Spreading Swine 'Flu

"So you're under the weather, then?"

"Yes, the doctor reckons it is that swine 'flu thing going around."

"Really? Oh, well, you'll have to come round then."

"Are you sure? It might be contagious."

"Oh, don't worry about that. Just come round for some dinner. Tonight would be good - I'll invite some others around as well."

"Are you sure? Should we bring anything? Wine or something?"

"No, no. Don't worry about that. Just bring your H1N1."

"Oh, ok. What are you cooking, by the way?"

"Probably some sort of pork and chicken stew..."

This country really does have some dickheads...

Hyperbole of the Day

From George Monbiot in an article where he ferociously attacks casual cocaine users then pleads for help for addicts:

Every year cocaine causes some 20,000 deaths in Colombia and displaces several hundred thousand people from their homes. Children are blown up by landmines; indigenous people are enslaved; villagers are tortured and killed; rainforests are razed. You'd cause less human suffering if instead of discreetly retiring to the toilet at a media drinks party, you went into the street and mugged someone. But the counter-cultural association appears to insulate people from ethical questions. If commissioning murder, torture, slavery, civil war, corruption and deforestation is not a crime, what is?

Let's take this wonderful paragraph bit by bit. Now, where does the figure of 20,000 people come from? And are those deaths directly linked to cocaine? How? Fine, if it can be proved that they are directly the results of cocaine I'll believe it. But the article - along with the claims of slavery, landmines, torture and killing - fails to offer any evidence to really back up the hysterical claims, leaving it not so much a fact as a factoid. Cocaine has negative implications both at home and abroad, but when dramatic numbers and other wild claims are thrown around it is always best to reference where they come from.

The second part of the paragraph is my favourite. I have this wonderful image of media types, of bankers, of sales people, all leaving parties halfway through, then going out and smashing the living fuck out of a poor passer-by for their wallet. Brilliant! Mind you, might disrupt the party/drinks event a bit. But more seriously, I'm not entirely sure that the mass muggings proposed by Monbiot actually would be better than having a toot in the toilet. 

Then we have the claim that it is the counter-cultural associations with cocaine that makes people ignore the ethical questions. My observations are that a lot of those people taking coke* aren't thinking about the ethical questions or the counter-cultural associations of the drug. Rather, they are thinking about getting loaded and having a good time. 

Then, finally, we have the idea that those buying coke commissioning heinous crimes. I'm pretty sure that those buying coke from dealers aren't throwing in an extra twenty in return for a bit of murder and civil war in another country. And whilst I understand that the purchase of coke has consequences on a global level, the argument that it is effectively the commissioning of torture and slavery is the sort of leap in logic that would have most sane people shaking their head and wondering what Monbiot is on. And whether they can have some of it as well.

No doubt Monbiot believes he is making a strong ethical case for people to stop using cocaine. Unfortunately, the likely result of his shrill tone and insane claims is that people will ignore him rather than coke. Something that will be compounded by his staggeringly stupid sign-off:

Until that happens, Costa's opinions on this issue are worth as much as mine or anyone else's: nothing at all.

Your opinion is worth nothing at all. You said it, George, not me...

*I don't use it myself. Can't stand the stuff. Makes me edgy and paranoid. And I'm already edgy and paranoid. I don't need to pay for white powder to help me with that. Besides, it tends to make people self-absorbed and arrogant. And people don't need too much help with that either...

Norwich North Labour - Brought To You By John Lewis

The Labour candidate in the Norwich North by-election - provoked, lest we forget, by the resignation of a Labour MP over expenses:

The Labour candidate for Norwich is Chris Ostrowski, who by coincidence works for the retailer that came to symbolise the Westminster allowances culture, John Lewis.

Nice. John Lewis employee. Way to rub the expenses scandal further into the faces of the voters of Norwich North. Still, I have faith in those voters. I'm sure that they won't use Ostrowski's employment situation against him. If anything signs the death knell for Ostrowski's bid for Parliament, it will be running as a Labour candidate at a time when Labour is dead in the water. 

150 years in prison probably means life...

Quote of the day on Madoff, who is now looking at a frankly daunting 150 year sentence:

"May your jail cell be your coffin," Michael Schwartz told Madoff.

Michael, he's 71. His sentence will run until he is 221. Unless Madoff is a lot more robust than every human being who has ever lived before, and his prison diet and exercise programme are pretty fucking extraordinary, chances are you're going to get your wish.  

Gordon's Vision for Britain

I can't help but think that Gordon Brown's plan to set out his vision for Britain is (far) too little (far) too late. After all, didn't he decide not to call an election just after he became PM because he wanted to spell out his vision for Britain? Plus - unless his plans are completely free of cost (like smiling at puppies or something) - he doesn't have the money to do anything. Now, with less than a year until he loses power at the next election and nothing but dust in the coffers, he has just as much chance of implementing any vision for Britain as Michael Jackson does of performing at the O2.

Still, this is apparently the laying out of a Labour manifesto for the next election - which will hopefully happen sooner rather than later. Because if Gordon really does care about the future of this country, then he will show it by giving us a chance to vote him out of power. 

Kelvedon Hatch

I've had, for as long as I can remember, a morbid fascination with nuclear war. It is something to do with the terrific yet terrifying beauty of the mushroom cloud combined with the finality of nuclear war really being "it". Chances are that global nuclear conflict would kill you outright. If it doesn't, then you'll probably wish it had done. Don't believe me? Check out The War Game. Or Threads. Or, if you want something lighter in a film genre that is darker than dark, try The Day After.

One of the things that fascinates me is desperate attempts to try to make sure that society survives a nuclear war - as detailed in The Secret State by Peter Hennessy. There are various government bases in the UK designed for the government to run and hide in should the balloon go up. Yep, in the event of civilisation evaporating underneath a mushroom cloud, the government will still be functioning. After all, at the end of the world, it is vital that we have continuity of government. 

Yesterday, via a leaflet in a B&B, I came across Kelvedon Hatch Secret Nuclear Bunker. Of course, I had to visit it. Although the "Secret" claim in the title is a little out of date. Secret venues don't tend to advertise in B&Bs. And the road signs around the Bunker looked a little like this: 

Not that secret, then, really. 

Anyway, the "Secret" Nuclear Bunker really is in the middle of nowhere. Which I suppose is the point. But the venue now is simply one of the most curious "tourist attractions" I have ever been to. 

I don't know what the owners wanted to achieve with the bunker, but walking around it was a surreal experience. The entire facility was filled with incredibly belligerent signs, warning that you had to take a tour "wand" (basically a dull as ditchwater commentary on what you were seeing), and that if you left through anything other than the main exit you would be charged £25. This was compounded by signs saying that if you hadn't reached a certain point in the commentary, then you were going too fast. And then, just to make it all a little bit more like The Village, there were constant warnings that "they" were watching you via CCTV.

The signs also warned of very lifelike dummies. This, presumably, was acid irony as the dummies in the building were rejects from Primark and, more often that not, lacked limbs. So you had white dummies with bad wigs sat at consoles or in bed, with no arms or legs. Sometimes, the lack of hands was rectified by rolled up newspapers. Which is about as convincing as it sounds. Perhaps the owners were making  a point about mutations through nuclear radiation. However, I suspect that they were simply too cheap to pay for real dummies. 

The tour ended in a laughable gift shop and canteen. Where you could get a cream tea with a free tea. After all the signs warning that they were watching you, and that bad behaviour was paid for through fines, everything - including the entrance fee - was paid for through honesty boxes. Presiding over the whole thing was a sweet man who also happened to be the oldest and frailest man ever. The whole thing was incredibly surreal, and I was left thinking that those running the Hatch had no idea what they had bought, no idea how to run it or market it, and no money to do anything with it anyway. 

Yet even the piss poor presentation of Kelvedon couldn't detract from its grim power. The place stank of stale air endlessly recycled through a hyperactive air conditioning unit. I can only guess at how bad it would have smelt with the maximum number of 600 people in there. Seriously, 600 people in a venue the size of a supermarket. Living, breathing and shitting (in chemical toilets) with little food and little water. Those ministers who previously ran departments with vast HQs would be reduced to working at a wooden desk with a phone. And the Prime Minister's room was smaller than my room at uni - and just as grotty. In the event of nuclear war the people hemmed in to this tiny little hell would be in a larger than normal coffin. They'd be trapped, living on top of each other, simply postponing their inevitable deaths. 

A nuclear war isn't winnable. Despite its numerous and glaring flaws, the Kelvedon hatch makes that very clear. 

We don't have a lot of time on this earth. We weren't meant to spend it this way. Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about mission statements.

 From the film Office Space

Minister Tells The Truth Shock!

Hillary Benn has clearly had some sort of truth drug in his early morning coffee. Because he has committed the dual cardinal Nu Labour sins of telling the truth and stating that the current levels of spending aren't sustainable:

Mr Benn told the BBC programme: "If I look at my department's budget, it is going to go down a bit and therefore we will have to prioritise."

Quite. I don't understand this made up bitching between parties about spending cuts. Everyone can see that the government has two options - reduce spending, or continue at the current levels of spending, bankrupt the country and then reduce suspending. The only person insane enough to pursue the second option is Gordon Brown; every other politician knows spending is going to have to be cut - it is just a question of what and when. 

The parties are ideologically identical to a large extent these days. Yet we're asked to tell them apart when at the ballot box. The issue of expenditure is one where the parties can put down the clear dividing lines in place. So this debate needs to change. Start from the assumption that spending needs to be reduced, and then tell us what you are going to cut and why. 

As a head's up, the party offering the largest spending cuts will probably be the one who gets my vote...

Brown on Jackson

Another celebrity death, another chance for Gordon Brown to show his razor sharp focus on the economy by issuing a statement about that death. Jumping on the bandwagon, some might say. But it has to be said that this is a particularly moving statement, ripe with emotional intelligence and deep sympathy:

"This is very sad news for the millions of Michael Jackson fans in Britain and around the world," a spokesman said.

How very true. To the point of almost stating the bleedin' obvious. Still, Jackson fans throughout the world must be taking great comfort from the fact that, in their hour of need, a broken, old and horrifically unpopular Prime Minister on his way out of power stands with them. Or at least acknowledges that the fans have recently had "very sad news."

On Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson has passed on. Cue a whole avalanche of bad jokes ("Exposure to sunshine, moonlight and good times ruled out: now coroners say cause of death was 'boogie'"), conspiracy theories and the sort of outpouring of grief that seems completely out of proportion to the tragedy. There may even be a new question entering general conversation - where were you when Michael Jackson died? I know where I was - watching a DVD of the risible Doctor Who story Delta and the Bannermen. 

I have to confess that I wasn't the biggest fan of Jackson's music. Sure, I can see why people love his music, but it just doesn't really work for me. So I'm not best placed to comment how much the world has lost this morning. Instead, I'll throw out some random observations (based largely on the BBC coverage yesterday evening):

• BBC journalism now seems to consist of going to the websites of other news organisations and reporting what they say in inverted commas to allow for deniability if the other sources get it wrong. Or, failing that, phoning Uri Geller. 
• If you are reporting on someone who is seriously ill and may or may not be dead, you should probably work out what tense you are going to speak about that person in. Early in the story, after Jackson was taken to hospital, the BBC news reporters were going "Well, he was... sorry, sorry! He is..." Now, that just seems a little insensitive. As a heads up, when someone is still alive it is probably best practice to refer to them in the present tense.
• The very first image you show in your Michael Jackson obituary probably shouldn't be the Thriller video, which features the now deceased Michael Jackson dancing as a zombie.
• Facebook status updates are just as good at breaking news as the BBC, if not marginally more effective.

It is also worth noting that other people died yesterday - including Farrah Fawcett and the music journalist Steven Wells, who both passed away after long, painful illnesses. Jackson died, and died comparatively young, but let's keep a sense of perspective about his death. The last thing we need is another rehash of the hysteria that surrounded the passing of Diana. Or Jade fucking Goody...

BBC News:

Conservative MPs are to pay back another £125,000 in expenses as a result of the party's scrutiny review of claims, David Cameron has said... It doubles to about £250,000 the amount being paid back by Tory MPs in total.

Difficult to know what to say other than "oh". As a taxpayer I'm pleased we're getting some of the money back (no doubt to be wasted by the government in some other way), although I do have to say that I'd be happier if it hadn't been robbed from us in the fucking first place.

The further repayments showed a "collective" understanding of the scale of problem, Mr Cameron added, and demonstrated the party's "real desire to take a lead over what is a very damaging issue".

Or, to put it another way, it reveals the singular desire of the Tory leadership to try to end a scandal that the Tories are just as guilty of as the other parties in Parliament. 

A quarter of a million pounds being repaid by Tory MPs - a fact that could be celebrated if they weren't the representative of the party that will form our next government.

Fixed Election Dates

Much has been made - including by your humble author - of Gordon Brown's failure to call a General Election just after he won the (uncontested) Labour leadership contest. Yet, for Brown haters everywhere, that probably would have been counter-productive. In that Brown probably would have won that General Election. So, rather than looking at the humiliating defeat of that bastard in about a year's time, we'd probably be looking at another three or so years of the grey ghoul in Number 10. Sure, with longer in power to let a new PM consolidate, the Labour party might be more eager to replace Brown had they won an election just after he became Prime Minister, but it would still mean another three years of Labour rule. 

Normally, the very fact that the PM can choose when to fight a General Election is of massive benefit to the incumbent Prime Minister. A savvy political operator (like Wilson in '66 or Thatcher in '83) can time the election to maximise their chances of winning a landslide. Likewise, bad times for elections can also be avoided - yeah, I know that the spin machine came up with a credible excuse for the delay, but Blair would have been mindlessly stupid to have a General Election in the middle of the foot and mouth crisis in 2001. 

Likewise, the alternative - for example, in the US, where Presidents know when they have to fight for re-election as the date is set by law - can create losers who, had they been able to choose the date for an election, probably would have won. The classic is the first President Bush. Had he had the capability, he would have been mad not to fight for re-election just after the end of hostilities in Iraq when his approval rating was through the roof. However, he was forced to fight in 1992, when the economy was down the toilet and any incumbent politician that year was going to be about as popular as the clap.

There are other advantages to having a fixed date for elections too. Party machines and electoral funding are far easier to organise, and there is no chance for the ruling party to call a surprise election in the hope of catching the opposition off guard and in a state of poor preparedness. The voters know when they will be able to go to the polls as well, and far less of the political debate is about the demands of the opposition for the ruling party to call an election. 

Yet I'm still not sure that there is a case for changing the way Britain's political system works and creating fixed dates for elections. It is only an advantage to the ruling party if they use it as an advantage - witness Brown dropping the ball when he first came to power just as Callaghan did before the Winter of Discontent. Besides, our electoral system is far from perfect for a variety of different reasons, and fixed term elections are not a cure-all for those problems. In fact, any such change could be seen as change for change's sake, which is about a meaningful as a Gordon Brown Promise. 

At the end of the day, there are far more pressing problems facing the UK today than the timings of elections. As with all constitutional reform, it tends to become the last refuge of the desperate politician trying to avoid the real issues that are drowning them.

Ridiculous claims in job adverts:

£18000 - £69000 per annum

Hmmm. I wonder how much of that is a spurious claim of OTE and therefore which end of the spectrum the candidate will end up on? And I wonder who can really say they are flexible to the tune of £51,000 when looking at the salary brackets they prefer? I mean what do they say at interview - "Yeah, I'd prefer the £69k, but if need be I don't mind dropping over fifty thousand pounds to just £18k. If the role's the right one, y'know."

John Bercow and the Adventure Of The Changing Wikipedia Page

Last night, when writing a post about the newly elected Speaker Bercow, I went to Wikipedia to get a link about the man's expenses. Previously, I remembered reading that he was one of the most expensive MPs. Last night, his entry had changed - now he was one of the cheapest MPs for 2008/9, with a grudging concession that he had been more expensive before. 

A comment from Obnoxio allowed me to track the changes and find out that the entry had indeed changed. The original read:

Bercow has consistently been one of the most expensive members of the House of Commons, in terms of claims on the additional costs allowance.

In the financial years 2007-8, 2006-7, 2004-5 and 2002-3 he had the distinction of occupying joint first position in a league table of most expensive members of the House of Commons, while in 2003-4 he was the joint third most expensive Member.

Last night, it had changed to:

In 2008/09 Bercow was one of the cheapest MPs in terms of total expenses, coming 631st out of 645.

In terms of the "additional costs allowance", he has been one of the most expensive over the past six years.

Now, both entries may be factually correct, but they paint a very different picture of Speaker Bercow. The first one makes it clear that Bercow has been one of the most expensive MPs, and therefore is at the heart of the endemic corruption that has caused such scandal in the Commons. However, the amended entry starts by claiming that Bercow is one of the cheapest MPs. From bad guy to good guy in one quick edit. Magic.

So what does this change prove? I've no evidence that Bercow was in anyway connected with it, and in fairness he's probably been very busy recently and therefore probably not that focussed on what was going on with his Wikipedia entry. All this edit conclusively proves is that Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, and it is very easy for the facts to be slanted away from the interpretation you prefer.

Given the above, why does this change matter? Because, it is indicative of a far wider problem - namely, the reinvention of John Bercow as the great reformer rather than being the Big Spender. The House of Commons were meant to elect someone to reform the Commons; instead they have elected someone who is up to his neck in the very scandal he is meant to be ending. There'll be a lot of spin around Bercow, as the House of Commons closes ranks around the person they've chosen to be their speaker, and the sneaky edit to Wikipedia is a good example of the rewriting of history for (the completely undeserving) John Bercow.

Some will argue that it is too early to write Bercow off, and they are probably right. After all, he was only elected last night. But everything about his election stinks, from the piss poor candidates who put themselves forward through to the growing amnesia of some about Bercow now he has emerged as Speaker. To round off this post on the new Speaker I'll use the words of Tory Bear:

Bercow wasn't the best candidate, he isn't clean and he sure as hell isn't honest. Let it not be forgotten that he has paid thousands of pounds back that he avoided paying in capital gains tax, an offence that has cost the careers of fellow MPs such as Kitty Usher. Not only that but Bercow topped the list of claimers of the Second Home Allowance and is paid around £35k to serve as an advisor to a Cayman Island healthcare company. Everything that the House needed has been spat back in the face of the voters.

Speaker Bercow

So, in order to reform the House of Commons in the wake of the expenses scandal, the Commons have elected one of the worst perpetrators* as the new Speaker. 

Well, I guess must know all of the fiddles and loopholes. And the ironies of a man who has campaigned so long as so hard to be Speaker being dragged to the chair (as per tradition) would be funny if it wasn't so fucking tragic. 

But seriously, this lacklustre choice reeks of party political point scoring and just how committed those in the Commons are to reform. They don't give a fuck. 

*Interestingly, unless I am very much mistaken, the Wikipedia page for Bercow appears to have changed since I last looked at it. It now highlights that he was one of the cheapest MPs in 2008/09, before grudgingly mentioning that he was one of the most expensive for the past six years. I have no ability or desire to prove those pages have changed recently, although someone with more technical ability might be able to do so...

The Speaker's Election

I wonder whether anyone will do any sort of a liveblog of the Speaker's election. One imagines that even the hardiest of would-be political commentators have better things to do with their time than relay perhaps one of the most dull elections known to man in microscopic detail.

Still, there are some who argue that this is one of the most important elections for Speaker in history. Which I would be more inclined to agree with if the contestants weren't a horse faced woman, an angry testicle, an obsequious little twat and a whole bunch of non-entities eyeing up retirement vying for the office. When it is difficult to get excited about the candidates in an election (or even work out who they are) it is sure as hell difficult to give a short sharp fuck about who wins. Besides, some of the key voters are those members of the Labour government who allowed Gordon Brown to seize the Labour leadership unopposed. Their judgment is not so much flawed as full on retarded. 

The new Speaker is not the fundamental change the House of Commons needs to recover from what has been one of the worst years in its history. It is a distraction - all smoke and mirrors designed to hide the fact that there has been very little change in the aftermath of the expenses meltdown. I've said it before and will probably have to say it again, but it is time for the people to decide what change they want in the Commons. And that can only be done through a General Election. 

Gordon Talks

Yesterday The Guardian carried an interview with Gordon Brown that was perhaps the most sycophantic bag of trash it has ever been my misfortune to violate my eyes with. Here's some examples for you, dear reader. Be warned, you're going to need a strong stomach:

Gordon Brown meets me in the garden of No 10, and looks like a man without a care in the world. His skin is peachy and fresh.

Peachy and fresh? That sound more like the description of a shower gel! And how does the writer know that his skin is peachy? Did she sniff it? Did she stroke it? 

And Gordon Brown not having a care in the world is a bad fucking thing. He should be worrying 24/7 about how he can rescue this country from the travesty he has made it into. Still, at least he has nice hair:

His stripy, liquorice allsort hair is shiny.

In other words, he has managed to wash his hair, and the colour of his hair is much like the hair of other aging men - it is black, going on grey. 

He was a talented sportsman before he lost the sight in his left eye in a rugby match, and still moves around with astonishing speed, despite an expanding paunch pushing at the buttons of his thick cotton shirt.

I don't really care that the Prime Minister was once a good sportsman. He was also once not Prime Minister, and I for one felt far happier when that was the case. But this talk of Brown moving at an astonishing speed - is he the fucking Flash or something? And what was the writer expecting? Him to be moving around like a broken man? The equivalent of the warped Davros in his wheelchair?

But the real content of the interview is, as LFAT points out, the wonderful self-delusion of our Prime Minister. I'd not going to point the various examples of the ludicrous crap that spews from his mouth - go to the article and find your own example, if you like. But the passage about about Gordon's views on living in Downing Street are just, plain insane:

And this is in spite of doubts, which he talks about, quietly. "To be honest, you could walk away from all of this tomorrow." (He often says "you" to distance himself from the intended "I".) "I'm not interested in what accompanies being in power. It wouldn't worry me if I never returned to any of those places - Downing Street, Chequers. That would not worry me at all. And it would probably be good for my children." 

The emphasis is mine. 

Basically, Brown doesn't care about the trappings of office. Leaving Downing Street would be better for his kids. And he could (although he puts it in the second person rather than the first) happily walk away from it all tomorrow. So you know what, Gordon? Do it. Resign. Walk away from it all. If you are too scared to resign, then call an election. We'll do it for you. Have faith in the electorate. We'll boot you from office, and make things easier for you and your family.

But this is the tragedy of Gordon Brown. Against common sense, the wishes of the people and all the available evidence, he believes he is the only person who can rescue the country from a crisis that he was instrumental in creating. He makes himself miserable by not facing up to the simple, and - for him - devastating truth. That he should just move on. For the good of everyone. 

Speaker of the House: Dorries V. Bercow

Reading the comments of Nadine Dorries' opposition to the likely election of John Bercow as Speaker of the House of Commons brought the comment of Henry Kissinger about it being a shame that both sides can't lose to mind once again. Let's look at Dorries' comments first.

The reasons - other than a dislike of Bercow for being a bit of a snob - reveal more about the prejudices and concerns of the woman some refer to as "Mad Nad" than they do about Bercow's suitability to be Speaker. Up first we have Nadine's problem with Bercow's wife:

The first being that the Speaker’s wife, should he have one, plays a very important role. We have all seen how often Speaker Martin’s wife has been named in the press over the years. John Bercow’s wife is reported to be a socialist. Does this matter? I think it does, a great deal. The position has been held by socialists twice already.

I'm not quite sure whether Nadine is referring to the role of Speaker of the House of Commons or the role of spouse of Speaker of the House of Commons. Although I struggle to know why it makes a blind bit of fucking difference what Bercow's wife thinks about anything. Bercow is his own man, and whilst his political views are all over the place (as we will come on to see), there is no evidence that he is unduly influenced by his wife. And it's also worth noting that the main reason why Mrs Martin ended up in the press so much was because of her aptitude at helping her husband to maximise his generous expenses allowance.

Anyway, isn't the Speaker meant to be neutral in debates ? Yeah, Speaker Martin didn't always manage that, but that bovine sack of shit should never had been in the position in the first place. If Dorries is worried about Bercow's wife whispering extracts from the Communist Manifesto during Prime Minister's Questions then she should note that the Speaker's wife won't be with him whilst he does his duties in the House. 

Besides, I thought that Bercow's wife was attached to Nu Labour - which makes her about as socialist a moderate Tory.

But that is just window dressing - I suspect that the real reason why Dorries has it in for Bercow is about the latter's view on abortion. See, the new progressive Bercow is pro-choice (or pro-abortion in the odious vernacular of Nadine) and makes no bones about being dismissive about some of the more loopy views of those who use spurious medical knowledge and arcane religious beliefs to limit a woman's right to choose whether they have a baby or not. Something that seems to have struck Nadine in particular is Bercow's description of her views as antediluvian. Nadine explains:

John Bercow described the 190 of us, who voted in favour of reducing the upper limit, as ‘antediluvian’, which means 'before The Flood' i.e. prehistoric.

Frankly, Bercow was quite polite in his description. But Nadine Dorries does have curiously dated views about abortion that often defy common sense, evidence and reason. She had banged on about the hand of hope photo - just go read this piece at the Devil's Kitchen and follow all the links to see just how zealous and deceitful Nadine can be to follow her frankly barmy views on abortion. 

As I said before, Bercow was polite in his description of Nadine's views. He was also accurate.

And let's wrap up our deconstruction of Dorries' problems with this little summary:

Can we trust a Speaker who has such strident zealot views on such an issue to be fair, if he regards those in favour of reducing the number of abortions as prehistoric?

Can we trust the commentary of a politician who unashamedly uses myths and nonsense to back her own spurious, illiberal and zealous views on abortion? And let's be clear on this, Dorries' policy for reducing the number of abortions is by limiting a woman's individual right to choose. 

The disdain and anger of Dorries at Bercow almost makes me want to support him for the bid to be Speaker. That is, until I did a bit of research on Bercow. 

Ignoring the fact that Bercow does come across as a bit of an arrogant wanker (he's a politician, for Christ's sake, of course he's going to be arrogant) there is his radical change in his political views whilst in the Commons from mimicking the views of one Enoch Powell to being the lapdog of Gordon Brown. Now, there is nothing wrong with changing your political views - Churchill famously couldn't decide what side of the House of Commons he wanted to be on. But there is nothing ideological about Bercow's changes. He simply follows power and influence. He is a toady, a lackey and a arse-licker. And whilst there can be no doubt that those who relentlessly pursue power to the extent of everything else - including even basic ideological integrity - do get on in Politics, they don't tend to be the best people to have in positions of power and influence. Think about another example - Tony Blair. 

And then there is the motivation - the reason why Labour MPs have got behind Bercow. Partly it is because he has done everything to suck up to them, but mainly because they know that electing Bercow as Speaker would really piss off David Cameron. So there we have it. We need to have a great, reforming Speaker of the House of Commons, but the Labour party are preparing to elect Bercow because he pisses off the Leader of the Opposition. John Bercow - neither historic not reforming, but irritating to the Opposition. Jesus. 

But what is Bercow - if elected - going to have focus on above everything else? That would be the issue of MPs' expenses. And here Bercow has some experience. By God, does he have experience. Not of the good kind, of course:

Bercow has consistently been one of the most expensive members of the House of Commons, in terms of claims on the additional costs allowance.

In the financial years 2007-8, 2006-7, 2004-5 and 2002-3 he had the distinction of occupying joint first position in a league table of most expensive members of the House of Commons, while in 2003-4 he was the joint third most expensive Member.

And that for me is the best reason why Bercow shouldn't be speaker. He is not just part of problem, he pretty much personifies the problem. Bercow should be on his way out of the Commons, not about to ascend to the position of Speaker. The sole thing Bercow has going for him is he pisses off Nadine Dorries.

To say Bercow isn't suitable to be speaker is to state the bloody obvious - but then, looking at the candidates for the job of Speaker, it is difficult to know who should get the job. Those who want the job aren't capable of doing that job - but then again, who is in the discredited House of Commons is capable of being Speaker?

MPs' Expenses: Half a Million

MPs have paid back nearly £500,000 so far in the expenses. That is half a million pounds, people. You could say we are looking at a £500k fraud. I know I do. 

But let's just think about that £500k figure. The MPs concerned were forced to pay that back through the revelations in The Daily Telegraph. But had we just had the redacted (i.e. crudely edited) expenses that the members of the Commons gave us under fucking duress, I do wonder just how much of that half a million pounds would have been paid back. I suspect it would be just a fraction. 

Corruption in our ruling class is clearly endemic, and the fetid feculent stench of fraud now taints every MP, regardless of whether they actually had their hands in the till or not. We need to start over, we need to raze the House of Commons to the ground and start again. Those MPs who weren't on the take should have nothing to fear - those that were, well, tough. The only way in which we can get any sort of respect back for the Commons is through a General Election. 

But such a decision would require courage, and more than anything else this scandal was aided and abetted by the cowardly silence of every MP on this issue. They'll deny us our say on this issue for as long as they can, just as they tried to hide the truth of their actions from us. But the next time we do get our say - when you are in the ballot box at the next General Election - just remember all this before you cast your vote. 

Hazel Blears: "I'm a (Completely Undeserved) Survivor..."

The first of two posts about MPs' expenses today. Apologies if I'm boring anyone, but I'm not going to shut up about this. Mainly because that's kind of what the corrupt, corpulent fucks in the Commons want. 

Anyhoo, I read that the Labour Party's pet squirrel has survived a vote of no confidence within her local party. Which is fine, really. I guess now she goes forward to a vote of confidence from her whole constituency at the next election, when hopefully the people will vote to give her more time to spend with Alvin and the other chipmunks. 

But, this being Hazel Blears, contrition was never going to be on the agenda. And so this is how she responds to the news that she has been allowed to carry on by her local party:

"I also heard tonight from party members that events of a few weeks do not wipe out 30 years of a record in local and national politics, fighting and being a champion for some of the poorest people in our country."

Quite simply, I don't know where to start with this fuck awful, self-congratulatory bag of crap. So I'll start at the top. She says "a few weeks" - what she means is "a few weeks" of scandal. But what she fails to take into account is that actually, what caused the scandal is the years she spent beforehand on the fucking take. She wouldn't have had a bad few weeks had she not been rinsing the taxpayer for thousands for a far longer period of time. 

Also, out here in the real world, what you tend to find is that being exposed as a fraud does undo 30 years of a good reputation. You lose your job, you are put on trial, you are convicted, and maybe you even go to prison. Blears is detached from reality - as you might expect from someone who has spent 30 years in politics - but her survival of this no-confidence measure (and her refusal to stand down, unlike other MPs in her position) once again shows how there is one set of rules for MPs, and another set for everyone else. 

And what record does Blears have, anyway? She has been a relentless cheerleader for whoever is in Number 10, in the hope of progressing her career. But as soon as disloyalty might progress her career more, she turns round and knifes the Prime Minister she supported and helped to elect in the most public and embarrassing way possible, before elections that her party is destined to struggle in anyway. She undermined her leader, and her party, and helped them achieve a spectacular electoral kicking. Pretty awesome record there, then. Actually, perhaps the reason why she survived the no confidence motion was because her local party decided not to consider her record at all. 

Finally, fighter and champion for the poor. How, precisely? By working with Tony Blair, a man who gutted and ripped away any commitment to the poor Labour ever had? Or by working with Gordon Brown, with his policies like the abolition of the 10p tax allowance? And how does being on the take with the MPs' expenses help the fucking poor, anyway? Other than rubbing their noses in the fact that their elected representative truly lives a different sort of a life to the people she is supposed to speak up for.

The Labour movement has always been filled with hypocrites - with champagne socialists and other freeloaders - but Blears is amongst the worst. Those who voted for her yesterday made a massive mistake. They showed that it is not just the likes of Blears that is out of touch with the British people, but the Labour Party as a whole. 

MPs' Expenses: Expletive Deleted

When the transcripts of the Watergate Tapes were being put together, it turned out - on top of everything else - that President Nixon had a bit of a potty mouth. And as a result, all of his naughty words were removed and replaced with the now infamous phrase of "expletive deleted."

I can't help but be reminded of that when I look at the published details of MPs' expenses:

Of course, there may well be a security reason as to why all the details couldn't be printed - if I was a fraudulent MP, then I'd be worried about the public getting their hands on any one of my addresses. But it becomes less fine when you think about what information hasn't - after a lengthy battle under the freedom of information act - been brought into the public domain. The BBC (who also provide the picture above) have some examples:

• Hazel Blears - The former Labour minister claimed second home expenses for three different properties in a single year but the redacted receipts do not show this as addresses are blacked out.
  
• Andrew MacKay - From the official receipts it would not have been possible to know the Tory MP claimed for a second home without having a main constituency home.
  
• Margaret Moran - The Labour MP who claimed £22,000 for dry rot on her second home. The receipts do not show her second home was in Southampton -100 miles from her Luton constituency.
• Sir Peter Viggers - Tory MP who tried to claim £1,645 for a "duck island", the official receipts show no evidence of the unsuccessful claim.

So, the information volunteered by MPs under extreme duress after The Daily Telegraph has already gone to town on those in the Commons is incomplete. But it isn't just incomplete - it is lacking in some of the crucial details that have helped to force the worst offenders both out of High Office and, in some cases, out of Parliament at the next election. I didn't think the publication of these expenses could do any more harm to Parliament: I was wrong. Even now, even after they have been exposed and judged as fraudulent fucks, they still try to hide. Openess and transparency mean nothing to the current crop of Parliamentarians. Our best bet is to replace them at the earliest opportunity. 

Because they really are a bunch of total *expletive deleted* *expletive deleted* who deserve nothing more than being *expletive deleted* right up their *expletive deleted**expletive deleted*. They truly, truly are worthless *expletive deleted*.

Labour: Fuck Democracy

DK highlights this horrific article on LabourList. He's going to do a full fisking, and I'll look forward to that. But I just wanted to highlight a particular part of the article because, to me, it sums up exactly why the Labour party that their slavish, statist followers are so downright dangerous to this country:

We must, of course, do everything we can to win the general election, but if we lose there is no limit to what the Tories could do. Parliamentary sovereignty means that the British people have no fundamental rights and there are no laws which parliament cannot change or abolish with a simple majority. Given this, the Tory response to this ‘unprecedented’ crisis could be truly terrifying and hugely damaging.

Of course, back here in the real world we all know that the British people do have one crucial right - to choose the party, and the policies, at General Elections that they want to run this country for up to five years. But no, no - LabourList would happily remove that right. 

They are so astoundingly arrogant that they believe that their policies - discredited and unpopular as they are - are so utterly correct that they have the right to ignore democratic process and instill what they believe to the perfect political truth as an absolute certainty in the British political system. Their arrogance is staggering - if you, the electorate, dares to criticise what they believe by suggesting that you will vote for the opposition at the next election, then guess what - they will do everything within their political power to cripple that incoming government as much as possible. 

Much has been written about how Gordon Brown's economic policies have the whiff of scorched earth about them - now it appears that the same is true of everything the Labour party now wants to do. The democratic process is only to be allowed to run its course if it is in the favour of the Labour party. Otherwise, they will use the state - for as long as they are in power - to remove your right to choose an alternative way of running the country. 

Put simply: democracy doesn't matter anymore, because the Labour Party are going to do their level best to use the state to cripple any democratic choice within this country. It is outrageous, it is dictatorial, it is authoritarian. And it shows why the Labour movement - and the godawful, unelected zealot who runs that party despite having no mandate and no real backing from the people - must fall in an election as soon as possible.

Nick Clegg: As incisive as ever

With the UK government in freefall, MPs standing down over expenses all the time and with Iran drifting into violence over disputed elections, it is good that we can reply on the Lib Dem leader, Nick Clegg, to offer his sage analysis on the issues of the day:

Nick Clegg has called for the Trident nuclear deterrent to be scrapped, saying it is too expensive and no longer meets the UK's defence needs.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of Trident and alternative "deterrents" (one of my favourite euphemisms, that one) I can't help but think that there are better times for Clegg to put his oar into the debate. Sure, pretty much everything Nick Clegg says is irrelevant as he has as much chance of actually being at the heart of political power as I do (which is no chance whatsoever), but he could still offer up-to-date commentary on what is going on, rather than picking on random issues at random times. It makes Clegg look like a man who has just woken up after a very long sleep, and has decided to babble on about the first issue that springs into his tiny mind. Mind you, for all I know, that could be the truth.

It is bad enough when our elected leaders are out of touch with the people. When they appear to be out of touch with the issues they are meant to be dealing with if they are ever elected, well, then I guess we've got an even worse problem.

A Small Levy - Fuck Off.

Nu Labour, Nu Taxes. They edge closer to taxing the air we breathe:

Every Briton with a fixed-line phone will pay a "small levy" of 50p per month to pay for faster net access.

The national fund created by the levy will be used to ensure most Britons get access to future net technologies.

Just fuck off. The lot of you. Fuck off. If you don't know why this is wrong, you should just fuck off. If you do know why this is wrong and are doing it anyway, then you should fuck off. I pay enough to the government each fucking year without having to pay more to access the internet to learn that the government is going to charge me for having a phone line to access the internet!

In summary: fuck off.

NHS: Stop Worshipping, Start Talking

Barack Obama on the US Healthcare System:

"A big part of what led General Motors and Chrysler into trouble were the huge costs they racked up providing healthcare for their workers - costs that made them less profitable and less competitive with automakers around the world."

"If we do not fix our health care system, America may go the way of GM - paying more, getting less, and going broke"

Whilst I'm not sure about Obama's solutions to America's healthcare problems, it is refreshing to see someone speaking so openly about the problems facing a country's healthcare system.If nothing else, then Obama has started a debate about healthcare in his country. Put simply, we don't get the same level of honesty from the leading politicians in the UK.

The Tories seemed to have discovered that they can talk about spending cuts again, but they are doing so in such a tentative way that it is pretty much meaningless. And no-one of any power in any of the main parties seems to have that massive drain on public funds that is the NHS in their sights. 

There should be nothing wrong with talking about fundamental to reform to all aspects of the NHS, including funding. Billions are spent on an institution that, whilst being free at the point of service, delivers a horrifically poor - and sometimes lethal - service to the taxpayer it is such a drain on. Dirty hospitals, computer systems that don't work, life-saving drugs being denied to patients - these are the signs of a bureaucratic monster that is out of control and in desperate need of reform. Hell, I believe that we would almost be better razing the NHS to the ground (metaphorically, people - I'm not talking about burning hospitals here) and starting again with a system that wasn't designed by socialists over half a century ago.

Yet the Tories, Labour and the Lib Dems all treat the NHS with a reverence that one normally only sees with Catholics when they are talking about the Pope. The great triumph of socialism in this country - and all those who favour a state led system over anything else - is the seemingly permanent removal of the NHS from the realms of political and public debate. Anyone talking about reform to this supposed public service is shunned like a paedophile with leprosy; thus denying us discussions about one of the most expensive and important of government run institutions. 

You can throw money at the NHS to no avail. You can parachute managers and computer systems into it, and get nothing in return. This isn't criticising doctors and nurses who work within in the system (and are often amongst the most despairing of it), but increasingly, giving the NHS funding is throwing good money after bad. And billions of pounds worth of money as well. 

I look forward to a day when a party genuinely tries to be radical by proposing massive reform to every aspect of the NHS - including reducing the funding. Come on, you crazy kids in Parliament - you all want to be like Barack Obama in your rhetoric and your spurious talk of change. Don't keep us waiting - you can be like him right here, right now by acknowledging that there is something wrong with the NHS that only a radical change can solve. 

But as with anything that requires an iota of courage from our politicians, I wouldn't be holding by breath whilst I wait...

Red Dwarf: Back To Earth

I had a dream before the new series of Doctor Who was first broadcast in 2005. In my dream, I settled down to watch the new series filled with anticipation. And what I saw was dreadful. A boring parody of what had once made the series great. Unwatchable, incomprehensible and lazy. Fortunately, when the series did come back, it was awesome. Instead, it turns out that my dream was actually about the special three Red Dwarf episodes broadcast this Easter.

I finally watched them on DVD this week. And I’ll say this: if you are not a fan, then don’t watch them because you never will be. If you are a fan, then don’t watch this because it will make you wonder why. It is passable television in an era when Susan Boyles hairy forehead is considered entertainment, but it is crap when you compare it to the original series. Worse than thay, it is lazy. It assumes it will be great, it assumes people will watch and as a result it never really tries. Throughout the whole three episodes, I wanted to scream at the TV “If you can’t be bothered to try, then don’t fucking bother!”

The first episode was more padded than a DFS sofa with extra padding. I was genuinely surprised when the end credits started to roll – since nothing had happened. From there, the story picked up in pace. And our heroes found themselves in the real world. From there, things got duller as the characters visited a geek shop and had the sort of conversation that would have a first-year philosophy student weeping into their cheap ale. At one stage, our heroes are talking about Season 9. At that point, you have fictional characters entering a fictionalised version of our reality talking about a fictional session of a real show that these fictional characters are actually a part of. It hurts my head just thinking about it; for a truly good comedy show, you shouldn't need a degree in metaphysics. Some actually funny jokes wouldn’t go amiss, though.

From there, we drift well and truly into the arena of “Why should I give a fuck about all this?”, and the show doesn’t ever really answer that question. The nods to Bladerunner simply make you wonder why they would try to mimic that film when they don’t even seem to have the budget to mimic the series they are allegedly trying to continue on from. And then you get the payoff – that the whole story has effectively been a dream. It is like the writer wanted to really rub the viewer’s face in the fact that they have wasted the last 90 minutes of their life. Frankly, he needs a slap.

It isn’t a continuation of what was a great series, it isn’t even a homage to it. It is a slur to the original Red Dwarf, and proof positive that if you ever want the series to be popular and rewarding again, then you will need a new writer and a new cast. This series is screaming out for a reboot; nothing short of going right back down to basic and right back to the drawing board can save this series. In retrospect, Dave making Red Dwarf was always going to be problematic, but I never dreamt it would be this shite.

An Inquiry into Iraq. Sort Of.

No doubt this will have the opponents of the Iraq War shaking their heads in a mix of disgust and despair:

An independent inquiry into the Iraq war will be held in private, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has told MPs.

Some would say that an independent inquiry held in a democracy might benefit from being held in public, and open to the scrutiny of all. Such people are, of course, hopelessly old-fashioned. They probably believe that think that a Prime Minister should be elected and everything!

Still, since this independent inquiry is being held in the dark - sorry, sorry, in private - I reckon I can guess what that outcome will be. Gordon Brown was right. And if he wasn't right, then it wasn't his fault anyway. 

Democratic government in Britain today - an inquiry to be held in private ordered by an unelected Prime Minister into a war years after that war started ages ago that said Prime Minister voted for. I wonder how much the white paint for this whitewash will cost the taxpayer...

Saving The World, Paul McCartney Style

Paul McCartney has some sage words to help us with the problem of climate change:

Sir Paul told the Independent: "Many of us feel helpless in the face of environmental challenges, and it can be hard to know how to sort through the advice about what we can do to make a meaningful contribution to a cleaner, more sustainable, healthier world.

"Having one designated meat-free day a week is a meaningful change that everyone can make, that goes to the heart of several important political, environmental and ethical issues all at once."

Not sure what this goes to show, other than Sir Paul and I have very different definitions of the word "meaningful". 

However, for me, this doesn't get to the heart of the problem with climate change and "environmental challenges". The problem isn't the changes we are seeing within our world. The problem is people - in particular rock stars who left anything even approaching every day reality decades ago - giving me spurious advice on how to live my life based on bugger all evidence. That really does my head in. This idea that because someone is famous they suddenly become incredibly knowledgeable on anything they care to dabble in is simultaneously idiotic and dangerous. After all, if Sir Paul - or Bono, or Thom Yorke, or that dweeb from Coldplay - wandered into the operating theatre with some advice for the surgeon just before they start operating on your brain, you'd tell them to fuck right off. And this flows across all the different parts of life. I'd probably take advice from the person who wrote "Live and Let Die" on songwriting; for just about anything else I don't really need the glib pronouncements of the man who wrote "The Frog Chorus."

So, in order to deal with my "environmental challenges", I've decided to never again listen to anything Paul McCartney has to fucking say. That goes to the heart of several important political, environmental and ethical issues for me all at once...

The Downfall of Downfall

We've all been there: you first see something funny, or hear a great joke, and it is hilarious. Real laugh out loud funny. Then you see it again, or an adaptation of it, and it is less funny. Or someone tells you a variation of the joke, and it gets less funny each time. And it goes on like that; a slow process of attrition, until you just think that the joke is shit and you are fucking sick of hearing it. 

I feel that way about those Downfall videos now.  The first time I saw one - about Hillary Clinton's failing bid for the Democratic nomination - it was laugh out loud funny. Now there are so many of them - dealing with everything from the BNP winning EU seats through to Derek Draper being a bit of a cunt - that it becomes more comment worthy if a political failure doesn't have the clip from Downfall adapted to suit the particular circumstances.

So enough already, people. Give the Downfall spoofs a rest. And if you leave it for long enough, you never know - it might get funny again. 

Fuck Off Hazel Blears

Chicken Yoghurt has the video of Hazel Blears justifying herself, relentlessly, for over six minutes. I haven't felt so nauseous since I had the novovirus. 

This is what she claims:

• She regrets resigning
• She wasn't undermining Gordon Brown
• She regrets undermining the Labour party
• Gordon Brown really likes her still
• The people in Salford are disappointed in her, but not angry
• She is happy to be spending more time with her constituency, and doing local things that she wouldn't have given a crap about - sorry, wouldn't have had time to do - if she was still a minister of state

Perhaps she does believe it all. But that would make her insane. Not so much Nuts about Hazel; more Hazel is Nuts. Literally, madder than a bag of rabid badgers. That could be the case - she could be insane, but instead I think she is filled with regret. Not for what she did, though. She knew exactly what she was doing. And what we are seeing now is regret for herself. Or, despite her denials in the interview, good old-fashioned self-pity. She thought she was firing one of the first shots in a coup to remove Brown from power. Instead, the shot she fired turned out to be political suicide. Turns out it couldn't have happened to a more deserving person. 

Axing Gordon: Get It Done, Or Shut Up

Peter Mandelson warning Gordon Brown of further plots against him is rather like a cobra warning its prey about the danger of snake bites - you somehow suspect that young Peter may yet play a role in the demise of Gordon Brown.

Nonetheless, the warning about more potential coups against Gordon Brown is probably an accurate one. Whether or not they will succeed is open to debate. After all, the only people less capable that the Prime Minister in the current government are those who would bring him down. 

Still, the Tories and the media must be looking forward to a story of salacious gossip, endless paranoia and absolute paralysis in the government from the top down. And whilst laughing at the misfortune of Gordon Brown is always good fun, I can't help but think that this endless speculation about whether the Prime Minister is going to survive or not has gone on for long enough. It is bad enough that we have a dickhead for Prime Minister; we can really do without these plotters ensuring that our Prime Minister is an enraged dickhead fighting against enemies real and imagined. 

Brown's critics should, to use the comment of another beleaguered Prime Minister, put up or shut up. And no more loaded resignation statements, or angry backstabbing and endless whispering campaigns. If they are going to do it, then they should make sure that they have an iron clad plot that can't fail. Rather than a half-baked scheme relying on amateurs no-one gives a fuck about leaving the Cabinet. Otherwise, they should just grin and bear it: both the grinding incompetence of Gordon Brown, and the inevitable election meltdown that will lead to. 

Drag Me To Hell

Sam Raimi is now best known as the director of the Spiderman film series. But prior to that he was also a horror director, and The Evil Dead trilogy stands as an energetic, surreal and grisly entry in the horror cannon. With his latest film marks a return to his beginnings. And make no mistake about it, this is a return with relish.

Oh, spoilers ahead.

The film is about a bank loan operator called Christine. She makes the mistake of shaming an old gypsy woman with really manky nails and a gammy eye. The gypsy woman responds to the cuss by attacking her, sucking on her chin, and cursing her. After that, the gypsy woman dies. That doesn’t stop her from sharing a bed with Christine, vomiting bugs and embalming fluid on Christine’s face and (at one point) slamming her forearm down Christine’s throat, as well as popping up at random times with a demented scream. As you do.

But having this ghostly stalker is not all that Christine has to deal with. She is attacked repeatedly by a poltergeist with the shadow of a human goat. She also is forced into various social mistakes, like spewing blood from her nose onto her boss and belching out a fly when she first meets the in-laws. And if that wasn’t enough, an all-purpose mystic from an ethnic minority (this film isn’t afraid of a borderline racist cliché) informs her that this is all pre-cursor to being dragged to hell. I’ve had bad weeks; nothing compared to this though.

If the above synopsis doesn’t give it away, Drag Me To Hell is a horror movie. And it is an insane horror movie that goes for the jugular with the gloves off. Subtle it isn’t, but Raimi has clearly decided that they were going to go for as many shocks as possible. The film is like 90 minutes of someone shouting “boo!” at you at the top of their voice just when you least expect it. And whilst the story is hackneyed and the script probably written in crayon on chew-proof paper, Raimi has the balls to go through with images and ideas that a lesser/more discerning director would have dismissed as over-the-top. Eye balls going down throats, demon possessed lackeys doing jigs over flames and a bit of kitty-killing, Raimi has clearly decided to try to create the ultimate horror movie. Not the best one, not the scariest one, but he has decided to throw everything he can into this film, and push every idea to its logical conclusion.

The result is a great film to go see at the cinema, and a film it is definitely worth seeing. Once. You won’t be rushing to see this film again, but you won’t regret going to see it at least once.

Drag Me To Hell: about as subtle* as the title would suggest it will be. Which turns out to be no bad thing.

*If you do want a subtler story with similar themes (and more of a discussion around justice and the nature of curses) then read Thinner by Stephen King. Don’t watch the film version, though – for the love of God, do not make that mistake…

Third Party Failure

Much has been made about the slipping of Labour to third place in a national election. Yet the surprising success of UKIP ahead of Labour also shows the drastic failing of another party – the Liberal Democrats.

The Liberal Democrats should be doing well in the current climate, yet they are floundering badly. It isn’t just about the expenses debacle; their MPs have been troughing, but nowhere near as bad as the worst examples of the triumphant Tories. And they should be beating the Labour party, rather than leaving it to UKIP who were, until just before this election, a dead party walking. So why this failure?

I’m sure he is a nice guy, but their problem is Nick Clegg. He doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t do anything. His strategy – if he has one – seems to be to wait until success comes to him. But he seems to be incapable of doing anything to make it happen. He doesn’t exploit Labour weaknesses, or the paucity of Tory policy. He doesn’t create an identity for his party, or set his party up as the non-racist alternative for a protest vote for those who can't stomach the BNP. He comes across as mute, and without any sort of grasp of how politics works. He has been a disaster for the Liberal Democrats.

And such is the genius, for want of a better word, of Nick Clegg that no-one notices how bad he is. He is burying his party slowly but surely, but it is completely under the radar as no-one notices his poor performance as everyone is entranced by the long slow car crash of the Brown premiership.

This failure is fine with me; I don’t care if the Liberal Democrats disappear off the face of the earth. But Liberal Democrats everywhere need to seriously think about what the lack of leadership from Clegg is doing their future prospects. The repugnant greed of our MPs has created a feeling of anti-politics and a lust for small parties; unless the Liberal Democrats get their finger out and start vying to be the alternative to Labour and the Tories, they are going to be swept away. At the rate things are going, there is a real danger that the Liberal Democrats will be a rump of a party after the next election, wondering what went so wrong, and remembering with fondness the good old days under Charles Kennedy.

Labour will survive having an atrocious leader, and the Tories survived having more than one. A third party reliant on the febrile support of the protest vote can survive having a poor leader, but they won’t survive one who just can’t lead at all…

Pandemic Panic

Swine 'flu has made the jump into the big leagues; yep, it is a pandemic now. And I for one am shitting myself with raw fear when I read the figures:

Official reports say there have been nearly 30,000 cases globally and 141 deaths, with figures rising daily.

141 deaths! Fuck me. With a world population of literally billions, that is terrifying. A fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the total population have died of a mutated version of a virus that kills hundreds each year anyway. Wow. 

But whilst we're in the game of whipping up new hysteria, I'm afraid I've found a new pandemic. Air crashes. Seriously, the recent crash of Air France 447 probably killed all 228 people on board. That is nearly double the amount that have died of swine 'flu... Actually, thinking about it, there must be pandemics everywhere as people are dying all the time of similar causes. Almost as if people die from disease and accidents all the time...

If there is a genuine disease that threatens the population of this planet, then it won't be the disease that finishes us off. It will be the built immunity we have to the shrill, hysterical reporting we get of the latest adaptation of the fucking 'flu virus that will get us. Because if the real apocalyptic virus hit us, then the media would rapidly become the boy who cried wolf, and we wouldn't notice just how serious things were until it is too late. 

Ann Widdecombe for Speaker!

After Margaret Beckett, now we have Ann Widdecombe vying for the position of Speaker. What the hell is going on? What happened to the real politicians? Are they all on holiday? Or simply too busy counting their ill-gotten gains in their publicly funded offices?

No doubt Widdecombe is serious about her bid for Speaker - in the same way that I suspect she is tediously earnest about everything that she does. But just a couple of problems with her bid. First of all, she isn't really famous for anything of real value. She is known for dissing Michael Howard, and for being asked whether she has ever enjoyed any nookie by Louis Theroux. She has been made a media darling by those who seem to want to patronise her a bit. She seems to be a self-styled battle-axe with little to offer in terms of a legacy or achievements. Plus, she's standing down at the next election, so whatever reforms she plans to introduce will have to be implemented pretty much as immediately after any election. 

Still, let's not worry about those details. According to the candidate herself she is the favourite with the public. In an election where the public don't vote. Christ give me strength!

If this really is the best of the candidates for the job of Speaker, then we should just board up the House of Commons and give the fuck up. More than ever the role of Speaker is crucial to the running of democratic government in this country, and as such requires something a little better than joke candidates and/or those coasting towards retirement. 

The BNP: Both left AND right-wing.

As well as giving British fascists the chance to go and embarrass us on an international stage, the minor BNP victories in the EU election has led to some arguing that the BNP is actually left-wing, whilst it has led to others reasserting its place on the right of the political spectrum. Unsurprisingly, those who identify as left or right don’t want the BNP infesting their part of the political spectrum.

Of course, you can make great cases for the BNP being on either end of the political spectrum, and I’m not going to rehearse those arguments here. Suffice to say that the BNP is an extremist party, and as a result can sit at the extremes of either the left or the right.

Because aside from the rhetoric, there is bugger all difference between the extremes of the left and the right in practice. Hitler may have despised Stalin and vice versa, but the way they implemented their politics were identical. Hitler had no issue with bending industries to the needs of the state, just as Stalin had no issue with scape-goating and persecuting minorities based on race and/or religion. The BNP, which has the draconian and utterly ineffective economic policies of the socialist left combined with the traditionally* racist policies identified with the reactionary right, simply represents the extremes of any party or political position that believes the answer to the problems faced by a country is a strong state.

Which makes the BNP the best party to illustrate why a small state is best. The BNP are a statist party that want to use the state to suppress minorities and suppress the economy. They simultaneously show the dangers of the extremes of both the left and right wing – you give enough power to a statist party, and that party can break the economy whilst persecuting ethnic minorities on the wishes of a vocal group of ignorant, self-identified indigenous mis-fits.

Doesn’t matter if you are a Tory or Labour, right-wing or left-wing when it comes down to it, since the BNP can claim to sit on either side of that spectrum. Debates about where they sit on that spectrum are smokescreens for the fact that they sit at the extremes of both ends at the same time. On some levels, the BNP are on your side Tory Supporter, they are your neighbours Labour Supporter. If you are traditionally left-wing or right-wing, then the BNP simply represents some of the extremes of your political beliefs. If you want to take anything from this debate then it should be that the BNP simply show how meaningless it has become to talk about the traditional left-right divide when the real political debate should be about how much power you want the government to have.

*Although leftwing Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown adopted that racist, BNP sounding slogan of British Jobs for British Workers, showing that racism is not the preserve of the right.

Self-Serving Loyalty

Some people seem to be in a state of shock that Gordon Brown still has his job after an abortion of a Cabinet reshuffle and delivering a set of election results that has given the EU a couple of fascists from our fair shores and a third place in a national election to Labour – behind UKIP. It is a pretty piss-poor performance, even for Gordon Brown – a man who has become the very definition of failure.

Yet if you think about it, of course Brown is still in place. If he was going to be ousted, then that would require some real courage from his MPs. And those MPs are just as cowardly as the leader whose most courageous act is writing about courage.

It isn’t a case of doing the right thing for the country. It is about doing the right thing for themselves. And whilst some MPs might think they would be better under a new leader, the reality is that a new leader would have to hold a General Election. And if there is a General Election, then a lot of the Labour MPs will be seeking alternative employment. And whilst that might happen anyway in a year’s time, this is the crucial point – this way, by keeping Brown no matter how badly he has performed, they get an extra year at the trough.

So there we have it. I believe the Labour MPs are keeping Brown not because they like him, or think he is right for the country, or that he has a chance of turning it all around. They are simply putting off the inevitable for personal gain. This shouldn’t be a surprise for anyone; yet the inevitably of their self-serving behaviour doesn’t make it any less depressing.

Margaret Beckett for Speaker!

No, not really. She would be an awful choice, and not just because she has no discernible jawline/chin and instead just has folds of flesh completing her strange face. See, she probably isn't the person to clean up Parliament:

Mrs Beckett has faced some questions about her own expenses - she claimed second home allowances of £72,537 from 2004 to 2008, despite having no mortgage or rent to pay on her constituency home and living in a grace and favour flat for part of the time.

Most people with that sort of record would be fighting for their jobs and their reputation, rather than seeking a promotion to sort out the very loopholes they exploited...

Witness the new Mayor of Doncaster getting owned here.* Proof positive that it is worth doing some basic research before you go on the radio to defend a manifesto you never thought you would have to implement...

*Link via Facebook. 

I hate job hunting...

...for a number of reasons. E-mail alerts is just the latest one. 

By profession, I am a trainer. I design, write and deliver training courses. When I look for a job, it is as a trainer - or learning and development consultant, or whatever terminology you would like to use for someone who trains other people. So when I set up a alert e-mail on a job site, I do expect to get something that might relate to training. Yeah, I know I will have to put up with getting adverts about being a Personal Trainer; after all, it does have Trainer in the job title. But seriously, why would any system throw up a list as *diverse* as the one I received on Tuesday morning? Take a look. Bear in mind I am looking for Trainer roles:

- English Teacher

- Field Sales B2B - Telecoms

- Customer Service Manager

- Senior Acoustic Consultant

- MULTI UNIT MANAGER, NOTTINGHAM - GREAT OPPORTUNITY!!!

- Construction Recruitment Consultant (Trades and Labour) - Nottingham

- BUYER - NOTTINGHAMSHIRE

- Production - manager/team leader/line leader

Perhaps somewhere in the adverts training is mentioned - I certainly can't be fucked to find out. But these have bugger all to do with what I can do and what I want to do. The search criteria are fine, but for some reason these jobs by e-mail alerts send me nothing but time-wasting dross. 

Maybe the website had some sort of rule that if there aren't any jobs that met the criteria on any given day, then they send out the first few jobs they can find. But I can't help but come back to the thought that this is just a big fat waste of time. I mean, I could apply for the Senior Acoustic Consultant role, but something tells me I wouldn't get it. I'm guessing I don't have the right experience. On the grounds I haven't got the first fucking clue what such a consultant actually does.

These sort of e-mails are meant to make job-hunting easier. Unfortunately all they end up doing is creating a new e-mail to delete each day before I go back to trawling t'interweb for jobs...

Incidentally, if anyone does know of Trainer Jobs based in Nottingham, please do let me know. The address is thenamelesst [at] yahoo [dot] co [dot] uk. 

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith: And The Point Was?

We’ve lost a lot of ministers over the past week, which has been a lot like losing painful blisters – a big fucking relief. But few have been mourned less than one Jacqui Smith.

Looking back on Smith’s time as Home Secretary is a lot like visiting the place that elected her* - pointless and a bit depressing. She came into office with the unique selling point of being a woman. And whilst she didn’t go quite as mad as the three men who preceded her in that great office of state, she also failed to make any sort of a mark whatsoever in office. She simply continued with what her predecessors in the Home Office wanted to do, like an unthinking droid. She didn’t really succeed anymore than Blunkett, Clarke and Reid had, and also failed to articulate any of the policies she had inherited in any way.

The only real success Smith had was a brief flash of leadership when trying to force one of Brown’s more contentious bits of legislation through Parliament. For a moment, some people started to see her as a potential leader of her party – an idea that now seems laughable. But it didn’t last.

Because it wasn’t just incompetence and an inability to communicate that ended Smith’s time in high office. It was also her desire to milk the taxpayer for all she could. Her expenses were eye-watering, and the ludicrous claim that she was lodging with a relative like a first year student coming to London for the first time would have been funny had they not stank so badly of potential fraud. The constant dripping of further proof of her greed and her corruption meant her departure became a dead cert. She should have been forced from office long before she decided to step down. And the concept that she had gone to fight for a marginal seat is laughable. If the people of her constituency have an ounce of sense, then Smith has gone back to wait to be evicted from Parliament.

As a minister, Smith was an embarrassment through and through. The only small blessing is that she should be soon forgotten. Perhaps her true legacy will be as a risqué pub quiz question – “Which ex-MP’s husband accidentally expensed the movies he liked to beat himself off to?” “Ah, that would be Jacqui Smith. Wasn’t she a minister or something? No, wait, I must be thinking of someone else…”

*Redditch has some nice areas around it, and may have improved in the past few years, but when I lived there, the city centre was one of the most depressing places I have ever visited.

Quote of the Day

From The Daily Mash:

Meanwhile Gordon Brown... said it was always his plan to reduce the Labour vote to 15% and leave Britain with £1.4 trillion worth of debt and a couple of fascists in the European Parliament.

It really is funny because it is (sorry, appears to be) true...

BNP: Still Odious

So the BNP have had some success. The flight of some voters into the hands of racist ignorance is never a pleasant concept. But let’s not panic. Let’s keep this in perspective. The BNP – or National Front, as they once were – have been promising a major breakthrough since I was born, and I turned 30 this May. There is no immediate danger of this nation becoming a BNP run country.

And let’s not pretend that the BNP success is down to their ability. More than anything else, it is about the failure of the Labour government to govern and the Tory opposition to effectively oppose. The BNP had nothing to new to say other than further window-dressing of their racist and socialist views. In fact, they remain fundamentally incompetent. Let’s not forget their laughable inability to protect the list of knuckle-draggers who joined their party. The next time one of the major parties rediscovers the idea that there is a place for ideology in politics and/or manages to actually get a leader with conviction, the BNP support will start to wilt again.

But if we do really want to write the BNP off and consign them to the dustbin of history where they so richly deserve to reside, then we need to end the silence that surrounds the BNP. So many of the methods surrounding the control of the BNP are about not dignifying them with debate. Pretending they don’t exist. The problem is this allows an even vaguely media savvy character like the ridiculous Nick Griffin to make the party look passably respectable for some voters. If you want to neuter the BNP it is best to do so by taking them on in debate and showing just how ignorant and deeply unpleasant their views are. And also reminding BNP supporters that it isn’t just the current views that are so unpleasant. After all, they have only recently turned their back on ideas such as Holocaust Denial.

The main parties spend a lot of time picking holes in the ideologies of their main rivals – something that is quite difficult to do given the broad, post-Blair consensus on this country. Taking pot shots at the BNP should be far easier. And that’s what should be done. Complaining about the success of the BNP is not enough. If you want to stop them, you have to take them on and show just how odious what they represent is. Then you will see the return of the BNP to its rightful place – on the periphery of British Politics, mouthing the views of maladjusted, misfit racists.

Things That Irritate Me

Random Facebook requests - something called Mafia Wars seems to be the most recent one. Seriously, I'd imagine if you are actually in a mafia war it wouldn't be tremendous fun, so pretending to be in one must be both unpleasant and dull.

Honestly, people, even I have better things to do with my time...

On Caroline Flint

Some are praising Flint's resignation to the rafters, and whilst I'm pretty much pro anything that embarrasses Gordon Brown and makes his position less tenable, I'd add a couple of words of warning about getting too excited about Flint's departure.

First of all, it comes very soon after she backed Brown. Now, maybe she had a sudden change of heart but generally if you are going to resign from something, it is best just to fucking do it. It is Clare Short Syndrome - if you resign about the war after you have backed the war, then your point is somewhat lost. Likewise, if you back Brown then moments later resign because of him, you don't look that decisive and therefore undermines what you are trying to say. 

And let's take a look at her reasons for leaving government:

"You have a two-tier government. Your inner circle and then the remainder of cabinet."

Yep, Brown does. But so does every Prime Minister. Hence the ongoing, tedious talk of kitchen Cabinets, inner circles, and an increasingly Presidential influence on British Politics. It may not be ideal, but it is a fact of life that every Prime Minister since Harold Wilson (the first time round) has had an inner circle. And isn't it strange how those who are in the inner circle don't complain about it, whilst those on the outside stamp their feet because they aren't allowed to play with the cool kids?

Moving on:

"Several of the women attending cabinet - myself included - have been treated by you as little more than female window dressing"

Now, this charge - which does sound about right - could stick, and could really hurt Brown. But I do wonder what Flint was expecting from the Labour Party. After all, this isn't the first time that Labour women have been used as window dressing. You can go right back to 1997 and see the casual embracing by the Labour party of the concept of "Blair's Babes" to see that the Labour party has no compunction about manipulating gender issues to grab a cheap headline. Caroline Flint has only just twigged she was being used as window dressing by the boorish Gordon Brown. Most other people clocked that a long time ago.

Which is the key point. Those leaving the Cabinet seem to have suddenly woken up to the idea that Gordon Brown is an incapable, unlovable twat who deserves absolutely no support whatsoever. Which is great, but leaves them far, far behind the rest of the country. And whilst their comments about how dreadful Brown is may be wonderfully amusing for Brown haters everywhere, it does beg the question of why they agreed to serve with Brown - an unelected Prime Minister who grabbed power from a savvy political operator who won Labour three elections - in the first place.

So congratulations to Flint, Purnell and Blears. Well the fuck done. You've just worked out that Brown is an incompetent, socially awkward elitist moron who has just driven your party into the ground. The rest of us clocked that a long time ago. So I look forward to that trio - and any others who have just hit on the idea that Brown is a rancid cock of a man - working out some other basic facts that occurred to the rest of us a long time ago. Like the idea that the Labour party is dead in the water, and that Labour policies really aren't the way forward...

Government of all the Talents: Sir Alan Sugar.

No, really. You read that title correctly. 

I missed this one yesterday, but it is with a grim, hollow laugh of contempt that I note Sir Alan "Prickly Lefty Twat" Sugar has joined the government as enterprise Tsar (whatever the ruddy fuck that might be). 

I'm sure that Sugar is more than capable of taking a made-up government post. After all, he is responsible for the Amstrad e-m@iler, a big old hunk of crap that has rightly joined so many other needless innovations on the scrap heap of history. And of course, it is vital to have the star of a ripped-off, second hand US show in government. In no way is this a gimmick, of course. In no way whatsoever. That would be beneath a politician as morally upstanding and anti-spin as Gordon Brown. 

I do wonder whether Sugar would have been given this post had The Apprentice not been in mid series. But ultimately, this is just the start of the Labour party's shameless promotion of Sugar as some sort of political leader. Watch this space, people. I can see him running for London Mayor in three years. And if he wins, then with his commercial savvy and quiet competence we should see a new age for London. And for new age read the complete collapse of London as a boorish twerp who mistakes a stern look for gravitas and charisma drives the capital's economy into the ground just as surely as the boorish twerp in Number 10 has managed to do for the national economy.