing a large amount of child pornography showing penetrative abuse by an adult and/or child pornography showing bestial or sadistic acts. On the one hand, you have the offence of driving like a tit. On the other hand, you have the offence of possessing large amounts of material that were created through the extreme abuse of children. The two offences are not really comparable in their relative seriousness.

Which shows the problem with the UK justice system. The sentencing laws have evolved over time, meaning there are some mad discrepancies. And it is ultimately not fair for someone to serve the same amount of time inside for being a bit stupid and possessing extreme child porn. The UK needs a radical overhaul of the sentencing criteria. Instead we get random, ill thought out proposals.

But then we really shouldn’t be surprised. This government isn’t capable of running the Home Office. There is no way that they would be capable of carrying out a radical overhaul of anything, let alone the justice system.

*I was nearly hit by a lorry recently whose driver looked down to fiddle with his sat nav and missed the fact that he was coming up to a pedestrian crossing. What a shit head.
**Between 12 months and 3 years, technically speaking.

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Mr Eugenides points to yet another example of unbelievable crassness amongst those vying for the highest office in the USA, this time from Mick Huckabee:

"It is now difficult to keep track of the vast array of publicly endorsed and institutionally supported aberrations — from homosexuality and pedophilia to sadomasochism and necrophilia."
Since when has paedophilia been publicly and institutionally supported?

Anyhoo, America has now had four years to find someone with the competence to take over from Bush when he finally is forced from office in just over a year’s time (by a constitutional amendment rather than the Democrats). And frankly the line-up is more than a little depressing. It really says something when the most capable looking candidates for both parties are the most tedious and predictable on both sides – Clinton (despite the nepotism) and Giuliani.

But this is a crucial election for the US. They have had eight years of President Bush – perhaps the worst President since Herbert Hoover. He has done massive damage to the image of the US abroad. He has fucked the economy, and left an already divided country even more divided through his passionate embrace of the religious fundamentalists who call themselves the Christian Coalition. They need someone to come into the White House who is not an extremist. They need someone who is intelligent and intuitive. They need someone who believes a diplomatic solution is not just a precursor to war. And the Christian fundamentalists like Romney and Huckabee, or the Pakistan baiting Obama, are not going to make the grade.

It may be an alarmist point of view, but there is some truth in the idea that this is an election where America chooses their position in the world for the future. Other economies and other nations, like China and (under the iron grip of Putin) a resurgent Russia, could very easily come to challenge the US’s claim to being the world’s only superpower. The US needs to make the choice of whether they will treat the Bush administration as an aberration, or a template for their political future.

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Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Red Right Hand

Classic Nick Cave. Edgy, weird, and a bit manic. Could you want anything more?

Calamity Clegg Strikes!

Calamity Clegg is living up to his nickname - 24 hours in the job and he has already committed (count 'em) 2 gaffes.

And what were his gaffes? Misjudging his figures on a key economic policy such as taxation? Has he committed a major foreign policy faux pas, such as proposing an invasion of Pakistan? Perhaps he uttered a racial slur or made a sexist comment.

Oh no, he just didn't know about the Pogues's Fairytale of New York. And he thought Changes was the name of a Bowie album, when *everyone* knows that the full album title is changesbowie.

What a cunt he is.

Of course, we could take the sensible option and say that, whilst not knowing the name of a David Bowie compilation and about the Fairytale of NewYork represents bad taste, it is hardly knowledge required of someone who is running a political party. It is not really a gaffe at all. And we already know that Clegg has bad taste. After all, he did join the Liberal Democrats.

But why be sensible when we can be hysterical? This lack of knowledge is catastrophic. How will Clegg compete with Cameron if he can't name hip albums? He's going to lead the Liberal Democrats into further poor poll ratings, he's going to drive the party into the ground. The Liberal Democrats must waste no time, and sack Clegg because of these gaffes. After all, they have a lot of recent experience in running leadership elections. And I've heard Chris Huhne might be interested in the job.

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'Tis the Season...

I love Christmas. I dare say some people, given the general misanthropy sometimes seen on this blog, might expect me to be Scrooge like over the Festive period, but nothing could be further from the truth. Christmas is awesome. It is even better these days because there is actually something worth watching on the TV.

Office Christmas parties, however, are different.

Don’t get me wrong, I do still enjoy a decent office Christmas party. If it has been properly considered and properly planned, it can be a good experience. But far too often they descend into mindless drunkenness, and have all the attendant problems of mindless drinking.

I’m not against drinking. In fact, I rather like drinking. A (rather worryingly) large amount of my life has been spent in various stages of inebriation. But that means, come Christmas, I know how much I can drink and still avoid being utterly, if you pardon my French, shitted.

It is those who don’t drink, or who seldom drink, who tend to be the ones who rapidly get to the state I would define as "mindlessly wasted". It is those who end vomiting anywhere other than in the toilet, who end up fighting and falling over, and who end up humiliating themselves. It is those non-drinkers who probably make up most of the passengers on "the vomit comet". It is a simple message, but one people seem to miss – just because you can drink more at Christmas, doesn’t mean you should. After all, the fact that it is Christmas doesn’t suddenly give you hollow legs and a greater tolerance to alcohol.

So to anyone who is "gonna go mental" at Christmas after a year of relative temperance, think about how you will feel the next day. You’ll have a hangover that makes the very worst flu feel like a light cold. And your stomach will want to eat itself – not just because of the sambuca shots, but also as you remembered the crippingly embarrassing things you did in front of your work colleagues the previous evening.

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The jug eared freak has attacked the one eyed thief.

It is entertaining to watch the Labour party tear into each other like a bunch of ferrets fighting in a sack, and the perpetual bitterness shown by Clarke (a man sacked for incompetence, lest we forget) shows the type self-awareness and general political nous of Ted Heath. But some of his criticisms are valid, not least that the "British jobs for British people" is racist and would have appalled the Labour party of old.

However the really stand out phrase for me is:

"There is only one question for Labour - how do we win the next election?"
No, Clarke, you inbred cunt, it really isn’t. The question for Labour should be "how best can I govern the UK in the interests of the British people." You, and the rest of the grasping Nu Labour bastards who sit in parliament, are here to serve the people. If you do that correctly, you will win the next election. But I’d imagine that concept is alien to Clarke and his ilk. His words inadvertently show exactly what is wrong with our current leaders – they don’t want to help you or the current. All they are interesting in is perpetuating their pointless power. Politics has become a further part of the entertainment industry – a dull, drab soap opera rather than anything that could be useful for the people our politicians nominally serve.

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Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Today's the day!

Today is the day when we learn who will be the new Lib Dem leader. The tedium is almost palpable: which of these two interchangeable Cameronlites (and it really takes something to make Cameron look like a heavyweight) will it be?

I rather favour Calamity Clegg - he may be less competent, but somehow he comes across as less egregious than Hideous Huhne. But ultimately I couldn't give a flying fuck either way. And I rather suspect that I am not alone in that sentiment...
So here is the question that is more pertinent than "which will it be?" - "does anyone really care?"
UPDATE:
Chris Clegg it is. Nick Huhne must be really disappointed. But can take some comfort that, given the current turnover of Lib Dem leaders, he will get a pop at it again in 18 months.

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Joking Apart

Since the Spiderman film series seems to have lost what made it great, anyone who is still interested in watching a decent superhero movie needs to turn to the rebooted Batman series - at least if they don't want to watch excerably crap or terminally dull movies. Of course, to date the only film released in this series is Batman Begins but The Dark Knight is released next summer - you can see the trailer here.

I'd imagine, given the legions of Bat fans out there, that elements of the film will prove to be very controversial. And one aspect that immediately stands out as strikingly different from previous presentations is the physical appearance of the Joker. Frankly, he looks like a refugee from a Cure concert who slept in s skip all night after getting pissed on meths:


It is very different from other, more sanitised presentations:


And, indeed, the cliched, camp version:

So, no doubt, some will complain about the way the character looks in next year's film. But actually, the new look Joker actually makes sense if you think about it. The guy is a psychotic, disturbed, mass murdering psychopath. He is the nemesis of Batman, who in himself is quite a dark character. Why would he look like a stylish clown? Or like an old man with white paint over his moustache?

The new Joker looks dangerous, and looks unpredictable. It bodes well for The Dark Knight: hopefully it will be a dark experience; a thousand miles away from standard superhero pap and a million miles away from some of the previous movies claiming to represent the Batman story.

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Monday, December 17, 2007

The Nu Labour Government

Data missing. Again. Lost by our "government".

Incompetent shower of incompetent cunts. They really are. This is someone's fucking identity, for Christ's sake. Actually, scratch that. It is 3 million people's identities. Add that to the other 25 million who have been royally screwed by the brainless toads in this government, and you've potentially got the data of 28 million people lost behind the filing cabinet. Or in the hands of someone who is looking to exploit it. Government can't tell you. Because they haven't got a clue where this data is.

The loss of this data should not only be the death knell for the ID cards programme, but also for any residual hope that this government is capable of looking after anything. They should be hounded from office and forced into whatever jobs they are actually capable of doing.

Which is, presumably, shovelling shit at a pig farm.

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Beyond Hypocrisy

The Labour MP Graham Allen attacks John Major:

"During his tenure donations were not all declared and foreign donations were commonplace. It took a Labour government to end those scandals and introduce legislation to bring greater transparency to party funding."
You what? Ending scandals like Cash for Peerages? Greater transparency like in the Donorgate scandal?

Doublethink, pure and simple.

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Stalin The Scamp

Via DK I see Arthur Scargill - failed Union boss, failed revolutionary, and, well, failure - has recently been asked about his thoughts on Stalin. That is Stalin - the mass murdering, sociopath former dictator of the Soviet Union, by the way.

"Next Scargill was asked by a listener about his views on JV Stalin: did he regard him as "a good socialist"?"
If Scargill had even a basic knowledge of his own political creed, then he would know that Stalin was a Marxist-Leninist, and therefore not a socialist. Yes, we’re getting into political semantics here, but socialists were not leftwing enough for Stalin. In fact, Stalin would have had Scargill arrested, locked up, tortured and then shot in the back of the head. Mind you, if I was a totalitarian dictator, I’d probably have Scargill arrested and shot as well.

""Arthur replied that he thought Stalin had been a "very good leader", especially during World War II."
A very good leader?! Presumably Pol Pot was a really good leader as well.

And World War Two was not exactly Stalin’s finest hour. The war began partly because he signed a non-aggression pact with the Nazis. Then, Stalin was utterly unprepared for the Nazi invasion. When it happened, Stalin suffered a nervous breakdown, and one of the reasons why the Nazis were able to plough so far into Russia was because Stalin was not ready and was, initially, not able to fight the war. And the Soviet campaign was not one of heroism and audacious warfare. It was a war of attrition, pure and simple. One of the reasons why the Soviet army kept on advancing is because the front line troops knew that if they turned round or retreated, their fellow Communists would gun them down just as freely as the Nazis.
It is difficult to have a "good war" as a leader, and all war leaders are open to criticism. But the Soviet victory in World War Two was despite Stalin, not because of him.

"It was true that he had committed "many, many errors", but, there again, "Churchill in Britain was also criticised"."
Interestingly, whilst you could criticise Churchill during the war, no-one could criticise Stalin until well after he died. That is because Churchill was a leader of a democracy. Where as Stalin was the same as Hitler – regarding any criticism of his leadership and personality cult as a crime deserving the death penatly.

"Campbell at this point mildly suggested that it was perhaps not Stalin's record as war leader that was the main issue. After all he stood accused of being a "mass murderer". Did Scargill think Churchill had killed more people than Stalin? And what about the gulags, the show trials? Yes, yes, said Arthur, but these "mistakes" must be seen in context."
Mass murder in context? Sheesh. It is difficult to put the murder of millions of people into perspective. But perhaps Scargill has revealed more than he realises about his own intentions than he realises. Maybe in Scargill land murder is ok, as long as it is pursing some sort of dysfunctional socialist utopia.

"Don't forget, "the problems of the Soviet Union were infinitely worse after Stalin than before his death"."
No, the problems of the Soviet Union were bad after Stalin died, but nowhere near as bad as during his reign. Because the mass murder and intentional starvation of large swathes of the population at least slowed down under Stalin’s successors, even if they didn’t stop. And, not being a socialist, I tend to see the lessening of starvation and mass murder as a good thing. Crazy, eh?

"As Scargill was unwilling to venture an opinion on whether Stalin was responsible for more deaths than Churchill"
Historical consensus on the number of people murdered by Stalin? Millions (possibly as many as 60 million). Historical consensus on the number killed by Churchill? Zero. It is therefore a tough question to answer, if you can’t count.

"Campbell tried another tack: who did our general secretary think was worse - Stalin or Thatcher? By now Scargill was really getting tied in knots. Until and unless he knew the truth, he could not go along with allegations against the former Soviet leader: "If people were killed, or put into concentration camps, it was wrong.""
What evidence does Scargill need?! The resurrection and confession of the long dead Soviet dictator? Nice clarification that killing and concentration camps are wrong. It does say something that Scargill had to make that clarification, though.

"Arthur conceded that Stalin may have done those things, but he knew that Thatcher had "destroyed our manufacturing industry, people's hope"."
Destroying the manufacturing industry is on a par with mass murder and the elimination of a political class in the world of Scargill.

"The listener who had originally asked the question compared Scargill's response to the holocaust-denial of David Irving."
Which is a very nice comparison. I rather think that Scargill would be disgusted with the crimes of Hitler, but tacitly accepts the murders of Stalin et al, simply because Stalin’s opinions are closer to his. Nothing like being a two faced bastard, is there?

"Scargill did, however, state that he had always opposed the restrictions on travelling abroad that the USSR had imposed."
Apparently mass murder is ok, restricting travel isn’t. The mind boggles.

The world according to Scargill – a world where Stalin made "some mistakes". Proof (if anyone really needs further proof) that socialists live in a parallel world that has no connection with reality.

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Friday, December 14, 2007

A Lego Atomic Bomb

Apparently there's a book that tells you how to make a gun out of lego. Not much to say, really, other than I wish I had some lego.

The hysterical reaction to the book is something else though. Favourite comment? This:

"And a commenter on ThisIsLondon.co.uk said: "This is a very dangerous idea. "Kids could make atomic bombs out of LEGO, and just think what would happen if some Islamic terrorist get hold of a copy. The possibilities are terrifying.""
An Lego atomic bomb? Does this moron even know what an atomic bomb is? Or the complexity of what it takes to make an atomic bomb? Oh, and nice referencing of Islamic terrorism. Because an atomic bomb in the hands of non Islamic terrorists is just fucking dandy. Do these people think before they type? Sit down and drink a tall glass of shut the fuck up, you moron.

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The Person Who Designed This Clearly Has Too Much Time On Their Hands

18

And since I filled in the quiz, I clearly have too much time on my hands as well.

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Thursday, December 13, 2007

The EU Treaty - Deception, Whatever You Think of the EU

Today the leaders of the EU will assemble in Lisbon to sign the EU Treaty. Well, most of the leaders will assemble in Lisbon to sign the EU Reform Treaty. Gordon Brown won’t be there, at least not for the ceremony. Perhaps he’s afraid, given the Treaty is being signed in a monastery, that if he goes there he will be struck down by a bolt from the heavens for over a decade of thieving and mendacity.

Now the EU Reform Treaty looks a lot like the EU Constitution. Those who like the EU are celebrating the fact; those who despise the EU inevitably aren’t. I’m not going to rehash those argument, but rather take a look at how this Treaty shows one of the more damning problems of the EU.

In his (slightly rambling) chapter on the EU in The Orange Book, Nick Clegg states that one of the problems of the EU is the fact that it exists in a state of permanent revolution. Clegg bemoans the difficult position of Europhiles like him to make the case for the EU, when no-one really knows what it stands for. The same case can be made for the Eurosceptics. Whilst there is not shortage of scorn and bile thrown at the EU, it is much more difficult to hit a moving target. But the state of constant flux within the EU is not so much the problem as the way in which the EU tries to overcome the various barriers and problems that are thrown at it.

The EU Constitution was the great hope for those who wanted further European integration. The stumbling block came when two countries rejected the Constitution. So, after a "period of reflection", the EU presents the EU Reform Treaty – a watered down version of the Constitution where the main differences are largely cosmetic (such as the use of the EU flag). However the fundamental difference is that this time it is a treaty – which means that almost all countries won’t have to go to their pesky electorates to get the Treaty ratified. The national governments can simply give it the nod.

So the EU – which is, in theory, a democratic institution that should be representing the will of the people – has noted the disapproval of (at least) two national electorates, but decided to plough on anyway with a largely identical proposal. However this time it is one that doesn’t need to be put to the people.

Ultimately, even if you are a Europhile and believe the Treaty is a useful and important document, you should concede that the way the EU Reform Treaty has been created does the EU no favours. It shows the EU to be undemocratic, arrogant and devious. The EU has got their Reform Treaty, but will have won few new friends with this, and potentially made a number of new enemies.

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With the markets dropping even though the central banks have been trying to prop up the world's leading economies, recession looks ever more likely.

Which leads me to misquote Ronald Reagan:

"A recession is when your neighbour loses his job. A depression is when you lose your job. A recovery is when Gordon Brown loses his job."

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Spam of the Day

My bulk folder is normally filled to the very brim with junk e-mails whenever I get around to checking it. Today was no exception. But one e-mail stood out to me - it was from a man/woman/spambot called Paesqua decided to send me a e-mail entitled "mature fucked on kitchen".

Whilst I swiftly consigned said spam e-mail to the trash folder of history, but I do wonder what the hell who ever devised that e-mail wanted to achieve. Were they advertising some sort of aged and culinary based pornography? Were they trying to download a virus or con me into releasing some sort of personal details?

Because frankly you'd have to be really fucking dumb to believe an e-mail from Paesqua about "mature fucking on kitchen" is anything other than spam. I can understand why people might fall for an ersatz e-mail from their bank, stating that they need to send in their personal details to check their money is ok.

But if you fall from Paesqua, frankly, you're a moron.

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Wednesday, December 12, 2007

A little bit of Julian Cope

"Try Try Try" - Julian Cope's song that directly addresses his (somewhat turbulent) relationship with his mum. In the sleeve notes to the album he notes that whilst she encouraged him to be an individual she never came to see him play.

Now I think Julian Cope is great, but having watched this video, it is tempting to ask the question "Is that because you sometimes dress like a twat, Julian?"

The West Pier

Ever since I was a kid, I've had an odd sort of a fascination with piers. It is a bit of a love-hate relationship - I don't feel comfortable, given my vertigo, standing on a plank of wood hundreds of metres above the sea and also don't really enjoy what passes for entertainment on some piers. But I also find them fascinating. With all the uninhabited land in this country, we still feel a need to build on one of the most inhospitable environments possible - the turbulent tide of the sea and the everchanging surface of the seabed. Also, I liked going to the seaside when I was kid, and piers remind me of that.
One of my favourite piers is in Brighton. No, not the Palace Pier (despite having an appearance in Doctor Who) but rather the now near destroyed West Pier. Take a look:


This picture represents the peak of the West Pier - when it was a major attraction of Brighton, rather than a unique yet unaccessible sight on the shores of Brighton that it is today. For those not in the know, things changed. By the time I first went to Brighton (just before the 1992 General Election, natch) on a family holiday, the pier was cut off from land:


And it captured my imagination - still, standing proud, but struggling to survive as people saw increasingly as abandoned and falling down. There was still hope for the pier, even then. It could have been rebuilt. But events intervened - both fire and the elements.

Each new calamity made it less and less likely that the public would ever set foot on the West Pier again. And now, with just a skeleton jutting out of the sea on the South Coast, it is now impossible that the Pier will ever rise again, regardless of the pie in the sky schemes dreamed up by some.


And you know what, let it fall into the sea. There are enough piers in this country to enjoy - one just a quick walk away from the West Pier. You can't save the West Pier now. It looks beautiful in the sunset, but it is the skeleton of a structure facing decay and total devastation. Let it fade into the sea, and disappear into the memories of those that saw it. It is a curiously modern desire to save human constructions that have had their day. With the West Pier, you have no real choice other than to let it disappear beneath the waves. Let it happen.

Just as it did to another Brighton pier, long ago...*

*Normal service of silly ranting about politics will be resumed as soon as possible.

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A Different Type of Scandal

In the UK we have Donorgate, in Australia they have something slightly different:

"A row over politicians' behaviour has been reignited in Australia after it was revealed that a senator was handcuffed to a pole in a Russian strip club while wearing nothing but his underpants. Nigel Scullion had spent the evening drinking with a group of Icelandic whalers and Canadian fishermen in St Petersburg."
Unlike in this country, the politician in question is available for comment:

"It was a terrific night. If you ever get an offer to go drinking with Icelandic whalers and Canadian crab fishermen, take them up on it. Two important lessons out of life from that: don't let anyone handcuff you to a post and make sure you always wear clean underwear."
Difficult to envisage a similar scandal involving David Miliband, although he would probably rise in my estimation if he was. Just as long as the footage didn’t end up on YouTube.

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Free Speech...

...in Iran, not in the UK.

Seriously, according to Guido you can openly criticise on the blog of Ahmadinejad's blog, but not on the blogs of our elected leaders.

Meh. The terrible thing is I'm actually not surprised that Ahmadinejad, elected dictator that he is, is more open to critisicism than our leaders.

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Monday, December 10, 2007

It must be a proud day...

...in the life of any Russian politician when you are nominated as Putin's puppet President. Yes, Dmitry Medvedev may well yet become the first President of a Republic who is much less important than the Prime Minister.

In the old days they'd call the leader of Russia General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In the future, the term will probably be Prime Minister.

UPDATE

Ah, yes, there we have it - official confirmation that Putin will stay in charge. President, Prime Minister, it is all the same really, isn't it?

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Cosseting Councillors

The BBC reports on an independent Councillors Commission report that will be presented to the government. There are some striking proposals in there. Strikingly bad, unfortunately.

"People voting in local elections could be offered entry to a free lottery under plans to increase turnout"
Right, so now we have to pay people through entrance in a lottery to actually exercise their right to vote. What a depressing state of affairs. How about educating the electorate about the fact that people fought (and, yes, died) for their right to stick an "x" in a box on a ballot paper. People shouldn’t vote because they are going to get rewarded for it. They should vote because they think it is the right thing to do, and they want their voices to be heard. And if they can’t be bothered on those grounds, then f*ck ‘em. They don’t get a vote.

"It also wants "parachute payments" for council leaders who lose their seats - plans apparently opposed by ministers."
And who is proposing these payments for council leaders? Ah, that would be the Councillors Commission. Part of their focus is on getting good pay deals for Councillors. That would make me question their independence, and therefore the relevance of their findings, somewhat.

"Currently, leaders of Britain's biggest town halls, who earn up to £60,000 a year as elected politicians, lose their salaries the day they are voted out of office."
Good. They’ve been voted out. Democracy in action. Let them get on with their lives. Fuck ‘em.

"But the Councillors Commission argues that there should be "parachute payments for elected mayors, leaders and executive portfolio-holders who lose office through the action of the electorate". It recommends the cash payouts should be equivalent to redundancy money and linked to the amount of time in office."
Bollocks. "The action of the electorate" is called democracy. It is what the report is trying to do - get more people to vote! If councillors are losing elections, then they aren’t representing the people well enough. They deserve to lose their payments, not get more money from the electorate who have just told them where to go. Losing an election isn’t equivalent to redundancy. It is the equivalent of being fired.

"It also suggests that some councillors could be able to claim unemployment benefit"
Well, that will *really* help reduce benefit fraud. Sends out *just* the right example if politicians are claiming benefit whilst working!

"But politicians would be prevented from serving more than five terms in office, meaning that hundreds of experienced councillors could be swept out."
Right, so part of the Councillors Commission’s role is to try to get councillors into place. But at the same time they are trying to boot experienced councillors out after five terms. For some reason I am suddenly thinking of the phrase "cutting off your nose to spite your face". And as I’ve said before, we have term limits in this country. They are called elections.

"Department for Communities and Local Government spokesman said: "This is a report from an independent commission and therefore does not represent government policy or government proposals. We will respond to the independent report when it is published.""
If the government has an iota of sense it will ignore this crappy report when it is published. However anything relying on Nu Labour having an iota of sense does not fill me with confidence.

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Libertarians and the Tories

Over at Jackart’s place there is an attack on Ian Joseph Parker’s announcement about the formation of a Libertarian Party. I’m different to Jackart in that I am not a tribal Tory, and would support any Libertarian party that properly espouses a liberal (note the little "l") view and agenda. Whilst I know that any Libertarian party would have a mountain to climb before even getting a modicum of electoral success, I don’t agree with Jackart’s comment of:

The truth is Libertarianism just doesn't wash with the electorate anywhere, let alone the UK.
If you want an example of Libertarianism starting to have an impact on the electorate then look no further than across the pond to our American cousins. There, the Libertarian candidate Ron Paul is starting to make an impact in the polls. The chances of Paul being the next US President? Very small. But his views are starting to have an impact, and if managed correctly, that impact will grow and grow. The Labour party is a great example of a party that, in the previous hundred years, has grown from basically nothing into one of the two ruling parties of this country. The fact that the political journey of creating and growing a party may be tough and frustrating doesn’t mean it will be impossible or that it isn’t worth doing.

But Jackart is right in one respect – it is pointless to look at Cameron and say "but he’s not a Libertarian." Absolutely right – he’s not. He’s a Tory. He’s a Conservative. Part of being a Conservative is to maintain the status quo – changing bits of the state rather than challenging the edifice of the state head on. Sure, the Tory party may want a smaller state, and may want to give a bit more tax back to the people of the UK than the Labour party. But they still believe that central government is the best medium for deciding who gets what, and don’t really want to lose any of the fundamental powers that the government currently has.

Which is why Libertarians will be consistently disappointed by the Tories. And in a way that disappointment is pointless – the Tories don’t represent the Libertarian viewpoint because, fundamentally, they are Tories. And whilst many Libertarians will end up voting Tory because they stand on the right side of some key issues, it represents very much voting for the lesser of two evils.

There is a broad, cosy consensus between the two main parties (and the Lib Dems, for what it is worth). Sure, they disagree on some points, but broadly speaking they agree that the state is the best way to manage the country and are very reluctant to see Central Government losing any real power – because, fundamentally, any loss of the state’s power is a loss of their power. So I believe that any party that challenges that status quo/consensus is worth watching with interest, and if it espouses the right kind of beliefs, is worth supporting.

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The Golden Compass

Saw The Golden Compass last night. Whilst it wasn’t as good as the book (although few films are) it was a pleasant surprise – a well paced, well produced adventure film. Even the kid in it managed not to be too wince-inducing. It even managed to have some of the nastiness of the book reproduced in the film (particularly when the bears fight at the end).

There’s been some criticism of the film for watering down the anti-Christian/anti-Catholic sentiments of the book. And, yeah, the enemy in the film, the Magisterium, is presented a lot less like the Church and more like a bog standard dictatorship. But this change isn’t to the detriment of the film – in fact, far from it. The film’s subtext is about free will, with the heroic characters within fighting the attempts of the Magisterium to tell people how to live not just in the world of The Golden Compass, but also in all other worlds as well.

And that message of fighting for the right to think for yourself, regardless of whether it is against religious or political authority, is pretty potent. And it is nice to see what is on paper a kid’s movie giving that message.

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Thursday, December 06, 2007

The Thought Police Are Coming

Samina Mali has been given a suspended sentence at the Old Bailey. In some respects, she was lucky. She could have gone to prison. And what was her crime? Talking arse, basically.

She said:

"The desire within me increases every day to go for martyrdom."
And:

"Watching videos by my Muslim brothers in Iraq, yep the beheading ones, watching video messages by Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahri and other videos which show massacres of the kaffirs."
She also wrote "Lengthy ramblings about firing rocket launchers and "taking part in the blessed forgotten sacred death of Jihad".

Talking about jihad, and rambling on about martyrdom is indicative either of naivete or an ultimately pointless commitment to an extreme form of religion. However talking and writing about these things is just that – talking and writing about them. It is not going out and committing those acts. She has been convicted based on poorly expressed motivations. Basically, she has been convicted for her thoughts. Cue a hundred references to Minority Report and Nineteen Eighty-Four. The scary thing is, though, if you are starting to prosecute people for their thoughts, then those comparisons are valid.

Mali should be able to say what she likes about jihad etc – that is a crucial part of free speech. And that right shouldn’t be taken away, because as soon as you do, it is only a matter of time before everyone else loses the right to call her a twat because of what she says.

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Memo to Jacqui Smith

Re: 42 day terror limit proposal

Drop dead, and fuck off whilst you are doing it.

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The more perceptive of my 5 or 6 regular readers will have noticed a change to the template of this blog. Haven't done it for any particular reason (in fact I quite liked the previous template) other than boredom.

At some point I will get round to updating the sidebar. For the moment, I can't really be arsed.

Rest assured, the changes won't alter the poor standards of commentary and writing that you can expect from this blog.

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But he stole my policies!

Ever since Blair first became Labour leader and a broad consensus developed between the main parties, we have continually heard the charge of "he stole my policies!" And the charge is, more often than not, correct - Labour are a bunch of thieving bastards, and not just when it comes to policy.

But when you think about it it says something quite telling about the mind sets of our politicians that they would complain when a government steals their policies. Sure, it means that they will lose a selling point that could help them win over the electorate. But on the plus side, they get their policies implemented by the government. You would have thought that was exactly what they would be looking for. Except it is not really about their ideologies. It is not about having their policies put into action, even if it is not by them. It is about them having the policies that are easy to sell, so they can win elections, and so they can get their grubby hands on power.

"Politicians: Power Hungry Bastards" is hardly an original observation, but it remains very true. But I long for the day when you hear Cameron or some other political leader bellyaching about their policies being stolen, and someone turns to him and says "so? Isn't having your policies implemented by the government precisely what you want?"

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Wednesday, December 05, 2007

According to the intellectual giant that is Neil Harding, everything is the fault of Margaret Thatcher – from fat kids to international terrorism. Despite falling from power 17 years ago, and despite the previous ten years of Nu Labour rule, it is all the fault of Thatcher.

Well, I think that we should be very grateful for Neil Harding for discovering this great historical fact. Although I’m not so sure that it is all the fault of Margaret Thatcher. I’m going to blame some of it on Ted Heath, maybe suggest Eden should be held partially culpable, and definitely give that bastard Churchill a roasting for his part in everything that is wrong with this country.

Actually, f*ck that. It is all the fault of Queen Victoria. Or maybe Henry VIII. The fucker.

But if there is one thing we can be completely sure of, nothing wrong with this country can be laid at the door of Tony Blair or Gordon Brown. After all, they’ve only been in charge of the nation for over a decade.

Neil Harding. What a fuckwit.

H/T DK.

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Tuesday, December 04, 2007

The Teddy Bear Row

Watch me fall on the wrong side of opinion, both popular and blogosphere, with this post. But fuck it, I think it needs to be said. And since I’m struggling to write coherently at the moment, here’s a series of questions:

Does it seem hopelessly backwards for a country to prevent people from naming a teddy bear after a long dead prophet?

Does sentences such as 40 lashes, a fine and imprisonment for the above "crime" seem not just a little excessive but actually totally ridiculous?

Does it seem extreme and worrying that people would call for harsher penalties for anyone convicted of that "crime"?

Does Sudan have an appalling record when it comes to Human Rights?

If you were going to teach in that country with an appalling Human Rights record, would you get to know the law?

If you were going there to learn about the culture, wouldn’t you actually learn something about how religion is viewed in that culture, and the importance of religion within that culture?

If you were teaching in that country, wouldn’t you make sure that both you and the children you are teaching stayed on the right side of the draconian laws?

If you were convicted of a crime in a foreign country, would the British government be within their rights to say "Tough shit, you’re guilty"?

Was Gillian Gibbons fucking lucky to have the support of the British government?

Was she fucking lucky to get a presidential pardon?

(The answer to all the questions above is, by the way, yes.)

Now, I’m not saying I can stomach radical Islam. But the fact is Sudan is an Islamic fundamentalist state. If you go there, you should accept that. And I can’t claim that I knew about Sudan’s farcically excessive laws on teddy bear naming (although the maniac reaction to the Danish cartoons last year may have set off some sort of warning bell), but you can bet your life that I would have found out about it before going to that country to teach. And when the kids mentioned naming that bear after the prophet, they would have been told to sit down and drink a tall glass of shut the fuck up.

You can bellyache all you like about Sudan, and how hysterical and barbaric their behaviour has been, and I’ll agree. But I also reckon Gibbons has to accept some of the blame for what happened to her, and realise that she got off lightly. If you go abroad, then know the laws of the land you are in, and regardless of whether you agree with them or not, obey them.

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Unoriginal, I know, but...

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51% of the voters have rejected Hugo Chavez's constitutional changes in Venezuela, therefore not allowing him to reduce the working day to six hours, grab private property, and run unlimited times for President. The latter is probably crucial for Venezuela, since it means that in five years time, Chavez has to stand down, and somehow he has to be replaced. Which can only be healthy for the country and their attempts to avoid dictatorship.

Unless Chavez happens to look to what is happening in the East

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Oh, Morrissey, so much to answer for?

No stranger to controversy, Morrissey has again left himself wide open to accusations of racism with some comments in the NME.

This is not the first time that Morrissey has been accused of racism. Back in the days of The Smiths, his song Panic was considered by some to racist as it was perceived to be an attack on black dance music and the solution offered by Morrissey ("Hang the DJ") becomes very controversialin that context (as if hanging people wasn't controversial enough anyway). This charge was relatively easy to dispel – as Johnny Marr pointed out, New Order made great dance music, and there were no black members of New Order.

But there were more incidents of apparent racism – not least in the lyrics to his songs. Bengali in Platforms is a good example (and probably ties in with his most recent comments), as is the song National Front Disco (with the "catchy" lyrics: "Oh, you're going to .../Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah/England for the English!/England for the English!") Then there is Morrissey performing draped in the Union Jack. Of course, you could argue that draping yourself in the Union Jack is not racist, and that just because Morrissey writes certain lyrics that suggest the characters in his song are racist doesn’t mean he is racist. But after a while, all the evidence mounts up, and you have to ask the question "is Morrissey racist?"

All of his comments and songs stop just short (and I mean just short) of him being openly racist. His most recent controversial comments, as relayed on the BBC News website (couldn’t find them on the NME website) are a good example of this:

"Although I don't have anything against people from other countries, the higher the influx into England the more the British identity disappears. So the price is enormous. If you travel to Germany, it's still absolutely Germany. If you travel to Sweden, it still has a Swedish identity. But travel to England and you have no idea where you are."
The loss of British identity is not a concern unique to Morrissey, and it is not directly attacking immigrants in his statement (although they are indirectly, in his eyes, responsible for the woes befalling Britain). However, his ideas are not that far away from the politics of the BNP and of the Far Right, and what I wish the NME reporter had asked him was what he proposes to do about the loss of British culture, Because that is where things get funky, that is where things get fucked up.

In a later interview Morrissey attempts to clarify his comments:

"It could be construed that the reason I wouldn't wish to live in England is the immigration explosion. And that's not true at all. There are other reasons why I would find England very difficult, such as the expense and the pressure."
The expense and pressure of living in the UK are certainly bad, although surely not that much dissimilar to LA, where Morrissey lived for a long time. But the controversial point of Morrissey’s statement was not so much where he lives (because, let’s face it, who really gives a fuck where he lives?) but rather his comments on the negative effect of immigration on British culture. Ultimately, Morrissey’s comments are not explicitly racist, but they reek of "don’t like the foreigners coming into my country". It all lies in how you interpret the comments, but ultimately I would see them as depressingly ignorant and xenophobic.

But then again, why should it really matter what Morrissey says? I don’t agree with his comments, but I am not going to rush home and throw my Smiths and Morrissey CDs in the bin. Because you know what? The reason why I like Morrissey and The Smiths is the songs, not the ideas, prejudices and ignorance of the person singing the songs. Let’s not get hung up on believing that everything Mozzer says drips with wisdom and sagacity – because, frankly, it doesn’t. And let’s not expect him to be a well balanced political thinker, because he is now a portly, middle aged, bitter outsider. Ultimately I’d be concerned if Gordon Brown was expressing this sort of opinion (which he kind of has) because Brown is in a position where his thoughts could become policy. He’s in a position of power. Morrissey is a position where he can do little more than get into a pissing match with the NME.

And you can make this wider. Let’s stop looking at singers and perfomers like they automatically have some sort of greater political insight because they have had a hit album. Bono isn’t a sound exponent of foreign policy because The Joshua Tree was a hit album. Actually he’s a cliched little shit with appalling taste in sunglasses. Likewise, Thom Yorke isn’t a spokesman for a generation – he’s a twisted little misanthrope who happens to jump on every "right on" bandwagon that he sees. Being a successful singer/in a successful band doesn’t make someone superhuman, with deep and meaningful insights into all aspects of life. In fact, all they become is successful singer/band performers with big gobs. More fool anyone who looks to Bono, Yorke, Morrissey or any other pop star for their knowledge of politics.

Yes, I understand that these people are role models to some, and as a result Morrissey's xenophobic comments could influence other people. But you know what? If you are really going to slavishly follow everything Morrissey – an ageing, stuck in a rut, beer bellied middle aged misfit – says, then you are either hopelessly naïve and need to grow up a bit, or you’ve lost your grip on reality, and need to get out more.

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Monday, December 03, 2007

Pay to Prevent Party Crime

Gordon Brown is considering party funding reform. According to the BBC (emphasis mine):

"He raised the prospect of more public funding and caps on campaign spending and donations, hinting at a review of the funding Labour gets from unions."
You what? More public funding?

Let's review - what caused Brown to call for funding reform? Oh yeah, the latest funding scandal that the Labour government has stumbled into. So what is Brown's logic? Stick his hand out and beg for cash. Good God, what an absolutely shameless bastard. What an absolute fucking scumbag.

See, this is not unlike a mobster being caught laundering money. This scandal is all about someone trying to hide the source of money. And what happens when a monster is caught laundering money? Oh, they go to prison. They don't go to the state and beg for cash. Such is the mindless arrogance of our unelected leader, he sees a crime committed by his party as a chance to go and fleece the electorate for more cash. Unless this is a new government scheme - "Preventing Electoral Crime Through Raping the Tax Payers' Wallet."

Brown claimed to be a conviction politician. That was promptly shown to be a big old bag of bollocks. However, with the police getting involved in this case, he will end up not so much a conviction politician but rather a convicted one.

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