Well, it’ll save us all a walk to the local primary school next May, if nothing else. Screw the voters, the results of next year’s affront to democracy are in. Those who really matter have declared their verdict. Here’s state-funded gossip-monger, the BBC’s Nick Robinson…

Asked what Cam[eron] was going to focus on in his speech tomorrow, Robbo replied:

“Well, the Prime Minister will once again want to focus on the big issue that George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor was talking about..the deficit…”

And advertising-funded gossip-monger…

ITV’s Tom Bradby has called George Osborne “the Chancellor”.

Why else would Tories propagandists have the balls to start publishing this kind of guff.

‘We’re all in this together,’ said the heir to the Osborne baronetcy of Ballentaylor in his party conference speech – a previously undeclared hankering for inclusion (AKA ivory tower buck-passing). It’s just some of us are deeper in than others.

Were you one of those liberal-lefty types that rallied to David Davis’ banner when he made his pointless and self-aggrandising publicity stunt principled stand over civil liberties last year? Your erstwhile leader thinks you’re a coward and an appeaser…

“If we had relied on Guardian-reading vegetarians to defend liberty,” he reckoned, “we’d all be speaking German.”

One of course wonders how many gin-swilling Tories joined the International Brigade in 1936. And how many ‘Guardian-reading vegetarians’ will join Davis on his next ego-buffing fool’s errand.

The best response was the first comment to the above piece:

More accurately, if we’d have relied on the Daily Mail’s 1930s editorial stance to defend liberty, we’d all be speaking German.

Welcome to the United Kingdom, 2009…

Reading the high court judgment, you have to pinch yourself and remember that this isn’t Kenya under Daniel arap Moi, but good old Blighty, where the police are impartial, the civil service disinterested and a minister’s word is his bond. In a civilised country, at least half a dozen senior officials would now be charged with perjury, the secretary of state for defence would be facing impeachment hearings and a number of soldiers would be on trial for torture and murder. But in the United Kingdom, where we see only what we choose, the judgment sinks without a ripple. We carry on believing what we have always been told: that unlike other countries, we do things properly here.

But anyway. What’s Jordan been up to lately?

…The Sun was one of the principal cheerleaders and propagandists for it.

See also, courtesy of Alex Ross.

John Prescott, bluff working-class figleaf, together in sisterhood…

I suppose, if I was being honest about it, I think too much of the emphasis has been on female rights, which I have supported all my life, and we’re not getting other messages across. Most of it is about the equality issue. It is very important, but it is not our biggest campaigning issue, whatever they say about it.

‘Female rights, which I have supported all my life’? Rights to what, John? To live in the creeping fear of your meaty fingers? Let’s ask Linda McDougall, wife of Austin Mitchell…

It was 1978, just after my husband had become an MP. I was 35. There was a memorial lecture for his predecessor, Anthony Crosland, and we were welcoming guests into our house. I opened the door to Prescott and showed him in. It was the first time I’d met him. As he came through the door, he pushed me quite forcefully against the wall and put his hand up my skirt.

Things were different in those days. It was not uncommon for men to take their chances. He was just trying it on. There was no big fuss. I just rebuffed him politely. He shrugged and winked and we all carried on. But from that day I knew what sort of man he was.

Ah yes, the classic actions of someone who’s supported ‘female rights’ all his life. ‘John is John,’ said Tony, another revolting old fraud.

Remember this story in The Sun from earlier in the year?

Fears grew last night that hate-filled Islamic extremists are drawing up a “hit list” of Britain’s leading Jews – bringing the Middle East conflict terrifyingly close to home.

TV’s The Apprentice boss Sir Alan Sugar and Amy Winehouse record producer Mark Ronson are among prominent names discussed on a fanatics’ website. Labour Peer and pal of Tony Blair Lord Levy, Foreign Secretary David Miliband and Princess Diana’s divorce lawyer Anthony Julius are also understood to be potential targets.

In a very fine piece of investigative journalism (remember that?) Tim Ireland of Bloggerheads, with help from Richard Bartholomew, discovered this story to be a massive hoax perpetrated by a man called Glen Jenvey, a man who has in the past worked with Tory MP Patrick Mercer, the parliamentary counterterrorism subcommittee chairman.

Tim’s reward? To be smeared, to have his mental health impugned, to be accused of being a paedophile, lied about, vilified, stalked, and finally his home address made public on the internet. He has had to involve the police. The harassment continues. Those in a real position to help him put an end to this have, disgracefully and unforgivably, refused to do so.

I’m proud to know Tim well and know something of what he’s been through in the last few months. And all for calling someone on their dangerous bullshit. He deserves much better for doing what a far better resourced press and media should have been doing themselves. He deserves full credit and any damage to his reputation restored.

To those who have helped do this to him or stood by and done nothing by allowing petty disputes get in the way of doing the right thing: it won’t be forgotten. This isn’t a game or an inter-blog spat – this is about a person’s safety and well-being and that of his family. The behaviour of some of the prominent Tories involved in all this is gut-churning.

Tim could do with a hand. You could start here.

An ‘eccentric‘ ‘rant‘ given by a ‘crackpot‘. Oh how we laugh at this buffoon, Gadaffi. Hahahahahaha. Who’d want to be seen dead in such a thundering arse’s company?

Oh wait…

- Political help behind Libya arms trade, says official
- Al-Megrahi’s release ‘would free BP’ to join the rush for Libya’s oil
- Libya oil deals were factor in Megrahi talks, says Straw

Yes, let’s all laugh at the funny man while he gives our balls a squeeze.

Just what tickled my fancy in the last few days…

• Perils bog down troops on Afghan frontline » Kuwait Times Website – This is by a friend of who's embedded with US Marines in Afghanistan
• Trident: Brown’s no peacenik (Dave’s Part) – 'This is a cost-free cheap stunt dressed up as a grab for the unilateralist moral highground that Labour vacated at least two decades ago.'
• Thomas Friedman on nuclear energy: wrong again – "It’s an odd kind of debating tactic to be sure, this juvenile machismo. Was anyone ever won over in an argument by being called a ‘wimp’?"
• The enemies of reason: The anti-immigration pissing competition – 'It's become an anti-immigration pissing competition in the middle-market papers to see who can muster the most outrage and fear, and today's effort in the Express is pretty typical…'
• British paratroopers re-enact Battle of Arnhem – Shouldn't these lot have been *enacting* the Battle of Helmand?
• John Pilger: For Britons, the party game is over – 'This is largely why the game of parliamentary politics is over for so many Britons, especially the young…'
• The design of Tony Blair’s potential new office – Seems very apt: a stonking great bollock…
• Giant farm dog saves baby pig’s bacon by adopting it as one of its own – Insert media/Tory Party metaphor here
• Warren Ellis: Thunderbirds will grow a generation of mad engineers – 'Put Thunderbirds back on, you bastards, and help grow a new generation of mad and frightening engineers.'
• The Yorkshire Ranter: ‘I have some problems with "10:10"’ – 'Nobody is saying: Let's do BETTER this time. Let's build something BIGGER and SHINY and DRAMATIC and FANTASTIC and OUTRAGEOUS that doesn't just meet a 10% target but SMASHES it.'
• Operation Motorman: the full story revealed – Getting the press we deserve…
• The Appendix – not so useless in the developing world | UN Dispatch – Why appendicitis rates are lower in the developing world
• BBC NEWS | Politics | We’re the progressives – Osborne – If only saying you were something made it so… I am GRAVARX, immortal ruler of the galaxy. See? No joy.
• High Court shields database state from blame • The Register – Wrong details on a government database ruin your life? Tony Blair's brother says tough shit…
• Greenpeace BlackPixel – What if you turned off a little square on your monitor?

Posted from my delicio.us links.

A short history of moral compromises…

Thatcher

Musharraf

Abdullah

Gaddafi

Kissinger

Hewson

It’s to be accepted and expected that, in an age of so-called realpolitik (the euphemism we use when politicians set aside their morality), Brown has to lick the claws of monsters in the name of arms sales and securing the future career prospects of his cabinet colleagues. But how desperate for admiration does someone have to be to take a lump of glass from Henry Kissinger?

(The Case Against Henry Kissinger part one and part two.)

Update: Alastair Campbell thinks getting a glass bird from Henry ‘illegal bombing‘ Kissinger is something to crow about. Birds of a feather, I suppose…

Update updated: Speaking on BBC Five Live this afternoon Gordon Brown said he wouldn’t shake hands with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. There’s clearly a complex and subtle calculation that Brown performs before he sticks out his paw. BAE plus BP times the number of potential directorships available divided by the number of New Labour cabinet ministers and special advisers, perhaps. In the case of Ahmadinejad the numbers come up short.

Witness the Tory fightback…

More cutting edge counter-propaganda here and here.

There’s a crude British idiom – ‘All fur coat and no knickers’ – that we use to describe something that is all style and no substance, something that is superficially impressive but lacking the fundamentals underneath.

Take for example, the recently launched Indian nuclear submarine, the INS Arihant (Destroyer of Enemies). Just how many enemies the Arihant could be the destroyer of right now is debatable, for you see…

…the Arihant was launched without its nuclear reactor, which will not be ready for another year, or so. No one is saying for sure when the reactor will be ready…

Ladies and gentlemen, the world’s first non-nuclear nuclear submarine. The reason the Arihant was launched without its reactor seems to be one of prestige – it’s taken more than ten years to get this far and presumably someone in the Indian government said, ‘just get the thing in the water, we’re starting to look like idiots’. In an added comedy twist, the Arihant’s launch tubes aren’t wide enough to accommodate any current designs of sea launched ballistic missiles.

Of course, it’s not the first time a flagship nuclear project has launched without vital components being in place. French nuclear berks AREVA have been building their so-called state of the art OL3 EPR reactor at Olkiluoto in Finland for four years ‘without a proper design that meets the basic principles of nuclear safety’. The EPR may be coming to Britain as part of Gordon Brown’s nuclear ‘renaissance’. There’s going to be all manner of fun.

Still, the Indian government could be really on to something here – they’re showing the way forward. If we can have the non-nuclear nuclear submarine why not the non-nuclear nuclear weapon and the non-nuclear nuclear reactor? Imagine the day when scientists unveil the AFCANKPWR (All Fur Coat And No Knickers Pressurised Water Reactor).

(More tales of nuclear insanity can be found at Nuclear Reaction.)

Update: ‘Launch’ is probably not the word an impartial bystander would have used…

Yesterday, the Arihant, which is Indian for “Destroyer of Enemies”, made first contact with water, when the Navy flooded a dry dock in the southern port city of Visakhapatnam. According to Indian officials, the submarine must now undergo extensive sea trials in the Bay of Bengal. The nuclear powered, 112-meter (367 feet) long submarine is intended to carry ballistic missiles and will be operated by a crew of some 100 men. However, the Arihant still is far from reaching operational status, as it currently is little more than a floating hull. Its key capability of nuclear propulsion is not yet available, as the nuclear reactor still has to be fitted. Also, significant systems, such as surveillance equipment as well as ordnance, are still missing, according to Uday Bhaskar, a former naval commander and director of the National Maritime Foundation. It will, therefore, probably take India a further three to five years before the Arihant is fully operational.

Well stripe me orange. While out walking the dog just now, I actually saw a team of guys out in high-visibility jackets with ‘COMMUNITY PAYBACK‘* printed on them. That New Labour has nasty, vindictive little ideas running through it like shit through a goose should be news to nobody. The fact that they’ve managed to find the practical wherewithal to actually put one into action – and one of Hazel Blears’ to boot – comes as a bit of a shock.

Apparently these jackets exist ’so you can see that they’re paying back your community for their crimes’. But surely, if non-custodial sentences for crimes are enforced properly, that’s implicit without the need for bright orange signs? These jackets are merely and only a manifestation of revenge-by-proxy that New Labour divines the British public (or at least the right-wing paper reading faction) yearns for.

So what happens now? I’ve identified several small time lawbreakers that live in my community. These jackets are clearly meant to mark these people as ‘others’, not like you and me. What should my reaction be if I meet them without their jackets? Shun them? What if I meet one in the park walking his dog? Turn my back? What if I were a local businessman and one turned up for an interview for a job? Should he be shown the door?

Just what purpose does my new knowledge serve?

* The website slogan is ‘JUSTICE SEEN, JUSTICE DONE’. Somebody should tell these marketing pricks they haven’t been commissioned by Judge sodding Dredd.

Sixty-four years ago today, the Nuclear Age began…

At 8.15am on August 6 1945, over the Japanese city of Hiroshima, the B-29 Superfortress bomber Enola Gay opened its payload doors. The payload was the first atomic bomb, codename ‘Little Boy’.

Here’s something I didn’t know.

In April 1945, General Groves was instructed to pick targets for the nuclear bombs… “To enable us to assess accurately the effects of the bomb, the targets should not have been previously damaged by air raids.”

I doubt many people become General without being a stone-cold, sociopathic bastard. To think that the people of Hiroshima probably thought they’d had a lucky escape when, all along, General Groves had something special planned for them.

Remember this…?

Richard Timney has written a series of letters to the Redditch Advertiser, in the Home Secretary’s constituency, defending controversial plans for ID cards and attacking the Conservatives.

In the letters, Mr Timney fails to declare that he is married to Ms Smith or that he is paid £40,000 a year to act as her Parliamentary assistant. Ms Smith has kept her maiden name.

It was New Labour, of course, that made this practice – or astroturfing as it’s known – widespread in British politics. They didn’t invent it however and other people in other walks of life do it as well.

Here’s one example.

Let us read between the lines of the way the Iraq inquiry is to be conducted…

[Iraq Inquiry chairman, Sir John] Chilcot repeated his insistence that evidence would be heard in public, and perhaps live on television, “wherever possible”.

But he said some sessions would remain behind closed doors, “consistent with the need to protect national security, sometimes to ensure complete candour and openness from witnesses”.

‘To ensure complete candour and openness from witnesses’. To be fair, it doesn’t take a genius to translate this. What Chilcot is saying, in other words, is some prominent members of the British Establishment cannot be trusted or expected to tell the truth in public. How marvellous.

Here’s a tip for budding comedy critics out there. Before writing an article accusing a comedian of arguing ‘that racists have a point’, of having a ‘purported hatred of Pakistanis’, of supporting ‘the BNP’s policy to deport all black people from the UK’, and leaving it at that with no context, might I suggest you actually go and see that comedian’s show first. Before, you know, cherry-picking quotes and portraying him as something he isn’t (that is, a racist bigot).

Let’s be clear. Richard Herring’s latest stand-up show, Hitler Moustache, is a passionate and heart-felt attack on racism. How do I know?

Because last night, I went to see the show.

If the spitting fury Herring shows towards those who failed to vote in the recent European elections, and so allowed two BNP members to get elected (’that’s not a joke, by the way’ he growled), isn’t genuine then Herring is as good an actor as he is a comedian.

Yes, the show’s poster gives pause and provokes an instinctive liberal recoil. Yes, in the show he toys with issues of racism to the point where the audience holds its breath. He uses the word ‘paki’ over and over again and you wonder and worry where he’s going with it. But. But. When you get there and you see what he’s doing, it’s immensely satisfying (and reassuring) and, yes, funny.

In the end, the show is a scabrous, uplifting, profane, inspiring, and fantastically funny plea for tolerance and a love letter to common humanity and compassion. Take out the swearing and Herring could do this show at schools and what a huge service that would be.

Any comedy critic worth the title, particularly one working for the Guardian, would have done the (not at all onerous) spadework to find this out. As Herring himself says, of Guardian critic Brian Logan’s article: ‘It’s either malicious or incompetent as far as I can see neither of which reflects very well on him as a critic’.

Update 31/7: Herring gets a right of reply in the Guardian. Logan, in hole, continues to dig.

I was on the Isle of Wight over the weekend and managed to get to the under-threat-of-closure Vestas wind turbine factory and take part in the protest on the Friday evening.

Here are some photos…

This is the speech given by one of the RMT reps at the protest…

You can find out all you need to know about New Labour kicking off its green revolution with standing by and watching the destruction of 600 green jobs on the Save Vestas website.

The full story is here.

Interminable.

Just what tickled my fancy in the last few days…

• Jacqui Smith: I’d never run a thing before the Home Office – Dear Jacqui, maybe you should have mentioned this *before* you took the job? Just saying. Lots of love, Just xxx
• Model schoolgirl and family ‘terrified’ as MPs fail to halt deportation to Nigeria where her father was murdered | Mail Online – When the bastards like the Daily Mail are highlighting the abuse of refugees you know something has gone badly wrong with our asylum system…
• Ministers renege on Dungavel child pledge – Another dispatch from the frontline of New Labour's fairness agenda
• Beau Bo D’Or » MPs’ Expenses Revisited – BBDO redoes the ending of his masterpiece, 'Financial Gain Plotting'.
• London mayor Boris Johnson dismisses £250,000 second salary as ‘chicken feed’ – Boris feels your pain.
• Energy white paper is set to shake up green industry – Memo to Ed Miliband: The West Wing is not real, dickhead.
• Blood & Treasure: call the cops – Making Afghanistan safe… for paedophile rapists
• Inject some sense into immunisation – Labourlist joins the counter-Enlightenment and goes anti-science.
• BBC NEWS | Ex-Pentagon chief McNamara dies – I own the documentary about him – 'Fog of War' – on DVD. Had it for years. It's still in the cellophane. There's a metaphor in there somewhere. Probably.
• Clubland bouncers given power to issue on-spot fines – What could possibly go wrong?
• Phone hacking allegations are irresponsible, says Wade – Irresponsible? Ooh, get her! She works for Rupert Murdoch, for pity's sake. I bet she thinks morality is Sherlock Holmes' arch enemy.
• Between the Hammer and the Anvil: In Which The Author Drinks Seven Beers Then Makes Strategic Proposals For Concluding The War In Afghanistan – 'Anybody else notice how the word Vietnam stopped cropping up in the press since President Obama got elected?'
• Surprise guest at the G8 – What the hell is Gordon Brown doing meeting with Mickey Rourke?
• Empire: Movie News – David Tennant Joins St Trinians II – Wow, that's the way to follow being Doctor Who. Way to go, David.
• BBC NEWS | Politics | Blair’s black eye at awards event – It wasn't me. Alas.

Posted from my delicio.us links.

I’m alive but have much stuff going on in the real world right now which makes one realise just how much of a grotesquely irrelevant pantomime – with almost zero effect on day to day living – British politics really is. There’s nothing quite like it to engender violent teeth grinding disgust, when you’re under pressure in real life, than to watch the Brown-Cameron-Mandelson-Osborne daisy-chain in full cry.

Plus, the fair Victoria finally married me a couple of Saturdays back. And it only took fifteen years of pleading, begging and threatening suicide on my part to get to her to do it. Learn from the master, lads, learn from the master.

Just what tickled my fancy in the last few days…

• David Cameron in trouble for fake German accent Video – Yahoo! News UK – What a cock.
• BBC NEWS | Wales | Tories to end free prescriptions – Doesn't sound like a vote-winner to me.
• Alastair Campbell: not in my name! « Harpymarx – 'Again, when it comes to mental health, not in my my name Alastair Campbell!'
• ‘I feel sick with myself when he touches me’ – Guardian Weekly – Who needs the BNP? part 35,353…
• Spielberg "Cracks Story" For Indiana Jones 5 – Den of Geek – Haven't we had enough bad news this week?
• Questions for the BNP: part four | Pickled Politics – Social and legal impact of a BNP government (cont…)
• The Curmudgeon: The English Progressive Tradition – 'We mustn't change the voting – FPTP is such fun, And causes such hilarity concerning how we're run…'
• Carol Ann Duffy leaps into expenses row with first official poem as laureate – Finally a poet I could get into. I haven't enjoyed a poem since 'Why Patriots Are a Bit Nuts In the Head'.
• How 10p-a-minute government helplines cripple those most in need – New Labour: helping the most vulnerable once again. Did I tell you the Kinnocks have six state pensions between them?

Posted from my delicio.us links.

So a Times journalist works out the identity of Orwell award winning blogger, Nightjack. Nightjack, a police officer and wanting to maintain his anonymity, takes it to the courts, loses, and is outed by The Times who duly crow…

Mr Justice Eady… , who is known for establishing case law with his judgments on privacy, has struck a blow in favour of openness, ruling that blogging is “essentially a public rather than a private activity”.

Bloggers, ‘can no longer be sure that their identity can be kept secret’, it seems. I was wondering if there were any other enterprises which were ‘essentially a public rather than a private activity’. And then it hit me – of course there are – politics and journalism.

Read the rest of this entry »