VCI Studies -An Academic Post

Graph showing how increases

celebrity endorsement are directly proportional to personal evil.(Courtesy of the VCI institute)

Where my own familiarity with the subject is wobbly I use the vacuous celeb index or VCI ,( the lower the better obviously ).For example ,whilst I pick over the UK political scene like an orang-utan nibbling its own fleas ,on the US I use nasal intuition. Obama`s queasily messianic speeches turned me off but it was his vertiginously high VCI that cemented the prejudice .

Gushing endorsers include Oprah Winfrey, Gwyneth Paltrow, George Clooney, Kanye West , Spike Lee ,Susan Sarandon Jennifer Aniston and a starry night sky of screen legends . Mc Cain has a Beach Boy and a Baldwin( Stephen ?…Nope me neither). The Republican’s VCI rating being commendably low I conclude he is the man the world needs

Madonna`s video montage showed Mc Cain alongside destruction, global warming and Robert Mugabe whilst Obama got Ghandi, John Lennon and Al Gore.. I need hardly say how adversely this affects Obama`s score
The rule holds good for Blair .Even a passing acquaintance with the method might have saved us in 2001 .Supernova hot Britney Spears backed Labour and in the midst of Spice mania Geri Halliwell appeared in a Labour party election broadcast. Eeeek. The Conservatives mustered Mike Batt , the Wombles bloke. Phew.

Ken ,the bitter, recently unleashed Lord Puttnam, Billy Bragg and Baldrick but poor Boris was left at the altar by Elton John who backed Paddick along pink lines presumably .Boris was devastated after all the Chistmas cards, "Elton and I are going to have to see what's going on." …he sulked . Similarly , his valiant attempt to induce Amy Winehouse to record : "'Ken Livingstone - no, no, no.' was ignored. Thank goodness .The support of La Winehouse would have lead to anomalies in the VCI curve which I would have had to ask a particularly perfidious climatologist to explain away.
Worryingly ; nice Mr. Cameron has been wooing nasty Simon Cowell .Cameron and Cowell's meeting (early June ) was arranged by Cameron's spin-doctor the former News of The World editor Andy Coulson and Max Clifford . Cowell and Cameron rubbed shoulders with the likes of Naomi Campbelland Liz Hurley somewhere swanky which , I must admit , is causing some alarm at the VCI Institute

Women Beware Women

Clement Freud recalled accidentally bumping into a woman’s breast …..
“ Madame".. he said ..,"If you heart is a soft as your bosom , you will forgive me “
“Sir", she replied “If your willy is as hard as your elbow I am in room 211...”
Ah ,fearlessly stylish wit is usually but not always, an aphrodisiac .‘Bald Jim’ a disreputable acquaintance ,once said “ Whats the problem ossifer having an offensive person on my weapon?.”,. He really did have an offensive person on his weapon, so this was pretty quick, but his charms continue to elude me .
By way of a contrast consider the timid advertisement for hormone replacement therapy that is “Sadie Smith” Some dreary minor demon in the Labour PR inferno, her curiously childlike opining is of no interest. The embarrassing spectacle of a woman who reverts to weeping adolescence at the slightest hint of egalitarian debate is well.. a bit un-sisterly.
. She was complaining about rough treatment handed out by Humphreys and I simply followed the Nigel Lawson line …
“Humphreys is a life long Labour voter and conceals it barely adequately. If you are sick of him imagine how I feel, but then only one of us would do something about it,like cutting the BBC Poll tax off ? Not you ,so shut your gob (please)”
Now that’s a chance for some fun ? Instead Sadie was overcome with emotion…
“….Newmania, if you don't like what I write ….fuck off. In fact, I'll save you the trouble of being so distressed by my words that( blah blah more of the same ) you - rudely - feel the need to tell me …( blah blah and on it goes). I HATE that. In fact, it's the one phrase or variation thereof that I cannot abide ..( and on ….)So, from now on, you're banned……I'll just reject your comment…..”
Banned ? Fuck Off? For one with my cloistered life and delicate constitution this is a jarring note . I like to think of myself as the Flanders and Swann of the virtual world .Others like to strip the comfortable veneer from life , I put it back,so how could such a genial fellow possibly have upset poor Mz. Smith ?Goodness knows. My only nagging worry is that every time a woman shows herself a unfit for any occupation for which blubbing is a minus she reinforces the glass ceiling
Come Back Snoopy
I see Councils will be snooping emails and phone calls to establish if couples are sleeping together ( New Of The World ).. I just wonder what sort of trouble they are going to end up causing …I have a suspicion about these two..
“Charles: "Oh Stop! I want to feel my way along you, all over you, and up and down you, and in and out..."
Camilla: "Oh, Charles!"
Charles: "Particularly in and out!"……..”
Brown Admits Left Hindered Sport ( Daily Mail)
Nice of Gordon to apologise for the lefts loathing of competitive sport Fortunately Tamara and Marcus who won the posh sports were part of the privately educated 50% private who medalled. Beneath the glitter there I still a structural weakness
Euphemisms of History
Did you notice Gerry Wexler ,the man behind Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin died? He coined “Rhythm and Blues “,which still means contemporary black music. The R4 obituary I heard scoffed at the euphemisms it replaced .”The Harlem Hit Parade “ being typical. Is “Urban music” an improvement ?

Anything to Declare ?

Amazing looking back isn’t it . Who knew? Glittering and absurd he stood beseeching cool Britannia to be in “My Gang” in the deathless opening number “ A New Dawn has Broken ” .What promise those words held . Now, a corrupt lumbering figure hawks his tawdry wares around the world seeking forgiveness for the unspeakable suffering he has caused .

How vile and manipulative his hits sound now .."No Tax Rises " " No More Sleaze" "The People`s Princess","Pretty Straight Bloke", "Think The Unthinkable" , "Tough on crime, tough on the causes ". "Weapons of mass destruction" ,"Learn to love( Peter Mandelson)." " The Third way", " Education , education education" the novelty number "My Little Rooney",and his last rock pastiche "Clunking Fist".

Many today will be checking to ensure that should any faded copies linger in their collection they are disposed of . How repulsive that inane grinning pantomime act seems now , how foul and yet for how many years , he was part of our lives.

Normal Service Resumed

Why should it surprise us that we are good at sport ? We are the only country in the world ,(except Australia ) ,where on any given weekend, the entire population seeks out bizarre equipment from the back garden shed, and heads off canoeing or hiking or cycling or whatever ....
This simply does not happen elsewhere. Italian men sip sugary drinks, while their mothers stroke their hair .The French only like sports where you can wear pink lycra and get away with it , like climbing . Americans would be fit if they ran around each other, and so it goes on. We are the country that has contributed the best games to the world ,and that is because we are the sportiest. It is astonishing looking back at it the good grace with which we put up with the fraud of the 20th century Olympics.
In the boxing the professional Eastern block put gnarled 38 years old army veterans against our callow teenagers , it was hopeless. Our swimmers were finishing work as a Quantity Surveyor in Crawley, before catching the National Express to Hull for three hours night training ,in a paddling pool. Why , because we thought when they said amateur , they meant it ?
In women’s athletics the East Germans were unleashing men on steroids, and in the field events it was the drugs ‘man’. Many records still stand as a testament to the perfidy of the rest .Our occasional successes were the result of fantastic self motivation worlds away from the elite coaching centres of the Australians in which talented youth soon found themselves fed peeled grapes and back rubs by relays of speedo clad virgins.
This golden Summer is simply the proper reward we have been denied . Others may be good at the main events, like football, but at the miscellany of hobby horses we excell. Sport in Spain means watching a tiny percentage of circus performers skip about on TV , not actually doing it .
Typically we interpret our medalling maestros as recipients of good fortune , intended for others . But ,we are not only the most sporting nation in the world (except the Australians damn them) . We are also the fifth largest economy and the fourth largest army. Mighty China only overtook our GDP last years and it is not clear they can continue their geometric progression. What about when the one child rule catches up and their large working population to small dependency ration reverses? Who will buy yet more cheap tee shirts? We are not roughly equivalent to Malta we are a big beast and in addition to our innate talent for games ,we have a not unrelated talent for social organisation
That is why we should not cravenly sacrifice our Parliament to Europeans bureaucrats , that is why we need not put up with scare stories about” Going it alone”.They need us more than visa versa. This is why we must always look at our own resources first.
As the odd 20th century ,with its strange imported doctrines ,fades away, we can face the future ,proud of what we are, and whilst open to the world , no longer cringing and apologetic .At heart this is what meek little internationalists are .Still hurting because we went from being an Empire to being good at pop music.

Get over it losers !

The Dark Lord Has Noticed You

Poor poor little Milliband .He is a think-tanker rather than an executive breed of politician. He has never shown much understanding of how to make an organization deliver his ideas. As schools minister he was obsessed with targets and testing, then said he was against them. As environment minister he was for personal carbon credits but did nothing about them. At local government he proclaimed the new localism and "double devolution", and did nothing but make speeches. At the Foreign Office he has followed Whitehall's line of least resistance, supporting America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has constructed a career on writing trite little essays and now dark arts Brown has decided to snuff him out
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/aug/16/gordonbrown.labourleadership
In what must be interpreted as a move against Milliband he has chopped away his legs as a potential Blairite adversary by including his old Blairite henchman Murphy, in the cabinet. This will make it very difficult f or Milliband to claim ,as his allies want him to, that only he can sell the electorate Labour with the old trick of pretending they have changed .Useless PM Brown may be but at in-fighting he is still a nasty trader in low blows

Long Legs Good Short Legs Better...

The secret of our cycling success is the use of red lights in training....( Matt)

Yesterday the probing mind of Newmania tackled the proliferation of -rexias as an ad hoc suffix ,today an old friend challenges for the gold medal for preposterous usage ,the much loved ...‘ Community'. Sightings of the ,“black smiths community”, are reported on R4, but better still the “sex offenders community “, was spotted by a Telegraph correspondent.

The Mayor of London Community has been phoning the ,most unspeakable tosh recently for his doubloons ,but is back on form today with at least one statistic, bound to annoy Polly Toynbee .“Roughly 58 % of the contestants from team GB sentot Athens in 2004 were educated at independent schools , who educate 7 % of the population .In the past three Olympics the independent sector has walked off with 45% of the medals “. Our cyclists have to live in Manchester to benefit from funding ,forming what you might call an elite stream......

Tuscan Toynbee is bemoaning the low esteem in which the community of sociologists are held . “ Why were children born in 1958 more likely to move upwards than those born just 12 years later in 1970 ,"she mentions . This fact is unfortunate for those of a leftish persuasion, coinciding, as it does with the great Comprehensive experiment.

It appears the the Labour Party are unlikely to improve its fortunes with the youth of Millipede, or so says the headline in the Guardian . It goes on to say ,however, “.He is seen as having the widest appeal by a margin 38% to 8%”. It appears that subterranean war between the Labour communities continues. How delightfully it reminds me of the end of Major .

In more news, as they say, I am not surprised to see the Firemen cruising around picking up girls with their big red engine. This selfish lazy community of overpaid wasters have consistently refused to assist with medical attention despite the possibility of saving lives and the fact they have nothing to do most of the time and run mini cabs

Lastly for none too mysterious reasons, I am overjoyed to read that the community of men with disproportionately short legs are the most attractive shape to women . For a chap who emerges from the fitting room dragging a bridal train of unfilled denim this is an unqualified boon . Long legs good short legs better , long legs good short legs better ...

Afterthought

Continuing the vital search for new words in the hope one will catch on,Global fawning – To describe those bizarre events such as the Oh oh oh bama delirium or the now forgotten Gorbasm Sir-ing Suggestion- The advice traditionally received by the PM for ennobling Bruce Forsyth and others Copy Day- For the blizzards of prewritten copy that flutter down when a foreseeable event like the death of Bill Deedes or the anniversary of 1968 occur

The Sensible Season

MI5 has teamed up with a homosexual lobby group Stonewall to recruit more gay spooks . It might be a idea to have only gays .They would be able to recognise to each other with the famous gay-dar and leave at the same time without any word spoken. Bum bum baaaaaaaaa!
Gay-dar is an example of the sort of groovy neo-logism loved by the press. Ever since I saw the word Faux –mosexual ( a man who pretends to be gay to increase shagging opportunities) , I have followed these fun inventions ,many of which are born at Glenda Slaggs desk I suspect.
‘-rexia ‘, is the latest must-have suffix . Starting with Anorexia, of course, it has migrated to man-orexia , , preg-orexia bride-orexia and drunko-rexia for states of food deprivation of various kinds . Kate Moss uses the word ‘rexy , to describe the too thin but still sexy look she craves . In fact the usage has now lost its precision, and branched out into obsessive-ness in general notably tano-rexia
Mathew Parris complains about the lack of words to fill obvious gaps .The person to whom you were talking, for example, cries out for “Chat –mate” . Gaelic has a useful term for the day after tomorrow ‘earar’ , surely ripe for import .
One Olympics verb is “Medalled” .Gary Glitter aka Paul Gadd aka ‘child molesting bastard’has meddled in Vietnam on at least two occasions and I am nauseated that he can slither around this country a free man.
New Words :
I thought I would have a go at a few myself
Fop-oholic ----- For a celebrity that pretends his mild drinking is a disease so as to sell books or records
Full-imia – For that version of Bulimia where you omit the vomiting as practiced by John Prescott?
Credit Brunch- An early meeting with the agency handling your search for a new job
Must –chav-item – For an ironically worn street fashion such as a diamond studded baseball cap
Men-paws-all- For that drunk women in her late 40s at the office Party....
(Nuff crap new words Ed.)

Rye Recollections

Yesterday, we went to Rye .
Its middle-aged,

As am I.

Well, “ Dates from the Middle-ages" , we`re told
Which , on reflection ,I`d call old .
This distinction , of late , I draw ,
More often than I did before .

Anyhoo; some nifty boats
Spilt along the harbour front
Like gaudy beads of red and blue
We dutifully praised the view

We unpicked a knot of lanes
Stared at oddly angled beams
Like curious Alice , murmuring “Coo..
Built in 1492..

From time to time we had to stop
At umpteen Rye themed nick nack shops,
Acquiring tea towels and some fudge.
Those ubiquitous brown mugs ,
Earthenware, its called .

(Of course ,
We wondered how much houses cost.)
Then babes and son and wife and me
Thought that we might stop for tea

"In Birkenstocks and stupid shorts,
And the buggy they all want
Blue cagoules spare nappies, juice
Tangled in a new papoose

The middle aged leave behind
Their ancient dreams .
To pass the time
The soul sings quietly,
shrunk to fit
The life that time has left for it ”

While we had our tea and scones
We wondered how we would get home
You see we didn`t really know

How we got here...

Time

To go.

So anyhoo; when everyone
Was in their booster seats again,
We nosed the Volvo to the coast
Headed West

But soon got lost

What Dreams Will Come

Schism and factionalism are tearing Labour apart. Dream tickets * ,from the bloke team of Johnson and Cruddas, to Milliband and “Partner”,bob to the surface with the solidity of rumours about the next Bond. Martin Bright in The New Statesman has the third way , but Luke Akenhurst has a post up called ,” The Fourth and Fifth Ways” !

In all this I detect an alchemist’s delusion. The heating mixing and calibrating of worthless ingredients, from which gold will never emerge .The irony is that the Party of historical inevitability is peculiarly blind to its own inevitable end

Collectivism is an anathema to the English, that is the natural state . This has been disguised by exceptional circumstances which, odd though it might sound to say so, prevailed throughout the 20th century. In the Khaki election the urban working class grasped representation and it was then that the Liberal Party became the rag bag of luxury issues it remains.

From there Mass warfare slewed Britain towards state action. The depressed aftermath, latterly of the Second World War ,continued the effect well into the 70s.This “extraordinary” impoverishment should be compared to the American experience, not the Victorian period and it sustained the Labour beyond its shelf life .

The misunderstood , Edwardian era was actually an explosion of economic progress stopped in its tracks but the Great War, not a long afternoon of croquet in the fin de siécle sunshine. In a ‘what if’ peaceful 20th century Labours time would have been short.

At last ,under Callaghan , the post war collectivist consensus became unsustainable in the face of national collapse . From that point natural prosperity has returned and Labour’s, raison d`etre, the working classes and the Union movement, withered . Today only 18 % are unionised and the majority are either leaving or aspiring to leave what was the working class.

Labour are currently enthralled by the mirage of Tony Blair, but in truth they have long been a paper tiger .Boundaries favour them in England to the extent that they had a huge majority of seats despite never equalling the Conservative vote . As the Union fragmented they have benefited from double counting the Celtic fringe .Paradoxically their inheritance of what was , relatively speaking, fabulous prosperity has fuelled a last hurrah. It cannot be repeated but they think a slight shift or presentation like adding “New” will save them..

History is against them and the depth of reinvention required will not be a matter of adding 'New' but of dropping “Labour “.

*I remember the Dream Ticket of Kinnock and Hattersley .. shudder...

Winning and Losing

“…... When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaking suspicion love actually is all around.”
Cheesy ? I know , I know , but the opening to the film “Love Actually” has always stuck in my mind ,and I suspect there is something profound hidden inside its sugar coating . Have you forgotten the sudden death of the surgeon Martin Kelly ? It was News worthy because of the celebrity of his pregnant Actress wife Natasha McElhone .She said this about her loss..
“ To have loved someone so much is worth every ounce of pain I am going through now “, Then there were the parents of Indira Swann who died in a recent air crash in Ecuador they said…”We have no regrets about Indira going other than the outcome . No worthwhile endeavour is without risk.” No indeed.
I have always loathed Sebastian Coe , his pushy mother and his presumptuous manner, but with the death of his father Peter last week , I saw him anew. Peter was Lord Coe`s coach ,mentor and friend .The two worked together with meticulous regard to detail and steely determination to win
I cheered Ovett in 1980,when he took the 800m ,seconds below Seb`s time, in what was a catastrophic race for the favourite .It was assumed Ovett would win the 1500m as well. It was his strong event and Coe had never beaten him. In the taxi Peter said nothing ,only putting his arm around his defeated son, in that rare moment, not coach or colleague just a father.
As we know, Seb triumphed at the longer distance but it was the picture of the two men in a moment of shattering defeat that strikes me now .Seb has never said much more than, “I liked the guy”..
Enough of the maudlin already,…Now the dancing horses and little boats fade away , the true Olympics begin .Good luck to all those competing ,in what I hope, will be celebration of all that is finest of the human spirit,( and watch out for Martyn Rooney in the 400m ,looking very sharp indeed)

Ooo I`m Scared

“Police may ignore minor crimes, as front line workers begun a work to rule in their escalating pay dispute “
I was truly terrified to see this dire warning .For years I have been accustomed to plod assigning their top sleuths to my stolen bikes and nicked car radios. Similarly, those champions of the work ethic, teachers, threaten strike action .For weeks at a time they will do nothing but pootle around France in a caravan, sipping local plonk, and telling each-other they could have been dot com millionaire.s In case my blunderbuss has fired over your head , allow me to apply the fish in face approach to inference. They would have time this pretty carefully for anyone to notice !
I now live in terror that book shop assistants may , at a moments notice, cease their industrious attentiveness ,and begin a strict policy of staring slack jawed into the middle distance dreaming about being novelists .Hairdressers will effect an intelligent conversation embargo, limiting themselves to inane drivel about soaps and your holidays .....where will it all end ? Will builders abandon their military time keeping and honest dealing?
Panic grips the nation ! In quivering knots the populous await armageddon, huddled together they breathe hideous rumours . It is said that wholes rafts of quangos are due to deny confused scaffolders a 'Latte' surrounded by original Tracy Emmins while they hand out forms about ,“envisioning the future for enterprise” . Regional development offices may simply return the £15 billion they cost and ask us to struggle on unaided by their conferences in Bali....contd. pg. 94
PS(When I spell check Quango it comes up Guano...hmm)

Some Thoughts Wot I Thunk

World Peace
The final of the Ukraine Miss world has been cancelled due to fear that Russia may turn its military might on its neighbour . Shame, the traditional wish for “World peace “ would have had a new piquancy screeched over an incoming air strike.
Sideways Running
I will not be doing Phelps mania He is a jolly speedy true swimmer to but as Michael Johnson mildly remarked ;if he had had events like running backwards, sideways and with a feather boa attached to his arse, he would have won hundreds of medal.s
Poor Little Georgia
I am also not doing outrage about poor little Georgia either . They invaded first , they have never controlled South Ossetia ,they threw grenades into basements full of Russian women and children, and I do believe the very people drivelling on about sovereignty are at this time still in Iraq , Afghanistan ....etc. Mind you , Russia did much the same sort of pontificating then.
Brush Up Your Yeats
Looking forward to Fife which Brown will be hard pushed to find an excuse not to pop into. The Classic Labour problem; Coal shipyards and Communism have been replaced by “Silicon Glens”. Labour replaced the Liberal as a big beast in the Khaki election when the urban working class demanded representation. That class is disappearing. This is the very heart of the left and its dwindling adherents may find themselves muttering “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold “...................Resquiat In Pace New Labour
And Finally Esther ..Silicon Glen
Silicon Glen is much more centred after the op and she is thinking of re-qualifying as a beautician . Boom tssk

Tax Rises For One Nation Is A Good Deal

During Macmillan’s premiership, 300,000 houses were built per year, far exceeding the Labour tally . Specs were lowered , true, but the reason that the Conservative Party were able to attend to immediate need, did not lie in heartlessness .The Labour Party saw social housing as an ideological drive towards a British Marxist utopia , preferring unbuilt palaces to real houses . Macmillan only wanted roofs over heads ,and saw the exercise as a temporary stage towards a property owning . Conservatives may use interventionism then, as long as it is not an end .
The right-to-buy scheme in effect gave a state subsidy to a poverty trapped class, but Labour attacked it through service charges in the housing empires because it offended their collectivist beliefs .These ‘owned’ corners, of some of the countries worst estates ,are incomparably better places to live , cared for a with a civility lost from the wastelands of workless infantilism dependency creates .This was intervention on a huge scale but once it was done the state stepped back . A good model.
By contrast ,Labour flash flood public money has deluged places like Glasgow East only creating male life expectancy far far below the Gaza strip (actually) as low as 50! This represents a historic missed opportunity during decade when government spending has increased by 30% ie about as much as a working mans` income tax . With the cost of housing and tax included , the working population have not benefited from the NICE years , and yet for this sacrifice we still live in a country that looks desperate ( Hence the obsession with crime ) .Labour have not tried to include the disadvantaged ,only to placate them , the included have paid for their folly
On the matrix of new ideas about why what works ,works ,I will have to name check. .Notions of social capital , trust , knowledge and evolved ( not imposed) solutions emerge from Communitarian writing and an infinitely more nuanced vision of man and society than the clunking levers of 20th century socialism .Cameron as ever gets little credit but he is the most intellectual Leader of my political life. The practical keys to encouraging desirable growth ,however ,are freeing access to property and supporting horizontal connectedness, family and civil society .The state is the best positioned agency for enabling measures designed to unblock log jams like the underclass ,so intervention may be required ,but for permanence to develop would defeat the point.
This is partly expressed in welfare/housing policy. It is the deep conviction of all Conservatives that State housing and pocket money are dehumanising evil poisoning the ground from which "society" grows .No conservative however ,would ever advocate theory over people ,which is why Cameron talks about a multi generational project . The version of the Wisconsin scheme is central. It has worked , it can change lives and include many more in mainstream life ( an essential for the nation) What has not yet been admitted is that it is expensive .Assistance channelled through the voluntary sector in this country would have to be on a large scale if there was to be a punitive element which there must be . Otherwise we would soon face a new Poll tax impasse .
Conservatives have been warned that their rage at the pension theft , the tax swindle , will have to wait while structural changes in welfare education and much more take priority . The objective is a country at relative peace from which the state can withdraw down to a level of say 35% of GDP from the 45% we have .
What has Iraq reminded us 0f ? That it is relatively easy to remove one structure , but you have to invest more in helping a better one to be born. If this takes temporary tax rises , then I say it is worth it. We must be One Nation again

American Idols

In the 2004 US presidential elections ,every City with a population of more than 500,000 returned a majority for John Kerry. How well do we really know the land of the free ,which incidentally contains a lot more wilderness than Africa ?
Well ,I don’t do ‘abroad ’ much, but my slumbering curiosity started like a fawn, when Obama’s coronation champagne was put back on ice, last week.. Gallup polled likely voters, 49% McCain , to 45% Obama. Republican adverts juxtaposing "the one”, with Charlton Heston, as Moses parting the Red sea were blamed so it seems that even Americans detect a soupcon of pretension in his grandiloquence . Mr. Oh oh oh Ohbama was typically restrained on his own victory in the Primaries ....“This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and the planet began to heal“ . ..pass the sick bag eh....
In a country where planting placentas under a tree ( like Mathew McConaughey ),is all the rage , you wonder if satire is legal ,but apparently it is . The suggestion slinks abroad, that while Obamah,may be the messiah, he may equally be a very naughty boy, and ,whisper it softly , ever so slightly bonkers .This ever-so-slightly-bonkers, affect is toxic .William Hague had no defence when Blair flung his subtle jibe, “Weird weird weird “. Not exactly deathless wit ,but allied to a penetrating glance at Ann Widdecombe and John Redwood , it was deadly .Now Obama quails before the loon detector .
We have presumptuously misjudged the colonials once again and I blame the old ‘separated-by-a-common-tongue’ thingummy-jig. With no gabbling foreigner to put us on our guard , we dive straight in, without checking the depth. True, we get their TV, but the thing about TV, is that its fiction .What Bill Bryson called the ‘wide open mental spaces of middle America’ are a penumbrian mystery.
(How Different Are We? -US versus the UK by stats ( from The Economist 2002):Opposed to unlimited right to abortion 46% v 17% -Proud to be American /English 97% v 76% -Taxation is “too low”/ Support for higher taxes and public services 1% v 62% (2002!)-Believe in the devil 45% v13%-Support ban on possession of hand guns 32% v 83%-People earning 40%or Less of median income 14% v 5% - Millionaires per hundred 0.74 v 0.58 -Gun deaths per 100,000: 10.6 v 0.3 -Average Executions per year -(97-2001) 78 v 0 -Defence spending per cap $1059 v$576 -Govt. spending as % of GDP 30 v 39, Now 45 ! , )
OK so we are different .Take Bush.. It is , (isn’t it ? ) ,a truth ,universally acknowledged ,that his Presidency has been catastrophic . Certainly mistaking imam ridden Iran, with Danes and German waiting to get on with democracy counts as an oopsy daisy ,but ,overall , America has fronted up to worldwide Islamic aggression and we are safer for it . From UAE to Indonesia to Pakistan , states ,previously supportive of jihad have caved in before the implacable cowboy . He successfully de-nuclearised Libya , then Syria and now North Korea . While Europe talked Iran built bombs , can anyone doubt what would happen without Bush or a similarly decisive President ?. Does anyone think Israel would take the first hit ?
The US has suffered relative decline but only because of the benign explosion of allies China , India Brazil and the like , none of them expansionist , it makes them richer . The problems are the non trading oil bubble countries like Putins bullying Russia , but I digress… My point is that the Euro line on Bush is not necessarily the way Americans see it ,even if they say they do. Something like this happened to John Major in his triumphant first election.
I fervently admire America ,but it has its own stride which is not mine . Brown tried copying tax credits . He neglected the very differing role of tax returns in the respective countries with disastrous consequences . Cameron is much impressed with the Wisconsin welfare to work programme ; let us hope he bases policy on the idea and dumps the script . Charles Moore complained that Thaler`s “Nudge” gave away the punch line in the title. He suggested “Yank” for uncritically importing ideas from the US ,but Labour`s right are most in need or the warning. The fragmented “Project” veers wildly between Yanko-philia and Euro-besotted ness ,we must avoid both Scylla and Charibdys .Try doing American neat,here , and you will find yourself standing before a horrified Labour Conference in Sheffield shouting ““ Aaaalright ! “ ..with the loon detectors twitching off the scale .

Being Nice To Brother Robert

I always enjoy Bob Piper's Blog which should really get more attention that it does . Too many left wing sites are infested with creeps practicing their Guardian essays and I cannot think of any other place to get a sense of the what the Labour Party is thinking beneath its frothy surface. He is usually ferociously partisan , but occasionally a more reflective piece slips out . By this I mean one that I agree with of course ...( ahem)
The following extracts are reacting to a John Kamfner piece ,itself reacting to Grieve's surveillance proposals . Kamfner claims Cameron is tacking back to safe Tory waters ,Robert diagrees ....

‘I think both Kamfner ..wrong. .....I actually think he believes all of this environmental , human-face-of-the-conservatives stuff. One of the mistakes the Tories made about Tony Blair was portraying him as a CND-supporting left-wing socialist with demon eyes behind the flashing smile and centre-right rhetoric. When they found out Blair was genuine (about this, at least) it was too late to change tack and they found themselves beached.
As I say, I believe Cameron believes......How all that will play out with his Party, ... is a tightrope Cameron will have to walk if he is ever elected......"

PS Sorry about the picture , his beauty , if there is any , must be an inner beauty

A Good Time Beats A Long Time

Nowadays I only have a Brompton folding bike , I know this because everyday on the way back from the station ,a group of glue befuddled youfs call ”Brompton” at me in the lilting dialect of the Island Dr. Moreau . Back in the day, however, I had as gleaming urban chic groover , upon which I diced with death around Islington. Ah yes ,James Brown was on the earphones and “ Sometimes I wanna jump and kiss myself “,summons the joyful spirit of the endeavour. A nasty scratchy helmet would have defeated the object, which was to be free and easy doing as you damn well pleeezy (if you will).
Lets talk bikes then .Nicola Cooke’s splendidly gritty gold was achieved on hills and in rain that as a Welsh woman she must have prayed for . Her smile beamed from beneath a fibre glass horror of course and with mangled bike strewn about the course ,the boots that boss will see yet more reason to enforce wearing the life condom, or ‘cycling helmet’ . Recently lovely Boris was “caught “ bare headed whilst atop a peddle cycle . He chose, he explained ruefully “Hatless windswept liberty “, over helmeted security, and moderately expressed the view that we should have the choice. Quite so Boris quite so ,but the elf and safety imps multiply in the darkness and with Biblical portentousness they are able to wing hands to the refrain... ”If it saves the life of one child .....”
Well is that right ? In Paris there is a renaissance of cycling due to the success of the Vélib bikes which can be hired from ranks every 300m. (Lovely Boris please introduce here as promised ). The Free French have an insuperable problem with helmets ,“ C`est relou de porter un casque “, they say , its boring ; and more important still ,the Mademoiselles refuse to mess their hair up. The calls for them to scrunch their locks is nonetheless clamorous ,due to the sheer success of the scheme . Use has risen exponentially with inexperienced cyclists obviously joining then ranks. Well that sounds dangerous, but these are the figures. Three deaths a year, 24 million journey on a vélib, which means you have a 0.0000125% of killing yourself while cycling . What’s more in Paris last year 53% of deaths were motor cyclists ,22% pedestrians and 18% cars /lorries . Bikes were only 7%” It would seem then you are safer sur la cycle than walking and then think of all the advantages to your heart and waistline . Formidable !
Total cycling deaths in the UK have steadily declined since 1934 (1536) to 136 in 2007 . Helmets have made no noticeable impact and there is evidence they are actually a danger. When cycling helmets were introduce in Australia ,and this is crucial , cycling dropped by a third , but injuries only fell by 11%. Nothing new here, seat belts have had not effect on road deaths, speed cameras have not reduced death and serious injury ,and the congestion charge had a temporary impact but eventually only slowed down traffic journey times . I `ll make the easy point about unpredictable consequences and the health risk of overregulation , but there’s more .There is evidence that you are better off with a wig than a helmet . Drivers think you are jittery woman and steer clear. (Honest its in a study by Dr. Ian Walker Travel Psychologist at Bath)
There is something more than this.It is “la relou “ versus “windswept Liberty “. Who is to say that had Nicole Cooke been obliged to look stupid from day one whether she would ever have climbed the hills of Wales, and eventually the very summit of sporting achievement .The joy of her triumph ,and our participation in it, should remind us all of a great truth . We are here for a good time ,not just a long time ,and we should all aim to screech to our rest ,sideways, in a radical handbrake turn .Not drop of our battery chicken perch as New Labour would prefer.

Minor Familar`s Dictionary

Lord Blog( Dale ) has noticed that Liberal Conspiracy has an A-Z of Right Wing Commenting. For example...ALCOHOL - benign, harmless substance when consumed by anyone over 45 which is also toxic and dangerous drug when administered to YOUNG PEOPLE or FERAL YOUTH. Should be taxed when drunk by YOUNG PEOPLE but not by others, who are of course responsible and never do anything...
Pretty funny really , anyway I had a quick go at a riposte but it was quick and lacks a little finesse Liberal Consiracy is that boring nerd Sunny who lives with his mum by the way...

A -ASIAN ACTIVIST -
A mediocre perpetual student who lives with his mother and trades on his skin pigment to be on TV where said “skin pigment” is interpreted as a sign of great wisdom far beyond identical opiners without magic skin
BLACK -
A term mystifyingly used of middeclass Asians who come to this country via such places as Uganda where they were kicked out by the blacks for exploiting the blacks
Or- Homogenous group always agreement with speaker and eachother
C- CULTURE ,
A thing neither possessed by nor understood by ‘whites’ who betray their ignorance by condemning forced marriage , honour killing , educational enslavement of women murder barbaric cruelty and genocidal anti Semitism
CRIME
A word describing events that decline indirect proportion to the amount experienced by whites
COUNTRY
Resource available to world and means or smoking out RACISM, by spotting any attachment to
D- DISTRIBUTION
As in inequitable distribution of moneys outrageously held by those who worked for them and ignorantly retained despite the superior claims of those who do not .
E- EQUALITY -
The legal provision of more than equal rights to women in employment , gays , in adoption , blacks , in preferment and any “victim” ( See also equal treatment of Israeli defence and Arab attacks on school buses )
EMPIRE
Genocide of innocent loveable peace loving people with own secret Parliament and full human rights legislation in 1750
EDUCATION-
The study of Adolf Hitler
ENVIROMENT-
Thing which Conservatives seek to ruin as evidenced by the root ‘Conserve’ which means rape pillage and despoil
F - FREEDOM ,
A good thing except when not applicable to smoking , hunting , talking about immigration, retention of your identity .A quality generally only to be conferred by Government
FAMILY
Community of Sure Start helpers and social workers AND NOT vile sexist male supremacist conspiracy of patriarchy as lovingly eulogised in lying Murdoch press
GOVERNMENT MONEY
Inexhaustible supply of finance of which there is never enough expended on “victims”. Believed to come from a money Spring deep beneath the Houses of Parliament requiring only a bucket to be replenished
GUARDIAN
-“The Truth”
H- HOUSING
Social housing ie council housing . A ritual incantation whereby those unable to afford a house themselves are obliged to buy free houses for people who deserve them by virtue of being on a “list”.
I- INCOME TAX
A virtuous tax attacking the twin evils of employment and endeavour. ( See also progressive tax increasing this virtuous effect)
INSTITUTIONAL RACISM
A means whereby anyone may be guilty of ‘racism’ even if they are not , except if they are black when the reverse holds true
IMMIGRATION
-One or two friendly picnicking couples and source of white racist phobia
J- JOKE
Vicious racist assault casting salt on still fresh scars left by events that may have happened as recently as 1780. To be banned .
JEWS
-Like the Salamander of medieval bestiaries this two in one creature is generally racist but can be a “victim” when discussing education AKA study of Nazi Germany
K- KIDZ-
Angelic creatures requiring only “Government money” to live useful lives going to schools talking about why not to do knife crime to other “Kidz”
L- LEFT WING
Means of excusing fanatical despots
LEFT BLOGASPHERE-
Seen in visions like an invisible 6ft rabbit
LIPOSUCTION-
True female circumcision of the West forced on women by male cultural supremacy and true source of vicious rumour about culture perpetrated by Murdoch press
LEND -
Give money to Labour Party
M- MURDOCH PRESS-
Jewish Capitalist front for Neo Cons whose gigantic sales are forced on the unwilling workers who deeply wish to buy the Guardian
N- NEO CON
Satanic Coven of Industrialist militarist and almost anything bad ending with -ist operating at a subliminal level in MacDonald’s adverts ( Code name Google )
O- OLIGOPOLY -
The means by which evil Tescos and its fiendish co plotters Asda and Sainsbury’s avoid competition and exploit the workers until such time as Nationalisation frees the market
P- PRICE ,
Fiction invented by Murdoch Press to cast doubt upon revealed truth of limitless Government money
PHOBIA-
Any opinion held by white people best attached to Islam or Homo but Terrorist-ophobia is work in progress
Q- QUEEN ,
Person to be spat on jeered at and not stood up for , unless meaning homosexual in which case to be celebrated but only at Islington gay festival and not when used by Bernard Manningist counter revolutionaries
R- RACISM
All white activity from tea drinking musical taste , choice of book , decision to vote Conservative and motive behind any call to control immigration organised ultimately by Hitler neo-cons and Klu Klux Klan.
RAPE - The act of white man looking at a woman , holidaying in Asia , using the word black , enjoying sex .
S- Sexism.- The enjoyment of sex by men unless they are black where even honour killing and forced marriage is not sexism seen through correct cultural prism
SINGLE MOTHER-
Put upon unfortunate who , unbeknownst to her , accidentally got pregnant and if she did understand what happened it was probably because she was raped by her father at the age of seven and consequently all men owe her houses and money .
SKOOLZ-
Not enough of and requiring more government money which . Must be differentiated from Schools which may be independent and contain nests of reactionary hate mongering education not limited to Nazi Germnay
T- TAXPAYER-
Mythical creature said by Hefferite Daleist counter-revolutionaries to be responsible for the limitless “Government money” , actually provided as birthright
U- UNDERCLASS-
Thing I have read about at university and subsequently written about in the hope of becoming Guardian Columnist .
UNEMPLOYMENT
Fiction invented on the flimsy pretext of entire cities not working when they are obviously incapacitated
V- - VOCAL MINORITY -
Any Majority in favour leaving EU , death penalty , tougher prison sentences , traditional family and other evils foisted upon the pliable minds of the ignorant by the Murdoch Press
W- W ANKER - Term or endearment and approbation as used by old school friends of Asian activists showing deep appreciation of their careers trading on skin pigment
X-- …
Y….
Z -

Everyone Against The Planners

Part of my inchoate ‘philosophy’ is small c conservatism .Unimpressed by shiny new ideas,I am implacably attached to what provably works, however improbable the invention of say , The House of Lords , might appear. This sort of conservativism has recently acquired contemporary resonance despite its antiquity.
Kieron O Hara, in his superb, “The Conservative Tradition” ,traces a lineage from sceptical classical philosophers like Phyrrus and Sextus ,through to Michel; Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-92). This Renaissance thinker had views on human presumption that lead him to castigate those who thought they knew best how to govern .He said : "It is easy enough in a nation to generate contempt for its ancient customs : no man has ever tried to do so without reaching his goal; but for replacing the conditions you have ruined with better ones , many who have tried to do that have come to grief” We might broaden the point by saying the wisdom, in a system, is not necessarily known to any individual .Those who claim to be qualified to redesign it (Social planners we would say) are therefore to be resisted .
In the 20th century Hayek also denied the efficacy of central planning ,but valued low level decisions if they were short term with expert local knowledge.“ The shipper who earns his living by using otherwise empty of half filled journeys ..or the arbitrageur who gains from local differences in commodity prices - are all performing eminently useful functions based on special knowledge in the fleeting moment not known to others ". Information , inaccessible to bureaucrats , is in millions of Mayfly judgements and for Hayek the sum of all this was price .Forget please the Neo Liberalism that ensues ,just hold in your mind the impossibility of a sufficiently responsive planner achieving an equivalent optimum.
Today I bought the “New Scientist “ and the arresting front cover exclaimed, “ Hands Off , Why things work better when you let go !”. Naturally my curiosity was piqued and sure enough Dirk Helbing ( a Swiss Physicist ) has discovered something oddly familiar. "In many situations it is better to give up some of our controls . Often the system discovers better outcomes unlike anything our minds would imagine …” uh huh… !
For example General Motors were not able to maximise the use of their paint booths . The random arrival of trucks and unpredictable maintenance resisted a programmed assignment. The solution was to give the machines simple rules and let them ”bid” for the jobs .The results looked peculiar but General Motors saved $1million in paint alone at one plant
This healthy respect for complex unpredictability has been directed at Traffic lights .At the moment lights are pre-programmed by engineers to alter their phases at given times . Helbing gave the lights simple operating rules and left them to organise themselves with sensors relaying information about traffic flow what other lights are doing .. Again the results can look very odd, but journey times , in Dresden , were reduced by 'devolving decisions to the lights'
Boris Johnson is surely the small c conservative non pareiil . He has launched a consultation on scrapping the congestion zone extension, and today we read ,congestion in the capital generally is back at its old levels Journey times are actually longer. There has been no easing of congestion in the Western zone since the charge was rolled out ( says TFL) , and Boris has encouragingly described Ken`s baby as a “blunt instrument ..”. In a package of measures he promises to re-phase traffic lights i.e. leave them green longer .Not bad Boris but what about consulting Dirk Helbing and adopting a truly conservative and yet brilliantly modern solution . Scrap the whole thing and let the lights and drivers decide.

Look How Clever We Are !

We assume our civilisation will go on forever , but why ? None of the others did, and we are running out of juice .The immediate problem, here , is that within seven years ,due to obsolescence and the enforced closure ,we are going to lose a third of our energy capacity . We have no answer to this local disaster, but I am thinking about life as we know it (Jim) . Lets go through the alternatives :
Coal - Too Dirty
I was explaining to a chum at work that climate change was a socialist plot .My killer blow was to ask why the ice at the arctic has got thicker .“ You mean ant-arctic", he said so we google duelled. Minutes later, I gracelessly agreed that he was right about the 'ant', but wrong about the hot . I was rather floored by this remark though:
“ Well that’s what you would expect its like turning a freezer off , the ant-arctic is a land mass so when you turn off the freezer it initially furs up. The arctic which is shrinking fast is like dropping ice in warm water . Its melting " . Eeek ..I can see the truth of that .So if we begin to accept that environmental damage might be a parameter coal is out .
Oil- Running Out
Back in the 30s we had Keynes, cars and planes, but they effected few . The annual consumption of oil was about 5m barrels a day. Now with countless cheerful Asians delivering elephant tusk fertility elixir on nifty three wheelers, we get through 85m .Compounding 2% growth a year confounds any oil reserves estimate . The highest are 3000 billion but no-one thinks that oil production can multiply to 1500billion barrels a year over the next 75 years . As a viable mainstay of a recognisable world Oil will not do.
Wind - The Joke
.It supplies 1% of our energy from 2000 turbines , less output than a single conventional power station but we are throwing a lunatic £100 billion at thousands more . To meet our EU target we would need to lower 7000 structures the size of Blackpool Tower into the sea , sheer fantasy obviously. Paul Golby ,the chief exec of EON, admitted that the wind was so variable a back up capacity would 90 % would be needed This means you have to also build as many coal fired and nuclear plants as before . Harnessing wind costs at least three times as much as traditional energy ,gas and Electricy bills are already rising by 37% and 13% to pay for the existing renewables . We have seen how quietly acquiescent everyone is about that!
Gas-Oh Those Russians
OK gas is cheap handy plentiful and ..sadly controlled by Vladimir Putin and we have already allowed his thumb far too near the jugular to think of any more reliance on gas. This is the 'war ' route to a new dark age.
Nuclear-Too Expensive
Clean plentiful and annoys both Ken Livingstone and Norman Baker , well what could possibly be wrong with that ? Nuclear fuel ,says Irwin Seltzer, is far dearer than the government likes to admit . High Construction costs together with long term liabilities mean that anyone with the Capital will want guaranteed profits . We are currently planning , mystifyingly , to sell our industry to the French and the future looks murky. Any way you cannot fill your car up at a Nuclear Power Station so the true changeover cost is unimaginable .
The Sun…..? Why not ?
I suspect there will be a solution, but it will suprise us . What about vast farms of solar panels in the Sahara . It would require a £35.7 billion European super grid but I like the logic of it and so do some serious folk .

If we don't come up with something, our belief that we have cured civilisation boom and bust ,looks like a hubristic Icarus saying, "Course these wings are heat resistant ...I never get my come uppance..not me oh no"...contd. Page 94 ..

Blog Standard Office

I once went on a music course at Guidlhall , I was doing my Blues and soul keyboards and something I noticed was the was the endearing self besottedness of singers . The singers scale we used to say was ‘do ray me me me me me me’ . I `m a bit of a Mimi myself and so with a bewildering ability to ignore all the evidence I have decided that a picture of where I blog would be interesting .
At the top you will see the bottom of a blue rosette , in mothballs a bit now , and a picture I once painted of a chair . Looking directly back you can see my keyboards . The filing system ( code name Sisyphus ) which goes from “ Anti Liberal “ to “Wimmin”is above You can just make out two Moses baskets which are about to be traded for cots . The white one has been the resting place of every Newmania since the Second World War

Polly Loves Milly

Well well , the boy Milliband is in the news isn’t he, The Telegraph have got an entire Court in waiting starting to gather ;Milburn for Chancellor they say . I wonder if the Labour Party have forgotten that Blair( Milliband was his Rooney remember ), was was not popular.He was cordially loathed by the Nation, and had he been around for the economic slow down his head would currently be sitting on a spike at the Tower of London. Back to Blair , don’t think so chaps , he left with all the timing of Indiana Jones grasping his hat before the boom imploded and the rock door crashed down.
A few days ago I raised a Gothic arch shaped eyebrow at La Toynbee placing both Millibands approvingly on the side of the progressives .Progressive is a word in flux right now but she made it clear she meant tax raisers. I wondered if this was wishful thinking from the Queen Bee of leftiness ,who has continued her favours ,or perhaps just a curtsey towards the new king... ( Little changed since Chaucer there )
“This fierse Arcite hath of his helm ydon,..
..Lokynge upward upon this Emelye;
And she agayn hym caste a freendlich ye
For wommen, as to speken in comune,
Thei folwen alle the favour of Fortune). “
( Knights tale )
She would not be alone in finding that slithering mazola man Millipede suddenly attractive. Liz Jones in the Mail on Sunday is , how shall we put it , explicit ..
“...an Italian cloth jacket slung sexily over his athletic shoulders , his dark hair in a boyish crop..he has his very own brood of adopted children , the only green way to have a family nowadays ...he could be our own Brad Pitt....young ..dashing virile..so thrusting ...so dashing ...etc.”
Of course La Toynbee was besotted with Brown when he was winning ( see Chaucer ) but perhaps there is a different reason for her willingness to consider the Blairy creep a “Progressive “ .These two heroes of social mobility are not exactly parvenus to the Patrician class . In the Winter of 1958 issue of Universities and New Left Review, Ralph Milliband ,in a symposium called “ Who Governs Britain”, noted with approval Phillip Toynbee's focus on the power elite in Britain. The daughter of the latter is supporting the son of the former then, and so the most incestuous power elite in the land continues to propagate itself.Its kinda beautiful when you think about it ,and, as is the fashion ,..I may cry.

Women Are From Venus

Did you know that the profits of Auto- trader is the chief source of income for the Guardian , that and their soon to be removed Public Sector appointments advertising scam. I like this real ad from said journal of note and if it is not legibile the chap selling the bike says ..

" I `m selling it because it was bought without the proper consent of my loving wife. Apparently "do whatever the fuck you want" doesn't mean what I thought "

I think even I speak Venusian a little better than that

Who Wears The Trousers ?

"Is that a Sari ?" " No its a Sarong .." " I `m Sari I was Sarong "( Groucho Marx)

Where Newmania leads so Michael Gove shall follow, and sure enough after my post on the dissonance between the Loaded and the Harperson world, there he is blaming Lads mags for the rampaging misogyny . My theory is that lap dancing and the porn pandemic are the reverse side of the coin, to the legal attack on men. Women are positively discriminated for in the workplace while divorce courts continue to assume their pre-eminence as child rearers .They remain determined not to be the bread winner ,however, and ruthlessly control domestic life by means of byzantine formulas applying to proper ironing and vacuuming . There is no greater incidence of house-husbands than 30 years ago and so we have a glaring asymmetry .While women wish to take on certain male roles men will not return the favour and women do not want them to.
Cruising the low sleazy demi-monde of G2 today I came across a sensible season snippet that summed it up. Mesdames et Messieurs meet and greet “Hommes En Jupe”,
“Dominique Moreau is the president of Hommes en Jupe (Men in Skirts), an association of about 30 men in Poitiers, western France, who don skirts to go about their everyday lives. For them, getting dressed in the morning is less about style and more about political substance: they are fighting to reclaim an item of clothing last worn by Frenchmen more than 500 years ago…….We're fighting against prejudice and cliches," says Moreau, a 39-year-old civil servant ,who quotes Virginia Woolf as a gender-bending inspiration. "Women fought for trousers; we're doing the same with the skirt."
Now theres your problem . Women wearing trousers , why not ? Liberating , empowering ,sexy in a new egalitarian way. Men in skirts , I don’t think so , even in effeminate France there are only thirty of them ,and a solitary British member, Tim Stannard,who says he has faced a hostile reaction. No shit Tim.
Personally I don’t care what legislation Hatty the eviscerator passes I am not wearing a dress or a Sarong and especially not a 'Jupe '

Libs Flop Again

The most significant news in a new ICM poll in the Sunday Express is that the Lib Dems have slumped to their lowest ratings from the firm since well before Nick Clegg became leader last December. The shares with changes on the last survey from the pollster nearly a fortnight ago are: CON 45% (+2): LAB 29% (+1): LD 16% (-3) 16% is not much better than the 14% that ICM had at the start of October 2007 just before Ming announced that he was going.
It appears that the Lib Dems are declining rapidly and this is after their utterly implausible claim to be the Party who would actually reduce taxes . Firstly this will lose them their left wing support but on the right they will not be believed having argued for a larger state than even New Labour for most of the last fifteen years. Its hard for me to see any reason for this Party and I am delighted the public seems to share my disinterest in their latest dressing up attire .

I believe the modish modern wood is “Traction”. They aint got it , I wonder how long before we get the next turn on.

What Are You Insinuatin' ?

“When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.”.

“ Racism “ by Alli Ratansi , like many leftist proselytising books , claims to be a work of disinterested academic enquiry. Its consideration of a speech by Mrs Thatcher at the 1978 Conservative Conference is typical . She said ...

“ If we went on as we are , then by the end of the century there would be 4,000,000 people of the New Commonwealth here. Now that is an awful lot ,and I think it means that people are rather afraid that this country might be swamped by people with a different culture . And , you know , the British character has done so much for democracy , for law and done much throughout the world that there is a fear it might be swamped , people are going to react and be rather hostile to those coming in “

There is no reference to any biological component ,no assumption of superiority ,only a forgivable pride in our own culture and a modestly expressed wish to retain it .

Alli R disagrees ,he decodes “New Commonwealth” as ‘blacks’, and 'Nation' as inherently racist by historic elision .It follows that approval of Britain has an unavoidable biological component, in support of which ,he quotes Margaret Thatcher ,elsewhere, saying .“The people of the Falkland Islands , like the people of the United Kingdom , are an Island race “ He concludes that modern racism is often concealed ,and that strings of inferences must be followed ,through a cultural Labyrinth, to reveal the monster.
Allow me to retort…. Firstly the quotation is selected for the ”New Commonwealth”,usage , which is clumsy by modern standards . Mr. Ratanski anachronistically makes it seem duplicitous by avoiding the context ,both of time, and of the speakers publicly stated condemnation of racism . He employs the fact that race and place are unavoidably connected to infer that any comment on culture and Nation is biologically charged .His introduction of the poetic .‘An Island Race ’ is plain illiterate.
My over-arching point,however, is about language .Suppose we allow such free interpretation for real racists .If I say ‘whites are better than blacks’ should I be forgiven by means of eliding a racial idea with a historico -cultural distinction signalling merely the “West” ? Let us hope not . We must allow people to use language in a discrete way , in delicate areas .Otherwise we will cook up an amorphous pudding by which any presentiment can be nourished .
Islamic apologists are currently active linguistic vandals . “Islam-phobia “ is a nonsense not only because it conflates criticism of a religion ,with prejudice against skin colour ,but also by asserting irrationality of the fearful . Well is it irrational ?I n January four men pleaded guilty to attempting to kidnap a man and behead him like a pig. They were not those pesky Methodists. In fact for every over hyped story true ones exist ,and what about identification of Muslims as “The New European Jews” First Muslim Minister Shahid Malik declared on Channel Four`s Dispatches “..ask Muslims today what do they feel like , they feel like the Jews Of Europe..” .There was amore explicit use of the Holocaust in the New Statesman from Ziauddin Sardar
“…are drawing parallels between how Muslims are being stigmatised and demonised now is horribly reminiscent of the way in which the Jew were in Germany in the prequel to the holocaust…”
Have there been British Nuremberg Laws been buried behind a Brown holiday story? Is Belmarsh operating on the same lines as Treblinka ? Of course not but as Orwell said ,"If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” . Corrupting thought is an active objective of some English speakers. Beware .

I`m Alright Jack

Milliband Milliband Milliband, that’s all I ever hear, but I `ll tell you who will be calculating quietly . Jack (the survivor ) Straw .His teflon qualities are in sharp contrast to Brown`s current incarnation as Mr. Fly-paper and he is exactly what Labour deserve
He was the éminence grise chiefly responsible for the sagely counselling against a quick honeymoon election . No blame attached to him for the anti climax ,however , despite his pre election tub thumping about have-a -go-heroes at the Labour Party conference. Naturally he forgot to introduce any such legislation during his time as home secretary between 1997 ands 2001.
As a young man he was hired as an adviser by Barbara Castle for his “guile and low cunning”.He became fashionable Euro-sceptic left in the 1980s but turned into an ardent New labour cheerleader ‘when the mood shifted ‘. He made the case for an EU Constitution but bounced Blair into a referendum in April 2004 while Bambi was on vac.. When the French and Dutch voted against it he was so vilely gleeful Blair was supposed to have put the phone down with words “What a tart “
He invited the Islamist Muslim Council of Britain ( The MCB) and hung Denis Mc Shane out to dry when he suggested that Muslims had a responsibility to root out terrorists . Once again he shimmied out of trouble by objecting to Muslim women covering their faces in his surgery ‘when the mood shifted ‘. He was an implacable opponent of electoral reform dismissing Roy Jenkins’ proposals as “complex”. Latterly the alternative vote system was always his idea .
He was intimately connected with Iraq as Foreign Secretary but managed to send a memo suggesting that we should not join the Americans , it soon became less than entirely confidential .Yes he introduced the Freedom of information but has spent much of his time undermining its principle. He was a key figure in blocking the release of the sexed up dossier . He was campaign manager to Blair and the to Brown and now he is positioning himself as the ‘”Caretaker leader” showing ,in his insidious way, as little loyalty as Milliband , but retaining deniability as ever . This, when unlike the younger crew, he might have been expected to take some flak for the endless misjudgements this clown’s car of an administration has served up. Not he
Should Straw accept an interim role and then be oddly slow to relinquish it while the Labour attack team pick off his rivals no-one should be surprised . War , famine and flood pass over the land but whatever Armageddon befalls us , there will always be cockroaches .

Down With Apart-Height

A candidate fails the black short list by reason of an insufficiently wide nose

The Government has decided to omit the all-black shortlist proposal from Harriet Harman's Equalities Bill.... said a Compass spokesperson” We have long campaigned for a change in the law which would permit political parties to choose parliamentary candidates from a list made up exclusively of black hopefuls.It turned out that the Government was not prepared to include the all-black shortlist proposal in the Equalities Bill because some of the black Labour MPs strongly opposed the idea. awn Butler, Keith Vaz, David Lammy and Diane Abbott are all in favour of all-black shortlists. However, Khalid Mahmood, Parmjit Dhanda, Sadiq Khan and Ashok Kumar are against. Meanwhile, black Labour activists are at a loss to understand how such a small number of black MPs are able to exercise such an influence on Government legislation...........

I think I can help there .Labour have now given up on winning the election and they are concentrating on shoring up the core vote . In these areas they are under attack from the BNP and in general they cannot afford to waste an a ounce of political capital on PC meddling , how they must regret Harperson has her bill at all. There are its true only 15 black MPs out of a total of 650 the. So what? The working classes are proportionately vastly less well represented and in any case the notion that skin pigment is suitable marker is quite worrying to put it mildly .I would like to propose all short short lists and it is seriously quite true that short people are under represented . Its apart-height ....no honest they are, and they have as much in common

By the way anyonejknow how they decide who is black and who is not ? My children are , the progeny of me , ( white) and Mrs. N mixed race ( Bermondsey/Trinidad). Do they operate a"One Drop" rule like the old Southern US ?Or do they test for thickness of lip and curliness of hair ?

Waaiiil I `d just lurve to know you`all

PS The picture is really one of Nazi Pseudo scientists testing for Jewishness

Mutley , A Philosopher For Our Time

Mutley made a profound remark yesterday: “The main problem in discussing this kind of issue is that it comes down to tens of millions of individual choices made by people.. and public policy is largely ignored or ineffective anyway.”
We were talking about Harperson’s barely concealed wish to commit phallocide on the male population but it’s a goodish statement of one of the main struts of the small c conservative case.

Richard Thaler an adviser to David Cameron is articulating the New Psychological economics. It tries to describe a realisation that people are not gnats or atoms re-emphasising real people and their choices .The left tend to assume manageable relationship between Policy and behaviour . As Thaler elaborates, this may not be the case and therefore gross intrusions are likely to be counterproductive .States , he thinks should look at the “Nudge “ Example:
“Then there is the power of social norms; letting people know what other people do. Informing them that most of their peers are organ donors leads to more registered donors.”

Using 1940s instruments in the connected modern world has been tested to destruction over the last 11 years . Doctors , for example , pay them performance related bonuses and they will work more . Good theory : actually they work less, having all the cash they can spend, contract out the graft and become expert at running a scam .Support for women in the workplace will slowly bring about a new balance between the genders . Good theory; actually women are non negotiably averse to being the main bread winner and there is no prospect of the house –husband leaving the pages of fiction. People balance needs that are not described in Marxist or basic economic models and their descisions make new realities .

Steve Richards is a Brown nose but nonetheless ,concludes , in the New Statesman that this will be the last Scot to lead the Labour Party.."Parts of the media and some voters regard him as the personification of the more collectivist Scottish culture “.
Mutley`s law holds good .“... Tens of millions of individual choices”, have already decided made England and Scotland two nations . Labour have had a majority in both but as the prospect of governing England on the back of Scotland loomed it became clear separation was accomplished . No Englishman can rule in Scotland of course and now the reverse is as true .
David Cameron will hold formal control over Scotland but we should not be impressed. As we know from theory and experience, a small incursion of choice into a market ( say of schools ...) transforms the whole system even if most of it retains its previous provision structure. All must compete . . . Similarly, whether or not Salmon can engineer his referendum a Conservative government has to proceed on the basis that he could, and act accordingly.
Politicians are by- passed, in the real world the Union has been killed by Mutley`s law.I would like to make the additional point, that in the pages of such books as “After Blair “( Kieran O Hara )..” Everytown” by Julian Baggini and the above mentioned new economics, intellectual excitement is located for the first ,time neither on the left ,nor on the Libertarian right . The time of the 'conservative' has come and Mutley is one of its foremost philosophers Medal , medal , and yet again I say ....medal

She Reads Dostoyevski You Know ...

Carla and one of Rushdie's girls ply their craft

Light news day today but the The Daily Mail is entirely justified in devoting an entire editorial to just what an odious snob Salman Rushdie is . I dragged my way through Midnights Children years ago, which I found precious and fussy .If , as AN Wilson says , it is inestimably better than his subsequent efforts, then he has clearly lead a life of evil. It was his involvement in the magnificently self regarding Charter 88 that first made my nostrils twitch. This preposterous collection of luvvies used to meet by Islington Green and bitch about their grants .Even Neil Kinnock pronounced them “ a movement of wankers whiners and whingers." ..and god that name !
It referred to the Czech dissident group Charter 77 , people who suffered imprisonment torture under a really oppressive state . The popular Thatcher government by contrast ignored them and in Mr. Rushdie’s case this may have been a torture in itself .
His reaction to the fatwa was to bravely suck up to them by professing a Damascean conversion even while ungratefully accepting the protection of the country he effects to despise but I have a more serious problem. It is the suspicion I have of any man who squires trophy women about. It looks ridiculous and argues a preening delusional self image .( I do operate a show biz exemption here , it goes with the territory).
I therefore have dark suspicions about Sarkozy . Carla Bruni seems to be universally admired, but I am not in that universe. It was when I realised her singing sounded like a strangled frog with Laryngitis I began to wonder. When I read her boast that she sneaked Dostoyevsky into fashion shoots hidden in Cosmo( so as not to embarrass the other girls ) , my worst fears were confirmed .Dostoyevsky of all writers ,a shorthand for intellectual to the ignorant , who else Carla , Satre , Camus , the full pantheon of adolescent pretension ?
Clearly this insufferable woman has been spouting drivel her entire life under the impression that fascinated men give a sod what nonsense she twitters .Yes I know she has legs on her legs, and cheek bones, and all sorts, but honestly , I could not stand it . By contrast look at the delightful holiday snaps of the Cameron’s the other day . They are about right for each other , she may even be a bit ,on the ordinary side and this argues a proper relationship .Dostoyevski !Yeah I used to hide Kerouac on my Beano Carla you nit.