Wednesday, June 19, 2013 

Important news story.

Mr and Mrs Tyler Wallbanger have "decided not to find out" the gender of their baby, a spokesman for the Scunthorpe couple has said.

The baby will be delivered on the very public maternity ward at the Scunthorpe General Hospital, where Diana Spencer might have had her sons had she been born into a northern working class community and not into the landed gentry, and therefore never met the Prince of Wales.

The baby is due in mid-July, and Tyler Wallbanger hopes to be present if his duties as a spellchecker for the council allow. Officials at the Wallbangers' home on the Rick Astley estate have appealed for an "appropriate degree of sensation" regarding the birth.

The birth was "a very personal matter for Tyler and Ashlee," the same officials said.  "But they also know it's a time to celebrate and many will want to share in their joy.  This is why, should the hospital's permission be forthcoming, the couple hope to broadcast Ashlee's labour live over uStream.  It will also mean that if Tyler isn't able to get away from work that he'll be able to watch the birth from his desk."

"Both Tyler and Ashlee are very excited about how their friends and the general public will learn the gender of their baby at the same time as they do.  In no way is their announcement at this time designed to further public interest in their child, as they believe the BBC has been hyping the pregnancy and birth up more than adequately for them."

Despite the possibility of the live stream, once Mrs Wallbanger goes into labour there will be no further public statement until the baby is born and the Queen, the Wallbanger family and other senior celebrities have been told.

Senior gynaecologist Dr Serena Williams will be delivering the baby.

Asked whether the couple have decided on any names, officials at the semi-detached were giving little away. "Let's just say, if it's a boy, they're thinking of naming him after the place where he was conceived, and if it's a girl, after a British national hero."

The Wallbangers are known to have visited Jamaica last year, while Tyler has long been under the misapprehension that the commanding officer at the battle of Trafalgar was a woman named Fellatio.

Reports suggest that the Wallbangers have asked the foreign secretary William Hague for some of the surplus weapons not fit to be sent to the rebels in Syria to enable them to fire a 21 gun salute to mark the birth.  It is not yet known whether he has responded.

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6/19/2013 09:52:00 pm | | | links to this post

Monday, April 08, 2013 

Death to penguins!

  • GREATEST WOMAN TO HAVE EVER LIVED, DECLARE BLAIRITES
  • GREATEST WOMAN TO HAVE EVER LIVED, DECLARE LABOUR MPS TOLD TO BE ON BEST BEHAVIOUR
  • WHO'S JOSEPHINE STARCHER, ASKS EVERYONE UNDER 16

Madam Josephine Starcher, the first and so far only female British prime minister has died at the age of 106, her chief propagandist Lord Ho Ho has announced.

Struggling to hold back the tears and dressed entirely in black, the normally jovial Ho Ho delivered his message to the massed ranks of the British press, knowing that this was a truly historic moment.  "This is a truly historic moment.  Madam Starcher is dead.  She choked on a Ritz cracker.  Mark and Carol Starcher have asked for the utmost media intrusion at this time.  As a supporter of a free press, it's what their mother would have wanted."

From humble upbringings, born into a family of fish gutters, Madam Starcher rose to be one of the defining political personalities of the 20th century.  Abandoning a career in turning the windmill round at the local crazy golf course, she joined the Conservative party, influenced heavily by the political philosophy of the German panel beater Herman von Paddle Steamer.  Realising that his aquatic based economics were rather antediluvian, she soon settled on the far more sensible writings of Fredrich von Hayek.

First selected by the Tories to contest the safe Silly Party seat of Luton, she nonetheless succeeded in reducing their majority by first 10 and then a further 5 votes.  It was not until 8 years later that she finally entered parliament, having won the London seat of Finchley thanks to a mistake on the ballot which listed her as the Ayn Rand Continuity party candidate.  The electorate were rather miffed at first to have elected someone so moderate, but soon took Starcher to their hearts.

Starcher's first taste of real power was as education secretary in the Conservative government of 1970.  Given the position by noted sailor and bon vivant Samuel O' Beckett, who approved of her past flirtation with the works of von Paddle Steamer, she excelled in the job, with her decision to introduce Turkey Twizzlers onto the lunch menu of every school in the country welcomed by all, especially newspaper owner Sir Bernard Matthews.

Rising to become leader of the party after O' Beckett mysteriously fell off a barge into the Grand Union Canal, she fought both sexism and the patronising mentality within the Conservatives, many of whom kept mistaking her for the charwoman right up until her resignation in 1990.  She nonetheless led the Conservatives to victory in 79, the Labour party's policy of discounting tents for summer holidays having been a unmitigated disaster for the country.

Once ensconced in Downing Street, she set about introducing reforms which were controversial from the outset.  At first, it seemed as though her policy of "Voucherism", whereby money was abolished and vouchers given out instead was leading Britain towards ruin, as unemployment increased by 25 million and a 6 hour week had to be put in place.  Criticised and cajoled by the "damps" in her cabinet, she gradually reintroduced money and later claimed that she had never supported voucherism at all.

Despite this set back, her first term came to be defined by the Rockall war.  The tiny island was invaded in 1982 by penguins who declared a socialist state, much to the dismay of the local population of British gannets.  Intervening on the side of the gannets, who she believed shared her political philosophy, the war lasted 30 minutes and cost the lives of approximately 59 penguins.  1 British soldier took a peck to the groin.  The successful action came to be the seen as the turning point in the government's fortunes, and the slogan "death to penguins" was a rallying cry for young Conservatives everywhere during the 83 election campaign.

Her second term was dominated at first by a strike by sewage workers, whose campaign of civil disobedience came to a head when they almost killed Starcher with a massive "shit cannon" blast in Brighton.  After defeating their leader Captain Crabs, she set about privatising much of the country's infrastructure, starting with the state owned glass eye maker.  Her victory in the 87 election assured, concerns began to be raised that power had gone to her head.  Her edict that every man, woman and the child in the country with the exception of nuns and the insane had to cut off their left ear, legislation that became known as the "ear tax", resulted in riots in Victory Square.  Challenged for the leadership of the party by Didbin Jane, she failed to win on the first ballot and was persuaded to stand down, leaving Number 10 with noticeably wet armpits.

In a sign of the unanimity of feeling across the political spectrum, a joint statement on Starcher's death has been issued on behalf of David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Nick Griffin and Nigel Farage:

"Truly, Starcher was the queen of hearts.  She cured the blind, healed the sick, and only once did she call for everyone to cut off their left ear.  Her successes were numerous, and the country was transformed from the hell hole it was in 79 to the paradise it continues to be today.  She literally single-handedly defeated the Soviet Union, the evil empire collapsing like a pack of cards with one swish of her right hook, while she also established the enterprise culture that today means anyone can take out a payday loan on an APR rate of 600,000%.  We hope that all will join us in saying one last time, death to penguins!"

Nick Clegg was unavailable.

The response elsewhere has been mixed.  In Scotland, where many of her policies were first tested out, a mass event appears to be taking place in Glasgow's George Square, although reports are unclear about whether or not the mass drinking is usual for a Monday.  Also indifferent it seems are the young, many of whom appear to be unaware of the legacy left for the country by Starcher.  One 15-year-old asked for his opinion merely grunted and then walked off, while a 17-year-old left the following message on Twitter:

"Everyone in politics is a fucking fag."

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Wednesday, February 27, 2013 

The great giving and taking offence stakes.

Over the last couple of months, it's been difficult not to notice a rise in the number of people either taking great offence at a perceived slur (see the ridiculous claims of transphobia against Suzanne Moore, followed by the genuine transphobia of Julie Burchill), those pretending to be outraged about something someone wrote 15 years ago (David Cameron and various Tories attacking John O'Farrell over his memoir, in which he described how as a callow young activist he'd wished Margaret Thatcher had died in the Brighton bombing), or, most seriously, representatives of a state actively trying to silence criticism through accusations of racism (the Israeli ambassador denouncing Gerald Scarfe's depiction of Benjamin Netanyahu). This culture of condemning and taking offence on behalf of others may well be as old as village gossips, yet in the last few years it seems to have been supercharged by the social networks and 24-hour news, where something that happened an hour ago is already regarded as old hat. It's also not always relatively harmless: those who've admittedly overstepped the line in their comments online, such as Azhar Ahmed or Matthew Woods, haven't just been convicted of sending "grossly offensive" messages, they've been threatened with violence and worse.

Last week we had the passing frenzy over Hilary Mantel's supposedly "venomous" remarks about the People's Kate, for which she was taken to task by both leaders of our main political parties, neither of whom could possibly have read her speech.  Mantel was big enough to ignore the entire silliness, leaving it to her agent to suggest her almost 6,000 word speech should be read in context rather than as a headline on the front of the Daily Wail.  This week we've had twins, so to speak, both gestated thanks to the Oscars. First there's Seth MacFarlane's entire performance as host, and then we also had the sheer horror of a tweet from The Onion, which read "[E]veryone else seems afraid to say it but that Quvenzhan Wallis is kind of a cunt, right?"

Dealing with the latter first, the main objection seems to be that anyone would ever refer to a 9-year-old girl as a cunt, even as a joke or satirical point.   Apparently "cunt" in American is even more offensive than it is in English, as while we often use it as term of endearment or in every other sentence when it comes to discussing football players, there it "has a particularly sexualised intent that makes it even more horrific when applied to a child", according to Sarah Ditum.  Fair enough, but can I suggest the usually excellent Ditum was perhaps a little slow on the uptake in this instance, it taking her a while to realise the Onion was mocking the modern tendency of some on social networks to criticise famous people in the most brutal terms, not just the snarkiest of gossip hacks. It also seems to be a dig at how child stars are often treated as not just precocious but simply smaller versions of their older contemporaries, regardless of the reality.  That the Onion decided to apologise is a shame, not least because as the Thick of It showed, inadvertently calling children cunts is really funny.

As for Seth MacFarlane, you really do wonder what people were expecting him to do as host.  Family Guy hasn't been funny in years (some would say ever), and while American Dad can be great, it's enjoyable precisely because it doesn't go off on the tangents Family Guy does, as well as having characters that may have started off as stereotypes but have since grown beyond that.  Singing about seeing the boobs of female nominees might be crass, and as has been pointed out, when the actors in question were portraying rape victims it was in even more dubious taste, but it's not misogyny.  The same goes for the gags about Jews and Wallis being too young even for George Clooney; they might not have been funny but getting worked up about them is just daft.  Far more questionable in my view was having Michelle Obama present the Best Picture award, which not only falls straight into the right-wing trap of Hollywood being Democrat to the core, it's that Argo, a film with a grip on reality almost as slight as that of Zero Dark Thirty was the winner, something seemingly designed to cause consternation in Iran.

My own view as to why there seems to have been so much of this nonsense of late isn't just that it's all down to Twitter or tabloid newspapers ever more desperate to stir the pot, it's that we also seem to be ever more intolerant of opinions different to our own, whether you're broadly on the left or the right. Any advantage that can be seized on will be, regardless of whether it can be ultimately stood up or not. There are some ideas, values or institutions which some regard as so sacrosanct that they can never be questioned, whether it be the monarchy, the military or the NHS.

When it comes to where comedy fits into this, with complaints recently about Jack Whitehall, and two new BBC Three alleged sitcoms, the real issue is that so much of it over the past few years has been ghastly, and not just on TV. The problem isn't that Ricky Gervais thinks there's some point to be made by playing someone who's simple, it's that he keeps getting away with writing the same show over and over, and where he is always the main character even if he doesn't play him. The Office was brilliant, but it's been downhill ever since.  On the big screen, the way Movie 43 has flopped despite its stellar cast hopefully suggests we've moved past the point at which a film gets a pass simply because it is so supposedly outrageous that it has to be seen to be believed.  South Park worked for so long (it has sadly declined markedly in recent years) because it had plenty of pathos to go along with the more outré material.  If nothing else, the Liberal Democrats wouldn't be in so much trouble now if Lord Rennard had heeded Sexual Harassment Panda's advice (allegedly).

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Tuesday, February 19, 2013 

A plastic newspaper, edited to mislead.

When it comes to taking comments out of context, or to be accurate, deliberately misconstruing them, the hatchet job being performed on Hilary Mantel comes second only to the monstering Jeremy Clarkson received in late 2011 when his joke on the One Show was misunderstood by nincompoops.  "Venomous", says the Daily Mail's front page, Mantel savaged for daring to suggest the People's Kate is perhaps a little dull, as though she was "machine-made" for her role as duchess and (eventual) queen.  "Completely wrong and misguided", says David Cameron, taking a break from selling weapons to foreign johnnies to talk to the media, and what's more, she's "a fantastic ambassador for Britain".

A comment which says pretty much everything about how politics now sees the royal family.  Almost 80 years ago the then prime minister tried but ultimately failed to persuade Edward the VIII not to abdicate; now their usefulness extends only to how they influence Brand Britain.  As for how the rest of us view a family on welfare that is most certainly exempt from the bedroom tax, much of it comes from a media that doesn't really know what to do with them, post-Diana.  Once the likes of the Mirror urged royal princesses to make their mind up on whether to marry or not; now the closest they get is pondering as to whether they should publish incredibly grainy shots of Kate in a bikini.  The Sun might print Harry buck naked, covering his crown jewels with his hands, or indeed put a model wearing just a bikini and a pout on its front page the day after her violent death, but to publish snatched shots of a pregnant princess is now beyond the pale.

The end result of this decision as to which members of the royal family should be protected or venerated and which should be mocked or held in contempt is, as always, the most cynical humbug and hypocrisy.  While none of the papers would touch the shots of Kate on holiday with a barge pole, they will of course describe her as "putting her bump on parade" when she does venture out into the glare of the cameras.  Harry, meanwhile, used as a propaganda prop by the MoD, was treated even worse, his "comments" about killing Taliban which were in fact nothing of the sort becoming the story in part because of his open disgust for the media as made clear in the interview.  No one can say anything even slightly detrimental about Brenda herself, while it's all but permanent open season on Charles and her other two sons.

Even the most cursory glance at Mantel's speech makes clear that she is not saying unequivocally that Kate is an automaton, without character or personality or any of the other things that the Mail and other papers have got up in arms about, but rather that this is how the media and indeed the royals themselves have constructed her image.  Mantel writes in her very first paragraph that she "saw Kate becoming a jointed doll on which certain rags are hung", not that she is, or was.  Mantel sees her like this because this is how either the royals or the media want her to be seen, and in her view, it's as far from the image of Diana, as she was presented and later presented herself as it's possible to imagine.  The worst that can be said about Mantel's depiction of Kate is as the Heresiarch says, it comes across occasionally as "gratuitously mean", even if it also seems to be all but confirmed by the responses from Cameron and the boss of her charity.

More intriguing though is quite how far Mantel appears to fall for the cult of Diana.  This entire paragraph, taken from mid-way through the speech is almost certainly a shoe-in for the next Pseuds Corner:


In the next stage of her story, she passed through trials, through ordeals at the world’s hands. For a time the public refrained from demanding her blood so she shed it herself, cutting her arms and legs. Her death still makes me shudder because although I know it was an accident, it wasn’t just an accident. It was fate showing her hand, fate with her twisted grin. Diana visited the most feminine of cities to meet her end as a woman: to move on, from the City of Light to the place beyond black. She went into the underpass to be reborn, but reborn this time without a physical body: the airy subject of a hundred thousand photographs, a flicker at the corner of the eye, a sigh on the breeze.

A sticky stain on the newspaper, perhaps?  Quite why Diana continues to inspire this kind of almost idolatry is unclear: Mantel describes her as both receptive and passive, but she was also manipulative and more than capable of playing the media at their own game.  Her Panorama interview with Martin Bashir is the ultimate example of the underdog turning the tables on her accusers, and while she may have been uninformed by history as Mantel writes, she succeeded in writing her own.  Charles undoubtedly deserves all he gets and more, yet the idea that there were three people in the marriage is to completely forget about Diana's lovers, as indeed she wanted the public to.

That slight diversion into pretension aside, Mantel's speech is beautifully written, and if nothing else its seizure by the Mail means that many more will read and hear it than otherwise would have done.  I haven't read any of her novels so can't comment on how they ultimately play out, but her speech portrays the monarchy as a centuries long tragedy, and brings out the loneliness and futility of being a part of it, whether it be the guests at Buckingham Palace avoiding speaking to Brenda or the detritus of the event Charles was attending which he must notice everywhere he goes.  Where I part company with the Heresiarch is when he says "Kate herself is an entirely blameless woman, doing her best to make sense of her bizarre role in national life".  The second part is certainly true, and she may well be blameless, but she most definitely did have a choice as to whether or not to join the entire rotten institution.  She may not be able to control the way she has since been projected, or how her sister (or just a part of her anatomy) has been made into a sex object in her stead, but she didn't have to go along with the pantomime.  And ultimately, that's why she has to put up with the occasional jibe thrown her way, misconstrued in repetition or otherwise.

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2/19/2013 07:41:00 pm | | | links to this post

Monday, January 28, 2013 

Britain - it's shit!

There are plenty of government policies that make absolutely no sense.  Michael Gove's latest wheeze to hive off AS levels as not counting towards a full A level while also abolishing modules is spectacularly stupid and opposed by practically everyone, but then every single thing Gove has done as education secretary seems designed to annoy anyone who isn't Toby Young.  Just as dumb would be criminalising khat, although as there hasn't been any movement on that yet perhaps the Home Office is having second thoughts.  Also daft is capping benefits at one percent, which while potentially making political sense is unconscionably ignorant on an economic level.

None of the above or any of the other myriad examples of waste or foolishness quite come close though to the idea of taking out advertisements in Romania and Bulgaria telling everyone there how shit Britain is and why they shouldn't come when they gain free movement across the EU later in the year.  It's a brainfart so dense it makes the inside of your head hurt as well as stink.  What's more, even on the most basic level it falls flat on its face.  One of the oldest advertising tropes is that first off, you tell your potential customers they can't have what it is you're selling, with the obvious intention of increasing their desire for the product when you do make it available.  If we're saying they shouldn't come, they'll think, why exactly is it that they shouldn't?  Is it because Britain is in fact a land of milk and honey, benefits on tap and an atmosphere so welcoming that it resembles one of those mythical, glowingly warm pubs where everyone instantly knows your name and your pint's waiting for you?  After all, what sort of government would actively want to say their country's horrible?

Secondly, it's a tabloid idea in every sense except one.  It is the equivalent of an UP YOURS DELORS, or the Sun putting out a special French edition castigating Jacques Chirac for daring to oppose the Iraq war, or the Sun (there's a theme here) taking out an advert in the Argentinian press in revenge for President Kirchner's open letter advert to David Cameron.  Moreover, it's an idea that has been motivated by the tabloids, who've been running articles for years now scaremongering about the imminent invasion of gypsies, organised criminals and other assorted stereotypes.  Stereotypes coming over here to do battle with our stereotypes? Never!  Except, of course, actually going through with such a tabloid idea wouldn't placate the tabloids, which is presumably the intention.  Even so much as saying the idea is being thought through is the equivalent of the government saying, yep, you're right, we're about to be swamped, thereby giving them the ultimate authority to run another umpteen articles about the coming tidal wave.  Look, the government's so concerned they're taking out negative adverts!

Third, it's a mess of the government's own making.  Despite having attempted to remove targets from other parts of the public sector, whether it be the police or the NHS, with very mixed results so far, the Conservatives stupidly promised to reduce immigration from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands.  Not just that they would reduce immigration, but would do so down to a round figure.  It's all well and good pledging to do something popular, as long as you know how it is you're going to achieve it.  The Conservatives haven't had a clue, and so have flailed around all over the place instead.  Hence the attacks on "bogus" colleges, which has had the effect of discouraging foreign students from coming here at all, the ever tightening rules on bringing back spouses, and the latest farce, the new citizenship test which expects applicants to imbibe the High Tory view of recent British history.  Undoubtedly it's a great advantage for immigrants to know more about their adopted country than the majority of those lucky enough to be born here, but isn't this getting things rather arse backwards?

Fourth is that it's completely inconsistent.  A couple of weeks back two of the spare parts of the monarchy drove a Mini through the Brandenburg Gate as part of some inane promotion of the best of British, and that wasn't even part of the government's "Britain is Great!" campaign. Add in the Olympics and the government's Britain is open for business rhetoric and the messages being sent are decidely mixed. Yes, they want investment and not unskilled labour, but either we're signed up to free movement within the EU or we're not.

Lastly, it's an idea motivated by the notion that we must be seen to be doing something, no matter how futile or counter-productive. There simply isn't going to be a repeat of 2004, when only Ireland and Sweden opened their borders at the same time as we did to the accession states.  Those wanting to try their luck elsewhere will be able to choose from the other 24 EU countries, and we're unlikely to come top of the bill when Germany is both nearer and has a growing economy.  Some undoubtedly will come, but the numbers are likely to be negligible.

Instead of pointing this out, the government seems to have actively set out to inflame the issue, delighting those who love to whinge on both about how awful this country is and all the bloody foreigners.  I'm quite partial myself to the odd bout of the former, but not to the point where I want those worse off to know all about it by sticking it on billboards.  In any case, the coalition is never going to be able to really capture the occasional grimness of this country in such a campaign, or showcase us properly without using a slogan along the lines of "Come to Britain - where even the dogs have neck tattoos!". Alternatively, they could just get this strip from the latest Viz blown up and plaster it everywhere.

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Thursday, January 17, 2013 

Sex on the state must stay secret.

There are some posts you really don't need to add anything to.  This one, from the Heresiarch on the Mark Kennedy sex spying case, is one of those:

Are undercover police allowed, or even encouraged, to sleep with "targets" as a means of gaining intelligence on environmental protesters and other political subversives?
One would hope not.  Such a practice would be deeply unethical. It would represent a fundamental violation of trust and an invasion of privacy and cast senior police officers in the role of pimps. The people (mainly women) targeted in this way are human beings, and citizens. It's not just sex on the job, and it's not just "crossing a line": we're talking about the emotional manipulation of people when they're at their most intimate and vulnerable, what one lawyer has described as "the sexual and psychological abuse of campaigners for social justice". It can't be right.
But that's what spies do, though, isn't it? Sleep with sources. Everyone knows that. It works for James Bond. That's what Mr Justice Tugendhat apparently thinks, anyway.

...

 Here's what he said (at paragraph 177):


James Bond is the most famous fictional example of a member of the intelligence services who used relationships with women to obtain information, or access to persons or property. Since he was writing a light entertainment, Ian Fleming did not dwell on the extent to which his hero used deception, still less upon the psychological harm he might have done to the women concerned. But fictional accounts (and there are others) lend credence to the view that the intelligence and police services have for many years deployed both men and women officers to form personal relationships of an intimate sexual nature (whether or not they were physical relationships) in order to obtain information or access.

In other words, he went on, at the time that RIPA was being passed "everyone in public life would have assumed, rightly or wrongly, that the intelligence services and the police did from time to time deploy officers in this way." So yes, RIPA authorisation probably does extend to sex - provided that the relationships themselves are not "degrading".

...

If Bond is a reliable guide on the appropriateness of undercover police officers indulging in sexual relationships with people they are supposed to be investigating for political protest, why wouldn't the officers equally at liberty to liquidate their sources when they cease to be useful? 007 has a licence to kill, after all, and regularly uses it to bump off his conquests. Many members of the public believe that secret agents behave like that anyway, and I don't think Parliament has ever explicitly forbidden it.

Another thing: apart from a short report in the Guardian, today's ruling has had very little media coverage, despite its potentially huge consequences for the rule of law. I realise, of course, that agents of the state engaging in sexual manipulation against peaceful, and essentially law-abiding, protesters matters far less than what some people on Twitter said about what Julie Burchill said in the Observer about what some other people on Twitter said to Suzanne Moore about what she'd written in the New Statesman. You'd think, though, looking at it from the outside (as I do) that the actual fucking police literally fucking duped activists and then using an obscure legal procedure to deny their victims open justice would interest people who call themselves radical and progressive rather more than a throwaway remark made by one self-identified feminist journalist, or even the genuinely offensive comments made by another high-profile feminist journalist a few days later in her defence, which is at the end of the day just words. You'd think so.  

Quite.

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Thursday, January 03, 2013 

Changing the subject.

David Cameron today rejected a call from absolutely no one to restore the "territorial integrity" of the Chagos archipelago, as everyone was far too busy concerning themselves with the status of the Falkland Islands.

"The future of the Chagos archipelago should be determined by the people who live there.  As we expelled the entire indigenous population of Diego Garcia when we leased the island to the Americans, this means asking the Americans whether they would like to continue to have a massive military base there, from which they have bombed both Iraq and Afghanistan and also rendered prisoners to.  Whenever they have been asked their opinion they have stated they wish to retain their current status with the UK, and for as long as they choose to stay with the UK they have my 100% backing.

"And anyway, who gives a stuff about a load of Tarzans and Man Fridays when we should be worrying instead about a shitty little territory where no one in their right mind would want to live?"

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Thursday, November 08, 2012 

The barbecued testicles of a wombat await.

In the pot calling the kettle black stakes, the spectacle of Louise Mensch saying Nadine Dorries has demeaned the role of an MP has to be up there with the Daily Mail declaring the BBC had "woken up to decency", or that other hardy perennial, the Daily Star reporting on the "sick" Brass Eye paedophile special while on the opposite page leering at the 15-year-old Charlotte Church.

Mensch's political career was without doubt a stunt from the very beginning, her place on the Tory a-list of candidates alongside such luminaries as Adam Rickitt designed to attract publicity.  Her resignation after just two years was less about her husband having moved to the US and more, according to err, said husband, to do with how Mensch felt certain she would lose her marginal seat come 2015.  Regardless of who's telling the truth, forcing your party into a unwinnable by-election midway through a parliamentary session doesn't win you many friends: she was duly booed at the Tory conference.

Whether Dorries would get re-elected as MP for mid-Bedfordshire if there was a snap election must similarly be in doubt.  For those of us who have long followed her political trajectory, her decision to flounce off to Australia to take part in I'm a Celebrity hasn't exactly come as a surprise.  It's rather of a piece with her modus operandi of repeatedly doing incredibly stupid things, and then failing to learn the lessons from the disasters that have followed.  Having failed to get the abortion limit reduced from 24 to 20 weeks back in 2008, she blamed Labour and Harriet Harman in particular for having run a shadow whipping operation, something she provided no evidence for whatsoever.

Last year, having changed tact by targeting abortion providers directly over the counselling they also provided, she was humiliated when Frank Field withdrew his support for the amendment while she was still speaking in favour of it.  Undaunted, she blamed Evan Harris for leaning on Nick Clegg to lean on David Cameron, despite it being apparent Downing Street wanted nothing to do with her amendment, as shown by the new health minister Anna Soubry dumping the consultation as soon as she was able to.  Nor is her paranoia limited only to political foes at Westminster, as Tim Ireland discovered: Dorries accused her Liberal Democrat challenger at the last election, Linda Jack, of stalking her, going so far as to report her concerns to the police.  Strangely though, she has seemingly never reported any of the threats made against her to the police, despite having repeatedly made clear how she's persecuted for her views.

Despite all these apparent setbacks, her newly acquired position as scourge of Cameron and Osborne (calling a spade a spade always delights the tabloids) seems to have led to her believing her own hype.  Other than the apparent £40,000 she'll receive for taking part, what else could possibly make her believe going on I'm a Celebrity is a good idea or a wise career move?  With the best will in the world she isn't George Galloway, who was able to recover from his appearance on Celebrity Big Brother through setting himself against the entire political establishment.  Can she really believe she'll be able to gain support for her continuing campaign to lower the abortion limit by living with a bunch of other C-listers in a forest in Australia for a couple of weeks, inevitably made to take part in the bushtucker trials foisted upon the least popular member of the ensemble?  If she does, she's even more disconnected from reality than I thought possible.

All this said, Damian Thompson does have something of a point when he writes the swift suspension of the whip from Dorries is at odds with Cameron's indulgence of Andrew Mitchell.  Also laughable is the amount of nonsense being spouted about Dorries leaving her constituents in the lurch, as though they can't go a month without their representative being in parliament.  Plenty of MPs barely bother to turn up, and there are a number with long-term illnesses who likewise find it difficult to attend regularly.  As long her staff are still working, then the amount of difference the people of mid-Beds are likely to notice is close to nil.

The real issue is, as it has always been, that Dorries has repeatedly lied and misled her own constituents, whether on expenses for her website, or as she herself admitted, how her blog was 70% fiction and 30% fact.  If this latest scheme is part of some bizarre plan to look human and in touch, then it's one based on a fundamental misreading of what the public wants in a politician, which certainly isn't someone so desperate for attention or money that they'll chew on a dingo's bowel while Ant and Dec gurn in the background.  At least she's gotten used to indignity; it's saying something when you can still go lower after being pictured topless on the front page of the Daily Star.

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11/08/2012 11:09:00 pm | | | links to this post

Monday, November 22, 2010 

Stupid ideas and short posts.

1. No one has ever started smoking as a result of being drawn to the packets cigarettes come in. There are innumerable reasons as to why some start smoking and others don't, especially now that it's so relatively frowned upon: peer pressure, being friends with others who do, having brothers and sisters or parents that do, simply falling into it through trying it and enjoying it, some of which, conversely, can also mitigate against others starting. There is an argument for only allowing cigarettes to be sold in plain packets on the basis that some brands of cancer sticks are more highly regarded than others, and that by forcing them to be sold in the same basic packaging you're reducing the attractiveness on those grounds, yet that's not the one which is being made by the health secretary and the usual "we know what's best for you" suspects.

Instead, this is essentially another policy based on the premise of the state stigmatising the practice even further than it already is, without of course putting them in a banned substance category and so cut off a lucrative revenue stream. It's also ineffective as increasingly those who smoke have pack holders (or tins, especially among those who roll their own) that cover the unpleasant and graphic warning messages, which have themselves failed for these even more drastic measures to be mooted. It also ignores somewhat how basic but clear and bold designs can be the best: the government seems to have recognised this in that they're thinking of grey or brown plain packs rather than plain white ones, which are gloomy colours, although doubtless if there's a way for the manufacturers to get round such rules they will. They could have gone further and decided upon snot green or dull yellow as the pack colour, so perhaps smokers should be grateful for small mercies.

2. One of my regrets from my school years (along with a whole lot of often more pressing others) is that I didn't pay anywhere near enough attention during my German lessons, although French would probably have been a better option had I not decided to be "different" when the choice was given between the two. It's only later and increasingly now, driven by the internet, that it's become apparent how useful and valuable having even just a basic knowledge of a second language is. Most children not unreasonably take the view thanks to our relatively insular modern culture, not to mention Anglo-American arrogance that we don't need to learn anything other than English as everyone now either learns or speaks it. Also terribly unhelpful (this might have since changed) is that unlike other European nations we don't start learning a foreign language or at least anywhere near properly until around Year 6, whereas they start almost as soon as they start learning their native tongue. Unless I'm wrong it's also now completely optional whether or not you continue with a second language once you reach 14, which means the vast majority abandon it and so even more will end up with the same regrets as I now have.

It's therefore rather bemusing to learn of the Classics for All campaign, which has the on the surface laudable aim of of wanting every student to have the option to learn either Latin or Greek. There is, it should be apparent, nothing wrong with offering the choice. It's more that there seems to be something almost deranged in reducing even further the chances of most learning a living second language, as such a campaign almost certainly does, at least by general state school timetable standards. The argument goes that through learning Latin you don't just learn a "dead" language but also the entire gamut of ancient culture, and with it comes the key, as Boris Johnson states, to a "phenomenal and unsurpassed treasury of literature and history and philosophy". I don't doubt that it can be an enormously useful discipline - the problem is more that unless you're a far more diligent student than I was, and know what really is good for you when you're far more enamoured with almost everything other than learning, you'll reject not just Latin but other languages entirely, which really would be a disaster.

(What was meant to be a short post has turned into a 711 word one. It's also not clear whether mine are the stupid ideas or not. And perhaps I should learn English properly before I bemoan my knowledge of German. Ho-hum.)

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11/22/2010 11:53:00 pm | | | links to this post

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