Not written here for a week or two because quite simply I have nothing to write about and I don't feel in the mood for waffling or bullshitting (not even for fun). I thoroughly enjoyed my break with Mark in France and, as usual, was just getting into the swing of it when we had to come home again. And what then? Before my holiday, I was looking forward to it, but now there ain't really much on the horizon which is exciting me. About the only thing is that by Christmas I shall, for the first time I shall be out of debt. I shan't owe anyone a penny. I was once in that position a few years ago when, for one or two reasons I shan't go into here, my stepmother sold the shares she inherited from my father and gave all of use four stepchildren a sum of money. I shan't say how much, as I feel embarrassed that I more or less frittered it all away. But how exciting is 'looking forward to not owing anyone a penny'? Not a great deal, really.
I am sitting outside a pub near Mark's on this Sunday night enjoying a pint or two of cider and a cigar or two. I can connect to the net courtesy of the pub (The Atlas in Fulham, which begins just a few hundred yards from Mark's flat in Kensington and Chelsea) and have been trying to download a pdf manual for a piece of music creation software (a lite version) which came with a midi keyboard I bought earlier today at Maplin's. Trouble is that for some reason I can't download the manual. I have also been eavesdropping on some dickhead or other who is so full of it that it makes me laugh.
I shall tell you what I have gathered so far: he must be in his mid to late 20s, is married to someone he refers to as Masser, which probably means her name is Mary or Maria, sounds as though he went to public school, is sitting with a friend but, as my father used to say (about me, if you have to know) permanently on transmission. His friend isn't really getting a word in edgeways. He is a qualified accountant and 'financial analyst', hopes in the future to start his own firm, once lived in Newcastle and has more opinions than you can shake a stick at. He and his wife are going to get the builders in to extend their house, he lives next to a woman whose house was once a council house, which means his probably was, too. He thinks Britain should cancel all foreign aid, cut taxes drastically, cancel national insurance for firms, feels democracy in Britain is a sham ('we're no more democratic than China'), wonders why 'stupid people' also have the vote and is generally a pain in the butt. At some point in the future he wants to live and work in Ireland ('when all this nonsense is over') and his friend works there now. His friend wonders whether or not he should move back to London: out in Ireland he is one of a few in his firm's branch, back here in London he will only be one of many. He has spent the past ten minutes outlining why almost all the civil service are useless and should be sacked.
. . .
What else? Nothing, really. Not feeling fed up or anything, but I'm wondering what there is to look forward to.
OK, so I'll come clean. I have in my head a novel I want to write. I have the mood, the 'attack', the style, the setting but I don't have a fucking story. Nothing. One central character is Simon Smugg and his wife Sian, who are childless as yet. You will gather their personalities from their surname. He works in a juniorexecutive position for a newspaper. The newspaper is where I want to have my fun. There is one angle I want to use, but I don't want to use it quite yet. (Pain in the arse: 'We should never have bailed out the banks.') It will consist more of dialogue than description (a trick - I shan't call it a technique because that would be too high falutin') I shall crib from Armistead Maupin. It worked for him, so why shouldn't it work for me. I gather some would-be writers simply take off and see where they are taken, but there are great dangers doing that, and I want to have some kind of basic structure on which to build and to keep it all in shape. Hence the need for a 'story'.
I'm afraid that as it deals with newspaper people, it won't have many attractive characters, although I dare not take the risk of making everyone a bastard (the technical word is 'a cunt') because that will - actually, I'd better play safe and say 'would' - put people off. ('Would' rather than 'will' because if you didn't know it you'll find out now, there must be a million and one would-be writers out there of whom something like one-thousandths actually finish 'my novel', and of those less than one-thousandth find a publisher and of those novels less than one per cent is any good. And of those that are published - not necessarily the good ones - about one in a million is read and makes any money. (BTW I subscribe to the unfashionable view that payment is the sincerest form of flattery and a writer who doesn't write for money is wasting his or her time. So, in the the grandest way possible I am setting myself up for pissing in the wind big time.
. . .
There is also another piece I want to write which, oddly, as far as the thinking is concerned, is further down the line in that I do have a four well-defined characters (in my head), a story and - hey - a 'theme'. But that is a little more 'serious' in that I want to do it well and don't want to go off half-cock. A teaser: central to it is the following limerick:
An ambitious young poet named Hinds,
wrote limericks with the usual five lines.
Then a change in the law,
made the maximum four.
It's not by me but by a former flatmate and fellow hack I used to keep up with every so often. Haven't been in touch for years. He last worked for the Daily Mirror, which is called The Mirror now, I think.
The point about that particular limerick is that, strictly, it isn't a limerick: it doesn't have the accepted form of a limerick - only four lines. Yet because of its content - read it again - I am prepared to argue that it is a limerick, though a very unusual one. And from that I have drawn my theme: 'description' and 'prescription'. When does 'description' evolve into 'prescription'? Or how does 'what we do' evolve into 'what we should do'? The problem I face with my 'story' is how to mesh together that train of thought and illuminate it with the 'story' I have thought up? Answer: I still don't know. And that is why I want to leave it on the back-burner until I do know and can do it as best I can.
Sunday, 16 October 2011
Friday, 7 October 2011
Let’s hear it for amorality, the only truly ethical position I know of. And a death to rival that of Di — St Steve has passed on
The good news for some might have been that a certain Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-borm al Qaeda leader has been killed in a drone attack, for which read assassinated in a drone attack. Well, it might be good news for some, but I can’t raise even one cheer let alone three. When is this kind of assassination acceptable? Or, to put it another way, when is murder acceptable? I’m not about to engage in a pro or anti capital punishment rant, for although I am against it, I think at least the arguments put forward by supporters are, at least, intellectually respectable. But the recent killings of al Qaeda leaders, which began a few months ago with that of Osama bin Laden (whose killing was watched live in the White House, we are told), really can’t go unchallenged. And before I go on, I hope that whoever is reading this will agree that I am not some tree-hugging, wishy-washy liberal.
To put it bluntly, I would be far happier if, after the death of Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S. had come out and said: ‘He was against us, so we killed him.’ But they are not doing that and they didn’t do that when they bumped off bin Laden. Instead, they resorted to various means in order to try to justify and legitimise what, to my eyes at least, was simply a murder. And even were I to agree that the world is better off without bin Laden, I simply refuse to accept that ‘their murders’ are evil and despicable, whereas ‘our murders’ - although we don’t call them that - are justified because we have ‘right on our side’. I can’t remember
anyone coming out and putting it as crassly, but that is what we are all being asked to believe. Well, it does’t wash, squire. For if that argument is good enough for us, it is good enough for al Qaeda and anyone else who opposes the West and can be used to justify ‘their murders’, too. But they, too, believe they have ‘right on their side’ and that is exactly the argument they use, although, oddly we don’t accept it. Note, that who actually has ‘right on their side’ can never be established in this world or any other. At the end of the day it comes down to what we chose to believe. And they chose to believe one thing and we another.
So it comes down to this: an argument is respectable if we use it and complete nonsense if our enemies us it. And you don’t need a college degree to see what utter nonsense that position is.
As I said before: I would be far happier if Washington had simply announced that Anwar al-Awlaki, one of its enemies, had been killed because without him alive it believed its enemy would be weaker. And Washington should have left it at that. Naturally, there would have been uproar around the world, and it would have been far from pretty but it would, at least, have been honest.
The danger is, of course, that were China to use the same argument to take out someone who it no longer wanted alive, we would be outraged, most certainly, but we would not have a leg to stand on. They are reasonably entitled to ask: ‘If you do it, why can’t we?’ To that we always reply: because we live in the free West in which free and fair elections are the norm and where we have the rule of law. And to that they might reply: ‘Well, if you have the rule of law, why was Anwar al-Awlaki killed without judicial process? And if you have the rule of law, why were several hundred people detained by the U.S. without charge at Guantanamo Bay specifically because the establishment was outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. courts? And they might add that if you feel it is acceptable to detain without charge those you believe to be a threat to your state, why is it not acceptable that we detain those without charge who we feel are a threat to our state?
What makes it all the worse for us is that we are too ready to take the high moral ground. We are all too ready to convince ourselves and anyone who will listen that ‘right is on our side’ and that because ‘right is on our side’ our actions, or rather those actions which are intended to strengthen that right, are somehow sancitifed. But, of course, it’s all complete nonsense.
Kill Anwar al-Awlaki, kill Osama bin Laden, kill anyone else you want to kill but please, please, please don’t pretend it is anything else but murder.
. . .
The essence of the dilemma is that hoary old problem which manifests itself in a variety of different ways but which is, essentially, the same old problem. One might call up the ‘is/ought’ gap to try to describe it. One might refer to the problem of relativism. One could tackle that same dilemma by examining arguments for and against the existence of God or, if someone feels uncomfortable doing that, arguments for and against the possibility of the absolute in the world. But I’m not going to go into it here, even if I could. Which I can’t. Another time, squire.
. . .
Call me a cynical old bastard but the bizarre outburst of sentimental guff which is marking the passing of Apple Steve Jobs merely goes to show that we here in the West have too much time on our hands. But then I would expect nothing less from the ‘Mac community’ who see themselves as the very definition of cool, sophisticated, enlightened, informed and generally only to be wholeheartedly admired by us lesser folk. For Jobs’s family his death is sad, especially as it came at the very early age of 56 and his children are still relatively young. But I do wish the rest of the world would get a sense of proportion.
The arrangement of candles shaped like an Apple apple (above) was set up in China. But that is just a mere detail. The outbreak of utterly over-the-top geek grief is universal.
To put it bluntly, I would be far happier if, after the death of Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S. had come out and said: ‘He was against us, so we killed him.’ But they are not doing that and they didn’t do that when they bumped off bin Laden. Instead, they resorted to various means in order to try to justify and legitimise what, to my eyes at least, was simply a murder. And even were I to agree that the world is better off without bin Laden, I simply refuse to accept that ‘their murders’ are evil and despicable, whereas ‘our murders’ - although we don’t call them that - are justified because we have ‘right on our side’. I can’t remember
So it comes down to this: an argument is respectable if we use it and complete nonsense if our enemies us it. And you don’t need a college degree to see what utter nonsense that position is.
As I said before: I would be far happier if Washington had simply announced that Anwar al-Awlaki, one of its enemies, had been killed because without him alive it believed its enemy would be weaker. And Washington should have left it at that. Naturally, there would have been uproar around the world, and it would have been far from pretty but it would, at least, have been honest.
The danger is, of course, that were China to use the same argument to take out someone who it no longer wanted alive, we would be outraged, most certainly, but we would not have a leg to stand on. They are reasonably entitled to ask: ‘If you do it, why can’t we?’ To that we always reply: because we live in the free West in which free and fair elections are the norm and where we have the rule of law. And to that they might reply: ‘Well, if you have the rule of law, why was Anwar al-Awlaki killed without judicial process? And if you have the rule of law, why were several hundred people detained by the U.S. without charge at Guantanamo Bay specifically because the establishment was outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. courts? And they might add that if you feel it is acceptable to detain without charge those you believe to be a threat to your state, why is it not acceptable that we detain those without charge who we feel are a threat to our state?
What makes it all the worse for us is that we are too ready to take the high moral ground. We are all too ready to convince ourselves and anyone who will listen that ‘right is on our side’ and that because ‘right is on our side’ our actions, or rather those actions which are intended to strengthen that right, are somehow sancitifed. But, of course, it’s all complete nonsense.
Kill Anwar al-Awlaki, kill Osama bin Laden, kill anyone else you want to kill but please, please, please don’t pretend it is anything else but murder.
. . .
The essence of the dilemma is that hoary old problem which manifests itself in a variety of different ways but which is, essentially, the same old problem. One might call up the ‘is/ought’ gap to try to describe it. One might refer to the problem of relativism. One could tackle that same dilemma by examining arguments for and against the existence of God or, if someone feels uncomfortable doing that, arguments for and against the possibility of the absolute in the world. But I’m not going to go into it here, even if I could. Which I can’t. Another time, squire.
. . .
Call me a cynical old bastard but the bizarre outburst of sentimental guff which is marking the passing of Apple Steve Jobs merely goes to show that we here in the West have too much time on our hands. But then I would expect nothing less from the ‘Mac community’ who see themselves as the very definition of cool, sophisticated, enlightened, informed and generally only to be wholeheartedly admired by us lesser folk. For Jobs’s family his death is sad, especially as it came at the very early age of 56 and his children are still relatively young. But I do wish the rest of the world would get a sense of proportion.
Friday, 30 September 2011
Out of office, Labour can be as wacky as it likes. And one for hacks to chew on, then spit out as worthless
The standard view is that once out of government and into opposition, political parties are able to breathe a sigh of relief, stretch themselves, once again drink too much and indulge themselves in all manner of off-beat behaviour in the certain knowledge that it doesn’t at all matter, that nothing matters for a year or two because no one is taking a blind bit of notice. They are, for the time being anyway, yesterday’s men and women. For the older ones, the outgoing PM and his Cabinet, it might sting a little, or even a great deal, not having the chauffeur-driven sedan and no one touching their forelock any more, both metaphorically and literally, every time they brush past on their way from one important meeting to another. But for the former party grandees there are the compensations: a berth in the Lords for some, several journalistic sinecures perhaps, a well-paid directorship or two (and we are talking of Labour as well as those fucking fascist nasty Tory cunts - I would hate to be ambiguous here). The older ones can also look forward, now that the pushing and shoving of political life is over, to easing themselves gently into the role of eminence grise and that of a man or woman whose informed opinion should be sought by those with the money to seek it. They will even allow themselves a degree of indiscretion, spilling the beans a little on the past failures of colleagues.
For the younger ones, the former junior ministers and ambitious MPs, opposition is the time to make their mark, to climb the party’s greasy pole and get down and dirty in an awful lot of boring, though utterly necessary, manoeuvring, so that when the party to whom they lost power in turn finally loses the plot - as, of course, eventually they always do - they are in prime position to present themselves for selfless public service, knowing that the old guard is well out of the way and regularly getting pissed in the genteel bars of the Lords.
But before that grand moment comes, there is a year or two of hiatus before the real jostling for power and position within the party begins. Most certainly it is going on in the background, indeed, it never stops, but as far as the public is concerned they can relax a little: after all no one is taking a blind bit of notice as the public knows this lot will be in no position to form the government for five years at the very least and so they have nothing to lose.
So it was with Labour after May 2010. The Coalition government was formed here in the United Kingdom by the Conservatives, who won most of the votes, and the Liberal Democrats who were buggered if they were going to form a coalition government with Labour. (Although they often seem appeal to the same constituency and like to present themselves as the ‘caring party’, the Lib Dems and Labour hate each other just a little bit more than the Conservatives and Labour hate each other. So despite a little virtual flirting with Gordon Brown after the last election - which was all nothing more than strengthening his hand when it came to bargaining with the Tories - Nick Clegg plumped for coalition with the Tories as we all knew he would.
Labour needed the break. Like the Tories in 1992, they were knackered, not just out of ideas, but out of puff and, to push a phrase more or less to utter breaking point, out of sorts. The problem the Tories had in 1992 was that everyone - Labour, the Lib Dems and, crucially, they themselves, confidently expected them to lose the election, which would have meant a few quiet, relaxing years in opposition and time to top up the personal coffers and take the wife to that lovely little hotel in Dorset they used to visit before they married and where she gave him his first blow-job. As it turned out, the bloody electorate played silly buggers and re-elected the Tories for another, utterly miserable, five years in government, which caught everyone on the hop and persuaded everyone, as if they didn’t already know, that you simply cannot trust the voters.
So now it is Labour’s turn to drop their guard and come out with all the wacky things they privately believe but, as a rule, are too wise do support publicly.
. . .
The outstanding wacky idea of these past few days was the suggestion by some idiot or other (i.e. a chap called Ivan Lewis who bears an uncanny resemblance to Lembit Opik, a former Lib Dem MP) at this week’s annual Labour party conference in Liverpool that all British journalists should be ‘licensed’ by the government and that if they behaviour in any way fell short of what the licensing committee deemed fit, they would be ‘struck off’. On the scale of wackiness, it almost scores a perfect ten. Leave aside completely the ethics of a democratic government deciding who should and who should not form that country’s free press, the true measure of quite how daft the suggestion is is the sheer impossibility of making a licensing system work. Whichever idiot is was spent the best part of three seconds thinking it all through. What, for example, would the state do with those bolshy individuals (of which, thank God, Britain has more than its fair share) who were unlicensed but still indulged in some kind of journalistic activity? What sanctions would apply? A fine? A short term of imprsionment if the fine remained unpaid, and most certainly it would? A longer term of imprisonment for persistent unlicensed behaviour? And what would constitute ‘journalistic activity’? Would this kind of blogging be regarded as such? Or would all ‘journalistic activity’ be tolerated as long as it did not touch upon a list of sensitive subjects drawn up by the government’s licensing committee?
And how exactly would the government stop ‘unlicensed journalistic activity’? Yes, it might impose fines, followed by imprisonment, followed by, for persistent and unrepentant offenders, the death penalty, but this would, in practice, prove to be cumbersome at best and a bureaucratic nightmare at worst. In the meantime, all those saintly types who now work for the ‘Indy’ and the Guardian and all those gin-soaked fornicators who now work for the ‘right-wing press’ - none of whom, irrespective of their politics, would for a second agree to the government dictating what and what they might not write - would rapidly form a thriving underground press.
Lewis’s suggestion has, unsurprisingly received a universal raspberry from members of the press of all stripes, ranging from Helen Lewis-Hasteley in the News Statesman to Tom Chivers of Her Majesty’s fascist press who writes a blog for the Telegraphy. I should, incidentally, mention that Ms Lewis-Hasteley is a case in point that the daft chararacterisation by many of the caring left-of-centre press and the nasty right-of-centre press (or the other way around, if you get my drift) is at best simplistic. Ms Lewis-Hasteley, or Helen as I shall call her simply because it is shorter, now writes for the New Statesman, avowedly left-of-centre. Odd then, if the simplicissimi are to be believed, that before she took up that job and agonised over the plight of the downtrodden many, she worked - very successfully - for the fascist Daily Mail (whose editor is widely believed to eat at least two babies for breakfast) as a commissioning editor and features executive.
Somehow, I don’t think a list of British journalists, licensed and regulated by the government, will see the light of day.
. . .
I have not previously come across Ivan Lewis, who, apparently, is Labour’s shadow cultural secretary. But not for long, I should think. Lembit Opik (once described by Private Eye as ‘the well-known anagram’) also has something of an odd history. He began his career as a Lib Dem MP showing some promise and was, I think, even considered by some of them as a ‘coming man’ (always the kiss of death). But as time went on, he made more headlines for his love life than as a politician and things started going pear-shaped. First, there was a longish romance with a Welsh TV weather presenter (who cut up rough as increasingly it didn’t ever seem likely to end at the altar and was eventually dumped). Then the youngish roue took up with a Cheeky Girl, one of two Romanian sisters who had a very minor pop hit and who then found fame as to Romanian sisters who once had a very minor pop hit. It seemed an unlikely pairing, and so the Cheeky Girl involved seems to have decided for she gave her beau Lembit the boot. What he does now I don’t know and care even less.
As for the ‘regulation of hacks’, it less of a chance of seeing the light of day than a snowball surviving in Hell. But never say never, so if, by chance, there does come a time when hacks are licensed by the government (with that nice Ivan Lewis holding the licensing committee’s casting vote), I want to make sure from the off that I am ruled out completely. I could and would never countenance being regarded as in any way ‘acceptable’ by anyone in authority. So let me say publicly: Ivan Lewis is a complete prat. That should it, if the guy has even a modicum of self-respect.
Tweedledum and Tweedledee: which is which? You decide
For the younger ones, the former junior ministers and ambitious MPs, opposition is the time to make their mark, to climb the party’s greasy pole and get down and dirty in an awful lot of boring, though utterly necessary, manoeuvring, so that when the party to whom they lost power in turn finally loses the plot - as, of course, eventually they always do - they are in prime position to present themselves for selfless public service, knowing that the old guard is well out of the way and regularly getting pissed in the genteel bars of the Lords.
But before that grand moment comes, there is a year or two of hiatus before the real jostling for power and position within the party begins. Most certainly it is going on in the background, indeed, it never stops, but as far as the public is concerned they can relax a little: after all no one is taking a blind bit of notice as the public knows this lot will be in no position to form the government for five years at the very least and so they have nothing to lose.
So it was with Labour after May 2010. The Coalition government was formed here in the United Kingdom by the Conservatives, who won most of the votes, and the Liberal Democrats who were buggered if they were going to form a coalition government with Labour. (Although they often seem appeal to the same constituency and like to present themselves as the ‘caring party’, the Lib Dems and Labour hate each other just a little bit more than the Conservatives and Labour hate each other. So despite a little virtual flirting with Gordon Brown after the last election - which was all nothing more than strengthening his hand when it came to bargaining with the Tories - Nick Clegg plumped for coalition with the Tories as we all knew he would.
Labour needed the break. Like the Tories in 1992, they were knackered, not just out of ideas, but out of puff and, to push a phrase more or less to utter breaking point, out of sorts. The problem the Tories had in 1992 was that everyone - Labour, the Lib Dems and, crucially, they themselves, confidently expected them to lose the election, which would have meant a few quiet, relaxing years in opposition and time to top up the personal coffers and take the wife to that lovely little hotel in Dorset they used to visit before they married and where she gave him his first blow-job. As it turned out, the bloody electorate played silly buggers and re-elected the Tories for another, utterly miserable, five years in government, which caught everyone on the hop and persuaded everyone, as if they didn’t already know, that you simply cannot trust the voters.
So now it is Labour’s turn to drop their guard and come out with all the wacky things they privately believe but, as a rule, are too wise do support publicly.
. . .
The outstanding wacky idea of these past few days was the suggestion by some idiot or other (i.e. a chap called Ivan Lewis who bears an uncanny resemblance to Lembit Opik, a former Lib Dem MP) at this week’s annual Labour party conference in Liverpool that all British journalists should be ‘licensed’ by the government and that if they behaviour in any way fell short of what the licensing committee deemed fit, they would be ‘struck off’. On the scale of wackiness, it almost scores a perfect ten. Leave aside completely the ethics of a democratic government deciding who should and who should not form that country’s free press, the true measure of quite how daft the suggestion is is the sheer impossibility of making a licensing system work. Whichever idiot is was spent the best part of three seconds thinking it all through. What, for example, would the state do with those bolshy individuals (of which, thank God, Britain has more than its fair share) who were unlicensed but still indulged in some kind of journalistic activity? What sanctions would apply? A fine? A short term of imprsionment if the fine remained unpaid, and most certainly it would? A longer term of imprisonment for persistent unlicensed behaviour? And what would constitute ‘journalistic activity’? Would this kind of blogging be regarded as such? Or would all ‘journalistic activity’ be tolerated as long as it did not touch upon a list of sensitive subjects drawn up by the government’s licensing committee?
And how exactly would the government stop ‘unlicensed journalistic activity’? Yes, it might impose fines, followed by imprisonment, followed by, for persistent and unrepentant offenders, the death penalty, but this would, in practice, prove to be cumbersome at best and a bureaucratic nightmare at worst. In the meantime, all those saintly types who now work for the ‘Indy’ and the Guardian and all those gin-soaked fornicators who now work for the ‘right-wing press’ - none of whom, irrespective of their politics, would for a second agree to the government dictating what and what they might not write - would rapidly form a thriving underground press.
Lewis’s suggestion has, unsurprisingly received a universal raspberry from members of the press of all stripes, ranging from Helen Lewis-Hasteley in the News Statesman to Tom Chivers of Her Majesty’s fascist press who writes a blog for the Telegraphy. I should, incidentally, mention that Ms Lewis-Hasteley is a case in point that the daft chararacterisation by many of the caring left-of-centre press and the nasty right-of-centre press (or the other way around, if you get my drift) is at best simplistic. Ms Lewis-Hasteley, or Helen as I shall call her simply because it is shorter, now writes for the New Statesman, avowedly left-of-centre. Odd then, if the simplicissimi are to be believed, that before she took up that job and agonised over the plight of the downtrodden many, she worked - very successfully - for the fascist Daily Mail (whose editor is widely believed to eat at least two babies for breakfast) as a commissioning editor and features executive.
Somehow, I don’t think a list of British journalists, licensed and regulated by the government, will see the light of day.
. . .
I have not previously come across Ivan Lewis, who, apparently, is Labour’s shadow cultural secretary. But not for long, I should think. Lembit Opik (once described by Private Eye as ‘the well-known anagram’) also has something of an odd history. He began his career as a Lib Dem MP showing some promise and was, I think, even considered by some of them as a ‘coming man’ (always the kiss of death). But as time went on, he made more headlines for his love life than as a politician and things started going pear-shaped. First, there was a longish romance with a Welsh TV weather presenter (who cut up rough as increasingly it didn’t ever seem likely to end at the altar and was eventually dumped). Then the youngish roue took up with a Cheeky Girl, one of two Romanian sisters who had a very minor pop hit and who then found fame as to Romanian sisters who once had a very minor pop hit. It seemed an unlikely pairing, and so the Cheeky Girl involved seems to have decided for she gave her beau Lembit the boot. What he does now I don’t know and care even less.
As for the ‘regulation of hacks’, it less of a chance of seeing the light of day than a snowball surviving in Hell. But never say never, so if, by chance, there does come a time when hacks are licensed by the government (with that nice Ivan Lewis holding the licensing committee’s casting vote), I want to make sure from the off that I am ruled out completely. I could and would never countenance being regarded as in any way ‘acceptable’ by anyone in authority. So let me say publicly: Ivan Lewis is a complete prat. That should it, if the guy has even a modicum of self-respect.
Tuesday, 27 September 2011
How a change of rules and new technology helped me realise I and rugger buggers can exist in the same universe. We don’t have to mix of course (which would be too much to ask of me)
Here’s today’s question: what do Finland, Luxembourg, Vanuato, Norway, Monaco, Nigeria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Guam and Tahiti in common? Give up? Thought you might, because it’s not obvious unless your answer was that vast majority of the citizens of those ten countries have two legs. Well, the answer is that they are all in the bottom ten in the International Rugby Union board’s ranking of national sides. Perhaps you would have cottoned on a lot sooner had I asked what New Zealand, South Africa, Australia, England and France have in common - they are all in the top five and of all the many connections one might make between the five of them, being rugby nation would not necessarily come too far down the list. But what suprised me was seeing how many nations around the world play rugby. Monaco? Really? Surely the place isn’t big enough for a full-sized rugby pitch? Finland? Well, as sure as eggs is eggs it will be a summer game up there, unless they play rugby on skates.
I am something of a recent convert to rugby, despite being impeccably middle-class with quite marvellous manners to boot and charm most others would die for, and despite the fact that I shall never see 59 again. In fact, I used to loathe it, and, to be honest, there are aspects to rugby I still loathe. I suppose it would be more truthful to say I have become a fan of the game of rugby when it is played during the Six Nations tournament at the beginning of every year and, as now, during the World Cup, now being staged in New Zealand.
To clarify my earlier loathing (now downgraded to intense dislike) a little more, it is English rugby and its so-called ‘rugger buggers’ I dislike: their attitudes, their vastly
OTT – and for me wholly unconvincing – swaggering machismo, their apparent conviction that man was put on earth solely to get arseholed on beer when he is not actually out training or playing, and, if I’m honest, the fact that so many very fanciable women are rather taken with the ‘rugger bugger’. On that score the only way I can console myself – i.e. that there will not be a snowball’s chance in hell that those women would ever even give me the time of day – is that it is more than likely that they are just as stupid as the men and that any conversation between us when not restricted to the possible size of Lawrence Dallaglio’s balls would surely be over within about three-and-a-half minutes, if not sooner.
I am happy to point out that this intense dislike is solely restricted to English rugby. In Wales it is very much the national sport played by all, and although Scottish rugger buggers have more in common with their English cousins than their fellow Celts, I don’t find them half as irritating. For one thing, they often share their fellow non-rugger buggers Scots sense of humour. My loathing started when, at the age of 13, and after four years attending German schools the last three at a Jesuit college, I was sent to the Oratory School. I was unfeasibly innocent – I remember suggesting to my mother that one sure way to tackle world over-population, a contemporary concern in the early Sixties, would be if all men and women simply stopped shagging. She laughed but did not (and possibly could not) explain why my solution was something of a non-starter – and life at and English boarding school (oh, all right, public school) was not so much a wake-up call but a nightmare for this tender young lad. I knew nothing of ‘queers’, ‘stiffs’ and ‘wanking’ and after just a few days got very, very homesick. I know realise that all the other boys had also been very, very homesick at one point, but as I was the only one of two in my year’s intake of 40 who had not previously been to a prep school, my homesick came later on in my school career. Those poor saps had gone through it all when they were seven or eight and were first shipped out as the inconvenience many middle-class parents regarded them. Football – soccer, to you Yanks – was the game I liked and followed, but it wasn’t played at the Oratory. Rugby was, and the connection between English rugby and an almost blinding unhappiness was made. It didn’t help that at 13 I had reached my teenage weight, but not yet my teenage height and was rather chubby to boot. My first nickname was ‘Preggers’ – perhaps you can guess why.
So there you have it: the reason why I find English rugby, its followers and everything about it loathsome. There is even a certain accent which, whenever I hear it, is like a stab in the back. Irrational? Certainly, but then someone once observed that what distinguishes humankind from animals is not that we have the capacity to be rational, but that we often behave totally irrationally.
. . .
But I have come to appreciate the game a great deal more, and for two simple reasons. The first is the various rule changes which have made the game far more fluid. When I was forced to play the game – and occasionally watched it – you often had to guess what was going on as the ball would get lost for what seemed like hours in a pile of rugby forwards and mud. This made it all rather boring. But rules changes mean that union is now almost as fluid as league.
The second change which made watching rugby (and, by the way, cricket) more of a pleasure was the gradual introduction of new technology which meant numerous replays, often in slow motion, and several angles were available, which helped one understand the game far better. Admittedly, many already did, but I wasn’t one of them.
These days I support Italy in the Six Nations. They have almost always been coming last, but they are getting better and better, for one thing they seem to have more in common with the Australian, South Africans, New Zealanders and French than those awful rugger buggers.
I am something of a recent convert to rugby, despite being impeccably middle-class with quite marvellous manners to boot and charm most others would die for, and despite the fact that I shall never see 59 again. In fact, I used to loathe it, and, to be honest, there are aspects to rugby I still loathe. I suppose it would be more truthful to say I have become a fan of the game of rugby when it is played during the Six Nations tournament at the beginning of every year and, as now, during the World Cup, now being staged in New Zealand.
To clarify my earlier loathing (now downgraded to intense dislike) a little more, it is English rugby and its so-called ‘rugger buggers’ I dislike: their attitudes, their vastly
I am happy to point out that this intense dislike is solely restricted to English rugby. In Wales it is very much the national sport played by all, and although Scottish rugger buggers have more in common with their English cousins than their fellow Celts, I don’t find them half as irritating. For one thing, they often share their fellow non-rugger buggers Scots sense of humour. My loathing started when, at the age of 13, and after four years attending German schools the last three at a Jesuit college, I was sent to the Oratory School. I was unfeasibly innocent – I remember suggesting to my mother that one sure way to tackle world over-population, a contemporary concern in the early Sixties, would be if all men and women simply stopped shagging. She laughed but did not (and possibly could not) explain why my solution was something of a non-starter – and life at and English boarding school (oh, all right, public school) was not so much a wake-up call but a nightmare for this tender young lad. I knew nothing of ‘queers’, ‘stiffs’ and ‘wanking’ and after just a few days got very, very homesick. I know realise that all the other boys had also been very, very homesick at one point, but as I was the only one of two in my year’s intake of 40 who had not previously been to a prep school, my homesick came later on in my school career. Those poor saps had gone through it all when they were seven or eight and were first shipped out as the inconvenience many middle-class parents regarded them. Football – soccer, to you Yanks – was the game I liked and followed, but it wasn’t played at the Oratory. Rugby was, and the connection between English rugby and an almost blinding unhappiness was made. It didn’t help that at 13 I had reached my teenage weight, but not yet my teenage height and was rather chubby to boot. My first nickname was ‘Preggers’ – perhaps you can guess why.
So there you have it: the reason why I find English rugby, its followers and everything about it loathsome. There is even a certain accent which, whenever I hear it, is like a stab in the back. Irrational? Certainly, but then someone once observed that what distinguishes humankind from animals is not that we have the capacity to be rational, but that we often behave totally irrationally.
. . .
But I have come to appreciate the game a great deal more, and for two simple reasons. The first is the various rule changes which have made the game far more fluid. When I was forced to play the game – and occasionally watched it – you often had to guess what was going on as the ball would get lost for what seemed like hours in a pile of rugby forwards and mud. This made it all rather boring. But rules changes mean that union is now almost as fluid as league.
The second change which made watching rugby (and, by the way, cricket) more of a pleasure was the gradual introduction of new technology which meant numerous replays, often in slow motion, and several angles were available, which helped one understand the game far better. Admittedly, many already did, but I wasn’t one of them.
These days I support Italy in the Six Nations. They have almost always been coming last, but they are getting better and better, for one thing they seem to have more in common with the Australian, South Africans, New Zealanders and French than those awful rugger buggers.
Monday, 26 September 2011
More blogs out there than sand grains on the beach - what is a boy to do to make his mark? And will the colonels return to Greece? That's what the CIA thinks (according to the rumour)
Surprisingly enough, I am not the only bod conceited enough to record his thoughts in a blog, and furthermore there is any number of blogs out there in what in the early pioneering days was called ‘cyberspace’ passing on their thoughts on the euro crisis. I discovered exactly how many when I came across a suggestion on the BBC News website outlining different possible outcomes to the euro crisis http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14977728 that the CIA has warned of a military coup in Greece. This rather intrigued me, because BBC, despite apparently being staffed wholesale by lefties (©Daily Mail), is, as a rule, rather circumspect in its pronouncements and is not given to making foolish claims lightly. For one thing the level of editorial control is such that anything published on its website will be seen and checked by at least three people. So, I reckoned, there must be at least a little credence in the suggestion that the CIA is actually worried that there might be a military coup.
I’ve previously thought that such a coup was not utterly impossible – as I have previously written that both Portugal and Greece, of the Med nations, have only been democracy for less than 35 years and were ruled by dictators before that. But the crucial difference between me and the CIA is that I am just some obscure blogger with more opinions than sense but the CIA has access to quite a bit of information, not least from the U.S. ambassador in Athens as well as from its ‘station’ if these days it bothers having a station in Athens. (Might sound odd to write that but I recently read a book by a Robert Baer, a retired CIA operative, who was dismayed that the new generation of the CIA upper echelon is far more in favour of intelligence gathered by eavesdropping than for running agents on the ground. Baer also suggested that current thinking means stations around the world were being closed down. Whether or not that is true, I don’t know – how could I? – but that is what he claimed. So it is reasonable to ask whether a CIA station was once existed is still operating in Athens or whether it has been downgraded to a chap with a mobile phone and a laptop sipping ouzo in a taverna.)
Whatever is the case, the chances are that the CIA is in a better position to know what is going on that good old me. So after reading that the BBC was repeating the CIA’s fears I googled ‘military coup 2011 greece cia’ and there they were – thousands upon thousands of blogs all saying the same thing. Trouble is
they might all be repeating the same silly rumour, but given the nature of the web a rumour can, almost within minutes, become established fact. And then it even occurred to me that perhaps the BBC, despite it levels of editorial control, had fallen for what is, perhaps, nothing but a rumour.
So listen up: there are claims out there that the CIA has warned of a possible military coup in Greece. Whether or not they have any substance I don’t know. And nor do you. The only people who would know are the good folk in Langley, Virginia, and I can’t see them emailing me once they have read this either confirming or denying the claim. And even if they did email me and tell me something either way, there would be no way of knowing they were telling the truth. Would there?
. . .
If, hypothetically, there were a military coup in Greece, I wonder what the reaction of the EU commissariat in Brussels would be? Going by previous reactions to crises, I think they would restrict themselves to ‘condemning in absolute terms and unequivocally the events in Greece’ and promising a definitive response ‘by Christmas’. That’s what they are good at. If issuing statements of intent, condemnation and reassurance – loads and loads of those these past few months to ‘calm the money markets’ – were a marketable commodity, the EU leadership would be rich beyond its wildest dreams. It firmly believes that frantic activity is the same as consequential action which is why very little seems to get done, althoughgetting everyone in ‘the club’ to agree to the latest proposal can never be easy. Trouble is, activity never was the same as action and it never will be.
So what would happen if the colonels again took over Greece (promising elections in a few months’ time, of course – they all do that)? Well, bugger all, really. There would be a lot of hand-wringing, especially on the left, but there is not much that could be done. Would Greece be suspended from the EU? They did something along those lines - though I can’t remember what - a while back when some unsavoury far right type in Austria looked like getting quite a bit of support. Actually, rather then Greece being suspended, I should imagine the first thing this hypothetical group of colonels would do would be to dump the euro and go back to the drachma. That (according to my reading - I would hate you to think I know what I am talking about) would benefit the country in the short term but would stoke up inflation in the long term. And I should also think it would tell the EU to go and take a running jump. Undoubtedly, there would be a lot of trouble from the country’s left, but if, initially at least, my hypothetical colonels ensured that the economy stabilised and that civil servants were paid again, they might find they had rather more support than the left.
Naturally, ‘the markets’, as we are now obliged to call them, wouldn’t know what to do. They would like it if my hypothetical colonels brought stability, but they would also know that these colonels, unless they were wise, might be unwilling to honour Greece’s debts. In fact, they might believe the best thing to do would be to seal of Greece from much of Europe, and only allow tourism - they would need the income - and the export of what Greece is good at exporting. Most worrying for the EU would be that other countries might be encouraged by the action of my hypothetical colonels - and then the Europoean dream would be well and truly over. The EU would probably shrink back into a rump of of the 12 states which once formed the then European Community before Delors and his ilk decided to go for broke and try for a ‘United States of Europe’. What Britain would do, I really don’t know. Probably just lose the Ashes to Australia again. That’s the kind of thing we do in a crisis. Oh, and get roaring drunk.
I’ve previously thought that such a coup was not utterly impossible – as I have previously written that both Portugal and Greece, of the Med nations, have only been democracy for less than 35 years and were ruled by dictators before that. But the crucial difference between me and the CIA is that I am just some obscure blogger with more opinions than sense but the CIA has access to quite a bit of information, not least from the U.S. ambassador in Athens as well as from its ‘station’ if these days it bothers having a station in Athens. (Might sound odd to write that but I recently read a book by a Robert Baer, a retired CIA operative, who was dismayed that the new generation of the CIA upper echelon is far more in favour of intelligence gathered by eavesdropping than for running agents on the ground. Baer also suggested that current thinking means stations around the world were being closed down. Whether or not that is true, I don’t know – how could I? – but that is what he claimed. So it is reasonable to ask whether a CIA station was once existed is still operating in Athens or whether it has been downgraded to a chap with a mobile phone and a laptop sipping ouzo in a taverna.)
Whatever is the case, the chances are that the CIA is in a better position to know what is going on that good old me. So after reading that the BBC was repeating the CIA’s fears I googled ‘military coup 2011 greece cia’ and there they were – thousands upon thousands of blogs all saying the same thing. Trouble is
So listen up: there are claims out there that the CIA has warned of a possible military coup in Greece. Whether or not they have any substance I don’t know. And nor do you. The only people who would know are the good folk in Langley, Virginia, and I can’t see them emailing me once they have read this either confirming or denying the claim. And even if they did email me and tell me something either way, there would be no way of knowing they were telling the truth. Would there?
. . .
If, hypothetically, there were a military coup in Greece, I wonder what the reaction of the EU commissariat in Brussels would be? Going by previous reactions to crises, I think they would restrict themselves to ‘condemning in absolute terms and unequivocally the events in Greece’ and promising a definitive response ‘by Christmas’. That’s what they are good at. If issuing statements of intent, condemnation and reassurance – loads and loads of those these past few months to ‘calm the money markets’ – were a marketable commodity, the EU leadership would be rich beyond its wildest dreams. It firmly believes that frantic activity is the same as consequential action which is why very little seems to get done, althoughgetting everyone in ‘the club’ to agree to the latest proposal can never be easy. Trouble is, activity never was the same as action and it never will be.
So what would happen if the colonels again took over Greece (promising elections in a few months’ time, of course – they all do that)? Well, bugger all, really. There would be a lot of hand-wringing, especially on the left, but there is not much that could be done. Would Greece be suspended from the EU? They did something along those lines - though I can’t remember what - a while back when some unsavoury far right type in Austria looked like getting quite a bit of support. Actually, rather then Greece being suspended, I should imagine the first thing this hypothetical group of colonels would do would be to dump the euro and go back to the drachma. That (according to my reading - I would hate you to think I know what I am talking about) would benefit the country in the short term but would stoke up inflation in the long term. And I should also think it would tell the EU to go and take a running jump. Undoubtedly, there would be a lot of trouble from the country’s left, but if, initially at least, my hypothetical colonels ensured that the economy stabilised and that civil servants were paid again, they might find they had rather more support than the left.
Naturally, ‘the markets’, as we are now obliged to call them, wouldn’t know what to do. They would like it if my hypothetical colonels brought stability, but they would also know that these colonels, unless they were wise, might be unwilling to honour Greece’s debts. In fact, they might believe the best thing to do would be to seal of Greece from much of Europe, and only allow tourism - they would need the income - and the export of what Greece is good at exporting. Most worrying for the EU would be that other countries might be encouraged by the action of my hypothetical colonels - and then the Europoean dream would be well and truly over. The EU would probably shrink back into a rump of of the 12 states which once formed the then European Community before Delors and his ilk decided to go for broke and try for a ‘United States of Europe’. What Britain would do, I really don’t know. Probably just lose the Ashes to Australia again. That’s the kind of thing we do in a crisis. Oh, and get roaring drunk.
Friday, 23 September 2011
Essert-Roman. Day 334 - I waffle on a bit more about the euro, the Palestinians, the Third World and then call it a day to prepare for la retour a casa (or something, you get the drift).
Essert-Romand, Haute-Savoie, France.
Last day of this holiday here in sunny Essert-Romand and, as usual, rather wishing it wasn’t. I think I might once try a three-week holiday. What with packing, hunting down tea-towels, chocolate with the town logo on it and other tourist tat, cleaning up the apartment - I’m buggered if I’m going to leave it looking like a tip - and other boring stuff, I rather think the last day was yesterday. Then there’s all the strategic eating - i.e. finishing off as much as the food as possible as fresh produce will have to be thrown away, and I hate wasting food (Catholic upbringing, see). Then, as it’s Friday, got to get the puzzles pages printed at work, alert Nicky, make any amends she spots, blah-blah, so it really would seem that yesterday was the last day. Tomorrow will be a bit of a rush as we have to get from here to Geneva airport by 9am at the latest, and what with all the bloody windy roads to start with, I have no idea how long the trip will last, and we don’t want to miss our plane. I suppose all this fraught whingeing is a sure sign the holiday is over. Heads down for Christmas now and most probably months of utter chaos as Britain yet again grinds to a halt by the unexpected arrival of some cold white stuff falling from the sky.
. . .
And the euro crap grinds on. Everyone knows what’s going to happen - ten years of Japan style stagflation at best, wall-to-wall repeats on TV at worst - so why, why, why, don’t they just bite the bloody bullet and we can all get on with swapping our austerity war stories. When the crash comes, the social fashionista will be at the insufferable worse, trying to outdo each other with how much money they have lost, how much harder life is for them now, even looks like they won’t be able to take a second foreign holiday this year, even thought of renting out the weekend place in Dorset, you know, it’s times such as these which make you realise quite how desperate life must be in the Third World. (Ironically, of course, the Third World is no longer the Third World and even using the term the Third World indicates that one is an out-of-touch, condescending dickhead. What was once the Third World is largely doing rather better than the First World, and as for the Second World, well they really must try a lot harder.)
I have no idea how this might affect me. I just keep my fingers crossed that my Mail shifts will carry on as usual until November 2014 because the alternative would be hitting the casual trail again in London or stacking shelves in Asda, and I have the stomach for neither. Bloody Greeks, bloody EU, bloody van Rompey or whatever the idiot’s name is, bloody EU cheerleaders. These past few years have been a blueprint for how to fuck up the lives of several million people while piously claiming their lives are being improved. At least if and when the EU evolves into something less smug and all-embracing we can start making stupid nationalistic jokes again, such as: Where’s the safest place to hide your money in France? Underneath the soap. Trouble is that that kind of Johnny Foreigner sentiment is hugely out of date. Still a good joke, mind. Made another yesterday when Mark and I spotted an obvious hire care with Swiss plates and an unmistakably German couple inside. Lost their way while looking for Poland, I remarked. OK, so not that good, but look, times is ’ard, squire, spare a few coppers for a cup of tea?
. . .
Don’t know how the whole ‘we want UN recognition’ thing will work out for the Palestinians, but I must say I am broadly in favour. And it’s not that I am anti Israel. In fact, so far quite the opposite. I have always admired how they stand up for themselves and refuse to take any shit and I have got into any number of arguments taking the side of Israel when, as usual, many trot out their somewhat hackneyed anti-Israel rhetoric (and I am still not convinced that lying just beneath the surface of much of there is not essentially a nasty and naked anti-semitism). And it doesn’t help that supporting the Palestinians has become the fashionable cause.
For example, looking for a neutral cartoon with which to illustrate this entry, I came across any number of rather vicious anti-Israel images and a great deal of ‘pity the poor oppressed Palestinians’, but the problem is just a damn sight more complex than that and it is thoroughly dishonest to pretend otherwise. But that doesn’t stop the fashionistas, many of whom give the impression they don’t have two brain cells to rub together, mindlessly following the latest trend, rather as to this day that image of Che Guevara, with the chap looking all peaceful and
gooey-eyed, ‘makes a statement’ about one’s politics and humanity. The only ‘statement’ it makes for me is that the wearer is ineffably naive.
The problem is that, like most countries, they are split into a left of centre and a right of centre, and the right of centre rather takes the piss what with building settlements where they have no right to build settlement. It is not easy to exist in that neck of the woods with fascists like Armadinejad behaving like some latter-day Hitler (although I suspect his days are rather numbered ruling a country where a vast majority of Iran’s people are under 30 and would rather be free than not. Now there’s a surprise). So Israel must realise that the time has come to give a little, that ‘negotiations’ must mean something, that they must come to some kind of workable solution, and the stragegy by the West Bank Palestinians at least might get things moving a little. The real problem, of course, is that the Palestinians themselves are split, and that there are many in the Middle East who simply want to see Israel wiped off the map, which I why broadly I’m more inclined to take Israel’s side. But I wish the Palestinians luck and perhaps in time sanity will prevail on both sides.
. . .
Unfortunately, it looks like the usual suspects for the knockout round of the rugby world cup, which might mean a consistently ,high standard of play, but coming late to the game (I used to dislike it intensely after having a miserable two years at school and identified that misery with the game. I still can’t English rugby - the pseudo-macho attitudes, the bonhomie and the a ‘real man’ crap, but I have warmed to the game. And for these past few years I have been supporting Italy in the six Nations and all the underdogs in the world cup. Yes, I know they didn’t have a hope in hell of going through to the next round, but . . . The United States held their own against Australia this morning and although the got a drubbing, they have nothing to be ashamed of and even scored a rather tasty try. But, as I say, it looks like the usual suspects going through.
. . .
If perhaps my comments about the Third World, Israel and Palestine and the two nationalistic jibes above has somehow pissed any of you off, let me re-assure you all that there is nothing I want more dearly than Peace On Earth and Tranquillity For All. Now fuck off and enjoy the rest of your day, and if I hear from any of you in the next few days there’ll be real trouble.
Last day of this holiday here in sunny Essert-Romand and, as usual, rather wishing it wasn’t. I think I might once try a three-week holiday. What with packing, hunting down tea-towels, chocolate with the town logo on it and other tourist tat, cleaning up the apartment - I’m buggered if I’m going to leave it looking like a tip - and other boring stuff, I rather think the last day was yesterday. Then there’s all the strategic eating - i.e. finishing off as much as the food as possible as fresh produce will have to be thrown away, and I hate wasting food (Catholic upbringing, see). Then, as it’s Friday, got to get the puzzles pages printed at work, alert Nicky, make any amends she spots, blah-blah, so it really would seem that yesterday was the last day. Tomorrow will be a bit of a rush as we have to get from here to Geneva airport by 9am at the latest, and what with all the bloody windy roads to start with, I have no idea how long the trip will last, and we don’t want to miss our plane. I suppose all this fraught whingeing is a sure sign the holiday is over. Heads down for Christmas now and most probably months of utter chaos as Britain yet again grinds to a halt by the unexpected arrival of some cold white stuff falling from the sky.
. . .
And the euro crap grinds on. Everyone knows what’s going to happen - ten years of Japan style stagflation at best, wall-to-wall repeats on TV at worst - so why, why, why, don’t they just bite the bloody bullet and we can all get on with swapping our austerity war stories. When the crash comes, the social fashionista will be at the insufferable worse, trying to outdo each other with how much money they have lost, how much harder life is for them now, even looks like they won’t be able to take a second foreign holiday this year, even thought of renting out the weekend place in Dorset, you know, it’s times such as these which make you realise quite how desperate life must be in the Third World. (Ironically, of course, the Third World is no longer the Third World and even using the term the Third World indicates that one is an out-of-touch, condescending dickhead. What was once the Third World is largely doing rather better than the First World, and as for the Second World, well they really must try a lot harder.)
I have no idea how this might affect me. I just keep my fingers crossed that my Mail shifts will carry on as usual until November 2014 because the alternative would be hitting the casual trail again in London or stacking shelves in Asda, and I have the stomach for neither. Bloody Greeks, bloody EU, bloody van Rompey or whatever the idiot’s name is, bloody EU cheerleaders. These past few years have been a blueprint for how to fuck up the lives of several million people while piously claiming their lives are being improved. At least if and when the EU evolves into something less smug and all-embracing we can start making stupid nationalistic jokes again, such as: Where’s the safest place to hide your money in France? Underneath the soap. Trouble is that that kind of Johnny Foreigner sentiment is hugely out of date. Still a good joke, mind. Made another yesterday when Mark and I spotted an obvious hire care with Swiss plates and an unmistakably German couple inside. Lost their way while looking for Poland, I remarked. OK, so not that good, but look, times is ’ard, squire, spare a few coppers for a cup of tea?
. . .
Don’t know how the whole ‘we want UN recognition’ thing will work out for the Palestinians, but I must say I am broadly in favour. And it’s not that I am anti Israel. In fact, so far quite the opposite. I have always admired how they stand up for themselves and refuse to take any shit and I have got into any number of arguments taking the side of Israel when, as usual, many trot out their somewhat hackneyed anti-Israel rhetoric (and I am still not convinced that lying just beneath the surface of much of there is not essentially a nasty and naked anti-semitism). And it doesn’t help that supporting the Palestinians has become the fashionable cause.
For example, looking for a neutral cartoon with which to illustrate this entry, I came across any number of rather vicious anti-Israel images and a great deal of ‘pity the poor oppressed Palestinians’, but the problem is just a damn sight more complex than that and it is thoroughly dishonest to pretend otherwise. But that doesn’t stop the fashionistas, many of whom give the impression they don’t have two brain cells to rub together, mindlessly following the latest trend, rather as to this day that image of Che Guevara, with the chap looking all peaceful and
The problem is that, like most countries, they are split into a left of centre and a right of centre, and the right of centre rather takes the piss what with building settlements where they have no right to build settlement. It is not easy to exist in that neck of the woods with fascists like Armadinejad behaving like some latter-day Hitler (although I suspect his days are rather numbered ruling a country where a vast majority of Iran’s people are under 30 and would rather be free than not. Now there’s a surprise). So Israel must realise that the time has come to give a little, that ‘negotiations’ must mean something, that they must come to some kind of workable solution, and the stragegy by the West Bank Palestinians at least might get things moving a little. The real problem, of course, is that the Palestinians themselves are split, and that there are many in the Middle East who simply want to see Israel wiped off the map, which I why broadly I’m more inclined to take Israel’s side. But I wish the Palestinians luck and perhaps in time sanity will prevail on both sides.
. . .
Unfortunately, it looks like the usual suspects for the knockout round of the rugby world cup, which might mean a consistently ,high standard of play, but coming late to the game (I used to dislike it intensely after having a miserable two years at school and identified that misery with the game. I still can’t English rugby - the pseudo-macho attitudes, the bonhomie and the a ‘real man’ crap, but I have warmed to the game. And for these past few years I have been supporting Italy in the six Nations and all the underdogs in the world cup. Yes, I know they didn’t have a hope in hell of going through to the next round, but . . . The United States held their own against Australia this morning and although the got a drubbing, they have nothing to be ashamed of and even scored a rather tasty try. But, as I say, it looks like the usual suspects going through.
. . .
If perhaps my comments about the Third World, Israel and Palestine and the two nationalistic jibes above has somehow pissed any of you off, let me re-assure you all that there is nothing I want more dearly than Peace On Earth and Tranquillity For All. Now fuck off and enjoy the rest of your day, and if I hear from any of you in the next few days there’ll be real trouble.
Thursday, 22 September 2011
How not to solve a crisis, any crisis really. And a gentle bit of tourist activity
In one way, the euro crisis gets more bizarre by the hour. We are told that in order to qualify for the next handout of euro moolah to keep the state from going bankrupt, Greece is being urged to impose every harsher austerity measures. And on the face of it, that makes sense you might say. But it makes absolutely no sense
Pissed off or what. Surprised?
at all to impose even harsher taxes and cuts on folk who have very little money in the first place: state pensions down, a property tax is imposed, state salaries are cut when all of Greece knows that if the wealthy paid, and had paid, their taxes in the first place, this crisis might never have happened. Recently, someone point out that the only problem in Greece is tax evasion. And the only people who can afford clever accountants and lawyers to make that evasion possible are the very people whose taxes would help alleviate the disaster Greece is now in and it is not wonder they have launched yet another public service strike. The low-paid should not be the ones to carry the can, both for moral and economic reasons. But this kind of wacky thinking has dogged the whole euro project from the outset.
. . .
In tourist mode yesterday, Mark and I drove up north to visit Thonon on Lake Geneva (or Lac Leman as I have learned the French call it). After a leisurely pastis by the lakeside, it was off to Evian nearby for another leisurely pastis. I’m not one for marching round museums and art galleries, although as far as I know there aren’t that many around here anyway. Mark who spend many years at French schools is a good source French history and told me the the treaty to end the Algerian war was negotiated and then signed in Evian. The town also has, he says, Europe’s largest casino and is a playground for the rich. Well, I never.
at all to impose even harsher taxes and cuts on folk who have very little money in the first place: state pensions down, a property tax is imposed, state salaries are cut when all of Greece knows that if the wealthy paid, and had paid, their taxes in the first place, this crisis might never have happened. Recently, someone point out that the only problem in Greece is tax evasion. And the only people who can afford clever accountants and lawyers to make that evasion possible are the very people whose taxes would help alleviate the disaster Greece is now in and it is not wonder they have launched yet another public service strike. The low-paid should not be the ones to carry the can, both for moral and economic reasons. But this kind of wacky thinking has dogged the whole euro project from the outset.
. . .
In tourist mode yesterday, Mark and I drove up north to visit Thonon on Lake Geneva (or Lac Leman as I have learned the French call it). After a leisurely pastis by the lakeside, it was off to Evian nearby for another leisurely pastis. I’m not one for marching round museums and art galleries, although as far as I know there aren’t that many around here anyway. Mark who spend many years at French schools is a good source French history and told me the the treaty to end the Algerian war was negotiated and then signed in Evian. The town also has, he says, Europe’s largest casino and is a playground for the rich. Well, I never.
Tuesday, 20 September 2011
Join me on an exciting journey of discovery to sort out the bullshit from the bollocks (part 1)
An occasional series (part 1) of those weasel words and phrases which insinuate their way into all our lives, but tend to mean rather less than they claim to. It has been sparked by an email I’ve just received from Adobe Systems urging me to sign up for a seminar where they will be trotting out their newest products and, I should imagine, hope that I shall part with some of my hard-earned shekels to become the proud owner of one of them. So pride of place and top of my list comes the phrase Adobe used:
1 Get the inside track - No, not really. When you join a gaggle of several tens of thousands worldwide who also received an invitation to ‘get the inside track’, you aren’t getting the
‘inside track’ on anything. You’re just becoming one of a very large and very amorphous herd. If I were being charitable, I might concede that ‘to get the inside track’ could be taken to mean ‘get more details on’, but I’m not feeling charitable and, anyway, I’m 99pc certain Adobe and others use the phrase to make you think you’re one of a select and exclusive few.
A related phrase is ‘sneak preview’. A preview it most certainly is, but when it is a ‘sneak preview’ of, say, the latest EastEnders plotline (US, Brazilian, German and readers from other countries, please fill in you own soap), you are doing nothing more sneaky than joining several million other morons who have nothing better to do with their time.
2 Exciting - Yes, that one, when what is described at ‘exciting’ is usually less ‘exciting’ than a bad wank. One of the silliest uses I have come across was in the Daily Mail, several times in fact, which billed an ‘exciting dry cleaning offer’. I think you paid for the dry-cleaning of your clothes, but buttons were dry-cleaned gratis. This one is very popular with ‘financial institutions’ PR operatives and civil servants: banks will simply re-package existing rip-off savings products, call them ‘exciting’ and hope you won’t notice it’s the same old cack. Civil servants are addicted to announcing, for example, and ‘exciting new health service initiative’ and an ‘exciting development in sewage disposal’. Often the ‘exciting development’ is also ‘a departure’. A real departure would be if for once the didn’t resort to bullshit.
3 Going on a journey of discovery - This one is much loved by ‘life coaches’, any number of lifestyle gurus, self-help charlatans, psycho drama instructors and a great many of their aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, nephews and nieces. The only thing you discover once you have completed the journey - and not always immediately, as these folk are adept at tapping into our infinite capacity for self-delusion - is that your wallet is now considerably lighter.
4 Find your inner [whatever] - This one is rather like being invited to go on a journey, in this case self-discovery. This is another favourite of self-help gurus and other cynics who prey on your unhappiness with any number of imaginative ways to turn it into hard cash, which, naturally ends up in their bank accounts. By far the most pernicious I know of are those crooks from The Church of Scientology. I you walk in off the street and fill in one of their personality profiles (as I once did out of interest - I wasn’t at all unhappy at the time), you will always be told that you are a complete psychological mess and that - for a price, of course - they can help you ‘find yourself’ and become happier. The very sad thing is there are many, many people out there who are unhappy - in fact, all of us at some point in our lives have been deeply unhappy - and what they need is true understanding, help, good advice, sometimes medication and some way to resurrect their feelings of self-worth. What they don’t need is for some Scientology fuck to reinforce their low-esteem in order to turn a fast buck or ten.
Incidentally, I shall not, as some might expect, launch into a wholesale and ineffably silly condemnation of counselling, whether it is provided by a medically trained counsellor (trained in psychology and psychotherapy) or someone properly and responsibly trained. Certainly, there are charlatans out there, but, I suspect, rather fewer than your average Daily Mail reader would appreciate. There are many who do excellent work, and are worth their weight in gold. I know from personal experience. It is always difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff and, as a rule of thumb, it would be most sensible first to contact your GP or doctor and get a recommendation. But if you are low, don’t just grin and bear it. Remember that statistically (I think I have this figure right) one in three or four of us suffers from depression or a related condition at some point in our lives. Don’t ignore it. You can always be helped in some way. But please don’t mix it with the fucking Church of Scientology.
1 Get the inside track - No, not really. When you join a gaggle of several tens of thousands worldwide who also received an invitation to ‘get the inside track’, you aren’t getting the
A related phrase is ‘sneak preview’. A preview it most certainly is, but when it is a ‘sneak preview’ of, say, the latest EastEnders plotline (US, Brazilian, German and readers from other countries, please fill in you own soap), you are doing nothing more sneaky than joining several million other morons who have nothing better to do with their time.
2 Exciting - Yes, that one, when what is described at ‘exciting’ is usually less ‘exciting’ than a bad wank. One of the silliest uses I have come across was in the Daily Mail, several times in fact, which billed an ‘exciting dry cleaning offer’. I think you paid for the dry-cleaning of your clothes, but buttons were dry-cleaned gratis. This one is very popular with ‘financial institutions’ PR operatives and civil servants: banks will simply re-package existing rip-off savings products, call them ‘exciting’ and hope you won’t notice it’s the same old cack. Civil servants are addicted to announcing, for example, and ‘exciting new health service initiative’ and an ‘exciting development in sewage disposal’. Often the ‘exciting development’ is also ‘a departure’. A real departure would be if for once the didn’t resort to bullshit.
3 Going on a journey of discovery - This one is much loved by ‘life coaches’, any number of lifestyle gurus, self-help charlatans, psycho drama instructors and a great many of their aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, nephews and nieces. The only thing you discover once you have completed the journey - and not always immediately, as these folk are adept at tapping into our infinite capacity for self-delusion - is that your wallet is now considerably lighter.
4 Find your inner [whatever] - This one is rather like being invited to go on a journey, in this case self-discovery. This is another favourite of self-help gurus and other cynics who prey on your unhappiness with any number of imaginative ways to turn it into hard cash, which, naturally ends up in their bank accounts. By far the most pernicious I know of are those crooks from The Church of Scientology. I you walk in off the street and fill in one of their personality profiles (as I once did out of interest - I wasn’t at all unhappy at the time), you will always be told that you are a complete psychological mess and that - for a price, of course - they can help you ‘find yourself’ and become happier. The very sad thing is there are many, many people out there who are unhappy - in fact, all of us at some point in our lives have been deeply unhappy - and what they need is true understanding, help, good advice, sometimes medication and some way to resurrect their feelings of self-worth. What they don’t need is for some Scientology fuck to reinforce their low-esteem in order to turn a fast buck or ten.
Incidentally, I shall not, as some might expect, launch into a wholesale and ineffably silly condemnation of counselling, whether it is provided by a medically trained counsellor (trained in psychology and psychotherapy) or someone properly and responsibly trained. Certainly, there are charlatans out there, but, I suspect, rather fewer than your average Daily Mail reader would appreciate. There are many who do excellent work, and are worth their weight in gold. I know from personal experience. It is always difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff and, as a rule of thumb, it would be most sensible first to contact your GP or doctor and get a recommendation. But if you are low, don’t just grin and bear it. Remember that statistically (I think I have this figure right) one in three or four of us suffers from depression or a related condition at some point in our lives. Don’t ignore it. You can always be helped in some way. But please don’t mix it with the fucking Church of Scientology.
Monday, 19 September 2011
Essert-Romand. Day nine - still raining, but we were compenstated by a short trip to Morzine where I managed to buy a cheap umbrella for three times what it was worth. Then a rather tasty supper: chicken breast with tarragon in white wine and cream sauce with braised chicory
Essert-Romand, Haute-Savoie, France.
Great day yesterday - for the second day in a row it rained, though to be fair it was not pelting down but only that soft, elegant, chic rain which makes visiting France so utterly delightful. So the brother and I decided the time had come to mooch around Morzine for a while to see just what delights that ski resort town might afford us in the depths of off-season. Well, not a lot, as it turned out. We drove in at around 1.30 in the afternoon, and as we arrived the rain began to fall again. (We had set of from Essert-Romand during what was, in fact, just a lull in the rain. We thought it was the end of the rain for that day. Obviously, it wasn’t.)
Parking in the marketplace (a delightful spot and highly recommended for those looking for somewhere to park in the off-season - loads and loads of space and hardly another motorist to contend with). My brother Mark was fully prepared for the rain as his very, very expensive North Face jacket (he has about ten of them) came with a hood. My rather cheaper Yves Saint Laurent wind-cheater (don’t worry, I bought it in a sale for just £20 about seven years ago) on the other hand did not. All the shops - and I mean all of them - were shut, but finally I came across one of those resort tat shops which was just opening again after lunch. (When I say ‘resort tat’ you must understand that any and all the tat available her in bling-bling Haut-Savoie is, of course, ineffably chic, elegant and French and knocks our good, honest British tat into a cocked hat.) So I barged in (the lights weren’t even on) and bought for bloody 6.50 euros exactly the same umbrella I have bought in Bayswater for as little as £2.99. Shouldn’t grumble, I suppose, because it was undoubtedly a far more chic and elegant crap umbrella than whatever I bought in Bayswater. And that, dear friends, was it.
We walked further into town and although one or two restaurants were empty, no shops were and by far the liveliest thing we saw was a flashing blue neon cross which informed all and sundry that if you had a headache, diarrhea or any other ailment which didn’t require hospitalisation it, the pharamacy it belonged to, would be only to glad to sell you whatever medication you need. Unlike our good, honest British supermarkets which will sell you enough paracetamol to kill a regiment, you have to buy all that kind of thing at la pharmacie. That supermarkets can now sell you shampoo and toothpaste apparently came about by presidential decree in 1985 after the French parliament had initially overruled an EU directive ensuring that both shampoo and toothpaste could be sold over the counter in all member states. (He took the view that if France were to have any kind of meaningful confrontation with the EU, it would be better to do so over some matter of greater importance than the general availability of shampoo and toothpaste. Good man!)
By a quarter past two, we had decided that enough was enough and made our way back to the car, but not until Mark spotted a noticeboard advertising coming attrations at the local cinema and various bars and was outraged that all - all - were horribly out of date and referred to attractions which took place in August, many over seven weeks earlier. But I managed to calm him down and we drove back to the local Carrefour where he had is picture taken in the photo booth in readiness for our trip to Lyon tomorrow to collect his emergency travel documents. Oh, and I bought créme fraîche and a baguette for tonight’s supper - chicken breast with tarragon. Mustn’t forget the really important details. Below is a picture of me enjoying myself.
. . .
I cooked supper tonight and it was superb. We had chicken breast with tarragon and, at my brother's suggestion, braised chicory, which I had never eaten before - I've only had chicory salad - and which was also worthwhile. But it is the chicken breast I am proud of because it was a dish I created on the hoof.
I've cooked roast chicken with tarragon before but rather than cook a complete chicken, I decided to use chicken breasts and after that I was on my own. All I did was to use a sharp knife to make a pocket in each breast and then I liberally sprinkled the inside with dried tarragon. I would have use fresh tarragon, but the local Carrefour doesn't stock it. I heated olive oil and butter - slowly, so as not to burn the butter - and when a small piece of chicken sizzled nicely, indicating that the oil and butter were hot enough, seared boths sides of each breast till they were brown. I then stuck a lid on the pan and left it on a low heat for a few minutes before, on impulse, I added a little vin bourru, which is a local white wine (in a region not known for its white wines. I'm sure any white wine, which is not too acidic would work. The chicken was then left to steam in the wine while I braised the chicory, again in olive oil and butter.
Once both sides of the chicory halves were slightly browned, I again put on the saucepan lid and the whole lot onto a low heat. I had put two plates to warm in the oven, and after about another 15 minutes, once the white wine had reduced a little, I took out the chicken, left it on the plates in the oven and added creme fraiche to the white wine with a little, very little, French mustard. All I then did was to heat up the creme fraiche until it was bubbling. I then served the chicken and chicory with the sauce. And even though I say so myself (for want of anyone else to sing my praises) it was gorgeous.
We ate it with a fresh baguette. Try it.
Great day yesterday - for the second day in a row it rained, though to be fair it was not pelting down but only that soft, elegant, chic rain which makes visiting France so utterly delightful. So the brother and I decided the time had come to mooch around Morzine for a while to see just what delights that ski resort town might afford us in the depths of off-season. Well, not a lot, as it turned out. We drove in at around 1.30 in the afternoon, and as we arrived the rain began to fall again. (We had set of from Essert-Romand during what was, in fact, just a lull in the rain. We thought it was the end of the rain for that day. Obviously, it wasn’t.)
Parking in the marketplace (a delightful spot and highly recommended for those looking for somewhere to park in the off-season - loads and loads of space and hardly another motorist to contend with). My brother Mark was fully prepared for the rain as his very, very expensive North Face jacket (he has about ten of them) came with a hood. My rather cheaper Yves Saint Laurent wind-cheater (don’t worry, I bought it in a sale for just £20 about seven years ago) on the other hand did not. All the shops - and I mean all of them - were shut, but finally I came across one of those resort tat shops which was just opening again after lunch. (When I say ‘resort tat’ you must understand that any and all the tat available her in bling-bling Haut-Savoie is, of course, ineffably chic, elegant and French and knocks our good, honest British tat into a cocked hat.) So I barged in (the lights weren’t even on) and bought for bloody 6.50 euros exactly the same umbrella I have bought in Bayswater for as little as £2.99. Shouldn’t grumble, I suppose, because it was undoubtedly a far more chic and elegant crap umbrella than whatever I bought in Bayswater. And that, dear friends, was it.
We walked further into town and although one or two restaurants were empty, no shops were and by far the liveliest thing we saw was a flashing blue neon cross which informed all and sundry that if you had a headache, diarrhea or any other ailment which didn’t require hospitalisation it, the pharamacy it belonged to, would be only to glad to sell you whatever medication you need. Unlike our good, honest British supermarkets which will sell you enough paracetamol to kill a regiment, you have to buy all that kind of thing at la pharmacie. That supermarkets can now sell you shampoo and toothpaste apparently came about by presidential decree in 1985 after the French parliament had initially overruled an EU directive ensuring that both shampoo and toothpaste could be sold over the counter in all member states. (He took the view that if France were to have any kind of meaningful confrontation with the EU, it would be better to do so over some matter of greater importance than the general availability of shampoo and toothpaste. Good man!)
By a quarter past two, we had decided that enough was enough and made our way back to the car, but not until Mark spotted a noticeboard advertising coming attrations at the local cinema and various bars and was outraged that all - all - were horribly out of date and referred to attractions which took place in August, many over seven weeks earlier. But I managed to calm him down and we drove back to the local Carrefour where he had is picture taken in the photo booth in readiness for our trip to Lyon tomorrow to collect his emergency travel documents. Oh, and I bought créme fraîche and a baguette for tonight’s supper - chicken breast with tarragon. Mustn’t forget the really important details. Below is a picture of me enjoying myself.
. . .
I cooked supper tonight and it was superb. We had chicken breast with tarragon and, at my brother's suggestion, braised chicory, which I had never eaten before - I've only had chicory salad - and which was also worthwhile. But it is the chicken breast I am proud of because it was a dish I created on the hoof.
I've cooked roast chicken with tarragon before but rather than cook a complete chicken, I decided to use chicken breasts and after that I was on my own. All I did was to use a sharp knife to make a pocket in each breast and then I liberally sprinkled the inside with dried tarragon. I would have use fresh tarragon, but the local Carrefour doesn't stock it. I heated olive oil and butter - slowly, so as not to burn the butter - and when a small piece of chicken sizzled nicely, indicating that the oil and butter were hot enough, seared boths sides of each breast till they were brown. I then stuck a lid on the pan and left it on a low heat for a few minutes before, on impulse, I added a little vin bourru, which is a local white wine (in a region not known for its white wines. I'm sure any white wine, which is not too acidic would work. The chicken was then left to steam in the wine while I braised the chicory, again in olive oil and butter.
Once both sides of the chicory halves were slightly browned, I again put on the saucepan lid and the whole lot onto a low heat. I had put two plates to warm in the oven, and after about another 15 minutes, once the white wine had reduced a little, I took out the chicken, left it on the plates in the oven and added creme fraiche to the white wine with a little, very little, French mustard. All I then did was to heat up the creme fraiche until it was bubbling. I then served the chicken and chicory with the sauce. And even though I say so myself (for want of anyone else to sing my praises) it was gorgeous.
We ate it with a fresh baguette. Try it.
Sunday, 18 September 2011
Censorship among the Great and Good: there ain’t nothing quite like a hypocrite, and the saintly Guardian leads the way. There is, it seems, one rule for them and quite another for us. And no one quite does ‘sandwich short of a picnic’ quite like our Lib Dem friends
Today I was subjected to an appalling and quite breathtaking piece of hypocrisy perpetuated by the saintly Guardian, the self-appointed defender of free speech and all things right and just. But let me simply provide the facts and a couple of screenshots, and you can make up your own mind.
This morning, while still in bed, I had been surfing the papers and came across the story of Alexander Lebedev, the media entrepreneur, owner of The Independent and London Evening Standard. Several readers had already left comments, one of which read: Oh yes, silly me, it’s the neo-Con love of money over everything else.
I responded to it. I wrote, although I am in no position to quote myself verbatim as my comment was subsequently removed by a moderator, that the comment was rather simplistic and par for the course of too many comments left on the Guardian website, but that, to be fair, ‘comments left on the Telegraph website were equally simplistic’. I added that such comments reflected the low standard of political discourse in Britain.
And that, dear reader, was that. No obscenity, no libel, nothing. But minutes later a Guardian moderator decided to remove my comment on the grounds that it did not ‘abide by ‘community standards’.
I responded to the deletion, which had thoroughly surprised me because the only element at all possibly objectionable might - just might - have been the suggestion that some contributions to the Guardian comment facility were ‘simplistic’. Being very bemused by the deletion, I added four more comments over the next few minutes. And that, I thought, was that.
Yet, returning to the website about 45 minutes later - and on a different laptop (on a works laptop as I had been working), I discovered that not only were my subsequent comments missing, but that my entries had been removed wholesale so that there was no trace whatsoever of my four comments. In other words although the first comment was deleted, my entry remained with the explanation that the comment itself had been deleted. But the story was very different with my subsequent comments: every trace had been removed so that a reader would not even know that comments had been made which had subsequently been deleted. Furthermore, I was also informed that any further comments I made would be pre-moderated - which is rather a neat way of informing me that they would be censored.
The very odd thing was that all I had done in those subsequent comments was to point out the irony that the Guardian, which prides itself on upholding principles like the freedom of speech, repressed any comments which suggested it itself might be guilty of unwarranted censorship.
So that you can judge for yourself, here are snapshots of the original posts and below each snapshot is the text as I am sure you will not be able to make out very clearly what I had written. I was able to take these snapshots, because the particular page on my personal laptop had not been refreshed, my comments were still to be seen i.e. this was the state of the page before my comments and any hint that they had once existed were removed. Here are the screenshots and below each is the text as you might not be able to make out what is written. My transcript includes literals as it was copied and pasted from the original Guardian web page.
First there was
11.06am
(The initial comment I regarded as simplistic): Oh yes, silly me, it’s the neo-Con love of money over everything else.
Then
11.26am
My response, which was subsequently deleted because, apparently, in did not ‘abide by community standards’.
A little while later, after I found my comment had been deleted
11.40am
I’ve had a very innocuous - very innocuous - comment removed by a moderator because I criticised a reader’s comment as ‘simplistic’ and pointed out that similar comments on the Telegraph website are all too often equally simplistic. And that was it. So much for the Guardian’s doughty defence of free speech. The explanation was that my comment contravened ‘community standards’ which implies what I said was somehow offensive. It was nothing of the kind.
What are the chances that the Guradian’s defenders of free speech will also remove this contribution?
(which, as it turns out, they did, although the reader would remain oblivious of this).
11.41am
Incidentally, ‘replies may also be deleted’ is the very dubious icing on the cake.
11.43am
It would seem even mild criticism of the Guardian and/or its readers ‘contravenes community standards. Must try much harder, lads and lasses. Defending freedom is just a little more difficult than that.
And finally my rather forlorn request to the moderator to clarify the matter:
11.53am
Moderator: Would it be too much to ask that you re-instate the comment of mine you deleted and let readers themselves judge whether of not it was acceptable. I ask because two readers have already recommended my follow-up comments, which would seem to imply that the censorship of my initial comments was, at best, over-enthusiastic.
I also criticised comments made on the Telegraph website as ‘simplistic’ and said they and comments here marked a pretty low point in ‘political discourse’. How on earth can any of that be offensive and from which sensitive Guardian readers (of which I am one) must be protected.
Can’t they make up their own minds? Isn’t making up your own mind and being given the freedom to do so an essential principle of a democratic attitude to the world? In your case, apparently not always. It would seem, going on your response that we are free to think and speak as you please.
But no such luck, and after posting that comment/plea to the moderator, I discovered that my recent comments had all been deleted as well as any trace that they had been made. And it’s worth bearing in mind that no so long ago the Guardian made a big song and dance about publishing the Wikileaks material in the interests of free speech. And now, what with the Metropolitan Police demanding that two of its journalists reveal their sources in the News of the World phone hacking scandal, the Guardian is one again girding its loins in the defence of ‘free speech’.
I regard the whole incident as quite bizarre and way over the top. Exactly what did the moderator or moderators involved object to? That some of the comments posted on its site were simplistic? That the Guardian might well be guilty of censorship? If the latter was objectionable, it is doubly ironic that the way it was dealt with was to censor it. Would anyone care to point out where I overstepped the line? Because I really do not know. Was I sexist, racist, did I use unacceptable profanity, was I blasphemous, had I perpeutated a libel. Well, no, not as far as I could see. All I had done was suggest that the Guardian was being hypocritical.
But it seems that at the end of the day there is one rule for the Guardian, and one for the rest of us. I do so loathe hypocrites. Bear that in mind the next to the good folk at the Guardian posture and beat the libertarian drum.
PS Incidentally, to add insult to injury I am now informed my comments ‘are being premoderated’. So when is censorship not censorship? Well, it would seem it is not censorship when the Guardian does the censoring. Initially, I was quite prepared to put the initial deletion down to an over-enthusiastic moderator. Now it is beginning to look as though the censorship if systemic and part and parcel of the Guardian’s modus operandi. Oh, I do so hate hypocrites.
. . .
Is it any wonder that the Liberal Democrats – Lib Dems to those of us in the know – are generally regarded, although obviously not by other Lib Dems, as bunny-hugging, allergy-prone figures of fun? And if that sounds like a loaded question, it is because it is a loaded question.
This time last year I came across a quote from a female Lib Dem at the party’s first since it formed the Coalition government with the hated, loathsome and, some say, utterly fascist Tories (who, by the way and I have it on good authority, regularly eat babies for breakfast).
‘I didn’t,’ this woman announced loudly, ‘vote Liberal Democrat to form the government.’ To be fair, one does know what she is driving at – had she added ‘in coalition with the Tories’ her outburst would have made some sense. (And you’ll already have noted, if you take any sort of interest in politics, that only the Lib Dems refer to themselves as ‘Liberal Democrats’. To the rest of us they are and always will be Lib Dems.)
But that kind of inane comment does seem to typify our liberal friends. And inanity seems to be par for the course. Within any group where power is to be had, so that includes the fascist Tories and looney Labour, there will be more than enough bitching, back-biting, intriguing and outright lying to see most honest and decent men through to Christmas 2015. This year the ‘sensation’ is a book by some chap called Jasper Gerard (who’s name rings a bell, although I can’t quite think why) which claims among other things that party leader Nick Clegg does all the housework at home, Chris Huhne harbours a secret ambition to turn professional Formula 1 driver and that Vince Cable is an MI5 plant keeping tabs on everyone else. Naturally, such claims must always be taken with a large pinch of salt, well, but . . .
Generally speaking, Lib Dems, the ordinary ones you meet in the street come in three flavours:
Those who can’t quite bring themselves to vote Tory (because the Tories are - I don’t know, you know - well, it’s like this, you see, scratch your average Tory and - well, to quite blunt, I’m not like that, you know, I mean at the end of the day one must, simply must, stick by what one believes in and the Tories, you know, well, you know …)
Those who can’t quite bring themselves to vote Labour (I really do agree with a lot of what they say, but, you know - I mean they might now have banned fox-hunting but they haven’t done anything about vivisection and animal rights, and we all know that it’s those dinosaur unions who are really running the show, what with their fat expense accounts, they’re as bad as all those fatcats they pretend to hate …)
Then there are men and woman like Mathew Wheeler (pictured below). I’m only assuming he’s a man (as in he’s a man rather than she’s a man) because generally speaking
Mathew is a man’s name although, again to be fair, you can’t really tell with the Lib Dems, who are much more open-minded on these matters than the rest of us. Now, I’m as liberal as the next chap (‘guy’), and if a man or woman wants to cover themselves in tattoos and look like a complete fucking idiot, well, by all means do so. But in cases like this, I really do think the chap’s local PC Plod should make an unannounced visit to his house and take the place apart for as long as it takes to incriminate him in something nasty. Then – this is the clever bit and I don’t doubt our Authorities will sooner or later adopt my strategy – he will be told: start supporting either Labour or the Tories (we really don’t mind which) or we shall lock you up forever and throw away the key. It might sound drastic, inhumane even, but believe me, it’s the only language such people understand. Coalition indeed! You knew there was something wrong with them as soon as they did well in the election and decided to do something sensible for a change.
Incidentally, Mathew Wheeler’s suit is a nice touch. What do you do if you have your body covered from head to toe in tattoos? Why, wear a suit, of course. Who says Lib Dems don’t have standards.
This morning, while still in bed, I had been surfing the papers and came across the story of Alexander Lebedev, the media entrepreneur, owner of The Independent and London Evening Standard. Several readers had already left comments, one of which read: Oh yes, silly me, it’s the neo-Con love of money over everything else.
I responded to it. I wrote, although I am in no position to quote myself verbatim as my comment was subsequently removed by a moderator, that the comment was rather simplistic and par for the course of too many comments left on the Guardian website, but that, to be fair, ‘comments left on the Telegraph website were equally simplistic’. I added that such comments reflected the low standard of political discourse in Britain.
And that, dear reader, was that. No obscenity, no libel, nothing. But minutes later a Guardian moderator decided to remove my comment on the grounds that it did not ‘abide by ‘community standards’.
I responded to the deletion, which had thoroughly surprised me because the only element at all possibly objectionable might - just might - have been the suggestion that some contributions to the Guardian comment facility were ‘simplistic’. Being very bemused by the deletion, I added four more comments over the next few minutes. And that, I thought, was that.
Yet, returning to the website about 45 minutes later - and on a different laptop (on a works laptop as I had been working), I discovered that not only were my subsequent comments missing, but that my entries had been removed wholesale so that there was no trace whatsoever of my four comments. In other words although the first comment was deleted, my entry remained with the explanation that the comment itself had been deleted. But the story was very different with my subsequent comments: every trace had been removed so that a reader would not even know that comments had been made which had subsequently been deleted. Furthermore, I was also informed that any further comments I made would be pre-moderated - which is rather a neat way of informing me that they would be censored.
The very odd thing was that all I had done in those subsequent comments was to point out the irony that the Guardian, which prides itself on upholding principles like the freedom of speech, repressed any comments which suggested it itself might be guilty of unwarranted censorship.
So that you can judge for yourself, here are snapshots of the original posts and below each snapshot is the text as I am sure you will not be able to make out very clearly what I had written. I was able to take these snapshots, because the particular page on my personal laptop had not been refreshed, my comments were still to be seen i.e. this was the state of the page before my comments and any hint that they had once existed were removed. Here are the screenshots and below each is the text as you might not be able to make out what is written. My transcript includes literals as it was copied and pasted from the original Guardian web page.
First there was
(The initial comment I regarded as simplistic): Oh yes, silly me, it’s the neo-Con love of money over everything else.
Then
My response, which was subsequently deleted because, apparently, in did not ‘abide by community standards’.
A little while later, after I found my comment had been deleted
I’ve had a very innocuous - very innocuous - comment removed by a moderator because I criticised a reader’s comment as ‘simplistic’ and pointed out that similar comments on the Telegraph website are all too often equally simplistic. And that was it. So much for the Guardian’s doughty defence of free speech. The explanation was that my comment contravened ‘community standards’ which implies what I said was somehow offensive. It was nothing of the kind.
What are the chances that the Guradian’s defenders of free speech will also remove this contribution?
(which, as it turns out, they did, although the reader would remain oblivious of this).
11.41am
Incidentally, ‘replies may also be deleted’ is the very dubious icing on the cake.
11.43am
It would seem even mild criticism of the Guardian and/or its readers ‘contravenes community standards. Must try much harder, lads and lasses. Defending freedom is just a little more difficult than that.
And finally my rather forlorn request to the moderator to clarify the matter:
11.53am
I also criticised comments made on the Telegraph website as ‘simplistic’ and said they and comments here marked a pretty low point in ‘political discourse’. How on earth can any of that be offensive and from which sensitive Guardian readers (of which I am one) must be protected.
Can’t they make up their own minds? Isn’t making up your own mind and being given the freedom to do so an essential principle of a democratic attitude to the world? In your case, apparently not always. It would seem, going on your response that we are free to think and speak as you please.
But no such luck, and after posting that comment/plea to the moderator, I discovered that my recent comments had all been deleted as well as any trace that they had been made. And it’s worth bearing in mind that no so long ago the Guardian made a big song and dance about publishing the Wikileaks material in the interests of free speech. And now, what with the Metropolitan Police demanding that two of its journalists reveal their sources in the News of the World phone hacking scandal, the Guardian is one again girding its loins in the defence of ‘free speech’.
I regard the whole incident as quite bizarre and way over the top. Exactly what did the moderator or moderators involved object to? That some of the comments posted on its site were simplistic? That the Guardian might well be guilty of censorship? If the latter was objectionable, it is doubly ironic that the way it was dealt with was to censor it. Would anyone care to point out where I overstepped the line? Because I really do not know. Was I sexist, racist, did I use unacceptable profanity, was I blasphemous, had I perpeutated a libel. Well, no, not as far as I could see. All I had done was suggest that the Guardian was being hypocritical.
But it seems that at the end of the day there is one rule for the Guardian, and one for the rest of us. I do so loathe hypocrites. Bear that in mind the next to the good folk at the Guardian posture and beat the libertarian drum.
PS Incidentally, to add insult to injury I am now informed my comments ‘are being premoderated’. So when is censorship not censorship? Well, it would seem it is not censorship when the Guardian does the censoring. Initially, I was quite prepared to put the initial deletion down to an over-enthusiastic moderator. Now it is beginning to look as though the censorship if systemic and part and parcel of the Guardian’s modus operandi. Oh, I do so hate hypocrites.
. . .
Is it any wonder that the Liberal Democrats – Lib Dems to those of us in the know – are generally regarded, although obviously not by other Lib Dems, as bunny-hugging, allergy-prone figures of fun? And if that sounds like a loaded question, it is because it is a loaded question.
This time last year I came across a quote from a female Lib Dem at the party’s first since it formed the Coalition government with the hated, loathsome and, some say, utterly fascist Tories (who, by the way and I have it on good authority, regularly eat babies for breakfast).
‘I didn’t,’ this woman announced loudly, ‘vote Liberal Democrat to form the government.’ To be fair, one does know what she is driving at – had she added ‘in coalition with the Tories’ her outburst would have made some sense. (And you’ll already have noted, if you take any sort of interest in politics, that only the Lib Dems refer to themselves as ‘Liberal Democrats’. To the rest of us they are and always will be Lib Dems.)
But that kind of inane comment does seem to typify our liberal friends. And inanity seems to be par for the course. Within any group where power is to be had, so that includes the fascist Tories and looney Labour, there will be more than enough bitching, back-biting, intriguing and outright lying to see most honest and decent men through to Christmas 2015. This year the ‘sensation’ is a book by some chap called Jasper Gerard (who’s name rings a bell, although I can’t quite think why) which claims among other things that party leader Nick Clegg does all the housework at home, Chris Huhne harbours a secret ambition to turn professional Formula 1 driver and that Vince Cable is an MI5 plant keeping tabs on everyone else. Naturally, such claims must always be taken with a large pinch of salt, well, but . . .
Generally speaking, Lib Dems, the ordinary ones you meet in the street come in three flavours:
Those who can’t quite bring themselves to vote Tory (because the Tories are - I don’t know, you know - well, it’s like this, you see, scratch your average Tory and - well, to quite blunt, I’m not like that, you know, I mean at the end of the day one must, simply must, stick by what one believes in and the Tories, you know, well, you know …)
Those who can’t quite bring themselves to vote Labour (I really do agree with a lot of what they say, but, you know - I mean they might now have banned fox-hunting but they haven’t done anything about vivisection and animal rights, and we all know that it’s those dinosaur unions who are really running the show, what with their fat expense accounts, they’re as bad as all those fatcats they pretend to hate …)
Then there are men and woman like Mathew Wheeler (pictured below). I’m only assuming he’s a man (as in he’s a man rather than she’s a man) because generally speaking
Incidentally, Mathew Wheeler’s suit is a nice touch. What do you do if you have your body covered from head to toe in tattoos? Why, wear a suit, of course. Who says Lib Dems don’t have standards.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)