Moon

A sci-fi film dealing with a remote base harvesting vital minerals on another world may not seem to be a particularly original idea. Particularly when you throw a super-computer with a calm voice and various spooky goings-on into the mix. And while you could be forgiven for thinking that you have seen the crucial plot elements of the film Moon before, it is still worth a watch if only because it takes those well-rehearsed plot elements and manages to do something interesting, if not quite original, with them.

Sure, Moon is derivative, but that has been a problem for science fiction for a long time. You can certainly argue that Moon owes a hefty debt, in terms of scenario, construction and mood to a film like Solaris. Yet Moon acknowledges these debts by undermining the expectations created by its inspirations. The uncertainty comes from multiple representations of the same person, and the computer is far from the insane, murderous type depicted in 2001: A Space Odyssey: instead, it shows itself to be absolutely in keeping with its programming, by saving the man/men it was meant to look after, rather than following the malign directives of the company that created it.

Moon also manages to drag a decent performance out of Sam Rockwell - an actor I have very little time for, and who managed to destroy the already flawed film adaptation of Choke. Sure, Rockwell can't help but look smug in some scenes (although God knows why, since he is hardly blessed in the looks department), but he does manage to create a couple of clones who are clearly aspects of the same personality, but who have distinct characters based on their differing knowledge of the situation their facing. As a result, his performance comes across as subtle and clever.

Which would be a good description of the film as a whole - subtle and clever. This isn't the sort of sci-fi where sweating marines run around with stupidly large guns blasting the hell out of some sort of alien menace. Rather, it is a creepy, unsettling vision of a far-from-perfect future. The film's success lies in its ability to take familiar sci-fi trappings, and turn it into an interesting and though-provoking story. A great example of a film taking a far from inspirational premise and turning it into something that definitely rewards viewing.

Archiving the Web

I have to say, I'm not entirely sure what to make of this story:

The UK's online heritage could be lost forever if the government does not grant a "right to archive", a group of leading libraries has said.

This is a problem, apparently:

The British Library said research showed that the average life expectancy of a website was just 44 to 75 days, and suggested that at least 10% of all UK websites were either lost or replaced by new material every six months.

That's probably true. After all, a lot of websites are set up, then are forgotten about or just plain abandoned. But it does rather beg the question of why you would want to archive a lot of the shit out there on the web. Does anyone really want to read the demented ramblings of Dirty European Socialist? Does history need a record of the jaw-dropping crassness of Councillor Terry Kelly? And is there any value that future ages could ever get from the insane worldview of Robin Page? The only real value of those writers would be to persuade people that dickheads are the one true constant of humankind.

But it isn't the desire to archive rubbish that concerns me. If someone wants to do it, then fine. But this idea doesn't sit easily with me at all:

But the British Library says it never clarified what steps had to be taken before electronic material was recorded.

"We're in the ridiculous position where we have to ask permission of each webmaster before we archive a site," the spokesman said.

So what is so wrong with asking permission before a site is archived? I'd have thought that is the decent thing to do. If something is not your property, then you need to ask before you do anything with it, let alone archive it for the ages. There is nothing ridiculous about asking permission. It doesn't matter whether the British Library is doing this for commercial gain or not. The desire to create a historical record does not absolve the Library of the need to treat the property of others with respect. Hell, they should ask before they archive anything, not just websites.

Who to Vote For?

So, the election is coming. And the question for anyone who doesn’t blindly follow a party without thinking is who to vote for.

Of course, ideally I’d be able to vote for the party I am a member of – the Libertarian Party. But that party is still very much a work in progress, and realistically a lack of candidates means I won’t be voting for them at this election. Which leaves me in the very unedifying and utterly depressing position of trying to figure out which of the useless main parties should get my vote.

Now, I don’t expect one party to absolutely represent my views. I don’t agree with everything that the Libertarian Party says or does. A certain level of pragmatism and compromise is required if anyone wants to be a supporter, let alone a member, of a political party. The same is true of voting. You can’t expect the party you vote for to represent you in every possible way.

Yet I feel so detached from all the parties vying for my vote that it seems next to impossible to choose who should get my vote. Each party appears to be craptacular in its own way. To break it down a bit:

The Labour Party: Well, voting Labour is moronic, as I've explained before.

The Tories: Despite being an ex-member of this party, I can’t see what the Tories actually stand for. Other than not being Labour. And when you throw in their tendency to drift towards social conservatism, it becomes very difficult to rationalize giving them my vote with being a Libertarian.

The Liberal Democrats: They have the most misleading name in history, since they are neither liberal nor democratic. And for every commitment they make to liberty (such as opposing ID cards), there is a corresponding drift towards pathetic left-wing, bash-the-bankers rhetoric. Besides, any party that contains social democratic choppers such as Vince Cable and Simon Hughes is not worth considering for more than about 13 seconds.

UKIP: Despite occasionally posturing as a libertarian party, UKIP come across (despite a handful of reasonable members) as a bunch of Tories rejected by their natural party for having a bee in their bonnet about Europe. Don’t get me wrong, I have no issue with their basic policy on Europe. But I struggle with ideas like banning the burka. It is the sort of mindless attempt at populism that completely undermines any rhetoric about being a party of freedom.

The Green Party: Yeah, because I can stomach the Green Party’s mix of socialism and reactionary politics without wanting to chunder. Oh, wait…

The English Democrats: As far as I can see, this lot are like UKIP, but 50% less professional and 75% more loopy. So that’s a no, then.

The BNP: Given I am not a nationalist, socialist or racist, this bag of simian misfits is the worst of all the options. Voting Labour is moronic; voting for the BNP is repugnant and moronic.

So where does that leave me? On the one hand, I could vote for the person I believe would be best able to represent the issues in my constituency. But I’m not planning to live here in the long-term, and I would hate to have a vote for a competent Tory candidate, for example, being construed as a vote for the utterly incompetent and lacklustre Tory leadership.

For the first time ever, I find myself in a position where I don’t know who to vote for. Maybe that will change in the run-up to the election, and one of the parties listed above will inspire with their campaign. But as things stand, that seems about as likely as Gordon Brown stepping down from his job tomorrow, and admitting that he just wasn’t up to it. And I keep on coming back to the option of spoiling my ballot paper. Hell, I’ve even worked out how I would do it – drawing a box at the bottom of the ballot paper and writing “none of the above” next to it – and giving that option the dubious benefit of a wasted vote.

The Forces of Hell!

So, it turns out that Gordon Brown was nasty to Alistair Darling. I particularly like the hyperbole of "unleashing the forces of hell" - it speaks volumes about the privileged position of Mr Darling that getting a weekend of negative press is on a par with hell. God knows how he will cope when he (hopefully) loses his job at the next election. That will probably be hell... x1000!

The notion that Brown bullied his Chancellor can surely not be news to anyone right now. But what really strikes me is how strongly Brown's cowardice comes through in this story. He unleashed the forces of hell on the Chancellor, strongly implying that a lot of his concerted campaign to undermine Darling was delegated to others. Then he didn't follow through with his bullying - Darling kept his job. It makes Brown's actions even more pathetic. He comes across as a frustrated man venting said frustrations on his colleague. Nothing quite so dramatic as the forces of hell, but rather just a boss from hell.

And there is a certain genius to Darling's comment - it ensures his job is secure for a while yet. Brown the coward will not dare to remove Darling, for fear that it confirms what we all already know - that Brown is a bully. Which is ironic since Darling should arguably be sacked now given the amount of embarrassment he has just caused Brown at a time when Brown is floundering anyway...

Quote of the Day

"Let's be consistent: we don't give a damn for tradition. And let's choose an extravagant personal adventure."

Jean-François Lyotard, 1924-1998.

Brown the Bully

Apparently the Cabinet Secretary didn't give Gordon Brown a verbal warning:

But a Downing Street spokesman said: "The cabinet secretary would like to make clear that he has never raised concerns with the prime minister about him acting in a bullying or intimidatory manner in relation to Number 10 staff, let alone giving him any sort of verbal warning."

But of course he didn't! After all, he was probably too scared of Brown bullying him...

Joking (?) aside, this story will probably run its course over the next couple of days without ever being resolved. Every lurid accusation that Brown is the boss from hell as well as the Prime Minister from hell will be met with a cagey denial. Unless any proof comes forward, then this story will just fade away, without any real conclusion about Brown's behaviour. But even though I doubt that the accounts of bullying will ever be properly verified, doesn't it speak volumes about our PM that these largely unsubstantiated claims could gain such traction? It really says something about (the public perception of) his character that so many could so rapidly buy into the idea of the PM as a bully. It is hard to imagine anything similar happening to any of Brown's immediate predecessors in Number 10 - I mean, can anyone really imagine the grinning homunculus Blair chucking a mobile, or Major grabbing an official by his lapels and screaming the "C" word at him, or Thatcher manhandling a secretary from her chair because she wasn't typing fast enough? No, no, of course not. It is just Brown. There is something special about Brown that makes these allegations believable when they probably wouldn't gain any traction with better other people.

After all, how many times have we all been told that bullies are, at heart, cowards? And history has no shortage of the examples of the cowardice of one Gordon Brown...

Labour: A Second Look

In all the excitement of the utterly predictable news that Gordon Brown is a bully, I forgot to comment on the "launch" of Labour's General Election messages. Actually, to say it is a launch of messages is probably overdoing it a bit. "Lacklustre mumbling about stuff" is probably more accurate.

But here it is, for anyone who is interested:

Gordon Brown has urged voters to take a "second look" at Labour as he unveiled his election campaign themes.

Unfortunately, when you have been in power for well over a decade, what you tend to find is that people have given you a second look. And a third one. And a fourth one. And so on. In fact, they are sick to bloody death of you. So if you election campaign is based on people taking a second look at you, then you're going to fall at the first hurdle. Because, quite simply, no-one is going to give a fuck about what you're saying.

Hell, this launch was so shit that it even makes the idiotic English Democrats' campaign launch look positively spectacular.

The New Doctor Who Trailer

For anyone interested, you can find the latest trailer for the upcoming series of Doctor Who here. And here. Oh, and it that isn't enough linkage for you, it is also here.

The trailer has met with mixed fan reaction, mainly because people seem to be seeing it as a little mini-adventure. Rather than what it is - an advert. Bless 'em. But as far as I am concerned, the advert does just what it should. It creates anticipation for the coming series (April 3rd, fact fans). The only slight downside is the music - which sounds like Coldplay remixed to be a bit funkier. But I think I can live with that. Given it is a trailer, and not the real thing...

Peter Mandelson, defending his "boss" against claims of bullying:

He said the book showed a "man who is quite emotional, who is quite passionate in what he believes and is doing ... who gets angry but chiefly with himself, who doesn't bully people".

Not to put a dampener on this desperate face saving exercise, but if the best person you can get to defend you against the charge of bullying is the political equivalent of Skeletor, then you may as well not bother trying to fight that charge at all.

Quote of the Day

"In response to the plummeting popularity of the Administration itself, revealed at Newbury and in the shire county elections, we have the Prime Minister's botched reshuffle. If we were to offer that tale of events to the BBC light entertainment department as a script for a programme, I think that the producers of "Yes, Minister" would have turned it down as hopelessly over the top. It might have even been too much for "Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'em". The tragedy for us all is that it is really happening—it is fact, not fiction. The man with the non-Midas touch is in charge."

Former Labour Leader John Smith, who could almost have been talking about the premiership of Gordon Brown.

Hysteria at the Conspiracy

There’s a wonderful piece up at Liberal Conspiracy about the supposed Tory education plans. The title – sadly – has been changed, but we can still marvel at the numerous spurious assertions, blind panic and utter nonsense within it. So much so that I think we need to break it down into smaller chunks of idiocy so we can savour this brain-dead Nu Labour prattle properly.

And so it begins:

An article in yesterday’s Independent highlighted the failings in the Conservative school policy. Personally I think it was a rubbish idea to start with. Allowing parents, charities and trusts to run schools?

Well, yes. Why not? At the moment we trust transient elected officials and unthinking bureaucrats to run our schools. Where’s the evidence that devolving power closer to the end user wouldn’t make things better?

It sounds to me just like an idea to privatise the school system, an idea which allows any idiot with a ton of money to influence and indoctrinate youngsters with their own opinions.

Yes and no. Mainly no. First of all, a lot of people with money are actually quite intelligent (hence them having money). But even if you did have an idiot running a school, I don’t think that school would last for long. Mainly because it would go out of business because parents wouldn’t want their kids being taught to be idiots. See, with increased localism, there could also be increased choice about where parents could send their kids to be schooled. As opposed to now, where it is often nothing to do with choice, but rather arbitrary boundaries based on location.

Obviously that is still the case today, but in small isolated specialist schools which provide top quality education for the highest fee payers. Imagine if that was the only choice for your kids (minus the massive bill of course)?

But it wouldn’t be the only choice. In fact, there would be more choice than ever, because parents would be far more empowered to decide where they want to send their kids. Rather than at the moment, when the decision – unless their child is bright enough to get a scholarship or rich enough to pay the fees – is entirely out of their hands.

The wonders of a central education system mean that every child has access to the same basic education and whilst it may vary regionally, what is taught is practically the same.

Sorry, but to quote Jeremy Bentham, this truly is "nonsense upon stilts". Even the internal logic of the sentence makes, well, no sense. See, everyone knows that the standard of education in this country varies massively from area to area, and with that variety in educational quality comes an inevitable difference in what is taught. A school trying to cope with serious disorder problems will end teaching things at a different pace and in a different way to a school where there is no disorder problems.

Furthermore, you have to factor in the human element to teaching. It is more than possible that a teacher – by dint of being crap or just willfully obtuse – might end up teaching completely the wrong thing. It happened to me – our Biology teacher (and bear in mind this was a top public school) taught us the wrong GCSE Biology syllabus. This was something which only became clear when we sat the exam. A centralised syallbus is not the same thing as a centralised education system – education is not uniform throughout the country in terms of content or delivery.

And anyway, how would people not trained in education be able to make the right choices about curriculum?

What, you mean people like Ed Balls?

And this is one of the big problems I have with this whole argument. It is predicated on the assumption that government knows best. The people can’t make the right choice about education, only the government can. The people can’t make the right choice about which schools their kids should attend. Only the government can. And only government sanctioned teachers can actually be effective educators.

Jeremy Bentham’s quote springs back into my mind. I can see no evidence that elected politicians are anymore capable than parents of making the right choices for their kids. And when we are talking about ministers of the calibre of Ed Balls, well, frankly I wouldn’t trust him to lace his own shoes without trying to stab someone in the back and further his career. I certainly wouldn’t trust him to make crucial choices about the education of other people’s kids

This whole process (if it went ahead, which I very much hope it doesn’t) would have to be closely followed by government inspectors and the cost involved in shutting down the public schools would be colossal.

Yes, if the government literally closed down the schools and left them derelict, then it would cost a lot. Of course, that would be a one-off cost, closely followed by savings of billions of pounds. And I reckon an astute government would allow for a transition of state schools into the private sector, thus minimising disruption and cost.

For a Tory government promising to cut spending and reducing the deficit, how does the party justify this?

*Yawns.*

See above.

By the time these “gradual” changes have been put into place, the Conservatives will probably be voted out of office anyway, if they get in in the first place. There is widespread opposition when one local school is closed, could you imagine the uproar when these plans become publically known?

Except the schools wouldn’t be closing – they would be moved out of government control and more choice would be given to parents, if this sort of reform was done right. So I reckon you would have parental joy, rather than wrath.

This is certainly a point to campaign about in the upcoming elections and certainly something I’ll be asking my local Tory candidate before I shut the door in his face next time.

You know, I’ve been disappointed by the lack of canvassing recently. I want politicians to come and knock on my door. And if a Tory does so, maybe I will quiz them about their education policies. Maybe I’ll just pretend to be French so they fuck off out of my face. I just don’t know. Guess I’ll make that choice when it happens. But I do know that if some dozy fucking Labour yoof knocked on the door and starting spouting this sort of utter shite at me, they would learn very quickly about my thoughts on the Iraq War and the decimation of the economy under Nu Labour. With added profanities. And only when I had finished my splendid rant would the door be slammed in their faces with an order that they “cock off out of my life forever.”

See, I dislike the Tories, I really do. But I hate the Labour Party a whole lot more.

The results of the system in Sweden haven’t been too rosy either. The head of Sweden’s school inspectors last week said that the system hadn’t significantly improved results in their country anyway, so why on earth do the Tories want to implement it here?

Dunno, maybe because it fits in with their tenuously expressed ideas about localism? Maybe because result not significantly improving is also not a sign that they have significantly declined? Possibly because they think the results will improve after the transition period? Lots of ideas. Maybe you should ask your Tory candidate next he/she/it knocks on your door.

As someone still in education this worries me and will worry parents of young children, teachers and union representatives.

Love it. A sixteen year old kid still in school knows how parents, teachers and union reps will respond. I wonder where he gets this knowledge from. Perhaps he’s been indoctrinated to be pro-state education by an education system run by… well, the state.

Typical Tories of course, deny the whole thing.

Yes, because Labour would never deny something inconvenient for themselves now, would they?

According to the spiel at the bottom of the article, the author is 16 years old and has a “big interest in politics”. Great. However, at the risk of being a patronising old curmudgeon, I’d argue that this kid still has a lot to learn about politics. The first lesson can be the need to think for himself, rather than regurgitating the hackneyed, moronic Labour toss about why radical education reform is automatically a bad idea.

Doctor Who v. Maggie

Newsnight recently had a little piece on Doctor Who in the 1980’s* – and its apparent anti-Thatcher bias. The particular story they reference in The Happiness Patrol - a curious and garish story that see the Doctor fighting a Bertie Bassett wannabe and overthrowing a regime where failing to be happy results in summary execution. As Doctor Who stories go, it is ferociously average, and to some extent a cross between Funhouse and a dayglo nightmare.

Is it anti-Thatcher? Well, Helen A could be construed as a poor representation of Thatcher – although the main link between the two appears to be their gender and their position as a leader. If The Happiness Patrol truly impacts on politics then it seems to be more of a comment on the sort of disappearances that occurred in South America in the 1980s. But at heart this story is a studio-based run-around with pink guns and malfunctioning go-karts. The biggest surprise about it is the fact that it has become a minor news story decades after its first broadcast.

And the notion that the makers of the programme might support Labour over the Tories is not surprising either – it remains true to this day. That isn’t necessarily because the show lends itself towards the left, but rather a reflection on the simplistic binary dualism that makes up modern politics in this country. For what it is worth, I think that the Doctor - if real - would be equally hostile to both the Tories and Labour. But speculating over what a fictional character might do is pretty pointless anyway.

Nothing much more to say on this one, other than to urge anyone wanting to check out the Sylvester McCoy era to choose a better adventure that this one. Ghost Light or The Curse of Fenric would be far better choices. And much easier to get hold of as well, because they are on DVD while The Happiness Patrol can only (for now) be found on second-hand VHS.

*From about 36.08. For as long as it stays on BBC i-player.

Oh, seriously, who fucking cares?

This is the very definition of a private matter. It should not be the top story on the BBC News website. The world is headed to hell in a handcart, and our state broadcaster seems to think that the most important thing happening on this planet right now is the desperate pleading of a randy golfer.

For fuck's sake...

James Purnell Stands Down! Joy!

If I wasn't so busy clapping and doing my happy dance, I'd be wondering why this has happened:

Former cabinet minister James Purnell has announced he will leave Parliament at the general election.

The excuse about Purnell not wanting to spend all of his life in frontline politics really doesn't wash with me, since everything the man has done thus far in his sorry excuse for a career positively exudes the feeling of "let me get to the top! Make me leader!"

Still, no matter. Because there can be few lamenting the loss of James Purnell, and his ridiculous hair, from Parliament. Not even members of his own party, given Purnell's actions this summer over Brown's leadership. And I know I will not be alone in celebrating the fact that we have lost/got rid of another preening Blairite lackwit come the next election.

Goodbye, Jimmy P. It seems ironic yet inevitable that deciding to stand down as MP will almost certainly come to be know as your best and most honourable decision during your time in Parliament. And if you really want to make your departure even better, you could try taking Andy Burnham with you as leave the Commons for the final time.

The world waits with bated breath:

Prime Minister Gordon Brown will unveil the slogan of Labour's general election campaign in a speech at the weekend.

Let's try to guess what that slogan will be. Some obvious choices:

"It's all the fault of the Tories (still)"

"Gordon Saved The World (With Your Money)"

"Vote Labour to save the foxes"

"Things can only get better (well, they can't get much worse)"

And we can also consider what the Tory slogans might be. I reckon that they will all be a variation of the subtle theme of:

"You Hate Labour More Than Us Now"

And the Lib Dems? Well, with Clegg in charge, there's only one option:

"..."

Nicholas Winterton - Wanker

Sir Nicholas Winterton, showing all the charm and sophistication that has made him one of our most hated MPs:

Sir Nicholas Winterton has angrily denounced plans to reduce first-class travel by MPs - telling the BBC he needs "quiet" and privacy to work.

Oh my, this is going to be a good one. Let's see dig down and examine exactly why Winterton doesn't want to travel the way the vast majority of people travel in this country:

The veteran Tory MP said there was a "totally different type of people" in standard-class train carriages.

Yes, there is a totally different type of person, Nicky boy. The people you represent - or, at least, supposed to represent. And God forbid that an MP might have to interact or spend time with ordinary people. That would be fucking terrible. But it isn't just a general snobbery that is stopping Winterton from sharing a train carriage with those that Alan B'stard might refer to as the ordinaries. No, he also needs to work:

"If I was in standard class I would not do work because people would be looking over your shoulder the entire time, there would be noise, there would be distraction."

Yes, yes there would be distraction. Which is why most people either learn to manage their workload so they don't have to work on the train. Or they learn to get over the distractions on the train.

But Nicholas still doesn't think that a train is necessarily a nice environment. And you know what? He'd be right:

"There's lots of children, there's noise, there's activity. I like to have peace and quiet when I'm travelling."

I like to have peace and quiet when I am traveling - unfortunately, I know that if I am on a train, that is not likely to happen. I also know that the option of first class is available to me. I choose not to take it because I am too cheap to upgrade. And this is the option open to Winterton - he could upgrade too. But the idea that the taxpayer should pay for him and his idiotic, odious ilk is repugnant. Why should Winterton - or any other fucking MP, for that matter - be able to enjoy luxury traveller at the expense of those very people he/they are supposed to be serving.

Frankly, Winterton can travel in any style he wishes - on a gold-plated unicorn for all I fucking care. But I'll be damned if I - or any other taxpayer in this country - is going to pay for him to do so.

Family Guy v. Palin

Even as someone who despises Sarah Palin, I have to say that this joke does seem particularly harsh:

The episode of the animation featured Chris - the Griffin family's son - bringing home a girlfriend with Down's syndrome.

When quizzed by his parents about her family, she said that her mother used to be Alaskan governor.

Don't get me wrong, I also find it funny - but that has more to do with my own dark sense of humour than any genuine humour in the joke. However, I can also see why the terribly named Bristol Palin might say this:

Bristol Palin went on to say in the posting: "If the writers of a particularly pathetic cartoon show thought they were being clever in mocking my brother and my family yesterday, they failed.

"All they proved is that they're heartless jerks."

So what to do? What should be done about this unusually crass joke from Family Guy?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Because this is a perfect example of freedom of speech working. A TV show makes a tasteless crack about a controversial politician; member of said politician's family turns around and tells TV show to go fuck itself. That is how it should work in a society populated by adults - people can say whatever then want, even if it is offensive, and anyone who disagrees with what has been said can protest in the strongest possible terms.

In a nutshell, that's what free speech is all about.

Harsh satire, but ultimately fair:

NOEL Edmonds' wife was being questioned by police last night over why she has failed to smother him in his sleep.

Liz Edmonds admitted during a radio interview that despite the viewing public's prolonged suffering, she has always resisted the temptation to crush 300 aspirin and mix them into his Cheerios.

I, of course, would have substituted Jamie Oliver for Noel Edmonds, but there we go...

The Pope On Paedophilia

You know, for most institutions this would be a given, but clearly for the Catholic Church it needs to be spelt out:

Pope Benedict XVI has... condemned abuse of children by priests as a "heinous crime", and said Irish bishops must act to restore the Church's "moral credibility".

Well done to the Panzer Pope! To most people, he has stated the bleedin' obvious. But such is the insanity of the organisation he heads up that this could almost be described as a great step forward. Whatever next? Could we see the Pope taken further leaps forward? Perhaps by saying that contraception is actually quite good at preventing AIDS and unwanted pregnancies. Is that too much to hope for?

Yes, yes it is. I'm probably being optimistic there. But jolly well done, Pope Benedict XVI, for clarifying that your priests shouldn't rape children...

Nick Griffin: Still Not PC

Nick Griffin, celebrating the forcible removal of a journalist from a meeting where his party (under considerable duress) decided to accept non-white members:

Mr Griffin said: "That's not the actions of a snivelling PC party, but of an organisation that has had enough of being lied about."

In fairness, Nicky G, I don't think that there is any danger that there is any danger that your party would be considered PC. Unless PC happened to stand for Pathetic Cocks...

Being Afraid of the Government

In modern society, the government is, more often than not, seen as a Good Thing. Sure, it could be run a bit better - a little more efficiently, - but a modern liberal democracy is perceived to be a million miles away from the nightmare dystopias of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot et al. So when a Libertarian mentions being afraid of the government, a lot of people simply roll their eyes and wonder what you have done with your tinfoil hat.

For what it is worth, I don’t think there is an imminent danger that the UK will slip into an aggressive, murderous dictatorship. Sure, there are some very concerning developments – like ID cards and the attempts to get 42 days detention onto the statute books – but I think that Gordon Brown is so cack-handed and incompetent that he would struggle to create a dictatorship even if he had absolute power.

But that is rather the point. It isn’t the intentions of government that I fear, but rather the incompetence of government. It is the stupid things they do while trying to do the right thing that really worries me. 42 days detention is a good example – the government desperately wants to stop terrorism. However, it doesn’t understand that 42 days detention doesn’t actually stop terrorism, and also has all sorts of potentially dangerous side effects. You can see the same thing happening with the economy. The Labour government swooped in to save the banking sector, like Superman with a fat wallet stuffed with someone else’s cash. As a result of their panicked, knee-jerk and ultimately pointless attempts to head off the recession, the country is nearly bankrupt and the coming recovery is being jeopardised. The government is currently paving our road to hell. With good intentions. Oh, and our money as well.

Then there is the commitment of the modern politician to trite political expediency. We can see this in Gordon Brown’s claim to be securing British jobs for British workers. Fuck knows whether he actually thought what he was saying was actually morally acceptable, but his determination to win the BNP vote led the British Prime Minister to plunge headfirst into the politics of ignorance. Political expediency – or political cowardice, as I’d rather call it – led to Brown jumping on the racist bandwagon. Sure, it is a minor point, relatively speaking, and Brown doesn’t speak for me on this issue or on any other. But it does beg the question of where this political cowardice could lead this ruling elite. I’ve heard some whispers that one of the reasons why we went to war in Iraq was because Blair was afraid of the Tories painting him as weak on security. I don’t know whether this is the truth, but I find the fact that I can consider it as a possible reason for that conflict speaks volumes. I think the desire to win votes now exceeds almost everything else for our politicians. I’m not afraid of them selling their own grandmother for a vote, I’m more afraid of them selling our grandmothers, grandfathers and then us out for an extra couple of votes.

And then we have the problem of the massive bureaucracy that goes hand in hand with “liberal” “democracy” in this country. Of course, with a government this size and with this scope, a large bureaucracy is an inevitability. But the problem with any bureaucracy is that it is fundamentally inhuman and amoral. It does not recognise the human. That is how innocent people can end up with their DNA on a criminal database in perpetuity, and how people can end up dying from cancer despite the drugs that could be used in their treatment being on the market. The bureaucracy, the rules and regulations, further remove people from each other, and do not take into account that basic human compassion that is seen so often when individuals interact with individuals. Most people, if they could help someone with cancer, would do so – however, when it comes to a vast, heavily regulated monolith like say, the NHS, the individuals who make the rules and therefore make the choice are so far detached from the dying person that it becomes a case of “bureaucracy says no”.

Ultimately, I believe humans are capable of great things. They are also capable of being small-minded, self-serving incompetents. I’m in far more danger of being killed by a bad driver than I am by a serial killer; just as I am far more likely to be adversely affected by an incompetent government than I am by a proactively malign one.

Which is why government needs to be – why it must be – limited as much as possible in its scope. It means well, but its actions end up being anything other than positive. And the unintended but still devastating impact of government can only really be minimised by returning as much power and as much responsibility as possible to the people.

Quote of the Day

“The original function of the Left was to be for the underdogs, and that was very good. But then this function became perverted.”

Sir Karl Popper, 1902-1994.

The Robin Hood Tax

There should be a website that details – and tears apart – the seemingly endless number of Facebook groups that are set up by people with a slender grip of reality. Another day brings another unthinking left-wing Facebook associate joining another idiotic group:

Robin Hood Tax is a tiny tax on bankers that would raise billions to tackle poverty and climate change, at home and abroad.

If governments took a tiny tax of 0.05% from international bankers’ transactions, it could generate hundreds of billions of pounds every year – that could stop cuts in crucial public services at home in UK, and help fight global poverty and climate change.

This is so irritating in so many ways that it really is a case of some many gripes, so little time. So I’ll focus instead on my biggest issue with this craptastic idea. It isn’t so much the damage this might do to an already struggling banking sector, nor the naïveté involved in the idea that the whole world could agree on one particular point of economic policy, when they cannot even agree on what the best basis of an economy should be. It isn’t even the ongoing stigmatisation of the banking world, despite the reality that others – such as governments and consumers – also played a crucial part in the down-turn we’re just coming out of.

No. What really fucks me off is this naïve assumption that government knows best. That if you give money to government you are automatically doing a good thing. That is, of course, total shite. Don’t believe me? Well, let’s take a look at what the British government spends its money on. War and (generally poor, not fit for purpose) weapons. More CCTV cameras, more invasions into the privacy of the people. And – best of all for these banking haters – buying large stakes in failing/failed banks. Yeah, let’s give the governments more money. Because they don’t waste it now, do they?

And this notion that the money will be used to stop crucial cuts in public spending at home in the UK – bollocks. If the government gets around to making cuts in public services, then than can do so by cutting out some of the waste within the public sector.

The Robin Hood Tax is perfect propaganda for the government. It subtly yet effectively reinforces the idea that the government is a benign entity that will do more and more good the more money we all give to it. Unfortunately, the government is not benign. It is both wasteful and, on occasion, extremely malignant. Licensing the government to take more money from the private sector is like giving a gambling addict 200 quid and pushing him into Ladbrokes. It is stupid, it is dumb and it is irresponsible.

The Robin Hood Tax – stealing from the rich to give to the incompetent. Unfortunately, the ineptitude of the government ensures any money they take from banks will not reach the poor.

Perfect Timing!

In terms of scheduling, you can’t fault the legal proceedings against those three MPs and one peer:

The four will make their first appearance at the City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court at 2pm on March 11, only three weeks before the official start of the general election campaign. This means that the issue could well dominate the start of the campaign, which is likely to infuriate both Labour and Tories, since it could push disillusioned voters into the arms of smaller parties — or none.

I wonder how long until someone argues that it is damaging to democracy that these court dates are so close to the General Election. If it happens, safe money says it will be one of the odious four who first asserts this idea.

But this is perfect timing, it really, really is. Just as the main parties start spouting their meaningless platitudes to get them through the election, the electorate will be reminded of just how atrociously some MPs have behaved. And hopefully that will factor into the way people vote. As I’ve said before, voters have to take into account how politicians will act once in office rather than just agreeing with any ideological stance they have or liking the way they look. The court appearances of these four should remind us that public servants are there to serve the public, not help themselves – and we can affect what type of person gets returned to Parliament through our votes.

Mind you, it is probably too much to hope that they are found guilty on the day before the election...

Interesting:

Hewlett Packard, the US computer group, has agreed to pay £200 million in interim damages to BSkyB, the satellite broadcaster, following a landmark lawsuit over a failed IT contract.

Last month, the High Court ruled that EDS, a subsidiary, had fraudulently misrepresented its ability to complete an upgrade of BSkyB’s customer services systems on time.

This could have positive implications for the government. After all, they have had more than their fair share of shitty performances from IT companies. Taking this case as a precedent, the government could win back a lot of money that has been fleeced from them through various IT contracts. But will they do it?

Probably not. Partly because to do so would require backbone, and the government has less spine than a jellyfish. But mainly because there doesn’t seem to be any incentive for the government to go after the money. BSkyB are incentivised by the need to make and maintain profits for shareholders. The government doesn’t need to make a profit, and if it needs more funding, it simply asks for more money from its shareholders – in other words, the taxpayer. Actually, scratch that – it demands more money from the taxpayer.

Which is the big difference between a business and the government – the former exists to make money, the latter to spend money. And it is why I would be (pleasantly) surprised if the government actually used this case as a launching pad to extract some of the money it has sunk into the various money pits IT contracts.

Prison and Facebook

Few would be able to argue that this isn’t a good thing:

Thirty Facebook pages have been taken down because prisoners were using them to taunt their victims, Justice Secretary Jack Straw has said.

It is good that these pages have been taken down, and would be even better if, y'know, it never happened again. Perhaps this could be a good example of government working in conjunction with business. Certainly, Jack Straw wants Facebook to do their fair share:

He said: "I'm sure Facebook is a massive organisation and there's lots of money floating around. If you have to spend a bit more on monitoring, then you have just got to do it."

Now, I’m sure that Facebook does have some spare money and could spend it on monitoring. It was my understanding that Facebook already had policies to prevent, or at least deal with, abuse on their website, but if this sort of abuse is occurring, than further work to stop it can only be a good thing.

Yet I can’t help but feel that the government could be doing more themselves. Possibly they could do more than Facebook. On the grounds we are dealing with those who are detained at her Majesty’s pleasure:

"We are getting much tougher about people smuggling telephones into prison and using them.

"I'm afraid we're dealing with crooks. Devious, manipulative people who actually have no respect for their own bodies so they push these mobile telephones into their body orifices."

I mean, seriously, what the fuck? Yes, these people might well be devious and manipulative. After all, they are in prison. And this really shouldn’t be a revelation to Jack Straw, for Christ’s sake. But think about it for just one moment. These people are in prison. Yes, they might shove a mobile phone where the sun don’t shine, but they are in a secure prison 24-7 surrounded by guards! Surely the logical thing to do would be to search these people effectively? To guard them, to stop them from doing shitty things whilst serving their time in prison, would seem to be one of the key reasons for imprisoning them.

Yes, maybe Facebook could police its site better. But surely to fuck it isn’t too much to ask the government to police its own prisons a little better first?

An Open Letter to Viagra Retailers

Dear Viagra Spammers Retailers,

Please note that I have no need of your product, and that is unlikely to change no matter how many e-mails you fill my spam folder with. Rest assured, though, that if I do find I need any Viagra I'll contact you.

Best,
The Nameless Libertarian

A new Facebook layout has prompted screams of impotent outrage: people are bemoaning the inconvenience of a mildly amended website, groups springing up to demand a change back to the last controversial layout that, for all the world, looks very similar to what we have now.

It is probably one of the reasons why the world is headed to hell in handcart – people don’t notice the reprehensible state we’re in because they are too busy banging on about how it now takes two clicks rather than just one to logout of Facebook.

So let’s get some frickin’ perspective here, people. The extremely limited changes to Facebook are the very definition of a minor irritant – if you’ve even noticed them thus far. If the changes bother you, then just remember in a week’s time you’ll have forgotten what Facebook used to look like, so you may as well get over the changes now. If you really can’t stand the new Facebook, then don’t fucking use it. It’s a free service that no-one is obliged to use – getting worked up about minor changes to the design is utterly futile.

Mmm... failure

From The Daily Mash:

THE Labour Party has combined the essence of disappointment, inertia and broken promises in a unique sauce that voters can add to their food.

This has the ring of truth about it. After all, if there is any area of expertise left for the Labour party, then it would be around issues of disappointment, inertia and broken promises.

There can be few better examples of just how much the Labour party under Gordon Brown has lost its way than this - David Cameron claiming the moral high-ground and painting himself as the man of action over MPs expenses. Cameron's MPs were just as tainted by the scandal as Brown's, yet Cameron is able to posture like this is a party political issue. Sure, only Labour MPs have been charged - but owing to the sheer number of them relative to the Tories, it was always more likely they would face charges. Plus, if memory serves (and here it does), there is also a Tory peer facing prosecution. Cameron should be avoiding this issue in the way one might avoid a pissed-off puff adder. Not using it as a club with which to beat the Labour party.

The fact that he is doing so - and doing so with impunity - speaks volumes about the wreck the Labour party has become. This is pure opportunism from Cameron - attempting to land a punch that he knows should be blocked with comparative ease. He must be amazed - and delighted - that the punch has hit home so hard.

The expenses scandal was meant to benefit no-one - the fact that it is benefitting Cameron is entirely the fault of the Labour party.

Alastair Campbell: He's feeling a bit bullied, y'know...

A "tearful" (surely proof of some sort of karma) Alastair Campbell defending the "honourable" (pah!) Tony Blair:

"I've been through a lot on this Andrew. And I've been through a lot of that inquiry... and... Tony Blair, I think, is a totally honourable man."

Hmm. Those who deceive millions of people and then have to go through an inquiry tend to feel like they have been through a lot. Difficult to feel a lot of sympathy for them, though. It's a bit like being expected to pity Richard Nixon for being put through the mill over Watergate - next to impossible to actually achieve.

Oh, and using the word "totally honourable" in connection with Tony Blair without a "not" is basically saying "I am talking total shite."

But the shamelessness of the inspiration for Malcolm Tucker is startling:

Mr Campbell said the media was obsessed with "settling your scores and setting your own agenda".

"You did it again this morning, which is probably why I'm a bit upset, this constant sort of vilification.

"You compared the novel to the dossier, and it's all fiction and all the rest of it. It's not. And I just think the way that this whole issue has developed now where I don't think people are interested in the truth anymore, Andrew."

That's right, we've got Alastair Campbell - who helped to hound a man to his grave - complaining of vilification from others. At the same time as complaining that other people aren't interesting in the truth while discussing his part in constructing a dossier that lead this nation to war on an utterly false premise. I suppose the scope of his ambition could be admired - although I really can't think of any men less likely to achieve the aura of "put-upon truth-seeker" than the ever atrocious moral desert that is Alastair Campbell.

The quote of the day...

…comes from Jim Devine, one of the MPs who has been charged over the expenses scandal, in an interview that frankly defies belief. Both Dale and the Angry Baby Man have the full video. There’s no shortage of staggeringly stupid “gems”, but this reasoning as to why he did something wrong is startling:

In my innocence, I was told that was acceptable.

Yes, because ignorance of the law is a perfectly acceptable defence, isn’t it? Oh, wait…

And he prattles on:

We’re not arguing we are above the law.

Yes you are. Particularly when you demand some sort of spurious trial in the House of Commons. It is a bit like a small businessman demanding trial by a bunch of blokes down his local if he’s accused of not paying enough tax. The law is quite clear – it doesn’t matter if you committed your crime out of ignorance, it is still a crime.

But what is most startling about this video is not the desperate, self-serving pleading of a man who has been caught out – let’s be honest, we’re all used to that by now – but rather how thick Devine seems to be. He genuinely seems to be a bit simple. Christ knows how he became a MP – possibly he wrote to Jimmy Saville or something. He seems to have the intellectual capacity of a pot plant and the charisma of a sloth on Valium. If this is the calibre of an MP these days, it is no wonder we end up with party leaders as vapid as Brown, Cameron and Clegg. They are positively convincing next to this moron.

(Failing To) Justify the Iraq War

Thomas Byrne writes an interesting blog, in an intelligent way that is somewhat of a rarity for the blogosphere. Of course, that doesn’t mean that he is right on everything. As this blog post on the Iraq War shows. Let’s take a look:

The idea that the UK went into Iraq to help its people is simply untrue – the war was justified in the UK on the grounds of WMD, i.e. on self-serving grounds. Even if the wars were for completely self-serving grounds, the long-term benefits to the Iraqi and Afghanistani people still remain as a valid argument. I don’t really see the hypocricy. Going to war on self-serving grounds and taking care to ensure the long-term stability of the country aren’t mutually exclusive. It doesn’t follow from the fact that the war was on self-serving grounds that the West have no care about the civilian death toll – thats clearly false.

Y’know, I’m not entirely sure why the UK and US went to war in Iraq. There have been so many different reasons and, well, lies, that I lose sight of what exactly happened. However the West may have cared about the civilian death toll, but their failure to do anything to minimise that death toll through decent planning is probably what has convinced some that they didn’t give a fuck about “collateral damage”.

Saddam’s previous atrocities and the likelihood that they would get repeated nullify any moral arguments against the war, in my opinion – they stop me from having any moral issues about regime change that I would have otherwise had.

Morality is not a question of absolutes, particularly when it comes war. The assertion that there were atrocities under Saddam has to be countered with the atrocities committed after the fall of Saddam, by both the West and others. Even when a war can be framed in broad ideas of good and evil – such as World War Two – there are still acts that are at best morally dubious committed by the “good guys.”

Iraq was clearly a threat to stability in the region – Saddam had already shown a willingness to invade a neighbouring state and a willingness to commit genocide. I don’t doubt that the risk of WMD was exaggurated, but it was nonetheless a risk – even if Saddam didn’t have nuclear capacity, he had a record of using chemical weapons on civilians.

Saddam’s regime was a threat to the stability in the region – as is the Iraq War. This is Morton’s Fork – instability in the region caused by Saddam, or instability caused by the West. There is little that has happened since the Iraq invasion to make the area any more stable. In fact, quite the opposite.

Furthermore, chemical weapons are often defined by experts in the field as weapons of mass destruction – something Saddam arguably made clear by his actions. However, the invasion was justified by talk of Saddam’s nuclear capability – which did not exist. So then we come to intention – given a chance, Saddam would have got his hands on nukes. But he didn’t actually have them, and if we are going to invade countries based on wanting to get nuclear capability, then we’d better gear up for attacks on North Korea and Iran as well. But more on that later.

Obviously civilian deaths because of the invasion are regrettable.

And easier to say that from the safety of the West when your family and friends aren’t the ones dying.

But you have to look at the longer-term picture. Noone can quantify how many civilians Saddam was responsible for killing: Kurds were placed into hidden mass-graves, and noone can really quantiy the death-count resulting from Saddam diverting water away from Shiite areas and razing Shiite farmland. I’m happy to take 2million as an estimate: How many more civilians would have died if Saddam stayed in power? How many would have died under the rule of his sons after Saddam?

How many have died as a result of the war? How many others have been affected or radicalised as the result of the war? We don’t know. But this is another example of Morton’s Fork, isn’t it? Death from peace under Saddam or death from war brought from the West.

How many would die early from being unable to eat properly or drink clean water as a result of Iraq being unable to develop under Saddam?

How many people died when the power went down in the relatively civilised parts of Iraq as a result of the Western invasion? How many people have died as a result of the bombings of crucial infrastructure in Iraq since the war and the horrific sectarian since 2003? Life wasn’t rosy under Saddam, for sure. But it has hardly been a barrel of laughs since he’s gone, either.

These questions are completely speculative, but I don’t think its unreasonable to say that it would be more than that died in the Iran-Iraq war alone.

Which, by definition, is pure speculation.

Iraq now has a real chance to develop into a decent country: it has a proper constitution, an elected government and has a decent crack at developing peace between Iraq’s different people’s.

This doesn’t follow. The fact that Saddam is gone doesn’t guarantee peace between the different people of Iraq. Indeed, many people believe the reason why Iraq was at relative peace for so long was because of Saddam’s draconian rule. Fuck me, I’m not going to defend the gassing of the Marsh Arabs, or the continual attacks on the Kurds – or any of the other crimes carried by Saddam. But one of the many problems with the invasion of Iraq is the failure of the Coalition of the Willing to come up with a plan to reconstruct Iraq after the War. And it failed to come up with a good plan to deal with the inevitable ethnic conflict we see in the country to this day.

Obviously Iraq still suffers from violence and sectarianism, but that was to be expected.

Yes it was, so why was there no plan put in place to deal with it?

We shouldn’t ignore the successes: violence is going down, Iraq has a proper constitution and is now making some attempt to balance the interests of the different sects in Iraq.

Evidence please. And violence probably would go down after the troop surge, wouldn’t it? The actual state of the ethnic conflict in Iraq, and the efficacy of the institutions created to deal with it, won’t become clear until the West has left Iraq. There is, at this moment in time, no reason for particular optimism about the state of play in Iraq.

Iraq has come a long way in the last two years – and it will continue to do so.

Yes, it has come a long way in the last two years – and in the eight years since the war. But then the anarchy caused by the invasion means that any sort of stability is a good thing, and relatively easy to achieve. If you put enough boots on the ground there.

In, in 10 years time Iraq will hopefully be reasonably stable; whereas if Saddam was still there who knows what state it would be in?

Again, speculation. Iraq might be great in 10 years time, it might be a complete disaster area. The only way we will be able to tell is in 10 years time. But let’s hold off celebrating the invasion of Iraq until we know that there is actually a stable system in place.

Those who howl about how America and Britain don’t tackle countries like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia are right; do have Human Rights problems. But they have nothing on Saddam – he tortured and erased entire villages (see Dujail massacre), diverted water away from Shiite territory to massage his ego and used chemical weapons on the Kurds.

And what about North Korea? Or Iran? Borderline totalitarian regimes with terrible track records of human rights violations that are given a wide berth by the West because, well, they’d be too much of a problem to take on. Both in the Axis of Evil as well… remember that phrase? It was given as another reason for attacking Iraq. But I digress. The point is that the invasion of Iraq on the grounds of human rights violations sadly doesn’t stand up to close analysis. This world is full of states that violate human rights. We can’t fight them all.

Cooperating with countries who have minor-ish Human Rights issues to remove a bloodthirsty genocidal dictator is an example of the ends justifying the means in my book, or would they rather we achieve nothing at all?

Talking about countries with “minor-ish Human Rights issues” is like talking about someone who has Prostate cancer having “minor-ish cancer issues”. It may be better than lung cancer, but that is purely relative, and of little comfort of you are one of the ones suffering from it. Other countries who might be suffering from “minor-ish” human rights issues are China and Russia – places where an conservative, anti-government blogger like Thomas might have a real problem.

And “would they rather we achieve nothing at all”? Let’s turn the question on its head – what have we achieved? It is not so much that the jury is out on Iraq, but rather that the jury has let to be convened to even begin its deliberations. Yes, few sane people would mourn the demise of Saddam and his terrible regime. But that doesn’t mean that, by default, what has been created in its place is any better than what went before. And even if in ten, or twenty, years’ time Iraq is a stable democracy, then I can guarantee that he poorly planned and poorly executed invasion of Iraq that was based on lies will remain a stain on the reputations of both the UK and US.

Don't Forget the Expenses Scandal When You Come to Vote

For anyone who has followed the scandal around MPs expenses, the news that millions of pounds have to be paid back and that criminal charges are coming to a select few will come as no surprise.

The time for rage and ranting is over – at least for me. My anger on this issue is spent. I’ve moved towards acceptance: acceptance that we have been rinsed by a bunch of troughing fucks who…

Wait, hold up, I’m drifting back to anger. Enough.

But this scandal shouldn’t end with the repayments and the charges. We have an election this year, and we should remember the frauds committed by our elected representatives when we go to the ballot box. A fundamental question that needs to be applied to each candidate is whether we feel they will act as a public servant, rather than just serving themselves from the public purse. As the actions of many of those in this parliament have shown, that is almost as important as agreeing with their ideologies.

Electoral Reform: Saving Politicians from Democracy?

With all the dignity of a condemned man calling for an end to the death penalty, Gordon Brown is calling for a referendum on electoral reform.

I remain unconvinced about the case for electoral reform. Our current system is far from perfect, but it does have the wonderful attribute of being simple enough even for the dumbest voter to understand. Contrary to the way it is being promoted, AV isn’t like voting in The X Factor.

Personally, if electoral reform has to happen, then I would prefer a system that produces coalition governments, if only because – as a Libertarian – I would like government to be hobbled as much as possible. But electoral reform is hardly the most pressing concern facing this country.

And when you have a Prime Minister facing electoral defeat, then do not doubt their intentions when they talk about electoral reform. This isn’t about what doing what is best for the electorate, it is about making things better for the politician. In this case, it is about trying to reduce the amount of time that the Labour party spend in opposition. One party, and one party alone, makes the case for electoral reform consistently, albeit for typically self-serving reasons – the Liberal Democrats. The Labour party don’t care about electoral reform; they care about the Labour party. They didn’t care one jot about electoral reform when the system gave them landslides on a minority of the vote. Now it is going to condemn them to opposition on a minority of the vote, their leader starts bleating about changing the system. The fact that this is so blatantly self-serving condemns electoral reform as a concept to a large extent – it has nothing to do with democracy, but rather saving failing politicians from democracy.

Year of Twats

Remember that (in)famous Cameron "Year of Change" poster?

Well, you can Tuckerise it.*

*Unsurprisingly, this does involve the odd profanity.

Atheism and Libertarianism

Given the amount of vitriol I send in the direction of religion – and, in particular, Christianity – I sometimes get comments on the blog about my attitude to religion. Most recently, I received an e-mail asking me what my problem with God is, and how I can rationalise that with being Libertarian. So I thought I would make my thoughts on religion perfectly clear for anyone who cannot pick up my position on religion by implication.

First up, it is worth noting that I don’t have a problem with God, much in the same way as I don’t have a problem with Noddy. As far as I am concerned, both are fictional characters. And I only have a limited amount of scorn and derision within me, so I have to focus on being angry with real people, rather than created characters.

No, I do have an issue with religion. To break it down, I think that most religions are so farcical in their claims that it is impossible not to mock. Why talk about “the Lord their God” when “the invisible sky fairy” comes across as so much more accurate a description? Why use the term “believers” when “God-botherers” provokes a far more satisfying reaction? Maybe it is a bit childish and a bit of pointless verbal flashing, but fuck it. I’ve never claimed to be mature. At least not consistently mature, anyway.

But I have slightly more credible reasons for my scorn towards religion. Like the damage religion does to society. It isn’t just the damage that, say, Islam is doing to Iraq or Iran. Look at what the born-again Christian George W Bush has done to the USA. When religion becomes militant, when it seeks to convert others or even whole societies, then it becomes deeply destructive. I have no issue with someone who wants to use religion as a design for life, or as a crutch to help them through a world that is often troubling and uncertain – just so long as they don’t try to convert me or use their ancient, contradictory texts as a blueprint to change society.

And then we have the privileged position religion seems to hold in society. I can call socialism a big pile of wank in front of a socialist and it is game on – the debate/argument begins. It is often fraught, and angry, but the debate happens. Criticise religion in front of many religious types, and you are met with a startled look of indignation and fear. The response isn’t to engage in an argument about the relative merits of atheism against religion. Rather, there is the startled demand to know how I can say such things, and whether or not I know that this is their religion. You can see this mentality emerging when you hear people talking about how “the UK is a Christian country”. It isn’t. It may once have been a Christian country, but it also used to be an absolute monarchy, and it isn’t anymore. We live in a multicultural country with a largely secular government. Religion needs to realise that it is just one view (actually, a number of different views) in a world filled with disparate and exponentially increasing number of beliefs. In the final analysis there is no difference between Islam and being a Jedi, or between being a socialist and a Christian. It may be humbling for someone who holds a religious views to realise this, but unfortunately for them, it also happens to be true.

So, how can I rationalise this disdain for religion with being a Libertarian – particularly when being a Libertarian inherently involves a commitment to freedom of speech. Well, the answer is implicit in the last paragraph, but I’ll spell it out just in case. I believe that everyone has a right to their beliefs, but that doesn’t mean I have to respect those views. Take racism. I find it abhorrent, but I believe that people have a right to hold those beliefs is they are that ignorant. And I see very little difference between my stance on racism and that on religion.

For the religious, remember this: I respect your right to hold religious views, but that doesn’t mean I respect the views you hold. Freedom of speech allows you to be religious, but also allows others to criticise your views. Accept it, get over it.

Remind me, just what is the point of our political class?

Regular readers will know that I am not a big fan of the political mainstream. In fact, one of the reasons why I think our country is heading to hell in a handcart is because our leaders fail to offer anything other than more of the same, with mild, peripheral, cosmetic changes. But I think it is important to understand why we are in this situation, and why it has come to pass that blandness is a bonus for political leaders.

As far as I can see the answer is twofold. First of all, our leaders have ceded so much power away to the EU that it is next to impossible for them to promise to do anything meaningful, since the EU actually has the lion’s share of power in relation to the running of this country. That isn’t necessarily to say that the EU shouldn’t have that power (although regular readers will again know my position on the EU), but rather an acknowledgement that any UK politician claiming to want to do anything radical is basically lying unless they are willing to address the imbalance of power between the UK and the EU first.

The second limitation on politicians seems to be the media response to anything that is not entirely mainstream. As soon as a party leader offers a radical proposal, they are in danger of being shot down by the media as some sort of dangerous extremist. The media seems to be inherently conservative, meaning it is far more rewarding for a politician to adhere to the status quo.

The upshot is that we have a political class that is nothing more than a useless self-perpetuating oligarchy. If you’ve ever stopped to wonder just what the point of our politicians is, then you’ve been close to the truth, since realistically they have ceased to have any point whatsoever. We no longer need intelligence or ideological commitment from our politicians. The sole criteria they need to have is a desire to beat the opposition – exactly the same mentality that you might expect from a seven year old determined to win in the sack race on a school sports day. We don’t so much have politics in this country anymore than a marginally more cerebral version of The X Factor with a vote every five years rather than every week that masquerades as politics.

It is the fault of the political class, of course. Because whilst the media and the EU might constrain them, both of those are things that can be dealt with by politicians. The EU is a human construct; it may be difficult and expensive to reform or even leave the EU, but it can still be done. It may be difficult to make a case for radical change to the media, but again it can be done. It is a question of ambition and scope of ideological views. The only ambition our political class is to get power for themselves, and keep it.

What is the point of our political class? An entertainment, a distraction. We can despair of Gordon, mock Nick and tut at David, and all the time not recognise that our political class is utterly pointless. Because the tedious ongoing drama that calls itself British politics is not politics in any meaningful sense of the word. And that won’t change unless we fundamentally change the people in the political class of this country.

Voting Labour Is Moronic

I can sort of see why people would want to vote Tory, Liberal Democrat, UKIP, Green – hell, even the BNP. Personally, I would struggle to vote for any of those knobheads – especially the last in the list. But I sort of get it. Yet I really cannot understand why anyone would want to vote Labour.

Sure, I understand that some people will vote for Labour because they have always voted Labour. As far as I am concerned, voting for a party based on the same sort of allegiance that you might show to a failing football team is pretty dumb. But my thirty years of existence on this planet has shown that people are really dumb consistently.

But is the notion of voting Labour because you always have done actually any more stupid than some of the other reasons we are given for putting your cross in the Labour box at the next election? Let’s take a look at some of the typical reasons for voting for our terrible, incumbent government:

Labour saved the economy

No, they decimated it and then spent billions of dollars trying to provoke a recovery that was going to happen anyway. It is a bit like wanting God to be Prime Minister because he saved the economy – it is total nonsense.

Labour will save the fox-hunting ban

This may be true, but I’ve yet to be convinced that repealing the fox-hunting ban is going to be the first priority of any incoming Tory administration. But let’s get some perspective here – on the one hand, you have a Tory party who may revoke a ban on hunting with dogs. On the other, you have a Labour party responsible for the deaths of hundreds of British troops and the deaths of thousands of others through their unflinching backing of one of the most egregious US Presidents in history.

I find fox-hunting repugnant, but on balance I find war-mongering far, far worse.

Only the Labour Party can stop the Tories

This may be true, but my gut response is to wonder just what Labour supporters think the Tories are going to do. Because here’s the truth of recent political history in this country. Just as the success of the Tories in the 1980’s and early 1990’s broke the ideological spirit of the Labour party, so the unfathomable success of the grinning homunculus broke the ideological spirit of the Tories. The Tories and the Labour aren’t the same, but they are far from radically different either. You can tell by the way in which they slavishly follow each other, and relentlessly vie for the supposed centre ground of British politics. The Tories were going to follow Labour’s spending plans; now the opposite seems to be happening.

Put simply, so what if the Tories are going to have to cut spending? The Labour party are going to have to do exactly the same thing.

The Labour Party are the only alternative for left-wing voters

Well, ignoring the fact that the traditional left-right divide is about as relevant for modern times as Amstrad home computers and Chesney Hawkes, I’d also question the extent to which the Labour Party is actually left-wing, even in the traditional sense. The first point would be the Iraq War, but I’ve already touched on that. So let’s look at some of the other ways in which the Labour party has shown itself to be anything other than left-wing:

• The Banking Bail-Out: There is nothing left-wing or socialist about the government choosing to bail out failed banks. Nothing at all. Yeah, the Labour party is now trying to bash the bankers. Great, yeah. Very left-wing. Very fucking populist. And something that would be 200% more convincing if the Labour party hadn’t spent so much money on propping up their pet fucking banks. Why is the Labour party having to make spending cuts? Because it spent billions trying to nationalise the banking sector at the worst time possible. How very left-wing.

• The Ongoing Attack on Civil Liberties: Once upon a time, being left-wing was about trying to increase freedom. Now it is about trying to reduce freedom as much as possible. The Labour government has attempted to bring in ID cards, a longer period of detention without charge, and ignores the advice of experts when it comes to drug legislation. And that is quite literally the just the tip of the iceberg. There is nothing left-wing about that. Unless for you left-wing means Stalinist.

• The Poor: The Labour party talks a lot about social mobility, but in the final analysis they have done remarkably little to help the poor in this country. The reason is obvious – they get the votes of the poor anyway. Why would they pursue policies to help the poor when they know that if those people vote, they get those votes anyway? Don’t believe me? Look at the debacle over the 10p tax rate. How socialist to shaft the poor.

To recap, I think it is moronic to vote for a party because you always have voted for them. But I think voting Labour for any of those reasons mentioned above is equally moronic. In fact, I cannot think of one good reason to vote Labour. Voting Labour this year would be a dumb thing to do. So guess what?

Don’t do it.

An Open Letter to the Beggars of Nottingham

Dear Beggars of Nottingham,

As a point of information, screaming "cock" at the top of your voice at me makes it less likely that I will give you money, not more likely.

Best,

The Nameless Libertarian