(Una)Musings

New Blog - Please Read...

2011-10-26T12:07:00.001+01:00

Dear All,

I'm now posting on the blogsite for my Children's novel, The Dawn Herald, at http://thedawnherald.blogspot.com. Hope to see you over there....

The Riots - A Week On

2011-08-13T19:20:00.003+01:00

Duggan wasn't Rodney King. The Left have made this and other comparisons; some have turned him into a freedom fighter. He wasn't. He was a man who had been earmarked because of his connections and because he was carrying a gun. How did the shooting of this man precipitate a riot?
There are two sides to the way in which Duggan's family were treated: they should have had answers immediately when they mounted a peaceful protest, or they should have waited for the outcome of the IPCC report. Well. The Met is a force unto itself - no pun intended - and, had Duggan's family waited, they may never have got answers. As it was, it's rather unrealistic to expect any force to conclude an investigation within a few hours. But they could have been treated better. And they should have. They went out, in a dignified and peaceful fashion, and awaited the verdict. None was forthcoming. Even now, nothing is forthcoming. The violence that arose out of pure opportunism is centre-stage.
The Right and Left respectively have tried to explain what happened on the streets of London and across the country in terms of strong adjectives and social and moral concepts: feral. Undisciplined. Immoral. Deprived. Hopeless. Trapped. None of it has any bearing to the people who have lived the riots, who have contributed to them, or from what part of society they come from. YES. There is a Massive problem that has been created by thirty years of Champagne Socialism and, by extension, by the Welfare State itself. Pay for people to breed and to be paid to do so by public finances, pay for them Not to be married, pay for the division of families, give up on their education, and you reap what you sow. David Starkey's been condemned for saying that a ghetto culture has permeated the underclass, and has much of its root in Jamaica. He's right, but for reasons that haven't been fully explained. If the youth takes gansta rappers as their idols, they're emulating those who have ALSO come from broken homes with broken lives and who CONTINUE to talk about their grief. If the youth adopts the alien way of contempo-speak - the new estuary English - it says that they come from a background of broken homes and lives; you can pinpoint the speaker within a few hundred yards of the estate they come from. The obvious solution is to teach the Queen's English in schools so that all those trying to get jobs will be on the same footing as their better-educated peers, and so remove the social stigma. And forget the nonsense about 'respect'. You earn respect; you're not automatically entitled to it. Which leads to the next point.
So. Take away the financial freedom to breed. With a life expectancy of 80+ after the age of 5, there's no earthly reason for kids to get knocked up at the age of 12. Too much, too soon. You leave them nothing to look forward to. You leave them frustrated. You leave them me-me-me I WANT. The youth shouldn't be 'listened to,' it should be allowed to be young.
How do you remove the 'I'm entitled' manifesto? The interview on Sky with four youths was most illuminating. One had been turned down - ignored - when he'd applied for a job, so he took revenge. (I applied for 50 jobs a week at one point and was rarely if ever contacted: should I too take a torch to all those that rejected me? I think not.) No 'respect', you see. Others said that they 'had to survive'. They looked at the Docklands with envy. Yet I, and so many of us, work very hard for very little, and from that very little is extracted the money to enable such people to eat and heat and clothe themselves. No, it's nothing to do with absolute deprivation - we're not living in Djibouti; I think it's more the fact that we're living in a world where stupidity is celebrated and ignorance is bliss. You can get on. You're not without opportunity. This isn't the Third World. There's a public library down the road from everyone and a museum around the corner. Remember the line in Good Will Hunting? 'You dropped a hundred and fifty grand on an education you could have got for a dollar and a half in late charges at the Public Library.' True. And true, and true again. DH Lawrence, Lloyd George et al would never have escaped their grinding poverty had they not been encouraged to learn.
Conclusions? This isn't a black or white problem; it's an attitude problem. After the Second World War the Conservatives were most opposed to the Welfare State because 'people want everything for nothing'. Break down the chains that the Welfare State binds people up in - tell Polly Toynbee and her ilk to bugger off and stop feteing big Statism - and make learning something to be revered. A billion Chinese can't be wrong. As for those affected by the rioting: it's ironic. The Big Society was created by the riots, exemplified by Englishmen and -women with brooms and cups of tea. In one fell swoop we've lost our anti-Islam animus - fuelled in a large part by the belligerence of Turks defending their home turf and the Extraordinary grace of Mr Tariq Jahan, who has epitomised all those things we once thought noble: dignity, honour, strength and courage. A hardworking man, he is not dealing in recriminations or calls to reinstate the death sentence. He's made us feel that we're All In It Together. All of us, rioters included, could take a leaf from his book.

The First Cut's Meant To Be The Deepest

2010-10-20T18:19:00.003+01:00

The press, ably abetted by the partisan left-wing hotbed that is the BBC, has been warning about 'pain' and 'irreparable damage to frontline services' (am I the only one to hate the phrase 'frontline'? What on earth does it mean? Are we living in a Bosnia-esque warzone, ducking beneath the stinging hornet-trails of bullets to dodge into our local A&E and have the odd foot or two reattached? No? I thought not). All because the Coalition is cutting away the rot *created* by thirteen years of spectacular mismanagement, the kind of drunken free-for-all spending spree more associated with Paris Hilton after a Ferragamo sighting or a stereotypical sailor on leave. The word 'gaffe' has been attributed by numerous newspapers to Danny Alexander, all because he happened to have open on his lap a document which was freely available on a governmental website to anyone who could be bothered to look. There have been screaming frenzies about the loss of half a million public sector jobs, despite the fact that civil service turnover is high and circa 400,000 people would have left or changed posts in the allotted timeframe. And Alan Johnson, who looks as though he would be more comfortable in an apron and a cap with a visor standing behind a counter and licking a pencil stub, has yet again trotted out the meaningless catch-all phrase 'unfair'. Unfair? It was kittenish.
There are a few unfair measures in the CSR. Firstly, it could have been much more comprehensive. The NHS can stand to lose several billion or so for providing the kinds of treatments that should be only available privately, including IVF on demand (particularly to those on benefits), plastic surgery and sex changes. There are charities who will raise the money for the latter, which is a noble cause; I for one can't imagine anything worse than being born, literally, in the wrong body. But it is not a life or death situation. Nor is having a wee phobia about the length of your nose and charging Mr Taxpayer for having the offending milimetres lopped off. The NHS should not be sending out leaflets to teach children how to masturbate, how to open your bowel correctly in twelve languages, or employing toothbrush monitors. Or Diversity Officers.
So many jobs in the public sector make no sense, either in real or economic terms. Many public sector jobs contribute little to the economy, so they're expensive to create and expensive to maintain. Hiring someone to be useless and expensive is a little like maintaining a mistress: looks good and is the envy of your friends (or Parliamentary opposition, from whom you've snatched the vote of the deadweight), but is financially ruinous in the long run. So let's get shot of 'em. Quietly empty posts and don't bother to refill them. Make people work for their salaries, rather than throwing 25k at someone you elevate to Project Manager because they've been given a brief on where to buy the best stapler or inkjet cartridge.
My sneaking suspicion is that the Conservatives, once they've secured a landslide majority based on a CSR that had many of the Opposition scratching their heads and looking foolish, will give these and many other freeloaders the boot. People 'on the sick' who are healthy enough to whizz around on motorbikes, for example. Hopefully, immigrants who rock up and expect handouts. Trade unions. Anyone who has 'multicultural' in their job title. When it comes down to it, today's CSR was positively anodyne; so anodyne that I could watch the cricket and the CSR simultaneously without losing the gist of either. And as ever Labour, the Party of the Opposition, was caught on the back foot without either a single comprehensive alternative or a word of apology for the damage they've done.

Chameleonic: Chapter I

2010-08-16T11:46:00.003+01:00

With my humility, as I've blogged before, growing apace, I've been spending time on carefully rewriting "Chameleonic". Part of writing a decent narrative is being being honest with oneself; plumbing the depths of consciousness and memory, finding the sore spots in one's past and integrating them into the narrative, having the courage to allow others to read one's mind. Consigning sorrow to paper so that it becomes an indelible record of one's life rather than something secretly locked in the darkness. I know that I shall have to rewrite the work over and over again until I am satisfied, that as I grow so it will too; but the whole point of writing is that it is an occupation that never ceases to satisfy as long as one draws breath. In this way life becomes art. Any opinions - positive or negative - on the first chapter below would be most appreciated.

CHAPTER I

‘Where is it?’ Byron erupted into Gala’s study, quivering with rage, red tongue lolling between his jaws. Gala averted her gaze from the dreadful sight. A sea of tranquil Virgin Mary blue stretched out before her. It disappeared abruptly as the blue blanket that had been covering her during her afternoon rest was torn away. Byron’s strange yellow eyes bored into hers. Defiantly, Gala put up her chin.
‘Where is what?’
‘My short story, the story I am writing, you red-headed shrew,’ he said rapidly between his teeth, grabbing one coppery ringlet and giving it a ferocious tug. Gala shrieked and rubbed her maligned head.
‘I have no idea, Glyphon.’ She squirmed away from him and made for her cigarette box. ‘Why in God’s name did you ring up the ironmongers’ and pretend to be called ‘Glyphon’, you senile old fool?’
‘If you do not give me back my story I shall strike you,’ said Byron menacingly. Gala lit her cigarette and yawned with supreme indifference. She looked him up and down.
‘So what else is new? You strike me all the time. Coward. Only a coward would strike a defenceless woman. You brute.’
‘Gorgon. Medusa. You unspeakable harpy!’ shouted Byron, striking a tabletop with a clenched fist. Gala did not flinch. She drifted over to the window and gazed across the gardens of “La Belle Epoque” to the sea.
‘I think I might have seen a bundle of papers by the furnace. You might just be able to rescue them if Betty hasn’t burnt them already,’ she said without turning her head. Byron howled inarticulately and stamped, the floorboards trembling beneath his feet. He threw the door open with a tremendous crash and trampled noisily down the stairs. Gala closed the splintered door gently. She loosened the bodice of her capacious smock and extracted several sheets of foolscap. Byron had been using the typewriter with the misaligned ‘a’ again, she noted with a sigh. The paper was pale green. Byron claimed that no other colour felt right — a sentiment he had lifted straight from Proust, thought Gala sourly; Byron was entirely derivative, had never had an original thought in his life. She read through the prose, one cinnamon-red brow raised, her upper lip quivering with disgust.
‘Ha!’ The door flew open once more. Byron, his bundle of foolscap clasped to his chest, marched into the study and snatched the sheets of paper from her fingers. He shook them at her, yellow eyes gleaming. ‘Thought you could hide them, eh? Well, I have had my revenge on you.’ He folded his arms, careless of the mass of foolscap, and nodded triumphantly. Gala raised her brows questioningly.
‘Well?’
‘I discovered where you’ve been hiding your chocolate ration. And I ate it. Every bit of it.’
Gala darted up and slapped him. ‘How dare you!’ she shrieked. ‘How dare you!’
‘I thought you might not like that,’ said Byron, smiling complacently. ‘See you at dinner.’ He bowed and strolled out of the room, whistling cheerfully. Gala, face hot with fury, her chest rising and falling tumultuously, stared through the open door of the study opposite hers. Byron, in an excellent humour, was battering away at his typewriter. He perched a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles on the end of his nose and peered at the page in front of him.
‘Demented old fool doesn’t even need spectacles,’ muttered Gala. ‘Eat my chocolate ration, would he? Well I’ll show him.’ Hugging herself with savage glee she extracted Byron’s favourite smoking jacket, tailored for him just before the War, from beneath a cushion and crept down the red-carpeted stairs. She ran on tiptoe across the draughty hallway through the open side door into the garden. A barbecue, on of the few remnants of her antipodean heritage for which she had any fondness, stood squarely in the middle of the lawn. Whistling to herself, Gala lit the barbecue expertly, squinting up at Byron’s window. As the smoke began to billow and curl, the distant rattle of keys ceased abruptly. Smiling serenely, Gala dropped the smoking jacket atop the coals and poked at it with a pair of tongs. There was a howl of fury and Byron’s window-glass rattled. Unperturbed, Gala continued to sauté the crimson velvet until it had caught alight and the twisted gold cord had tarnished and disintegrated. Byron, leonine head topped incongruously with a yellow silk turban, leapt on to the lawn.
‘Why?’ he bellowed.
‘You ate my chocolate ration when you knew it was the only thing I had to look forward to all week,’ hissed Gala, brandishing the tongs at him. Byron eyed them uneasily. Gala was capable of doing him a serious mischief if she felt fiendish enough. Once she had presented him with a rose filled with pepper: he had broken a rib in the resultant sneezing fit. Gala could always out-beastly him — which was why he felt no compunction about hitting her. His eye fell on the smoking remains of the smoking jacket. He would like to beat her until she screamed, he thought grimly, fist clenched.
‘I wouldn’t if I were you,’ Gala advised: ‘the Vicar’s coming.’
‘Good afternoon, Vicar!’ called Byron with false cheer, trampling across the emerald grass. Gala gave the ashes a final poke and followed him.
‘Lovely day,’ said the Vicar mildly, doffing his hat to Gala. He was a tall, spare, bow-backed aesthete who was bullied mercilessly by his cook-general. From the faint stains on his lapel Gala deduced that he had been eating a cold collation of flaccid ham, wilted lettuce and bottled salad cream that that domestic tyrant ordained was quite good enough for a clergyman. She smiled sympathetically. The Vicar caught her look and sighed a little.
‘Would you like to come to dinner?’ asked Byron, who had also noticed the salad cream stains. The Vicar brightened.
‘I would be delighted,’ he said with alacrity; then his face fell. ‘Maundy Thursday, so much to do, and the Little Tadchester choir need me to play the organ for them this evening…’
‘Tomorrow?’ asked Gala doubtfully. The Vicar shook his head, took out his diary and thumbed through it hopelessly. ‘No, I am afraid that I do not have a free evening until three weeks on Tuesday.’
‘We’ll plan a proper dinner party. Four courses. And port.’
‘Port?’
‘The best. Byron laid it down before the War. We’ve been saving it for special occasions.’ A gust of wind lifted the yellow silk turban from Byron’s head and bowled it across the garden. Gala shrieked with laughter. Casting her a look of immense dislike, Byron chased after it.
‘Wonderful,’ said the Vicar, writing Dinner at La Belle Epoque in his diary and beaming. He watched Byron sprint after his turban. ‘May I ask, my dear, if you are well?’
Gala looked at him quickly. For a moment her green eyes softened with misery. Then she folded her arms and straightened her back resolutely. ‘We rub along well enough. It’s not happy, precisely, but we’ve been married for over thirty years. I don’t know who I’d be without Byron. I just wish…’ She shrugged. ‘I wish he’d be a bit nicer sometimes. Do you know, after all these years he still only gets out one wineglass, makes one cup of tea?’ She hesitated. ‘I’ve said too much. I’m sorry.’
‘That is what I am here for, my dear.’ The Vicar pressed her hand quickly. ‘I was wondering if you might be interested in doing a little nursing at the convalescent home? You were so good during the War, and…’
‘And it would get me out of the house,’ Gala interjected wryly. ‘I don’t know. When I started nursing way back in 1907 I didn’t ever want to do anything else, and then of course I joined the FANY…’ She smiled. ‘I wanted to do something useful, something that had an actual purpose, where there was no quibbling about who wore the trousers — unlike the London Hospital where the doctors were God and we their unquestioning acolytes.’ She watched Byron who, turban in hand, was staring raptly at the patterns of sunlight falling through leaves. ‘I never saw war as a romantic idyll, I knew it would be bloody hard work, but I was used to death and deprivation. So why not? But now…’ She shook her head. ‘Something about the last War broke me. Twenty years of so-called peace and then the world was plunged into another senseless conflict. All those young men sent off to die, thinking they were doing their duty… Coming back broken, burnt, blinded. We couldn’t mend them, we couldn’t help them. The hardest thing about nursing people you know are never going to get better is that you become quite cynical, you wonder what the point is. I don’t like thinking that way, I don’t like myself when I think that way.’
‘Not all of them are hopeless cases,’ the Vicar pointed out. ‘They are on the road to recovery. It just takes time.’
‘I’ll think about it. I promise.’
‘Bless you, my dear. I must be off…’
‘I’ll say ‘goodbye’ to Byron for you. He’s likely to be there for quite some time.’ She watched the Vicar depart along the cliff path and went into the house, hugging herself against the chill. Tomorrow was Good Friday. Byron, a ferocious atheist, had banned all bibles from the house; but Gala had hidden away a cherished, battered little New Testament that had accompanied her through the mud of Flanders and the Somme and the Marne and which had, on one occasion, even saved her life. Sometimes, turning it over and over in her fingers, she reflected that it was her only consolation in life: its unchanging message of hope, its sense of purpose, its strong, stable characters. She opened it to the Gospel of Mark and read slowly, lips moving soundlessly. The door flew open. She jumped and flushed with annoyance.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘Minding my own business,’ said Gala, marking her place with a finger.
Byron stared incredulously at the little book. ‘I said no bibles, no religion in this house. Give it to me.’
‘No.’ Gala looked at him steadily. ‘No, I won’t. Not this. It’s too—’
‘I said ‘give it to me’!’ Byron wrestled it from her and threw it out of the window. ‘Ha!’ he said triumphantly, grinning, inviting Gala to share the joke. She shook her head.
‘I shan’t forgive you for this,’ she said quietly and went down to rescue the little book. It had fallen into a pool of water, its pages crumpled and torn. She lifted it out carefully, smoothing the pages with trembling fingers. Byron ambled out the house, hand stuffed awkwardly in his pocket. He won’t say sorry, he never apologises: goes on the offensive instead. I wonder what he’ll do this time? thought Gala, unable to look at him.
‘When I think of scarlet women,’ Byron began dreamily, ‘I run through a Rolodex of beauties. Rita Hayworth with her red hair. Scarlett O’Hara. Marilyn Monroe in her skintight dress. But I had to end up with you.’ He grabbed a hank of hair and pulled it viciously. Gala swayed, mute, her eyes fixed on her New Testament. ‘You are vile and worthless,’ Byron told her, releasing her suddenly. He went into the library and slammed the door. ‘Damn her,’ he muttered. ‘Never could see the point of a joke.’ He poured himself a glass of brandy, noticing that the level had sunk significantly: their horrible charlady had been at it again. ‘Bloody woman. I’ll tell Gala to fire her.’ Fire Mrs Thing, he wrote on a sheet of paper in a neat square hand. He had no idea what the woman’s name was, menials never interested him: they were arms attached to mops and dusters, a crouched shape with a scrubbing brush in the middle of a shining sea of linoleum.
‘Women!’ Why, oh why, had he ever got married? He should have known it would be bloody miserable. Look at his own parents’ marriage. Mother bolted with her lover, father shot himself. Gala had deliberately set out to entrap him, Byron thought, draining his glass and slamming it on the desk. Got him when he was at his most vulnerable. Right after the Marne when he had been shot twice through the shoulder in the very first hour, left to fester on a jolting cart with all the other wounded bodies, partially paralysed by an inept surgeon and parcelled back to Blighty. He’d never had a chance! And he’d so been looking forward to a jolly good war, he’d reached that point in life where he felt he had nothing new left to experience.
Byron dashed an angry tear from his eye. Gala had been so dashing, an angel of mercy leaning over him as he lay on the filthy cart and murmuring ‘don’t worry, Captain Stanton: we’ll take good care of you.’ And larch-slim and beautiful in a leaf-green dress with a wide cream ribbon tied around her slender waist on one of her leaves, when she came to take tea with him and he ended up proposing. Just like that! She was brave, too: she delivered supplies and transported the wounded to and from the Front all throughout the War. In a strange way, their roles had been reversed: he languished at home while she faced death every day, never turning a hair as shells screamed overhead and mortars pounded unbearably. He resented her bitterly, even as he admired her. Her leaves were few and fleeting, a night here and there, a meeting of strangers who came together to slake their mutual need, he supposed; they rarely spoke, he had no idea what she was thinking. Initially it entranced him, later it made him fear and distrust her.
After the War she came home to the great flat-faced London house Byron shared with his bachelor uncles. Disaster struck. She repulsed him. Her flaming red hair, a primitive danger signal, terrified him. He could not look directly at her, his gaze slid across her as if she were an acquaintance whose name he could not remember. They had nothing in common save a growing dislike. She nursed the two bachelors, whom Byron referred to facetiously as the Maiden Uncles, through a series of illnesses and avoided him. They moved into separate bedrooms. She’d never really been much good in that department anyway, stiffened up halfway through: he supposed she was frigid. Treated him with contempt after their disastrous honeymoon — well, that was rather his fault, he supposed (Byron wriggled uneasily): communicated with him with a series of notes for five years, never speaking to him unless it was absolutely necessary. Put all her energies into nursing a load of broken crocks throughout the Second War, ignored him entirely. What did she expect? A medal? Coming home all weary with blood on her uniform. Disgusting. How could a chap be expected to put up with it?
Why had she got so upset about a wretched little book anyway? She knew it was all a load of codswallop, he had explained patiently to her why religion was the province of the naïve and that God-botherers should be avoided at all costs (save the Vicar, who knew his cricket and had never tried to convert him). And yet she still persisted, in her bloody-minded antipodean way, in believing that absolute twaddle. Byron scowled. Flinging the book out of the window had been a masterstroke, a well-deserved piece of retribution for the time that she had flung his favourite commode out of her window. Why couldn’t she see the joke? Uptight, stiff-necked, humourless harpy.
Byron fingered his upper lip, wondering if he should grow a moustache. Again. But the last time he had done so, hiding out in his quarters for a full fortnight with his pommel horse and regimental uniform at the ready so once his whiskers came through he could play at being a cavalry officer — Gala had laughed until she choked. Eyes watering, cheeks flushed, she had bent double and wheezed with mirth. He wish she had expired from it. Awful shrew! Byron kicked the leg of his desk viciously and hurt himself. He needed to be cheered up somehow. It was too late to buzz down to London and visit the lady with whom he had a discreet arrangement. He would play Roman Emperors instead.
Bounding up the stairs two at a time, useless arm clasped across his chest, he went to his Dressing Up Cupboard and hunted out the capacious white caftans Gala used to cover her bulges. Where was his laurel wreath? And his lyre? Aha! Somehow he had absentmindedly stowed them between his Country Squire costume (tweeds, shooting stick, monocle and a twelve bore) and his American Grandpa outfit (sagging cardigan, checked shirt, a canister of rabbit tobacco and a pair of steel-framed spectacles). Byron placed the laurel wreath on his head and declaimed to the looking glass, standing so that he could not see his partially paralysed arm. ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen…’ he murmured. Frowned. Put up his chin and stared into his own eyes: he wasn’t quite feeling like an Emperor. More like an Indian prince, a Maharajah. He changed rapidly into silk robes and turban, sat cross-legged on a Turkey carpet. Could he get away with smoking his opium pipe? Would he have to dress up as a Chinee instead? Yes: every detail must be accurate, he had to get into character. He exchanged his turban for a pigtailed wig, put on long robes fantastically embroidered, and nodded in satisfaction. A sticky ball of opium was worked between the fingers of the right hand, plugged into a long-stemmed pipe. He lit it, began to soar, to float, absolutely at peace.
Gala, smelling the sweet scent of opium wreathing beneath Byron’s door, ground her teeth in frustration. He would be useless for the rest of the day, when he did finally emerge from the cloud forests to which the drug transported him he would be dreamy and distracted, lost in a world of inner contemplation. Why did he have to be a Mandarin today? she wondered. In a rare moment of candour Byron had confessed that he has been masquerading as a series of characters since the age of eleven as a way to escape the misery and bullying at school. Gala suspected that others preferred Byron when he was in character rather than out of it, the real Byron, raw and vulnerable: the man who, when he thought no one was watching, looked at the world with the eyes of a child. She went down to the kitchen, disturbing her general factotum Betty who was sitting with her feet in the warm oven reading a lovely novel called “Miss Glamorna’s Passion”.
‘Don’t get up. I only came to dry this out.’ She held up the sodden New Testament.
‘I’ll pop it in the oven,’ said Betty, taking her feet out and replacing them with the book. ‘Should be dry in no time. Do you want a cup of tea? You look ever so tired.’
‘I rather think I need something stronger.’ Gala stared at the fat ginger cat which was lying on its back with its paws in the air, toasting itself on the hearth. ‘Dinner at eight if you can manage it.’
‘Got some lovely mackerel off the boat this morning. And Mr Purvis give me three tins of peaches from under the counter, so I thought a nice trifle?’
‘Splendid. Byron loves his trifle.’ She watched the cat’s ears flicker, its paws twitch as it dreamed.
‘Everything all right?’ asked Betty casually.
‘Oh, you know. Same as ever.’ The two women looked at one another. Betty nodded. Then, the natural hierarchy reasserting itself, Gala left the kitchen and went in search of the gin.
Byron was sleepy and abstracted at supper, toying with his grilled mackerel and picking all the peach out of his trifle and laying it end to end. Gala, who was determined not to let him vex her, read The Old Wives’ Tale which she had propped against the brandy decanter and ignored him.
‘You’re getting very fat,’ he announced suddenly.
Gala sent him a stony glare. ‘I can lose weight,’ she said evenly. ‘You, on the other hand, will never be anything other than a cloth-headed idiot.’ Byron gnashed his teeth. Gala returned to her book, serene in the knowledge that she had got one over on him.
Byron twiddled his thumbs, played with the saltcellar and finally burst out: ‘do you have to read at the table? It’s frightfully antisocial.’
‘Because you’re such wonderful company? Yes, I do.’ She got up and began to clear the plates.
‘Where’s Betty?’ demanded Byron aggressively.
‘Went to her mother’s; she’s not very well…’
Byron followed Gala to the kitchen, grumbling, and pursued her to the sink. ‘Why won’t you talk to me? It’s pretty childish of you, isn’t it?’
‘I am not talking to you because I have nothing to say.’ Gala rinsed the plates. Furious, a maddened bull, Byron trampled back and forth, head swinging from side to side. His choleric gaze fell on the New Testament which Betty had placed on top of the Aga.
‘Ha!’ He seized the book and shook it at her. ‘Ha!’
‘Put it down, Byron. Please.’
Byron stared at her for a long moment. Then turned with disconcerting speed and thrust the book into the fire.
‘No…’ The cry burst from Gala’s lips; ashen, she raised a hand to her mouth, trembling. ‘No…’ Her groping hand found the back of a chair; she lowered herself into it, staring at the book which was being consumed by a sheet of flame.
‘Say something!’ demanded Byron. Gala shook her head; enraged, Byron shook Gala. He finally released her, pressing his face into hers. She arose, drawing her cardigan around her, and stood for a moment staring at the fire.
‘I am so disgusted with you that I do not think I will ever want to look at you again,’ she said softly. Byron dashed after her into the hall, watched as she ascended through golden lamplight, her hair a gleaming mass of russet and sunset. He opened his lips to call out to her, to demand that she come down at once and speak to him, but the hard planes of her face silenced him. He had gone too far this time, finally, after all these years…
Disconsolate, Byron wandered into the drawing room, turned on the radiogramme, turned it off again, fiddled with the Meissen statuary on the chimneypiece, slammed the lid of the tantalus several times, flung himself into an armchair and out of it again, unable to settle. ‘Ga—!’ The house was silent, absolutely still; as still as if he were the only one living there, as if she had already left it. Damnable woman, thought Byron inconsolably, hugging himself with his one good arm. He perched on the edge of the sofa, swinging his foot violently. Why can’t she have more of a sense of humour? I wish I’d never met her. Horrible little redheaded creature, I wish she was dead. He put his face down on his knees and wept.

The Dawn Herald - Chapter I

2010-07-22T12:26:00.001+01:00

Am craning my head over the metaphorical parapet and putting the first chapter of my children's book, The Dawn Herald, online for your delectation. All comments/suggestions would be most appreciated. And of course, I'll acknowledge you once it's published!

CHAPTER I

There is a world just over the horizon which nestles in the topmost branches of a great tree.
If you pluck a hair from your head and look through it in bright sunlight, you might be able to catch a glimpse of this world. But you must be swift, for after you have seen it once it will not reappear again for seven years.
Woven into the gnarled roots of the great tree that cradles this world in its boughs is another world, all fire and ice; and beneath that world there is another tree. A strange shadow-world hovers around roots that grow deep into the foundations of the universe itself.
The world at the top of the trees is called the Third World. After twelve thousand years of argumentation and two serious wars, the philosophers could not come up with a more poetic name for the bowl-shaped world with its twin suns and great Sky Goddess whose nebulous body stretches from horizon to horizon.
On the edge of the Third World’s largest sea there is an angel-shaped city named Ellyra. Many years ago, in a time when dragons and two-headed men and talking Tygers roamed the land, it was home to a very unusual princess.
She was supposed to be a boy.
Her name was Isolde. She was the last of the Dîn dynasty which had ruled the Kingdom of Gerena for six thousand years; the last descendant of Belial, a fallen angel and Alnair, a fallen star. Alnair and Belial had thirteen children, all boys, who went out and conquered the lands of the Third World. Some kings were like their star-mother and were wise and just. Others were like their beautiful but wicked father and used dark magic to slay their enemies. All their descendents, only one in every generation, were male. Their fathers arranged marriages for them with beautiful girls whose families were happy to sell their daughters in exchange for wealth and power. There had never been a female descendant of the fallen angel and the fallen star. Until Isolde.
It was customary, while awaiting the birth of the Heir, for the King to divert his attention from his wife’s agonies by playing a game of chess with live pieces. At the moment of Isolde’s birth King Halliam dispatched his opponent’s screaming bishop to the afterlife. He turned, smiling widely, as an angel drifted across the giant chessboard and hovered before him. In the brilliant sunlight it looked grey and sombre. Its face was downcast and its wings drooped.
‘Your Majesty,’ it begun. King Halliam spread his arms wide.
‘Let me guess. My wife has given me… a boy!’ he announced. A ripple of laughter and a smatter of light applause ran through the crowd surrounding the monarch. The angel was silent. ‘A boy,’ King Halliam prompted. The angel looked at the ground. After a very, very long pause it shook its head. King Halliam stared at it incredulously. His eyes began to bulge and his face turned bright red with fury. ‘A GIRL!!!” he bellowed at the top of his lungs and evaporated the entire chessboard on the spot.
In a dreadful panic the King’s Sorcerors sent out envoys to every court in the Third World, from fire-bright Oriel on the Dawn Sea to dark and tricksy Trimmaeus in the Dragonspine Mountains, to find a star-born consort for the future queen. They slunk back to the angel-shaped city of Ellyra empty handed. All the little princelings had already been promised in marriage. The Lady Claire, lying exhausted in her ivory bed, watched helplessly as King Halliam raged back and forth.
‘Our royal line will come to an end!’ he stormed, his handsome face red with fury. ‘Six thousand years lost! All because you had to bring a wretched girl into the world! You are a disgrace!’
‘I am sorry,’ murmured the Lady Claire, rocking her newborn child. King Halliam snarled.
‘Had she been a boy she could have married anyone and their bloodline would have been cancelled out. But no. You had to spawn a wretched girl, a girl who will never be allowed to wed a commoner. Why in the Goddess’s name did I ever marry you? Damn you!’ he bellowed, great veins standing out on his neck, and bit his knuckle hard enough to draw blood.
‘Perhaps you could… change the law. If you allow her to marry a commoner she—’
‘The blood of stars does not pass on through the female line!’ bellowed Halliam. He slammed his fist on an ebony coffer, sending a tray of goblets flying. With a great effort he reined in his temper. ‘After Belial died in the First Great War,’ he said through clenched teeth, ‘Alnair wed again. Another fallen angel, even fairer than Belial. Alnair brought two girls into the world. They wed but never bore an heir. They were barren.’
‘Why would that be?’ asked the Lady Claire, tucking a fold of blanket carefully around the sleeping Isolde’s ears. King Halliam glared.
‘I do not know or care. Keep your theophysical questions for the Court Philosopher and tell me what is to be done! If we do not find a boy to wed your brat the entire kingdom will fall!’ he hissed.
‘We do not need to give up hope. A star-blooded boy may yet be born. I hear that Queen Mittuan of Gandolfia is increasing.’
‘Getting fat, more like,’ King Halliam sneered.
‘Uangnaq of the Seal Fishers—’
‘I will not merge my kingdom with the Ice-Realms!’ shouted King Halliam.
The Lady Claire winced. ‘Does not the law change,’ she pursued valiantly, though her lips were white with pain and fatigue, ‘if she is Chosen by the Sky Goddess to be her Dawn Herald? May not she then wed a commoner and continue the line?’
King Halliam snorted. ‘Chosen? She? I should like to see a child of yours Chosen to be the most powerful person on the Third World!’ he spat and slammed out of the room. The Lady Claire looked thoughtfully at the closed door. The elderly nurse who had been fussing over the infant’s crib bustled over at once, clucking with disapproval.
‘Give the little lamb to me now, there’s the poppet,’ she said, holding her hands out for the baby. The Lady Claire looked at her beseechingly.
‘Just one minute more, Nursie. After tonight I will have such little time alone with her,’ she coaxed. The nurse tutted.
‘Just one more minute, then. And mind it’s not a moment longer!’ she warned. ‘I’m going to make you a nice milky drink and when I come back, you’d better be ready for a good long sleep.’
‘Oh, I could sleep for a thousand years.’ The Lady Claire stretched lazily, watching the nurse bustle out of the room. ‘Perhaps you will be Dawn Herald one day,’ she whispered, kissing the little crescent birthmark on the baby’s ivory-fair brow. The baby sighed in her sleep, small hands flexing. ‘Perhaps you will. Indeed, why should you not? Any girl who is completely pure of heart may be Chosen.’ She smiled as the child awoke and looked up at her. ‘Behold your world, my little one,’ she murmured and held the baby up to the window. Outside little cascades of snow drifted from the darkening sky. The Lady Claire pointed to the Sky Goddess, just visible through the clouds, slumbering in her rainbow Arc of matter beneath her cape of stars. ‘There she is,’ she said to the tiny child. ‘There is your destiny.’ Her eyelids fluttered and she yawned. ‘You must make her love you so much that she wants you and only you to serve her.’ As she yawned again so hard that tears ran from her eyes a great snow goose swooped from the sky and hovered outside the window. A basket was securely tied to its back. The Princess Isolde, safe in her mother’s arms, awoke and reached out a small hand to the goose which tapped on the window with its beak, looking at the child with a dark, intelligent eye.
‘That’s quite enough of that,’ said the nurse, whisking into the room and drawing the curtains shut with a clatter. ‘Time for mother and baby to rest.’
‘Oh, Nursie, can’t I just… All right.’ The Lady Claire relinquished her daughter and snuggled down on the pillows. Outside in the dark the goose tapped on the window again. She frowned. ‘What’s that noise?’
‘Must be some nasty branches. Nothing for you to worry your pretty head about.’ The nurse bustled around damping down the fire and snuffing out candles, casting the Lady Claire a wary look every now and then from her sharp old eyes.
‘That’s funny… there aren’t any trees outside my window…’ sighed the Lady Claire as she fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. The nurse waited for a moment and tiptoed from the room, closing the door tightly behind her. She hurried along the corridor to a round chamber with a pointed glass roof that glittered in the light of the falling snow. There, waiting for her in a shaft of radiance, was an angel.
‘That wretched bird gave me quite a turn, tapping at the window like that. Has it gone?’
‘Yes. The snow goose is even now flying towards the Sea of Forgetfulness on its journey to the Witchlands. It pains me,’ said the angel who had come into being when Isolde was born, ‘to send a soul away from its mother.’ The nurse tutted.
‘One of them had to go. You know the law. The Queen can only have a single heir. If there was twins the King’d know my poor lady played him false and then where would we be? He’d send my poor lady to have her liver pecked out by the Carrion Crows on Traitor’s Rock. She doesn’t deserve to suffer any more, oh no: being married to him’s enough of a burden for anyone. The other baby’ll be safe in the Witchlands. She’ll have a good and happy life. It’s better this way.’
‘I am guardian to both the souls,’ said the angel.
‘Then you’re going to have to be in two places at once, aren’t you?’
‘How is it possible that the Lady Claire does not know she has a second child?’
The nurse looked a little ashamed. ‘When I felt there was two babies I had to put her into a deep sleep. She never knew a thing, bless her. I was afraid that this might happen, I did try to warn her—’ She looked into the distance, her face pensive, and gave herself a little shake. ‘When all’s said and done, least said, soonest mended and you can’t help who you love. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to see to Baby. You should be down in the Infinite Library. Life-books don’t write themselves, and you don’t want to be leaving out any of Baby’s story, do you?’ She glared at the angel and bustled off, forgetting the little lost girl at once. All that mattered now was the Princess Isolde.

Day In The Life Of...

2010-07-21T08:51:00.010+01:00

Me. Since a very young age I've rather craved being the Luminary Of Note featured on the back page of the Sunday Times Magazine. All said luminaries, however, seem to have very organised lives; mine borders on the chaotic. After waking up at the unbearable and ungodly hour of 06.20 to the morning Market Report, without which The Chap cannot function (I can; and am planning to sabotage him with the Shipping Forecast. I find "Northeasterly 4 or 5, backing northerly 5 to 7 later" oddly soothing), I stagger in the general direction of the coffee pot and quaff a pint or two. After performing various Domestic Tasks (though sadly not in the bell-shaped skirts and heels considered indispensable by the 1950s Housewife: I suspect The Chap may approve of such a get-up) I get on with the day job and try not to let my characters intrude to too great an extent. Writing's a little like a form of schizophrenia; many different, insistent voices clamouring for attention.
At the moment I have not one, not two, but THREE books on the go. AND a play. The sequel to the Dawn Herald, the Shield Bearer, is laid out beyootifully in my imagination; just need to find the time to write it. It opens with A Quest. At the end of the Dawn Herald my bolshy heroine, Isolde, has had her memory stolen by the Faerie King, who intends to sell it off to the highest bidder. Isolde's loyal band of warriors have a month to find her before the Lady Lilith, queen of the Old Ones and a Jolly Bad Sort, obliterates the Third World and all the men and creatures on it. The Shield Bearer is Nat, who was one of few friends Isolde possessed during her turbulent youth (as a young Dawn Herald she was considered highly dangerous, as Heralds Shine brightly when confronted with evil and inadvertantly incinerate everyone and -thing in their immediate vicinity: not the best way to make friends and influence people). Isolde always had the sneaking suspicion that Nat might be vaguely personable if he were only taller, broader in the shoulder, tidier, had better hair, and didn't cut her down to size on every available opportunity.
By the time Isolde's memory is stolen, Nat has been trained in the arts of warfare and diplomacy, has filled out considerably in the shoulder region and has a excellent leg for a hunting boot. A natural leader of men, he is absolutely fearless. Some ten thousand words into The Shield Bearer, he and the warriors (including the Pirate King, an irrepressible rogue, Arielle, daughter of the Witch-Queen of Ira-Doon and Halliam, Isolde's father and deposed King of Gerena) have travelled into the Lands of Fire (which bear an uncanny resemblance to Istanbul, a place I know well, only considerably hotter) to seek out the lost Princess. They discover that she is being held captive by the Monster of the Depths, once the fairest bard in the whole of the Dawn Territories, now corrupt and hell-bent on destruction, and are about to have a jolly good battle with the Monster and his stone goblin minions. Unfortunately once they vanquish the Monster and invade his lair they find that the bird has flown... I'm really looking forward to writing the next part of the quest, in which Nat is imprisoned in Isolde's twin sister's imagination (she's gone doolally-tap or, as Terry Pratchett would have it, completely Bursar) and ages ten years overnight.
Obviously at some point Isolde will have to be rescued and her memory restored. But writing a Quest is jolly good fun. Reminds me of all the Arthurian tales I read in my youth.
Alas; must put creativity on one side. The washing up awaits....but at least I have the evening to look forward to, during which The Chap and I will probably read, argue gently about anything and everything, and sip contemplatively at a glass of fizz or three. Wonderful stuff.

Bores, Beowulf and the Like

2010-07-19T20:33:00.004+01:00

I wrote a precis to Chameleonic not so long ago. My attempt at a Beowulfian (if that isn't a word, it should be) narrative:

“From the frame three faces stared down at him: man, man, woman sketched in sepia, age spotted. His ancestors, who fleeing from the wintered wastes of Tartary across the turbulent seas fell into the arms of pirates when their slim-stemmed boat, battered by a full-bellied wind drank water and sank into the darkness. They followed the sinking ship down, down into the black maw of the sea-mouth. And in the drowning darkness drifted. Then to the sky they turned swimming blindly up, up breaking through the icy sea-skin into the perilous night. Wrapped in the lace embrace of cresting waves they saw the firefly glint of lofted lanterns above the salt-trails. Arms raised like masts they called out to the light-bearers above the tempest’s roar. The skipper’s shout flew up into the icy air and the turning ship cut a combing arc through the tumbling sea. Two nets dipped deep and brought up man, man, woman from the wave-bowels. Man, man, woman lay on the deck dripping frozen beyond feeling. Pirate-men in silvered furs, eyebrows iced, surrounded them and swaddled them in seal skins. The Captain, black-giant frost-beard, pulled woman to her frozen feet and took her to the wooden ship’s warm heart. Gold boars bristled on his cheekpads: gold lions roared upon his fingers and his shadow was as big as a bear’s. He sat her in a rocking chair and from a flat flagon poured fiery fuel to melt her. At length the ice-white face flushed faintly and the ice-cold lips parted. With the first smile the Captain was lost in a love-web, his heart given to her through pulse-beating fingertips: beat, throb, beat. But her heart was given already to the land gods: not for her blue acres seeded with salt, wind-furrowed. Bowel-broken the crucified Captain left man, man, woman on a sea-arm flung into the Channel-mouth. Before them lay green hills crowned with coronals of wheat. A loveliness of larks soared—”

Which brings me on to bores. Because whatever merit this derivative foray into ancient literature may have, it breaks the boredom threshold of the average reader ten words in. In the spirit of trying to be modest, non-precious etc, I'm trying to keep my prose light. Buoyant. My characters winsome and interesting, rather than riddled by the kinds of Kenneth Williams-esque (if you haven't read his autobiography, approach it with the mental equivalent of cleansing wipes: the man was obsessed with his genitalia, which he managed to zip into his fly on a regular basis and then whinge about) problems we all try to escape by diving into the nearest work of literature. That being said, there are plenty of literary bores. Who has EVER finished The Famished Road? Or the Eye Of The Sun? Or War And Peace for that matter, the kind of brickish tome one takes virtuously on holiday and which subtly metamorphoses into a blockbuster with "Spy" in the title a few hours later?
Am also Trying To Be Good and not start scribbling down YET ANOTHER book whose plot has miraculously sprung up in my imagination. ('Wait until you get an advance,' noted The Chap austerely: all very well and good for HIM to say, but when inspiration strikes you can't really pen it behind a metaphorical door to liberate later. Like a hungry child, it needs to be fed and *now*). WWII. Young Russian soldier captured on the Eastern Front and sent to Dachau. Avoids being killed when he is befriended by the crippled wife of a German officer. After liberation, is interrogated as a collaborator back in Moscow. Anyone have a list of good resources whereby I can research what life was like for young Russians in the 30s/40s?

Another Day, Another Rejection...

2010-07-15T07:54:00.003+01:00

This one, at least, was pleasant: a 'do-not-take-it-personally-and-your-writing-may-be-really-great-so-don't-think-there's-no-merit-in-it' etc. In fact, it was so pleasant that I can't even descend into nail-biting hair-tugging rage; it would be like slapping a kitten, kicking apart a dollhouse or similar. Nor did my lower lip wibble unbecomingly (I don't "do" crying). Still, there is a certain sense of inevitability when I receive an email from some agency or other. Not that I am in any way defeated by rejection; on the contrary, I adopt a do-or-die attitude (mantra: 'I *will* be a success, I *will*). And, of course, think of JK Rowling, Beatrix Potter and other literary luminaries who were rejected numerous times before anyone took more than a cursory look at their work.
This weekend, am going to get started on my chick lit. froth-book. Debating whether to set it in the Polo or Show Jumping world. A small prize to whomever can come up with a name for my heroine - the more improbable, the better.

Should I Bite The Bullet And...

2010-07-12T11:52:00.003+01:00

write a chick lit. novel? Though I've registered my empathic disapproval of such non-literary endeavours, it would enable me to make a few necessary purchases: a manor house, a Steinway Grand, an Aston Martin Vanquish for The Chap, an oxygen tank for hangovers, etcetera. All one *really* needs to pen a frothy bestseller is an improbably-named heroine (Diamante, Taffeta, Chenille) who Works Her Way Up from a caravan park, Borstal or similar and wins the heart of a louche Argentinian polo player. Add diamonds, Pimms, champagne, a couple of arrests, Old Etonians, a lot of shopping, and - voila! It's a knotty dilemma: self respect or a hefty bank balance. It would also provide a little light relief, as writing about the clinically insane is beginning to make me foam at the mouth. Gah! Too many books to write, too little time in which to write them.

Preciousness, Petulance and So On

2010-07-11T11:47:00.004+01:00

Humility is something that I am trying, slowly and painstakingly, to learn. It has been pointed out to me (quite forcefully) that when it comes to criticism of my writing, I am anything but humble. And this will be a great obstacle to my getting my books published, because if I can't accept it from The Chap, I'll have a hard time accepting it from those with zero tolerance for the hyper-artistic type. Well. (Deep breath.) I concede that on some points The Chap may well be right. The first of which is that I may, for the first time, actually have to plot a definite narrative trajectory to make my books' structure tight, coherent and engrossing. Difficult when one is accustomed (as I've mentioned before) to scribbling, as quickly as I can, a record of the events unfolding before my mind's eye.
So. At the moment I am charting, fairly painstakingly, a section that will be inserted into the middle of "Chameleonic". My beleaguered middle-class lady, Richenda, has done a bunk with her working-class lover Jack to the Continent. While there, she begins to descend into the madness which always threatens to engulf her, which she has spent a lifetime trying to conceal; blames her lover for all manner of ills both real and imagined, deserts him in the middle of France, and makes for home. On the way, she is picked up by the police for questioning about a murder committed before she did a bunk, the body that she and her lover discovered in the woods during one of their trysts. Terrified that she will be blamed for the murder of the woman attempting to blackmail her over incriminating photographs of Jack and her, Richenda betrays him in order to save her own skin. Yet in doing so, she is wracked with such overwhelming guilt that she loses her mind and is imprisoned behind sanatorium walls. And, in the meantime, her lover, accused of a murder he had not the capability to commit, has lost everything: the future he had planned with her, his past, his friends, his liberty and his livelihood. In the macrocosm of the wider world, the solitude of the village in which they lived has been shattered irrevocably by the elopment and the savage murder. Richenda's husband, Oliver, a cad who cannot bear to be cuckolded, does his best to see that Jack swings for his crime; her niece, Melanie, who has lived with them for years because her silly irresponsible mother is in the habit of decamping with her latest lover, has lost the love and affection of her aunt and all respect for her Uncle Oliver. Gala, crazed with jealousy after seeing Jack and Richenda together, takes to the bottle and shuts herself up in "La Belle Epoque", a virtual recluse; her sweet but weak little nephew, Carson, is obliged to take care of her.
The greatest difficulty in charting such emotional despair is not to descend into it myself, as I *am* my characters for as long as they persist. Must have plenty of Monty Python at the ready.
Thank you to those who have commented: I appreciate your support so very much.

Chameleonic

2010-07-10T14:57:00.006+01:00

I'd like to tell you a little about my greatest achievement: a novel entitled "Chameleonic", a three part saga based loosely on The Divine Comedy. I wanted to examine the hypocrisy endemic in the English class system, particularly post-War: all that jovial 'we're in it together' melted away like snow, yet the outward trappings of camaraderie remained. You know: 'good morning, Mrs Lovell. How's Doris? Oh, good morning, Vicar. Yes, the plans for the church fete are going swimmingly.' And so on, whilst beneath the veneer of capability the ordinary middle-class lady, married to a cleanshaven chap who goes off to his office punctually at 8 each morning, returns at 5 in the expectation that slippers shall be warmed and little Bobby behaving himself, is a seething mass of rage, sexual frustration and despair. The ordinary middle-class lady whose husband is more shocked and disgusted not by the fact that she has had an affair, but that she has had an affair with a mere grocer. A woman who has dedicated her life to hiding her fragile mental state, holding on to her sanity by a thread, looking perpetually into the abyss: a state that her neighbours neither know nor care about, because it Just Isn't Done To Pry.
I set "Chameleonic" in a village on the south coast - deliberately leaving it nameless; I wanted to convey more the sense of the time in which my characters lived, rather than place, in order to make it applicable to all England. There's the usual selection of retired Brigadiers and Majors; also a healthy crop of dilettantes, the most outrageous of whom is Byron Stanton. He's married to Gala, a red-headed shrew with whom he has constant stand-up fights (viz. "As she passed by the self-consciously named “La Belle Époque”, Byron and Gala’s tottering cliff top house, the sound of distant shouting came to her ears. She stopped to listen. Above her somewhere a door burst open. ‘Bring me a kipper, anus!’ Byron bellowed.
‘How dare you call me that?’ screamed Gala from her tower room. Melanie could see the violent conflagration that was her hair from the lane below.
‘It means ‘old woman’, you fat ignoramus,’ Byron shouted.") Byron's favourite pastime is to pretend to be someone else: one day a cavalry officer, the next a Maharajah, the next Napoleon. He has a Dressing Up cupboard full of useful items to aid his metamorphoses: monocles for the Country Squire, sagging cardigans for the American Grandpa, togas for Nero, red braces for the Tycoon. He is also deeply unhappy, wandering Dante-like through the dark wood. As is Gala, poor Gala, who goes through life labouring under the impression that she is unloved; their tragic niece, Bella, who knows that if she is not flamboyant and outrageous no-one would take any notice of her, Bella's abandoned pink-eyed trembling son, Carson...
"Chameleonic" is not all doom and gloom, however. There is redemption, humour, unexpected joy and tenderness; the whole gamut of life. Love, too, that escapes the narrow confines of the society which seeks to bind people irrevocably to unquestioned notions of respectability.
"She watched the movement of his intense dark eyes, he felt her gaze and smiled suddenly; looked from one eye to another, lost in the complexity of colours. The clear, near translucent whites flushed a faint rose like the blushing wilderness sky before dawn. He remembered such dawns in France. When the pale landscape took on endless shades of milk-green with the changing light and lavender shadows slid across crimson rock. Remembered the sable fields streaked with gilt ribbons of gleanings, the bowed heads of sleeping sunflowers. And as the gleaming fire eye of the sun opened in the ivory sky and the deep blue of the heavens sank lie a veil towards the horizon, the sunflowers raised their golden faces expectantly. Encircling the landscape of her sight a black wall, perfect and unbroken. The territory within charted by archipelagos of light and deep green sounds, a map that drew the reader inexorably into the heart of her consciousness, the centre of the wheel. He looked upon her soul and found it glorious."
I can't wait to share "Chameleonic" with the world. Also its sequel, "Panopticon", a work in progress; difficult to write because it requires me to live a vast range of emotions through my characters. I average around 300 words a day. But if something's worth doing, it's worth doing well and taking time over. Far better 300 words of excellent prose than 3000 words of chick lit, for example...

Black Dog Days

2010-07-09T16:15:00.004+01:00

If you ever fall into the slough of despond that I do on occasion, what I call a 'black dog day' when all I want to do is sit by the sea and watch waves cresting endlessly, writing for children is an excellent pick-me-up. What other pastime allows you to break the laws of physics in a variety of creative ways and see the multiverse in a way usually only achievable by ingesting large quantities of LSD? My first children's novel, The Dawn Herald, is set on a bowl-shaped world cupped in the boughs of a universal tree. It is populated by two-headed men, talking Squirrels, Sky Pirates and their crews of Sea Rats, Hares in scarlet jackets which splutter so abysmally when they speak that one must put up an umbrella or risk being drenched, angels, rulers descended from fallen angels and fallen stars, and my two favourite characters of all: Isolde, princess of Gerena and the protector of the great Sky Goddess, and the Karabu:

"The karabu was one of Isolde’s few friends and her partner in crime. A fiery chariot with the heads of a lion, man, ox and eagle at each corner whose upstretched wings formed a shady canopy, it had borne The Almighty Creator from place to place on a very different world in the days of the prophets. However, it had taken a wrong turning in the desert and fallen through an interdimensional door, landing with a crash in the middle of the Palace’s Bee Garden to the astonishment of the King and Queen at the time. At first wildly popular due to its unique appearance and ability to harmonise with itself in song, it had lately been retired by Orochthiel, head angel of the Infinite Library, on the grounds that it was too old-fashioned. The karabu was not enjoying retirement. It refreshed its sixteen heads frequently from a bucket of wine and hiccupped."

After an act of spectacular perfidy by the Regent of Isolde's kingdom, Gerena, Isolde goes on the run with the karabu and thirteen angels. There are battles galore, creatures of darkness, and unexpected allies found in the shape of Mordial-King, Perfectly Round Monarch and Ruler of Territories both Real and Imagined whose country, Yorsin D'Oc, regular gets up and wanders away depending on the weather. I'm beavering away on the sequel, the Shield Bearer. Any advice from those who have successfully placed children's books with agents?

The Trials and Tribulations of the Unpublished Author

2010-07-05T11:35:00.006+01:00

This blog will henceforth be dedicated to my ongoing attempts to get my books published. Political rants, when I feel sufficiently irate (unusual, given that we've got the government I've been praying for for the last five years, even with the LibDems orbiting St David of Cameron) can be found over on http://brackenworld.blogspot.com/. marasunamusings, however, will be a daily (or thrice weekly, depending on how the mood takes me) chronicle of what it is to write - and to be rejected.
Writing is the easy part. Also a necessity. If I am prevented from scribbling down my thoughts, I descend into uncontrollable melancholy/rage. I can't sit and plan out what I'm going to write, as if I were trying to produce a 1st class Tripos essay. It is rather as though I'm watching a film, the salient details of which I must record before they are lost forever. But, at the same time, I am my characters: young and old, male and female, I become them. When I write them, I speak through their lips, descend into the darkest depths of their psyche and out of the abyss; yet, simultaneously, they are entirely distinct from me and the dearest of friends. I know them better than anyone on earth. If one of them dies, I am distraught.
Writing is an endless joy. I refuse to cease until I've used up all my words. But it is a process of immense betrayal also. One uses the interesting parts of friends' and loved ones' characters and discards the rest. Their innermost thoughts, secrets, pain, all becomes grist for the mill, translated by a traitorous pen into a gripping narrative in a world that would otherwise not take interest. One's moral compass is always pointed Due Self-Interest. It also offers a satisfactory vehicle for vengeance. If someone has irritated one for a long period of time, one can immortalise them. Exegi monumentum and all that.
Being published is an entirely different cup of tea. Learning to commodotize oneself is appallingly different, if not morally and philosophically suspect. Picking up the telephone with sweating hands to call an agent in order to see if they're interested in reading one's stuff, only to have them bang it down with a tart 'no', receiving rejections with such lines as 'your work isn't suited to the talents in our agency' (say what??? Anyone who can decipher what on earth that means wins a Prize) or 'this really isn't one for our list', the 'really' heavily underscored, is a tremendous blow to one's amour propre. It is difficult to ascertain whether the agents play Jenga with unread manuscripts and only flick through those which land at their feet, or whose title starts with 'A', or if they are even bothering to take on new works (but haven't bothered to say as much on their websites). Or is it merely a case of not What You Know but Whom You Know?

Who Did You Vote For In The Scramble For No10, Daddy?

2010-05-11T06:49:00.004+01:00

From my customary prone position I am goggling at Nick Clegg's shameless two-timing of the Tory and Labour parties (were one's chap to behave in such a dishonourable fashion, he would be fired via trebuchet into the North Sea posthaste). The Kingmaker, whose Cheshire Cat grin is becoming more pronounced by the day, is bossing around both the parties to get the entirely unwanted constitutional reform he claims the nation 'deserves'. Doesn't he realise that he came last? And that those who voted for the Tories (or for those way back in second place, that vile excrescence on the buttcheek of the nation's politics) Oppose PR? Despise PR? Have absolutely no interest in PR whatsoever?
PR is what Clegg craves, and PR is what we've got. The nation should take its head out of its orifice and have a good hard look at the mess we're in - the backroom meetings, dodgy deals, endless non-statements and fluff news (sorry, Mr The BBC, but 'his car's just pulled up' is neither interesting nor relevant to, well, *anything*), financial markets yoyoing around the stratosphere and absolutely nothing getting done. The election wasn't fought on PR. It was fought on the battleground of providing economic stability. PR guarantees the opposite. Yet nonetheless the Cheshire Cat forges on, touting his wares indiscriminately, in order to drive the final nail through the crumbling coffin of parliamentary politics.
The Tories lost by only 16,000 votes. Not a great deal, it must be said. It is perfectly reasonable for Mr Cameron to form a minority government, were Brown not so despicably dishonourable that he refuses, leach- or squatter-like, to budge from No10, and is offering his resignation on a platter to the LibDems John the Baptist style. To all intents and purposes, the Tories came out on top. Now, the party that the majority of the country voted for faces having to stand in ignominy on the wrong side of the House and to deal with the insanity of a LibLab coalition. I can only hope that should such a dreadful thing come to pass, the lefties will make such a dog's dinner of UK politics that when another election rocks up in six months, they'll be sent into the wilderness for a few decades. Alas that so many jobs, so much industry, and so much more of this blessed England's history would be destroyed in the meantime.

The Balance Of Power

2010-05-07T17:07:00.003+01:00

The plummeting markets have been stayed a little by Cameron's statesmanlike pronouncements on a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. Voting reform shall be a tricky issue, difficult to navigate through; yet Cameron's pledge to make the number of voters per seat equal while retaining the past-the-post system is eminently sensible. Additionally his pledges to do away with the dreaded ID card scourge, not handing over power to the EU and shoring up our defences are extremely attractive. Will Brown make way, though, once the Cons/LibDem alliance has been forged? As John Major delicately pointed out, Brown's behaviour is less than dignified; he reminds one of a child that has spat its biscuit and wants it back. The comparison between he and Cameron is a laughable one. The next twenty-four hours should be very interesting indeed.

Crash and Burn

2010-05-07T12:40:00.005+01:00

Having taken a prolonged leave of absence from blogging due to the tiresome ramblings of a socialist witterer* on each of my posts which filled me with so much ire I nearly shot my Mac, I feel the diabolical catastrophe that was last night's election bloodbath requires some comment. 1). If you voted for BNP or UKIP, you're a tonker. Not only because you're either a far-left extremist who considers Mein Kampf essential holiday reading or because you think for a second the EU will relax its tentacles because Lord Pearson of Rannoch has asked them to nicely, but because you've shored up the Labour vote. By denying seats to the Conservatives (or even the LibDems, at a pinch: despite their Obamania, support for the Euro etc they are at least LIBERAL). 2) If you voted for Labour, you're a tool. The last 13 years have been so insufferably vile, so filled with spin, counterspin, doublespin, backbiting, barefaced lies, financial ruin, Nannyism, snooping, deliberate uncontrolled immigration in the name of 'multiculturalism', 'diversity', 'equality', a monstrous welfare state, surveillance and Ed Balls that only windowlickers and their ilk can possibly find anything good to say about the Labour party. 3) Cameron could have been a lot stronger; he should have taken the gloves off and let his opposite number have it. Gentlemanlike behaviour, though terribly laudable, is not what is required here. Blowing up Brown (in a metaphorical sense, of course) *is*. There is so much that could have been pointed out about the malevolent meglomaniac currently hanging on to the doorframe of No10 and strenuously resisting any attempt to dislodge him - but wasn't. C- for effort.
Rather than sit about and watch the economy tank, I'm off to the pub. I may be some time.

*at least I think he was a socialist. Certainly a witterer. Either way, a pain in the arse.

What Does The EU Mean To YOU?

2009-11-08T11:48:00.008Z

My fellow blogger and political commentator Scunnert has raised an interesting point:

"The UK is, in my opinion, the driving force behind the development of an EU super-max ghetto. They do this as a proxy of the US of A for reasons yet to be revealed."

I have been considering the ever-growing size and scope of the EU for some days now: I've been trying to work out what on earth would cause nations to willingly to relinquish their national sovereignty over their parliaments and systems of government, their legal codes and modes of education in order to create a superstate. Since said superstate is, putatively at least, 'democratic' it does not represent the kind of overwhelming power that Arch-Duke Franz Ferdinand or Hitler or Bismarck held over vast territories. The leaders of nations within the superstates, having been elected in by their peoples, must be shown to be actively doing in harmony with each other something that adds to human betterment - however difficult to qualify said betterment may be. And, indeed, our very own unelected Gordon Brown sees the cessation of hostilities over national and pan-European institutions as refreshing: we can now meet a new dawn etc etc as friends and so on. They *must* therefore have a cumulative agenda. Of what are they afraid?

I think the answer is deceptively simple: the fear of the resurgence of Communism. Why else force umpteen millions of people to live under systems of government which are so socialist as to hover on the border of Marx's Utopian dream if not to demonstrate that there is no real need to return to Communism? Why offer everything the Communist state held dear - socialized medicine, subsidised housing, free education, re-education if you didn't toe the party line - with the added benefit of endless bottles of Coca Cola and Levi jeans? Why spend so many billions on shoring up Eastern European nations if not as a bulwark against Russia and, farther afield, China? And why collaborate so closely with the US whose vested interests are often markedly different from ours/Europe's? Could America's sudden extreme beadiness regarding Europe be due to the fear of Reds under the bed?

Dead Democracy

2009-11-04T07:18:00.008Z

“Today is a day when Europe looks forward, when it sets aside years of debate on its institutions, and moves to take strong and collective action on the issues that matter most to European citizens: security, climate change, jobs and growth.”

I don't know with which Europeans Gordon Brown has been hobnobbing, but they certainly aren't English. Had he ever consulted us on this 'historic' signing, he would have heard very different accounts of what these 'European' citizens are worried about: immigration, bank bailouts to the tune of £4,000+ each (foetuses included), cheating MPs and the loss of even the meagre sovereignty that to these 646 MPs Lisbon represents.

The truth is - as even Brown the spurious historian would have to concede, were he not so far up his own backside as to render truth redundant - that Britain and Europe have never really been the best of friends. That 21 mile wide strip of water separating us from France may as well have been a 1000 mile gulf. We don't share language, national concerns, temperament or character; we've been proud to be insular, 'this sceptred isle', until Labour came along and told us that we should be ashamed of everything we've ever done. Ever. Our humour, stoicism, ability to keep down ten pints of strong ale and love of monarchy - at times when Europe burned in the fires of republican revolutions - set us apart. But this isn't an apologetic for Euro-scepticism. It isn't even a rant about Brown achieving his socialist world view in which everyone marches to the same tune - or else. I'm genuinely worried about what will happen next. It seems that Merkel et al are so intent on making the EU a 'global player' - whatever that means - that they have forgotten entirely about the millions of people they have crushed together. The mere concept that Tony Blair, a man with the blood of millions on his hands, thinks that he's a good candidate to run the European show should have sent alarm bells ringing around Brussels months ago.

As it is, from this day forth our votes will mean little or nothing. Our legal system - upon which 60% of the world's legal systems are based and arguably the most successful - has been shelved in favour of its antithesis, the Napoleonic code. Our politicians' strings will be further jerked by the unelected shadowy figures somewhere on the Continent. Personal privacy will become even more of a laughable idea as Europe openly rolls out its 'security' taskforces and shares our 'data' with all and sundry. Though contemporary English democracy has only become a concrete idea since WWI in which national institutions turned things like private property rights, limited taxation and privacy upside down, its proponents eighty or ninety years ago believed in and fought bitterly for personal and national sovereignty. I await with bated breath Cameron's re-thought-out plans for Europe, due later today. If ever there were an eleventh hour crisis, this is it.

Whatever happened to...

2009-08-15T10:38:00.005+01:00

After taking a very long break from commenting acerbically upon the posturing of thıose deluded enough to believe that they have sufficient nous to make a 'contribution' to British society, due to continuing ill health, I awoke this morning wondering what in the hell has happened to Ian Tomlinson. Expenses scams and spurious swine flu epidemics (the Govt's stocks of Tamiflu have reached their 'use by' date, dontcha know: what better way to erode otherwise useless stocks and make Big Pharma richer than claiming a pandemic is sweeping the globe??) have swept the sinister - and in Tomlinson's case, deadly - events of the G8 under the carpet. Has Tomlinson's killer(s) been accused, tried, reprimanded, sentenced? Or none of the above? We need answers; we need them now.
Incidentally, much of what the smiling politicians *actually* got up to at the G8 has also been swept neatly under the rug. I refer in particular to the Roma-Lyon Group which, in its fight against organised crime, is tasked with 'identify(ıng) and promot(ing) best practices for expanding biometric identity management practices for travellers and improving security in all modes of transportation'. (See http://www.statewatch.org/news/2009/jul/g8-counterterrorism-2009.pdf). Needless to say, the group is neither elected nor accountable nor subject to any scrutiny - unlike us. It seems that the onus of democracy falls on we the people, and the freedom of tyranny upon they the leaders.

Iraq War Myth No.2

2009-05-11T22:41:00.009+01:00

"The second Gulf war of 2003 followed the first Gulf war of 1991 which resulted directly from Iraq's invasion of Kuwait..."*

Indeed, the second Gulf war of 2003 followed the first Gulf war of 1990-1991 just as 1 p.m. follows midday, or age follows beauty; there was no basis whatsoever for the two events to have been linked (No Kuwait; No Kurds; No Tanks) had not the US administration, bloated with colonial bravado, decided to find some pretext upon which to wage war against a nation stripped down by 12 years of crippling sanctions, bombings and the first Gulf war. "Toppling Saddam remains the unfinished business of the first Bush administration. His defiant hold on power infuriates the Bushies", noted the Guardian in 2001. But this jingoistic claim does not reflect the whole story; that there was an ever-growing, authentic and powerfully persuasive grass-roots resistance to Saddam Hussein's authority that could genuinely have challenged both it and US attempts to open Iraq to Western markets. This resistance continues today, though it is amalgamated with the brutal partisan attempts to gain control over areas of destabilised Iraq: to those who wanted to finish what Bush No. 1 started, such resistance was a red rag to a bull.

If Saddam Hussein wanted to create and use chemical weapons in a war against the West, he would have found the pretext to do so as a response to the hellish sanctions imposed on his increasingly desperate population. In 1998, Denis Halliday, the UN Assistant Secretary-General, resigned after 34 years with the UN, "declaring the US and British sanctions regime imposed on Iraq 'genocidal'. Halliday, who ran the UN's 'oil for food' programme in Iraq, continues to openly place blame for the excess deaths of 600,000 Iraqi children under five, as reported by the United Nations Children's Fund, squarely on the shoulders of the US and British governments. In February 2000, Halliday's successor as UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq, Hans von Sponeck, also resigned after 30 years with the UN, asking,

'How long should the civilian population of Iraq be exposed to such punishment for something they have never done?'I've been using the word genocide, because this is a deliberate policy to destroy the people of Iraq. I'm afraid I have no other view at this late stage.'

In 1993 Madeleine Albright, head of the same group responsible for 'educating' Iraqis about democracy and orchestrating US-sympathetic campaigns prior to the 2005 election said, in response to the question "I have heard that a half a million children have died [because of sanctions against Iraq]. I mean that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And - you know, is the price worth it?"

Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is worth it."

These sanctions had been imposed after George Dubya Senior played a game of cat-and-mouse with Iraq following the 1990-1991 bust-up between Iraq and the UK, USA and Saudi Arabia (tho' forces from 31 other countries were involved); a bust-up which bore absolutely no relation to the second Gulf War which began some 12 years later. And no weapons were found.

However, the news of the time would have it otherwise: every newspaper's leaders on Iraq - not to mention their editorials - gave a detailed play-by-play of the emotions and opinions of those entrenched in Afghanistan or observing the conflict from a soi-distant armchair. Forget logic: Condi Rice, and Donald Rumsfeldt (the supreme architect of disaster capitalism who was already rebuilding Iraq before it had been decimated), and unnamed sources in the Pentagon, were all commenting knowledgeably upon the motivations of the Bush team. The general consensus seemed to be that Dubya Jnr insisted on finishing what Daddy had started, regardless of lack of provocation.

Had Bush Snr et al been in office in 1998 and able to chase after Saddam Hussein in the exhaustive way in which today's US administration has systematically obliterated Iraq, he would have been able to cite a breach of UN sanctions; Iraqi officials prevented US inspectors from inspecting suspected weapons sites. Even then, UNSCOM inspector Scott Ritter says, "as of December 1998 we had no evidence Iraq had retained biological weapons, nor that they were working on any. In fact, we had a lot of evidence to suggest Iraq was in compliance." By 2001, over 95% of the weaponry - that which posed a real, tangible and immediate threat - was gone. Ritter changed his 1998 perspective, stating that the threat from Iraq was 'zero'. Zero. That doesn't present the merest possibility of viable chemical or biological weapons capable of causing localised or global terror being found or fabricated in Iraq. It means that the empty mustard gas shells found in a warehouse were the sum total of Iraq's supposedly devastating cache of WMDs. But as Ritter, who was so conveniently swept out of the limelight after a police sting operation in 2003, put it so eloquently:

The United States needed to find a vehicle to continue to contain Saddam because the CIA said all we have to do is wait six months and Saddam is going to collapse on his own volition. That vehicle is sanctions. They needed a justification; the justification was disarmament. They drafted a Chapter 7 resolution of the United Nations Security Council calling for the disarmament of Iraq and saying in Paragraph 14 that if Iraq complies, sanctions will be lifted. Within months of this resolution being passed--and the United States drafted and voted in favor of this resolution--within months, the President, George Herbert Walker Bush, and his Secretary of State, James Baker, are saying publicly, not privately, publicly that even if Iraq complies with its obligation to disarm, economic sanctions will be maintained until which time Saddam Hussein is removed from power.

That is proof positive that disarmament was only useful insofar as it contained through the maintenance of sanctions and facilitated regime change. It was never about disarmament, it was never about getting rid of weapons of mass destruction. It started with George Herbert Walker Bush, and it was a policy continued through eight years of the Clinton presidency, and then brought us to this current disastrous course of action under the current Bush Administration." (Pitt, William R. War On Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know)

To the West, Saddam Hussein had become an untenable nuisance: unstable, yet resistant to outside attempts to squeeze him out of power. Based upon his psychological profile, it is likely that had he had chemical weapons, he would have used them as retribution for the sufferings of Iraq in such a way as to precipitate a large-scale confrontation. In fact, Hussein's Iraq was in the same state of dire and worsening economic poverty that prompted him to invade Kuwait in the 1990s. But Hussein did not precipitate a confrontation. His country was already in a perilous state of decay; he had virtually no friends or allies, and had not forged the kinds of links with Iran that would have created a powerful United Eastern Islamic state. He followed to the letter 'those who would prepare for war, seek war': he had not prepared for it, nor had he sought it.

*An indepth discussion of WMDs, including UNSCOM, the ISC and Rockingham's role, to follow.

Iraq War Myths No. 1

2009-05-10T13:40:00.011+01:00

"Millions of Iraqis risked death to elect their government. Their government therefore has a greater legitimacy than almost any other government in the world!"

At the time of the first 'democratic' elections in Iraq, America had already lost 1100 troops and spent $2oo billion on waging war. In the light of such gross expenditure of lives and money (the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died not having been factored into this analysis, of course: they were merely 'collateral damage') it is unlikely that said occupying force, having overtly and exaggeratedly stated that its real intent in invading and occupying Iraq was to install 'democracy', would permit the population to vote for that which had always passed previously as government. The very obvious fact that a nation under US occupation* is by very nature undemocratic and therefore cannot be considered capable of holding free and unbiased elections and the Blairite propagandist message that the Iraqi people could only choose between 'democracy and terror' aside, one must question just how many were able to participate in the Iraq elections. The refugees bombed out of their homes? The street children? Those held under vague or no pretext in Allied jails?

Given the extraordinary state of daily upheaval in a country that had been systematically obliterated, it is hard to see how many Iraqis could bear witness to the message that the New U-Turning US President, one who condemned the war from outside office and supported it in it, spieled out:

"We kept our troops in Iraq to help establish a sovereign government - and you got the job done. And we will leave the Iraqi people with a hard-earned opportunity to live a better life - that is your achievement; that is the prospect that you have made possible."

We kept our troops in Iraq to help establish a sovereign government: does that sound like democracy to you? Democracy at the end of a bayonet? Or that sovereignty might be established by external forces? In a country which now doesn't even possess basic sanitation? But it gets worse. Before the first Iraqi elections in 2005, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and the International Republican Institute were given over $80 million to orchestrate political and electoral activities in Iraq. Two of the major players: Madeleine Albright and John McCain. These 'extensions' of the State Department, claimed Prof. William Robinson of the Global and International Studies Programme at the University of California,

"are trying to select individual leaders and organisations that are going to be very amenable to the US transnational project for Iraq... pacifying the country militarily and legitimating the occupation and the formal electoral system...[will ensure that Iraq will be controlled by] economic, political and civic groups that are going to be favourable to Iraq's integration into the global capitalist economy".

Within Iraq, independent news ceased. Al-Jazeera was shut down for the duration of the elections, and newspapers critical to US endeavours were stifled. Any hint that the population protested against the continuing occupation and wished to reinstate the Baath leadership was banned by the US Proconsul, Paul Bremer. Those who did seek to report the news as it was actually happening were threatened by the army, police and insurgent forces: 'we're unable to get access to anybody. We're frightened', said a Baghdad journalist. Cramped in on three sides, what was the response by those Iraqis who sought to challenge a unilaterally US subsidised news force and an interim PM who had formerly been a CIA asset? The truth is that we don't know; there was absolutely no canvassing, panelling or analysis of media freedom or the people's response to it in the six months leading up to the elections, yet British and American newspapers, who incidentally made no mention of either the NDI/IRI involvement or the blanket ban on critical media resolutely reported that the elections were 'democratic' and 'free'. Attention now turned to the 'brave' Iraqis and the 'rebel insurgents' who apparently threatened their ability to vote:

"American and Iraqi officials have warned that rebels determined to expel foreign forces could step up attacks before Iraq's first free election in decades." (Sunday Express, Dec. 19, 2004) This just before another 1000 troops were shipped into Iraq: could there be a better pretext? Or a less legitimate 'free' election?

Unanimously, across the so-called political spectrum, all other newspapers extolled how 'we went to Iraq to make it free'; the point was no longer whether the war and occupation was legitimate or not, but that a 'democratic' election would hasten the USUKA exit strategy formulation. Leaving Iraq suddenly became the cross-party unifier. Even Menzies-Campbell regurgitated the Blair line: "Failure to hold elections on January 30 would be seen as a major triumph for the insurgence... But if these elections are to be credible they must cover the whole country and the whole population. No one should minimise the difficulty of carrying this through." Of course, the 'exit strategy' is pure fabrication: the UKUSA are tied up in Iraq for at least 30 years, having built and continuing to build military bases and outposts; and the multinationals also have moved in and laid claim to Iraq's oil supply for the next forty years too. Should Iraq become too bolshy in the near or even distant future and elect a leadership of which the West disapproves, the military will be there to make sure that the 'Arab facade' toes the line. Given that the country, having been demolished, is already divided by insurgent factions trying to lay claim the biggest piece of the pie, it is likely that Iraq will continue to dominate our headlines for the next ten years; but those who are most affected by sectarian violence, the 'ordinary' Iraqis, will continue to suffer unnoticed.

In the most recent Iraqi elections, voters had to pass through security checks. The President Nour al-Maliki hoped to build a successful election strategy on promising electricity and sewerage processing: civic amenities we take for granted, and which Iraqis took for granted before America bombed their processing plants to smithereens. According to a Baghdad journalist, "Saddam is viewed by most [Arabs] as a heroic and impeccable figure and they believe and understand that everything that has happened in Iraq ever since his oust[ing] has been catastrophic." The US model of democracy hasn't trickled down very far, then. In fact, according to the latest intelligence on the Enduring America wire, al-Maliki's party is prepared to enter into a coalition with the outspoken Allies-hating Moqtada al-Sadr in order to establish an Islamic state - which, if al-Sadr's past rhetoric is anything to go by, will almost certainly mimic Mahmoud Ahmedenijad's Iranian state paradigm. The UKUSA method of 'making an omelette by breaking eggs' doesn't work when it comes to making democracy by breaking the backs of nations, it seems.

Finally, the opinions of Iraq ex-patriots, rarely sought, are illuminating. In 2005 less than 1 in 10 registered to vote which, according to Abu Khaleel, is remarkable: "Anybody who knows even a few Iraqis is aware how passionate they generally are regarding politics. Furthermore, most of these people have had their lives severely disrupted by politics and tyranny. It cannot be that they don't care how Iraq is governed...why didn't they register to vote? Aren't they interested in democracy and elections?

The answer is simple: They are against "these" elections."

*To be discussed in a later post

Doublespeak

2009-05-09T09:14:00.007+01:00

Humanity has a lot to be proud of. It's produced what we would justly call wonders: the Pyramids, the sadly-eroded Colossus, the Great Wall. It's also given us Mozart, and Avicenna, and Aristotle and, rather dubiously, Philip Roth and Bob Hope. It has a lot to be ashamed of on a large and a small scale: petty cruelties conflated into colonialism, science exploited and abused to dehumanise other cultures.
We know that things don't change - not really; there is very little new under the sun. The young have to reinvent everything anew; otherwise life would be unbearable. One of the great problems with living in a trash culture is that we're exposed constantly to the feeble thoughts of actresses and singers as if they were original truths; and, of course, the vapid-minded drink from the dregs of this non-knowledge and use it to affirm their existences. Those of us who are impatient with such moronic witterings look more closely at life; we scrutinise its history, its meaning, its purpose, the etymology of the word 'life' itself, and try to work out a way in which we can exist authentically, acknowledging the other without being turned into the Other.
Our task is made all the more difficult by the floods of disinformation and doublespeak that pour like a poison stream from the mouths of our politicians and their ever-churning propaganda machines. It will be a wonder indeed if we will ever be able to look upon life and see truth in it again. And the one responsible, who is now lurking behind his cloak of new-found piety, is being paid millions every year to get away with spewing forth more doublespeak, perpetuating the lies that have led to the deaths of around two million people. That's more than the number murdered in Rwanda, under the Khmer Rouge, in the Korean War, during the Troubles in Northern Island, US casualties in Vietnam, the Twin Towers and under Idi Amin. The man? Tony Blair. The war? Iraq.
Iraq's no longer a country. Even before the UKUSA found a shoddy pretext to go to war, Rumsfeldt and other disaster merchants were batting around ideas for its reconstruction. Blair stood up in Parliament without compunction and, hand on heart, lied. He claimed that everything that was good and pure and just in the world was at stake. He played shamelessly on people's moral convictions. Knowing full well that there was no justification for the claim that Saddam Hussein, once the West's Golden Boy, had WMDs, he added one fiction to another, Ossa atop Pelion, and built a fraudulent case against the dictator. And, having chummed up with the States, chased the UN inspectors out to unleash Operation Firefox and then lying further, claiming that Saddam Hussein had chased those inspectors out, he systematically set out to obliterate Iraq.
There is nothing left there: it was blown to smithereens, razed to the ground, turned to dust. One of the most ancient civilisations on earth is now a stinking cesspit filled with terrified, bewildered citizens and angry fundamentalist aggressors for whom the idea of the best healthcare and education the Middle East had to offer is a distant memory. Hospitals, schools, mosques, museums: gone. The only ones living in any semblance of luxury are those on military bases or occupying the plush Western-style condos that sprang up overnight. The antiquities have been looted or destroyed. The roads are full of holes; electricity is sporadic; AIDS is drastically on the rise, food is scarce, children are homeless. In fact, half of those dead are children. But they're not children to the self-acclaimed Saviour of the Middle East: they're collateral damage. It's 'regrettable'. I think he may have offered his sympathy at some point. Too late: they're dead.
If a child goes missing in this country, it's 24/7 news. The search for little Madeleine McCann goes on. But how many children have gone missing in Iraq? And who cares? What is to happen to this lost generation, the survivors of a grossly unjust and unnecessary war?
Way back when, we marched against the war. We lost. But that does not mean we give up the fight now. We cannot let journalists claim that Blair believed there were WMDs. It's nonsense; a fabrication. And it implies that because a politician believes something, it must be right. That's a very subjective and dangerous fantasy to be playing with. We can't allow our media to report the war through such a distorted lens. Again, playing with the truth and using such highly subjective terms - Iran is 'hostile' and a 'troublemaker' but America is 'committed to democracy' - is very dangerous. Iran is a 'troublemaker', yet America, which has illegally invaded two nations, is 'democratic'? What a leap in logic! Such bias breeds hostility and contention. Years later, many more will die because of the errors of today, of now.
By all rights, Blair should be on trial for war crimes. He is a mass murderer; a class A charlatan with Messianic delusions and a moral compass that points straight to Ego. He is a despicable phoney, a liar and a thief: he has stolen an entire country's history, its future, its resources and its lives. He does not deserve to enjoy freedom; were he tried at Nuremberg he would have been hanged. Instead, he is wafting around and dispensing advice on 'peace'. And he goes unchallenged, save by us. The media may be in a straitjacket of doublespeak, but we are not. If there is to be any honesty, let it be in politics, let us be saying it, and let it be now.

Happiness is a Warm Gun

2009-05-03T16:10:00.004+01:00

I've just returned from Addenbrooke's Hospital, where I spent 4 hours in A&E waiting to see if I'd broken my ankle. Finally, having had a huge walking boot fitted by a breathtakingly handsome and genuinely nice young Gilbert Blythe-ish doctor (of course, I was looking like hell: spectacles, hoodie and jogging bottoms, smeared mascara. Add a dowager's hump, stick a tent over me and charge admission), I lurched out past a little family: two responsible parents, and a angelically pretty little girl who'd just been bought a teddy bear from the hospital giftshop. She was chattering away to parents who were clearly interested in what she had to say. She won't be needing the happiness lessons proposed by the notorious Jim Rose, then.

I googled Jim Rose; the first two entries were for circuses, which seems quite appropriate as the man relentlessly proposes clownish embellishments to our already beleaguered, over-cosseted, under-educated little guinea pigs who have suffered under successive burdens of 'progressive' teaching methods to the extent that they're going to grow up lazy, incurious and unemployable. Now, along with all the other bits of social engineering rubbish (because they don't want anyone to start forming exclusive groups by themselves: that's hierarchical and classist and non-Utopian) children have got to learn to analyse their emotions and develop happiness strategies. Which will have the effect of creating huge amounts of business for psychiatrists, but will damage children irreparably.

You can't teach unformed minds how to develop coping strategies for things they haven't experienced. You can't quantify happiness. And it's very difficult to qualify it. To do so is to orchestrate someone's existence for them, because you're telling them what should or even must make them happy. And to self-examine complex emotions behind feelings is a skill most adults don't even have, one which is still being developed because psychology is not a finite subject: different models are constantly being proposed, and the practise of it is ever-evolving. I find the suggestion that the State can dictate what passes for 'joy' - in their grey, dull, Health & Safety orientated, homogenized world - sinister in the extreme. In fact, I'd go as far to say that it's a recipe for disaster, a reason to contemplate ending one's existence. Because you see, if they get hold of the children's minds, then the kind of world we grow old in is going to be a very terrifying one, one in which everything is done 'for our own good', but no-one can remember what 'good' entails.

Swine Flu: The Great Pharma-Con

2009-04-30T11:15:00.004+01:00

We're due a jolly bad flu pandemic, oh yes. It's been 50 years since the last one. Whether the H1N1 will indeed sweep the globe, mutating as it goes, and taking out vast swathes of the population remains to be seen; at present, its worst efforts seem to be confined to poor, beleaguered Mexico which has always been spectacularly unlucky when it comes to virii. Over the centuries, it's been near wiped out again and again by typhoid, smallpox, cholera, measles, and the clap. Add to that a near-non-existent health service and insufficient sanitation, and they're on a hiding to nowhere.
On this side of the Pond, however, we could do a LOT better. And the first thing to do is not to give the public an etiquette lesson in the form of 30 million leaflets telling us we're less likely to spread disease if we cover our mouths when we sneeze or buy up millions of useless facemasks, but to be honest about one of the biggest corporation cons of the past 5 years. Tamiflu.
Tamiflu doesn't work on H1N1. Over the past 10 years H1N1 has developed near-absolute resistance to Tamiflu. This resistance isn't confined to North America, as one virologist speculated hopefully a few years ago: it's Europe-wide as well. Despite clear evidence and even clearer articles by those in the know that have been floating around for the past year, the maker of Tamiflu, dear old Roche, on whose board the maestro of disaster capitalism Donald Rumsfeld sits, is using the Mexican outbreaks as ad opportunities and are continuing to peddle the redundant drugs even as I type.
Only Relenza and/or the 'flu jab have been demonstrated to work against this particular strain; the government in assuring us that we're well-prepared to withstand an epidemic is playing a very, very dangerous game with our lives. It is deliberately deceiving the public. We have NO way of knowing whether Tamiflu can have the slightest effect on a mutating H1N1 virus; stating therefore that we're 'safe' is barbaric.This goes even beyond the scope of illegal wars or heavy surveillance 'for our own good'; they're playing Russian roulette with our existence, and in this game no-one can win.

The Peasants' Revolt 2009

2009-04-24T07:38:00.006+01:00

After reciting the winning formula 'this is a global recession' for over half an hour so that everyone would get the point, Darling announced the unbelievably petty, spiteful and manifesto-breaking pledge to tax the modestly well-off a phenomenal 50%, the highest rate of income tax in the developed world. And when I say 'modest', I mean modest. £150,000 by today's standards, especially given the prohibitive cost of living, is not a lot. It is not in any way comparable with JK Rowling or Rupert Murdoch's yearly take-home. Of course, they have teams of accountants ensuring that they get the best bang out of their buck; the average GP, however, has to suck up whatever the government has spewed.

The 'I don't have it so why should they?' crew are naturally delighted. NuLab has its finger right on the pulse of vindictive jealousy that riddles society like a cancer. The answer is simple: if you can do those jobs, you deserve the pay. I'm not talking about the dead-wood bureaucrats who have made the NHS a hell on earth to run, or the non-entities who work in 'diversity' or 'alcohol awareness', but the doctors who've worked incredibly hard to get a consultancy position or the lawyer who's finally commanding a decent salary after inserting two thousand years of legal theory into their cranium. If we are diagnosed with cancer, we want to go to a specialist who has a proven track record; if our spouse or business partner attempts to rook us for our life savings, we need a lawyer/barrister who can win the case. To do these jobs well requires a sterling intellect and a lot of experience. It should be rewarded.

But it is not only these professions that are being penalised; it is anyone with talent. Entrepreneurs start small, usually from a home office, and work their way up gradually. Why should their reward be a 50% tax bill? If they earn over £100k in a year anyway their current tax bill is 43 times higher than that of the lowest income bracket. What a reward! Productivity is seen as something shameful, sinful; and all this money goes to paying off NuLab's debt mountain. There's the little matter of debt interest amounting to 50 billion - more than the annual schools budget. And, of course, we mustn't forget the Client State.

I wonder when it became de rigeur for the State to make the rich be responsible for the poor. This latest tax hike states, without a doubt, that anyone who's modestly affluent is compelled - morally or otherwise - to pay for others not to work, to act as a parent to shirkers, to prop up all the ne'er-do-wells. Because somehow it's the 'right' thing for the rich to pay more tax. Rather than freely giving to charity out of altruism - and those in the new 50% bracket have already stated that their charitable donations will dry up in future - they're forced to pay through the nose for those who don't deserve charity.

Taxation - or money with menaces - is only ever successful when there is little or none of it. Lichtenstein has one of the most successful economies in the world with the happiest people and lowest level of STDs, drug and alcohol abuse, and depression. Their taxation rate is also the lowest in Europe. At present, I'm trying to get a novel published. Were it to do well, I wouldn't see the results: I'd be too busy paying for NuLab's excesses, its illegal wars and sex changes on demand on the NHS, its DNA databases and thinktanks designed to erase my freedom. (A good reason to emigrate.) I think we should resuscitate clause 61 of the Magna Carta: since the Philosopher Kings won't listen to reason, it's time for the peasants to revolt.

Demoralisation: The True Cost of Poverty

2009-04-19T13:20:00.006+01:00

Frank Field's often represented as a sterling chap, one who has a bit of integrity, dontcha know and who, in following Blair's orders to 'think the unthinkable', addressed seriously the huge problem we have with welfare in this country. Blair's policy - and Field's response to it - is as stupid and misguided as any policy can be: you can't cure poverty by cutting off people's money. You can't 'cure' poverty full-stop. But you can alleviate it to a certain extent by fostering independence, which is precisely the opposite of NuLab's ambitions to control everyone and everything in every place at every time.

Firstly, it's important to realise that there's such a thing as the 'deserving poor', those who because of poor education, lack of training and the removal of, say, a manufacturing base (or pre-WWII a servant 'place') can't get jobs. They become demoralised through lack of prospects; the more depressed they get, the less likely they are to work - were there the jobs available in the first place, which there often aren't. The following 'big ideas' could provide opportunities for a proportion of the artisan classes to return or get into work:

1) ensuring that locals get first dibs at a job; ensuring that local jobs aren't passed out to immigrants because natives think they're too 'good' for it by removing benefits; providing on-the-job training for new starters rather than demanding experience that it would be impossible for them to obtain;

2) cutting overseas aid to India and China. In effect, we're handing them a hefty percentage of our GDP on a platter. A massive proportion of our manufacturing industry has been relocated to these countries, thus taking jobs away from Britain. Our miners and steel workers and ship builders are a fast-vanishing breed. Paying Indian and Chinese manufacturers to do the work we should be doing at home is an insult to our workforce;

3) offer substantially better business taxation rates to locate factories/manufacturing bases in the UK rather than overseas. Running a nation as a service economy is a hiding to nothing for, when the overseas manufacturing bases go bottom up, there's nothing left for us to provide a service for.

The 'deserving poor' get a pretty bad time of it. They've been badly educated in large classes which can't take the time to teach them properly and exposed to all kinds of experimental teaching methods. Small wonder that 25% of the population can't even write its own name. Many can't apply for jobs because they don't have any educational qualifications or the ones they do have aren't good enough. We need to buck up the education system seriously so that the vast majority of children are taught the 3Rs and little else until they've mastered them.

The amount on which the 'deserving poor' is supposed to live is scandalous. Beneath contempt. One simply cannot make ends meet on £60 a week. There is almost nothing one can do on £60 a week. Being given this little when one has no prospects of anything better fosters huge dependency and depression. A system of food stamps that would provide enough nutrients for a family would be a good start: if you have enough to eat (which most benefit claimants and the elderly alike don't, or have to live on the cheapest ready meals so impregnated with E numbers it's surprising they don't glow in the dark) you're a little less desperate. Soap and clothing ditto. Looking and feeling clean and presentable automatically changes you in the eyes of the world. If you smell of poverty and appear full of despair you become invisible. Society turns its back. You might as well not exist.

The poor will always be with us. There will always be those who are intellectually subnormal or retarded in some way. In the 'old' days, monasteries or parishes used to take them in and give them little jobs to do. Now they're put in over-priced facilities or into prisons after committing crimes. There will always be the undeserving poor: those who don't want to work; those who would rather turn to thieving, drug-running and scams. They've existed throughout history. What we don't want is for the deserving to turn into the undeserving poor because 'society' doesn't care if they're alive or dead: that they're damned if they try and damned if they don't.

These are the people who have been beaten through circumstance, poor aspirations, lack of opportunity, abysmal education, wretched housing, disjointed and fragmented upbringing and a Nanny State that doesn't care. To deal with our Welfare crisis, we need to deal with people, rather than statistics or stereotypes: because at present we've got an awful lot of people who have the potential to be very useful to themselves, society and the economy, but are all being treated and called 'scum'. We need to create the kind of Britain which permits free industry on home ground employing local people.

Self-sacrifice: Labour's Immigration Experiment

2009-04-18T12:42:00.020+01:00

The government cleverly has managed over the past twelve years to make it so that there's no difference between state and society. I'd call that 'totalitarianism': they call it 'political correctness'. The price for going against their policies and diktats on immigration is to be shunned or arrested. In fact, the government moved pretty cannily on the Damien Green affair: they weighed up the risks and decided that to invite the outrage of the public by invading Parliament was less important than drawing attention to the content of the leaked documents.

Immigration on the vast scale encouraged by Labour has been an absolute nightmare. And it's not just a nightmare burden on health, education, housing, language, policing and resource services but on something fundamentally deeper, something one can even call 'primal'.

Blair et al have tried to sell globalisation as a 'good' thing. They claim that we can all 'learn' from each other and increase prosperity tenfold. The recent and ongoing financial crisis put paid to that lie, as has the rise of rabid extremism across our newly flat earth. Extremism is a knee-jerk response to flat-earthism, collectivism, corporate exploitation, illegal wars and corrupt, uncaring governments: it's a return to our origins. It's a return to the tribal instincts on which society were founded since humankind first conceived of 'I' and 'you' some 47,000 years ago.
The quickest illustration of how a society is formed is observing the way in which street gangs (and/or neofascist organisations) behave. Two or more individuals battle it out. Hangers-on from either side and fence-sitters support one or the other, deciding where their loyalties should lie. The clear winner develops a hierarchy in which brute physical strength, cunning, organisation and intellectual dexterity are prized; those who don't possess any of these skills become the faithful servants (or patsies). All pledge loyalty to the leader, respect to those high up in the ranks (to whose position they aspire), and would-be members are required to go through a rite of passage in order to 'belong'. Belonging is prized above all things; allegiance to the pack is something to fight for - to the death, if needs be. To gain supremacy, pitched battles are fought over turf between rival tribes. Tribes, nations, nation-states, religions: all have been formed in this way. Each tribe has some identifying series of marks or qualities that make them unique. They may come from the same place, speak in the same way, have the same appearance, follow the same belief system: whatever it may be, it is something that is peculiarly theirs. And, if there is an influx of outsiders into a particular area, they will stress their unity through stressing the importance of these symbols of nationhood and culture.

Because, you see, people aren't meant to be 'equal'. Evolution doesn't permit 'equality'. 'Equality' only exists in mathematics. Everyone's a supremacist at heart. I'm a white supremacist who believes in Chinese, and Native American, and Irish, and Angolan, and Indian, and Hawaiian, and Australian, and Malaysian supremacy. I think everyone's race is supreme, my own in particular, and I don't particularly want to trade it in for another's. And if you go around the global table you'll find most people think the same way: they're proud of their origins, proud of their country and think that they come from the best of all worlds. Attempts to make us a 'global family' speaking the 'same language' fail. Look at Esperanto - if you can even remember it.

Karl Popper wrote that a communist leadership likes to quickly, even lethally, turn absolutely every social institution upside down and inside out and remake it anew, reasoning that the pain that individuals feel is necessary in order to make a 'better' world: exactly what Blair did to make Britain 'his' through an utterly devious form of manipulative psychology. Beria would have been proud. Opening the floodgates to a seemingly endless deluge of outsiders - when historically we'd be gearing ourselves up for a good scrap with these invaders - and making them the honoured guests at our own expense has entirely disempowered anything that smacks of pre-NuLab Britain, anything associated with being British (or English, or Welsh, or Scottish, or Northern Irish). Our habits, our quirks, our beliefs, our temperaments, our mores, our doubts have been erased by instilling in people the feeling that they're not 'being good citizens'. We live in a culture of appeasement. And we know what happens when policies of appeasement are followed: 1939-1945.

Immigrants tend to be bewildered when they enter a new country: the way they behave afterwards is dependent entirely on governmental policy. And one of the greatest crimes NuLab's committed against 'Great' Britain is refusing to insist that immigrants speak the language. Thus foreign is good, British is bad: and, if you show any kind of patriotism or voice your discontent with the fact that your council tax is being spent on translating documents into 50+ different languages, you're labelled as a BNP supporter. An awful lot of politicians have been 'warning' about an increase in BNP support. Harriet Harman's one of these. She's someone who doesn't deserve to be listened to not because she's a hypocrite, but because she treats the general public like a 'mob' who will hang, to order, governmental scapegoats.
What creatures like Harman should have been 'warning' about is the effect of inserting millions of 3rd world inhabitants into a 1st world nation. Tribalism and hypertechnology, Eden and the Enlightenment are clashing furiously on every front; it is the battle of the alpha and omega, beginning and end (as Fukayama would have it) of history. The more the juggernaut of Fortress Europe rolls on dragging 'diversity' and 'global' policies with it, the greater the state of crisis we face. Man is an evolutionary creature of highs and lows striving ever-upwards, not for equality-driven flatlines. We live in the only country in the world that tries to make its 'native' people ashamed of their existence. If we do not act swiftly, we will be witness to a deadly struggle for supremacy between 'native' and 'immigrant', one that will destroy the tissue of our society and drag our country down for centuries.

Murdered: Ian Tomlinson Died of Abdominal Injuries

2009-04-17T17:17:00.005+01:00

It has been confirmed that Ian Tomlinson, the man at first accused of being a G20 anarchist who recklessly taunted police, who was attacked from behind by a member of the riot squad who covered up his identifying badge before beating this passer-by whose hands were in his pockets, died not of a heart attack but of abdominal injuries.

This means clearly and unequivocally that he was beaten with such severity that he died of his wounds.

Ian Tomlinson was murdered by a member of the police. That individual, who is being questioned on suspicion of manslaughter, should be charged with murder. The evidence is unambiguous.

If Ian Tomlinson is treated with the same level of disrespect and lack of concern that Jean Charles de Menezes and his grieving family have been, another innocent man will have died at the hands of the police, on the orders of their superiors to use all 'due force' when dealing with so-called 'national security' incidents. It is a matter of absolute urgency that the usage of such corrupt tactics cannot, under any circumstances, be allowed to continue.

Guardians of Power

2009-04-16T10:46:00.007+01:00

I've been pottering around Ebay over the last week as an hysterical displacement activity; I find that bidding on antique Toile de Jouy fabric and patchwork quilting squares soothes my tumultuous mind. Out of idle curiosity, I typed in 'gothic doors' and found some architectural delights that would have gladdened the heart of Mary Shelley and her ilk; had they been in my price range, I would probably have thrown caution to the wind and bought them. However, I told myself sternly to be sensible. Removing the sitting room window and existent front door would not meet with my neighbours' or landlady's approval. Then there would be the inevitable spiritual crisis - can I live with a decommissioned church door? Where do I put my mezuzah? (No helpful suggestions, please.) Would I have to ask a rabbi to "de-Catholick" the doors, or is their wood permeated eternally with motes of Christian holiness? Metaphysical considerations aside, some unhelpful sphincter from the council would be bound to bang thunderously on said doors and, clipboard and diversity pamphlet in hand, tell me to remove them. Should I refuse, I have no doubt they'd send for the boys in blue. Which idea fills me with dread.
Today's ConservativeHome warns against treating the police too harshly in light of Ian Tomlinson's tragic death. It cites the case of PC Mulhall who was accused of assaulting a woman only for it to transpire that she was in fact assaulting him. Indeed, in the Mulhall case, he was in the right and the drunken harpy twisting his unmentionables deserved precisely what she got. But the tactics of the police at the G20 summit and, indeed at Kingsnorth were very, very different from those of PC Mulhall. The way in which they were deployed suggests that they had been given tacit instructions to use certain levels of force and crowd control by their superiors.
'Kettling' demonstrators and passers-by alike (the latter of which were released only on the proviso that they gave their names, addresses and submitted to having a picture taken) is in itself an act of aggression which turns a relatively harmless situation into a potentially fatal one. It constitutes a complete violation of dignity; it resembles a form of prison-camp internment. Denying people water and lavatory facilities demeans them in the worst kind of way; it should not be allowed, and the questions that should have been asked as a matter of urgency at the time - are they allowed to do this? How and why are they allowed to do this? - were not. Boris Johnson and Paul Stevenson should have been in situ and available for comment regarding said 'kettling'. That they were not, and that there has been a negligible response from their respective offices suggests that they were complicit in ordering this police action.
There are many incidents involving G20 policing that just don't ring right. How was it that only two demonstrators, surrounded by riot police, smashed the windows of RBS, and that a photographer was already inside waiting for them? How was it that those peacefully occupying squats around the corner from the action, who had already had by their own account, that of passers-by and the police interacted with the Met and posed no conceivable risk, were suddenly raided on suspicion of terrorism? Why was a woman who dropped her sunglasses and bent to pick them up struck brutally in the face by an unidentifiable police officer? And why, if not as an act of premeditated violence, did the officer who struck Ian Tomlinson remove his identifying badge number?
These acts of agression, coupled with the arrest of a hundred potential demonstrators for actions as yet uncommitted (which plainly speaking means that they were arrested for thought crimes: they were not meditating murder, but dissent legitimately permitted in a so-called democratic society) and a plethora of accounts of heavy-handedness by PCs and WPCs nationwide, should paradoxically not lead us to condemn the Police Force out of hand. We may shout that we are living in a police state: but a police state is only ever created if the guardians themselves allot the police a disproportionate amount of power in order to enforce their, the guardians', will. And giving anyone too much power is to place too much temptation in their hands: no matter how good they may be, or how honourable, or decent, unless they are the very strongest of individuals the temptation will be there to see just how far they can go. With the law on their side, the police go all the way: they're not legally doing anything wrong. In my opinion (though many would disagree with me) power is synonymous with freedom; an unequal freedom that permits the few to control the many through the ever-present threat of physical violence, coercion and incarceration. The government, using the ubiquitous blanket of 'national security', has extended their remit beyond that which is permissible in a free society. And, of course, people rebel strenuously against the curtailing of their own freedom and act in what is now deemed 'anti-social' (which begs a serious question: how can one act anti-socially when there is no longer a society?), which then seems to justify the passing of ever-more stringent laws which hand more and more power to the police force.
The true culprits are the government. Plato's Republic was designed to be used as a societal blueprint, unlike 1984: and that is what we are living. A tiny minority, the Philosopher Kings who believe that they are inviolable and their thoughts and deeds sacrosant, who take responsibility for each and every creature under their auspices from the moment of birth til that of death, rule the nation; they use the military/police class to do their bidding in order to enforce their will; and everyone else, that is everyone who is not a Philosopher King or policeman, is expected to abide by their rules. They have no freedom because the Philosopher Kings do not see them as people, merely coarse entities who perform the tasks alloted to them and are punished if they do not do so. It is our duty to ourselves, to others and to the kind of society that we would like to live in and to pass on to future generations, in order that they might also live to snatch the reins of power from the unelected minority. The only response that should ever be given to the question of 'quid custodiet ipsos custodes?' is "Us".

These Are Not Great Days: These Are The Darkest Days Our Country Has Ever Lived

2009-04-14T18:06:00.003+01:00

Despite the rush of schadenfreude to the head prompted by the despicable Derek Draper's fall from grace taking the Cromwellian Gordon Brown with him, I feel depressed. Terribly depressed. Depressed in a way that an entire school of nihilists would envy: I simply can't see any point in - well - anything. I can't see that any of us will be alive in ten years' time or, if we are, that our world will have been overrun by nations run on Islamic fundamentalist lines, or have become so totalitarian in response to Islamic fundamentalism that we will be tracked and tagged wherever we go, or that AIDS II will spread like wildfire (or perhaps bird flu: who knows?) and decimate human life; that man will develop ever-more sophisticated ways to spy on himself or destroy himself which will delight the disaster capitalists and neocons to everyone elses' expense; that every time I open my mouth I risk having my head bashed in by some upper-middle-class-hating prole, that positivism will anchor itself so firmly in the minds of the young that their imaginations will die, and all I have to look forward to is an impoverished senility in an old people's home, where I will be patronised, called by my first name without having invited such familiarity, and be drugged up to the eyeballs before dying alone. I've counted romantic relationships out of my equation - no-one can be bothered to get married these days but would rather commit to not committing and live together until they get sick of each other: not my bag; I've counted success out of my equation also, as no-one's interested in even reading what an aspiring writer/philosopher has to say these days, let alone representing them or publishing them. Because I've studied Theology and English Lit., I'm never going to get a decent salary; even if I were to find some job that remotely suited me, I'd be taxed through the nose, face a huge debt burden courtesy of this government for the rest of my life, and probably lose all my savings when another financial institution goes belly-up.
So, really, what is the point? I don't have freedom: society's an open prison. Usually we leave home to find independence; to break free of being watched constantly, questioned about our plans and whereabouts. Now the government's taken over the parental role, we can never leave home - unless we emigrate. I don't have prospects: the government's telling institutions to discriminate against people like me, because my background and education give me an unfair edge. There's nothing to look forward to. No wonder people drink until their livers burst.
Luckily, I'm not the only one. A report in the Telegraph today shows how the entire nation's dissolving in a morass of fear and anxiety; that the recession's going to last a lot longer than it should because of this all-pervasive sense of hopelessness and suspicion. In climates like these, people's Nietzschean drive kicks in: they start to look for a Messiah, a superhuman being to lead them out of the darkness. I only hope that we don't end up with another Hitler.

Education, Education, Education

2009-04-10T09:37:00.002+01:00

Children today are (at least) two years behind their 1960s selves. Yet they're not becoming more stupid or inept; the fault lies in the quality of teaching and the broadening of the curriculum to the extent that every subject battles for supremacy and none is covered sufficiently.
The solution is clear. Revert to a 1950s-style grammar school education. Ensure before anything else that children can read and write their own name and add, multiply, divide and subtract without using a calculator. Restrict the pre-11 (and 11+) syllabus to English, mathematics, basic history, a smattering of science, a painting class and/or a woodwork/shop class or two a week and a good deal of healthy open-air play free of all those noisome Health & Safety regulations which deem it unsafe for children to even play with conkers or run in a playground. Teach them good manners, discipline and logic: how to argue from cause to effect, rather than dealing with the after-effects of lamentable decisions, such as to spend £1 trillion of taxpayer money, for the next two or three generations. Above all, keep technology out of the classroom and preferably out of schools altogether. Recent studies have demonstrated that exposing a four-year-old child's mind to IT can actually damage its ability to develop relationships and even moral centres. Young children simply don't need to be exposed to a barrage of podcasting, webchat and twittering: they're far better off interacting with one another. Insist on a school uniform that is as plain and unadorned as possible, ban political correctness and put the teachers in charge. Above all, ban sex education pre-11+. This government's 'if you can't be good, be careful' stance has done nothing to stop our children dabbling, often disastrously, in sexual experimentation. Allow them to be children: why presexualise them?
At the age of 11, children should be able to take 2 exams: one academic, one more hands-on and technical, which will demonstrate in what area their talents lie. Those academically gifted may go to grammar schools, try for scholarships at private schools or enter as fee-paying students if their parents are able. Those more technically-adept go on to polytechnics, the former state schools, from which they have the ability to a) leave at 14 and go on to apprenticeships b) learn other languages if they have the ability and desire to do so, to increase their job-market potential c) go on to skilled technical academies in which they can perfect their skills, develop new industries and teach and train others. For both groups, there is an opportunity for further academic/technical aptitude testing at the age of 14 so, if a child who, for example, has not performed well academically at his/her 11+, they may be 'streamed' into grammar/private school education and vice versa: children develop at different rates. The test at 14 will comprise English and Mathematics and every child must be able to read to a basic level, write clearly and demonstrate the ability to do standard sums: in other words, it must be able to go out in the world and be able to understand legal contracts and do its own household accounts.
After 14, those staying in education may carry on to 'O' Level - 5-6 subjects, with English and Mathematics a mandatory requirement and A-Level, if they so choose. University entrance must be dependent solely upon academic excellence and each student demonstrably possess the level of aptitude each institution requires. At 16, children may combine academic or technical study with Army training, either as a cadet, at military academies or in signing up post-education. Those with a long 'rap sheet' might be offered the option of wiping said sheet clean if they join the Armed Forces and learn discipline, comradeship and a trade. Around 25% of the population is expected to enter academic institutions and approximately 15-20% to technical institutions.
Just a few ideas off the top of my head about what a rounded education 'should' entail. Any thoughts/opinions, however radical, will be gratefully received!

Ism-mania

2009-04-09T10:35:00.010+01:00

Grandpa: Penny, why don’t you write a play about ism-mania?

Penny: Ism-mania?

Grandpa: Yeah, sure. You know – communism, fascism, voodooism. Everybody’s got an “ism” these days.

Penny: I thought it was an itch or something.

Grandpa: Well, it’s just as catching. When things go a little bad nowadays, you go out and get yourself an “ism,” and you’re in business.

Penny: I’ve got it. It might help Cynthia to have an “ism” in the monastery.

Grandpa: Yes, it might that. Only give her “Americanism.” Let her known something about Americans. John Paul Jones, Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, Washington, Jefferson, Monroe, Lincoln, Grant, Lee, Edison, Mark Twain… when things got tough with those boys, they didn’t run around looking for “isms.” Lincoln said “With malice toward none, with charity to all.” Nowadays they say “Think the way I do, or I’ll bomb the daylights out of you.”
(Frank Capra: You Can't Take It With You)

Frank Capra was an enlightened man. He is typically remembered for his misty-eyed nostalgia and his unshakable belief that people are essentially good at heart, despite an abundance of evidence to the contrary. I realise that I've fallen victim to the kind of ism-mania of which he speaks, namely in depicting Blair/Brown's form of government as 'socialism'. Many if not most socialists would see NuLab's goals as incompatible with socialism in that it embraces neoconservitivism (ism no.1), laissez faire capitalism rather than that which they're supposed to uphold: ordoliberalism (isms no.2 and 3), progressivism (ism no.4), revisionism (ism no.5) and neoliberalism (ism no.6) all of which are confusingly brought together under a banner of centrist social democracy rather than democratic socialism. (Social democracy is supposed to be a form of libertarian reform from below which shakes off authoritarian shackles; democratic socialism involves minimalist to severe measures of authoritarian state socialism, which could encompass the domestic policies of just about everyone from Harold Wilson to Stalin.) Confused? We should be: we're engulfed by a flood of such 'isms' on a daily basis, all of which seem to differ so infinitesimally as not to be worthy of remark or so radically that we can only assess them from a black/white stance. Our responses become diluted: we either protest against one element of what we see as authoritarian control, or anti-civil liberties, or gross exploitation, but leave the societal definitions and constructs up to the so-called 'experts'. Then, twenty years later, someone writes a book about what we've lived through. 'Ah, yes!' we say, shaking our heads in disbelief. 'That's exactly what it was like...'
All of which feeds rather nicely into the political blueprint first devised by our old friend Edward Bernays, who stated calmly in Propaganda that there was only so much that any man needed to know or to be told: you couldn't overload the poor creature, so it was in his best interest to filter his news and opinions for him and to gather them together under particular headings, so as to give him a nice sense of structure in his life. This 'run along now, the grown ups are talking' approach pervades politics and, by extension, all of society today. And it's impossible to talk about society and politics as separate entities: since politics has turned into a personality cult we're unable to have an abstract discussion about education, say, without mentioning what Labour's done to it; rather than coming up with what we think would be a better way in which to educate our children, we can only complain about what has gone wrong or suggest ways in which to fix the rot.
This leaves us no leverage. If you consider yourself a liberal but disagree with all of the Liberal Democrats' policies, there's nowhere for you to go. Ditto Conservatism and definitely ditto Labour. Even if you agree with three quarters of their policies but vehemently disagree with the other quarter, you're still expected to support the party. You're still expected to vote for them. Your feelings on the other issues don't matter: in agreeing to disagree (though your consent hasn't been sought) you're being 'democratic'. Gone are the days where you can heckle those fighting for political office and make them substantiate what they have to say. Today's politics are based upon presumption. Which is why I made the error, for example, of calling NuLab socialist. They're not. The countries of the Southern Cone before the Chicago Boys moved in were socialist; they had the greatest explosion in education, industrialisation, shared wealth and social mobility in human history. NuLab, in stating that everyone has been 'empowered' whilst simultaneously disempowering them by pulling the lynchpins out of all existing social institutions, dumbing down education and making the intelligentsia a laughing-stock, are working from a very different agenda: one that could almost be seen as akin to that of the great robber barons of the C13th, or indeed the East India Company in the C19th. Wage war on those who may oppose you, disenfranchise the unarmed, create great hubs of power, and convince people that there is no other way to exist so that they do not even dream of seeking a new political philosophy; they can only militate against elements of the existent system whilst the great machine rumbles on, unhindered.
To create the kind of world we can really bear to live in - not a Utopia, because that is one person dreaming on behalf of the many: a nightmare - we have to overcome all these new assumptions which are being cloaked as ancient wisdom and start from scratch. From the beginning. To ask all those big ethical questions which our populist politicians answer for us on the basis of presumed consent. Whether we agree with any of the tenets of the three major political parties, for example: and if we do not, why do we not? How do we put new tenets in their place without destroying people's lives in the process? I still have enough faith, like Capra, in the goodness of people that we can achieve some kind of decency in living, in a life where people choose what level of individuality they want to assume rather than being robbed of it altogether.

My Point Exactly...

2009-04-08T17:13:00.004+01:00

Over the past few days I've posted a few pieces about reason vs emotions and why academic achievement should be celebrated rather than reviled. The majority of responses have been positive, which is heartening: not because I need people to agree with me, for I do not, but because I am glad that there are so many like-minded others out there who can see that which is rotting Britain's core; to be alone entirely in one's beliefs is to render one helpless. On the other hand, one unrelenting critic has steered the course of the debate into the murky waters of personal invective and has condemned me for sentiments I have not voiced and in which I do not believe. And this seems to be what passes for normality in Britain these days: people's feelings are too precious to be meddled with, or they are assaulted deliberately by those wholly and utterly unrelated to them in any way, who will then go on to ascribe beliefs and opinions to them that simply don't exist.
The atrocious lapse in etiquette notwithstanding, what does it say about our culture that we presume to 'know' another without having met them? And to pass judgment upon them forthwith? Is such an approach to human relationships the result of socialist class-levelling, in which because people are similar in some aspects they are deemed the same in all aspects? Or is it something deeper: that our world has become so formidably style-over-content behaviourally-deterministic one-size-fits-all that many do not (or cannot) perceive any inherent differences between their fellow men and women and feel equipped to judge them on an Everyman (or, indeed to condemn them on an 'Other') basis?
We hear a lot of tripe these days about how we can curb binge drinking through ever more draconian state measures. Rather than looking at the causes of it, the government feels that it can deal with the effects. But perhaps the reason that both these phenomena has spiralled out of control is that the world has become too big, too militaristic, too frightening and our politicians too distant. In the absence of community and self-determination, people either seek to escape their misery at the lack of any hope for a meaningful future by annihilating themselves through alcohol. What else do they have to look forward to? Too, in the absence of theological ritual, the Friday night piss-up has become an event invested almost with sanctity; something in which the many can participate with the same intent. Knife crime and gang culture is also being 'targeted' by various state bodies. If they stopped to realise for one moment that many young people are entirely alienated from society through a spiralling culture of suspicion, breakdown in communication, authority, family relationships and the knowledge that whatever they say simply won't matter to the government, they would realise that gangs are in basic anthropological terms like families. A hierarchy is established through struggle; each member finds his or her allotted place following a process of initiation.
And perhaps those shunning that dirty old 'real' world in favour of the internet are working off those selfsame evolutionary impulses in forging a new society in which dominance is attained by those who shout the loudest and longest, since physical combat is impossible. One thing in both worlds remains unchanged, however: falsely ascribing ideas and beliefs to others in order to castigate them is universally unacceptable. A lie is a lie is a lie.

Intellectual Snobbery or Justified Elitism?

2009-04-07T14:36:00.008+01:00

Possessing the mandatory Stiff Upper Lip, and following my own advice, I smile serenely when reading some of the comments made about my most recent article, Grow Up Grownups: in it, I advocated a return to using reason rather than emotion when making decisions and to being less 'precious' about having one's feelings hurt. Otherwise, I argued, people become embroiled in complex situations without having any real reason to do so, support causes without knowing anything about them and judge harshly those against whom they have an emotionally-fuelled grudge in general, rather than rightfully targeting the guilty few. What I found most interesting, though, was that I was charged with intellectual snobbery and advised to take a trip into what some call the 'real' world.
I've been in and out of this 'real' world for years, and have worked in numerous places with numerous kinds of people. Some I've liked, others I haven't: such is life. I've always been interested in others' stories; for although I can't learn a great quantity of new facts from many of those I've met, I can certainly learn how their responses to situations differ, and how their experiences have shaped them, of what they want out of life and what matters to them. I also tend to retreat into an academic world because it is the only place in which I feel at home; in which I can use my intellect to the full, develop new theories about the world with likeminded others, and am not obliged to try to think like the 'man on the street'. What intrigues me most is the idea that my world is any less 'real' or valid than the one in which my critics dwell. In my humble opinion, being advised to live in a 'world' in which struggle, strife, discord, discontent, humiliation, failure, high taxes, low wages, ill health, Nanny state and dishonest government are all accepted as the status quo - are almost seen as a grim badge of honour (the sage utterances of 'well, life's hard, isn't it? But there's nothing we can do about it, so we might as well make do' strike no chord with me; I won't subscribe to such fatalism) is to condemn me to misery. A life lived in the quest for the Beautiful, however, one which seeks to learn the mysteries of time and space, the numinous, the inner workings of the human psyche and the origins of everything is to be applauded.
Which is something we don't do in the UK. Intellectuals and academics are viewed with suspicion. A good background and education are seen as excuses for discrimination. Society has dumbed down, the Spin Doctors attempt only to appeal to the middle and backwards slope of the bell curve, and those who think rather than do are ostracised. Which leaves little to aspire to - except, of course, becoming a footballler, X Factor or Big Brother winner, or a footballer's wife.
Socialism has always viewed intellectuals with fear and loathing, because they can swiftly and lethally expose its shortcomings. In socialism's exaggerated form, Communism, it tends to stick the intellectuals on pig farms or their bones down mineshafts and satisfy the lowest common denominators' lust to destroy anything that is different or smacks of superiority. Under NuLab, 50% of the population have been shoehorned into higher education, whether they possess the requisite nous or not: all in the attempt to downgrade university degrees and remove them of their 'special' status.
Such an approach runs sharply contra to evolutionary theory. To make a mockery of higher levels of intelligence which contribute to society's betterment, its potential and its happiness is to destroy future generations' innovations in thought and progress. Our legacy will be their existence: the way in which their world is worked out relies upon what we do today. To dumb down now places ever greater obstacles in the way of personal freedom and individuality. There's nothing to strive for. Moving up to the middle classes through intellectual achievement and endeavour becomes a logistical nightmare as they are, arguably, the class which is most penalised. A culture which celebrates the ignorant, the animalistic at the expense of evolution (and God's) most precious gift, that one single facet that separates us from the rest of the natural world, reason, is a dying culture.
So I, for one, will continue on in my merry way; unashamedly academic to the hilt, and I hope to die in a library surrounded by exquisite examples of erudition. There are many ways to live: and to strive for excellence is, after all, the core purpose of human nature.

Grow Up, Grownups

2009-04-05T12:37:00.007+01:00

I'm interested to know how many people out there can still reason for themselves, rather than be driven by their 'feelings'. A lot of people have been arrested over the last twelve years because of 'feelings': because someone may be doing or saying or wearing something that might cause upset or hurt. This includes arresting a man wearing a 'Bollocks to Blair' t-shirt, an elderly campaigner because he heckled Jack Straw, and a be-placarded doomsayer being removed from his Westminster beat because his 'end of the world is nigh' message might offend someone. Ditto telling the truth about the 'global' financial crisis: the Conservatives were given a sharp slap on the wrist for stating that the collapse of banks and markets would have unpleasant implications for families on the grounds that it might cause people 'concern'.
All of which means a) people are doing our thinking for us because b) we're not motivated by reason, but emotion. Marching for Gaza when one doesn't know the name of the Fatah PM - or of Hamas, for that matter, let alone what the conflict is about - is an action born purely out of emotion. Lining the streets to say 'goodbye' to Jade Goody, a woman characterised by her foul mouth, complete lack of breeding, feral habits, bigotry, racism and extraordinary stupidity, she who was booed roundly when she exited the Big Bruvver house, is illogical. What are people celebrating? The fact that they've been so adeptedly manipulated by the media that they've elevated a guttersnipe to sainthood? Or that in twelve years social inversion has been achieved to the extent that Goody is viewed with the same misty-eyed nostalgia as Princess Diana? The same goes for MPs' expenses: that sense of outrage, the 'snout in the trough' knee-jerk response. Abusing one's expenses a la Mr and Mrs J. Smith, Hoon, McNulty et al is clearly reprehensible. But MPs receive an expenses entitlement because they work long hours running the country, representing millions of people and - in many cases, the Labour Front Bench notwithstanding - trying to act in the best interests of both the many and the few. It's a devilishly hard and often unrewarding job. The 'it's not fair' whine from an envious populace is a purely emotional one. What they're saying is that they don't get extra money for the jobs they do, so why should MPs? Simple. Invite the populace to run the damn' country and see what happens: 99% of people simply aren't anywhere near up to it, and a proportion of that 99% would be hard-pressed to run a bloody bath (though they might be able to whip up a bloodbath to order during the 'summer of rage'). People aren't equal in terms of intellect or capability. Labour's social engineering has pushed the myth that they are; that all jobs require the same level of intelligence and capability. Rubbish. Poppycock. All this has achieved is unnecessary hatred for those who receive higher salaries, a hatred that persists regardless of whether someone is - forgive the pun - doing a sterling job or not.
'But these MPS have ruined the country', I hear you say. Yes, indeed, some of them have: through the mechanism of 'democracy' to which everyone kowtows reverently. There's another bit of Blairite nonsense: socialist democracy, the idea that everyone's point of view counts. It doesn't, particularly to Labour. And they were voted in, after all. Twice. Whilst people are rubbing the wounds of mega-taxation, ruined education, binge-drinking, knife crime, terrorist plots, dirty hospitals, illegal wars, bad transport infrastructures, ruinous train fares, ID cards, data losses, 24/7 surveillance, control orders, the removal of habeas corpus, out-of-control immigration and further financial meltdown, all of which are occurring in the too-big, too-impersonal and too frightening mesh of globalisation, they've overlooked the erosion of one of the inherent attributes of humanity: reason. Without it, one is a mere infant. We need to stop being so precious about our 'feelings' and toughen up.

Interception Modernisation Programme

2009-03-23T19:36:00.002Z

I just sent this letter to my eminently useful MP re the Interception Modernisation Programme:

"I am gravely concerned by the proposed expansion of governmental

surveillance to include not only records of telephone calls made,

emails sent and websites visited but to engage in mass surveillance of

social networking sites such as Facebook, Bebo and MySpace and record

each and every 'Twitter', 'poke' and instant message.   Vernon Coaker

has stated that it is 'vital' for the government to have access to and

provision for the capturing and storing of said information in the

indefatigable fight against terrorism. The futility of said fight aside

- there will always be those who seek to disrupt societal mechanisms

and thus create terror; terrorism will persist as long as humanity does

- there are three main points which cause me particular disquietude:  

1) Firstly, the government's track record on protecting individual and

collective information is abysmal. Whether they themselves are

responsible for safeguarding said information or have extended that

privilege to a private company, there have been extraordinary breaches

in security, including but not limited to that of the armed forces,

child benefit recipients and the security services. Creating a database

to encompass the information sought by Coaker et al will require

extraordinary ingenuity; no such project has ever been attempted

before. Whilst such a database will be undoubtedly lucrative for its

architects and thus for the Treasury through direct taxation, the

taxpayer will suffer a further financial onus due to the fact that they

will be required to pay for said database, that which denies their

liberty and cannot make the commitment to safeguard their information

adequately; 

2) The government's proposal of anti-terror legislation known at

present as "Contest 2" which seeks to render certain views not as

extreme but as extremist creates a dangerous precedent for profiling

and 'fishing' expeditions despite assurances to the contrary. Worded

ambiguously and subject to endless interpretation, it contains elements

of sheer delusion which, if brought into law, make life potentially

more invidious not only for British-born and immigrant Muslims, but for

the rest of the population. I refer in particular to two clauses: that

it is forbidden to argue that Islam condemns homosexuality (which it

does, unequivocally and without reservation) and that they fail to

condemn the killing of British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. The

former would prohibit academic endeavour in that mentioning Islamic

aversion to homosexuality would be a crime, which is prohibitive to

free thought and, through omission, teaching certain aspects of Islam; the latter is

particularly tendentious, because it suggests that Muslims will be

monitored - if not compelled - to condemn *actively* said killings.

Throw away statements, particularly those made via the medium of

Instant Messaging, could be used to prosecute an individual in a court

of law, create greater divisions within society (ghettoization) and

even precipitate a hitherto unmeditated violent response. Email

communications, particularly amongst individuals campaigning for social

change and justice re the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have already

been monitored under RIPA, the government has acknowledged; were such a

communique to highlight the fact that statistically speaking many more

Iraqis than Allies have died, would it expose the writer to the full

wrath of an ambivalently-worded law? The two proposed bills in tandem

are potentially lethal;

3) Part III Article 14.2 of the International Covenant on Civil and

Political Rights (1966) states that 'Everyone charged with a criminal

offence shall have the right to be presumed innocent until proven

guilty according to the law'. However, the Interception Modernisation

Programme makes the presumption that there is no innocence, and thus no

need even for charge; that an incontrovertible evil dwells deep within

the hearts of all men, that their being is founded not upon right

reason and will-to-good but upon the will-to-harm, to create chaos. In

a virtual world, as in a real one, a ceaseless search for wickedness

will be as fruitless as the search for the tails and horns of would-be

Hitlers. The truly wicked are as likely as not characterised by their

outward benignity, often their righteousness, heavy with the odour of

sanctity. There have been many attempts to qualify evil - and, under

this government, to quantify it; the outcome is one of resounding

failure. And in the aftermath of hundreds of badly designed, badly

phrased laws designed to curtail 'anti-social' behaviour, the State has

gradually engulfed society so that they have become one and the same

entity. The State dictates what people may think, feel, eat; say, do,

believe. Each day, another 'evil' is brought on to the statute books.

That which is deemed 'wrong', 'politically incorrect' is swelling

whilst the ability to catch the perpetrators of all these petty 'evils'

is shrinking. Whilst there may be true evil in this world - the

paedophile, the terrorist, those who would seek to break another's life

out of curiosity or for their own amusement - there is also the

infallible human will to good. It must not suppressed beneath the

weight of a tyrannical minority. We do not live in East Germany - yet.

The message 'nothing to hide, nothing to fear' has become obsolete; it

would be better if it were replaced by 'coruptissima republica plurimae

leges'. "

I've also set up a Facebook group; please join and pass on the word.

You Can't Have It Both Ways

2009-03-21T14:12:00.011Z

There's an abundance of rage across the blogosphere this morning over the proposal for Department of Health 'moles' to try to change peoples' bad eating, drinking and lifestyle habits. Nanny State, Nanny Bullying and the usual cry of 'whodeyfinkdeyareven' are echoing throughout cyberspace. But what is the difference between this kind of meddling and advertising, the multi-billion pound industry based upon behavioural manipulation?

Every time someone sit down in front of their television, they are exposed to combinations of images and sounds that have been months and years in the making: twitched and teased this way and that in order to grab the attention and stick indelibly in the memory. They make their choices based on 'trusted brands' - which are trusted because someone on the television said that they were trustworthy. People take the advertisers' word for it: they would scoff at sticking their head in the end of a smoking cannon, but would eat a pot of teeming bacteria every day because someone said it was 'good' for them.

Using markers like 'fact', 'clinically proven', 'people just like you', 'confidence' (not to mention many words and phrases that previously belonged to a religious vocabulary, such as 'faith', 'heaven', 'eden', 'paradise' and 'sin') the general public barks like a dog and rolls over when given certain cues. The level of intrusion into our thoughts and the manipulating of our habits, beliefs, preferences and choices is astounding.

Yet, somehow, this kind of Pavlovian engineering that was once used so successfully by Edward Bernays, father of modern advertising and Hitler's favourite bedside read, to convince the entire female population that smoking was cool is accepted on all levels: the subliminal and the overt. When the State attempts to butt in using similar techniques, it gets short shrift. I suspect that this underlying dichotomy springs from the fact that advertising happens in a supposedly 'free' market, and the State is seen as anything but; that advertising lulls us into a false sense of security because it is directed at 'us' and makes 'us' feel important, whereas the State only serves to make us feel powerless. But both have only a single goal in mind: to control your consciousness.

Bad Thinking

2009-03-20T13:04:00.009Z

"David Cameron signalled that the rich would have to pay “their fair share” to rescue the economy from the mounting crisis in the public finances.
It was made clear that hundreds of thousands of top earners would face paying the new rate — which Labour will also introduce after the election if they hang on to power — if Mr Cameron enters Number 10."

Idiocy has won.

We live in a nation in which our government is not accountable to anyone and makes endless decisions concerning its own welfare which it cloaks in the language of 'transparency' and 'public interest'.

Now the nation is being told that it is the duty - a term which subsided into the bloody maw of political correctness along with the concepts of fairness and nationhood - to rescue the economy.

If those who have putatively been elected to public office are unable to safeguard the economy in the first place, why should the unelected general public be forced to pay for their mistakes?

It is clear that there is a pressing need in the absence of governmental culpability to find a scapegoat. The next candidate is dangled in front of the mob for their delectation: the richest, who already pay the highest taxes, generate the most income for the economy and represent the finest entrepreneurial, intellectual and financial minds we possess, are somehow to blame and must make amends for their talents by giving away yet more of their money. They are being hanged on the scaffold of an ignorant public's censure, a 'general' public which is always casting around for others to condemn because it has not, itself, achieved their successes; and those who carry the hallmarks of success are inevitably the ones to suffer.

This is not to say that no-one has any 'duty' to society. It is saying that one's duty, being an innate will to good, is best enacted independently rather than being precipitated by a socialist-motivated state which demands money with menaces ('taxes') in order to carry out said good. (And those who would ask the delightfully naive questions 'who pays for the roads, if no-one pays taxes?' should rather look at our national debt: that is where most of the money goes.) In other words, one's duty is to society, not to the State: bracketing State and society together is a very dangerous thing, because it paves the way for totalitarianism - one way of approved thinking. The compulsion inherent in forcing people to do good for others also removes the equally innate will to be responsible for the other: the 'there but for the grace of God go I' gene, if you will.

Asserting a universal right to, say, abortion means that I will have to pay for abortion, whether I believe in a sacred right to life before birth or not; ditto war, ditto IVF for lesbian couples, ditto ID cards, ditto failed educational and health schemes; ditto free speech or its abolition, for the taxpayer pays for the mechanism that denies them the right to articulate their beliefs: Parliament. All of this is a hallmark of Labour's Big State. All of this has been paid for by the taxpayer despite their personal convictions: such is the hallmark of democracy, that it frustrates individuality through ensuring everyone is obliged to pay, literally and figuratively, for the outcome of others' beliefs and opinions to the detriment of their own.

And, because Labour has expanded the public sector to such an extent that it has been the only direct competitor of the private sector, growth has been stifled in other areas. Potential quashed. Now, the 'general' public is being asked to believe that it has a duty - a moral imperative in a state that would deny morals or imperatives - to make right the errors that have characterised the past twelve years. Cameron wishes to perpetuate the rot by targeting the few individuals who may potentially rejuvenate the country and encourage foreign investment. What is 'fair' about this scenario?

Liberty Means Responsibility. That Is Why Most Men Dread It

2009-03-17T16:15:00.008Z

In what is for once a remarkably shrewd move on the part of the government, calls by Liam Donaldson to charge alcohol per unit have been rejected. Gordon Brown has realised belatedly that such a move on the heels of massive taxpayer liability for bank bailouts - from which it has in no way benefitted - would be the equivalent of coating himself in liver and diving into a pool of mastiffs. Various papers and internet fora are ponderously discussing how to be 'responsible' about drinking, as if it were that easy.

We always do things arse-about-face these days. Someone shoots up a school? Ban guns. Kids drink too much? Hike the price of alcohol. Rather than examining just why people are so unhappy, the powers-that-be believe that their censor-all curtail-all approach is going to make people happier, healthier and wealthier despite glaring evidence to the contrary.

The culprit is not just big government, however much we would like to pin 100% of the blame upon them. One would have to go back a hundred and fifty, two hundred years to locate the source of the problem. The first is that a universal franchise is prohibitive to freedom, has marginalized intellectual, moral and economic efforts and elevated the 'norm' to excellence: we are not getting better every day, but, on the contrary, more average. As the economist and political theoretician JA Schumpeter put it:

'The democratic method is that institutional arrangement which realizes the common good by making the people itself decide issues through the election of individuals who are to assemble in order to carry out its will... However, when we move still farther away from the private concerns of the family and the business office into those regions of national and international affairs that lack a direct and unmistakable link to those private concerns, individual volition, command of facts and method of inference soon cease to fulfill the requirements of the classical doctrine.'

In other words, the reality of the 'real' world lived by the majority of citizens and that of philosopher kings in rapt contemplation of the Beautiful are so far removed that an across-the-board understanding of major events is well-nigh impossible. Moreover, the idea of a universal franchise is not one shared by all, contrary to idealistic theories of Utopia. Universal franchise becomes even less appealing in the face of mass immigration; and, in a bizarre twist, the native population in a reversion to the kind of feudalism of the aristocracy practised before 1832 rears its head and asserts its rights to its own land above that of any o(O)ther. Even those of the lower working class would wish to become honorary esquires, espousing their property rights; class barriers can never be broken down whilst there exist different tribes throughout the world; the statist flat-earth dream will never be realised as long as humanity persists.

The second great difficulty in overcoming the collectivist mindset is that people cannot determine their own fate if a) they do not know what or who they are because they have never been taught to think freely and b) hence do not have the capacity to envisage what that fate might be. There is no will of the voter that cannot be manipulated; politicians no longer stand on the soap boxes, they sell us the soap. Political decisions become the most aggressive of marketing campaigns, a mishmash of bar graphs and voter preference charts; the politicians and their policies cannot be separated out, so that one either votes for the 'popular choice' - the Diet Coke celebrity endorser, if you will - or stays silent. Still, it is small wonder that such a cynical attitude is taken towards matters literally of life and death when the standard business mantra is 'sell yourself', 'sell yourself' - kill your spirit, kill your spirit.

Our society is overdeveloped; there is too much crowding in upon us, too many ways to turn, and too much machinery in place to stifle any expression that cannot be fitted within a specific matrix. Everything is a 'brand', nothing has reality in itself and for itself: a style-over-content-world poised perilously on the crest of the wave. And that is why people drink and drink: they're not happy; their bodies are free, their minds are chained; and what on earth is there for them to look forward to? What is there for them to live for, save servitude?

Proudhon, one of the architects of anarchical libertarianism, feared the kind of world that was to come. Speaking of the impending onslaught of Fascism and Stalinism, he saw that the major threat lay in a 'compact democracy having the appearance of being founded on the dictatorship of the masses, but in which the masses have no more power than is necessary to ensure a general serfdom in accordance with the following precepts and principles borrowed from the old absolutism: indivisibility of public power, all-consuming centralization, systematic destruction of all individual, corporative and regional thought (regarded as disrupted), inquisitorial police...'

How familiar the words: how familiar the concepts. And a debate over 'responsible drinking', smugly moral as it may appear to those earnestly debating within the narrow framework allowed them by a government who wishes to give them the illusion of freedom, will no more create a healthy society than a sane one.

Stop Children, What's That Sound

2009-03-14T17:28:00.003Z

What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side

It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away

It's time we...

But we won't, will we.

In a few weeks, the headlines have changed from 'Cameron Calls For Enquiry On Iraq War' to 'Hundreds Turn Out To Cheer Soldiers'. The images of devastated cities already reclaimed by the wilderness have given way those of to immaculately-outfitted battalions surrounded by Concerned Citizens. The St George flag is, of course, very much in evidence. Suddenly everyone's 'British' again.
The battle lines have been drawn in the sand; the positions have been staked out. You either belong to 'them' or to 'us'; mostly their 'them-ness' is predicated on the colour of their skin. Our 'us-ness' is bound up in the simple red cross on a white background. Nationalism, in sophisticated terms: tribalism in real, human ones. And it doesn't matter a damn that a triumvirate of the top university institutions have reported that young British Muslims are more likely to be tomorrow's human rights barristers or educational advocates or overseas advisors or politicians; that very few are radicalised or prepared to imagine committing terrorist acts. Once that battle line is crossed, 'they', the 'Other', will be hurt indiscriminately.

The government's been preparing for a 'summer of rage'. It took quite a while to get it into Joe Public's head that he's expected to run riot in the coming months. When he failed to respond to subtle teasers - riot squads being trained up in readiness for an event which so far was mythic - other incentives had to be offered up. Refusing to allow in Geert Wilders. British Jobs For British Workers. And now, Support Our Troops. No matter that the war is illegal; no matter that the troops are being used as cannon fodder in the ultimate colonialist money-making enterprise. They're fighting against people who are Not Like Us.

Protectionism takes many forms. It's not just about monetary protection; it's a knee-jerk response to perceived outrages against an established culture. It doesn't matter whether someone who's Asian is British-born or not, whether they consider themselves British born or not, whether they're in the Armed Forces or protesting against them. They're just "different" and their "differences" are being escalated to a dangerous extent.

The familiarity of 'they dress different, eat funny, keep themselves to themselves, aren't very friendly, are they?, all about religion innit' surely cannot have passed people by entirely. From 1933 onwards such terms were used to deliberately drive a cultural wedge through the centre of German society: a society that at heart had always not-quite-trusted Judaism for lacking that fundamental je-ne-sais-quoi, that ethos that made a German a German and everyone else an outsider.

I fear that we are too late: I fear that soon, twelve years of repression and hundreds of years of tribal malice will boil over and the 'Other' will be lying dead in the street, another victim of cultural animosity; that the 'Other' will be rounded up for its own good, that every 'Other' will made into a monster which must be erased from history - beginning, perhaps, with Pakistan and ending with Iran. And thirty years from now, people might feel shame for their actions, put up monuments, collect together pitiful survivor narratives, write books about it and teach a degree about it: about how it must never happen again. Until the next time.

Let Me Get This Straight....

2009-03-11T15:03:00.004Z

From the BBC:

Worcester's bid to twin itself with Gaza City as a "humanitarian gesture" has been turned down.

The city council had backed the plan by councillor Alan Amos, who said it aimed to link to the "people of Gaza" and not to support the Hamas leadership.
But Worcester Twinning Association said the proposal did not meet its criteria.
Twinning with the Middle Eastern city was not "the most appropriate or practical means" of meeting the people's humanitarian needs, it said.
Israel attacked the Gaza Strip in December in retaliation for rocket attacks. Aid groups have said this led to a humanitarian crisis in the region.
'Complex arrangements'
Neville Swanson, chairman of Worcester's Twinning Association, said it appreciated the council's desire to "express sympathy with the sufferings of the people".
But he added the voluntary association did not have the "resources or competences" to embark on complex arrangements "to set up a meaningful relationship with Gaza City" even if it was found that people in Gaza wished it.
Mr Swanson added the decision did not prevent the council from funding a formal link with Gaza City itself.
The twinning proposal had been criticised by Worcester MP Mike Foster who said the debate had been a waste of the council's time.
Mr Amos had rejected claims the move would support the Gaza Strip's Hamas leadership, which is regarded as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the United States and the European Union.

So: ranting Luton Muslims bad, ranting Hamas good (no matter what they might say); 7/7 atrocities bad, rockets raining down on Sderot good; Muslims preaching against Iraq and Afghanistan war bad, Muslims preaching against Israel's existence good; 20% of UK Muslims in a recent survey saying its acceptable to slap your wife or daughter in public bad, Hamas creating a charter which explicitly calls for jihad, female suppression and Jew-killing good?

Glad we cleared that one up.

Curtain Call

2009-03-11T05:14:00.004Z

Splendid news. Dolly Draper's been not only kicked off Twitter for abuse and a huge imbalance in his follower/following ratio, but he's been booted off his own website also.

Now that he's got all this spare time on his hands, perhaps he'd like to go back to the States and study at - as opposed to in - Berkeley?

I Am Scared...

2009-03-10T18:19:00.004Z

By this:

Unlock Democracy welcomes Compass call for Electoral Reform

Commenting on the publication of Compass's "No turning back: a manifesto for change," Director of Unlock Democracy Peter Facey said:

"We warmly welcome Compass's call for electoral reform and view it highly significant that a respected and central part of the wider Labour Movement has come out in favour of this crucial reform.

"Far too many people within Labour still cling to the notion that politics must be tribalist and limited to two parties. This flies in the face of all the evidence which shows were are moving towards a multi-party system. Both Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party are now in government, while the Liberal Democrats now have more MPs than at any time since the 1930s.

"The existing electoral system has failed to stop this fundamental shift but it does now threaten to make our political system increasingly unstable, unrepresentative and unresponsive. It needs to be put out of its misery and replaced with something fit for the 21st century.

"Compass should be congratulated for forcing this issue up the political agenda."

The full manifesto can be found here: http://www.compassonline.org.uk/news/item.asp?n=4043

A multiparty system? How very 'democratic' of them. Means that you won't have the option of finding a party you can agree with; you'll have to agree with everyone and compromise incessantly and, in the end, be crushed entirely by herds of Averages because, after all, the 'greatest number' is the only number that counts.

In '70s America, the Communist party didn't bother fielding candidates because both parties had included all their principles in their agendas. Looks as though we're heading towards the same unitrack collectivist nightmare.

Education, Education, Education

2009-03-10T16:05:00.006Z

From Times Online

March 7, 2009

Parents face prosecution over 'gay' education class protest

Sara Dixon

PARENTS who took their children out of school to prevent them being taught about lesbian, gay and transgender relationships are facing prosecution.

Around 30 pupils from an east London primary school were absent from a week of special lessons to highlight non-heterosexual partnerships.

To mark the event some students watched a special adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet retitled Romeo and Julian.

Stories covered in the lessons at George Tomlinson School included a fairytale about a prince who turns down three princesses before falling in love with one of their brothers and the tale of Roy and Silo - two male penguins who fall in love.

The protesting parents said the content was more appropriate for secondary school pupils and now they face possible court action.

Some of the parents said they informed the Leytonstone school they were removing their children for the week.

Pervez Latif, whose children Saleh, ten, and Abdur-Rahim, nine, attend the school, said both Christian and Muslim parents objected to the theme linked to Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender History Month.

Mr Latif is quoted as saying: “I didn’t want my children to be learning about this.

“I wrote a letter to the chairman of the governors explaining that I would be taking my children out of school and he wrote back saying that there was no other option.”

He added parents were informed of the lessons by newsletter.

Sarah Saeed, 40, also took her eight-year-old daughter out of school during the week. She claims she told the school she would remove her daughter if they went ahead with their plans.

She is quoted as saying: “It is not an appropriate age for the children to be learning such matters.

“She has a 100 per cent attendance record otherwise. This is the only time and this is the only choice I had.”

Officials at Waltham Forest Council said there were unauthorised absences from George Tomlinson School when it covered topics relevant to lesbian, gay and transgender history.

They said action had been taken against the protesting parents but are currently refusing to say how they plan to punish them.

Mr Latif reportedly said his wife feared it could end with them having to defend their decision in court as their children are being treated as truants.

To deal with truant pupils Waltham Forest Council can make parents can sign a contract, impose fines or bring them to court.

A nice attempt to try to make this into a Muslim intolerance issue, rather than a righteous grievance on the part of parents who want to determine what moral issues their children learn about at school. Objecting to an entire week 'learning' about Romeo and Julian is now deemed a thoughtcrime. Reminds me of what Socrates tells Glaucon in The Republic:

'All citizens above the age of ten must be expelled from the city and deported somewhere into the country: and the children who are now free from the influence of the manners and habits of their parents must be taken over. They must be educated in the ways [of true philosophy], and, according to the laws, which we have described.'

Of course, the philosophers are not expelled: they remain to teach the children how they should be thinking, away from parental interference.

Privacy vs The "Right To Know"

2009-03-08T16:12:00.007Z

Anna Raccoon posted an interesting and provocative comment over at her excellent blog about Ashley Cole's recent dalliance with a peroxided honey. Now, I can't stand 'celebrity' but I think everyone has the right to privacy; having said as much I got back the following gratuitously patronising and offensive comment from another blogger:

Mara MacSeoinin: ……………… ‘no-one has the ‘right to know’ what he may or may not do in his spare time. Whether someone earns a lot of money or a little isn’t really the point: I think we’d be much healthier as a nation if we returned to a ‘mind your own business’ ‘you mind yours and I’ll mind mine’ mindset.’

*****************************************************************
In a perfect and World with perfect people who do everything in a perfect way ………………. I think that it would be super to be able to choose only to be interested in the people we have preiously chosen to associate with …………. and forget all about becoming involved with the lives of others with whom we have nothing in common …………..

However ……………….. there are politicians and professors and nuclear scientists and pop stars and film stars and blue collar workers who surf the net for abusive images of children and the mutilation of animals and recipes for bomb-making and all kinds of other things that make the World very unsafe.

Unfortunately, humans are not designed to live in a World of isolationism and elitism.

I do not know which particular Planetary nation that Mara MacSeoinin is referring to in saying that ‘we’d be much healthier as a nation if we returned to a ‘mind your own business’ ‘you mind yours and I’ll mind mine’ mindset.’ And I would like a reference to that Planet or a reference to any Earth civilisation who lived in this curious way. I am most intrigued!

Here on Planet Earth there has never been a time in recorded history where such a ‘mindset’ has ever existed.

Humans are naturaly gregarious ………….. with the obvious exceptions ……………… and the very fact that they live on a Planet which is shared by all …………….. means that we have to know what other humans have in their hearts, their minds and all other areas of their lives.

I'm up for a little debate. What do you think? Is this an expansion of the 'if you've got nothing to hide you've got nothing to fear' ethos? Are we naturally nosey or inclined to be reticent? Do we have a 'right to know' things about others? And does a sordid private life make a public figure a candidate for evisceration if s/he are exemplary at what they do?

Libellous Lord Ahmed

2009-03-08T13:38:00.005Z

From Pakistan's Associated Press:

LONDON, March 5 (APP)‑ A number of British politicians and members of the UK‑based Pakistan Diaspora pledged their complete and all outsupport for the incarcerated Lord Nazir Ahmed while lauding his contribution to the British society in the context of the community relations and his role at the international platform.
Mirpur‑born Labour Peer is presently undergoing a 12‑week jail sentence on account of dangerous driving that resulted in a fatal motorway accident near his home town of Rotherham, north‑east England in December 2007.
The support campaign was launched on Wednesday evening at East London district of Leyton where a number of speakers praised the services rendered by him and the great respect he has earned worldwide due to his continued commitment in seeking justice across the globe...
Another Muslim MP Khalid Mahmood in his message read out at the meeting said,” Lord Ahmed has been outstanding advocate for the Muslim community and has given confidence and inspiration to Muslims across the UK and the globe. From Palestine and Kashmir to Sudan and Kosovo he has spoken up for the underprivileged and the underrepresented.”
Lord Ahmed’s colleague Lord Patel and Baroness Sayeeda Warsi also spoke on the occasion and said the Labour Peer has earned respect due to the numerous actions he has done both nationally and internationally. Ms.Warsi said Lord Ahmed had always stood for principles and justice and who build bridges between the white and the non‑white British communities. Glasgow MP Muhammad Sarwar in his address said Lord Nazir has been sentenced on account of dangerous driving and no death charge has been levelled against him.
He said there was no truth in apprehension within the Muslim community that he would be stripped of his Lordship. He is a life peer and cannot be deprived of his honour.
Sarwar said according to the legal experts the custodial sentence awarded to Lord Ahmed was excessive and that he has valid grounds to appeal against the verdict.
Event organiser Barrister Abid Hussein thought that Lord Ahmed has been awarded excessive punishment as he had ruffled the feathers of the higher authorities because of his strong views and support on various social and political issues notably the 42‑day detention period, war on Iraq and his pro‑Palestinian stance.

I find this campaign very distasteful indeed; a human being lost his life through Ahmed's recklessness, and no amount of 'good works' can recompense the man, his family or the impact he may have had on society.
What gives me particular cause for concern is the final paragraph, the most pertinent part of which I have highlighted. If an appeal is to be brought against the judges who committed Ahmed to prison for the extremely lenient term of twelve weeks, it will set a dangerous precedent. The grounds (as far as I can see; there may be many more) upon which said appeal may be brought is by

1) evoking Articles 5 (4) of the HRA: the right to contest the lawfulness of detention by citing that under 10.78 a magistrate may be liable if he has been deemed to have acted in 'bad faith'.

2) If the Community-Cohesion-multicultural-equality-diversity bunch can argue that Ahmed was imprisoned not by virtue of the crime he committed but because of his political beliefs using HRA 15.163 citing cases such as Handyside v United Kingdom (1976) and 17.134 (political discrimination) and even argue a case for compensation (10.159). These examples are just off the top of my head...

If Ahmed is freed on these grounds and is able to gain compensation he will not only strike a seminal blow over the judiciary by the executive but set a precedent for thousands of cases to be retried on the grounds of 'bad faith' citing political motivation or personal discrimination against the convicted.

It goes to show just what a hellish invention the HRA is: a nice idea in theory; in practice a nightmare.

The Indignity of Indifference

2009-03-07T13:11:00.012Z

I was ambling around the Web this morning and came across this chart which linked IQ to the various professions:

140 Top Civil Servants; Professors and Research Scientists.
130 Physicians and Surgeons; Lawyers; Engineers (Civil and Mechanical)
120 School Teachers; Pharmacists; Accountants; Nurses; Stenographers; Managers.
110 Foremen; Clerks; Telephone Operators; Salesmen; Policemen; Electricians.
100+ Machine Operators; Shopkeepers; Butchers; Welders; Sheet Metal Workers.
100- Warehousemen; Carpenters; Cooks and Bakers; Small Farmers; Truck and Van Drivers.
90 Laborers; Gardeners; Upholsterers; Farmhands; Miners; Factory Packers and Sorters.

Of course, the list is not rigorous; it's based upon statistical expectations and thus doesn't allow any deviation from the norm. (Stating that policemen tend to have an IQ of 110, for example, doesn't take into account that there numerous departments dealing with numerous issues within the police force, gaining superior roles requiring intellectual vigour upon promotion, etc.) Nor does it state what happens to those with IQs below 90, below 80 and indeed, below 70.

But it really does make one wonder what the hell Labour's been playing at in trying to get 50% of kids into higher education.

Looking at figures borrowed from the same website:

IQ Description % of Population
130+ Very superior 2.2%
120-129 Superior 6.7%
110-119 High average 16.1%
90-109 Average 50%
80-89 Low average 16.1%
70-79 Borderline 6.7%
Below 70 Extremely low

So 25% is above average, 50% is average and 25% is below average. Which technically implies that 75% should be taking apprenticeships, earning City & Guilds, NVQs, language, technical and other qualifications, whilst the top 25% should be going to university.

This isn't elitist - although I do fervently believe in justified elitism; I think one should have something to strive for - but practical. If Labour really wanted to 'help' people, they would make the standard of primary and secondary education so superior that those gifted children who would typically fall through the net because of their social background would be identified and given the opportunity to go to university: the DH Lawrences of this country, if you will. Offering university as some kind of socialist 'sop' is immensely harmful and, in some cases - like the Surf Management course offered at Newquay which had to be dropped - grotesquely ridiculous.

I am reminded of what Karl Popper said about Utopia and the desperate need for prudence of action so as not to cause human misery on a grand scale:

"It is infinitely ... difficult to reason about an ideal society. Social life is so complicated that few men, or none at all, could judge a blueprint for social engineering on the grand scale; whether it would be practicable; whether it would result in a real improvement; what kind of suffering it may involve; and what may be the means for its realization... [The piecemeal politician] will be aware that perfection, if at all attainable, is far distant, and that every generation of men, and therefore also the living, have a claim; perhaps not so much a claim to be made happy, for there are no institutional means of making a man happy, but a claim not to be made unhappy, where it can be avoided." (The Open Society and Its Enemies, pp 158-9)

The Rightness of Life

2009-03-06T20:19:00.008Z

The Telegraph's blog today gives us George Pitcher's consensus on two elderly English people with terminal cancer who decided to go to Switzerland and end their lives with Dignitas's help. Pitcher claims that their actions were 'disgusting', 'selfish' and 'undignified'; rather than using palliative care and facing a painful end, they violated the true sanctity of existence with the evil collusion of others.

"The usual support for such action runs that our lives are our own, to do with what we wish. But that is manifestly untrue. Our lives are only and entirely defined by our relationships with other people and the world in which we live. We don't "own" our lives in the way that we possess a car or a washing machine. We are gifted them and they only make sense in relation to people and the world around us. As a consequence, we are obliged to honour and respect not only our lives but our deaths too. To pop off to the shops and top ourselves when it is convenient, or if we can't face the future, is to dishonour both life and death,"

says Pitcher. I find this viewpoint not only tragic but fatally deluded; deluded to such an extent that Pitcher, through his reckless use of words, his faulty logic, risks making life precisely the opposite of precious: worthless.

'We don't "own" our lives... our lives are only [my ital.] defined by our relationships with other people and the world in which we live.'

If we do not "own" our lives, to whom do they belong? If we do not own them as the most real of material and spiritual things, how can we speak of the self? Of I? What meaning has 'this is my life!' in the face of such an extraordinary declaration? Of what value is self-possession or self-awareness? Arguing that human lives can only be seen in context with the Other, depicted through comparatives and superlatives, is to deny us the innate capacity for reason, for self-determination, for deciding right and wrong; for being the authors of our fate existing within the eternal rather than the immediate human condition. It is to allow society to determine what 'life' is, what 'existence' is: to render one helpless in the face of shifting public opinion and political whimsies. And if life is defined as not worth living by our neighbours and society, or if society is wiped away with the reckless abandon of a Utopian aesthetic who sees the world as an infallibly rotten, irredeemable thing that must be destroyed to be rebuilt, so goes with it 'life'.

There persists in Pitcher's writing some trace of the idea that in great suffering lies redemption, that pain is the test of human character and to wish to abnegate it is to be somehow less than human. But, in contemplating suicide, the person is more wholly human, more intensely, violently aware of what 'I' and 'me' and 'life' and 'existence' mean than so many of those going through the motions of living. And, indeed, whilst it is impossible to say 'I' without having a consideration of 'Thou', once that relation is established there is no need for there to be a further consideration of Thou-ness when contemplating the 'I'. The relation has been established: the I-self is now independent and self-determining. As Deleuze has it:

"given that there exist differences of nature between things of the same genus. That is, not only are no two things ever the same, the categories we use to identify individuals in the first place derive from differences. Apparent identities such as "X" are composed of endless series of differences, where "X" = "the difference between x and x'", and "x" = "the difference between..."

It is our individuality that must be cherished as well as our inter-personal relationships; to speak of them inter alia denies our fundamental freedom of self-possession.

How High Is Your IQ?

2009-03-06T11:33:00.005Z

Most IQ tests focus upon mathematics-based questions, which, if you can't stand the stuff, give you a score equivalent to the kid in your class who stapled himself to the desk and then set fire to himself. However, there's a rather nice Vocabulary based IQ test out there. I like it. My score was 183...

If you have fifteen minutes to waste, try it out:

http://www.eskimo.com/~miyaguch/schmies.html

Daily Roundup

2009-03-05T23:27:00.006Z

Oh, will you just piss off already?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/4927264/Church-schools-could-be-forced-to-promote-Islam-and-homosexuality-Catholics-fear.html

-When will Islam get the memo not only that homosexuality exists, but that you shouldn't be stoned to death if you happen to be gay? Let's put a group of LBGTs and hardline Muslim kids in a room and see what happens, shall we? That should be a fun multicultural and diverse lesson. After all, NuLab's all about social experimentation.

Undeterred, mass murderer, money maker and faith's new front man is going against everything his former National Socialist Party stood for and is pushing theology as THE way to go:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/4938541/Tony-Blair-warns-that-Christians-must-speak-out-in-aggressively-secularist-age.html

The rats leave the sinking ships: the fleas leave the rats; and the BoE is making money. Not in a good way.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/recession/4944424/Bank-of-England-embarks-on-radical-plan-to-print-money-as-it-cuts-interest-rates-to-0.5pc.html

Beating them at their own game: al-Bashir defies arrest warrant by the ICC and kicks out the aid agencies. Says it's all a ploy to get grubby Western mitts on Sudanese oil.

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE5232X520090305

To all the deluded bleeding-heart wannabe-liberal misguided uninformed fools out there who supported Hamas recently - why didn't you send one Blue Peter badge per rocket fired into Israel, while you were at it? Now Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei is back on the case, things should really heat up! (Though not in a nuclear way...)

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iran-holds-conference-to-support-hamas-1638243.html

I've a migraine so that's it. Anything to add? Post below...

Enoch Powell: Liberal or Far Right?

2009-03-05T20:41:00.003Z

A most interesting discussion over at ConHome on Enoch Powell. John Anslow posted this comment:

"Powell was one of most influential voices for the decriminalization of homosexuality, and also his opposition to capital and corporal punishment. His speech deploring the murder by warders of eleven Mau Mau terrorists was described by Dennis Healey as “the greatest parliamentary speech I ever heard”.

His “Water Towers” speech of 1961 began the process that led to the closure of the great mental institutions and the move towards Care in the Community.

His ideas on economics centred on the importance of free trade and its relationship to a free society; and he deplored the state interference that has always been a feature of far-right parties.

Even his love of country, demonstrated when he gave up a professorship at the University of Sydney immediately on the outbreak of the Second World War to enlist as a private soldier, ( “he …. fancied he could hear the boots of the German armies drilling through the earth and reaching him in Australia”) was expressed through his love of the poetry of A. E. Housman.

Powell was a complex man, and a great Englishman; one who deserves to be remembered with much greater respect than his legacy currently enjoys."

I am more of the opinion that Powell was much more far-Right; he's been misquoted about rivers of blood often enough, of course, but what clinches it for me is that he tried to push quite strenuously the idea of 'voluntary re-emigration'. Not a 'liberal' tactic.

Past Precedent

2009-03-05T13:44:00.002Z

A lovely rebuttal to Harriet Harman courtesy of dear old Cicero:

Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum

Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.

Daily Roundup

2009-03-04T20:20:00.003Z

I'm doped up on codeine and only have a 5 minute attention span, so only 3 stories today - all of which display the government's extraordinary levels of authoritarinism, hypocrisy, brashness and self-righteous militancy:

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20090304/tuk-mayor-in-clear-over-green-arrest-6323e80.html

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20090304/tuk-congress-must-seize-the-moment-pm-6323e80.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/4938788/Jean-Charles-de-Menezes-coroner-criticises-double-standards-by-police.html

No PC Here Please, We're British

2009-03-04T18:04:00.005Z

Dominic Grieve, on whom I've been fairly hard in the past - particularly over his weak response to the sheer horror of Part VIII Cl. 152 of the Coroners and Justice Bill - came up with the following statement today on that gruesome bugbear, 'multiculturalism'.

"A decade of ranking people as members of neatly categorised ethnic, religious or social groups, rather than treating everyone as an individual in their own right; a decade of courting self-appointed heads of minority groups and pandering to special interest lobbies, ignoring the range of opinions and depth of diversity in modern Britain; and a decade of stifling difficult debate, under a blanket of political correctness, that marginalises those ill at ease with prevailing dogma or accepted ‘progressive’ wisdom.”

Categorising people is, of course, part of socialism: to make everyone 'equally represented' (and then to make an extraordinary leap in logic and say that if everyone's represented equally, they must therefore be equal. As Aristotle said, "Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal." But surely Grieve is wasting his breath; on the most basic of levels, to talk of multiculturalism is to identify immediately the difference between people. On the most sophisticated level, what has been used successfully over the past 12 years is what Michel Foucault identified as 'governmentality': the linking of modes of thought with governance so that the two become inseparable. That is the true 'genius' of Political Correctness; it is now impossible to talk about issues that affect or determine our notions of individuality and personal interrelations outside the political sphere.

Over the past twelve years, hierarchical 'top-down power' has been widened to include other forms of social control: the use of marketing to influence social behaviours; indoctrination through an osmotic, rather than rote based educational system; re-education of those ill-disposed to be 'tolerant'. Those of my generation were brought up to debate contentious issues. Based on their life experiences thus far, will the current generation be able to argue about difficult concepts?

"The reluctance to exercise reasonable judgment and to criticise or challenge negative cultural imports into our country, including discriminatory practices against women and corrupt political and electoral practices, is one of the most troubling consequences of a culture that wishes to avoid offence and accusations of racism."

In other words, 'moral' issues - the mere mention of which is like dripping acid on to the ear of a hard core socialist and relativist - have gone to the wall. I do hope that the Conservatives intend to abolish the ECHRA: to condemn certain social practises such as those mentioned above will raise the cry of 'discrimination! Discrimination!' from those busily beating their illiterate wives and children like carpets. It is a relief, though, to have it almost acknowledged that one doesn't have to like something just because it's different. However...

"It is through contact and the constant exchange of views and opinions that we moderate each other’s attitudes and behaviour. Creating that contact, breaking down ghettos of the mind and instilling confidence in our ability to learn from each other are the essentials. Greater diversity within our society must be recognised and applauded. But it seems to me that the zealous regulation of conduct, the imposition of state-defined orthodoxy on public and private conscience and the overburdening of law and regulation, have the consequence of undermining that confidence and are deterring participation and engagement."

Socialists don't have consciences; if they did, they would not play God: they would permit others to have free will rather than doing their thinking for them. I don't like this sentiment of 'greater diversity'. Why must it be applauded? If I don't agree with some cultural practice am I going to be compelled to applaud it in the name of 'diversity'? Isn't that exactly what NuLab's about? Is that not, in effect, a further form of indoctrination? How is that at all freeing? The mere concept of 'diversity' - the most meaningless and yet most discriminatory nonsense phrase in the NuLab canon - sends a cold chill down my spine. And this snippet seems to suggest that one will be forced to enter into dialogue with the other whether one likes it or not.

“Multiculturalism was intended to create a more cohesive and friendlier society by facilitating bringing people together. But instead the laws and concepts underlying it seem to me to drive people apart endangering our traditional sense of community based on common values."

Multiculturalism was intended to create a New Jerusalem, a USA circa 1850-1950 in which everyone could have the dream ticket of capitalism. But whereas the US system did not tear down established class delineations and encouraged people to work their way up from humble immigrant to President, our top heavy benefits system and unconscionable derision of and hatred towards anything that smacks of the middle class - education, breeding, manners - leaves people with nowhere to go. How can you encourage social mobility (climbing) if the only ones who seem to get a leg up are footballers and 'reality' TV 'stars', and the proles whines that they should be entitled to the 'best' just because someone else has it?

'Multiculturalism' can only work if we return to our essential pre-WWII values. That is, to be proud of our country, our achievements, our culture and our history; to welcome in others - as we always have - and enable them to integrate themselves into our culture whilst maintaining theirs. Read works like Hanif Kureshi's Buddha of Suburbia which illustrates just how both cultural identities are maintained and assimilated.

"In schools, the dumbing down of history has resulted in a system where the teaching of a narrative of British history has all but vanished. Instead of children being taught to have respect for past events and individuals who have shaped their lives, they are encouraged to be contemptuous of people who did not live up, in their own era, to the then unknown values of modern Britain. I am convinced that this approach has hindered more recent immigrants to this country developing a sense of belonging."

The dumbing-down of education full stop is to our great shame. And we can hardly be vile to immigrants who can't speak the language when 25% of kids under NuLab can't speak, read or write it either. Go into any town on a Friday night and see how much yoof jargon you can understand; you might as well be in a foreign country. We're around 20th on the list of international academic achievement, and I suspect we'd be a damn' sight lower if it weren't for our independent schools. Our country would be much better off if 90% of our schools were indeed independent and in competition with one another; if those academically inept were allowed to take 2 O-Levels - English and Mathematics - and dispense with education after that point, those wanting entry- to middle-clerical positions or to go on to A-Levels to take a further 5 tailored to their ability at 16, and those most able who want to go to university to take 3+ A-Levels at 18. But it is impossible to see how we can improve education in general and the teaching of History in particular as long as it is a crime - a BNP hate crime - to announce that one is proud of being British.

Brownian Motion

2009-03-03T18:08:00.006Z

”If there is a fault, it is our collective responsibility. All of us have to have the humility to accept that over the last few years, things got out of alignment.”

So says Alistair Darling about Gordon Brown's mismanagement of - well - everything. On the cusp of his meeting with Obama, it must be the very last thing he wants to hear: the equivalent of my asking Idi Amin who catered his finger buffet and the answer being 'why, I did'. Such shameless hijacking when Brown is out of the country trying to make nice with the big boys suggests Brown will be out on his ear or appropriate body part in the next few weeks. Still, the Master of Delusion should take comfort that his predecessor, mass murderer and worshipper at the feet of Bernays, is making a six figure sum each year by preaching to the converted, mediating between hostile Middle Eastern forces ("now, Ari and Abdullah: shake hands and play nicely") and popping up at any international gathering which didn't tell the doormen to keep him out.

All this double-dealing and newsthink really makes me inclined to run for political office - if I weren't flattened by M.E.; pretty hard to campaign when you're prostrate - because at least I admit when I'm wrong, own up to my mistakes and try to make things right by asking others what they would like, rather than what I think they'd like. I also don't think that I know 'best' on every occasion or have all the answers; to do so is to strangulate thought, stifle debate and snuff out potential. Heigh ho, there we go.

In the news today, we learn that extremist behaviour continues to dominate the headlines: the Sri Lankan cricket team was brutally ambushed in Pakistan. Which of course will have the effect of driving Pakistan further into the metaphorical wilderness. My thoughts and prayers go out to the families of those related to the victims and survivors; and to the Camerons, who are going through the inconceivable pain of having to bury their child today.

Elsewhere, 'public opinion' (for that read 'Labour pundits') is still trying to find ways of clawing back Fred Goodwin's salary. DON'T. Not unless you want to set the precedent for irrevocably breaching and breaking Contract Law in England and thus creating utter anarchy. And they're trying to force Gail Trimble into a rematch because one of her team mates graduated last year. Well, she answered all the damn' questions, didn't she? Isn't this merely going to be an opportunity to rub her opponents' noses in it for the second time in a row? Still, I suppose the resultant low self-esteem will make psychiatrists richer which, after all, is what it's all about.

I mentioned a few days ago that Lockheed Martin has developed a kind of bionic exoskeleton to rival Raytheon mechwarrior gear. It's Iron Man come to life. Unfortunately, the 'public' doesn't have a chance to question the ethical implications of developing such devices, what will happen when the other side develops the same prototypes, and how this will impact on innocent civilians (charmingly called 'collateral' in wartime). Rather than any pretence of democracy of federalism operating in the present day, it seems more that we are in the merciless clutches of totalitarianism and oligopoly. Totalitaroligopoly. God help us.

Daily Roundup

2009-03-01T20:50:00.006Z

Not that much today, as my joint pain is off the charts. Most links are to today's Telegraph. If I've forgotten anything, post below as per normal.

1) Law? Pah. Courts? Meh. A gratis Stolypin's necktie with every pension if you don't give it back even though it was approved by ministers because the government says the people's opinion is more important than the rule of law? Fred Goodwin, you have a choice of classic hemp or piano wire:

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20090301/tuk-minorities-to-get-government-help-6323e80.html

2) Ask not what the BNP can do for you, but for what you can do for the BNP:

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20090301/tuk-minorities-to-get-government-help-6323e80.html

3) Against all the evidence, Brown insists that the EU's just a-brimming over with brotherly love. I call that Munchausen's by proxy:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/4903514/Gordon-Brown-insists-the-European-Union-is-united-in-response-to-global-economic-crisis.html

4) More money for Palestine, despite the fact that it gets the biggest cash handout on a daily basis in the world. This time the money will be going to - oops, my mistake - its usual pocket, Fatah, in a bid to ostracise Hamas. Ironic, when the Israeli government encouraged the establishment of Hamas as a counter to Fatah.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/4903829/Hillary-Clinton-to-offer-1bn-to-Gaza-in-move-to-sideline-Hamas.html

5) Obama's strikes on Pakistan continue, though you'd never know it. This is number 4.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/4903627/Eight-killed-in-US-missile-strikes-in-Pakistan.html

6) Once Saudi and the UAE have got you jumping through hoops, your days as a world dominatrix are over:

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE52012320090301

7) It's Not News To Us: this piece was printed on an online Iranian site about three weeks ago. But it's easier to keep people hating Iran: draws their attention away from the Depression.

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE5201Y920090301

8) More young people are harming themselves than ever in jail. Presumably because leaving it for an open prison's not much of a prospect.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/rates-of-selfharm-soar-among-young-offenders-1634741.html

9) Expect the smashin' lootin' burnin' to resume: the mass murderer and war criminal Tony Blair popped over to Gaza for a cuppa today, dispensing healthy advice on how to create peace. Presumably by turning a country into a smoking ashtray and getting your friends lucrative building contracts. That's democracy, boys!

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/middle-east-envoy-tony-blair-in-gaza-for-first-time-1634887.html

10) About time too: stem cell research based on skin cells, not potential human beings. Yet another essential moral issue the country wasn't consulted about.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1158311/Breakthrough-British-scientists-stem-cells-human-skin--NOT-embryos.html

Revolt Face

2009-03-01T13:21:00.006Z

"The Prime Minister has said it is not acceptable and therefore it will not be accepted. It might be enforceable in a court of law this contract but it's not enforceable in the court of public opinion and that's where the Government steps in," says Harriet Harman. The issue? No, not human rights violations; Fred Goodwin's pension.
I happen to think Goodwin a quite sizeable sewer. His execrable management of HBOS has contributed to the taxpayer's future impoverishment; they've had to bail him out, and are now paying for him to be comfortable whilst they're eating out of no-label cans by candlelight. But two facts remain: the pension was agreed with ministers and its details should never have been disclosed to the general public. Appealing to the mob, that 'court of public opinion' that elsewhere rushed out Saddam Hussein and hanged him without trial, that gloated as the tumbrils passed and the horrified heads of the nobility dangled before the bloodthirsty maw of the Revolution, is to place us firmly on the path to 1917 Russia. If public opinion had mattered so much, there would have been no Iraq war. If public opinion had mattered so much, the ID card initiative, ContactPoint, mass CCTV surveillance and a host of other initiatives would have been abandoned. If public opinion did indeed matter at all, Gordon Brown would have relinquished his position by now and the country have gone to the polling stations.
The frank acknowledgment that the law means nothing to the government sits uneasily with Jack Straw's importunate bleats in The Guardian: 'there was no golden age of liberty. Since 1997, we've done more than any government to extend freedoms than ever before'. One rule for them, one rule for us: a vague nod to parliamentary scrutiny for them, 18 million security cameras for us. It sits even more uneasily with Purnell's statement that 'minorities' (including women: half the human race, of which I am one) are going to get extra help during the downturn. If there were ever a rallying cry to the BNP standard, this is it. Throwing cash at some people to the exclusion of others is not going to encourage mutual peace and harmony. This policy represents yet another volte face on the DWPs recent shakeup of Incapacity Benefit - for which, in order to qualify, you have to be unkempt, unable to use a telephone book or remember an address: if you can do any of these things, you're faking it; another 'let's see if this works' social experiment on we the guinea pigs.
Goodwin is being canned for capitalising upon the credit crunch. What of Rupert Murdoch who boasted that he positioned NewsCorp to ride out a Depression a full year before it happened? Where is the government's condemnation of Murdoch's shark tactics? Or Mandelson's 'favours for friends' in relation to Heathrow's third runway?
Blatant hypocrisy aside, I would send out the strongest warning to Harman and her ilk not to attempt to appeal to the mob. The mob cares nothing for order; it revels in chaos. Let the mob run free and economic annihilation will follow; on its heels will come Hitler. The mob is indiscriminately destructive; it tears down and kills for the delight of it; it does come equipped with bolts of piano wire and does hang people from the nearest lamppost. And, whilst she and her Cabinet cower in her underground bunker as the force she has unleashed rampages overhead, it is the people she is supposed to protect who will suffer.

Daily Roundup

2009-02-28T19:49:00.004Z

If I've missed anything please post below.

1) Just in case people don't understand that there's going to be a state of emergency this summer, the fire services have been preparing for one:
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20090228/tuk-national-emergency-exercise-staged-6323e80.html

2) Ghost towns are upon us. Funny, that: the High Street's lying dormant because no-one's got any money. And, of course, councils must be really happy that Next, the Gap et al managed to close down all those pesky independent stores.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/recession/4885231/Recession-threatens-to-create-ghost-towns-say-councils.html

3) Protectionism beckons. And about time, too. Perhaps we could tell Europe to go to hell while we're at it and get our country back.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/4885887/Will-Barack-Obama-end-Britains-special-relationship-with-America.html

4) Talk about Iron Man: bionic war's upon us, as Lockheed Martin stands to make big bucks. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/27/lockheed_exoskeleton/

5) Lenin's won: children are now officially owned by the state. And, if they act up, the pharmaceutical corps can always stand to make a few bucks:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/feb/27/dna-database-children-civil-liberties AND http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/25569107/bitter_pill (The last article's very long but fascinating)

6) Also from Rolling Stone, the story of how China adopted Britain's surveillance policies to humanity-denying effect:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20797485/chinas_allseeing_eye/print

7) Want a good education? Tough. How the government's brought a casino mentality into the learning 'game'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/feb/28/schools-admissions-education-policy

8) Autism Bill passes first hearing: a good initiative, at first glance But will this lead to ever-more extensive snooping as children are forced to undergo screening?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/autism-private-members-bill-passes-first-hearing-1634407.html

9) Another Mandelson 'favour for friends' debacle - this time over the hotly contested third runway at Heathrow.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1157763/Mandelson-new-favours-row-Heathrow-PR-pal-meetings-ministers-new-runway-ahead.html

10) Yet another example of the horrific flaws in the ECHRA as legal aid bills for seven men convicted of terror offences comes in at £7 million.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/legal-aid-payment-of-1637m-for-lawyers-in-terror-trial-1634242.html

11) The BNPs popularity is snowballing. Are LabLibCon deliberately being the 'do nothing' party in order to encourage mass dissent and extremism in order to get out the fire hoses and the Civil Contingencies Act?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/is-the-bnp-becoming-cumbrias-cup-of-tea-1634246.html

12) Bring on the in-car cameras; talking when driving's apparently worse than DUI. One wonders which UK company's coming up with a prototype Big Brother screen.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1157465/Hands-free-mobile-phones-dangerous-drink-driving.html

13) Japan's suffered the biggest industrial production plunge ever.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7914040.stm

14) The people who caused the global meltdown are going to be in charge of a global currency within 15 years. God help us.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/cnbc-analyst-global-bank-global-currency-within-15-years.html

15) The day the music died: Obama's defense budget is actually larger than Bush's.
http://www.slate.com/id/2212323/

Grr, Grr, Grr

2009-02-28T05:22:00.005Z

An habitual insomniac who only sleeps a few nights (or days) a week, I thought that it was time to spend my many waking hours productively (rather than seeing how quickly I could remember all the elements of the periodic table and their atomic mass, seething, red-eyed and chaotic) and jazz up my blog. Whoops! I've completely buggered it. Lists, contacts, links, everything lost; if I've disappeared off your Followers list, dear friends, tis because of my inability to deal with HTML in a civilised fashion.

On a heartening note, Brown's facing rebellion from every side re his proposals to destroy Royal Mail. Hopefully he will finally, finally meet his Waterloo. Perhaps the most unpopular leader in UK history should chum up with the most unpopular former leader in US history and write a book about social ostracism.

Clutching At Straws

2009-02-27T22:48:00.004Z

"Our record isn't perfect. But talk of a police state is daft
There was no golden age of liberty. Since 1997, we have done more to extend freedoms than any government before", claims Jack Straw

(Taken from The Guardian, Friday 27 February 2009)

I occasionally ask the asylum seekers at my constituency surgeries why they made the very long journey to the United Kingdom rather than a much shorter one somewhere else. The answer is almost always the same: it is better here. People have more rights and greater protection.

Similarly some of my Muslim constituents will say that whatever criticisms they have of Britain, they cannot think of a better country in Europe, or for that matter the Middle East or South Asia, in which to live freely and to practise their faith in an atmosphere of tolerance and respect. More generally, despite the claims of a systematic erosion of liberty by those organising this weekend's Convention on Modern Liberty, my very good constituency office files show no recent correspondence relating to fears about the creation in Britain of a "police state" or a "surveillance society".

I'm the first to accept that Labour since 1997 has not achieved a state of grace in terms of the crucial balance between security and liberty. But on any objective basis, this government has done more to reinforce and strengthen liberty than any since the war.

Part of the problem for those who question this is that their analysis assumes the loss of a golden age of liberty. No such age existed. The 60s, 70s and 80s were the decades of the informal "judges' rules", the absence of statutory protections for suspects, "fitting up", egregious abuses of power, miscarriages of justice, arbitrary actions by police, security and intelligence agencies, phone tapping without any basis in statute law or any legal protection for the citizen whatsoever, gaping holes where there should have been parliamentary scrutiny.

As the director of Liberty wrote in 1989: "The last 10 years of government have had a striking effect upon freedom in the UK. Civil liberties have not just been eroded, they have been deliberately attacked and undermined." Almost 10 years later there was still no overriding and systematic protection for people's rights and liberties. Labour has provided that: it's called the Human Rights Act. So long as we are in power it won't be watered down.

The fundamental universal rights enshrined in the act are not contingent on behaviour, but nor do they come without responsibility. Implicit in the act is the notion that we all owe one another obligations in the way we exercise our rights. The forthcoming green paper on a bill of rights and responsibilities is designed to generate public debate about how we can articulate these implicit duties more explicitly.

Even the convention rights enshrined in the HRA are not absolute. The right to liberty itself can be taken away in a variety of circumstances - not least if you are convicted of a serious crime. This gets to the heart of the debate about modern liberty. Can individual rights ever be restricted in the name of the common good? I believe there are times when it is necessary to impose restrictions on some aspects of individual liberty in the interests of wider security. That is one of the central tasks of government. Indeed, as James Madison said, if people were angels, there would be no need for government. But sadly people are not all angels.

The climate in a post-9/11 world is much harder than anyone imagined, even in the immediate aftermath of that outrage. I do not pretend we've got everything right. We haven't. Take the data-sharing measures proposed in the coroner's and justice bill. Their aim is good, but parliamentary scrutiny has thrown up justifiable concerns that the powers provided could be misused. It's not our intention but I agree, so we are acting to get a much better balance between data protection and access to services.

And while the ends can never justify the means, our motives for seeking better protection for citizens from terrorism and crime are hardly ignoble. Those who cast myself and my colleagues as Orwellian drones engaged in some awful conspiracy planned in Whitehall basements not only overlook all this government's achievements, they cheapen the important debate about getting the balance right so that a very important freedom, that to live without fear in an atmosphere of tolerance and respect, is nurtured and protected.

And there is of course an ultimate check on executive power - democracy. Talk of Britain sliding into a police state is daft scaremongering, but even were it true there is a mechanism to prevent it - democratic elections. People have the power to vote out administrations which they believe are heavyhanded.

When people come to assess the choices available at the next election, I will stand proudly on Labour's record, from the Lawrence inquiry, which reported 10 years ago this week, progressive legislation on race and gender, to devolution, the Human Rights Act, Freedom of Information and much more, and be ready to be judged on it. I hope that in the final reckoning even some of our harshest critics will concede that this Labour government has done more than any before it to extend liberties and to constrain government.

Crackpot Hysteria from our Big Brother

2009-02-27T20:58:00.003Z

Wandering around the blogosphere and looking through posts about Home Education, I found this:

"...On the Facebook group, I noticed a post from someone saying that she knew of 3 families who were warned to remove their public blogs by social services or further action would be taken, because their blogs showed photos of their children learning. Having the photos there apparently put those children at 'serious risk'"

Presumably, taking children out of the house poses a serious risk because someone might see their faces.

Many thanks to http://whatshallwedotoday.blogspot.com/2009/02/bits-bobs.html for alerting me to this latest piece of insanity.

The First Daily Roundup

2009-02-27T14:17:00.005Z

If you have any more examples, please post them below.

1) Work and home blurs into one:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/facebook/4838076/Office-worker-sacked-for-branding-work-boring-on-Facebook.html

2) If you don't like it, ban it:
http://bnp.org.uk/2009/02/how-can-they-be-fair-in-the-kremlin/

3) Keep them stupid, keep them down: how can socialism work if there's no-one to help?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/secondaryeducation/4862999/Teenagers-failing-basic-English-and-maths-tests.html

4) ...And look at the kind of creeps they deem good for education!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/27/radioactive-child-porn

5) Don't stand outside a station. In fact, just don't stand anywhere.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/video/2008/jul/14/zuby

6) Hutton's sorry about 'misleading' statements on special rendition. That's called 'lying', John.
independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/we-did-hand-over-terror-suspects-for-rendition-hutton-admits-1633397.html

7) Leaders 'impatient to run Iraq', says Miliband. Yes, they were fairly impatient to do so *before* the War started.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/miliband-leaders-impatient-to-run-iraq-1633647.html

8) Don't forget: if you're buying booze, BB will be watching:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1151505/Buying-wine-Spy-cameras-watching.html

9) Poor? Tough. The Council lost your money and they're going to charge you for it:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1154157/Council-tax-bills-soar-30-times-rate-inflation.html

10) And don't forget that humanity is evil and not to be trusted. Ever.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1156978/Database-makes-suspects-information-watchdog-warns.html

11) If you're gay, you're now 'entitled' to IVF at the taxpayer's expense. Great news for all those heterosexual couples that have been queuing up for years and the taxpayers who weren't consulted.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20090227/tuk-victory-for-lesbians-in-baby-battle-6323e80.html

12) Government breaking its own laws for criminals. Really puts everything into perspective.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20090227/ten-jack-allowance-for-jade-final-hour-5a7c575_1.html

13) Bugger biology: why bother learning about zygotes and the loop of henle? After all, we don't need a medical profession:
http://timesonline.typepad.com/schoolgate/2009/02/can-we-please-h.html

Daily Roundup

2009-02-27T10:27:00.003Z

In 1930s Germany Victor Klemperer, a rabbi's son who converted to Protestantism, started to keep a diary recording the daily erosion of civil liberties. Freedoms didn't vanish overnight; they were slowly, slowly erased little by little, so that only those who were actively watching the political scene could see their nightmare unfolding in front of them.

And, considering that the public shells over a considerable proportion of their income to the government, they are paying for the walls of totalitarianism to be raised up around them.

I am going to compile a list of headlines and snippets every day to document what is happening to us; I'd be very grateful if all those similarly concerned about the quality of existence in Fortress Britain would do the same.

Economics, Terrorism, National Security: It's All The Same

2009-02-26T14:33:00.003Z

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/25/AR2009022503389.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter

I have the feeling that the Civil Contingencies Act is going to be implemented much sooner rather than later.

Spiritual Legacy

2009-02-26T13:56:00.003Z

Just a thought about rock 'n' roll and feminism; it occurs to me that women everywhere owe a great deal to African-American music, be it the Negro spirituals and gospel music transformed into the electrostatic genius of Ray Charles or the jazz and blues geniuses of the late C19th/early C20th that influenced Elvis Presley to such devastating effect. Before rock 'n' roll burst on the scene, the majority of women were sexually repressed, or encouraged to be so; to think in regimented, prescribed ways; to emulate their parents and accede to their diktats unquestioningly; to believe that being an old maid the worst fate that could befall a woman - in short, to exist only as a male-created entity.

The old guard were right to fear the power of music. After rock 'n' roll burst on the scene, nothing was ever quite the same again. Women dropped their inhibitions and realised that they, too, were sexual beings. A new age of mass articulation and self consciousness dawned. Liberation from unconscious taboos, prejudices, artificial constructs and suppressions. The language of music, one which had been strait-jacketed for too long into a neat, didactic series of little ditties sung by beautiful anodyne women and handsome lacklustre men, was unleashed, and with it the freedom narrative: 'we hold these truths to be self-evident...'

The Invisible Noose

2009-02-26T02:50:00.010Z

From the desk of Rupert Murdoch:

February 23, 2009

Dear Colleagues:

...As you all know the downturn we are operating in is more severe and global than anything we have seen before. No company is immune to its effects. I want to take this opportunity, today, to write to you about how we will manage such an important leadership transition, and why I am convinced that today our company is not only well-positioned financially and competitively, but is on the cusp of a new phase of growth. Remember, we began priming ourselves for a weakening economy over a year ago. We have managed expenses and capital expenditure prudently, and strengthened our balance sheet. Following the partial sale of NDS, we will have over five billion dollars in cash, and this year we should exceed $3.5 billion in adjusted operating income.

In the past, we have met downturns with vigor, often departing from the herd. We have emerged much stronger. (What a fantastic business opportunity the misery of millions is.)

Achieving our ambitions will require change and renewal. So throughout 2009, I will continue to work closely with all of our companies to make sure that we are organized and resourced in the best way to take advantage o f this extraordinary point in time. We will press our advantages and invest in our great franchises. And, of course, we will keep our eyes on big prizes, some of which may arise only once in a generation.

Across News Corp. we have a broad and deep reservoir of extremely able executives.

Over the years we have accomplished great things. People understand, and have acknowledged, our entrepreneurial spirit as well as our doggedness; our willingness to take risks, our contrarian investment style; and our commitment to long-term development and shareholder value. (Note the unsettling blend of Messianic 'phone bontos in ereme' and Chicago School economics.)

Many of you have told me how hungry you are to work more closely across our companies. Many of us have been frustrated by the things that can get in the way of that. From systems that don't talk to each other to incentives that struggle to capture the opportunity and aspiration of our total group. These obstacles are obvious to us all. There will be a streamlined management structure between our Los Angeles based business units and the rest of the company. Peter and I will be communicating more on this over the next few months. For the time being, of course, the talented executive team at the Fox Group will continue to report to Peter. (And, with an ever-greater international communications network which will, of course, need ever-greater policing, I spot a new surveillance opportunity.)

Now is also an ideal opportunity to streamline and enhance many of the corporate and administrative functions of the business. There will be cost savings as a result, but the more important aim is to be leaner so that we can better leverage our collective talent and expertise...

We have worked hard to develop and advance the best among us. The renewal of great companies begins within themselves. Pursuing an edge through superior talent is a priority. This will be a key focus for us in 2009.

In the coming months, I will be reaching out to you with new questions, and with new plans.

We are in the midst of a phase of history in which nations will be redefined and their futures fundamentally altered. Many people will be under extreme pressure and many companies mortally wounded. Our competitors will be sorely tempted to take the easy beat, to reduce quality in the search for immediate dividends. (Again, an absolute fusion of politics, Messianic rhetoric and laissez-faire economics. No distinction or disassociation between people and companies; in fact, implication of companies' 'personhood'.)

Let me be very clear about our company: where others might step back from their commitment to their viewers, their users, readers and customers -- we will renew ours.

The direction of the business now and over the next few years will define the character of our company for decades.

We have always thrived on change and challenge. ... The best things we have done, and there are many examples, have defied conventional wisdom, often in the teeth of fierce opposition and near universal disbelief in our capabilities.

Over the past 12 months I have spent time with you in India and China, in Italy and the UK and many other countries. We have brought Dow Jones into the fold, extended our influence in Europe, and been at the center of reporting the arrival of a new American president and the impact of the global financial crisis. We've told extraordinary stories, in theaters (of war?) around the world and on page and screen from Mumbai to Malibu.

Our own international reach is a profound strength. We have intelligent, creative and highly motivated colleagues around the world who are ambitious for themselves, for their countries, for our customers and for our company. The result is that where others simply seek distribution, we are building durable businesses at scale. We are also creating large franchises in marketplaces that will grow at a faster pace in the coming years and, increasingly, our businesses are based on direct customer relationships..

We must always be acutely aware of our responsibility to shareholders, and to create real value for them. This is entirely consistent with, and in many case s inseparable from, the enormous social value we have created over the decades. We provide information and entertainment to billions, enabling them to improve their lives and those of their families. There is genuine value in the values of our company -- these are values that are even more important in a world confronting so much today (families and shareholders in the same paragraph, connoting equal responsibility to both and lack of distinction between the two entities) - 'all the world's a plasma screen and all its people shareholders')

We believe in communities. The very idea of community is broad, and encompasses interests that cross national, ethnic and demographic borders. We are all members of many different communities, whether it be of people who are passionate about Hollywood films, or care about living in a healthy environment, or use a local jobs website, or trade commodities in Chicago and London, relish soccer whether in China or Nigeria. These communities are our communities, as they read, evaluate and create everyday

That is why, most of all, I believe in the community that is our company.

Rupert Murdoch

***Note the Obama-like language. Having derided the President during the Race for the White House, Murdoch is now poaching Obama's trademark rhetorical finesse; in effect, turning a business memo into a political blueprint as he launches Operation Go [More] Global. He no longer runs a company but a 'community', blurring the distinction between the two entities: he is attempting to pass off NewsCorp as a society in itself, and a model one at that.

Several important points leap out:

* Firstly, that Murdoch positioned his empire to be ready for the downturn a year before it occurred - obviously, he did not believe it to be expedient to enable other companies to position themselves similarly in readiness; some would call this competition, others shockingly immoral, as tens of thousands have already lost their jobs;
* that he has taken upon himself a supreme moral status in 'improving lives' and 'creating social value' (manufacturing consent). Literally creating social value through the manipulation of the masses, presumably using Edward Bernays's 'Propaganda' as a handbook, in the quest to extend his invincible planet-encircling media stranglehold;
* that attempts to challenge his monopoly of the airwaves and newspapers, not to mention his expansion into music, film, sports and business have been dismissed on the basis that Murdoch is indeed 'improving lives' by 'acting in the public interest';
* that he intends to expand his news empire still further, meaning that potentially 50+% of the planet's news will be uniform;
* as the 'most powerful man in the world' it will certainly be his mission to carry on pushing for global centralization and strenuously opposing individual attempts to cling to nationhood.

The similarity between Murdoch and Frank Capra's character Jim Taylor in "Mr Smith Goes To Washington" is uncanny.

Galvinised Steal

2009-02-22T16:28:00.002Z

Rather than marrying a millionaire, girls should aspire to becoming a MEP:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5780750.ece

How DARE You Try To Kill Yourself, You Swine!

2009-02-22T15:23:00.002Z

For once, I'm asbo-bloody-lutely speechless.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/mid/7902046.stm

Goody Goody

2009-02-22T12:24:00.007Z

Jade 'Go Home Mrs Poppadum' Goody's wedding is turning into such a media circus that the arrival of frenzied clowns and Max Clifford in a fright wig is imminent. The 'Big Brother' 'winner' is tying the knot (two sons in hindsight) today, and is apparently being paid millions for the photographs of the happy event.

In a rare show of candour which, when contrasted with the Front Bench's extraordinary ability to take avoid any kind of truth-telling whatsoever, Goody has stated that she's trying to get the maximum amount of money possible out of the media for her children's futures. We've already been treated to the information that she has a special concealed pocket in her wedding dress for her painkillers and that she's determined to walk down the aisle.

Why should we care? Really? Why is this 'news' dominating the headlines when the US has fired two missiles into Pakistan this week? Though impending Armageddon is unlikely - the most zealous of Islamic fanatics is unlikely to convince his countrymen to turn their entire nation into a smoking ashtray - it merits more discussion than the fact that Tweed left his house dressed in women's underwear (presumably his clinically stupid attempt at humour), or was wearing a blue tracksuit with the number '3' emblazoned on it when he rocked up at the wedding venue.

It is sad that Goody's dying at such a young age. No-one denies that the cutting short of a life is disquieting both for the victim and for the onlooker's perceptions of their own mortality. But beyond that fact, I don't care. I don't see why the taxpayer is having to pay for a police presence at this wedding.

I don't see why someone who is as dumb as a cupboard, who doesn't even know what country Cambridge is in and bawls racist spleen at the top of her lungs, is suddenly receiving condolence messages from Gordon Brown. Is he making cancer care in hospitals a priority? Is he sending personal messages to the families of leukaemia victims who don't happen to be famous (or indeed to the families of the 1.4 million Iraqis whom he, with his government, have been complicit in murdering)? Did he stand up in Parliament and demand that cancer sufferers be given the best drugs regardless of the cost?

And why should Goody's appalling boyfriend, who beat up someone with a golf club and managed to evade a prison sentence, be 'let off' to consummate the marriage? Are other prisoners shown such extraordinary leniency? It seems not. Far from being 'tough on the causes of crime' - and Tweed is one of them - the 'Justice' minister has created a dangerous precedent by giving into the wishes of two frankly appalling creatures who have played the sympathy card and won.

Fittingly enough, Crimewatch presenter Nick Ross was seen arriving at the venue along with many other so-called celebrities paying 'tribute' to 'brave Jade'. Tribute to what? To ignorance? To moronic behaviour? To criminality? To bad breeding, worse education and abhorrent values? To an entire lack of morals and ethics? To the dumbing down of the nation in which feral savages like these who, fifty years ago would have been slammed into Borstal and hopefully never see the light of day, are now seen as role models? How many parents would really, honestly turn to their children and say 'when you grow up, I want you to be just like her?' Far be for me to ever advocate press censorship, but I'm all for tabloid muzzling when it comes to making gold out of dross.

On Liberty

2009-02-20T23:38:00.021Z

The "Labour" establishment has all but destroyed what it means to be British; what it means to be human. They have nearly completed their mission to impose socialism upon every part of a society which is giving way to a state; and a socialist state only works when no people are involved. Socialism is feasible only as an imagined state of being, not consciousness; it is agreeable only when there is no-one there to disagree with it. It fears intelligence, because with intelligence comes dissent, questions, verbosity, verbiage. With intelligence comes ideas, challenges, a re-ordering of the status quo; an end to blind obedience. And here I risk the full retribution of the mob (once my premise has been explained to it) for daring to say that no wonder our country has become so stupid, so Alice Through The Looking Glass; because the Averages Labour support to the exclusion of the intellectuals care nothing for liberty. They cannot think in axiomatic terms: liberty and freedom and justice and truth have no real meaning for them. They can only recognise them by their opposites: that it is "bad" when someone is brutalised or tortured (and often they will led to believe that there is a "good" reason for such brutalizing by the perpetrators when it becomes not quite so bad). They know not that such axioms exist and should be upheld for their own sake as bright, beautiful, shining things that are so precious they are infinitely worthless and entirely priceless.

The mob will take security over liberty always. It will give up what are innate freedoms - not knowing of their existence, let alone of their importance - and allows them to be sold back to its children as 'rights'. It has to be told what to do: being directed makes it feel safe, except when it hears the primal call and must obey its urge to spill blood. It will hand over its body and soul willingly in return for money; a prostitution of flesh and spirit. It upholds a system of government pernicious beyond words, it goes through the inhuman process of celebrating the fact that it chooses its leaders based upon a popularity contest and accepts their total dominance. It considers not that it votes only against failure, not for success. It allows itself to be told what it likes and what it dislikes by those who stand to gain from its mental manipulation. And this, this marching in place, it calls "free".

No, the mob possesses no reason, nothing of the exquisite or fine: it is dulled and coarse, badly milled, full of chaff. At most, a thread of animal cunning runs through it; but collectively, it is little more than an unruly child which is either beaten into submission and retires sullenly, or bands together with other children and creates anarchy. Its power can be summed up thus: weapons in the hands of grown men with the minds of infants. It pollutes all that it touches, all that epitomises humankind's greatest achievements and separates it from the animals. Show it a Wren masterpiece, show it an Adams staircase that flies like a ribbon through the air, show it Titian and Rembrandt and Dali and Rothko, and it will tear them all down in favour of cheap glittering trash and instant gratification.

The mob is not only cunning, but resentful. Its slow-moving collective brain sees that others gain wealth and influence and things of beauty; it hides in the dark places, thirsting with greed and hatred, and waits for the day in which it can storm the citadels of learning with envy running through its veins like poison. And I fear not the wrath of the mob who reading this would understand little and care less; I fear more the political masters who would stir up the mob's vengeance and let them run amok. The mob, given liberty, sells it; and those who fight for liberty on the mob's behalf tend to end up dead. The mob would have riven Rousseau and Voltaire limb from limb and sucked the marrow from their bones, yet not ingested one particle of their will-to-liberty; they would have burnt Franklin alive, and laughed savagely as they shredded Paine's 'Rights of Man' before his dying eyes.

The Founding Fathers feared the mob, and justly so; they believed it self-evident that all men had the right to the pursuit of happiness, but not a free-for-all in the way they pursued it; for men may be created equally, but they are not - will never be - equal. Too well did they know what violence may be wreaked by those maddened by hot blood, lust, bloodlust; that in the throes of animal passion no-one and nothing can be distinguished, no justice may be served, no reason employed, no lives saved. And once the baying mob has been subdued it dons its smock once more, hoses the streets clear of blood, has very little clear recollection of its anarchy; it all seems like a dream somehow, something that happened to someone else. And those rulers of men believing that they have tamed the savage beast make grandiose declarations promising a better life, a safer life, a more equal kind of life, a fantasy that exists only until the next time the mob answers the call of the wild.

Abu Qatada awarded £2,500 Compensation for Human Rights Infringements

2009-02-19T17:19:00.011Z

There is little point in dissecting Abu Qatada's character per se: the press has already donned its mantle of smug morality and indulged in the customary attack/counter attack, character assassination and dehumanisation by which it conveniently creates our devils for us. Suffice to say, Qatada is a dangerous man; but so are all those in Parliament dangerous who would seek to detain people indefinitely on the one hand and allow the ECHRA to be enacted on our sovereign soil with the other.
The Human Rights Act is a good idea. So is Utopia. How many, after all, would actively not want others to be happy? Would actively want others to be tortured? Denied safety of home and family and freedom to think? (Well, Labour would rather deny that last 'right', but moving swiftly on...) Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could live in a heaven on earth? Unfortunately, what Marx didn't bargain for when he pushed for the adoption of Communism which, to all intents and purposes, is a secularised form of Christianity as originally conceived in the Gospels, was humanity. Socialism works fine as long as there are no people inconveniently getting in the way of progress and asking questions and trying to get ahead and not wanting to be equal. It tends to break down when people sneer at bad accents and bad table manners and persist, despite socialist governments' desperate efforts, in believing that education should be elitist. The Human Rights Act is perhaps the pinnacle of socialist achievement, and therein lies its fundamental flaw. It only allows people to be grateful for the 'rights' handed out and has no safeguards against abuses.

The UK government in its wisdom adopted this one-size-fits-all-generic-Roman-law-based piece of legislation, overturning a good 1200 years of a fine legal system painstakingly built up on past precedent distinct from that being developed on the Continent. Rather than helping victims of crimes - something the English legal system used to be rather good at - the legislature has been forced to find on behalf of the criminals, rather than the victims. It's rather like rewarding the architects of the financial crisis for their destruction; in Abu Qatada's case, we are paying him because after holding him for too long without trial we now want to extradite him to a country where he might be tortured on the basis that he attempted to incite mass slaughter in Britain.

And other, similarly shocking abuses have been perpetrated against the victims of crimes solely because of the HRA. Recall, for example, the case of the woman who was raped by a violent African immigrant who'd spent most of his time in the UK in prison; the judge refused to deport him to his home country because he would be too unaccustomed to the culture (one wonders how much of the UK he can learn from a jail cell). So he's cooling his heels at Her Majesty's leisure; and the rape victim's taxes are going towards his upkeep. She is having to pay for her attacker to have three square meals a day and free dental treatment. And, given the economic climate, it is possible that she has lost her job whilst the thug who brutalised her is enjoying far greater security: he doesn't have to worry about bill-paying. She and the rest of Britain are paying the bills for him, just as they are paying the bills of the repulsive thugs who kicked Gary Newlove to death - and then appealed for reduced prison sentences on the basis of their 'human rights'.

I am often conscious of a slightly giddy, panicked sensation as though I've stepped through the Looking Glass: everything is back-to-front. Bankers take bonuses from the taxpayer. Starbucks says 'sorry' to Mandelson for telling the truth. Clarkson is condemned for making an observation. Heroin dealers are allowed to carry on dealing, whilst those who challenge them are thrown in jail. Benefits cheats go to jail, and Jacqui Smith keeps on raking in the allowances. Speaking about religion in the public sector is a sacking offence, Geert Wilders is banned, but marches supporting Hamas in Gaza are supported and anti-Semitic plays attract large audiences. The intellectuals are in a war with the averages and the averages are winning. And Abu Qatada, now in the UK indefinitely, is paid £2,500 for indignities against his person in a country that proposes to ostracise Muslim clerics who shun the Western way of life. Is there no end to the insanity?

Radical? More Like a Fart in a Thunderstorm

2009-02-19T09:04:00.005Z

I just despair. ConservativeHome (I'm not sure why I still read it, unless it's to torture myself) is fêting David Cameron as a radical because he wants to decentralise government, copy the Swedish school system and is being 'bold' enough to encourage marriage rather than shacking up. I enquired the following:
"How about radically pedalling back the database state? Removing the majority of CCTV cameras which make us the most watched nation on earth - to the extent that China is using US as their surveillance model? Throwing out any hint of the NIR? Destroying DNA retained from innocent citizens? Destroying the ContactPoint database, CAF and all it implies? Ripping apart RIPA? Making people's medical records inaccessible to 300,000+ civil servants? By not automatically tracking each and every car? Throwing out Section 8 Cl. 152 of the Justice Bill and all clauses like it? Preventing liberty-eroding measures being implemented through Statutory Instrument rather than Parliamentary scrutiny? A referendum on the Lisbon treaty? Demanding a full enquiry into Labour's dealings with the CIA re Guantanamo in particular and Special Rendition in general? Investigating ACPO; preventing a private for-profit company to carry out police work? Making MPs' expenses more accessible? A full enquiry into the Iraq war? A return to freedom of speech; a destruction of the proposed legislation that will make it illegal for civil servants to even mention religion? These would be radical measures indeed."
Needless to say, said questions went unanswered; instead, more discussions by smug, fairly affluent, fairly average types about the 'right' thing to do to 'get people back to work'. i.e. raising the tax threshold. Would the entire nation pull its finger out if tax were capped at 4%, one wonders?

Starbucks Apologises for Telling the Truth

2009-02-19T02:02:00.013Z

I wonder if whatever wasp buzzing round Dolly's unthink-box has abandoned its host for a meatier victim: Mandelson seems to have boiled his onion, frittered his wig and buttered his Cholmondley over Schultz of Starbuck's comment that the UK economy is spiralling (which it is). For having dared to state "Unemployment, the subprime mortgage crisis specifically in the UK, and I think consumer confidence in the UK is very, very poor," Schultz was four-lettered by a foul-mouthed, foaming 'Business' - what is he? Secretary or Expert? I forget - 'person' who then went on to demand: 'how the hell are [Starbucks] doing?'
Then, as a final piece of jaw-dropping insanity, he asserted: "The UK is not spiralling, although I have noticed that Starbucks is in a great deal of trouble. But that may be because of their overexposure given the state of the market. So please do not project Starbucks on to the UK economy as a whole."
It seems that Mandelson's moved on from a low-grade factitious disorder to full-blown Munchausen's, the same illness that's afflicting the entire Front Bench. One wonders if Mandelson's going to be spending a lot of 'time with his family' as Brown's ship sinks with only one hand on board - the captain.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7897394.stm

The Party Line

2009-02-18T20:20:00.013Z

Hypocrisy is the dominant characteristic of the Labour party; everything is being done to us for our own good despite all evidence to the contrary, and the more it hurts, the better it is for us. But the worst of it is that they get us to do their dirty work for them; to conspire against ourselves, and we fall for it. Regularly. I'm speaking of democracy.
Ah, democracy, democracy, democracy... the breakfast of champions, the tea-time of the gods; the most equitable system in the world, the only one that is regularly reviled but clung to because 'they' claim that any other kind of politics is a damn' sight worse. Sweet democracy, brought to you by Tony Blair as part of the 'globalisation, let's follow American neo-colonial neo-conservative policies at home and abroad and aggressively sell or bomb people into submitting to our way of life'. Such is democracy, that gives everyone an 'equal' say because they are all 'equal' because they are all 'diverse' because they are all the 'same' because they are all 'different'. Wonderful democracy, allowing women and idiots to have the vote just like the men. Aren't we just peachy lucky to be living in the UK?
The government doesn't have to trumpet about democracy - or what they say passes for democracy - too much these days, because everyone else in the country, be they a WI matron or a leftie student activist, bellows about the sanctity of the democratic system on their behalf. Having only lived under 'democracy' for twelve years, they're unable to recognise it for its true self: totalitarianism. A system whereby the state intrudes into every corner of private and public life. And, what's more, people are enthusiastically taking on Campbell and Mandelson's jobs for them: thinking it's in 'our' 'best' interests to tear down the Lords, and make it a criminal offence to mention religion, and supporting ID cards and state ownership of banks. It doesn't matter what side they vote on: they're still participating in a socialist agenda. Lenin would be proud, Beria more so. One suspects that Gordon Brown's been using the latter's address on the triumph of psychopolitics as a study guide:
"The optimum obedience is unthinking obedience. The command given must be obeyed without any rationalizing on the part of the subject. The command must, therefore, be implanted below the thinking processes of the subject to be influenced, and must react upon him in such a way as to produce no mental alertness on his part."
And so socialism is capitulated as liberalism, liberalism is capitulated as democracy, and everyone ends up living according to the same agenda: a dumbed down, flatline, anodyne, anti-vital illusion. As Beria goes on to say: "If you would have obedience you must have no compromise with humanity. If you would have obedience you must make it clearly understood that you have no mercy. Man is an animal. He understands, in the final analysis, only those things that a brute understands."

Spy Chief's Trying To Stir Up Trouble, Trumpets McNulty

2009-02-18T19:14:00.004Z

Tony McNulty claims Stella Rimington's assertion that we're heading towards - if not already in - a police state is 'abject nonsense' which is 'playing into the hands of our enemies'.

Hmmm. He would say that, wouldn't he, being that he's been instrumental in creating the police state in the first place, as a cursory look at his voting record shows:

Voted very strongly against a transparent Parliament
Voted moderately for introducing a smoking ban
Voted strongly for introducing ID cards
Voted very strongly for Labour's anti-terrorism laws
Voted very strongly for the Iraq war
Voted very strongly against an investigation into the Iraq war

So, in other words, he's against making Parliament accountable, for an illegal war, against an investigation into the illegal war, and pro tagging the population as if they were a herd of bloody cattle and throwing them in the clink without charge. And we're supposed to accept what he says instead of the sage (albeit tardy) counsel of arguably one of the most intellectually able - Head of Intelligence - women in the country.

(He also voted strongly for the hunting ban and for introducing student top-up fees. Sewer.)

Dolly Draper's Brainfart, 'Downfall' Style

2009-02-17T19:01:00.001Z

Bloody genius.

Injustice atop Injustice atop Injustice...

2009-02-17T17:59:00.010Z

When one has M.E., as I do, and spends an awful lot of time in bed (being unable to move easily) feeling rotten and in pain, one is afforded ample opportunities to think about all the nonsenses being perpetrated in our name. How did we let it happen, we ask: surely, we couldn't have sleepwalked into a totalitarian state which uses 1984 as an operating manual? But then I went over to the ConservativeHome website to see what they're up to and realised that there are an awful lot of smug, sanctimonious, righteous and above all ill-informed people in the world who, possessing the inevitable limitations of those brought up under NuLab (i.e. the inability to reason from cause to effect, to use any logic whatsoever, and to revise history when they feel like it) simply can't be argued with.

On ConHome there were, for once, several articles not about finances but the erosion of everything useful in our culture, like apostrophes and religious freedom. Reading through the latter, I again found that worrying tendency to dismiss libertarianism as a selfish 'do whatever you want' ideology, and that governments must make sure that they act in the best interests of all their citizens. In other words, utilitarianism: the greatest good for the greatest number, in a state where the government determines what the good is. If you consider that this government does - and this is the frightening thing - believe that it is acting in our interests, based upon the principle of utility, then it becomes overwhelmingly clear just how we ended up in this nightmare, where no-one is 'allowed' to say or do or even think anything without being watched and either reprimanded or ignored.

The baby-faced baby who's just had a baby, little Alfie, is a case in point. He not only doesn't understand finance, he doesn't even know the word: but why should he, when the government's prepared to shore up anyone who has their hand out for welfare (and then penalises the only deserving cases out there: but more of that at another time)? Get knocked up, get a house: and both Labour and Conservative have been so weak when it comes to providing a response (IDS even said something along the lines of 'not to be judgmental': if everyone's 'equal and 'just the same' it's unforgivable to judge) that I imagine hundreds are going to emulate the ghastly duo and pop out a sprog of their own in the hope of attracting large newspaper payouts and having Max Clifford as their publicist.

Then, in a breathtaking display of hypocrisy, the government's banned Geert Wilders from entering the UK because his film 'may' trigger some kind of reaction; in effect, that's the same as saying something's going to happen tomorrow. I 'may' get hit by a bus or join a Moonie cult: then again, I may not. There is a little thing called free will the existence of which is being denied here; the idea that people are incapable of distinguishing between radical Islam of the Hamas type (their charter makes interesting reading) and their next-door neighbours. Now, I found the Fitna film upsetting, because it was meant to be upsetting: but Wilders was correct when he said that he wasn't really responsible for it. The people pushing the idea that all Jews are apes to three year old kids or saying that gays should die or exploding themselves on trains did it for him. It's an unpalatable view of Islam, but any kind of extremism or radicalism is unpalatable. And you can't begin to fight against something properly unless you understand it.

I think the worst dichotomy facing us from a 'multicultural' standpoint is that we are at war with a group of people the ideologies of which we condemned to the extent that we went off to bomb the hell out of them, and on the other hand live in a country where it's illegal not to accept the Other. And people who don't who hold public offices are forced to be 're-educated' (gulags, anyone), such as the firemen who didn't want to participate in handing out leaflets about discrimination against gays. Why should they? It wasn't their job, and they weren't gay after all. They have a distinct and very important role - to put out fires: not to become spokesmen for political issues. Everyone is effectively being turned into a PR officer for so-called minorities. But it is often not the minorities - which, up until last year, included women, half the human race - who take on a victim mentality. It is the narcissistic and insecure socialists who attach this tag to minorities and then go out fighting on their behalf to get them 'equal' 'treatment', thus denying them the dignity of difference.

The very fact of Britain being at war means that the government has to discriminate completely against negative views of Islam because, after all, we're trying to prove that our society is so much better to live in than that of Iraq and Afghanistan that we've just razed to the ground. And thus the battle against libertarianism in particular and liberty in general becomes all the more heated, because if people were allowed to exercise their free will they'd have none of this hypocritical, morally detestable, double standard imposed by the Left on our collective consciousness. Alas, to undo it, one would have to resort to their tactics and re-educate the masses to put an end to the willing slavery they exist in, which is taught to them in their cradle and shapes their entire lives. Every generation is about twenty years too late to guarantee the total liberty of the next.

(Una)Musings

New Blog - Please Read...

The Riots - A Week On

The First Cut's *Meant* To Be The Deepest

Chameleonic: Chapter I

The Dawn Herald - Chapter I

Day In The Life Of...

Bores, Beowulf and the Like

Another Day, Another Rejection...

Should I Bite The Bullet And...

Preciousness, Petulance and So On

Chameleonic

Black Dog Days

The Trials and Tribulations of the Unpublished Author

Who Did *You* Vote For In The Scramble For No10, Daddy?

The Balance Of Power

Crash and Burn

What Does The EU Mean To YOU?

Dead Democracy

Whatever happened to...

Iraq War Myth No.2

Iraq War Myths No. 1

Doublespeak

Happiness is a Warm Gun

Swine Flu: The Great Pharma-Con

The Peasants' Revolt 2009

Demoralisation: The True Cost of Poverty

Self-sacrifice: Labour's Immigration Experiment

Murdered: Ian Tomlinson Died of Abdominal Injuries

Guardians of Power

These Are Not Great Days: These Are The Darkest Days Our Country Has Ever Lived

Education, Education, Education

Ism-mania

My Point Exactly...

Intellectual Snobbery or Justified Elitism?

Grow Up, Grownups

Interception Modernisation Programme

You Can't Have It Both Ways

Bad Thinking

Liberty Means Responsibility. That Is Why Most Men Dread It

Stop Children, What's That Sound

Let Me Get This Straight....

Curtain Call

I Am Scared...

Education, Education, Education

Privacy vs The "Right To Know"

Libellous Lord Ahmed

The Indignity of Indifference

The Rightness of Life

How High Is Your IQ?

Daily Roundup

Enoch Powell: Liberal or Far Right?

Past Precedent

Daily Roundup

No PC Here Please, We're British

Brownian Motion

Daily Roundup

Revolt Face

Daily Roundup

Grr, Grr, Grr

Clutching At Straws

Crackpot Hysteria from our Big Brother

The First Daily Roundup

Daily Roundup

Economics, Terrorism, National Security: It's All The Same

Spiritual Legacy

The Invisible Noose

Galvinised Steal

How DARE You Try To Kill Yourself, You Swine!

Goody Goody

On Liberty

Abu Qatada awarded £2,500 Compensation for Human Rights Infringements

Radical? More Like a Fart in a Thunderstorm

Starbucks Apologises for Telling the Truth

The Party Line

Spy Chief's Trying To Stir Up Trouble, Trumpets McNulty

Dolly Draper's Brainfart, 'Downfall' Style

Injustice atop Injustice atop Injustice...

The First Cut's Meant To Be The Deepest

Who Did You Vote For In The Scramble For No10, Daddy?