The Living Working Countryside review has some illiberal proposals. Some houses are to be sold not for what the market will bear, but for less because houses are to be categorised as 'first' and 'second' homes. If the local authority and the tax authorities offer financial advantages for nominating houses in various categories then obviously any advantage will be accepted and maximised. But if an owner pays the going rate council tax and the going rate capital gains tax on any property they choose to own (something to be supported whole heartedly, why ever are these subsidies offered?), who is to restrict anyone owning whatever they like and can afford?
Is this regime seriously proposing to require owners to live in their own property? Remissions on costs can certainly be withdrawn (and won't add much to outgoings any way). But that is very different from sequestering properties and imposing usage conditions in the name of housing people who have less money than others. What happened to building council houses for those on low incomes?
Wednesday, 23 July 2008
Tuesday, 22 July 2008
Poor and Closely Watched
Sixty billion pounds has been spent on various schemes to encourage employment take-up since 1997. Even more goes out on welfare 'incapacity' benefits. The proposals for reforming this disaster are ineffective and unattractive. The plan is to reassess recipients and ensure that they really are incapable of working. Those on other kinds of benefit may be required to work for their dole, and prove themselves available for employment by signing on every day thus demonstrating under constant monitoring that they are not working in the grey and black economies.
This is supervised poverty. What an inglorious end to Labour as the party of the working people.
This is supervised poverty. What an inglorious end to Labour as the party of the working people.
Monday, 21 July 2008
Mr Embarrassing
To die of embarrassment barely begins to react to the ill-written, bombastic, lying nonsense spouted by the incompetent posing as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (what he vulgarly refers to as 'Britain') before the Parliament of Israel.
'Britain' would 'increase the pressure on Teheran until President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad halted his atomic programme'. So Brown can set up 40 nuclear power stations, over riding current planning laws to do so, but the Iranians had better watch their step or Cowardy Custard will 'increase pressure' on them.
"Our country will continue to lead, with the US and our European partners [mass leadership then? A sort of rabble at the front, more than a United Kingdom leadership here. And we do not have 'European partners', we have an uneasy association with a European Union that regards its foreign policy as theirs to impose and ours to accept, now all vetoes we could have used have been thrown away by Executive act rather than democratic decision] in our determination to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapons programme. We stand ready to lead [thought you were leading already, sort yourself, or at least your thoughts on this issue, out] in taking firmer sanctions,".
'Turning on Mr Ahmadinejad, [bet he didn't flinch], the Prime Minister said': "To those who believe that threatening statements fall upon indifferent ears we [who is we, precisely? Certainly you, Brown, do not speak for America or for the European Union] say in one voice that it is totally abhorrent for the President of Iran to call for Israel to be wiped from the map of the world." [Well, usually we say 'the face of the Earth' but something from your mind has entered the mind of your speech writer and infected it with infelicitous use of word, gesture and rhetorical device. Are we surprised? No, you could and have spoiled anything and everything, not just the lives but even the minds of others, Brown].
Mr Brown stressed his own personal attachment to Israel, [Angels do not know the universal and instantaneous lament that will spring to the lips of Jews the world over at the revelation that the ultimate Jonah has embraced their being, but lament away now] recalling how his father, a Church of Scotland Minister, paid frequent visits to the country. [That speaks for itself. Jonahism is hereditary it seems.] "For the whole of my life, I have counted myself a friend of Israel". [All Angels can say here is 'Jesus'].
He added: "Britain is your true friend. [Thank goodness they know that 'Britain' is a virtual rather than real power, being as they are from Israel and therefore very sharp]. A friend in difficult times as well as in good times, [what kind of friends does Brown have? unfortunate revelation of self and circumstances here] a friend who will stand beside you whenever your peace, your stability and your existence are under threat; a friend who shares an unbreakable partnership based on shared values of liberty, democracy and justice. [Share those values with Brown and you can give up the ghost].
"Britain and Israel continue to stand together. [Where, exactly, would that be? We all wish Israel well, as they do us, so what's all this standing about then?] So to those who question Israel's right to exist and threaten the lives of its citizens through terror we [We, who, precisely?] say: the people of Israel have a right to live here, to live freely and to live in security." [So does everybody. All people who on Earth do dwell.... thought his father was a priest. Is that a lie too?]
However, [Don't you just loathe that however word. It means invariably that everything that has gone before was a load of lies. Still, anyone condemned to listen to Brown trying to say G'Day in Hebrew and muffing it (is that a word or action allowed close to the word Brown these days?, should be unsurprised at its entrance], Mr Brown added that Israel itself [as opposed to some other Israel?] needed to make concessions to its neighbours to secure "a historic hard won and lasting peace" which had been brought within reach by the cooperation of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas - Israel's "best partner of a generation". [It is here that expiry from embarrassment occurs. What, on Earth, business is this of the unelected, Scottish, derided, contemptible so-called prime, minister of, heaven help us, our country?]
He urged Israel to create the conditions for a final agreement [not the happiest choice of words - final agreement - try not to say final anything when at the table of Jewish friends and pretending to speak for us, Brown] by "freezing, and withdrawing from settlements." [And stop wasting food; anything can be frozen and got out later for some horrific, Brownian meal].
He added "like many of your friends, [Angels would add enemies too] I urge you to make these decisions."
One member of the Israeli parliament heckled as Mr Brown delived what he described as his "honest analysis." [Only the one? Quite some level of contempt].
'The prime minister had tried to begin his speech in Hebrew but struggled with the pronunciation of "nazal tov", or good fortunes, and "shalon Aleichem" or peace to unto you.' (Telegraph) [It's that weird jaw position, set permanently to telling lies. It doesn't do good wishes, never mind truth].
'Britain' would 'increase the pressure on Teheran until President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad halted his atomic programme'. So Brown can set up 40 nuclear power stations, over riding current planning laws to do so, but the Iranians had better watch their step or Cowardy Custard will 'increase pressure' on them.
"Our country will continue to lead, with the US and our European partners [mass leadership then? A sort of rabble at the front, more than a United Kingdom leadership here. And we do not have 'European partners', we have an uneasy association with a European Union that regards its foreign policy as theirs to impose and ours to accept, now all vetoes we could have used have been thrown away by Executive act rather than democratic decision] in our determination to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapons programme. We stand ready to lead [thought you were leading already, sort yourself, or at least your thoughts on this issue, out] in taking firmer sanctions,".
'Turning on Mr Ahmadinejad, [bet he didn't flinch], the Prime Minister said': "To those who believe that threatening statements fall upon indifferent ears we [who is we, precisely? Certainly you, Brown, do not speak for America or for the European Union] say in one voice that it is totally abhorrent for the President of Iran to call for Israel to be wiped from the map of the world." [Well, usually we say 'the face of the Earth' but something from your mind has entered the mind of your speech writer and infected it with infelicitous use of word, gesture and rhetorical device. Are we surprised? No, you could and have spoiled anything and everything, not just the lives but even the minds of others, Brown].
Mr Brown stressed his own personal attachment to Israel, [Angels do not know the universal and instantaneous lament that will spring to the lips of Jews the world over at the revelation that the ultimate Jonah has embraced their being, but lament away now] recalling how his father, a Church of Scotland Minister, paid frequent visits to the country. [That speaks for itself. Jonahism is hereditary it seems.] "For the whole of my life, I have counted myself a friend of Israel". [All Angels can say here is 'Jesus'].
He added: "Britain is your true friend. [Thank goodness they know that 'Britain' is a virtual rather than real power, being as they are from Israel and therefore very sharp]. A friend in difficult times as well as in good times, [what kind of friends does Brown have? unfortunate revelation of self and circumstances here] a friend who will stand beside you whenever your peace, your stability and your existence are under threat; a friend who shares an unbreakable partnership based on shared values of liberty, democracy and justice. [Share those values with Brown and you can give up the ghost].
"Britain and Israel continue to stand together. [Where, exactly, would that be? We all wish Israel well, as they do us, so what's all this standing about then?] So to those who question Israel's right to exist and threaten the lives of its citizens through terror we [We, who, precisely?] say: the people of Israel have a right to live here, to live freely and to live in security." [So does everybody. All people who on Earth do dwell.... thought his father was a priest. Is that a lie too?]
However, [Don't you just loathe that however word. It means invariably that everything that has gone before was a load of lies. Still, anyone condemned to listen to Brown trying to say G'Day in Hebrew and muffing it (is that a word or action allowed close to the word Brown these days?, should be unsurprised at its entrance], Mr Brown added that Israel itself [as opposed to some other Israel?] needed to make concessions to its neighbours to secure "a historic hard won and lasting peace" which had been brought within reach by the cooperation of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas - Israel's "best partner of a generation". [It is here that expiry from embarrassment occurs. What, on Earth, business is this of the unelected, Scottish, derided, contemptible so-called prime, minister of, heaven help us, our country?]
He urged Israel to create the conditions for a final agreement [not the happiest choice of words - final agreement - try not to say final anything when at the table of Jewish friends and pretending to speak for us, Brown] by "freezing, and withdrawing from settlements." [And stop wasting food; anything can be frozen and got out later for some horrific, Brownian meal].
He added "like many of your friends, [Angels would add enemies too] I urge you to make these decisions."
One member of the Israeli parliament heckled as Mr Brown delived what he described as his "honest analysis." [Only the one? Quite some level of contempt].
'The prime minister had tried to begin his speech in Hebrew but struggled with the pronunciation of "nazal tov", or good fortunes, and "shalon Aleichem" or peace to unto you.' (Telegraph) [It's that weird jaw position, set permanently to telling lies. It doesn't do good wishes, never mind truth].
Sunday, 20 July 2008
Fair Does
The Times reports that a 'child who had performed much better than a classmate in the Key Stage 2 English test was marked lower.'
Child A wrote about Pip Davenport, a fairground inventor, “If he wasent doing enthing els heel help his uncle Herry at the funfair during the day. And had stoody at nigh on other thing he did was invent new rides. “Becoues he invented a lot of new rides he won a prize. He didn’t live with his mum he lived with his wife.”
Child B wrote, “Quickly, it became apparent that Pip was a fantastic rider: a complete natural. But it was his love of horses that led to a tragic accident. An accident that would change his life forever. At the age of 7, he was training for a local competition when his horse, Mandy, swerved sideways unexpectedly, throwing Pip on to the ground, paralysed.”
'Both children were awarded five out of eight for sentence structure. Child A was given eight out of twelve for composition and effect while Child B received only seven marks.'
Performed much better?
The second script is punctuated well and using commas too often is open to taste. The correct use of a double point is impressive. The spelling conforms to standard usage, indeed the spelling of: apparent, led, forever, swerved, sideways, unexpectedly, and paralysed puts countless bloggers to shame. Usually numbers are written in full in such a text so the use of a numeral is failing to conform. Being severe, 'thrown to the ground', not 'on to the ground' conforms better.
The other text needs more extensive editing.
“If he [wasn't]wasent doing [anything]enthing [else]els [he would help]heel his uncle [Harry]Herry at the funfair during the day[,][delete .] [and]And had [to study]stoody at [night]nigh[insert full point] [One]on other thing he did was invent new rides. [Because]Becoues he invented a lot of new rides he won a prize. He didn’t live with his [M]mum [,] he lived with his wife.”
"If he wasn't doing anything else he would help his uncle Harry at the funfair during the day, and had to study at night. One other thing he did was invent new rides. Because he invented a lot of new rides he won a prize. He didn't live with his Mum, he lived with his wife."
“Quickly, it became apparent that Pip was a fantastic rider: a complete natural. But it was his love of horses that led to a tragic accident. An accident that would change his life forever. At the age of seven he was training for a local competition when his horse, Mandy, swerved sideways unexpectedly, throwing Pip to the ground, paralysed.”
The marks were fair. Child A speaks with a lively, observant, eleven year old voice. Child B has been tutored more to conform to objectives that have silenced that liveliness and produced a 'correct' but curiously sad text.
Rhetorical usage, standard spelling, punctuation, are essential. But child A has the edge in communicating time, place, personality and character. Pip the prizewinning fairground rides inventor comes alive, with an uncle Harry who is part of the funfair and whom he loves, studying in the evenings, and a Mum who one day he will no longer live with and, instead, a wife.
Having a horse called Mandy, who swerves, and being paralysed from the fall at seven?
We should be vey careful about imposing conformity at such a cost to insight, imagination, fantasy and the sharing of emotion.
Child A wrote about Pip Davenport, a fairground inventor, “If he wasent doing enthing els heel help his uncle Herry at the funfair during the day. And had stoody at nigh on other thing he did was invent new rides. “Becoues he invented a lot of new rides he won a prize. He didn’t live with his mum he lived with his wife.”
Child B wrote, “Quickly, it became apparent that Pip was a fantastic rider: a complete natural. But it was his love of horses that led to a tragic accident. An accident that would change his life forever. At the age of 7, he was training for a local competition when his horse, Mandy, swerved sideways unexpectedly, throwing Pip on to the ground, paralysed.”
'Both children were awarded five out of eight for sentence structure. Child A was given eight out of twelve for composition and effect while Child B received only seven marks.'
Performed much better?
The second script is punctuated well and using commas too often is open to taste. The correct use of a double point is impressive. The spelling conforms to standard usage, indeed the spelling of: apparent, led, forever, swerved, sideways, unexpectedly, and paralysed puts countless bloggers to shame. Usually numbers are written in full in such a text so the use of a numeral is failing to conform. Being severe, 'thrown to the ground', not 'on to the ground' conforms better.
The other text needs more extensive editing.
“If he [wasn't]wasent doing [anything]enthing [else]els [he would help]heel his uncle [Harry]Herry at the funfair during the day[,][delete .] [and]And had [to study]stoody at [night]nigh[insert full point] [One]on other thing he did was invent new rides. [Because]Becoues he invented a lot of new rides he won a prize. He didn’t live with his [M]mum [,] he lived with his wife.”
"If he wasn't doing anything else he would help his uncle Harry at the funfair during the day, and had to study at night. One other thing he did was invent new rides. Because he invented a lot of new rides he won a prize. He didn't live with his Mum, he lived with his wife."
“Quickly, it became apparent that Pip was a fantastic rider: a complete natural. But it was his love of horses that led to a tragic accident. An accident that would change his life forever. At the age of seven he was training for a local competition when his horse, Mandy, swerved sideways unexpectedly, throwing Pip to the ground, paralysed.”
The marks were fair. Child A speaks with a lively, observant, eleven year old voice. Child B has been tutored more to conform to objectives that have silenced that liveliness and produced a 'correct' but curiously sad text.
Rhetorical usage, standard spelling, punctuation, are essential. But child A has the edge in communicating time, place, personality and character. Pip the prizewinning fairground rides inventor comes alive, with an uncle Harry who is part of the funfair and whom he loves, studying in the evenings, and a Mum who one day he will no longer live with and, instead, a wife.
Having a horse called Mandy, who swerves, and being paralysed from the fall at seven?
We should be vey careful about imposing conformity at such a cost to insight, imagination, fantasy and the sharing of emotion.
Friday, 18 July 2008
Mr Stupid
John Eatwell and Avinash Persaud, writing in the Financial Times, (Fannie and Freddie, damned by a Faustian bargain) underscore the sheer incompetence of financial, economic and regulatory policies pursued by New Labour. There are few things to regret about Kinnock losing the 'put out the lights' election but one of them was that John Eatwell did not become the economic guru for Labour.
Never and then never would the ignorance uniquely combined with arrogance of Balls and Brown have wreked such damage on the livelihoods of people in the UK had sensible advisors been at the Treasury. Not Maynard Keynes, or Nicki Kaldor (considering the tax mess Brown created) but intellectually and technically competent and trained professionals would have prevented our current nightmare.
Half-baked personnel lead to half-baked policies. Everyone knew Brown was trouble, everyone didn't want trouble while they took power, so they gave him a sop thinking to lose him later. What they left out of their power-seeking equation was what Brown was dragging along with him, fawning idiots instantly recognized by Heseltine in his classic put down, but grotesquely determined in their ambition.
When the minister is Mr Stupid and his political coterie a rabble of power-seeking inadequates, much can rest on the quality and steadiness of technical appointments and civil service senior staff. It can be of greater importance than which Party is in power, or which Party Leader becomes prime minister. So it is now; we have had Mr Stupid for 11 years.
We would have been infinitely safer under Kinnock.
Never and then never would the ignorance uniquely combined with arrogance of Balls and Brown have wreked such damage on the livelihoods of people in the UK had sensible advisors been at the Treasury. Not Maynard Keynes, or Nicki Kaldor (considering the tax mess Brown created) but intellectually and technically competent and trained professionals would have prevented our current nightmare.
Half-baked personnel lead to half-baked policies. Everyone knew Brown was trouble, everyone didn't want trouble while they took power, so they gave him a sop thinking to lose him later. What they left out of their power-seeking equation was what Brown was dragging along with him, fawning idiots instantly recognized by Heseltine in his classic put down, but grotesquely determined in their ambition.
When the minister is Mr Stupid and his political coterie a rabble of power-seeking inadequates, much can rest on the quality and steadiness of technical appointments and civil service senior staff. It can be of greater importance than which Party is in power, or which Party Leader becomes prime minister. So it is now; we have had Mr Stupid for 11 years.
We would have been infinitely safer under Kinnock.
Wednesday, 16 July 2008
The Risk of a Return to Feudalism Recast
Never having lived in a financial meltdown, it must be said it's a spectacular occurrence. Economic theoretical positions are being destroyed before our eyes. There is little agreement on which effects interventions by authorities are trying to control, or even what those interventions should be. Or even if there is any authority able to intervene, or should be making such intervention claims.
This last is more worrying because any regime with an authoritarian psychosis assumes that the regime can and should intervene in the lives of others and is welcoming this opening of fields of activity that individuals formerly played on.
What the forces of economics and failing institutions at national and international level will grind into history is going to happen - faster, slower, it has a geological inevitability. But what irresponsible and dishonest opportunism will ride on the shifts in power and control of resources is unveiling itself already. The loss of individual and private control over livelihood and life choices, currently making for a poor and restricted enjoyment of opportunity and potential, is becoming not consequential but ever more coercive.
Quite soon it may be difficult to withdraw deposits from any bank; formally made difficult by regime regulation in the name of maintaining confidence and orderly financial relations. It may become difficult to organise to obtain higher wages, and planned control of incomes will be centrally decided, though this will not be the same as the wage control policies of Wilson's day and other Labour former governments. Work itself will be reconceived not as the sale of labour for a given sum and in certain conditions, but as a way of qualifying for social existence and regime-surveilled and provided, 24/7 activity. In many ways it will be a revisiting of pre-capitalist feudal structures, with labour dues and fealty required by hierarchical local, and regional, power holders - known now as stake-holders, but carrying titles and centrally-awarded status and income in return for services rendered. They are in position today.
Freedom of movement, curtailed now, will become a sanctioned activity, rather than governed by cost and opportunity. Communications will need to be face to face for privacy to be ensured, so travel control (and the proposed national communications data base) will be of some regime urgency to install.
Choice will be the key propaganda concept masking the classing into consumption categories of the national population as their consumption behaviour is modelled and channelled into cost-effective provision for their category.
Watching the financial, and then economic earth quake is unnerving yet fascinating. Living its political aftermath needs mass involvement and assertion of individualism and effective control of governance and its growth and control agenda by defended and embedded state guarantees of freedom.
This last is more worrying because any regime with an authoritarian psychosis assumes that the regime can and should intervene in the lives of others and is welcoming this opening of fields of activity that individuals formerly played on.
What the forces of economics and failing institutions at national and international level will grind into history is going to happen - faster, slower, it has a geological inevitability. But what irresponsible and dishonest opportunism will ride on the shifts in power and control of resources is unveiling itself already. The loss of individual and private control over livelihood and life choices, currently making for a poor and restricted enjoyment of opportunity and potential, is becoming not consequential but ever more coercive.
Quite soon it may be difficult to withdraw deposits from any bank; formally made difficult by regime regulation in the name of maintaining confidence and orderly financial relations. It may become difficult to organise to obtain higher wages, and planned control of incomes will be centrally decided, though this will not be the same as the wage control policies of Wilson's day and other Labour former governments. Work itself will be reconceived not as the sale of labour for a given sum and in certain conditions, but as a way of qualifying for social existence and regime-surveilled and provided, 24/7 activity. In many ways it will be a revisiting of pre-capitalist feudal structures, with labour dues and fealty required by hierarchical local, and regional, power holders - known now as stake-holders, but carrying titles and centrally-awarded status and income in return for services rendered. They are in position today.
Freedom of movement, curtailed now, will become a sanctioned activity, rather than governed by cost and opportunity. Communications will need to be face to face for privacy to be ensured, so travel control (and the proposed national communications data base) will be of some regime urgency to install.
Choice will be the key propaganda concept masking the classing into consumption categories of the national population as their consumption behaviour is modelled and channelled into cost-effective provision for their category.
Watching the financial, and then economic earth quake is unnerving yet fascinating. Living its political aftermath needs mass involvement and assertion of individualism and effective control of governance and its growth and control agenda by defended and embedded state guarantees of freedom.
Monday, 14 July 2008
Armed
Mr Brown said: "We need to make it absolutely clear to everyone, but especially young people, that in our country there are boundaries of acceptable behaviour (and) that it is completely unacceptable to carry a knife."
You don't carry a knife Brown, you carry a panga.
You don't carry a knife Brown, you carry a panga.
Union
The Union of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland needs to be reconsidered. The reconsideration must involve all the people in all the divers parts of the Union. It cannot be right to have only the Scottish people engaged in a 'National Conversation' about their relations with England, Wales and the British counties of Ulster.
There is great bitterness lying across all of these relationships; and enormous, strategic resources, and great wealth involved too.
We should not allow such a contemptible regime as Brown's to make irreversible choices (or reversible only with levels of violence we had thought to have ended within these Islands - the only claim New Labour can make to establishing the good) on behalf of us all.
The necessity of a general election that is conducted on manifestos offering choices for the union of the United Kingdom, and choices on the nature of our union with Europe is paramount.
There is great bitterness lying across all of these relationships; and enormous, strategic resources, and great wealth involved too.
We should not allow such a contemptible regime as Brown's to make irreversible choices (or reversible only with levels of violence we had thought to have ended within these Islands - the only claim New Labour can make to establishing the good) on behalf of us all.
The necessity of a general election that is conducted on manifestos offering choices for the union of the United Kingdom, and choices on the nature of our union with Europe is paramount.
Marriage and its Purposes
Contrary to romanticist vulgarisation, marriage does not either yield lifelong love and partnership, nor does it exclude such a relationship. Marriage is a contractual, social mechanism that povides the weft to the warp of kinship systems.
Italians, which really means Roman law, say always that we know who our mother is. Fathers are socially determined. Whatever web of kinship used to shape a society, men are invariably associated within it by social categorisation. Supposed to marry your mother's brother's son? Then that is where your husband (in the sense of recognized father of the familial descendant generation) will be located. Sometimes he might even be that, but more usually that is just a part of his socially ascribed role.
Essentially, groups of men exchange women (and, variously, associated property), in the interest of maintaining their command of that most fundamental economic good, human reproduction. The next generation is ultimate wealth.
Women resent this. Well, you would, wouldn't you? Dress it up any way you like, kinship groups, dominated by males, exchange women. They do so because exchange generates society, and from social order springs power that is institutionally embedded, rather than constantly reasserted by force of arms.
These bald and unnuanced assertions of fought-over theory (oh yes, it looks like Flanders Fields out there), provides some explanation of what is being reasserted in the reality of Brown's Britain. Women are exchanging themselves, without reference to established structures and norms, in their regime-provided shelter and subsistence. It may feel like 'liberation' but in the end, when the assertions of brute force are played out, they will find out who is the 'father' of their children.
And there will be a new understanding of the meaning of to cheapen oneself. What group will make an exchange for those without a constellation of connection, sent into the world naked, without fathers, uncles, grandparents...
Those who seem to be unmarried but are surrounded by appropriate adjoined kinship groups are merely playing with the formalities and in no real danger. But those who have tried to negotiate their own exchange without understanding of contract have condemned themselves and their children to a terrible status.
Italians, which really means Roman law, say always that we know who our mother is. Fathers are socially determined. Whatever web of kinship used to shape a society, men are invariably associated within it by social categorisation. Supposed to marry your mother's brother's son? Then that is where your husband (in the sense of recognized father of the familial descendant generation) will be located. Sometimes he might even be that, but more usually that is just a part of his socially ascribed role.
Essentially, groups of men exchange women (and, variously, associated property), in the interest of maintaining their command of that most fundamental economic good, human reproduction. The next generation is ultimate wealth.
Women resent this. Well, you would, wouldn't you? Dress it up any way you like, kinship groups, dominated by males, exchange women. They do so because exchange generates society, and from social order springs power that is institutionally embedded, rather than constantly reasserted by force of arms.
These bald and unnuanced assertions of fought-over theory (oh yes, it looks like Flanders Fields out there), provides some explanation of what is being reasserted in the reality of Brown's Britain. Women are exchanging themselves, without reference to established structures and norms, in their regime-provided shelter and subsistence. It may feel like 'liberation' but in the end, when the assertions of brute force are played out, they will find out who is the 'father' of their children.
And there will be a new understanding of the meaning of to cheapen oneself. What group will make an exchange for those without a constellation of connection, sent into the world naked, without fathers, uncles, grandparents...
Those who seem to be unmarried but are surrounded by appropriate adjoined kinship groups are merely playing with the formalities and in no real danger. But those who have tried to negotiate their own exchange without understanding of contract have condemned themselves and their children to a terrible status.
Sunday, 13 July 2008
Taking From the Working to Give to the Compliant and Dishonest
Labour’s members of Parliament have told Brown in plain terms that they think the biggest obstacle to regaining popularity is his own performance, reports the Mail on a series of meetings with regional groupings.
'In a meeting at No10 with the party’s influential North West group, Mr Howarth, a member of the Privy Council, challenged Mr Brown when he blamed Labour’s woes on the economic slump. Mr Howarth told him: ‘I have to tell you that many of us think it is not so much the economy that is the problem, but you who are the problem. We would like to know what you are going to do about it.’
Brown then did a Kruschev at the United Nations, banging on the table and venting what is referred to as his 'frustration': ‘In my opinion, the real problem we face is an economic one and I am doing all I can to improve the situation.', he dissembled. When Former Whip Greg Pope 'brought the debate back to Mr Brown’s performance' stating, ‘The problems we have are not just economic, they are political as well.’, Brown demanded: ‘Trust me, I can fix the economic problems and that is the most important issue.’
Well, yes, he can keep his clients onside. Flint is offering to take on the adventurous debts taken by those without means or intention of meeting them. Local Authorities will be provided with tax-payers' money to buy up their devalued houses and unsecured borrowings of various kinds and they can return to being council tenants, after their brief fling with capitalistic risk has ended in abject failure.
Some, those paying tax, and not paid out of tax-raised funding, might feel that they had jollier things to do with their money than subsidise Brown's feckless. Or even more prudent things, like saving for their old age or for periods of unemployment. But so inappropriate are they in their view, that taking their money and using it correctly on the deserving, hard-working, heartlands, client family is the right thing to do.
No wonder people who earn their living and create wealth are fleeing for the hills, as abroad is now known. Anything to escape Brown and his hordes of rabid, conscienceless, Labour-voting, self-justifying thieves.
'In a meeting at No10 with the party’s influential North West group, Mr Howarth, a member of the Privy Council, challenged Mr Brown when he blamed Labour’s woes on the economic slump. Mr Howarth told him: ‘I have to tell you that many of us think it is not so much the economy that is the problem, but you who are the problem. We would like to know what you are going to do about it.’
Brown then did a Kruschev at the United Nations, banging on the table and venting what is referred to as his 'frustration': ‘In my opinion, the real problem we face is an economic one and I am doing all I can to improve the situation.', he dissembled. When Former Whip Greg Pope 'brought the debate back to Mr Brown’s performance' stating, ‘The problems we have are not just economic, they are political as well.’, Brown demanded: ‘Trust me, I can fix the economic problems and that is the most important issue.’
Well, yes, he can keep his clients onside. Flint is offering to take on the adventurous debts taken by those without means or intention of meeting them. Local Authorities will be provided with tax-payers' money to buy up their devalued houses and unsecured borrowings of various kinds and they can return to being council tenants, after their brief fling with capitalistic risk has ended in abject failure.
Some, those paying tax, and not paid out of tax-raised funding, might feel that they had jollier things to do with their money than subsidise Brown's feckless. Or even more prudent things, like saving for their old age or for periods of unemployment. But so inappropriate are they in their view, that taking their money and using it correctly on the deserving, hard-working, heartlands, client family is the right thing to do.
No wonder people who earn their living and create wealth are fleeing for the hills, as abroad is now known. Anything to escape Brown and his hordes of rabid, conscienceless, Labour-voting, self-justifying thieves.
Saturday, 12 July 2008
The Knives Are Out
The economic news gets worse steadily, just as was forecast. Giving credit to those without means was always going to end in tears, but it was thought to be such a clever, egalitarian, Labour thing to do - pretend that the poor could meet the requirements for prudent lending by using demutualised , heartland credit agencies that wouldn't look at the poverty of their client base, not least because the employees are part of it. Indeed entire regions of the UK are clientilised poor facing, now, the results of regime financial cynicism, for there was, after all, a lot of quick profit to be made bundling them all up and rating the bundles inappropriately, then passing the parcels of bad debtors and their debts on before the music stopped.
Nevertheless, it is not poverty having its financial mask removed and still being there with us, as it always will be, that frightens. It isn't the economy; that can go wrong any time and, cyclically, it does. What is new is the collapse of lawful and civil behaviour.
People are physically unsafe because policing has withdrawn from many areas, either completely, or at fixed periods of the day. People are not just financially poor, they are financially unsafe in that their resources are open easily to fraud from lost personal data, depredation by regime demands, or the more old-fashioned burglary. The worst threat is the denial of expectations. This is not yet a contributer to the social and cultural fear being endured at present, even though it has struck many in the private sector already.
Pensions that are expected by public sector employees are not able to be paid. The regime will repudiate the pension expectations of its engorged client state. First up will be those newly enroled into Brown's Britain's service. Then the entrants into pensionable age will find their entitlements not starting at once. Then the established pensioners will be required to accept cuts in the name of 'fairness' to all potential as well as current pension claimants. The last to be knifed will be current employees as they can cause real trouble - they might even make a concerted effort and withdraw their labour so must be left alone until the appropriate legislation and control systems are in place. Couldn't happen? It did, all over eastern Europe and the Russian Confederation as their command economies collapsed. And who has tried to run a command economy for most of us (though not the rich, national and international, operating in the London trading post) these last 11 years - out of kilter with history itself?, though the intellectual arrogance would block off that, and all, awareness.
The last threatening piece in the jigsaw picture of lawlessness is the New Labour Regime itself. As we whooped it up on credit we could never repay, the Regime mined the bedrock of our state and its defences, lopping limbs from a body politic and constitutional, blinding and crippling until a basket case is our last defence aginst criminal and gang governance, against mishap and undeserved misfortune, is the under writer of our commitment to each other in the most general and therefore most binding ways. And it is gone, leaving nothing to restrain the use of force and protect the weak, which is most of us, from naked power and its wielding. Wielding right down at local levels too.
The devastation of the economy is but the beginning.
Nevertheless, it is not poverty having its financial mask removed and still being there with us, as it always will be, that frightens. It isn't the economy; that can go wrong any time and, cyclically, it does. What is new is the collapse of lawful and civil behaviour.
People are physically unsafe because policing has withdrawn from many areas, either completely, or at fixed periods of the day. People are not just financially poor, they are financially unsafe in that their resources are open easily to fraud from lost personal data, depredation by regime demands, or the more old-fashioned burglary. The worst threat is the denial of expectations. This is not yet a contributer to the social and cultural fear being endured at present, even though it has struck many in the private sector already.
Pensions that are expected by public sector employees are not able to be paid. The regime will repudiate the pension expectations of its engorged client state. First up will be those newly enroled into Brown's Britain's service. Then the entrants into pensionable age will find their entitlements not starting at once. Then the established pensioners will be required to accept cuts in the name of 'fairness' to all potential as well as current pension claimants. The last to be knifed will be current employees as they can cause real trouble - they might even make a concerted effort and withdraw their labour so must be left alone until the appropriate legislation and control systems are in place. Couldn't happen? It did, all over eastern Europe and the Russian Confederation as their command economies collapsed. And who has tried to run a command economy for most of us (though not the rich, national and international, operating in the London trading post) these last 11 years - out of kilter with history itself?, though the intellectual arrogance would block off that, and all, awareness.
The last threatening piece in the jigsaw picture of lawlessness is the New Labour Regime itself. As we whooped it up on credit we could never repay, the Regime mined the bedrock of our state and its defences, lopping limbs from a body politic and constitutional, blinding and crippling until a basket case is our last defence aginst criminal and gang governance, against mishap and undeserved misfortune, is the under writer of our commitment to each other in the most general and therefore most binding ways. And it is gone, leaving nothing to restrain the use of force and protect the weak, which is most of us, from naked power and its wielding. Wielding right down at local levels too.
The devastation of the economy is but the beginning.
Thursday, 10 July 2008
No to TV Licences
Are you receiving violent, abusive, arrogant, threatening letters from the BBC licensing administration when you decide to dispose of your television?
Shall we take our tv sets to their headquarters so that they can see we have thrown them out?
Do you think this will make them leave us alone and stop sending cruel and frightening envelopes of visciousness to tinkers, tailors, soldiers, sailors, rich men, poor men, beggar men and thieves?
Shall we take our tv sets to their headquarters so that they can see we have thrown them out?
Do you think this will make them leave us alone and stop sending cruel and frightening envelopes of visciousness to tinkers, tailors, soldiers, sailors, rich men, poor men, beggar men and thieves?
Tuesday, 8 July 2008
Licence
Owning a television is subject to a tax, a poll tax. The explanation is in terms of funding public service broadcasting. The complaint is that:
the tax is regressive
the service is highly politicised to self-serving, and then authoritarian, ends resulting in an improper warping of neutral reporting into a ministry for regime propaganda
the ownership of a receiver does not mean any use of public service broadcasts that could readily be made free to air no longer.
So unpopular is the tax on ownership of a television that many choose to entertain themselves with their computers, and listen to the wireless. It's time the tax was transferred to the ownership of a computer; or perhaps charged additionally to the television tax, to raise much-needed revenue from many computer-users already suspected of libertarian tendencies and of an unhelpful attitude to paying taxes.
[This is the second in a small series of posts under the provisional title:
'This Is How They Are Thinking.'
The first: 'Managing Democratic Expectations in the Post-Democratic State.' was published on 25 June 2008]
the tax is regressive
the service is highly politicised to self-serving, and then authoritarian, ends resulting in an improper warping of neutral reporting into a ministry for regime propaganda
the ownership of a receiver does not mean any use of public service broadcasts that could readily be made free to air no longer.
So unpopular is the tax on ownership of a television that many choose to entertain themselves with their computers, and listen to the wireless. It's time the tax was transferred to the ownership of a computer; or perhaps charged additionally to the television tax, to raise much-needed revenue from many computer-users already suspected of libertarian tendencies and of an unhelpful attitude to paying taxes.
[This is the second in a small series of posts under the provisional title:
'This Is How They Are Thinking.'
The first: 'Managing Democratic Expectations in the Post-Democratic State.' was published on 25 June 2008]
The Rule Book and Harriet Harman
A general election is needed now. Confidence in the Prime Minister can be lower only in the face of the end of the world. Many economic and financial commenters suggest, with a great deal of unnerving evidence, that the end of the world is what we are entering. So just to set out, straight and true, the formal rules governing what happens should our intellectually, morally and emotionally challenged new Labour Prime Minister be clawed down by his rabid colleagues:
when the Party is in power and the Leader, for whatever reason, can no longer serve as Prime Minister, the Cabinet will choose the new Prime Minister.
Alles klar? Not the deputy Leader stepping up to the plate, that's for when the Party is in Opposition, and is why Margaret Beckett took over automatically until a Party election for Leader could be held.
When in power the Cabinet chooses.
The notion that in such times the new Labour cabinet should impose yet another unelected Prime Minister upon a country that has used every means to express its rejection of Labour and its policies (where we have been able to discover them, its vision is still a shy creature) signifies either that we are now wholly bereft of any remnant of a constitutional state governed by democratic and extra-party rules, or that some part of the constitutional state is no longer performing its duties.
when the Party is in power and the Leader, for whatever reason, can no longer serve as Prime Minister, the Cabinet will choose the new Prime Minister.
Alles klar? Not the deputy Leader stepping up to the plate, that's for when the Party is in Opposition, and is why Margaret Beckett took over automatically until a Party election for Leader could be held.
When in power the Cabinet chooses.
The notion that in such times the new Labour cabinet should impose yet another unelected Prime Minister upon a country that has used every means to express its rejection of Labour and its policies (where we have been able to discover them, its vision is still a shy creature) signifies either that we are now wholly bereft of any remnant of a constitutional state governed by democratic and extra-party rules, or that some part of the constitutional state is no longer performing its duties.
Monday, 7 July 2008
Zugzwang
Cowardice is attributable and attributed widely to Gordon Brown. Repeatedly he runs away overseas, or to his own country, when his regime is being more than usually exposed as corrupt and appalling. Japan today, while Glasgow East constituency Labour party pretends to choose a candidate after their earlier four choices fell under the weight of their Labour pasts and their undesirable futures, and being asked personally to stand by the most famous political Jonah on Earth.
What he would like most of all is 'to get on with the job'. He keeps telling the electorate this. And every elector who gets the chance replies that he is not the man for the job of Prime Minister. So the Leader's aim, and that of his lickspittles, is not to disturb the electors for their opinion, nor disturb the status quo through bank melt downs, rampant street violence, collapsing living standards, power and water cuts, (these last occur quite routinely in London, the first world metropolis), premature death is 'hospitals', and the widespread impression that our money is as safe in British banks today as our pensions were from 1997 on.
If he doesn't have to make a move to remedy the damage done over the last 11 years he can get on with the private agenda of his post democratic elite of wrecking our standard of living and quality of life in the interests of global economic 'growth' and the institution of permanent governance of the resources and lives of the planet. (Gordon Brown has a very high opinion of his intelligence, understanding and management of the expectations of others, and the worth of his vision as opposed to theirs).
Every time he has to make a move in the world of democracy and morality he is forced back into a losing position. Every time he is forced to answer when he would rather not move is a victory. What we see as cowardice not just from him but from his regime creeps, is much more a determined refusal to even play the game.
What he would like most of all is 'to get on with the job'. He keeps telling the electorate this. And every elector who gets the chance replies that he is not the man for the job of Prime Minister. So the Leader's aim, and that of his lickspittles, is not to disturb the electors for their opinion, nor disturb the status quo through bank melt downs, rampant street violence, collapsing living standards, power and water cuts, (these last occur quite routinely in London, the first world metropolis), premature death is 'hospitals', and the widespread impression that our money is as safe in British banks today as our pensions were from 1997 on.
If he doesn't have to make a move to remedy the damage done over the last 11 years he can get on with the private agenda of his post democratic elite of wrecking our standard of living and quality of life in the interests of global economic 'growth' and the institution of permanent governance of the resources and lives of the planet. (Gordon Brown has a very high opinion of his intelligence, understanding and management of the expectations of others, and the worth of his vision as opposed to theirs).
Every time he has to make a move in the world of democracy and morality he is forced back into a losing position. Every time he is forced to answer when he would rather not move is a victory. What we see as cowardice not just from him but from his regime creeps, is much more a determined refusal to even play the game.
Sunday, 6 July 2008
Mandelson Go Home
Populist and self-serving Angels may be, but protection of our standard of living is what is wanted and required. The free trade, dated, economic past its sell-by date, cheap theorising of the awful Mandelson globalist freak is a conceited pretence that what happens elsewhere in the world has any claim to override the importance of our enjoyment of Ferragamo shoes, French dresses, Sander working clothes, proper hair cuts, Florentine parfumiers, food whose origins is known (is, indeed, often a former acquaintance, or at least supplied by a current acquaintance), books of choice, decent furniture, a place to retire to from visitors, and a place to be sociable, wine to drink or pat in its racks; a countryside tended and sleek under local owners' care, cities maintained in their various splendours, mountains to cool off in and seasides to paddle through.
All must have their particular priorities of course, (personally gazing at pictures is winning over listening at concerts right now, but doubtless that will change), and the Rowntree Foundation has consulted focus groups (fancy) to discover what is wanted by representative sectors of our society in a basic survival kit.
As an aside some of the things rated essential wouldn't be consumed free if offered, and some of the things essential to survival were not even mentioned. Why are focus groups thought to be representative of anything but themselves? Except in a collectivist, authoritarian mindset of course.
But to continue on the rejection of global economic growth and its centrality to our well being, what is essential is to live with well-designed, competently-built, decently priced goods, in a civil society that respects its members as sovereign and keeps its citizens in properly groomed public surroundings, both urban and rural, and in their infancy and in their dotage; and in the Schengen area too.
Goods from outside the Schengen area are of no interest, nor travel outside it of much either, (though hope springs eternal that Australasia might be visited, and perhaps the Trobriand Islands). What we have not got we will trade for, but not trade, and exposure, for growth of itself. Nor is the idea that Zimbabwe or some other despoiled part of the planet is for us to rectify acceptable, let alone mounting unwarranted war and lesser attacks, and creating entire countries ruined, and new enemies, all out of the evils, falsities and personal ambitions of Mandelson, Blair, Brown and their ilk.
If it is also the ideology of these new Labour degenerates to run riot over the history, culture, economy, living standards, well being and political morality of a United Kingdom foolish enough to have put them in a position of power, that has become our terrible mistake and misfortune. But in Europe no-one wants them or will allow them to be foisted onto our lives here.
All must have their particular priorities of course, (personally gazing at pictures is winning over listening at concerts right now, but doubtless that will change), and the Rowntree Foundation has consulted focus groups (fancy) to discover what is wanted by representative sectors of our society in a basic survival kit.
As an aside some of the things rated essential wouldn't be consumed free if offered, and some of the things essential to survival were not even mentioned. Why are focus groups thought to be representative of anything but themselves? Except in a collectivist, authoritarian mindset of course.
But to continue on the rejection of global economic growth and its centrality to our well being, what is essential is to live with well-designed, competently-built, decently priced goods, in a civil society that respects its members as sovereign and keeps its citizens in properly groomed public surroundings, both urban and rural, and in their infancy and in their dotage; and in the Schengen area too.
Goods from outside the Schengen area are of no interest, nor travel outside it of much either, (though hope springs eternal that Australasia might be visited, and perhaps the Trobriand Islands). What we have not got we will trade for, but not trade, and exposure, for growth of itself. Nor is the idea that Zimbabwe or some other despoiled part of the planet is for us to rectify acceptable, let alone mounting unwarranted war and lesser attacks, and creating entire countries ruined, and new enemies, all out of the evils, falsities and personal ambitions of Mandelson, Blair, Brown and their ilk.
If it is also the ideology of these new Labour degenerates to run riot over the history, culture, economy, living standards, well being and political morality of a United Kingdom foolish enough to have put them in a position of power, that has become our terrible mistake and misfortune. But in Europe no-one wants them or will allow them to be foisted onto our lives here.
Saturday, 5 July 2008
Who Will Stand for Gordon in Scotland?
Were an Angel candidate for the Glasgow East Westminster Parliament seat the automatic closing down of the selection process because of the absence of another hopeful might be taken as a hint that Angels were not wanted by the New Labour regime.
Doug Maughan and Irene Graham (not Angels, most certainly not) left meekly after 'giving their agreement' to the suspension of the selection meeting when family reasons caused the failure of the shoo-in candidate to present himself at his own adoption meeting.
George Ryan, a Glasgow councillor, had been fingered personally by Jonah Brown, which is a sufficient, (some might argue necessary) explanation, rather than 'family reasons'; better, even, than his family preferring not to have the searchlight of standing in a national election turned on Glasgow councillors and their activities.
Doug Maughan and Irene Graham (not Angels, most certainly not) left meekly after 'giving their agreement' to the suspension of the selection meeting when family reasons caused the failure of the shoo-in candidate to present himself at his own adoption meeting.
George Ryan, a Glasgow councillor, had been fingered personally by Jonah Brown, which is a sufficient, (some might argue necessary) explanation, rather than 'family reasons'; better, even, than his family preferring not to have the searchlight of standing in a national election turned on Glasgow councillors and their activities.
Friday, 4 July 2008
The Debt to Be Paid by the Weakest
Four million households are paying their mortgage or their rent with their credit card or a personal loan, reports the Times. That is quite, quite terrifying. The loan could very possibly be fraudulent in that its true purpose has not been declared, and if discovered risks the loss of the house. Credit card default risks the loss of the house also, regardless of the use to which funds have been put - funds carrying 15% and upwards interest rates at that. Effectively these households have sunk already. Four million of them, and there must be a strong suspicion that many of these borrowers are in so deep only to buy former council housing.
Nothing like 11 years of New Labour and Gordon Brown managing the economy to beggar the poorest and leave them homeless as well.
Nothing like 11 years of New Labour and Gordon Brown managing the economy to beggar the poorest and leave them homeless as well.
Do Not Eat Sea Bass and Langoustine
The head of environmental responsibility for Seafish, said: "Choosing alternative species helps to ease the pressure on stocks of more traditional fish." ..." a bland white fish you can add flavours to is fine. People don't want strong-tasting fish by and large."
The attempt to put us off a nice piece of haddock, or cod, the aim of decrying a finest cuts tinned salmon on a fresh lettuce from the garden with salad cream, then peaches in syrup with jelly (various flavours) and condensed milk, is a vile attack upon our tea.
Sea bass is an alien fish form that substitutes for decent food. A fishy version of spam. Reject it, and reject langoustine and squid too. While you are carrying the banner for higher teas, turn back the white burgundy tide and the battered and deep fried marrow flowers; and the ditto porcini mushrooms.
There are limits to substituting one food for another and in sea bass they have been reached and over-reached.
The attempt to put us off a nice piece of haddock, or cod, the aim of decrying a finest cuts tinned salmon on a fresh lettuce from the garden with salad cream, then peaches in syrup with jelly (various flavours) and condensed milk, is a vile attack upon our tea.
Sea bass is an alien fish form that substitutes for decent food. A fishy version of spam. Reject it, and reject langoustine and squid too. While you are carrying the banner for higher teas, turn back the white burgundy tide and the battered and deep fried marrow flowers; and the ditto porcini mushrooms.
There are limits to substituting one food for another and in sea bass they have been reached and over-reached.
Wednesday, 2 July 2008
A Smaller, Stronger, Committed Union for Europe
'Europe worries people and, worse still, citizens are asking if it is not the nation state that protects them better than the Union.' Nicholas Sarkozy.
Got it in one. The Union works for its original member states and, on the whole, for Spain, Austria, Hungary, and probably Poland and the Czechs and Slovaks; that is, for the central land mass of continental Europe. What it does not lend itself to is resolving the fractured history and cultures of peripheral nation states. These will be communitaire only when their interest is served, which is far less frequently than the identification of economic, geographical and historic interest in the main parts of Europe.
So why do we go on? Why cannot there be an inner core and an outer, looser favourable trade and commerce terms group of countries? Abandon Nice and build on the solidity of the original six plus the east and Spain. The United Kingdom simply does not belong, but neither too is it reasonable that Malta and Cyprus and bits of the Balkans, let alone countries suffering serious underdevelopment like Romania, should disturb the open-bordered Union many of us would like to see and some of us enjoy living in.
For many others, particularly those with a different institutional structure, as well as those who have only recently recovered self-determination, as it is for those who celebrate the Union ideals, it is too far too fast. Some of us want to be out and some inside equally strongly do not want those who do not share the dream.
President Sarkozy is right again when he condemns the destructive activities of the British Trade Commissioner Mandelson. Why should we open the Union to world trade when we have no wish to make our living standards vulnerable to global economic weather? The Union is there to protect us and our living standards; if the UK government wants to set up some global free for all, good luck and goodbye.
Got it in one. The Union works for its original member states and, on the whole, for Spain, Austria, Hungary, and probably Poland and the Czechs and Slovaks; that is, for the central land mass of continental Europe. What it does not lend itself to is resolving the fractured history and cultures of peripheral nation states. These will be communitaire only when their interest is served, which is far less frequently than the identification of economic, geographical and historic interest in the main parts of Europe.
So why do we go on? Why cannot there be an inner core and an outer, looser favourable trade and commerce terms group of countries? Abandon Nice and build on the solidity of the original six plus the east and Spain. The United Kingdom simply does not belong, but neither too is it reasonable that Malta and Cyprus and bits of the Balkans, let alone countries suffering serious underdevelopment like Romania, should disturb the open-bordered Union many of us would like to see and some of us enjoy living in.
For many others, particularly those with a different institutional structure, as well as those who have only recently recovered self-determination, as it is for those who celebrate the Union ideals, it is too far too fast. Some of us want to be out and some inside equally strongly do not want those who do not share the dream.
President Sarkozy is right again when he condemns the destructive activities of the British Trade Commissioner Mandelson. Why should we open the Union to world trade when we have no wish to make our living standards vulnerable to global economic weather? The Union is there to protect us and our living standards; if the UK government wants to set up some global free for all, good luck and goodbye.
Tuesday, 1 July 2008
Men Without Work Means Families Without Fathers
The Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society is a name to pause over. Might there be an agenda here, a reworking of notions of place and locality to fit the post democratic world? Well yes, but reading critically on, data on male worklessness and the rise of lone parenthood in Great Britain pulled attention irresistibly.
It has been a flagship policy of the Leader during his years bunkered in the Treasury with the Balls, and interfering ferociously at all levels with every aspect of domestic United Kingdom policy, to provide means-tested goads to the employment of single parents.
"UK government policy towards lone parenthood...has focused almost exclusively on efforts to get more lone parents into work through tax credits, employment promotion and training...in 2006 43.5% of loan parents were still without a job...[and] subsidising lone parents in work through tax credits is expensive." The authors note the further undesirable result of encouraging lone parenthood by "improving the financial situation of loan parents relative to that of couple families". To prevent lone parenthood in the first place is always better than to have installed the present system, which is referred to as 'second best', but might well be considered 'worst'.
The econometric results presented in the paper show that for the whole country as much as half the rise in lone parenthood between 1971 and 2001 "has been due to higher male worklessness".
When Labour was voted into power in 1997 much of the landslide was an expression of hope that, particularly in the old industrial heartlands, a party with a tradition of planned intervention in infrastructure and encouragement of industrial growth might recover the fortunes of those made workless by technological change and altered terms of trade. Instead we got Gordon Brown and his tax credits and PFI; and Harman, Jowell and the wimmin lifting the heavy hand of patrilineal exploitation.
And another generation without family, provided with school as a substitute place of safety rather than a place of extrafamilial education, learning and enrichment, a client state in Labour's ghetto heartlands, and the best hope of employment there to become a trusty and help administer the rest.
Relieving this regime of office, by whatever means, is not going to be enough; they must pay more than that.
It has been a flagship policy of the Leader during his years bunkered in the Treasury with the Balls, and interfering ferociously at all levels with every aspect of domestic United Kingdom policy, to provide means-tested goads to the employment of single parents.
"UK government policy towards lone parenthood...has focused almost exclusively on efforts to get more lone parents into work through tax credits, employment promotion and training...in 2006 43.5% of loan parents were still without a job...[and] subsidising lone parents in work through tax credits is expensive." The authors note the further undesirable result of encouraging lone parenthood by "improving the financial situation of loan parents relative to that of couple families". To prevent lone parenthood in the first place is always better than to have installed the present system, which is referred to as 'second best', but might well be considered 'worst'.
The econometric results presented in the paper show that for the whole country as much as half the rise in lone parenthood between 1971 and 2001 "has been due to higher male worklessness".
When Labour was voted into power in 1997 much of the landslide was an expression of hope that, particularly in the old industrial heartlands, a party with a tradition of planned intervention in infrastructure and encouragement of industrial growth might recover the fortunes of those made workless by technological change and altered terms of trade. Instead we got Gordon Brown and his tax credits and PFI; and Harman, Jowell and the wimmin lifting the heavy hand of patrilineal exploitation.
And another generation without family, provided with school as a substitute place of safety rather than a place of extrafamilial education, learning and enrichment, a client state in Labour's ghetto heartlands, and the best hope of employment there to become a trusty and help administer the rest.
Relieving this regime of office, by whatever means, is not going to be enough; they must pay more than that.
Friday, 27 June 2008
Fingerprinting Children
The heartwarming response to the terrible suggestion from the racialist Northern Leagues Minister of the Interior that Roma children should be fingerprinted was instantaneous and unanimous rejection. The Head of State, Italian Jewry, the professions, all major newspapers and other media, the Church, and all of us are as one in dismissing fingerprinting any children. Claims to be protected from such practices are entrenched in the Constitution and its adjuncts. Any such legislative attempt would run headlong into the embedded protections, particularly of minors, in the citizens' defences against authoritarian governance. Routes to redress are explicit and accessible.
People are just as repelled by the fingerprinting of children as young as five in England. Unfortunately the continuous assault upon the accepted attitude and sense of propriety that our constitution needs to make it function, coupled with the persistent introduction of authoritarian formal enabling legislation followed by undiscussed orders, over the New Labour years has led inevitably to loss of unanimity in opposition to such practices. It is considered by some that the presence of legislation justifies its use.
We cannot go back to our destroyed constitution, and it is becoming increasingly urgent that formal defences for the citizen against authoritarian governance are drawn up and thir implementation put beyond regime reach. Next September little fingers will be inked and rolled onto a permanent record. We have come a long way from finger paints and innocence.
People are just as repelled by the fingerprinting of children as young as five in England. Unfortunately the continuous assault upon the accepted attitude and sense of propriety that our constitution needs to make it function, coupled with the persistent introduction of authoritarian formal enabling legislation followed by undiscussed orders, over the New Labour years has led inevitably to loss of unanimity in opposition to such practices. It is considered by some that the presence of legislation justifies its use.
We cannot go back to our destroyed constitution, and it is becoming increasingly urgent that formal defences for the citizen against authoritarian governance are drawn up and thir implementation put beyond regime reach. Next September little fingers will be inked and rolled onto a permanent record. We have come a long way from finger paints and innocence.
Thursday, 26 June 2008
Destroying the Permanent Democratic State with Temporarily Conferred Electoral Power
Having set out examples of post democratic management of democratic expectation in the previous post it is interesting to consider again just what are the chances of a general election. As can be seen, there is no need for terrorist frighteners or social violence.
Italy, prince of political manipulation, shows the way, as Berlusconi with his total control of the media, instigates ad hominem legislation to end his trial for the criminal acts of which he and his distasteful English New Labour employee, Mr Jowell, are accused, and launches a regime assault upon the institutions of the Italian state.
Italy, prince of political manipulation, shows the way, as Berlusconi with his total control of the media, instigates ad hominem legislation to end his trial for the criminal acts of which he and his distasteful English New Labour employee, Mr Jowell, are accused, and launches a regime assault upon the institutions of the Italian state.
Wednesday, 25 June 2008
Managing Democratic Expectations in the Post-Democratic State
'Conservative support, at 45%, is at a 20-year high.' This would give the Conservative party 'a landslide victory as big as Labour's win in 1997, with some 400 seats.' Labour would be 'reduced to well under 200 MPs, with many ministers losing their seats.' 'Labour would lose previously safe seats such as Wakefield.', notes the Guardian. Within the UK federation the Scottish section of the UK Labour party can be expected to collapse.
What arguments and means can be used to contain the expectation of a general election and its expected results within 22 months - one session of Parliament and the impotent remnants of another? The voters of the United Kingdom are determined on regime change. But while the regime embodies objectives inimical to the voters, those objectives are highly desirable to governing elites.
In order of importance, these are: the installation of the Lisbon Constitution and consequent removal of member state vetoes on European federal decision taking. Electoral results in member states for nation-state democratic institutions will shrink in importance. Decision-taking on nation-state level will move to the European federal institutions while regional and more local matters will pass from nation-state central decision-taking to various elected and appointed institutions under subsidiarity (a 'pillar' of the European Union governing structures), as planned under the devolution introduced under New Labour to produce the 'Britain of the Nations and the Regions.' The cyclical rather than constant member state representation on EU governing bodies will further delimit nation-state importance and emphasise cross nation-state border Regions. With this, too, interest in national elections will decline. Smaller nation-states will find themselves weakened in their EU representation particularly - hence Ireland's resounding No to Lisbon; and nascent secessionist nation-states in federalised member states of the EU will face wholly different determinants of their leaving together with their resources, whether of their people, skills or natural resources. For many reasons, Lisbon is the New Labour Project's post democratic 'home safe'.
Once part of federal Europe there is good argument to match consultation of the people to constitutional practices, terms of office, and electoral forms to pan European best practice. Proportional representation in its least representative form is used already for EU elections in the UK and in its devolved regions for their assemblies. The first past the post Westminster system is becoming a stand-alone outside of local elections to power-deprived local authorities.
Globalisation and its challenges, it is argued, require longer term planning implementation and response than the parliamentary terms settled in the last 100 years. It is unwise, if not dangerous in certain fields such as defence and anti-terrorism, to respond with the short termism generated necessarily by a constitution developed organically to respond to circumstances so dramatically altered. After all, under the great threat from the Axis powers the parliamentary term was set at 10 years and are we not exposed to threat as bad or even worse nowadays? The constitutional role of precedent validates such a sensible adjustment.
So widespread is the economic suffering that has resulted from the unwise if not illegal activity of financial actors in global markets, exacerbated by the rise of the Chines and Indian economies, that it would be improper to abandon the prudent guidance of the economy until uncontrollable world turmoil has been ameliorated and abated at home, and settled abroad. The evident and well-founded distress of the people cannot be allowed to express itself in ignorant allocation of blame to the finest manager of the economy since records began. Temporary, 'mid term' unpopularity born of simplistic understandings must not be allowed to disturb the ship of state.
Dissent, monitored by state employees in contact with the public in every day, indeed all, activities will be assessed and dealt with where it is judged to have slipped over the borderline into disruption, and connivance in terrorism. Responsiveness to public demand is in any case better using focus groups and properly instituted consultation with stakeholders and clients.
Voting is a primitive, visceral, raspberry-blowing, undifferentiated exercise that belongs in a simpler, less-integrated, infinitely less dangerous world. It is time to trust our Leader and our government in their moral and technical reliability, for periods long enough for their modernising policies to bear fruit.
What arguments and means can be used to contain the expectation of a general election and its expected results within 22 months - one session of Parliament and the impotent remnants of another? The voters of the United Kingdom are determined on regime change. But while the regime embodies objectives inimical to the voters, those objectives are highly desirable to governing elites.
In order of importance, these are: the installation of the Lisbon Constitution and consequent removal of member state vetoes on European federal decision taking. Electoral results in member states for nation-state democratic institutions will shrink in importance. Decision-taking on nation-state level will move to the European federal institutions while regional and more local matters will pass from nation-state central decision-taking to various elected and appointed institutions under subsidiarity (a 'pillar' of the European Union governing structures), as planned under the devolution introduced under New Labour to produce the 'Britain of the Nations and the Regions.' The cyclical rather than constant member state representation on EU governing bodies will further delimit nation-state importance and emphasise cross nation-state border Regions. With this, too, interest in national elections will decline. Smaller nation-states will find themselves weakened in their EU representation particularly - hence Ireland's resounding No to Lisbon; and nascent secessionist nation-states in federalised member states of the EU will face wholly different determinants of their leaving together with their resources, whether of their people, skills or natural resources. For many reasons, Lisbon is the New Labour Project's post democratic 'home safe'.
Once part of federal Europe there is good argument to match consultation of the people to constitutional practices, terms of office, and electoral forms to pan European best practice. Proportional representation in its least representative form is used already for EU elections in the UK and in its devolved regions for their assemblies. The first past the post Westminster system is becoming a stand-alone outside of local elections to power-deprived local authorities.
Globalisation and its challenges, it is argued, require longer term planning implementation and response than the parliamentary terms settled in the last 100 years. It is unwise, if not dangerous in certain fields such as defence and anti-terrorism, to respond with the short termism generated necessarily by a constitution developed organically to respond to circumstances so dramatically altered. After all, under the great threat from the Axis powers the parliamentary term was set at 10 years and are we not exposed to threat as bad or even worse nowadays? The constitutional role of precedent validates such a sensible adjustment.
So widespread is the economic suffering that has resulted from the unwise if not illegal activity of financial actors in global markets, exacerbated by the rise of the Chines and Indian economies, that it would be improper to abandon the prudent guidance of the economy until uncontrollable world turmoil has been ameliorated and abated at home, and settled abroad. The evident and well-founded distress of the people cannot be allowed to express itself in ignorant allocation of blame to the finest manager of the economy since records began. Temporary, 'mid term' unpopularity born of simplistic understandings must not be allowed to disturb the ship of state.
Dissent, monitored by state employees in contact with the public in every day, indeed all, activities will be assessed and dealt with where it is judged to have slipped over the borderline into disruption, and connivance in terrorism. Responsiveness to public demand is in any case better using focus groups and properly instituted consultation with stakeholders and clients.
Voting is a primitive, visceral, raspberry-blowing, undifferentiated exercise that belongs in a simpler, less-integrated, infinitely less dangerous world. It is time to trust our Leader and our government in their moral and technical reliability, for periods long enough for their modernising policies to bear fruit.
Monday, 23 June 2008
Elections and Their Certainty
The persistent and determined refusal of Gordon Brown to face all and any election to office is a hallmark of both the man and the Party of which he is Leader (a status itself achieved without the inconvenience of facing election). There has been a determined policy to avoid by-elections. There is a flagship Labour policy to remove from elected local authorities all powers that interfere with regime policies determined not by open and public debate but formulated according to privately set agendas and, in many aspects of social policy, the consultation by invitation of stake-holders and other interest groups carefully chosen for their advantage-seeking through conformity to regime objectives. During this regime there has been also the alteration from first past the post election to a democratically crippled form of proportional representation. Particularly, this has been so in elections impossible to avoid such as those for the European Union, and for those Labour thought it could allow safely as theirs was the inbuilt client advantage bought and paid for from tax-raised funds - the devolved governance of Scotland and London (even Wales is almost lost). So far, so familiar.
Voters are out of control: every chance they get, however remote from recovering some power from New Labour, is used to speak out for the end of Brownism. It used to be a function of the Head of State to warn and advise but, now that all activity in that office has been either circumvented or abandoned, the warning aspect has become an undertaking of the people. Nothing the matter with that, the People every time over any hereditary, failing office. So voters must be corralled into some power-deprived, guided activity that expresses aspiration rather than determines outcomes. Any means to do this can be adopted: threats, criminalisation, belittling, purchase, institutional skulduggery with the mechanisms of voting - New Labour are up for it.
The Parliament Acts, ostensibly protecting our exposure to any government and attempts to alter the length of parliamentary terms, have been as exposed to this regime's post-democratic interference as much as any part of what was once our Constitution. With the ruling by nine Law Lords that the 1949 Act is primary legislation and is capable of being used to modify the provisions of the 1911 Act, the two Acts together can be used to put almost any face on our constitutional beliefs and claims that the Executive must go to the country at least once every five years.
Our regime doesn't do elections, not even the teeniest weeniest of elections unless forced. We cannot enforce any general election ever, never mind by 2010, by any constitutional means. And the inertia of events is not on our side; things are going too badly wrong for the concession of a vote.
Voters are out of control: every chance they get, however remote from recovering some power from New Labour, is used to speak out for the end of Brownism. It used to be a function of the Head of State to warn and advise but, now that all activity in that office has been either circumvented or abandoned, the warning aspect has become an undertaking of the people. Nothing the matter with that, the People every time over any hereditary, failing office. So voters must be corralled into some power-deprived, guided activity that expresses aspiration rather than determines outcomes. Any means to do this can be adopted: threats, criminalisation, belittling, purchase, institutional skulduggery with the mechanisms of voting - New Labour are up for it.
The Parliament Acts, ostensibly protecting our exposure to any government and attempts to alter the length of parliamentary terms, have been as exposed to this regime's post-democratic interference as much as any part of what was once our Constitution. With the ruling by nine Law Lords that the 1949 Act is primary legislation and is capable of being used to modify the provisions of the 1911 Act, the two Acts together can be used to put almost any face on our constitutional beliefs and claims that the Executive must go to the country at least once every five years.
Our regime doesn't do elections, not even the teeniest weeniest of elections unless forced. We cannot enforce any general election ever, never mind by 2010, by any constitutional means. And the inertia of events is not on our side; things are going too badly wrong for the concession of a vote.
Friday, 20 June 2008
How to be Deaf to a National Conversation
The Scottish Government began the national conversation on Scotland's independence shortly after winning the last Scottish general election. The discussion, open to all and conducted on the net, in public meetings and with contributions from all and any interest, has been lively, informed, and innovative while displaying remarkable understanding of the history of Scottish politics, their future settlement both within Scotland and in Scotland's relations with the rest of the world and, particularly, with the federal United Kingdom. An acute grasp of Scotland's economic exploitation and possible independent development is present too.
The form of devolution in Scotland adopted in the last century embodies the effective independence of Scotland when all of its measures are fully implemented. However Scotland's government has decided to consult the Scottish people formally in a referendum, which it will hold in 2010, on whether fully-developed devolution or a more precipitate step into independence is what they choose.
This is driving the United Kingdom Labour regime barmy, in bringing with it the certainty of their own demise, indeed the demise of the United Kingdom as we know it. Cack-handed is a fair description of the New Labour Project's constitutional rearrangements all those wasted years ago.
So Brown set up the Calman Commission on the future of Scottish devolution intending to use the usual focus group post-democratic practices to let the Scots down gently in frustrating their clear intention of de-coupling from the the Honecker-style United Kingdom - Honecker you should be with us at this hour, what a pity you died utterly shamed hiding in Chile - nightmare. Things are going from bad to worse for Brownism, (such an unfortunate colour in the horrid history of authoritarianism).
The sub-committee set up to consider ways in which the Calman Commission on Scottish Devolution can engage with the public and gain feedback has found that the public will not engage appropriately. The minutes of the public engagement group, (doubtless tax-payer funded, where do these money-grubbers spring from?), chaired by Murdoch MacLennan, chief executive of Telegraph Media Group (who chose him?) recommended it should not hold "town hall" meetings across Scotland and open to the general public, (even John McCain wants precisely these kinds of meetings, together with Obama, in the interests of democratic engagement) at least while gathering information. "Such meetings would be difficult to manage...". Fears that the internet site is 'unhelpful' also, (this kangaroo sub committee calls the weight of expressed opinion so far 'hijacking' by 'nationalists' who are, no doubt, shortly to be state-redefined as 'terrorists' together with the 'other critics' mentioned) rules internet consultation out too.
The Commission is, however, to take public evidence during parliament's summer recess, from former First Ministers (otherwise known as Scottish Labour crawlers) Jack McConnell and Henry McLeish, and from George Reid and Lord David Steel, the ex-Presiding Officers, (that is Speakers except in the devolution denigrate-speak adopted by the Westminster Establishment), reports the Herald cheerily. So that's all right then, two Labour time servers and a pair of ex politician quangoistas dependent on the Brown regime for their life style sound as if they might be reliable enough to have their views recorded.
Commission members are also concerned about inviting contributions on the website, because that "carried considerable risks if not approached with caution". It is suggested there should be an online questionnaire only, offering limited answers as options.
It must be remembered, the Calman Commission was set up by the Brown regime with a remit that excludes independence as an option in Scotland's future.
Conservative and Liberal Democrat party leaderships, to their detriment, were foolish enough to have initially allowed themselves to be drawn in. The quicker they abandon Calman and his dishonest 'commission' to its fate, the better.
[Affirming the narrative is the reason for presenting here some arguments made in earlier Angels' posts.]
The form of devolution in Scotland adopted in the last century embodies the effective independence of Scotland when all of its measures are fully implemented. However Scotland's government has decided to consult the Scottish people formally in a referendum, which it will hold in 2010, on whether fully-developed devolution or a more precipitate step into independence is what they choose.
This is driving the United Kingdom Labour regime barmy, in bringing with it the certainty of their own demise, indeed the demise of the United Kingdom as we know it. Cack-handed is a fair description of the New Labour Project's constitutional rearrangements all those wasted years ago.
So Brown set up the Calman Commission on the future of Scottish devolution intending to use the usual focus group post-democratic practices to let the Scots down gently in frustrating their clear intention of de-coupling from the the Honecker-style United Kingdom - Honecker you should be with us at this hour, what a pity you died utterly shamed hiding in Chile - nightmare. Things are going from bad to worse for Brownism, (such an unfortunate colour in the horrid history of authoritarianism).
The sub-committee set up to consider ways in which the Calman Commission on Scottish Devolution can engage with the public and gain feedback has found that the public will not engage appropriately. The minutes of the public engagement group, (doubtless tax-payer funded, where do these money-grubbers spring from?), chaired by Murdoch MacLennan, chief executive of Telegraph Media Group (who chose him?) recommended it should not hold "town hall" meetings across Scotland and open to the general public, (even John McCain wants precisely these kinds of meetings, together with Obama, in the interests of democratic engagement) at least while gathering information. "Such meetings would be difficult to manage...". Fears that the internet site is 'unhelpful' also, (this kangaroo sub committee calls the weight of expressed opinion so far 'hijacking' by 'nationalists' who are, no doubt, shortly to be state-redefined as 'terrorists' together with the 'other critics' mentioned) rules internet consultation out too.
The Commission is, however, to take public evidence during parliament's summer recess, from former First Ministers (otherwise known as Scottish Labour crawlers) Jack McConnell and Henry McLeish, and from George Reid and Lord David Steel, the ex-Presiding Officers, (that is Speakers except in the devolution denigrate-speak adopted by the Westminster Establishment), reports the Herald cheerily. So that's all right then, two Labour time servers and a pair of ex politician quangoistas dependent on the Brown regime for their life style sound as if they might be reliable enough to have their views recorded.
Commission members are also concerned about inviting contributions on the website, because that "carried considerable risks if not approached with caution". It is suggested there should be an online questionnaire only, offering limited answers as options.
It must be remembered, the Calman Commission was set up by the Brown regime with a remit that excludes independence as an option in Scotland's future.
Conservative and Liberal Democrat party leaderships, to their detriment, were foolish enough to have initially allowed themselves to be drawn in. The quicker they abandon Calman and his dishonest 'commission' to its fate, the better.
[Affirming the narrative is the reason for presenting here some arguments made in earlier Angels' posts.]
Wednesday, 18 June 2008
The Letter
Mervyn King has to write a letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to explain the inflation rate. I suppose that's because the two Scottish Labour fools who have been interfering in England's economy for the last 11 years are too stupid to understand what they have done.
Tuesday, 17 June 2008
The State We Are In
'Mounted and riot police later divided the protesters between two fronts: one on Great George Street and the other at the mouth of Whitehall.', reported the Evening Standard of the demonstrations against the war criminal George Bush and his 'British' Prime Minister nose-picker. So far, so as it always was, although the aluminium lathis have a retrograde, imperial smack to them that was not present in Angels' demonstrating days.
'"Snatch squads" then patrolled the area, arresting people who had earlier been filmed by officers and highlighted as troublemakers.' This is not standard at all. There used to be spotters pointing out people to arrest to officers while the demonstrations were at their height, but sending organised gangs of policemen to arrest demonstrator/by-standers after the struggle has died down, on surveillance camera viewing, is a development from Ireland's Troubles (and doubtless Aden, Malaya and other 'emergencies').
Arresting a demonstrator in the thick of a fight with the police is one thing; picking up suitable accusees chosen solely for propaganda purposes belongs in what were once other political hell-holes.
So now demonstrators face rastrellamento (the Fascist practice of locking in a body of protesters and then holding them there for hours, often in blazing sun or other extreme weather conditions, beating up any attempting to break out or even sit down), armed assault (the Raj practice of permitting an organized, authorised demonstration and then attacking the people with everything from boot and fist, staves, to gunfire), and snatch squads (the Soviet and east European-developed technique, used widely too in Northern Ireland) of arresting nominated victims after the event to cause the greatest fear-inducing effect among potential future dissidents.
The oppressed people learn to cope with all of these, and still the regimes are overthrown. It is our turn to learn now. We have learned there is no longer such a thing in Brown's 'Britain' as a peaceful demonstration; it will be precipitated invariably into violent confrontation and consequent arbitrary arrest.
'"Snatch squads" then patrolled the area, arresting people who had earlier been filmed by officers and highlighted as troublemakers.' This is not standard at all. There used to be spotters pointing out people to arrest to officers while the demonstrations were at their height, but sending organised gangs of policemen to arrest demonstrator/by-standers after the struggle has died down, on surveillance camera viewing, is a development from Ireland's Troubles (and doubtless Aden, Malaya and other 'emergencies').
Arresting a demonstrator in the thick of a fight with the police is one thing; picking up suitable accusees chosen solely for propaganda purposes belongs in what were once other political hell-holes.
So now demonstrators face rastrellamento (the Fascist practice of locking in a body of protesters and then holding them there for hours, often in blazing sun or other extreme weather conditions, beating up any attempting to break out or even sit down), armed assault (the Raj practice of permitting an organized, authorised demonstration and then attacking the people with everything from boot and fist, staves, to gunfire), and snatch squads (the Soviet and east European-developed technique, used widely too in Northern Ireland) of arresting nominated victims after the event to cause the greatest fear-inducing effect among potential future dissidents.
The oppressed people learn to cope with all of these, and still the regimes are overthrown. It is our turn to learn now. We have learned there is no longer such a thing in Brown's 'Britain' as a peaceful demonstration; it will be precipitated invariably into violent confrontation and consequent arbitrary arrest.
Monday, 16 June 2008
Tethered Targets
Reporting on Informed Comment (see Angels' Links) describes what is happening in Iraq not in terms of the war but the permanent alteration in the status of a sovereign country after assault.
'These giant bases, rising from the smashed birthplace of Western civilization, were not only built on (and sometimes out of bits of) the ancient ruins of that land, but are functionally modern ziggurats. They are the cherished monuments of the Bush administration. Even though its spokespeople have regularly refused to use the word "permanent" in relation to them - in fact, in relation to any U.S. base on the planet - they have been built to long outlast the Bush administration itself. They were, in fact, clearly meant to be key garrisons of a Pax Americana in the Middle East for generations to come. And, not surprisingly, they reek of permanency. They are the unavoidable essence - unless, like most Americans, you don't know they're there - of Bush administration planning in Iraq. Without them, no discussion of Iraq policy ... really makes sense.'
So what sense can be made of Brown's policy in Iraq, announced after meetings with the outgoing US President, with such permanent bases, as big as towns, in mind.
Brown stated: "There is still work to be done and Britain plays, and will continue to play, its part." What part can the United Kingdom play? It certainly plays no part, and has no presence, in these garrisons.
As today's Herald reports: '4100 British soldiers, desperately needed in Afghanistan, are bunkered down behind fortifications at Basra's airport five miles from the city.
Of these, fewer than 300 are currently playing a direct role in training the Iraqi army or giving tactical guidance to their units on the streets.
The vast bulk of the UK force is simply there to protect the perimeter of its own besieged base. Any fewer than 4000, and the security of the installation would be at serious risk.' The British base at Basra is not the billions of dollars of fortified township with independent power, water, and supply routes of the US permanent bases.
The argument that 'the military justification for British soldiers to remain in Iraq ...is that they sit astride the main US supply route on the highway from Kuwait north to Baghdad.', is arrant nonsense; US ziggurat bases are supplied by air. Some of them have more air traffic than Heathrow.
'Beyond that static [and unused] guard role they lack the offensive power to intervene decisively in any internal power struggle and can barely guarantee their own security.
Depressingly, 'despite claims about progress in training Baghdad's new army... of the 197,000 local soldiers qualified by US or British instructors, at least 27,000 have deserted. That figure represents more men than Britain has in all of its infantry battalions combined.'
In the meantime, US Marines have had to intervene in southern Afghanistan because the army 'is so overstretched it cannot scrape up an extra battle group of 650 fighting soldiers.' (Herald Defence Correspondent).
Bush said: "I just want to remind you that [Brown] has left more troops in Iraq than he initially anticipated. Like me, he will be making his decisions based on the conditions on the ground without an artificial timetable based on politics."
The Iraqi insurgents are faced with numbers of permanent, enormous, wholly independent, garrisoned settlements in their country which will be invulnerable to their attacks and will not be evacuated (if current policies are pursued) when the new administration takes over in the United States. The British troops seem to have two functions: to give face to the 'multinational' nature of the invading forces (after all they are the only other nation left apart from the American principals) and effectively, to be a soft target for Iraqi insurgent attack, leading to justification for further oppression and permanent occupation.
Brown and Browne need to explain to Parliament precisely what is their reason for the siting of sorely needed troops at Basra airport.
'These giant bases, rising from the smashed birthplace of Western civilization, were not only built on (and sometimes out of bits of) the ancient ruins of that land, but are functionally modern ziggurats. They are the cherished monuments of the Bush administration. Even though its spokespeople have regularly refused to use the word "permanent" in relation to them - in fact, in relation to any U.S. base on the planet - they have been built to long outlast the Bush administration itself. They were, in fact, clearly meant to be key garrisons of a Pax Americana in the Middle East for generations to come. And, not surprisingly, they reek of permanency. They are the unavoidable essence - unless, like most Americans, you don't know they're there - of Bush administration planning in Iraq. Without them, no discussion of Iraq policy ... really makes sense.'
So what sense can be made of Brown's policy in Iraq, announced after meetings with the outgoing US President, with such permanent bases, as big as towns, in mind.
Brown stated: "There is still work to be done and Britain plays, and will continue to play, its part." What part can the United Kingdom play? It certainly plays no part, and has no presence, in these garrisons.
As today's Herald reports: '4100 British soldiers, desperately needed in Afghanistan, are bunkered down behind fortifications at Basra's airport five miles from the city.
Of these, fewer than 300 are currently playing a direct role in training the Iraqi army or giving tactical guidance to their units on the streets.
The vast bulk of the UK force is simply there to protect the perimeter of its own besieged base. Any fewer than 4000, and the security of the installation would be at serious risk.' The British base at Basra is not the billions of dollars of fortified township with independent power, water, and supply routes of the US permanent bases.
The argument that 'the military justification for British soldiers to remain in Iraq ...is that they sit astride the main US supply route on the highway from Kuwait north to Baghdad.', is arrant nonsense; US ziggurat bases are supplied by air. Some of them have more air traffic than Heathrow.
'Beyond that static [and unused] guard role they lack the offensive power to intervene decisively in any internal power struggle and can barely guarantee their own security.
Depressingly, 'despite claims about progress in training Baghdad's new army... of the 197,000 local soldiers qualified by US or British instructors, at least 27,000 have deserted. That figure represents more men than Britain has in all of its infantry battalions combined.'
In the meantime, US Marines have had to intervene in southern Afghanistan because the army 'is so overstretched it cannot scrape up an extra battle group of 650 fighting soldiers.' (Herald Defence Correspondent).
Bush said: "I just want to remind you that [Brown] has left more troops in Iraq than he initially anticipated. Like me, he will be making his decisions based on the conditions on the ground without an artificial timetable based on politics."
The Iraqi insurgents are faced with numbers of permanent, enormous, wholly independent, garrisoned settlements in their country which will be invulnerable to their attacks and will not be evacuated (if current policies are pursued) when the new administration takes over in the United States. The British troops seem to have two functions: to give face to the 'multinational' nature of the invading forces (after all they are the only other nation left apart from the American principals) and effectively, to be a soft target for Iraqi insurgent attack, leading to justification for further oppression and permanent occupation.
Brown and Browne need to explain to Parliament precisely what is their reason for the siting of sorely needed troops at Basra airport.
Voting in Haltemprice and Howden
Calling a general election at will is one of the greatest powers of a United Kingdom prime minister. Calling a by-election is a power that rests in the hands of every member of parliament.
The Brown-orchestrated venom-spitting at David Davis using this power is a measure of how dangerous it is. Once again some of the electorate has a chance to vote. Like Crewe and Nantwich, Haltemprice and Howden now answer the question.
Everyone with a vote in the constituency, regardless of political party, should be sure to vote, and vote for freedom and an open society.
The Brown-orchestrated venom-spitting at David Davis using this power is a measure of how dangerous it is. Once again some of the electorate has a chance to vote. Like Crewe and Nantwich, Haltemprice and Howden now answer the question.
Everyone with a vote in the constituency, regardless of political party, should be sure to vote, and vote for freedom and an open society.
Saturday, 14 June 2008
Brown Loses the Plot
It was desperate for Brown that he should shovel the United Kingdom into the European Union as it is conceived by the Lisbon Constitution. Otherwise Scotland would continue steadily towards asserting its independence and changing its federal relationship with the United Kingdom; so, too, altering the relationships with Wales and Northern Ireland. This spells the end of the Labour party itself, not just the end to Brown's premiership without election or mandate. Once within the Lisbon EU Scotland would have been reduced to a region with its options for leaving either federation, EU or UK, grossly restricted. Terms for smaller countries under the Lisbon EU are so unattractive it might not want to be in the EU at all.
Most Europeans wish the EU to continue - but not in its present form and even less in the Lisbon form, which effectively hands authority to France and Germany. Among his many failings, Gordon Brown is a fool and, in his frantic desire to save himself, his ruling elite, and his precarious claim to rule the UK he will be intensely vulnerable to German and French pretence that he too is part of Europe's ruling group of large countries. The merest glance shows that the UK is not: not part of the euro, not part of Schengen, with a separate nuclear force, unwilling to co-operate even on large defence expenditures such as aircraft carriers with other member states, constantly obstructive and hence much disliked on pan-European tax and welfare measures, civil liberties and justice measures, workplace and union conditions, the list goes on and on.
Conceit assists Brown in his delusion that he matters. Vilified at home for his clumsy, ugly, so public dishonesty and constant stream of lies about what he has done and what he is doing, his personal distastefulness, his twisted authoritarianism, Brown can be bought cheaply by Sarkozy's flattery to his wounded amour propre, as France finds a home for its nuclear waste in England.
We need a general election now to choose a government and prime minister who will advance the UK's interests in Europe, and advance a European Union as an association of equal member-states for the purposes of trade. We cannot allow Brown to blunder on in return for a kiss from Carla Bruni.
Most Europeans wish the EU to continue - but not in its present form and even less in the Lisbon form, which effectively hands authority to France and Germany. Among his many failings, Gordon Brown is a fool and, in his frantic desire to save himself, his ruling elite, and his precarious claim to rule the UK he will be intensely vulnerable to German and French pretence that he too is part of Europe's ruling group of large countries. The merest glance shows that the UK is not: not part of the euro, not part of Schengen, with a separate nuclear force, unwilling to co-operate even on large defence expenditures such as aircraft carriers with other member states, constantly obstructive and hence much disliked on pan-European tax and welfare measures, civil liberties and justice measures, workplace and union conditions, the list goes on and on.
Conceit assists Brown in his delusion that he matters. Vilified at home for his clumsy, ugly, so public dishonesty and constant stream of lies about what he has done and what he is doing, his personal distastefulness, his twisted authoritarianism, Brown can be bought cheaply by Sarkozy's flattery to his wounded amour propre, as France finds a home for its nuclear waste in England.
We need a general election now to choose a government and prime minister who will advance the UK's interests in Europe, and advance a European Union as an association of equal member-states for the purposes of trade. We cannot allow Brown to blunder on in return for a kiss from Carla Bruni.
Friday, 13 June 2008
No Means No! Brown.
Downing Street moved to reassure its 'partners' that the Leader and his authoritarian junta would still force the ratification of the failed Lisbon Constitution, repudiated today by the Irish people, through the Westminster parliament.
The Treaty has fallen yet he pretends that the votes of the Irish nation count for less than those of nine bought and paid for Orangemen.
UPDATE
The meaning of the term 'partners' is becoming clearer. The failure of the European Union Lisbon Constitution is splitting member state governments between authoritarians and democrats.
The Irish Times reports that the Lisbon Treaty will 'overcome' the Irish No vote:
"Ireland's possible rejection of The Lisbon Treaty should not stop other member states ratifying it, France's Secretary of State for European Affairs Jean-Pierre Jouyet claimed today.
"The most important thing is that ratification should continue in other countries (if Ireland has voted "no") and I have good reasons to think that the process of ratification will continue," Mr Jouyet told LCI television.
"We would have to see with the Irish at the end of the ratification process how we could make it work and what legal arrangement we could come to."
His view of was at odds with comments by French Prime Minister Francois Fillon, who said yesterday:
"If the Irish people decide to reject the treaty of Lisbon, naturally, there will be no treaty of Lisbon."
The Treaty has fallen yet he pretends that the votes of the Irish nation count for less than those of nine bought and paid for Orangemen.
UPDATE
The meaning of the term 'partners' is becoming clearer. The failure of the European Union Lisbon Constitution is splitting member state governments between authoritarians and democrats.
The Irish Times reports that the Lisbon Treaty will 'overcome' the Irish No vote:
"Ireland's possible rejection of The Lisbon Treaty should not stop other member states ratifying it, France's Secretary of State for European Affairs Jean-Pierre Jouyet claimed today.
"The most important thing is that ratification should continue in other countries (if Ireland has voted "no") and I have good reasons to think that the process of ratification will continue," Mr Jouyet told LCI television.
"We would have to see with the Irish at the end of the ratification process how we could make it work and what legal arrangement we could come to."
His view of was at odds with comments by French Prime Minister Francois Fillon, who said yesterday:
"If the Irish people decide to reject the treaty of Lisbon, naturally, there will be no treaty of Lisbon."
Ireland Is Not the Only Impediment to the Lisbon Constitution
Ireland and its people may yet defend the nearly 500 million citizens of Europe against the authoritarian putsch lurking beneath the post democratic, federal European Union.
It is worth noting, too, that of the 27 member states only eight have deposited their acceptance of the European Constitution with the Italian government in Rome, the final ratification stage. Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Hungary, Malta, Rumenia and Slovenia have sold out. Germany awaits its Constitutional Court decisions on the legality of ratifying the Lisbon Constitution. Cyprus, Italy, Spain, and Sweden have not even begun the procedures, zilch, not even a tilt at getting it through the lower house.
The rest have the Constitutional Treaty stuck somewhere in their democratic works, upper houses, head of state acceptance, constitutional challenges, failure to deposit the ratified Treaty in Rome despite all other procedures being completed.
Ireland or no, this is not over.
UPATE
Reports are coming in that Ireland has voted No. All the other national hesitations will be reinforced and confirmed.
It is worth noting, too, that of the 27 member states only eight have deposited their acceptance of the European Constitution with the Italian government in Rome, the final ratification stage. Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Hungary, Malta, Rumenia and Slovenia have sold out. Germany awaits its Constitutional Court decisions on the legality of ratifying the Lisbon Constitution. Cyprus, Italy, Spain, and Sweden have not even begun the procedures, zilch, not even a tilt at getting it through the lower house.
The rest have the Constitutional Treaty stuck somewhere in their democratic works, upper houses, head of state acceptance, constitutional challenges, failure to deposit the ratified Treaty in Rome despite all other procedures being completed.
Ireland or no, this is not over.
UPATE
Reports are coming in that Ireland has voted No. All the other national hesitations will be reinforced and confirmed.
Thursday, 12 June 2008
What Will You Give Me To Make Me Stay?
David Davis' resignation and refighting of his seat on the chosen ground of civil liberties and the rule of law offers a fascinating potential. Labour has done everything it can to shut down by-elections since 2005; only death has been an acceptable reason for a by-election in a Labour seat (apart from the permanent erasure of Tony Blair from Gordon Brown's world).
Discipline has not extended to the idea that a dissident Labour member of Parliament might wilfully resign and force a by-election; presumably the Party hierarchy assumed that the benefits were too high to be sacrificed to principle. Is that true now?
There are Labour members of Parliament sharply disillusioned with the leadership and its behaviour; there are many who want a new Leader followed by a general election just to limit the melt down; there are older Labour members who can be offered very little post this parliament so unpopular is the current government, and so unlikely are their seats to return a Labour MP after their demise, that they may as well be left to fight and lose. (The Lords and the quango posts and the advisory positions will soon be for the Conservatives.) What have any of these groups to lose (other than a relatively small wage payment for a little longer) from negotiating either policy changes or personal advantage under threat of resigning forthwith and forcing a destructive by-election where Labour will fail to hold in almost any seat in the country?
In breaking disciplinary ranks the Conservative shadow home secretary has highlighted a disciplinary flaw that can be fatal to Gordon Brown.
Discipline has not extended to the idea that a dissident Labour member of Parliament might wilfully resign and force a by-election; presumably the Party hierarchy assumed that the benefits were too high to be sacrificed to principle. Is that true now?
There are Labour members of Parliament sharply disillusioned with the leadership and its behaviour; there are many who want a new Leader followed by a general election just to limit the melt down; there are older Labour members who can be offered very little post this parliament so unpopular is the current government, and so unlikely are their seats to return a Labour MP after their demise, that they may as well be left to fight and lose. (The Lords and the quango posts and the advisory positions will soon be for the Conservatives.) What have any of these groups to lose (other than a relatively small wage payment for a little longer) from negotiating either policy changes or personal advantage under threat of resigning forthwith and forcing a destructive by-election where Labour will fail to hold in almost any seat in the country?
In breaking disciplinary ranks the Conservative shadow home secretary has highlighted a disciplinary flaw that can be fatal to Gordon Brown.
The Devil's Walk, or New Labour's Long March Through the Institutions
"...I was in a vision, having the angel of God near me, and saw Satan walking leisurely into London." [Southey]
FROM his brimstone bed, at break of day,
A-walking the Devil is gone,
To look at his little, snug farm of the World,
And see how his stock went on.
Over the hill and over the dale,
And he went over the plain;
No matter what was his name,
Whose face with his own when he came to compare
The expression, the look, and the air,
And the character too, as it seemed to a hair,
Such a twin-likeness there was in the pair,
That it made the Devil start and stare;
For he thought there was surely a looking-glass there,
But he could not see the frame.
He saw a Lawyer killing a viper
On a dunghill beside his stable:
"Ho!" quoth he, "thou put'st me in mind
Of the story of Cain and Abel."
An Apothecary on a white horse
Rode by, on his vocation;
And the Devil thought of his old friend
Death in the Revelation.
He passed a cottage with a double coach-house,
A cottage of gentility;
And he owned with a grin
That his favorite sin
Is pride that apes humility.
He saw a pig rapidly
Down a river float:
The pig swam well, but every stroke
Was cutting his own throat;--
10.
And Satan gave thereat his tail
A twirl of admiration;
For he thought of his daughter War,
And her suckling babe Taxation.
Well enough, in sooth, he liked that truth,
And nothing the worse for the jest;
But this was only a first thought,
And in this he did not rest:
Another came presently into his head;
And here it proved, as has often been said,
That second thoughts are best.
For as Piggy plied, with wind and tide,
His way with such celerity,
And at every stroke the water dyed
With his own red blood, the Devil cried,
"Behold a swinish nation's pride
In cotton-spun prosperity!"
He walked into London leisurely;
The streets were dirty and dim;
But there he saw Brothers the Prophet,
And Brothers the Prophet saw him.
He entered a thriving bookseller's shop:
Quoth he, "We are both of one college;
For I myself sate like a Cormorant once
Upon the Tree of Knowledge."
As he passed through Cold-Bath Fields, he looked
At a solitary cell;
And he was well pleased, for it gave him a hint
For improving the prisons of Hell.
He saw a turnkey tie a thief's hands
With a cordial tug and jerk:
"Nimbly," quoth he, "a man's fingers move
When his heart is in his work."
He saw the same turnkey unfettering a man
With little expedition;
And he chuckled to think of his dear slave-trade,
And the long debates and delays that were made
Concerning its abolition.
He met one of his favorite daughters
By an Evangelical Meeting;
And, forgetting himself for joy at her sight,
He would have accosted her outright,
And given her a fatherly greeting;
But she tipped him a wink, drew back, and cried,
"Avaunt! my name's Religion!"
And then she turned to the preacher,
And leered like a love-sick pigeon.
A fine man and a famous Professor was he,
As the great Alexander now may be,
Whose fame not yet o'erpast is;
Or that new Scotch performer,
Who is fiercer and warmer,--
The great Sir Arch-Bombastes;
With throbs and throes, and ahs and ohs,
Far famed his flock for frightening,
And thundering with his voice, the while
His eyes zigzag like lightning.
This Scotch phenomenon, I trow,
Beats Alexander hollow;
Even when most tame,
He breathes more flame
Than ten fire-kings could swallow.
Another daughter he presently met:
With music of fife and drum,
And a consecrated flag,
And shout of tag and rag,
And march of rank and file,
Which had filled the crowded aisle
Of the venerable pile,
From church he saw her come.
He called her aside, and began to chide:
"For what dost thou here?" said he:
"My city of Rome is thy proper home,
And there's work enough there for thee.
"Thou hast confessions to listen,
And bells to christen,
And altars and dolls to dress;
And fools to coax,
And sinners to hoax,
And beads and bones to bless;
And great pardons to sell
For those who pay well,
And small ones for those who pay less."
"Nay, Father, I boast that this is my post,"
She answered; "and thou wilt allow
That the great Harlot,
Who is clothed in scarlet,
Can very well spare me now."
"Upon her business I am come here,
That we may extend her powers;
Whatever lets down this church that we hate,
Is something in favor of ours.
"You will not think, great Cosmocrat!
That I spend my time in fooling;
Many irons, my Sire, have we in the fire,
And I must leave none of them cooling;
For you must know state-councils here
Are held which I bear rule in.
When my liberal notions
Produce mischievous motions,
There's many a man of good intent,
In either house of Parliament,
Whom I shall find a tool in;
And I have hopeful pupils too,
Who all this while are schooling.
"Fine progress they make in our liberal opinions,
My Utilitarians,
My all sorts of --inians
And all sorts of --arians,
My all sorts of --ists,
And my Prigs and my Whigs,
Who have all sorts of twists,
Trained in the very way, I know,
Father, you would have them go;
High and low,
Wise and foolish, great and small,
March-of-Intellect Boys all.
"Well pleased wilt thou be at no very far day,
When the caldroun of mischief boils,
And I bring them forth in battle array,
And bid them suspend their broils,
That they may unite and fall on the prey,
For which we are spreading our toils.
How the nice boys all will give mouth at the call,
'Hark away! hark away to the spoils!'--
My Macs and my Quacks and my lawless Jacks,
My Shields and O'Connells, my pious MacDonnells,
My joke-smith Sydney, and all of his kidney,
My Humes and my Broughams,
My merry old Jerry,
My Lord Kings, and my Doctor Doyles!"
At this good news, so great
The Devil's pleasure grew,
That, with a joyful swish, he rent
The hole where his tail came through.
His countenance fell for a moment
When he felt the stitches go:
"Ah!" thought he, "there's a job now
That I've made for my tailor below."
"Great news! bloody news!" cried a newsman;
The Devil said, "Stop, let me see!"
"Great news? bloody news?" thought the Devil;
"The bloodier the better for me."
So he bought the newspaper, and no news
At all for his money he had:
"Lying varlet," thought he, "thus to take in old Nick!
But it's some satisfaction, my lad,
To know thou art paid beforehand for the trick;
For the sixpence I gave thee is bad."
....
He went to a coffee-house to dine,
And there he had soy in his dish;
Having ordered some soles for his dinner,
Because he was fond of flat fish.
"They are much to my palate," thought he;
"And now guess the reason who can,
Why no bait should be better than place,
When I fish for a Parliament-man."
...
Now, the morning air was cold for him,
Who was used to a warm abode;
And yet he did not immediately wish
To set out on his homeward road.
For he had some morning calls to make
Before he went back to Hell;
"So," thought he, "I'll step into a gaming-house,
And that will do as well;"
But, just before he could get to the door,
A wonderful chance befell.
For all on a sudden, in a dark place,
He came upon General ----'s burning face;
And it struck him with such consternation
That home in a hurry his way did he take,
Because he thought, by a slight mistake,
'Twas the general conflagration.
FROM his brimstone bed, at break of day,
A-walking the Devil is gone,
To look at his little, snug farm of the World,
And see how his stock went on.
Over the hill and over the dale,
And he went over the plain;
No matter what was his name,
Whose face with his own when he came to compare
The expression, the look, and the air,
And the character too, as it seemed to a hair,
Such a twin-likeness there was in the pair,
That it made the Devil start and stare;
For he thought there was surely a looking-glass there,
But he could not see the frame.
He saw a Lawyer killing a viper
On a dunghill beside his stable:
"Ho!" quoth he, "thou put'st me in mind
Of the story of Cain and Abel."
An Apothecary on a white horse
Rode by, on his vocation;
And the Devil thought of his old friend
Death in the Revelation.
He passed a cottage with a double coach-house,
A cottage of gentility;
And he owned with a grin
That his favorite sin
Is pride that apes humility.
He saw a pig rapidly
Down a river float:
The pig swam well, but every stroke
Was cutting his own throat;--
10.
And Satan gave thereat his tail
A twirl of admiration;
For he thought of his daughter War,
And her suckling babe Taxation.
Well enough, in sooth, he liked that truth,
And nothing the worse for the jest;
But this was only a first thought,
And in this he did not rest:
Another came presently into his head;
And here it proved, as has often been said,
That second thoughts are best.
For as Piggy plied, with wind and tide,
His way with such celerity,
And at every stroke the water dyed
With his own red blood, the Devil cried,
"Behold a swinish nation's pride
In cotton-spun prosperity!"
He walked into London leisurely;
The streets were dirty and dim;
But there he saw Brothers the Prophet,
And Brothers the Prophet saw him.
He entered a thriving bookseller's shop:
Quoth he, "We are both of one college;
For I myself sate like a Cormorant once
Upon the Tree of Knowledge."
As he passed through Cold-Bath Fields, he looked
At a solitary cell;
And he was well pleased, for it gave him a hint
For improving the prisons of Hell.
He saw a turnkey tie a thief's hands
With a cordial tug and jerk:
"Nimbly," quoth he, "a man's fingers move
When his heart is in his work."
He saw the same turnkey unfettering a man
With little expedition;
And he chuckled to think of his dear slave-trade,
And the long debates and delays that were made
Concerning its abolition.
He met one of his favorite daughters
By an Evangelical Meeting;
And, forgetting himself for joy at her sight,
He would have accosted her outright,
And given her a fatherly greeting;
But she tipped him a wink, drew back, and cried,
"Avaunt! my name's Religion!"
And then she turned to the preacher,
And leered like a love-sick pigeon.
A fine man and a famous Professor was he,
As the great Alexander now may be,
Whose fame not yet o'erpast is;
Or that new Scotch performer,
Who is fiercer and warmer,--
The great Sir Arch-Bombastes;
With throbs and throes, and ahs and ohs,
Far famed his flock for frightening,
And thundering with his voice, the while
His eyes zigzag like lightning.
This Scotch phenomenon, I trow,
Beats Alexander hollow;
Even when most tame,
He breathes more flame
Than ten fire-kings could swallow.
Another daughter he presently met:
With music of fife and drum,
And a consecrated flag,
And shout of tag and rag,
And march of rank and file,
Which had filled the crowded aisle
Of the venerable pile,
From church he saw her come.
He called her aside, and began to chide:
"For what dost thou here?" said he:
"My city of Rome is thy proper home,
And there's work enough there for thee.
"Thou hast confessions to listen,
And bells to christen,
And altars and dolls to dress;
And fools to coax,
And sinners to hoax,
And beads and bones to bless;
And great pardons to sell
For those who pay well,
And small ones for those who pay less."
"Nay, Father, I boast that this is my post,"
She answered; "and thou wilt allow
That the great Harlot,
Who is clothed in scarlet,
Can very well spare me now."
"Upon her business I am come here,
That we may extend her powers;
Whatever lets down this church that we hate,
Is something in favor of ours.
"You will not think, great Cosmocrat!
That I spend my time in fooling;
Many irons, my Sire, have we in the fire,
And I must leave none of them cooling;
For you must know state-councils here
Are held which I bear rule in.
When my liberal notions
Produce mischievous motions,
There's many a man of good intent,
In either house of Parliament,
Whom I shall find a tool in;
And I have hopeful pupils too,
Who all this while are schooling.
"Fine progress they make in our liberal opinions,
My Utilitarians,
My all sorts of --inians
And all sorts of --arians,
My all sorts of --ists,
And my Prigs and my Whigs,
Who have all sorts of twists,
Trained in the very way, I know,
Father, you would have them go;
High and low,
Wise and foolish, great and small,
March-of-Intellect Boys all.
"Well pleased wilt thou be at no very far day,
When the caldroun of mischief boils,
And I bring them forth in battle array,
And bid them suspend their broils,
That they may unite and fall on the prey,
For which we are spreading our toils.
How the nice boys all will give mouth at the call,
'Hark away! hark away to the spoils!'--
My Macs and my Quacks and my lawless Jacks,
My Shields and O'Connells, my pious MacDonnells,
My joke-smith Sydney, and all of his kidney,
My Humes and my Broughams,
My merry old Jerry,
My Lord Kings, and my Doctor Doyles!"
At this good news, so great
The Devil's pleasure grew,
That, with a joyful swish, he rent
The hole where his tail came through.
His countenance fell for a moment
When he felt the stitches go:
"Ah!" thought he, "there's a job now
That I've made for my tailor below."
"Great news! bloody news!" cried a newsman;
The Devil said, "Stop, let me see!"
"Great news? bloody news?" thought the Devil;
"The bloodier the better for me."
So he bought the newspaper, and no news
At all for his money he had:
"Lying varlet," thought he, "thus to take in old Nick!
But it's some satisfaction, my lad,
To know thou art paid beforehand for the trick;
For the sixpence I gave thee is bad."
....
He went to a coffee-house to dine,
And there he had soy in his dish;
Having ordered some soles for his dinner,
Because he was fond of flat fish.
"They are much to my palate," thought he;
"And now guess the reason who can,
Why no bait should be better than place,
When I fish for a Parliament-man."
...
Now, the morning air was cold for him,
Who was used to a warm abode;
And yet he did not immediately wish
To set out on his homeward road.
For he had some morning calls to make
Before he went back to Hell;
"So," thought he, "I'll step into a gaming-house,
And that will do as well;"
But, just before he could get to the door,
A wonderful chance befell.
For all on a sudden, in a dark place,
He came upon General ----'s burning face;
And it struck him with such consternation
That home in a hurry his way did he take,
Because he thought, by a slight mistake,
'Twas the general conflagration.
Brown Reported to Have Given Orangemen a Seat on the ISC in Part-payment
The Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) was established by the Intelligence Services Act 1994 to examine the policy, administration and expenditure of the Security Service, Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). The Committee has developed its oversight remit, with the Government's agreement, to include examination of the work of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) and the Intelligence and Security Secretariat, which includes the Assessments Staff in the Cabinet Office. The Committee also takes evidence from the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS), part of the Ministry of Defence (MOD), which assists the Committee in respect of work within the Committee's remit.
The Prime Minister, in consultation [not this time, Ed.] with the leaders of the two main opposition parties, appoints the ISC members. The Committee reports directly to the Prime Minister, and through him to Parliament, by the publication of the Committee's reports.
The Members are subject to Section 1(b) of the Official Secrets Act 1989 and have access to highly classified material in carrying out their duties.
The Prime Minister, in consultation [not this time, Ed.] with the leaders of the two main opposition parties, appoints the ISC members. The Committee reports directly to the Prime Minister, and through him to Parliament, by the publication of the Committee's reports.
The Members are subject to Section 1(b) of the Official Secrets Act 1989 and have access to highly classified material in carrying out their duties.
Too Much Information
'After it was announced he had won by nine votes, a relieved Mr Brown embraced the whips behind the Speaker's chair.'
Couldn't he have waited until he got home? The nose-picking and nail-biting in public are quite enough.
Couldn't he have waited until he got home? The nose-picking and nail-biting in public are quite enough.
Wednesday, 11 June 2008
Brown Succeeds in Being Ever More Disgusting
More disgusting was a difficult level for Gordon Brown to reach. Relying on Orangemen to introduce internment without trial into England does it though.
It has been said often that the six counties of Ulster that make up Northern Ireland were used as a training ground for the British Army and a trial ground for repressive, authoritarian practice, including torture, to challenge England's civil liberties. How ironic that it is the votes of the protestant unionists that have been used by a Scottish prime minister to subject the English to arbitrary rule.
It has been said often that the six counties of Ulster that make up Northern Ireland were used as a training ground for the British Army and a trial ground for repressive, authoritarian practice, including torture, to challenge England's civil liberties. How ironic that it is the votes of the protestant unionists that have been used by a Scottish prime minister to subject the English to arbitrary rule.
Ireland Should Speak for Us All Tomorrow, Not Vote Narrowly on the Lisbon Constitution
The citizens of the european countries have been silenced, some by outright lies as in the United Kingdom government's reneging on a manifesto commitment to a referendum and, as a commenter on the previous post says, similarly by the government in Portugal; others by no referendum being proffered and no means to obtain one constitutionally, or consitutional means circumvented, as in Italy, or by a false identification of freedom and the West with the European Union, as in Poland and other eastern European countries.
Ireland speaks tomorrow for us all. This brings another responsibility to every Irish voter. Every vote cast is not cast on whether or not to accept the Lisbon Constitution; it is a vote that can open the way to restoring democratic voice, and democratic choice to every muted European.
Ireland speaks tomorrow for us all. This brings another responsibility to every Irish voter. Every vote cast is not cast on whether or not to accept the Lisbon Constitution; it is a vote that can open the way to restoring democratic voice, and democratic choice to every muted European.
Monday, 9 June 2008
To the People of Ireland, Once More With Feeling, Choose Irish Independence
'We ordain that the elected Representatives of the Irish People alone have power to make laws binding on the people of Ireland, and that the Irish Parliament is the only Parliament to which that people will give its allegiance:
'We solemnly declare foreign government in Ireland to be an invasion of our national right which we will never tolerate...
'We claim for our national independence the recognition and support of every free nation in the world, and we proclaim that independence to be a condition precedent to international peace hereafter...'
And
'IRISHMEN AND IRISHWOMEN: In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom...
We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people. In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty; six times during the last three hundred years they have asserted it to arms. Standing on that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent State, and we pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades-in-arms to the cause of its freedom, of its welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations.
The Irish Republic is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irishwoman. The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and all of its parts, cherishing all of the children of the nation equally and oblivious of the differences...
... In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by its valour and discipline and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called.'
Signed
Thomas J. Clarke,
Sean Mac Diarmada, Thomas MacDonagh,
P. H. Pearse, Eamonn Ceannt,
James Connolly, Joseph Plunkett
(The seven signatories of the Irish Proclamation: Padraig Pearse, James Connolly, Thomas Clarke, Thomas MacDonagh, Sean MacDermott, Joseph Plunkett, and Eamonn Ceannt were executed by the British Government for their efforts to secure a free Ireland.)
'We solemnly declare foreign government in Ireland to be an invasion of our national right which we will never tolerate...
'We claim for our national independence the recognition and support of every free nation in the world, and we proclaim that independence to be a condition precedent to international peace hereafter...'
And
'IRISHMEN AND IRISHWOMEN: In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom...
We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people. In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty; six times during the last three hundred years they have asserted it to arms. Standing on that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent State, and we pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades-in-arms to the cause of its freedom, of its welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations.
The Irish Republic is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irishwoman. The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and all of its parts, cherishing all of the children of the nation equally and oblivious of the differences...
... In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by its valour and discipline and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called.'
Signed
Thomas J. Clarke,
Sean Mac Diarmada, Thomas MacDonagh,
P. H. Pearse, Eamonn Ceannt,
James Connolly, Joseph Plunkett
(The seven signatories of the Irish Proclamation: Padraig Pearse, James Connolly, Thomas Clarke, Thomas MacDonagh, Sean MacDermott, Joseph Plunkett, and Eamonn Ceannt were executed by the British Government for their efforts to secure a free Ireland.)
Nerve is not Enough
"Have you no consideration for my poor nerves?"
"You mistake me, my dear. I have the utmost respect for your nerves. They've been my constant companion these twenty years."
"Our simple view that 'more nerves' is sufficient to explain 'more brain power' is simply not supported by our study," explained Professor Seth Grant, Head of the Genes to Cognition Programme at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. As leaden-footed scientists do he confirmed the observations of quicksilver pragmatics expert Jane Austen some two centuries earlier that 'nerves' are not indicative of brain power.
Research published in Nature Neuroscience suggests that it is not size alone, or nerves, that count. "We found dramatic differences in the numbers of proteins in the synapses between different species. We studied around 600 proteins that are found in mammalian synapses and were surprised to find that only 50 percent of these are also found in invertebrate (creatures without a backbone..., [isn't that a little hard? Ed.]) synapses, and about 25 percent are in single-cell animals [or Prime Ministers, as we refer to them currently, Ed.] which obviously don't have a brain." Nerves yes, though, just look at those finger nails and nose habits.
'The origins of thinking lie in feeling [Yes! Ed.]: some of the proteins involved in synapse signalling and learning and memory are found in yeast, where they act to respond to signals from their environment, such as stress due to limited food or temperature change.' "It is amazing how a process of Darwinian evolution by tinkering and improvement has generated, from a collection of sensory proteins in yeast, the complex synapse of mammals associated with learning and cognition," added Dr Richard Emes, Lecturer in Bioinformatics at Keele University.
Pity about the single cell, invertebrate bundles of nerves; lack of back bone and no feelings.
"You mistake me, my dear. I have the utmost respect for your nerves. They've been my constant companion these twenty years."
"Our simple view that 'more nerves' is sufficient to explain 'more brain power' is simply not supported by our study," explained Professor Seth Grant, Head of the Genes to Cognition Programme at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. As leaden-footed scientists do he confirmed the observations of quicksilver pragmatics expert Jane Austen some two centuries earlier that 'nerves' are not indicative of brain power.
Research published in Nature Neuroscience suggests that it is not size alone, or nerves, that count. "We found dramatic differences in the numbers of proteins in the synapses between different species. We studied around 600 proteins that are found in mammalian synapses and were surprised to find that only 50 percent of these are also found in invertebrate (creatures without a backbone..., [isn't that a little hard? Ed.]) synapses, and about 25 percent are in single-cell animals [or Prime Ministers, as we refer to them currently, Ed.] which obviously don't have a brain." Nerves yes, though, just look at those finger nails and nose habits.
'The origins of thinking lie in feeling [Yes! Ed.]: some of the proteins involved in synapse signalling and learning and memory are found in yeast, where they act to respond to signals from their environment, such as stress due to limited food or temperature change.' "It is amazing how a process of Darwinian evolution by tinkering and improvement has generated, from a collection of sensory proteins in yeast, the complex synapse of mammals associated with learning and cognition," added Dr Richard Emes, Lecturer in Bioinformatics at Keele University.
Pity about the single cell, invertebrate bundles of nerves; lack of back bone and no feelings.
Blackout
Thousands of homes suffering power cuts yesterday in south-east London, from half past seven in the morning, as EDF Energy said supplies were isolated 'for safety reasons'- "We are liaising closely with the fire service and apologise for the inconvenience this is causing customers,"- is very bad news.
'Inconvenience' is a wholly inadequate way to describe the problems generated within a modern domestic environment in a first world metropolis by a power failure. Must we recast our lives completely, including our physical environment, to meet the demands of a world where power, food, transport, warmth, water, and shelter are no longer guaranteed?
Those who stocked up on a year's worth of basics last summer have already profited from their foresight and their storage space. But that is the simplest response to give and within the decision-taking aegis of individuals; all it needs is cash, a freezer, a larder and a car (any one of which of which can be in short supply in many city homes).
Private transport is under attack when the private transport of goods as well as family members is becoming an essential for many, particularly women. Heating bills threaten to rise further by up to 40%; we have some private response to this - clothing, 'living cold', and if we are rich enough insulating our dwelling.
Water other than for drinking and cooking is not a private decision-taking area, more a public health disaster threat (cutting off water for non-payment in some high rise blocks in Birmingham was rethought hurriedly at the end of the last century). Others have commented widely on threats to our private control over shelter. Power is outside our private control completely. It cannot be stored and its guaranteed supply cannot be bought by individuals. Indeed they are the first in line for cuts when supply shortages erupt. The graduated loss of private control over essentials of life is total with electricity.
Metropolitan, city, town, even rural life styles are built on long standing assurance of uninterrupted power. Apologies for 'inconvenience' are a measure of the dislocation between what we have built our private lives on, and what we face now.
'Inconvenience' is a wholly inadequate way to describe the problems generated within a modern domestic environment in a first world metropolis by a power failure. Must we recast our lives completely, including our physical environment, to meet the demands of a world where power, food, transport, warmth, water, and shelter are no longer guaranteed?
Those who stocked up on a year's worth of basics last summer have already profited from their foresight and their storage space. But that is the simplest response to give and within the decision-taking aegis of individuals; all it needs is cash, a freezer, a larder and a car (any one of which of which can be in short supply in many city homes).
Private transport is under attack when the private transport of goods as well as family members is becoming an essential for many, particularly women. Heating bills threaten to rise further by up to 40%; we have some private response to this - clothing, 'living cold', and if we are rich enough insulating our dwelling.
Water other than for drinking and cooking is not a private decision-taking area, more a public health disaster threat (cutting off water for non-payment in some high rise blocks in Birmingham was rethought hurriedly at the end of the last century). Others have commented widely on threats to our private control over shelter. Power is outside our private control completely. It cannot be stored and its guaranteed supply cannot be bought by individuals. Indeed they are the first in line for cuts when supply shortages erupt. The graduated loss of private control over essentials of life is total with electricity.
Metropolitan, city, town, even rural life styles are built on long standing assurance of uninterrupted power. Apologies for 'inconvenience' are a measure of the dislocation between what we have built our private lives on, and what we face now.
Sunday, 8 June 2008
Easy Peasy
The list of words difficult to read and hard to spell published in the Guardian (and they should know, after all) is surprisingly short and unchallenging. Where is the word most commonly misspelled in comments? 'Independent' must take the prize. That final 'a' instead of an 'e' is like a fist in the eye every time.
Here they are:
100 of the most difficult words
Orange, foreign, rhinoceros, properly, vomit, tambourine, tournament, tourist, heaven, engine, exquisite, opposite, advertisement, gnarled, rigid, risen, sinister, spinach, video, vinegar, tie, wheelie, quiet, science, crier, pliers, soldier, Monday, mongrel, monkey, courage, magic, manage, palace, four, journey, gnash, gnaw, gnome, ghastly, guard, miracle, miserable, pigeon, pity, prison, month, mother, nothing, once, smother, son, sponge, tongue, wonder, almost, both, comb, ghost, gross, most, only, post, programme, deny, reply, July, obey, caterpillar, chapel, damage, dragon, fabulous, family, famished, garage, glacier, habit, hazard, hexagonal, imagine, panic, radish, miaow, powder, cauliflower, plant, pyjamas, raft, rather, salami, task, vast, kiosk, kiwi, machine, encourage, somersault, swollen, souvenir.
Here they are:
100 of the most difficult words
Orange, foreign, rhinoceros, properly, vomit, tambourine, tournament, tourist, heaven, engine, exquisite, opposite, advertisement, gnarled, rigid, risen, sinister, spinach, video, vinegar, tie, wheelie, quiet, science, crier, pliers, soldier, Monday, mongrel, monkey, courage, magic, manage, palace, four, journey, gnash, gnaw, gnome, ghastly, guard, miracle, miserable, pigeon, pity, prison, month, mother, nothing, once, smother, son, sponge, tongue, wonder, almost, both, comb, ghost, gross, most, only, post, programme, deny, reply, July, obey, caterpillar, chapel, damage, dragon, fabulous, family, famished, garage, glacier, habit, hazard, hexagonal, imagine, panic, radish, miaow, powder, cauliflower, plant, pyjamas, raft, rather, salami, task, vast, kiosk, kiwi, machine, encourage, somersault, swollen, souvenir.
Magic and Modernity
Spending hundreds of thousands of pounds to find out why the electorate loathe him seems yet another waste of money by Brown. He could read the blogs, lots of fine and accurate, imaginative analysis there, and available free of charge. The news that he has been refused as a client by a leading advertising company because of the bad effect he would have on its other famous clients suggest too that another aspect of his persona is well recognised.
Assurances that all this money, for yet more private polling and focus group delving into why he is the worst person on earth to be prime minister, is coming out of Labour party funds and not from the taxpayer is undermined by the reporting of widespread concern that the Labour party is within three weeks of bankruptcy. Its officers and employees are taking advice from lawyers to protect themselves from personal liability, and the unions on terms and conditions of their termination of employment.
It may be helpful to suggest that the better departments of social anthropology - UCL or Cambridge would be a good choice - are well versed in the occurrence, causes, explanations of, and social response to the perceived social malignancy of individuals. Cheaper and quicker too, as their research has been funded and completed already. It offers also, good reasons why using magical methods is really dangerous in the real world. Some of the remedies provided in ethnographic accounts for dealing with the Browns of our societies are pretty elemental (earth, air, water, fire, as in the form of: stones; flying - let's see you; floating as in drowning; and as for fire let's no go there), and Brown (ignorant and unaware as always) is not a Shona spirit medium, though he does resemble Mugabe in other behaviours.
Much safer just to accept the modern, democratic way - go for a vote in a general election and then go away.
Assurances that all this money, for yet more private polling and focus group delving into why he is the worst person on earth to be prime minister, is coming out of Labour party funds and not from the taxpayer is undermined by the reporting of widespread concern that the Labour party is within three weeks of bankruptcy. Its officers and employees are taking advice from lawyers to protect themselves from personal liability, and the unions on terms and conditions of their termination of employment.
It may be helpful to suggest that the better departments of social anthropology - UCL or Cambridge would be a good choice - are well versed in the occurrence, causes, explanations of, and social response to the perceived social malignancy of individuals. Cheaper and quicker too, as their research has been funded and completed already. It offers also, good reasons why using magical methods is really dangerous in the real world. Some of the remedies provided in ethnographic accounts for dealing with the Browns of our societies are pretty elemental (earth, air, water, fire, as in the form of: stones; flying - let's see you; floating as in drowning; and as for fire let's no go there), and Brown (ignorant and unaware as always) is not a Shona spirit medium, though he does resemble Mugabe in other behaviours.
Much safer just to accept the modern, democratic way - go for a vote in a general election and then go away.
Friday, 6 June 2008
The Missing Candidate
The candidate for Vice-President is nominated by the Democratic party convention, as is the candidate for President. That said, effectively the formality impinges on the practice of the nominee choosing the running mate only most indirectly, if at all; an extreme case boundary, nothing more.
So who should the Democratic nominee choose? A political clone, a complementary politico/socio/ cultural figure, a contrast, a weakling, a reassurance to voters of the other party, a consolation prize for the runner up and their primaries' voters, or a defence against assassination by choosing someone so potentially horrific as a replacement the threat is removed?
Obama wants to win the election (twice, so he has to think four years from now as well as November), stay alive, do stuff for America. So he has to have strategy that runs unbroken from getting out the vote this time, to reaching into power centres and governmental areas where he has no constituency, to getting stuff done, for eight years.
Hillary Clinton's claim that she can deliver the Wimmin and the blue-collar workers is clearly another case where she misspoke herself; two more incompatible constituencies would be difficult to devise. The only reason the blue-collar workers voted for her was because they were voting against Obama. That cause is now lost, so the vice- presidential nominee must be someone to attract their votes, not just scoop up protest votes. The Wimmin will vote only for Clinton, as they say, (the harridans), and should be written off as a lost cause in the interests of the blue-collar worker vote. Clinton is irrelevant for the four years hence elections, unless Obama loses this time, which is a wholly different set of considerations.
She has no noteworthy contacts outside of democratic politics on any kind of scale sufficient to affect the outcome of the November election, particularly after her public declarations that all must now unite behind the candidate. As she is to the left of Obama, and in a rather last century way, she is relatively unnattractive to many voters; neither can she be considered socio/culturally interesting to most - she's just an elderly woman with out of date ideas about women and their social status, and anyone staring in despair at our NHS will be determined to refuse entry to her health provision projects - how many times does she have to be told 'No'?. She offers no reassurance whatsoever to wavering small 'c'conservative voters. Her foreign relations 'experience' is laughable, and has been laughed at very widely.
The only grounds, then, for her current claims seem to be that she's so awful that as Vice-President she would act as a good shield to any assault on the President, and that she wants a runner-up prize because she was robbed.
Not good enough. Obama needs a reliable, likeable, political clone who reassures the undecided and doubtful, yet will step into the breach and carry on doing stuff for America in the spirit of the political will expressed in Obama's selection as candidate, if need be, and back him to the hilt throughout his years in office otherwise. If he can be also a link into areas of governance that add to Obama's reach, that will be a great bonus.
Hillary Clinton should never have been alllowed to stand for the Democratic nomination, and Obama needs to find the missing candidate that she displaced, in choosing his vice-presidential companion.
So who should the Democratic nominee choose? A political clone, a complementary politico/socio/ cultural figure, a contrast, a weakling, a reassurance to voters of the other party, a consolation prize for the runner up and their primaries' voters, or a defence against assassination by choosing someone so potentially horrific as a replacement the threat is removed?
Obama wants to win the election (twice, so he has to think four years from now as well as November), stay alive, do stuff for America. So he has to have strategy that runs unbroken from getting out the vote this time, to reaching into power centres and governmental areas where he has no constituency, to getting stuff done, for eight years.
Hillary Clinton's claim that she can deliver the Wimmin and the blue-collar workers is clearly another case where she misspoke herself; two more incompatible constituencies would be difficult to devise. The only reason the blue-collar workers voted for her was because they were voting against Obama. That cause is now lost, so the vice- presidential nominee must be someone to attract their votes, not just scoop up protest votes. The Wimmin will vote only for Clinton, as they say, (the harridans), and should be written off as a lost cause in the interests of the blue-collar worker vote. Clinton is irrelevant for the four years hence elections, unless Obama loses this time, which is a wholly different set of considerations.
She has no noteworthy contacts outside of democratic politics on any kind of scale sufficient to affect the outcome of the November election, particularly after her public declarations that all must now unite behind the candidate. As she is to the left of Obama, and in a rather last century way, she is relatively unnattractive to many voters; neither can she be considered socio/culturally interesting to most - she's just an elderly woman with out of date ideas about women and their social status, and anyone staring in despair at our NHS will be determined to refuse entry to her health provision projects - how many times does she have to be told 'No'?. She offers no reassurance whatsoever to wavering small 'c'conservative voters. Her foreign relations 'experience' is laughable, and has been laughed at very widely.
The only grounds, then, for her current claims seem to be that she's so awful that as Vice-President she would act as a good shield to any assault on the President, and that she wants a runner-up prize because she was robbed.
Not good enough. Obama needs a reliable, likeable, political clone who reassures the undecided and doubtful, yet will step into the breach and carry on doing stuff for America in the spirit of the political will expressed in Obama's selection as candidate, if need be, and back him to the hilt throughout his years in office otherwise. If he can be also a link into areas of governance that add to Obama's reach, that will be a great bonus.
Hillary Clinton should never have been alllowed to stand for the Democratic nomination, and Obama needs to find the missing candidate that she displaced, in choosing his vice-presidential companion.
Wednesday, 4 June 2008
Goodbye Hillary and About Time Too
We are all involved in the election of the new American president, even if most of the world does not have a vote. The United States decides and the rest of us choose, or are forced to follow. Watching the selection of the Democratic party candidate has been a political education in itself; not just in the formal rules of the game, but in the political manoeuvres and policy positions of the candidates and their timing and adjustments of their statements on them.
What stands out from all the detail of events is the sheer, unremitting nastiness of Hillary Clinton. This nastiness is not particularly personal, although she displays it personally, through and through, at every possible juncture, but an aspect of the politics of the last 15 to 20 years. It is an appalling mix of arrogance, self-righteousness, right-on ness, ride rough shod over any opposition no matter how reasonable or principled, do what we say, we are above you voters indeed your voting is a tiresome inconvenience, we are the holders of the truth to bring about the perfect, permanent society, and have the means. This combined with a lot of moralistic whining about what is fair, what is right, what it is time for, and what she stands for. Nothing could make any woman more furious than that such a person, who happens to be a female, should lay claims to representing femaleness when, at the very least, she continues to give countenance and status to a serial sexual predator as if it is enough we should all agree that if we don't like him we shouldn't vote for him. Shameless. Well, we won't have her offering herself as his front woman either, thank goodness.
The seeing-off of the Clintons is the seeing off, too, of a copycat politics that has spoiled our country also in the last 11 years.
And how typical of the mindset of that politics that she cannot accept that she was defeated - she pretends she was robbed.
Watching the Democrats against the Republicans is going to be a far better thing than watching the Clinton's being all things to all men.
What stands out from all the detail of events is the sheer, unremitting nastiness of Hillary Clinton. This nastiness is not particularly personal, although she displays it personally, through and through, at every possible juncture, but an aspect of the politics of the last 15 to 20 years. It is an appalling mix of arrogance, self-righteousness, right-on ness, ride rough shod over any opposition no matter how reasonable or principled, do what we say, we are above you voters indeed your voting is a tiresome inconvenience, we are the holders of the truth to bring about the perfect, permanent society, and have the means. This combined with a lot of moralistic whining about what is fair, what is right, what it is time for, and what she stands for. Nothing could make any woman more furious than that such a person, who happens to be a female, should lay claims to representing femaleness when, at the very least, she continues to give countenance and status to a serial sexual predator as if it is enough we should all agree that if we don't like him we shouldn't vote for him. Shameless. Well, we won't have her offering herself as his front woman either, thank goodness.
The seeing-off of the Clintons is the seeing off, too, of a copycat politics that has spoiled our country also in the last 11 years.
And how typical of the mindset of that politics that she cannot accept that she was defeated - she pretends she was robbed.
Watching the Democrats against the Republicans is going to be a far better thing than watching the Clinton's being all things to all men.
Tuesday, 3 June 2008
Summer Dressing
Linen, square-cut neckline, hanging straight down from the shoulders with a box pleat front and back, and a low belt just above the hips, loosely tied. I brought one in cream and one dark green, self-indulgently old fashioned, particularly in the above the ankle but below the knee length, with sleeves that reach to the elbow but can be cuffed back to just above. It was a private joke, a bow to the heat of summer on the central European plain, the long, dreary afternoons in novels about girls who have lost the chance to live independently and confuse drawing and watercolours, piano and a good education, the finding of a husband when the field has been harrowed by war, with knowing and feeling.
All those novels were written by men. The dress, symbolic of the subjugated girl, is really the only defence against this heat and dust (and looks good on women, not just girls). I've even added the sun hat with the wide, trailing-at-the-back, brim. And the plain, lawn straight slip beats the elasticated grip that welts the body in the torture chamber of modernity. Those girls were in charge of the first and most important aspect of their lives; all the present day talk of being in control of one's own body is arrant nonsense on a summer afternoon in Potsdam without a linen dress and accoutrements. Even the babies have parasols.
Agonised in tight stretch trousers, or shorts, strappy tops cutting into red hot shoulders, slimy with sun lotion and buzzing with midges, red in the face, with hair too short to tie smoothly back flopping on faces sticky with sweat, thongs adhering, they pass through the avenues, today's girls and women, complete anachronisms.
And I bet they can't play the piano either.
All those novels were written by men. The dress, symbolic of the subjugated girl, is really the only defence against this heat and dust (and looks good on women, not just girls). I've even added the sun hat with the wide, trailing-at-the-back, brim. And the plain, lawn straight slip beats the elasticated grip that welts the body in the torture chamber of modernity. Those girls were in charge of the first and most important aspect of their lives; all the present day talk of being in control of one's own body is arrant nonsense on a summer afternoon in Potsdam without a linen dress and accoutrements. Even the babies have parasols.
Agonised in tight stretch trousers, or shorts, strappy tops cutting into red hot shoulders, slimy with sun lotion and buzzing with midges, red in the face, with hair too short to tie smoothly back flopping on faces sticky with sweat, thongs adhering, they pass through the avenues, today's girls and women, complete anachronisms.
And I bet they can't play the piano either.
Sunday, 1 June 2008
Invalid
The invalidity of Gordon Brown extends to every part of his persona. He has no mandate to lead the Labour party and no mandate to be Westminster prime minister; he has no authority to act in major areas of government's proper remit and no history of professional competence or personal capacity to undertake major political roles. His chancellorship is a well-documented disaster and his prime ministership a slow agony into quiessence.
The Scottish people do not want nuclear power stations built in Scotland, nuclear waste stored in Scotland, Trident and nuclear-powered submarines in Scotland, oil in Scottish territory exploited rather than husbanded, Scottish fishing grounds devastated by European Union agreements negotiated by Westminster, indiscriminate immigration into Scotland, fees and charges for services in Scotland that should be part of the social wage, and are not wholly convinced of Scotland's settled future within the European Union on Westminster's terms. Neither do they want Labour party rule in Scotland.
The English people do not want any of the above in England either, plus they do not want a Scottish prime minister from Kirkcaldy when he has his own Parliament to go to. As Labour members of parliament press for Darling, Alexander and Browne to be demoted within the Westminster government not least on the grounds of their Scottishness and the seats they hold, though rank incompetence weighs in to recommend their rapid departure as well, Frank Field underlines that the Labour party's very survival as an English party is at stake, in a new twist to the arguments about relations within the United Kingdom. (today's Telegraph).
England has a natural right of centre of balance. The Conservatives will always represent the majority here. But those voters whose economic and cultural interests are not served by the Conservative view of government as the creation of a civil society under the rule of law within a small and well-defended state, those who see government as the creation of some kind of ideal, large state with government as permanent administration - as many authoritarian ideologies of the left and the right do - are turning increasingly from Labour to the authoritarians of the right, not the left.
It is not just the federation of the United Kingdom that must be re-ordered. The Labour party itself must become a pluralist democratic party of the centre Left and abandon the New Labour Project of imposing a permanent authoritarian governance within a federal European Union state upon the country.
The Scottish people do not want nuclear power stations built in Scotland, nuclear waste stored in Scotland, Trident and nuclear-powered submarines in Scotland, oil in Scottish territory exploited rather than husbanded, Scottish fishing grounds devastated by European Union agreements negotiated by Westminster, indiscriminate immigration into Scotland, fees and charges for services in Scotland that should be part of the social wage, and are not wholly convinced of Scotland's settled future within the European Union on Westminster's terms. Neither do they want Labour party rule in Scotland.
The English people do not want any of the above in England either, plus they do not want a Scottish prime minister from Kirkcaldy when he has his own Parliament to go to. As Labour members of parliament press for Darling, Alexander and Browne to be demoted within the Westminster government not least on the grounds of their Scottishness and the seats they hold, though rank incompetence weighs in to recommend their rapid departure as well, Frank Field underlines that the Labour party's very survival as an English party is at stake, in a new twist to the arguments about relations within the United Kingdom. (today's Telegraph).
England has a natural right of centre of balance. The Conservatives will always represent the majority here. But those voters whose economic and cultural interests are not served by the Conservative view of government as the creation of a civil society under the rule of law within a small and well-defended state, those who see government as the creation of some kind of ideal, large state with government as permanent administration - as many authoritarian ideologies of the left and the right do - are turning increasingly from Labour to the authoritarians of the right, not the left.
It is not just the federation of the United Kingdom that must be re-ordered. The Labour party itself must become a pluralist democratic party of the centre Left and abandon the New Labour Project of imposing a permanent authoritarian governance within a federal European Union state upon the country.
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