The Proletarian Tide

Soundtrack to a Strike

2011-12-01T18:45:00.003Z

Very much a work in progress this. I was trying to think of stuff that should be on an OST for the day. This is what I ended up with:

The Workers - Let's Work Together
The Specials - Ghost Town (h/t Perrin124)
Rage Against the Machine - Maggie's Farm
Captain Ska - Liar Liar
Billy Bragg - There is Power in a Union
Manic Street Preachers - If You Tolerate This Your Children Will be Next
Manic Street Preachers - Natwestbarclaysmidlandslloyds
The Enemy Within - Strike (cheers again to Perrin)
Luke Haines - Never Work
Radiohead - Electioneering
NxtGen - The Andrew Lansley Rap
Marxism 2008 Closing Rally - The Internationale

Any further suggestions welcome - we'll use it on the next one. Solidarity, comrades.

All in all, pretty good

2011-11-30T22:45:00.004Z

Right then. First things first. The government's lines on this have simply got to look ridiculous to most people by now. If it doesn't, I may have to despair of my sunny, optimistic view of human nature. On the upside, the last poll I saw showed a majority of support for our action.

From the inside, it was good. I was on two picket lines today and no one crossed at either of them. The demo in the city centre was pretty good:

The general turnout seems to have been pretty good - 7,000 in Leicester, 20,000 in Bristol and Liverpool, for example and the strike action seems to have been fairly solid nationally.

From my personal experience there was a good level of general support from the public, too. Unfortunately no one particularly amusing was in opposition (unless you count the homeless bloke who shouted 'Get back to work you lazy bastards' at us. Which I don't, on account of its being genuinely baffling.)

The biggest problem was that there were a couple of thousand people and the only space that was available for speeches was in a marquee big enough to hold a couple of hundred. That, and the ice rink that was filling most of the space, leaving us wedged up against the Guild Hall. These are, as I'm sure you'll agree, pretty minor complaints.

Of course the big thing now is: what next. Personally, I think we should be planning for more action in January. What say you, interwebs?

Oh, for Gods' Sake

2011-11-26T16:21:00.007Z

There are many reasons not to like Michael Gove. But aside from his elitism, parochialism, incompetence, viciousness, fundamental opposition to the concept of public service, his general meanness of spirit and possession of less charm than Arnold J Rimmer, his stupidity is what is currently annoying me.

This isn't actually related to the strikes - that's a whole other seething cauldron of outrage. This is his move to put a copy of the KJV in every school in the land - with a foreword of his own.

OK, it's only 2 lines, so it's not worth getting too worked up about. But he's not a Biblical scholar. He can't have anything to add to the text other than his own opinion on it - and who the fuck cares what he thinks about the Bible? It's only a few months since he tried to remove the statutory requirement to teach RE from the national curriculum, and has completely opposed including RE in the EBacc. And judging from his behaviour, he clearly isn't much of a Christian either, so sending round copies of his no doubt awe-inspiring thoughts on the KJV just smacks of arrogance.

What really annoys me about this is not the redundancy of spending money at a time when he's cutting everything else on a book that all schools have plenty of anyway (as the National Secular Society have pointed out).

There are 2 major annoyances that outrank this:

He doesn't seem to be in a rush to send out copies of other major religious texts. The excuse for this surfeit of self-promotion is the 400th anniversary of the publication of the KJV. Last year was the 100th anniversary of the first simultaneous English-Arabic translation of the Qur'an. I don't remember a free copy turning up at school.

The KJV is not a good translation. Most of the NT is based on a single, late, Greek edition and from an educational point of view the NRSV is much better, being a modern English edition based on decades of study by scholars piecing together a representative text based on the widest possible selection of the most accurate available texts. Personally, I wouldn't use the KJV in teaching.

In short, another day, another ~~reason~~ plethora of reasons to dislike the secretary of state for education.

The inevitable pre-strike post.

2011-11-24T19:24:00.005Z

(h/t)
Phew, we're nearly there. The Tories have obligingly refused to 'negotiate' any further so not even Barber has an excuse to cave in now. We're nearly there.

*A scuffling is heard from the back of the crowd. A scruffy urchin forces his way through the press of bodies. Removing his woebegone cap in an automatic gesture of genuflection, the wide-eyed, soot-besmirched imp stares in wonderment.*

"What's that, Tide? You wanted the Tories to break off negotiations? Why you left-wing communist with your infantile disorder!"

"Young fool", saith I, loftily, "that is not so. For you see, there were no negotiations to break off!"

"Why sir, you are a veritable verbal prestidigitator and no mistake! But how so? For surely I heard Mr Cameron this very morn insist that they would make no more concessions. Logically there must have been some in the first place for there to be any more even in potentia?"

Ahem. I'm dropping this frankly ludicrous pseudo-literary device now.

No. There were no negotiations. There was a bit of clumsy divide-and-rule, trying to hive off the very lowest paid and those closest to retirement from the rest, but it was so appallingly done that no one fell for it.*

Even more brilliantly, the government point-blank refused to carry out the triannual review. This is the 3-yearly review to check if the pension fund is OK. The fact that they wouldn't do this review is pretty good evidence that they knew there wasn't a problem. For corroboration you could look at these two interesting facts:

The teachers' fund has had £46 billion more paid into it since 1923 than has been taken out.
Teachers' pensions are unfunded. The money just disappears into the Treasury.

They should really just admit that the extra money would in fact go not on our pensions anyway, but on deficit reduction. Because we don't need to put any money into the pension scheme. So while Cameron boasted yesterday about cutting corporation tax and a maximum wage for the wealthy has been ruled out, the poorest paid in society (civil service pensions average at around £5,500 annually) are to be taxed to reduce the deficit. Say it again: "WE'RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER."

I'm not going to be dumb enough to try to predict the future in a situation like this, but I think it's clear that the best chance of breaking this deceitful, manipulative, plutocratic shower of piss that calls itself the coalition has got to be a big day next week. And where possible it has to be whispered: All out and stay out.

Because this isn't about protest. It is about winning.

---------------------------------------------------
*Here's how it would work. Those earning under £15k would not face an increase in contributions. Hurrah! You might think. But this would include pro-rata posts. So you could work 2 days a week and still face a doubling of your contributions. And guess what? Lots of low-paid workers are part-time! Clever.

At the other end of the scale, the over-50s were told they wouldn't have to face an increase in retirement age. But they'd still have to double their contributions and they'd still have had the RPI measure switched to CPI. So they'd still lose.

*Attenborough whisper* The mistake I think the ConDems have made is in assuming that we're as stupid as they are.

The Post of Surreal Frivolity, or, Why Kevin Ovenden Has the Head of a Giant Fly

2011-11-03T21:27:00.006Z

This has nothing to do with anything really, but it's been hanging around the periphery of my mind's eye (not sure where that would be - in the corner next to the Locked Trunk of Teenage Embarrassment?) and tonight seems to be the time to expunge it.

Here it is: I think Kevin Ovenden has the head of a giant fly.

Wait, come back! Let me explain.

I've never met Kevin Ovenden. From what I've seen of his comments on Lenin's Tomb he seems like a sane and interesting commentator. This is in no way a comment on Kevin Ovenden.

On Lenin's Tomb he posts like this:

Perhaps some of you already see the problem. For the rest, watch MY MAGNIFICENT BRAIN.

In my head, Kevin's ID becomes:

See where I'm going with this?

Exactly!

See, I'm not mad! NOT MAD, I TELL YOU!

KEVIN OVENDEN HAS THE HEAD OF A GIANT FLY!!!!!!

Sorry, Kevin. I'm not entirely sure why I had to share this. Anyway, on a completely unrelated note, I'm off to bed. Like the Dread Pirate Roberts, I'll probably kill this entry in the morning.

The Louise Mensch Beverage Scale of Permitted Capitalist Criticism

2011-10-23T10:31:00.008+01:00

Following Louise Mensch's remarkable revelation of a new form of critique of political economy on Friday

I have reflected on this remarkable insight. If she's right, then whilst the liberal left are 'swooning at her brio' we're missing valuable research time. As Marxists we are bound by our own credo to rigorous materialist analysis, and beverage consumption is such an obviously materialist habit that it deserves close attention. Let's elaborate this remarkable theory, I thought to myself in my secret underground Marxist lab at Proletarian Towers. And to that end, I have devised the 'Louise Mensch Beverage Scale of Permitted Capitalist Criticism' heretoforeafter referred to as the Mensch Scale.

The Mensch scale is a comparison scale between 0 and 4, where a level 4 subject is permitted full criticism of capitalism up to and including promoting anarcho-syndicalism as an alternative means of the self-reproduction of society, and level 0 represents someone whose consumption of beverages enmeshed in the capitalist system of production should just keep their fucking mouths shut, the ingrate serf scum.

Like the Beaufort Scale, we must have examples so that if we are in conversation with someone we know exactly the point at which any criticisms of the capitalist system or any of its constituent parts goes beyond the permitted maximum. As soon as this point is reached, the correct response is to raise your hand firmly and instruct the vagabond to halt their discourse. 'Cease your mimsy prattle, fool,' instruct the presumptuous ignoramus, 'for the way in which liquids that trickle through your digestive tract AS YOU PRESUME TO PEDDLE YOUR CRITICAL MIND-TURNIPS THIS DAY were produced preclude your being given an attentive ear.'

THUS WILL CONSERVATIVE DISCOURSE TRIUMPH.

As an alternative, you may use the classic 'T' symbol beloved of basketball sportspersons to indicate a 'time out'. In our case of course, the 'T' will stand for actual tea.

Enough elucidation - I realise that you must be gagging to classify yourself, family and friends!

Level 4
Permitted criticism of capitalism = Total. Academies, Goldman-Sachs, concentration of capital, etc.
To achieve level 4, you must drink untreated mineral water collected yourself from a babbling mountain brook near your hermitage. Of course, you must not boil the water before drinking it, unless you mine the metal to create a kettle yourself. Purchasing so much as a camping kettle with one of those little whistle cap thingies on it basically takes you right back to the level of the Koch brothers.

Famous Level 4s: none.

Level 3
Permitted level of criticism of capitalism = TNCs, sweatshop labour and the military-industrial complex.
To achieve level 3, you are allowed to drink water from the tap, despite its being produced by privatised water companies. You *must not* add Robinsons' Barley Water to it to make a weak lemon drink, however.
Famous Level 3s: basically, this is John Harvey Kellogg.

Level 2
Permitted level of criticism of capitalism = privatised train networks, quality of the gifts in Kinder Surprise.
To achieve level 2, you may drink tap water and fairtrade tea and coffee. On no account must you purchase this coffee from some kind of franchise or drink Ribena. THIS WILL RENDER YOUR UNHAPPINESS WITH TRAIN JOURNEYS NULL AND VOID.
Famous Level 2s: Lucy Mangan, probably.

Level 1
Permitted level of criticism of capitalism = the speed of service in Nando's. AND NOTHING ELSE.
Level 1s will drink Fentiman's lemonade at National Trust gift shops, then think NOTHING of washing it down with R Whites. Why don't these people just FUCK OFF AND DIE? They probably drink Ty-Phoo, the despicable BASTARDS.
Famous Level 1s: YOU. If you're LUCKY.

Level 0
Permitted level of criticism of capitalism = What on earth makes you think you can criticise capitalism, you insignificant, smelly turd? IT PROVIDES YOUR BEVERAGES.
Level 0s would drink Coca-Cola at a Showcase Cinema, EVEN IF SOMEONE WAS WATCHING.
Famous Level 0s: given the size of the sample, it was hard to narrow it down, but here's two:

Luis 'Chile' Eduardo, Columbian Sinaltrainal union official working with employees of Coca-Cola bottlers, who routinely receives messages like this:

The Paramilitaries of Magdalenena Medio, The Black Eagles, call on the terrorist Coca-Cola trade unionists to stop bad mouthing the Coca-Cola Corporation given that they have caused enough damage already. If there is no response we declare them military targets of the Black Eagles, and they will be dealt with as they prefer: death, torture, cut into pieces, coup de grace. No more protests![1]

Erol Turedi, one of the Coca-Cola Icecek (Coca-Cola Turkish subsidiary) workers sacked for asking for a wage increase and organising union representation in their workplace. At a demonstration where 200 sacked workers walked into the Dudullu plant,

'1,000 police [were] drafted in to cope with the 200 protestors. The Cevik Kuvvet - 'robo cops' in full body armour - mass outside and are deployed into the building in groups. They fill the corridors. They occupy the balcony. They take the floor above the workers. Hundreds of police appear in the atrium, with riot shields and batons at the ready. The police charge nets six arrests and forces the protestors into a corner, the women and children huddled at the back by the walls. The men stand in front of them. They have linked arms together in an effort to protect themselves and their families, but when the assault finally comes their efforts are proved to be instinctive rather than practical. In front of them are 1,000 police and behind them the children have started to cry.

Finally Coca-Cola's managers agree to talk to the union. So while the police corner the families downstairs [union] President K and the union lawyer go upstairs for talks. It is late afternoon when they gather in a meeting room, which is small. Around a table, which is large. Alongside the managers, which is essential. And next to the police ... which is baffling.

... If events were going badly upstairs, events downstairs took an unexpected turn for the worse. On the frontline Erol looked out at the police - 'they just pulled down the gas masks and that was when we knew.' ... Their eyes widen as they tell of stumbling into each other in panic and blindness, gasping for breath. Thye curse the polie as children were separated from their parents and the men beaten with riot sticks. And they hold out their hands when they talk of being bundled into the police wagons outside, of reaching up to the small windows to gasp for fresh air - only to be sprayed in the face by the police.[1]

Shut up! You drank Coke! What do you think you're doing, Level 0s?
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[1] Mark Thomas, Belching Out the Devil: Global Adventures with Coca-Cola, 2008

Just so we're clear...

2011-09-02T21:40:00.003+01:00

This is a BAD idea:

Ministers are scrapping a requirement for teachers to record instances when they use physical force, as part of a wider move to "restore adult authority" in the wake of the riots in England.

Here are some reasons why neither I nor any teacher I know thinks this is good:

Pupils should not be afraid of their teachers, as this is a barrier to their learning. If you are afraid of your teacher, you are less inclined to view your education as an opportunity, and more likely to view yourself in opposition to it.
There are plenty of alternatives to force in dealing with classroom behaviour issues. If you do need to use force, you have already lost your authority.
The link with the riots is specious. It is not a coincidence that the riots happened in the most deprived areas of London. The underlying cause is inequality, not a lack of caning.
I didn't get into this job to beat children. However annoying it is when a lesson doesn't go to plan, grabbing hold of a kid is not a solution to the problem.
This whole thing feeds into the right-wing myth that the primary cause of bad behaviour is a lack of discipline. This is part of the whole hang 'em, flog 'em, dose of national service bollocks. As Lenin recently noted: Greece has national service. It is not 'discipline' that is the problem. Discipline is an issue for the army and a prison, not a free society. Yes, we need a certain level of co-operation to do our jobs, and yes there needs to be an understanding that there are consequences for poor behaviour, but this has to be based on the understanding that co-operation and good behaviour are beneficial to the individual students and their peers, not 'cos I'll give you a clip round the ear if you don't. Which can be complicated and tedious, but has the benefit of not being neolithic.

As you were.

Slogans?

2011-07-21T06:51:00.002+01:00

Hello everyone. I'll helping to make placards for Saturday's demo to save Bombardier.

Any suggestions for slogans?

So far I'm a bit stuck. Best I've got so far is

'ConDems - off the rails'

and the rather more prosaic

'Save Bombardier workers'

I'm sure you can do better - help me, intertubez!

H/T to Tony Burke for the flyer - my scanner's buggered at the moment...

Bombardier: La Lutte Commence (ou possiblement, Continue)

2011-07-14T23:37:00.002+01:00

I've just come from an open organising meeting called by the RMT to kick off the campaign to save 1500 jobs at Bombardier (and thousands more support jobs) in the wake of the decision not to award the company the Thameslink contract.

There was an amazing display of solidarity tonight. As well as speakers from RMT, GMB, and TSSA, MP Chris Williamson was there, who has been circulating a petition that in less than two weeks has got more than 34,000 signatures.

In addition, there were statements of support from the city's Trades Council, Unison, NUT, climate change activists, LMHR and workers from Birmingham. There was also mention of unusual cross-spectrum support, which even extends as far as the *shudder* Di'ly Sexpress.

The main thrust of this post is the stuff you can do to help. Here's a list:

Sign Chris's petition - it's paper, and the deadline is this weekend so turn up to the Carribean carnival on Saturday where there will be a stall for you to put your name to it.
Go to the Right to Work meeting on Tuesday - at The Quad in the Market Place, 7 pm. This is a broad front meeting with speakers from Right to Work, Labour, SWP, the Green Party, the Indian Workers Asociation, Climate Change and trade unionists. This meeting is to help build public support for the Bombardier workers, all are welcome.
Sign Unite's petition here.
Lobby your MP. The Bombardier issue has received unusual levels of cross-party support, even within the Con-Dems, so tell them you want the decision to give Siemens Preferred Bidder Status revoked NOW, before any final decisions are made.
Go to the rally on the 23rd. This rally is sponsored by all four unions at Bombardier - Unite, TSSA, GMB and RMT. Meet on Saturday 23rd at Bass Recreation Ground, 10.00.
Lobby the Con-Dems during conference season. Info on the Right to Work campaigns on that here.
Any other suggestions welcome - just put them in the comments.

How Not to Get a Good Night's Sleep

2011-07-13T23:07:00.006+01:00

I was about to go to bed when I thought I'd check up on Lenin. It turns out he's had an article in today's Graun about the Murdoch implosion, which obviously I'm finding satisfying on a number of levels. Specifically he was commenting on Ed 'Twat' Miliband's decision to stick the boot in now the beast is wounded*.

Point is, much though I enjoy Richard's writing, CiF becomes an even worse bearpit than usual under his articles. A brief survey of the comments suggests at least 3 sub-species of Trollus Cryptofascistus.

The 'cynic'. This is a common troll endemic to CiF threads. Cynics usually acknowledge that something is not good but then proceed to offer up whatever banal platitudes they use to ensure they don't actually have to do anything about it and lets them drown out the little squeals of guilt that occasionally erupt from the dustier layers of their reptilian hindbrains. These trolls' comments usually have the effect of siding with the aggressor against the victim - ach, you see it every day in the playground, bless them. Typical examples include iamaliberal:

Labour - the party with the bravery to kick someone when they are already down.

The 'clearly a hack'. Typical examples include Ilohan:

Whilst the media, liberal commenators, Ed Miliband etc get in a hysterical tizzy about events that happened years ago and are, in any case, a side effect of having a free press....1000s of people are losing their jobs in Derby cos we have no meaningful industrial policy**...
But some dodgy phone tapping is a national crisis...
I don't know...but have we al lost our minds?

The 'Sir Thickington Thickalot'. These are generally just your examples of either pig-ignorance or outright barefaced lying. Possibly a witches' brew of both. Examples include flatpackhamster:

Did you know that Richard Seymour, the author of this article, is an active member of the Socialist Worker's Party? Did you know that his party campaigns for totalitarian rule and glorifies the Soviet era?

The last ones do at least have comedy value. However, it brings out the worst in me.

--------------------------------

* For the record, it's great that he is sticking the boot in, long may it continue. However little confidence I have that it will, should Murdoch manage to pull something out of the bag to stop the rot and begin reinflating his rancid bladder of a media empire. Maybe he could do something about his unfortunate tattoo whilst he's at it.

**PS - it's not because 'we have no meaningful industrial policy' - at least, not in the sense I suspect Ilohan means. It is, as ever, because of the way capitalism runs industry. And if you want to stop the job losses, there's a public meeting next Tuesday.

UPDATE: Having grabbed a few hours sleep, I've come to the conclusion that in fact this is a pretty normal CiF crowd. And in some ways, isn't that the biggest disappointment of them all, eh?

In Praise of Chris Bryant

2011-07-07T18:24:00.005+01:00

Chris Bryant is coming dangerously close to restoring my faith in elected representatives. Yesterday there was this, and today there was this!

Come the revolution, I for one will aim to miss. His criticisms are so reasoned and substantive that I feel a bit guilty about the following snark aimed at the periphery of his statements.

Here it is: Astonishing - first he works out that the PCC is a fig leaf, then he spots that Burley's 'a bit dim'.

Hmm, you know, reading that back, I feel that I've irrevocably lost any claim to the moral high ground ever.

-----------------------------

There is still going to be a Marxism post. Honest.

UPDATE: Of course, nobody's perfect

Strike!

2011-06-30T17:20:00.004+01:00

First off, sorry this is late. The strike kept me pretty busy all day, then I was off to Marxism 2011 straight after work on Friday (of which more later). Anyway, this is more of a diary entry than an attempt to analyse, but I hope I capture something of why I think it was a welcome and positive development.

We got some good coverage today -here's Radio Derby (about 46:00 in - listen for the vile Tory MP proud to be scabbing, but the best bit starts at about 2hrs 20 and there's a great piece from Sue, who teaches at a local PRU, closer to 2hrs 30).

Here's how the paper went with it:

Workers were told at a rally in Derby's Market Place that more strikes would follow if the Government did not back down on its plans to raise the pension age for public workers to 68 and increase ontributions.

Keith Venables, Derby National Union of Teachers president, said: "Strikes after the summer holiday could lead to an autumn of discontent."

In yesterday's action, members of the National Union of Teachers, the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, and the Universities and Colleges Union joined those in the Public and Commercial Services union for the one-day strike .

With other unions preparing to ballot members, including Unison and the National Association of Head Teachers, leaders are confident the percentage of schools shut or partially closed next time could be nearer 100%.

Which is pretty positive, really. There's some photos here.

All in all, I think this was a good turnout and we have good reason to hope for a wider strike in the autumn. I also think that a healthy proportion of people are not buying the government line on the strikes despite the blanket media coverage and the spinelessness of the Labour leadership. Of course, the key thing is to broaden it out now.

Finally, despite NUT and ATL not being a majority of staff members in our school, it was largely shut down on the day, so from a personal perspective there was the added benefit of having an actual effect.

Hahahaahaaa

2011-06-30T08:15:00.003+01:00

Off to a strike meeting in a minute, but this tickled me:

'Is US TV too leftwing?'

And as an example of leftwing, the Graun's put up a picture of The West Wing. I shit you not.

Dear America,
Thank you for reminding me how comparitively unfucked our political discourse still is and how vitally important it is that, to paraphrase Lenin, you be removed from your position and replaced with something which differs in all other respects from you.

Yours etc

The Proletarian Tide
(dictated but not read)

Might find this handy

2011-06-25T12:11:00.004+01:00

I know I'll find a use for it...
I think it came from these guys - cheers!

I Don't Think Much of Ed Milliband's New Tattoo

2011-06-25T10:14:00.005+01:00

Sometimes I can't help but think these kind of things are a mistake. I mean, once it's done, it's permanent. It's the sort of thing that can make you squirm with embarrassment for years if you don't get it done right.

On a related note:

[Ed will tell] the public sector unions that it would be a mistake for them to strike next week, saying they need to do more to persuade the public of their argument over the perceived injustices in the government's changes to public sector pensions.

Oh good. I'd hate to think that the leader of the Labour Party would back us, the people who routinely vote for his party, at a time when our livelihoods are under attack by some of the most reactionary hacks ever to disgrace the title of Minister of State. No, Ed, you tell us that it's our fault. Why oh why don't we use our incredible presence in the national media to make our case to the public before we take action to defend ourselves? Shouldn't take much longer than the rest of this century, after all.

And that's before you get to the bollocks about 'opening the Labour Party up' - no, you arse. The Labour Party was founded to defend the working class against the depredations of the capitalist class. It's not MEANT to be for everyone. It's to help the majority organise to defend against the powerful minority in society. It's not going to be able to do that if every branch has to listen to what the local Alan bloody Sugar thinks about every damned thing.

Still, I think the tattoo is the biggest mistake.

---------------------------------------------------

UPDATE: Anyways, I've got yer 'case for strike action' right here...

Guardian in 'headline that literally cannot be true' oddness

2011-06-22T14:00:00.002+01:00

I mean, if you think about it for a second,

'World's oldest person dies aged 114'

can't actually be possible, can it?

Just sayin'.

One out, all out

2011-06-14T23:45:00.003+01:00

So the results are in and barring major government climb downs, we will be on strike on the 30th June.

I thought it was just worth reiterating the reasons why we'll be out.

We are being asked to work longer, pay more and get less. I won't be able to retire until I reach 68, I will have to pay at least an extra £100 out of my pension every month, and I'll receive a minimum of £168,000 less when I do retire.

There is no crisis in the pension fund. It is self-sustaining and there is no shortfall.

The proposed move from a final salary to average salary will hurt many teachers but particularly women - if you take time off to have children, your pension will suffer as a result.

Our pension money is being used for the purposes of deficit reduction. Workers are being asked to pay for this crisis. I feel like a stuck record at this point, but this crisis was not of our making. This deficit was not of our making. This was a crisis created entirely by the capitalist class and this is an attempt to make the rest of us pay. To borrow a slogan that tells us more than the ConDems are comfortable with, We Won't Pay for Their Crisis.

As a corollary to that, do not forget: this is class war. The tories are using the deficit as cover to hit our communities and hit them hard. This is a concerted bid to destroy the public sphere in whatever ways they can. The attacks on the NHS, the academies acceleration and the universities show us this. Do not be deceived: they are attacking us and if we do not resist now, our ability to withstand attacks in future will be weakened too. This is capitalism: continual class war, waged by the haves against the have nots and the have lesses. Only a fight back can halt their advances. Only socialism can end the war.

Unanswered Questions of Some Importance

2011-06-12T17:54:00.004+01:00

I didn't get to watch AWOBMOLG live this week so I didn't liveblog it. Might well post a review when I've got a bit more time though. However, never mind all that now because Who finished last week and I have Some Questions.

Here we go...

What is the Myth Corporation?

Why aren't there any ducks in the pond?

Is Melody really River?

Is the girl in the suit Melody?

Who shot the Doctor?

Who do the Silent work for?

What's the point of the Headless Monks?

What does 'Silence will fall' actually mean?

Just who is fighting this 'eternal war'?

How are the Cybermen involved?

Didn't the Doctor go back to see young Amy at the end of the Eleventh Hour? What happened there then?

Why doesn't Amy remember the Daleks?

Why did the TARDIS explode in the first place?

Where can I get the exciting dum-dum-dum dum-dum-de-dum incidental music?

Other stuff may come up in time.

AWOBMOLG: Perhaps not doomed, but probably pointless, liveblog 2

2011-05-30T20:45:00.030+01:00

Since last week's liveblog worked OK, I'm going to give it another go tonight. I'm quite looking forward to a critique of the idea of an ecosystem, personally.

21:03 Interesting start - mainly for the wonderful archival footage Curtis always finds.

21:03 Will this lead on to a criticism of the ideas of neural networking?

21:05 Ecosystems are definitely not my area of expertise, but it is interesting to compare the idea of equilibrium to Darwin's understanding of a war for survival, constantly being waged and with huge, geometrical, losses for each species.

21:07 It seems that Forrester is attempting to capture the very dynamics that Curtis is concerned with illuminating.

21:07 Ah, except that he seems to be positing a universal law not just of systems but of the existence of systems. This seems on the face of it to be a bit of a stretch.

21:10 This is giving me the urge to re-read some of that Churchland stuff I was bored rigid by 10 years ago... (url added)

21:14 I like the way Curtis always assumes that his audience is capable of understanding science without explaining it in breathless Brian Cox-stuff.

21:16 Yay for Buckminster-Fuller! Will there be a mention of C60, I wonder?

21:18 He's right about 'spaceship Earth' in some fundamental respects of course.

21:19 Oh, is that what Clarke was on about in his godsawful Rama series? Rama linky added.

21:21 Hm, an old hippy friend told me that I was born too late and I should've been a student in the 60s. He may have been right, though since (cheers, hindsight!) it was doomed maybe it's better that I wasn't.

21:25 How awesome is this? Video windows, mice and everything! This reminds me of a TED talk - I'll see if I can find it...

21:30 I'll look for it later - distracted from doc now!

21:31 Just think about the maths required for that model - incredible. Humans are wonderful.

21:37 Initial thought on the ecosystem as natural Toryism - if you've not read Richard Seymour's The Liberal Defence of Murder, I recommend you get hold of it - imperialism is subsumed into ideas far more frequently than it often appears on the surface...

21:43 I remember at school being told that this was how nature worked - natural systems that balnce over time. David Attenborough's Life on Earth is a good antidote to this.

21:48 Looking at the Twitter feed, what a lot of people seem to be forgetting is that Curtis likes to present a thesis. He may not be correct in all his assertions, but he is doing what no other mainstream documentarists are doing at the moment - presenting an intellectual argument as an intellectual argument and forcing you to engage with his ideas. His continual insistence on exposing the narratives elites and other influential groups tell themselves and the world rather than showing his own views or asserting a truth (other than that the universe is stranger than you expect) is what makes him remarkable.

21:52 *cough* NED *cough*

21:53 Also, vets often put holes into ruminants' stomachs - when you've got 4 stomachs there's lots of stuff to go wrong. Not as weird as it looks.

21:55 Curtis talked about this problem with communes in his Graun interview the other week.

21:59 Did I miss the thing about part 3? I thought this was a 3 parter!

-----------------------------------------------
UPDATE: Here's that TED talk, Sixth Sense Tech...

AWOBMOLG Doomed Liveblog Attempt

2011-05-23T21:01:00.022+01:00

9:07 Adam Curtis is now highlighting for all the Bioshock players who didn't get it exactly what the game was satirising. For other good summaries of Her Bonkersness, see Action Philosophers (sample here - http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/744775.html )

9:08 Randians against Burke, eh? Ooh a bit of Clint Mansell - good one Adam!

9:10 This reminds me a bit of some work on folk-psychology I did once. Boiled version: just because everyone agrees that the same thing is happening, doesn't mean that it actually is. If you pay attention only to the agreed-upon phenomena you can ignore the deeper structure that pre-determines the options for action.

9:12 Interestingly this (sickly marrying of neoliberalism with 'freedom') is exactly the kind of bullshit the Graun's tech weekly podcast often slavishly repeats.

9:15 Hoo - Atlas Shrugged! Any Sadlynauts will be familiar with the US right's response to the financial crisis a couple of years ago - threatening to 'go Galt'. Strangely they never did. Wonder why?

9:19 Bit disingenuous to say they were asking for a 'totally free society' since a central tenet of Objectivism was contempt for the majority of people. I know this isn't an original point, but it's probably worth repeating.

9:22 I was never convinced that those who professed belief in the 'new economy' guff weren't being somewhat disingenuous to be honest. I always kind of assumed that those who pushed it were the same ones who push every boom - the ones who are convinced they'll come out ahead.

9:28 Ooh it's the bit off the trailer.

9:31 From Rand to Monica Lewinsky - bit of a stretch?

9:35 The problem I'm having is that this is a very familiar story. I'm sure it's an essential par, but I've known this since I were a teenager...

9:37 She's* right, of course. Luckily, since no one ever reads this blog I'm in the privileged position of creating a commodity no one wants to buy.

9:40 The face on that IMF negotiatior...urgh...

9:42 IMF riots ... that takes me back...

9:45 Interesting that this time round the bankers don't seem to be even pretending that they have a solution. They've learned not to trade in optimism, at least.

9:51 Whod've thought that Objectivism was thinly-disguised, vainglorious hubris, eh?

9:54 Nice tying in to Power of Nightmares and Century of the Self.

9:56 I don't know, Adam. How many people really believed their own hype about permanent boom? It would require an astonishing level of naivety on the part of financial elites...

10:00 Well, I'm fully satisfied. Lovely bit of Curtis, was that. What is the theme over the end credits?**

-----------------------------------
UPDATE
*Just to be clear, 'she' in this case refers to Carmen Hermosillo, not Ayn Rand.

** It's Stereo Total - Aua

*** Title fixt

**** Intriguingly, Virgin catch up lists AWOBMOLG under 'Drama and Soaps', rather than documentaries. How odd.

Something to make teachers angry

2011-05-21T19:47:00.005+01:00

If you're a teacher and you're being balloted about whether to strike, there's a handy thingummy here that will allow you to calculate exactly how much you're being screwed by proposed Government changes to the pension scheme.

For example, I'm going to lose over £166,000 over my working life. In other words, a house.

I don't like Tory scum for many reasons, and few of them have to do with my personal situation as a worker under attack, but this is a nice illustration of the viciousness of what they want to do to me and thousands like me.

If your union hasn't yet balloted, speak to your rep and put pressure on them to do so. Together, we are strong. Divided, we will be screwed by total and utter bastards.

Remember, we're not all in this together - they are attempting to make us pay for their fucking crisis.

Public Service Announcement

2011-05-21T09:09:00.002+01:00

Just in case you've been living in a Chinese pipe, I thought I'd alert you to Adam Curtis' new documentary All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (AWOBMOLG, as all the cool kids are calling it).

Eh?

2011-05-21T09:06:00.002+01:00

Wow, I've done drunken blogging before, but that was quite impressive. Still, I would like to call attention to the lovely spelling, if not grammar. Heigh ho.

I dunno, stuff I guess.

2011-05-20T22:07:00.005+01:00

I have my own version of SMGW. It's called The Good Wife.* It's truly dire. From the fact that every black face turns out to belong to a twat, to the bizarre moral righteousness from a character that works for someone everyone admits to be a heroin-dealing murderer, to the explicit right-wing politics, it's utterly terrible.

Tonight I saw the episode where it went beyond mental. Well into Ally McBeal dancing baby mental. It had this bizarre schtick where the courageous ~~bastards~~ cunts who I'd quite happily stab for a period not greater than, but approximating to, eternity, decided to 'do' international politics.

Cheers Ridley (but I'm guessing mostly Tony) Scott! It's one thing where your mental idea of reality coincides with Chicago. It just doesn't work if you're trying to involve your vehicle for the ex-ER woman in the real world.

Here's my take on this shitfest. It's quite fun to watch Americans being dicks. Everyone expects Americans to be dicks. The bizarre bit is when you pretend that American politics has anything to do with reality. Hell, it's weird when you see a show that is happy to pretend that the way that the USG presents its foreign policy has much to do with what actually happens in the world. Is this what it's like to read the Sun?

I have to love the whole 'working for a dictator' line. I am not a Chavez fanboy but the idea that he's a dictator is particularly nice. It goes with the bizarre storyline that one of the lead characters is having to do some eye-rolling because his daughter's off to a kibbutz (in the US it's still that period in 1963 when you could ignore the Naqba and go on about equality in the commune whenever Palestinian suffering rudely interrupted). In fact the way the two reality-denying storylines mesh is nothing short of fucking spooky. Both involve an inversion of reality (socialist elected president = dictator; Occupied territories = socialism) that neatly mirror each other. It's so carefully done I have to assume it's on purpose.

I'd reward that with kudos if it weren't so retarded.

-------------------------
*Those with taste may safely look away now.

**Hey, what are you lot still here for? oh......

AV then

2011-05-05T16:23:00.004+01:00

Bloody bread and circuses.

Just a couple of highlights then for those that missed the shenanigans. First there was the No campaign...

Then there was the Yes campaign...

Finally there was grim reality...

Millions of mainly working-class electors have boycotted the electoral system since 2001. The Labour leadership knows that most of those are abstaining ex-Labour supporters. The reasons for this are obvious – their interests are not being effectively represented.

But AV doesn't promise to empower them. And it actually replicates one of the undemocratic aspects of FPTP. Ralph Miliband's criticism of FPTP was that it was used by party leaders to discipline rank and file members and force them to accept centrist policies, in order to win support from "marginal" constituencies. Under AV, the parties would be doing much the same thing in order to gain the "second preference" votes of their larger competitors.

I was going to vote no. But then I saw how pathetically the yes campaign was going to be beaten and I began to pity them. And since it's still effectively rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, I thought about voting yes after all.

Then I saw the Stephen Fry video, and went against it all over again. Politicians are going to start 'working in the national interest'? Stephen sweetie, there's no such animal. And the last thing we need is more collaborationist corporate centrists telling us that because they all agree it must be best for everyone. We're All In It Together could become our national fucking motto at this rate, which would be quite something, since it would be even more dishonest than the current 'My God and my right'.

Inevitable Nuptial Post, pt 94

2011-04-29T09:56:00.004+01:00

I don't particularly care whether they get married or not. They don't seem like monsters, merely people who enjoy monstrous privilege. Come the revolution there will be more important jerks to put up against the wall.

In fact, I don't give a stuff about marriage in general really. I can't get excited about it. I'm at the age now when quite a few of my friends are either married or thinking about it, and that's great for them, but it's virtually impossible to see it as anyone's business but theirs.

So I don't WANT to be annoyed about today. I've tried very hard just to ignore the manufactured enthusiasm that many people seem to be going along with out of a determined sentimentalism, like the smile on a parent's face as they agree to read The Wheels on Barney's Bus once more to their demanding young progeny.

But good gods they've made it difficult. Even watching TV on catchup I've been repeatedly and loudly informed that 'we've all got wedding fever' (Yes, if by that you mean I'm developing a rash). Youtube has some kind of banner animation and every shop is filled with the indescribable tat that would make a Franklin Mint salesman sneer. Even my alarm clock woke me up with news of this bullshit this morning.

I think I must have finally flipped because last night I actually dreamed I was at a street party that was also attended by David Cameron and Gideon Osborne, and that I locked myself in the house and watched them all being eaten by zombies. WHAT COULD IT ALL MEAN?

Anyway, I just wanted to say that I didn't WANT to be all ranty about this kitsch and gaudy celebration of inherited wealth and privilege at a time when public services are being gutted and unemployment is at 2.5 million. The media drivelstorm has forced me into it. ARE YOU HAPPY, JOURNO SCUMBAGS? ARE YOU? LOOK UP FROM YOUR SCREEN AND LOOK AROUND AT YOUR CO-WORKERS. ONE OF THEM'S ON YOUTUBE EVALUATING THE VERACITY OF UPSKIRT SHOTS OF KATE AT UNI, AREN'T THEY? PROUD OF YOURSELVES, ARE YOU? STOP DOING EVERYTHING JUST TO PISS ME OFF. STOP IT.

Anyway, I think I'm going to spend the day with Buffy DVDs and occasionally re-watch the awesomeness that was The Impossible Astronaut.

Easter is a time for remembrance. For sacrifice.

2011-04-02T11:28:00.003+01:00

It's a time when we remember a man who died for us. A man who wasn't really a man. A man who suffered for us in ways we can't really understand. A man whose sacrifice we remember because he defeated death itself. Even now, he is watching over us.

So in 3 weeks, on Easter Sunday, spare a thought for him. And remember his words:

'Eee ba tha gum.'*

----------------------------------
*In other words my fanboy sense is tingling. The trailer is the best thing since this thing.

Dear Internets. Yesterday I was on a great big march...

2011-03-27T20:11:00.005+01:00

... and I had a great time. Still blown away by it. I think sheer size was what impressed me most. Size and the sense of anger. Size, the sense of anger and the huge variety of groups. Size, the sense of anger, the huge variety of groups and the great placards. Size, the sense of anger, the huge variety, the great placards and the bands. Size ... I'll stop there. I'd love to upload my pictures but like a fool I forgot my camera and my phone doesn't talk to other electeronicamal devices very easily. I'll work it out soon. Highlights of the day:

The girl with the 'only one man can save us now' placard with a TARDIS on it The girl with a huge homemade banner that looked a bugger to carry, emblazoned with 'This banner isn't big enough for all the things I'm angry about!'

The anarchist brass band. They weren't attempting to play anything, which is probably for the best. I have no idea how a band would sound, founded on the principle of anarchy, but I'm guessing this would sound better...

The brass band who struck up the Internationale when passing the bust-up LloydsTSB that had been vandalised.

The vandalised LloydsTSB. Banks have never been funnier than when someone's chucked something through a glass door then stuffed a baguette into the hole. When I can get hold of the photos I'll update this post and then you'll see. Then YOU'LL ALL SEE! You know, if you want.

The 'Big Society - compensating for something?' banner.

The various 'build a bonfire' chants. Some were quite inventive.

The fact that the back end of the march still wasn't visible near Trafalgar at gone 4 o'clock - more than 5 hours after it first started.

The number of times that I heard comments along the lines of 'this needs to be the start of something, not the end'.

The number of people carrying SWP placards calling for a general strike (mine's leaning against the bookcase as I type).

Ahem. Worst points of the day:

The Kindness Revolution or whatever they were offering free hugs near the National Gallery. It wasn't just the unsubstantiated demands, it was that they were actually from the White Stuff clothing company. Fuck off, White Stuff clothing company.*

The bloke with the 'Socialism is Theft' banner. Yeah, that's why we're here guys! Let's start a fight during a display of solidarity.**

I would like to end this post with a simple message: GENERAL STRIKE NOW. We run this country, not the Condems or the bankers. We make everything, we do all the work. Let's remind these motherfuckers just whose indulgence they play on when they tell us they're the voice of authority. Build for a general strike.

--------------------------------

*Also, at what point did people start charging for hugs anyway? You need to get better friends, White Stuff Clothing Company.

**Also, brief shout-out for all the 'Tory Scum' banners. It's good to see the old classics getting a play.

There is literally no snark left...

2011-03-24T13:06:00.004Z

I've not updated for a bit, partly because I've been to busy with ... you know ... stuff ... and partly because I generally want to post on here in order to snark at news stories that make the little veins in my eyes start throbbing with greater urgency than a diarrhoetic in a 10 items or less queue at Boots*, but the absurdity event horizon seems to have passed me by. I mean, look at this:

George Osborne said he would be watching oil companies "like a hawk" to make sure there was "no funny business" following his budget decision to cut 1p from fuel duty.

Honestly, where do you start? It's times like this I am painfully aware that I can never make a great satirist. I can't see it with ironic detachment. It's just a matter of - this is utter, nonsensical madness. What's the right response to this? A clever gag, a series of bullet points explaining the various levels of hypocrisy and untruth at work, or what?**

I know everyone else has pointed this out as well - if even the shadow chancellor's got it then it's a fair bet few are fooled, but Jesus. They really do think we're a Burkean mob, don't they?

We'll see how well this 'stability' that Gideon's created works on Saturday I suppose...

-----------------
*Yes, at Boots. Look, if they were in Tesco's how would you get the cue that they were buying imodium? Look, just forget it.

**Note how I avoided the obvious 'a series of bullets' line there. Never go for the easy punchline, kids. Unless it's funny to do so, obviously.

Lovely, thanks. Yours?

2011-01-08T22:36:00.004Z

So in advance of Xmas, I announced my intention to get some seriously shit films to watch during the festive season. Films of the calibre of Beverly Hills Cop II. Did I get my wish? Well, in the end the closest I got was Beauty and the Beast, unfortunately, which is emphatically NOT shit. And not just because Disney decided that a psychosexual fable that involves the use of Stockholm Syndrome and elements of Bluebeard (and hence legendary paedophile child murderer and neckhole fucker Gilles de Rais) was a suitable subject for a children’s film. Also because a talking clock called Cogsworth says ‘If it ain’t baroque, don’t fix it!’

So what was my xmas viewing, I hear you cry? And where’s that cartoon you promised? Well my dears, as to the first: coming right up. As to the second: shut up.
Firstly there was an ace Doctor Who. Combines all my favourite things about Christmas into one neat package. A Christmas Carol had some lovely singing, a message of hope and redemption, and of course an intricate time-travelling plot and a flying shark.

Then there were the little shiny discs I got from my adoring public. I may not have sat through something as dire as Star Trek: The Motion Picture, but I did have some genuinely harrowing festive experiences.

First out of the giftwrap was Deep Water. This is a documentary about Donald Crowhurst, who in 1968 got in a boat, tried to sail around the world by himself without stopping, started lying about how far he’d got, got drunk, claimed he was some kind of supernatural entity and killed himself.

Next out of my big comedy stocking and covered in holly leaves and sellotape, we have The Wave, the film in which a well-meaning schoolteacher accidentally turns his kids into the Hitler Youth within a week. With hilarious consequences, it would say on the box, if it were more than usually dishonest.

Anxiously tearing at an infinitude of ‘Merry Christmas’es in a variety of fonts, I then uncovered Hidden Agenda, Ken Loach’s film about the abuses perpetrated by the security services in Northern Ireland and containing a fictionalised version of the coup that nearly happened, to oust Wilson’s last government. With assassinations, grubby politics and the kind of aristocratic nastiness you associate with Thatcherite Establishment types, Time Out didn’t call it ‘More laughs than a barrel of monkeys with kuru.’

What’s this, hiding beneath my lump of coal? Why it’s harrowing docudrama Threads! I’ve used the bit where Sheffield blows up in lessons on War and Peace, but this is the first time I‘ve seen it all the way through. Who’d have thought the nuclear holocaust could be the least distressing part? Anyone who thinks self-important vacuity-fest The Road is a disturbing piece clearly hasn’t seen Threads. Although after you have, you will probably wish you hadn’t.

So that was my Christmas viewing. Paranoia, peer-conformity, corruption, the end of the world and the hell of survival. If you think about it, it’s what the baby Jebus would’ve wanted.

Happy 2011 everybody!

Things you notice about incidental music

2010-12-22T07:24:00.006Z

Our school's assembly was xmas-themed this week, and a bit of Charlie Brown's Christmas was shown. Peanuts is one of those things you know about because it seems to be a formative part of most Americans' childhood experiences, rather than something I know much about myself, so I'd never seen it.

So hey, maybe you are a big Peanuts fan and already know this. WELL GOOD FOR YOU. But I didn't, so there.

Listen to the background music here!

THE RED FLAG! Is it me, or is that a weird choice for an American cartoon? I used to read the strip in my Nan's Daily Fail, for the gods' sake!

PS more cartoon strip to follow soon, if you like that sort of thing.

UPDATE: Thanks to Roobin (see comments), I have learned that in fact The Red Flag is usually sung to the tune of a German Christmas carol called O Tenenbaum, which in English is rendered as O Christmas Tree. Therefore it is just a coincidence that it appears in Charlie Brown Christmas at a point where Charlie is railing against consumerism. You Learn Something New Every Day.

Shit TV: But How Shit?

2010-12-15T20:04:00.002Z

I've been contemplating obtaining some proper shit-but-fun films for xmas, to provide relief from my lowly, lonely, pointless existence. I've got the beginnings of a list, but I feel there must be more. I therefore solicit suggestions to function as addenda to this compendium:

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Lethal Weapon
Lethal Weapon 2: Diplomatic Immunity
Beverly Hills Cop
Beverly Hills Cop 2
Die Hard
Die Hard 2
Ghostbusters
Ghostbusters 2
Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

I know I'm missing some obvious ones, but what?

Directions in the Opiniosphere - Update

2010-12-14T19:52:00.003Z

The perils of anecdata:

The immediate response of a 'close family member'* to Jody McIntyre's ordeal was to blame him for being on a demo in the first place.
Another 'CFM' just got home after a train delay due to a suicide and complained that their death would have 'eaten into East Midlands' Trains' profits'.

Conclusion: People are inexplicably detestable.

------------------------

*Genetically. I've never thought about love when I thought about home.**

**Slight exaggeration. Although not tonight

Pleasing Directions in the Opiniosphere

2010-12-11T20:57:00.002Z

It's been an interesting few days for democracy, I'm sure you'll agree. For the first time since Iraq there's a strong public protest on the streets whose aims, at least, are backed by a big majority* of the public. Only this time there seems to be a cross-section that are supportive of the elements that the PM is calling 'hell bent on violence' and 'feral thugs'.

On a purely anecdata level, it's been brilliant to see the short shrift that a lot of the hand-wringing 'BUT TEH SNOOKER BALLZ' gang are getting. I have quite an insulated life in some ways, as I don't bother with the tabloids or the right-wing broadsheets, and I stopped that soppy 'got to read opinions from BOTH sides' crap years ago, on the same basis that I don't bother getting the Discovery Institute's reaction to every new fossil find. But the normally centrist people I know through work and through social media (I don't really have enough of a social life at the moment to canvas IRL people) seem at the very least disoriented and frequently openly sympathetic to direct action.

It's a basic tenet of Marxist thinking that revolutions offer points where people's perception of themselves and normal social truths begin to shift, and although we're obviously not at the point of storming Whitehall yet, we are witnessing people normally safely esconsced within establishment notions of 'democracy' and 'peaceful protest' genuinely questioning themselves. I think that at the very least, the Tory attempt to re-write history so that the entirety of Labour's period in office was a disaster is dead in the water. Admittedly, at least one person I know has reaffirmed today that they are 'still proud to be a Lib Dem', just 'disgusted at the leadership' - but I can't take that too seriously, 'cos what does 'being a Lib Dem' mean, exactly? And at least it's in the right general direction.

Anyway, interesting times ahead.

*H/T Adam Bienkov

Xmas - The Prologue Continues.

2010-12-11T12:09:00.003Z

Are they really this obtuse? REALLY?

2010-12-11T08:59:00.003Z

Currently on teh Beeb's news site:

THE GOVERNMENT IS DOING SOMETHING MORALLY REPUGNANT AND DEEPLY UNPOPULAR. Jesus, are they a bit slow or something?

Funny Thing...

2010-12-08T18:18:00.002Z

... but I've become so familiar with the sleazy, dishonest ways that the Fail does business that I now only have to read as far as the words 'the author, James Slack' to know exactly what's coming next.

How long before he becomes an entry in the OED?

Slack, vb. To repeat casually racist and factually inaccurate tropes about asylum, immigration or brown people for the purposes of meeting tabloid deadlines and reinforcing readers' prejudices about 'foreigns'.

'Hey, are we meeting Tozzer down the Dog and Hammer later?'
'I dunno, it'll just be another Slackfest.'

Religulous: I do not think it means, what you think it means, Bill Maher

2010-12-07T06:30:00.006Z

I've been doing a bit of research on religious differences and conflict recently, and came across a couple of documentaries on the subject. One of them made me quite angry. Here’s why.

RELIGULOUS!

Bill Maher's film about religion is so bad it's actually very funny. Just not for the reasons Maher seems to want. Made in 2006, it's full of the kind of extremist-bating stuff that Louis Theroux got bored with 10 years ago. You know the drill: find some inarticulate and/or hardline people with extreme or rigid views on some doctrinal matter, then take the piss. The only difference here in terms of format is that whilst Louis took the time to actually live in his subjects' world and was careful to keep his incredulity as hidden as possible, so that we got at least a fuller portrait of them and their lives, Maher just turns up and insults people to their faces, talks over them with his own equally strident but better articulated (and crucially louder) opinions, with occasional mugs to the camera to demonstrate how loony these people are. Then the camera can film people getting angry or defensive or begin to stutter or stumble over their words. Thus God is a LIE, sheeple!

Maher is opposed to religion, in a sub~~-Dawkins~~ ~~-Hitchens~~ -Humphrys kind of a way and makes no bones about this. Well, that's fine. I've been a lifelong atheist and have never felt the pull of God or religion to be an important force in my life, and I once felt angry about how stupid religion obviously was. Of course, I was 16 at the time*, and didn't use my years of experience as a stand-up comedian who works rooms for a living to bully people into looking stupid for a documentary.

So I don’t object to an atheist making a documentary about religion per se, it’s just one as poorly made and thought-out as this one. Part of the problem is the obviousness of his targets, and a big part of it is the sheer pointlessness of the format. Maher goes around the world** doing his look-at-the-loony shtick but despite most of the screen time being a series of ‘interviews’, in reality they are monologues. The interviewees are just there to hear The Amazing Wit of Bill Maher and either agree with him on the spot or look offended. Bill does not at any point seem to be under the impression that anyone he talks to has anything in particular to offer him, with the possible exception of his mother.

This approach leads to quite a lot of unintentional humour. There is a scene where he ‘interviews’ a Muslim woman about some of the more disturbing interpretations of Qur’anic verses (and I do mean interpretations – although Bill never mentions it, there are a variety of variant translations of the text, and the Qur’an is famously difficult to render in English, and guess what, Bill – these books are products of particular times and places and most believers are quite capable of understanding that), and when she tries to explain how she ‘reads the Qur’an’, Bill impatiently interrupts her: ‘That’s not how you read a Holy Book!’ he exclaims. The curious spectacle of an atheist telling a person of faith how they read their scriptures has a wonderful irony to it. It was a scene that returned to my mind at the end, when Bill tells us about the importance of being ‘humble’, which apparently only atheists are capable of.

Two other things stick out about this documentary as truly repellent, however. The first of these is Bill’s self-righteous and thoroughly underserved claiming of ‘reason’ for himself and fellow atheists alone, and the second is how his unacknowledged prejudices come to the fore when he talks about two issues in particular: Islam and Israel.

Bill is convinced that because he has spotted that religious texts can be contradictory or express unpleasant sentiments, and that the figure of Jesus has non-Christian historical antecedents (a truly astonishing insight that only someone engaged in the forefront of theological disputation could have unearthed – that or an AS Religious Studies student) therefore belief in God/religion (Maher frequently treats the two as identical) is fundamentally irrational and therefore wrong.

Of course, this childish level of analysis Has Teh Dumm. He repeatedly refuses to acknowledge a social, cultural, historical or political aspect of religious belief, as evidenced in his interviews regarding Israel and Islam, and evinces no ability to empathise with people whose cultural background is different from his own.***

Israel is a particularly fascinating example of his prejudices. He interviews an anti-Zionist rabbi, who begins to outline his theological justification for his stance, before the inevitable series of accusations and interruptions. The rabbi is pretty much accused of holocaust denial and wanting the destruction of all Israelis, and the hapless man is left looking somewhat bemused by the whole encounter when Bill does an O’Reilly, quitting the interview with a smirk on his face. So we never hear much about what the rabbi does think on the subject and the whole Ahmedinejad ‘Israel wiped from the face of the earth’ controversy is brought up, Maher doesn’t do anything to acknowledge the controversial way that the comment was twisted and reported in the media and uses it to discredit the rabbi. In fact he doesn’t investigate the political nature of the Israel/Palestine dispute at all, not mentioning the Naqba, the 1964 or 1967 wars, the Oslo Accords or the intifadas. A montage of angry Muslims and some bombing scenes are what we are offered. How insightful. No refugee camps, white phosphorous, ‘targeted killings’ or anything then, Bill? What about the UN GA resolutions condemning the occupation? No? Hmm.

This links directly to Maher’s characterisation of Islam. After his casual dismissal of anyone who opposes or criticises Israel as effectively in favour of suicide bombing, he decides to characterise Islam as a whole through a few of the high profile incidents of recent years – the Muhammad cartoons being a favourite, though he’s not above using 9/11 footage during the film’s epilogue. He says that when things start getting blown up, it’s usually Muslims behind it (which conveniently ignores the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions – presumably they’re hiding behind the huge elephant with ‘Israeli state terror’ written on it in fluorescent neon letters that’s already in the room) and actually goes so far as to say that his Muslim interviewees are only saying they’re peaceful because he’s an ‘outsider’ – that’s right, Bill’s implying that there’s some global Muslim club that is setting out deliberately to deceive people about their hidden agenda to take over the world, probably concealed in that funny ‘writing’ of theirs and that gibberish that so many of them speak. If they’ve got nothing to hide, why don’t they say everything in English, like the rest of us, eh? Tying everything back together, I particularly loved the bit when we see the Temple Mount, with subtitles helpfully informing us that ‘The Temple of Solomon is the holiest site in Judaism ... but Muslims built the Al-Aqsa mosque right on top of it’. Nice.

The end of the film has Maher standing in Megiddo, saying that unless we give up religion right this second we’ll all die in a nuclear holocaust. Because we’re not rational and unprejudiced like what he is.

In short then: thanks for flying the flag for atheists and reason there Bill, really appreciate it. You did everyone a service, really you did. Did you ever wonder exactly why those guys in the al-Aqsa mosque said they'd never found you funny?

-----------------------------------------------
*That's actually an exaggeration for comic effect. I used to get annoyed about it in a New Atheist way well into my early 20s. Eventually I grew up a bit though – my motto became encapsulated on a t-shirt you can get from Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science store: ‘I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.’

**In that curiously American way where you go and see people around the world but never leave America in your head.

*** This got me thinking about exactly what Bill was missing out in his view on religion. Here is a rough list.
1. The idea that religious practice is part of your family life. By his own admission religion played only a limited part in his own childhood, but he seems not to be concerned enough to see how children incorporate their understandings about religion and practices – such as when to fast, when to pray, how divorce happens into their early experiences.
2. Social influences. If your religion is something practiced by family members, friends, authority figures, people you look up to, this will influence how you see your religion.
3. Political considerations. Religion, as Marx noted, is a reflection of and an expression of resistance to class society – it is a place where the unspoken or unspeakable desires of the oppressed and the solace and justification of the oppressors can find a voice. People look to their religion and their God for an expression of peace and justice that cannot be found in their own lives, as well as to express the right of the haves to their lot. The Church of England is a good example of this – at one level it is the state religion, represented in Parliament and led by the head of state, but internally split between a High and Low Church – one of the establishment and one of the People. Around the margins you have the denominations concerned with ecumenicalism and social justice – the Nonconformists, the Methodists, the Quakers, where so much progressive thinking and leadership has come from.
4. The ineffable. Whether Bill likes it or not, many people have an experience of something Other, alien to ourselves. This experience cannot be quantified, it seems to be entirely personal, and yet often intensely profound. This experience can be attributed to God, insofar as it can be named. If pressed, people often describe this as their conviction that ‘there is something greater than themselves’
The extent to which these factors and others I’m still ignorant of interact within an individual are entirely unpredictable. It certainly doesn’t make someone irrational because they are influenced by any of these.

Xmas - Part 1

2010-12-05T12:44:00.003Z

As part of a new service to humanity I'm offering, here is the first part of an ongoing saga I like to call 'Xmas'. Conveniently, I've also titled it 'Xmas'. Enjoy.

So, Kids.

2010-12-04T16:50:00.010Z

WARNING: LONG, SELF-INDULGENT POST.

I was getting my hair cut this afternoon. One of the hairdressers was sounding off about education, one of those dreary, depressing 'bring back the birch, kids don't have no respect' monologues that I've talked about elsewhere, but it did remind me of one of those topics I've thought about a lot recently - just what should a teacher's relationship be to their pupils?

I think it goes without saying that part of being a teacher is not beating children, but what should we be prepared for? I used to think that as long as I'd given the pupils a lesson, moved them on through their curriculum, that they'd learned something new, that was enough. The longer I've been doing it, though, I've started to come to the conclusion that it isn't, not really. The ideal, I now think, is a bit more complex than that, and one which I'll be outlining in a shamefully overly sentimental and lachrymose way below.

It transpired that the reason for the hairdresser's diatribe against this new fad for not throwing things at children was the presence of a schoolgirl in the shop, who had obviously got herself a Saturday job. This girl in turn was giving her strident opinion on the uselessness and stupidity of teachers in general. I found it all quite fascinating, in a way. I've often heard pupils say that what they want in a teacher is someone who can 'control a class' and this girl was no exception. To illustrate her point she mentioned a case when a supply teacher had been unable to get her class to be silent to the point where she had left the room. The touch of bravado in her voice as she told this story said it all. Although I doubt she'd ever admit it, she obviously felt guilt over this incident. The hairdresser's confusion of 'fear' with 'respect' had stemmed from this.

Here's where I know I have a long way to go as a teacher developing their practice. I know that children are not young adults, that they are rapidly developing individuals, often with fragile egos, and that part of the job is to provide the kind of guidance and structure that will help them to make academic progress as they go through the godsawful process known as 'adolescence'. So you can't treat them as adults, no matter how grownup they seem to be - not because of their intellectual capabilities but because of everything else. I don't like to cite non-peer-reviewed sources when talking about child development, but here's some good shorthand to cut through my waffling:

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.*

Or to put it another way: you can never go home again.

To grope my way slowly towards this post's destination, then. Despite my knowing all this, a part of me wants to give The Speech, every time I encounter some child who's worked it all out and knows everything (i.e. all teenagers, everywhere). Since I could never give the speech in a professional context (and hence it's something I've always had in my head and has never been said aloud), I've decided to reproduce it here, in my nice pseudonymous blog.

'I have absolutely no doubt that you think you know what school is, and what classes are for, and I'm guessing you think it's something like 'to pump you full of facts and some skills and get you some GCSEs then shove you out into a job'. Maybe you think this is a good thing, maybe not. But if you do reckon that's what all this is for, I'm afraid that's not quite it.

You are, and I appreciate it probably doesn't look like it to someone who has to go to 25 lessons a week and spend hours on homework as well, plus whatever hells happen outside of school, really lucky. For most of human history, most people have received little or no formal education. A hundred years ago, most people didn't get much past primary school, even in the UK. Today millions still go without any formal education at all.

But having the opportunity to learn about algebra and thermodynamics and Shakespeare and slavery and Sikhism and how cities grow and how to play cricket isn't the only reason you're lucky. You're also lucky because your teachers are people who won't hit you, or threaten you, who want to encourage you to be your best**. You're lucky because the CBI ideology that you get an education to get a job hasn't won yet, and because a lot of teachers do what they do because they think you should have a chance, at least once in your life, to learn about some of the things that make this universe and this planet and humanity so absolutely fascinating and give you a flavour of all the possibilities that your life has to offer you, that we've not yet given in to the turgid utilitarianism of 'get a trade, son' thinking - the kind of thinking that leads straight back to throwing chalk and sitting in silence with textbooks.

The proto-existential philosopher Nietzsche saw two possible futures for humanity - one where people dared to be great, and one where people lost sight of their own souls. He called this second possibility the 'ultimate man,' and wrote of him like this:

Behold! I shall show you the Ultimate Man.
'What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?' thus asks the Ultimate Man and blinks.
The earth has become small, and upon it hops the Ultimate Man, who makes everything small. His race is as inexterminable as the flea; the Ultimate Man lives longest.
'We have discovered happiness,' say the Ultimate Men and blink.

Well, some of your lessons will be dull and some of your teachers won't understand you and you'll probably get shouted at sometimes, and if you make it through your school life without at least one detention you'll be very weird, and life isn't perfect, and the next few years might see classes grow larger and resources get fewer, and there probably will be a bully who makes your life miserable at some point - and that bully may even be in school - but underneath all that stuff, what we really want to do is more than give you a good education, one that doesn't turn you out at 16 any more jaded and cynical than you're forced to be because you're 16, we want you to leave with self-confidence and skills and if at all possible the understanding that the world is an amazing place that you've barely begun to explore.

But I couldn't give that speech of course, because I'd have to explain what the CBI is, and utilitarianism. And that would be a picnic compared to Nietzsche. And because kids' attention spans aren't long enough. And it's soppy. And it doesn't really solve anything.

But basically I'd model all education on Doctor Who if I could.

----------------------------------
*Admittedly, this is being used as a metaphor for awakening to the love of Christ, but I think it's more useful if you look at it more literally.

**For a given value of 'your teachers'.

A Party You Just Don't Want to Go To.

2010-12-01T17:24:00.003Z

I get emails from Cage Prisoners. It's a worthy cause. Sometimes though, you think 'was that really how you wanted your header to look?

Ad Criticism

2010-11-26T22:20:00.002Z

Watching the new series of Peep Show. Here are some random thoughts that occurred during the ad break.

Does that bloke do all the ad voiceovers, or just anything to do with telecommunications?

Attention CGI'd-to-look-sort-of-plasticine new fathers: this is how it works in a maternity ward - if you don't tell the nurse, she will just keep giving you more babies.

Davidoff isn't going to be the person people want him to be any more. He's going to interfere with children.

Everyone involved in Skoda needs to die.

McDonald's food is not xmas themed and everyone involved in this pathetic attempt to persuade us that it is should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

The day is starting well.

2010-11-18T06:08:00.002Z

Have you noticed that people start their Christmas shopping earlier every year? Who did Mr Justice Mann get this for, I wonder? If it's for me, he shouldn't have. All I got him was one of those Terry's Chocolate Orange bars last year. Now I'm going to have to get him something nice. Tickets to Les Mis, perhaps?

I always knew this day would come, and wondered how it would be, yet now that it has I feel strangely ... serene*

2010-11-17T19:56:00.004Z

The inevitable is happening, apparently, and one of the few women politicians that can make Thatcher seem vaguely human - or at least remind you that in the good old days evil villains used to be vaguely intelligent - might try the presidential run that everyone has been expecting from her.

The only question is whether this is to be (a) welcomed, because she's so patently unelectable and the Republican machine is divided so might not be willing to pull the same scams they did for the last fucknuckle; or (b) feared on the grounds that enough people might be pissed off with Obama not to vote and enough people are downright insane enough to go to a voting booth and pull a lever marked 'Palin'?**

-------------------------------
* Yes, you have heard this before.

**Yes the allusion to a gallows was in there - obviously in this case a self-operated one.

NEWS!

2010-11-16T20:02:00.006Z

(imagine it being shouted by a drunken Johnny Vegas for full effect. Yes, I've been watching Attention Scum! too much recently)

Since people neither I nor anyone who reads this blog will ever meet* are getting married, completely understandably nothing else appears to be happening today.

But just in case you were under the delusion that EVENTS can still happen even when the NEW ~~MARIE~~ DIANA is GOING TO UNDERGO AN ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEDURE before the Earth has next rolled around to its current position in its orbit of a ball of flaming hydrogen 1.4 million kilometres across and 150 million kilometres away, here are some illusory gobbets of THINGS.

Despite compensation being offered to the Gitmo detainees, Shaker Aamer has been held without charge for more than 9 years now. Cage Prisoners will be holding a rally about his case in London on 11th December.
Sussex University is under occupation by students calling for no rise in tuition fees.
Cameron has stopped paying his photograher from general taxation.
Viktor Bout, arms dealer and scumbag extraordinaire, has been extradited to face trial in New York.
Francis Maude is ConDemNation's Mephistopheles (and a mysterious organisation run from a private house near Stratford on Avon has direct access to the whips' office). OK, I was a little slow on that one.
The President of the European Council thinks Ireland could destroy Europe. Go, you priest-infested backwater you! Honestly I have no idea whether this is a serious possibility or pointless hyperbole. My instinct is the latter, but who knows? We all remember the damage Father Dougal Maguire could cause with a poorly placed comment, and I assume the republic is basically just like a sitcom about priests.
There's probably loads more STUFF too. But I can't process more than however many news stories this was in a single day or it all goes out of my ... thing. You know, with the hair and the eyes. Inside that.
Yeah, that.

--------------------------------------
*Although to be strictly honest, I did used to work for his dad. He is the one who's dad is Charles, right? He's not the other one? I get confused.

I'd forgotten this. But it's brilliant.

2010-11-12T18:11:00.004Z

A few years ago, there began the most important translation of a sacred text that has happened since the National Council of Churches' Division of Christian Education first had tea, cake and an agenda.

Now pretty much complete it stands as a testament to human ~~wisdom~~ ~~folly~~ foldom. As a sample, here's John 3:16, the verse that rednecks love to wave around the ring at wrestling matches.*

NRSV:
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

Ceilincat sez:
So liek teh Ceiling Kitteh lieks teh ppl lots and he sez 'Oh hai I givez u me only kitteh and ifs u beleeves him u wont evr diez no moar, kthxbai!'

I think you know which is the most readable, enlightening, and above all true to the spirit of the message.

---------------------------------------------------
*Why? No one knows.

It's fine, you can thank me later.

2010-11-11T17:54:00.003Z

Just realised, after a friend updated their FB status to 'We turned London into Paris' that basically, the success of yesterday's demo in London was down to me.

Without my incendiary blog post, on the prestigious, edgy internet no less, who would have had the cojones to drag a sofa out of Millbank and into the street? That's right, no one.

You're welcome.

No, no money required. Just a post on the supreme soviet will do nicely.

When in doubt, blame the victim.

2010-11-11T16:20:00.002Z

A classic right-wing move when one of their policies turns out to be very bad for people is to blame the victims of that policy. There are probably a gazillion examples but when I saw IDS's nauseating plans, the first one that leapt to mind was Norman Tebbit’s ‘on yer bike’ attitude at a time when Thatcher’s policies had just cut 2 million jobs from the economy.
It is an exact replication of the same calculated idiocy (by which I mean that if you look at it for a moment you can see how stupid it is, and assume that the ministers responsible are cretins rather than what is actually the case: they are committing deliberate acts of evil in public), whereby employment secretaries conveniently forget that we don’t live in an industrial democracy, and most people don’t have much choice about work, and assume that the reason there is so much unemployment must be because there are so many unemployed. Therefore, goes the ‘thinking’, if you make life hard enough for people who have 'chosen' to be unemployed, this will incentivise them to find the work that 2.5 million of their comrades also seem to be a bit too lazy to find.

Actually, a more accurate title might be: When in doubt, don't just blame the victims. Beat them up a bit more. 'Hey you, you haven't got a job! That makes you basically a criminal, yeah? Here's a bin bag and a rubber glove. Off you go.'

I think what sickens me most is that it’s not even new. I’m assuming that when drawing up the policies, one of the remaining civil servants/photographers were sent round to get some clippings from a 1981 copy of the Times.

It's Happening, Reg! Somthing's Actually Happening!

2010-11-10T20:36:00.004Z

Today was awesome for anyone who likes to see proper angry protest in a progressive cause. Aaron Porter might think those who smashed windows were "despicable", but as someone who's been on one too many protests where you see too many of the usual faces, a demo like this says something that 'peaceful' (let yourself get kettled by the cops and don't say so much as a bad word about it) protests don't quite so well: we're really angry. I think people in power tend to get more sleepless nights about angry protest than peaceful protest.

Always good to see a bit of people power and a progressive cause taking control of the streets, anyway. And if you wanted a demo without dickheads you might as well wish for a police force full of paragons of virtue. Just accept that people REALLY don't like Condem policies, guys.

Not that it needs stating, but just for the record: I don't think violence is to be welcomed, but if you're pushing through policies that hurt people, people can't always be relied on to wait for deliverence from a Mediator. Besides, as a revolutionary I tend to think that only the co-ordinated power of the working class can overthrow the class system itself and bring an end to the conflict inherent in class societies - and I don't expect the bourgeoisie to give up easily.

Not that I was on a demo, mind. I work for a living, me.

Have You Ever Wondered How Epic Modern Poetry Might Sound if Read by Stephen Hawking?

2010-10-30T01:46:00.004+01:00

Wonder no more with Alan Ginsberg's Howl:

Next: Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner followed by John Milton's Paradise Lost.

Daily Mash in cultural reference missed opportunity blunder

2010-10-29T10:53:00.003+01:00

The Mash had a news briefly about this article speculating on the possibility of one day being able to record your dreams.

Moran Cerf, a researcher at New York University who is currently working in the field of consciousness and emotions, believes he has a system that could one day detect and record the subjects of your dreams.*

However, as any fule kno, the correct auteur to use in this reference is Wim Wenders:

As this linear chase snakes itself around the world, the nuclear satellite is shot down, causing an EMP effect that wipes out all unshielded electronics worldwide. The characters wind up in a hidden cave in the Australian Outback, where the recordings are played back. After the death of the hitchhiker's mother during the transition between the first and second phases of the plot, his scientist father discovers a way to use the device to record human dreams; by this time the second phase of the plot has fully commenced. Several of the central characters become addicted to viewing the playback of their own dreams

No need to thank me, I'm just happy to be of service. I do recommend you see it if you ever get the chance, it's one of the strangest and most beautiful films you'll ever see.

-----------------------------
*

But before you get too excited about playing back last night’s slumber-vision in high definition, Cerf’s system is far, far more humble, and is a far cry from the systems seen in science fiction movies. Instead of watching your dream on a display like Red Dwarf's "dream recorder", the method simply monitors neural activity in your brain.

Sky News in admirable lack of bias outburst

2010-10-26T23:53:00.004+01:00

Niiiice.

For a slightly more useful take on the current dispute see here and here.

... and the award for 'Least Convincing Definition of "Everything"' goes to...

2010-10-21T19:23:00.004+01:00

Also works for 'triumph'.

And 'treat'.

'Musical' also too. [That's enough "also"s - Ed.]

ATTENTION SCUM!

2010-10-19T17:21:00.005+01:00

With apologies to Simon Munnery (and Stewart Lee, who directed).

Will Britain's Lingering Xenophobia Save Multiculturalism?

2010-10-18T16:44:00.005+01:00

The Germans are a little behind the times. Over here, racists have been claiming that 'multiculturalism has failed' for ages - ever since racist attacks started being taken seriously by the police, in fact.

Still, since a quick visit to the Mash today I have a message for everyone who's worried about the rise of the far right in the UK. In the words of i was a cub scout, I want you to know that there is always hope.

Since the immediate reaction of satirists to quotes like:

The comments come amid rising anti-immigration feeling in Germany.

A recent survey suggested more than 30% of people believed the country was "overrun by foreigners".

was to reach for the big blood-red button with a swastika on it,

perhaps anti-racists can break the seal on the 'you know who else thinks multiculturalism has failed?' bottle.

What I'm saying is, whilst this story's given the morons a field day,

it does seem that the anti-multiculturalism crowd have just permanently godwinned themselves. Nice.

I forgot just the one thing...

2010-10-05T17:15:00.004+01:00

At the time of the Terry Jones Qur'an burning idiocy I was a bit blase about it. He was so obviously a massive wanker that there didn't seem to be anything much to say about it. In fact I was fairly thoroughly agreed with the Daily Mash on the subject.

But I forgot. The most basic lesson. The one that anyone who's had contretemps with racist organisations should remember.

Idiots. Copy. Each. Other.

Six men arrested after Koran burnt on 9/11
One man in a grey Adidas tracksuit and white trainers, who has a blue cloth wrapped around his head as a burka-style mask, makes a series of obscene gestures towards the book as it burns.

Laughing, the tracksuited gang shouts “This is for the boys in Afghanistan. September 11, international burn a Koran day, for all the people of 9/11.

“This is how we do it in Gateshead, right.”
One man then attempts to add more fuel, but instead sets the plastic petrol can on fire. He then kicks the book across the yard, leaving a trail of flames which he is forced to hastily stamp out.

For the record: no it isn't, you twunt. That's why you got arrested. For an encore, the EDL turned up to an SWP branch meeting to try and assault my comrades, and assaulted two Irish Centre members of staff for good measure.

What a bunch of twunting twunty twuntbags.

In short: copycat crimes are a symptom of people who haz teh dumm in the worst kind of way.

Exciting new bloggertunity

2010-10-05T17:03:00.004+01:00

The brilliant, acerbic and rather lovely Siobhan Schwartzberg has started a new blog. I reckon it'll be well worth keeping your peepers on.

That is all.

Although it is on wordpress, so expect much FYWP in coming months...

Look, it's over there! Insists Gove.*

2010-10-01T22:05:00.003+01:00

The so-called "no touch" rules that discourage teachers from restraining or comforting schoolchildren are to be abolished as part of a "new deal" for teachers, the education secretary, Michael Gove, said yesterday.

Personally, I didn't get into this job to hug kids but to teach them. If I can support pupils, that's fine, but I don't want children to see me as part of their extended family either. I'm a professional with a job to do, not a babysitter.

Slightly less callously, and more in tune with what I most especially dislike about this idea, it's important to have a clear 'don't touch the kids' policy for several reasons. An atmosphere where pupils need to fear the teachers physically is a bad atmosphere for learning. It erodes trust between teacher and pupil. Also, kids can be very antagonising and badly behaved - pretty much every school I've worked in has been in a deprived or inner-city area and had behaviour issues of one kind or another. The last thing a stressed teacher approaching the limits of their temper needs is to feel that there is some leeway around physical contact with the kids. It's better for us as well as for them.

I know of schools - heck I've worked in them for brief periods - where there are panic buttons on the walls and teachers carry walkie-talkies. There was one school in Newcastle (not one I've worked in I'm afraid, although one I did visit on one or two occasions in my previous professional life) with metal detectors and an on-site police officer. There are serious behaviour problems at these schools.

But:
(a) there is no miracle solution to this - bringing back the birch will not make the pupils better, in fact I'd say that it would be more likely to prolong the cycle of violence.
(b) violence in schools is always found in the most deprived parts of the community, those most suffering from joblessness and poverty. The very problems, I should point out, that Gove and his government are doing their level best to exacerbate.
(c) this is a tiny minority of schools. In most schools teachers do not feel threatened by their pupils. Certainly I never have. And even if this should change in the future, and some pupil does sincerely make a threat against my personal safety, any putative moves back towards corporal punishment will be a terrible backwards step. How can we teach children that violence solves nothing if we are prepared to use it ourselves?

-------------------------
* I can't help but feel this is the first salvo in an attempt to blame bad behaviour and school problems in the coming years on pupils, as schools are sapped of vital resources, much-needed refurbishments are shelved and class sizes grow.

Hahahaahaaa, pt 94

2010-09-26T09:50:00.004+01:00

This is priceless. If you're in the doldrums because the new Labour leader is marginally less ghastly than the one the Graun have been crowning since the election but still nothing to get excited about, at least look at how terrified teh Fail is. First there's this:
Ed Miliband is the Thatcher of the Left, apparently, allowing daring newshound James Forsyth to use 'doomsday scenario' and 'insurgent' to describe the narrow victory of Ed over David.*

But this hysteria is not only confined to the reactionary press. The Graun's coverage isn't much better, with the following making it in at paragraph four:

MPs who supported David Miliband warned that Ed Miliband's reliance on the union vote was a "disaster" for the party – leaving it open to charges that its leader would be in the pocket of its leftwing paymasters, and wide open to attack from the Tories and rightwing elements in the media.

Or, 'you can't vote for Ed, the tories won't like it!' Inspired.**

But by far the best has to be this:
Ed Miliband in Not Married Shocker!
Love the caption under the photo, using the word modern in the way only the Fail can (i.e. as a pejorative)

And check out the opening paragraphs...

As the son of a North London Marxist intellectual, you might expect Ed Miliband to have a less than conventional approach to traditional family values.
And the birth certificate of his 15-month-old son, Daniel, would appear to bear this out, as it includes everything except any mention of the boy’s proud father.
Although the section headed ‘Father’ is blank, Daniel’s mother Justine Thornton is named, along with her Manchester birthplace and profession, barrister.
Daniel was born on June 2 last year and the birth certificate was signed by Justine in Camden, near the couple’s London home, five weeks later on July 9.
There is no suggestion that Ed Miliband is not Daniel’s father and when asked why his name is not on the register, a spokeswoman for the new Labour leader suggested he simply had not had time to fill in the form.

'Paul, we've reached the bottom. I think we've scraped our way through the wood. Look, I can see the floor. Can I stop now?'
'No, Daily Mail Reporter, you may not! Scrape, damn you! Scrape! If only we can shriek loud enough, maybe people will start to think this is an actual problem of some kind! Can you find a picture of a saucily-dressed young mother of the kind Ed might well shack up with when his hedonistic sex-crazed mind takes its fancy? The kind that our readers fear will make them go blind if they see, and induces in them a fear of their own repressed and furtive attitudes toward intercourse?'
'Not in time for the first editions, sir.'
'Damn, just run one of him and his partner looking happy and suggest there's something immoral going on beneath the surface, and that this is somehow anybody else's business, then. There'll still be plenty of pics from the X Factor to lure the punters in.'

EPIC FAIL, Daily Mail.

------------------------------------
*Special mention goes to alluding to a fear of 'Ed's willingness to indulge the party' - the Fail's genuine fear of Labour members as feral beasts who do not know their place and will be coming for your Buy to Lets and begonias given the slightest nod from on high.

**In many ways this election is of course an indictment of how far Labour has fallen to Thatcherite nonsense, that the union vote is being seen as a problem for the Party. But there we go. And don't give me any of that 'unelectable' nonsense either. See here (unless you've got the book, which goes into more detail).

So anyway, I was just wondering...

2010-09-17T23:48:00.003+01:00

Let's not worry for a second about the ex-Nazi* whose office (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly known as the Holy Inquisition) was not exactly enthusiastic about pursuing allegations of child abuse but still lays claim to a billion followers complaining about the 'marginalisation' of Christianity. I was more thinking about his now legendary speech yesterday. Just after the Nazi reference. This bit.

As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a 'reductive vision of the person and his destiny'

Now I've already had a dig at his Nazi past, as has everyone else on the internet. Just thought it might be worth mentioning that Italy and Spain were both heavily RC nations in the 20th century, and, well you know what bastions of human freedom they became. So you don't need to look as far afield as ... well one doesn't want to appear indelicate, does one? As far afield as You-Know-Who to find a place for the Vatican at the fascist table. Phew, I think I managed to avoid Godwining this piece. Close call - that Ratzinger and Nazism, it's just going to dog him like a child-sex allegation at the Criminal Records Bureau, isn't it? Sorry about that.

Damn, I mentioned them! Three times!

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*Yes, I know it was the law when he joined the Hitler Youth and I know he was only a teenager, but in fairness, he started it.

In Other News, Braaaaaiiins.

2010-09-04T13:44:00.000+01:00

I will be seeing this in 3D. That is all.

Reasons to Hate Newsnight Review, Pt 94

2010-09-04T10:23:00.005+01:00

I stopped watching Newsnight Review back when it was still called Newsnight Review*. I should've stopped when this was first broadcast but I let myself casually drop into it occasionally back when I still was capable of watching Newsnight itself without wanting to kick the screen in. So about 5 years ago.

Anyway, it came on last night when a DVD finished and I was subjected to the mutilated horror of it all for a minute or two. Couple of things:

Something called Clemency Burton-Hill is a fucking idiot.
Jesus Christ, SHUT THE FUCK UP ALL OF YOU. SHUT THE FUCK UP. WHENEVER YOU SPEAK IT'S LIKE DROWNING IN A LAKE OF SMUGNESS. I SINCERELY WANT YOU TO DIE.

To explain point (1), I refer you to the review of Tamara Drewe (a strip so incredibly dull I never successfully navigated a complete edition of when it was in the Graun's Review section. In fact it was probably the reason that I now open it at the back, read Doonesbury, then stick it in the recycling). Here is Clemency, looking like every annoying fucking Rah that I would see hanging around Hatfield at uni, apparently doing nothing whilst waiting to be appointed part of the Establishment when they graduated.

'Isn't it amazing to see the middle classes depicted on film like that, I mean, especially a UK Film Council-backed film? I mean we're talking about Shane Meadows later and they're much more likely to back a film like ... This is England, and I found that fascinating, though sort of rather uncomfortable as you say, kind of I might have that [inaudible due to scratching of absurd rah hairdo] I quite often see Jim Naughtie at literary festivals, I'm complicit in this as well.'

Yes, if there's one thing the British media needs more of, it's portrayal of the lives of the average ordinary member of the middle classes who live in Arcady-By-The-Waitrose. We just don't see enough of these people, do we? FUCK OFF.
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*It is apparently now called The Review Show.

Belated Yanks-Fish-Barrel-iness

2010-09-03T17:13:00.003+01:00

Meant to do this the other day, but all that Bible study got in the way.

Is it just me, or is this the single most expressive image of America ever created?

Rock n Roll Communique #2

2010-09-02T17:33:00.002+01:00

You have sealed orders. Go see Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.

It will make you want to fall in love if you're not. It will reaffirm your faith in love if you already are.

Report back to HQ when you have achieved this objective.

That is all.

Leeds 2010 Roundup

2010-08-30T17:04:00.005+01:00

"I'm sorry for quoting U2 in a place where poetry has been performed"

- Eddie Argos

It was a good festival this year, despite the fairly weak lineup. It was definitely a personal best in terms of number of bands seen and some really stood out - Foals in particular, but also Klaxons, Los Campesinos!, Phoenix, Egyptian Hip-Hop, Minus the Bear, Chapel Club and a few others. Futureheads were as fun as ever - you never get bored of the Bouncy Bounce or the Futureheads Singing Game, after all.

Because I was working on the Main Stage bar again this year, this did unfortunately mean I had to see Guns 'n' Roses, the only interest here being of course how late Axl would show up, assuming he turned up at all. In the end even that was boring - only about half an hour late, which in Axl's world is actually on time. He's the man for whom the phrase 'wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff' was invented. It's like the Libertines, if they just turn up and play their rubbish pop songs, no one will give a fuck.

Funny thing though, we'd been saying all weekend how they were 'just a covers band these days' and when they turned up they played Knocking on Heaven's Door, The Pink Panther, and Another Brick in the Wall. For fucking hours.

Total highlight of the festival for me was Eddie Argos's turn with Art Brut's guitarist and Everybody Was in the French Resistance ... Now!'s keyboardist. He was funny, had some kick-ass pop songs and the best engagement with the crowd of anyone I saw. he managed to get everyone in the comedy tent on their feet and up at the stage, which is a fair achievement really. Plus he played Emily Kane in front and with the assistance of his girlfriend (the aforementioned keyboardist, lovely Dyan Valdes) which is if nothing else somewhat ballsy.

Also the M.C. went 'who wants to see Guns 'n' Roses tonight?' and most of the tent went 'Meh.' Slightly taken aback, he said 'Who's not bothered about Guns 'n' Roses?' which got a deafening cheer. 'Oh, that's not the reaction I was expecting, to be honest' he said, looking genuinely confused.

This leads me onto my mini-rant for the day. Comedians at Leeds: don't ditch your material just 'cos you're at a festival. Andrew Lawrence did OK, but Jason Byrne disappeared into misogynist, misandrist wankiness after an amazing start. Every comedian seems to think shouting 'This is much better than Reading, isn't it?' and swearing a lot is what the audience want, but the truth is no one gives a fuck about Leeds/Reading rivalry and if you're in a comedy tent there's a chance that you're there to see some comedians do their actual material. For the love of gods!

Rant over. Pics may follow, or may not. Anyway, that's my reason for not having anything to say about the other major event of this weekend.

Remember This?

2010-08-25T23:05:00.004+01:00

I don't like memes. I think it's a clumsy and facile concept that aims to give a scientistic account of data that doesn't hold water.

That said, remember this?

And then Delboy fell through the bar, I know. But still. It was a funny meme. If memes existed, which they don't.

Interludes from Real Life

2010-08-25T01:41:00.004+01:00

A friend of mine told me the other day about one of her cats having to be put down, and the subsequent and somewhat delicate task of explaining this turn of events to her young daughter.

The child took it pretty well, considering, and had that direct way of looking at the situation that the pre-adolescent often does, asking blunt questions along the lines of 'can I come to the vet's?'. But then it got a little trickier. Having lost one cat, it naturally occurred to her to worry about the other.

'Is Schrodinger alright?'

Of course, the problem is, with a name like that, it's hard to be sure.

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True story.

The Taunting of Floridian 123

2010-08-23T17:04:00.008+01:00

Just because I'm looking for a distraction from doing some actual work, here's a random fucking idiot from CiF.*

Background: Charlie Brooker wrote about the 'Ground Zero Mosque' nutters , in which he pointed out that it's not a mosque and not at Ground Zero, although oddly he didn't do the obvious and make it clear that there shouldn't be a problem if it was either or both of those things, as it would be rather like saying that Oscar Romero is the same as Alexander VI. Anyway, here's a particularly cretinous comment from some stupid bloody wingnut.

First of all that building was close enough to have the falling landing gear of the plane Muhammad Atta was on damage it. Secondly, they said they will hold Friday nite prayers in it so of course it's a mosque. This is not about religious freedom. It's about LOCATION. Do you think the Russians would be happy about a mosque being built in Beslan near the school where over two hundred kids were raped and shot in the back by terrorists? One more thing, I seem to remember a super mosque that was supposed to be built in London just in time for the olympics. The people protested about it and now the mosque isn't being built. Rather hypocritical of you isn't it?
The governor of New York wants to meet with them to suggest an alternative site but they flat out refuse to even consider it. Their present position is "We are going to cram this peace loving, bridge building mosque down the throats of you Americans whether you like it or not."

So, let the taunting commence!

First of all that building was close enough to have the falling landing gear of the plane Muhammad Atta was on damage it.

You're saying that these terrorists were willing to risk damage to one of their own buildings*? How evil is that! Like TOTALLY evil. We're through the looking glass here, sheeple!

Secondly, they said they will hold Friday nite prayers in it so of course it's a mosque.

Or, is it a cultural centre with a prayer room in it?

This is not about religious freedom.

Or, is it? Because it kind of sounds like you're saying that people can't use their own building to worship in their own way and use that building to promote understandings between other people exercising their religious freedom in the way they want to. So, it kind of is about religious freedom really, isn't it? Just a little bit? Maybe?

It's about LOCATION.

Hmm, don't know about you, but if I was trying to think of anywhere for people to build some hope and understanding between faiths, somewhere near an awful reminder of what happens when people have an intolerant attitude towards others might be, oh I dunno, the perfect place to put it?

Do you think the Russians would be happy about a mosque being built in Beslan near the school where over two hundred kids were raped and shot in the back by terrorists?

Hey, Floridian, have a look at this:

Here are some Terrorists:

And here are some Muslims:

P.S. Islam is the second largest religion in North Ossetia-Alania, an independent republic within the Russian Federation, not actually in Russia. But wait, you don't want the great US of A to be judged by the standards of the RUSSIANS, do you, Floridian? Why do you HATE AMERICA?

One more thing, I seem to remember a super mosque that was supposed to be built in London just in time for the olympics. The people protested about it and now the mosque isn't being built.Rather hypocritical of you isn't it?

I have to admit, I'd never heard of this story, but then I don't live in that London, and anyway it does seem a tad racist to assume that Charlie Brooker would have opposed the Mosque because he is British. Presumably the Muslims who wanted to build the thing in the first place were British as were the community groups that opposed it. Not sure this is actually hypocritical in any way at all. Hang on a sec...
Nope, doesn't seem to apply. Perhaps hypocrisy doesn't mean what you think it means?

The governor of New York wants to meet with them to suggest an alternative site but they flat out refuse to even consider it.

What, you mean they don't see why they should move from their own building just because some hysterical racists are shouting at them? They won't back down from a project whose explicit point is to combat idiotic ideas like yours? I wonder why ever not?

Their present position is "We are going to cram this peace loving, bridge building mosque down the throats of you Americans whether you like it or not."

Or, 'we're not going to let a bunch of hysterical racists stop us'? Sounds kind of, you know, courageous to me. Also, Veiled Penis Reference, too.

But anyway, in conclusion Floridian, you thought building a mosque was insensitive? Check THIS out.
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*It's OK to read CiF if it's for Charlie Brooker, it's like eating a sandwich whilst you're walking.

**I just found Floridian 123's dictionary. I see the problem, because under 'Mooslem' it just says 'See terrists'

Is Human Nature a Barrier to Socialism?

2010-08-19T21:11:00.005+01:00

Ante-Script

As previously when I've done talks like this, the below is more or less what I meant to say, any resemblance to my actual, stammering and highly eclectic delivery is purely coincidental. Enjoy...

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Every socialist will have heard this objection to socialism. You've got someone to agree that the current system doesn't work, that the credit crunch shows some basic problems with the system, that it's unfair that some have so much and others so little, but then you come to propose socialism as an alternative. 'Ah, but that's human nature, isn't it? You've always got to have leaders. Some people always rise to the top. People are naturally selfish/greedy/bastards.' That's why doing a speech on this topic is brilliant, because tonight we'll have the space to actually talk about why this is not an effective objection, rather than, as I usually do, to myself on the bus home.

In my experience, people believe that this is their trump card, the insuperable objection. It's all very well wanting equality, but in the end we're all a bunch of selfish buggers, right? Good point. From littering to murder we can think of all manner of examples of selfish behaviour. Indeed, the political party with the largest number of parliamentary seats is explicitly based on the politics of greed and self-interest. So how do we explain the fact that we are still socialists? There are only 2 options:

This brilliant objection had never occurred to us before
We think we have a good response.

Since every time you mention your politics this is brought up by someone, I think we can discount a, even if you don't credit us with the smarts to have thought of it ourselves (a point of view that implies that socialists emerge fully-formed from some kind of Damascene conversion). That leaves us with b. So what might a socialist response consist of?

There are really three aspects to the question:

What is human nature?
What is socialism?
Is 1 incompatible with the aims of 2?

Some people have argued that there is no such thing as human nature at all – that humanity is some kind of tabula rasa on which all behaviours are written by social and cultural influences. I won't be arguing this, but rather that although some human behaviours can be seen as universal, the expression of those behaviours does not sum up human nature and that social factors hugely influence some behaviours and completely determine others. This, I think, suggests that human nature is perfectly compatible with our idea of socialism.

Some human behaviours are universal. Language is the most obvious example – all human cultures have complex languages. We are speaking, and because of that thinking, apes. Other candidates for universal behaviour include play, laughter, and tool use. You will notice from my examples that these are broad and general formal categories, they describe a general form of behaviour but no specifics. All humans laugh, but do they all titter? I honestly couldn't tell you. All humans speak, but clearly not all humans speak about Peter Mandelson's autobiography, or the advantages of Python over Perl.

Not even the person who has told you that socialism is impossible because we're all too nasty or selfish would agree that all human behaviour is essential to our nature. There is no gene to code for writing Star Trek fan fiction. So we're talking about defining what is essential to humanity and what is not, in general terms. We've already looked at some things that all humans seem to do independently of culture. So what kinds of things are particularly socially constructed, other than fan fiction?

First off there are social institutions – these clearly have only social roots, responding to a social set of circumstances and defined entirely by social relations. Money, schools and religions fall into this category. But more than that we are, as Aristotle so neatly put it, 'political animals' – animals that by our very natures exist in communities, that are social not through choice but because it is one of the things that define us. We can only have a concept of selfishness at all because it stands in opposition to our ideas of communal behaviour: selfishness is a feature of our political natures, usually defined in a negative way against our presumed social obligations rather than in accordance with them – that, I think, is our intuitive understanding of selfishness.

The idea of the individual, isolated human as a major philosophical idea begins with the Enlightenment and Rationalist thinkers, such as Descartes, with his solipsistic evil demon, and the Empiricists like Hume and Locke, for whom individual perceptions were the building blocks of philosophy. This isolationist tendency in philosophy is mirrored in the phenomenon of alienation that is produced by capitalist society.

It is sometimes thought that Marxism is somewhat crass, that it reduces the complexity of human interaction to an economic basis, but of course for Marxists, economics form the base of what humans are able to do, and society is the superstructure built on top of this base. One of my favourite quotations from Marx is about just this phenomenon: men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please, they do not do it under conditions of their own choosing. In other words, how our society is structured is fundamentally governed by how we put food on the table – how society produces for itself. So, what is alienation, why does capitalism lead to it, and what does this have to do with human nature?

To take the last question first – from a Marxist point of view, any society will emphasise certain human characteristics over others, according to how it is organised. Theft, for example, is a big issue in capitalist societies, where most things are held as private property and therefore taking most things without asking, or paying: food from a supermarket, a train journey without a ticket, burglary, are seen as theft. A society which does not hold most things to be private property would of course not have such an obsession with who owns what. Alienation is not a conscious product of capitalism, but a result of the way people relate to each other under this form of production, and I will argue is a big factor in why people make the 'human nature argument' against socialism, although they may not be aware of it.

Of course at this point many people cry foul over Marxist argument, as with the related idea of false consciousness: 'how can you tell me that what I think I'm thinking isn't at all what I'm thinking! I know I'm selfish sometimes and I'm not a capitalist, you're being very presumptive about being able to determine my psychological motivations here!' And it's important to distinguish between what we can say about the general forms of capitalism and the motivations of individuals. What we can say is that the way in which our society produces for itself means that the individuals in it are alienated in certain ways. This doesn't tell us how any individual will choose to act but it does tell something of the general ways in which people relate to each other.

So what is alienation? There are several possible ways of approaching it, but one which most people will recognise is that sense of disconnectedness from those around us, sometimes focused on the workplace, at other times more difficult to place. Alienation can be in the pointless meeting you've got to attend, or when watching the telly and realising that there is nothing on that was made with you or your tastes in mind. At these moments we feel disconnected from those we work with, disconnected from the culture that we should be able to identify with.

But alienation goes far deeper than this – consumer culture is itself a form of and response to alienation. Capitalism produces commodities at a rate far outstripping any previous mode of production, and the defining way that it achieves this is mass-production. Mass-production in a capitalist system forces redundancy (because capitalists compete with each other to generate profit and need to maintain growth in order to increase those profits) – resulting in endless iterations of objects and the idea of artefacts as inherently disposable. A good example of this is the iPhone, which although only launched about 5 years ago has gone through 4 iterations, each marketed as utterly superior not only to its competitors but also to the model that preceded it. So we come to think of objects around us as impermanent, transitory and without substance.

Mass-production creates millions of identical objects. When we see Toy Story, for example, the toys in it are instantly recognisable. Each Mr Potatohead or Barbie is after all identical to all the others. The result of this is that even the objects of play that we are presented with as children are throwaway – if my son has an Optimus Prime and his friend has an Optimus Prime, they have two completely identical toys. There is no uniqueness to the objects we purchase.

Mass-production places the actual making of objects, from the morning Weetabix we eat to the cars we drive, outside of most of our objects of experience. If I work on a production line at Toyota, I will may have a part in the making of the car I drive, but I will have had no part in making my Tesco's pizza. Most of the objects of our experience are obtained with no intervention from ourselves other than the exchange of currency. We are alienated from the things around us because we have no direct connection to them.

Perhaps most importantly, mass production places us in a position of powerlessness in relation to many of the objects that we own. If I need a table, it is still possible for me to go down to B&Q (other builder's merchants are available) and buy the wood I need to make it, and thus create an object purely for my own use. But I cannot put together a mobile phone or a computer in the same way. If I want a commodity I may be able to choose between different suppliers, but I cannot relate to the object as anything other than a commodity – it is produced to be sold more than it is produced to be used.

The wider system of capitalism alienates us from people around us. At work we are often in competition with our workmates, we are keenly aware that there are only so many jobs and more than that we in most cases have no control over our economic lives. We do not set our own wages, or our own hours. We do not choose who we work with or the way we approach our jobs. The lower the pay you're on, the more likely this situation is to be true. More than this, because capitalism is a very particular mode of production, where things are made not on the basis of need but on the basis that they will be sold, there is a sort of creeping tendency to assign everything a monetary value. Indeed, as capitalists have sought to find new markets to expand into, new arenas of profit, we have seen the creation of markets in water, in pollution – effectively parcelling up the air we breath, and even in government itself, through PFI and PPPs.

So capitalism is not only an economic model but one which defines the way society works and affects the way we relate to the people around us. The essence of capitalism is competition and private wealth. These are the driving motors of capitalism and why the logical endpoint of capitalism is Gordon Gekko's famous comment that 'greed is good' – it is somewhat telling of course that what was intended as an indictment of the relentless pursuit of profit was enthusiastically taken up as a slogan.

What effects might the profit motive have on human behaviour? In the USA people are paid for their blood donations. This means that blood is donated by people who are in need of money quickly, and is looked down upon socially. Another effect is that the blood is more frequently found to have infections – the only major illness outbreak resulting from transfusions in the UK, where blood donation is voluntary, came from a batch of blood bought from New York. Bringing in the profit motive can undermine the idea of public service itself, not just by changing the motivation from those involved in delivering it from public duty to personal enrichment, but by changing the general public perception of the nature of the service. Revelations about the levels of pay in the top levels of the NHS, or major charities like Oxfam, affect how people think about those organisations and reduce the public's support for them.

Just to briefly sum up, then: what does all this suggest? Well, along with the idea that we are animals whose nature is shaped by the social forces we encounter, and the idea that the social forces produced by capitalism do not simply encourage greed, but also alienation and commodity fetishism, there is the undeniable public-spirited side to human nature that is revealed in the reaction to inroads to public-sector work being made by the profit motive. Capitalism has no choice but to encourage the profit motive, and with it the selfishness, alienation and greed that characterises it.

One of the questions I started this talk with was: what is socialism? It's a difficult question to answer, because socialism envisages a world without an exploiting class, one in which the workers enjoy real economic and political power – which of course unfortunately also means that we cannot say what a lot of it will look like, since the decision is not ours to make. As revolutionary socialists, we look forward to the day that we are no longer needed. What then, the question should perhaps be, does socialism offer? Socialism offers the opposite to capitalism. It is fundamentally co-operative, food is put on the table not by competing consumers but by the agreement of all, by workers who are in control and where there is no class of people profiting from the work of others. Since human nature is to be sociable, adaptable and co-operative, and since capitalism makes us so unhappy and unfulfilled, not only is human nature not incompatible with socialism, human nature will actually benefit from it.

Update: This may be of use.

The Unconcealed Millionaire*

2010-08-17T09:12:00.005+01:00

Yesterday a war criminal tried to buy his way into heaven. I'm sure you know this already, and the whole incident is covered in some depth here. The whole thing is deeply disgusting on a number of levels, and it's interesting that no one seems to be buying it, (apart from the RBL, who I can't say I really blame for their 'delighted' quote - although if I worked for them I'd probably be privately comparing it to a customer in a fireworks shop offering to pay for the damage in the branch they just burned down).

The Guardian's sub-heading on their piece about the response to the donation is slightly odd:

Armed forces charity delighted to accept book proceeds but opponents of war say it will not change their views on former PM

I love the 'but' there. I assume the Graun weren't actually expecting Stop the War to pack up on receipt of this announcement, with a collective 'Oh, that's alright then' and a shrug of shoulders. The consensus building is that this is 'guilt money', which is a politer word than 'blood money' I suppose, but in the context of Blair almost certainly inappropriate. As one of the anti-war protesters interviewed by Sky says: Blair couldn't even say sorry at Chilcott, in fact he insists he has nothing to feel guilty about.

This may or may not be how Blair actually feels of course, but let's assume that it is for the moment. If it's not guilt then what is it?

To me it's a symbol of one of the uglier successes of Thatcherism: the return of philanthropy. In the nineteenth century, capitalists who'd grown fat on the suffering, poverty and dangers they exposed their workers to would build a park or a meeting hall with some small portion of the wealth they'd expropriated, and in return for the generosity of foisting their opinion of what the working masses needed on them, the amenity would have their name on it somewhere and an official expression of gratitude would be made.

This kind of patrician attitude began to wither after the second World War as a more egalitarian consensus was gradually formed. This phenomenon has come to be known as the 'end of deference' and it was brought about in an era where workers gained huge increases in standards of living, unions were strong and the modestly redistributive economic model of Keynesianism was in vogue.

Thatcher of course changed all that. Capitalists were now, in an Orwellian turn of phrase that operates in stark contrast to the way economics actually works, 'wealth creators', and over the next two decades ideas like 'society', 'public service' and 'equality' were chipped away at, undermined, until shows like Dragon's Den and Secret Millionaire could appear on our screens without shame.

Blair shows the brazen apotheosis of the return to philanthropy. With one gesture he seems to believe that his calumny can be mitigated, that people will remember that he's a 'pretty straight guy'. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the squandered lives and resources on misbegotten imperialist adventures, the antagonism, hostility and nationalistic fallout, these are as nothing, because he has the thing that makes everything go away, that makes it all better. 'Here's some money.'

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*I wanted to call this piece The Book, The Thief, His Life and Their Millions, but he's only a thief in the sense of having stolen hundreds of thousands of people's lives, which of course makes him a murderer. And 'murder' doesn't scan.

Upcoming Attractions

2010-08-14T16:38:00.002+01:00

Just a couple of upcoming demos/events:

Must... Resist...

2010-08-13T23:54:00.005+01:00

Can hyperlinks be libellous? asks Siobhain Butterworth.*

*In some ways, I am a very simple creature.

Oh, That Old Thing

2010-08-12T20:37:00.004+01:00

I'm speaking on human nature and socialism next week. Could be interesting. I'll post up the gist of it afterwards. Not done one of these for a while so it'll be interesting to see if I can remember how to speak to a room half-full of very argumentative people. Come along if you've got nothing better to do, why don't you?

I've not finalised what I'm going to say yet, but it'll probably have a bit of Vygotsky, a bit of John Molyneux, a splash of Wittgenstein, and some Toy Story 3 for good measure.

Toy Story 3 - Why Lenin is Only Half-Right

2010-08-09T12:48:00.010+01:00

Lenin wrote an interesting view on Toy Story 3 yesterday. As usual it's perceptive and belligerent, and I think a lot of what he says is correct. His thesis is, broadly, that Toy Story is a tale that encourages us to embrace our alienated, commodified relationships with the world produced by capitalism by encouraging us to think of toys as servile chattel, in which we the audience identify with entities inherently commodified and subject to a master-servant behaviour whose highest ideal is a Stevens-like devotion to duty and subsumed heteronormative, male-dominated white-supremacist social relationships.

As a Marxist analysis this makes sense, and puts Toy Story firmly within the tradition of mainstream Hollywood cinema and particularly in children's features.

Where I think it is not complete is that it rather ignores the reason why so many people have been critically admiring of it. As a criticism it looks at the fundamental structure of the narrative and characters rather than the plot.

The thing about Toy Story 3, and what makes it a blub-worthy* film, is that it is a coming-of-age tale, or perhaps more specifically a rite-of-passage movie. The story is of the toys coming to terms with the loss of their owner, because the owner has outgrown them. Of course, as adults we recognise our own experiences of finding oneself too old to play, of having to put away childish things. In Toy Story 3, Andy does so without regret but with a sense of loss - which I know I could identify with. And as with Andy there was one toy which I didn't want to leave behind me, and which has survived all the moves back and forth around the country more or less intact, though usually just stuffed in a box somewhere and never actually out on display.

For Lenin, our attachment to toys is a symbol of our sick late-capitalist culture, where we attach affection and recognisable cultural tropes to inanimate, mass-produced objects - things incapable of returning our love and identical to the playthings of millions of others around the world. There is some truth in this of course, but not a whole truth.

Humans, I think we can all agree, are natural anthropomorphisers. You can see this in the polytheistic societies of ancient Greece, the medieval anthropomorphic personification of Death, and in what Daniel Dennett calls 'the intentional stance' (the idea that we adopt towards people an expectation that they will behave as though they have beliefs and desires and that this is a stance that can be adopted towards non-human things as well, on occasion). So in the way in which people play with toys Pixar have it right - especially as children we simply do bestow inanimate objects with intentionality and personality. The fact of the means of production of these objects is not relevant as an object of conscious experience to the child playing with them.

Some Marxists deny that there is any such thing as 'human nature' and of course human nature is a lot more flexible than is sometimes assumed.** Nevertheless there are some behaviours that humans engage in pretty much universally, and one of these is play. The actual form of play is culturally determined, but the act of play is not (although the extent to which play is encouraged or denied is - the point here is that given the opportunity, children play, by themselves and in groups). In American and other late capitalist cultures the form of play is recognisable in Toy Story and therefore provides the familiar cultural context to the theme of maturity and loss to engross an audience in the story.

Some reviewers have pointed out the comparisons with Winnie-the-Pooh in this theme. Winnie-the-Pooh offers a similar, though notably less commodified theme when Christopher Robin tells Pooh that he will have to go off to school, and won't see so much of him any more.

Vygotsky, in his essay on play, says that

play is such that the explanation for it must always be that it is the imaginary, illusory realization of unrealizable desires. Imagination is a new formation that is not present in the consciousness of the very young child, is totally absent in animals, and represents a specifically human form of conscious activity. Like all functions of consciousness, it originally arises from action. The old adage that children’s play is imagination in action can be reversed: we can say that imagination in adolescents and schoolchildren is play without action.

Play therefore is fundamentally developmental, and the leaving behind of a particular way of thinking, which is to say a way of life. This acknowledgement of change and loss is the heart of Toy Story 3, regardless of the bastardised culture that it finds expression in.

Judging from the scale of its box office it seems to do this rather well - although the extent to which people identify reasons for seeing it with this portrait of change is of course arguable - but I do think that any analysis of the film that leaves out this dimension to the story has missed something fundamental.

-----------------------------------------------

* I should probably add my personal attitude to Toy Story briefly. I have a great deal of fondness for a lot of the Pixar films (Up and Wall-E especially) but I have no great memory of the first 2 Toy Story films. I went to see Toy Story 3 and enjoyed it a lot, but not, if I'm honest as much as Up or Wall-E. Still had a (manly) tear in my eye at the end though.

**I don't just mean 'God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve' type moronicism, but rather that without a considered critique of the role social institutions have played in our development we have not really begun to approach what that nature might consist of and are instead lazily applying culturally loaded ideas like 'humans are naturally greedy'. For a good discussion see here.

N.B. I've edited the bit on anthropomorphisation slightly as I realised that the whole paragraph had become somewhat sidetracked into human nature a bit prematurely.

Wingnuts and Neologisms

2010-07-30T18:43:00.009+01:00

'Well, it's quite simple, really.' Henry leaned forward and threw another log on the fire. ... 'The trick is to keep doing outrageous things. There's no point in passing some scandalous piece of legislation and then giving everyone time to get worked up about it. You have to get right in there and top it with something even worse, before the public have had a chance to work out what's hit them.'
- Henry Winshaw, What a Carve Up! by Jonathan Coe (1995:313)

A frequent guilty pleasure of mine is Sadly, No!, a US-based snark-blog that takes the piss out of American wingnuts (whose 'grassroots' movement actually called themselves teabaggers, then blamed Urban Dictionary for making it sound naughty). The gift, and the trauma, of American wingnuttery, is that there appears to be no bottom to the barrel. It reminds me of the everlasting pint of Guinness in the old gag, and just like that magical pintpot, it spews forward a gusher of foul, sticky, black bile that turns the stomach.

Take, for example, this, in which a man spends 5 pages calling Shirley Sherrod (the woman who lost her job after a wingnut edited a video to make her look like a racist) a liar because she described the racist beating to death of one of her relatives as a 'lynching'.

Plain as day, Ms. Sherrod says that Bobby Hall, a Sherrod relative, was lynched. As she puts it, describing the actions of the 1940s-era Sheriff Claude Screws: "Claude Screws lynched a black man."

This is not true. It did not happen. How do we know this? ... [quotes from Supreme Court judgement on the case] Hall, a young negro about thirty years of age, was handcuffed and taken by car to the courthouse. As Hall alighted from the car at the courthouse square, the three petitioners began beating him with their fists and with a solid-bar blackjack about eight inches long and weighing two pounds. They claimed Hall had reached for a gun and had used insulting language as he alighted from the car. But after Hall, still handcuffed, had been knocked to the ground, they continued to beat him from fifteen to thirty minutes until he was unconscious. Hall was then dragged feet first through the courthouse yard into the jail and thrown upon the floor, dying. An ambulance was called, and Hall was removed to a hospital, where he died within the hour and without regaining consciousness. There was evidence that Screws held a grudge against Hall, and had threatened to "get" him.

Yeah, Jeff, right on! How dare she call that a lynching? What was she thinking? She's like worse than Obamhitler.

But anyway, I thought that was going to be the vilest thing I read all week. But somehow, the EvilGuinness keeps pumping away, delivering new globs of devilfoam to parts you thought it could not possibly reach. Here's a man called Dan Popp.

Let's broaden our campaigns to keep not only our sports stars, but all our rich neighbors in the neighborhood. Let's not discriminate against white CEOs just because they can't jump. Instead of vilifying the rich and forcing them to justify their success, irrationally presuming that it must have come at the price of someone else's failure, let's embrace all those who bring value to our society.

If you're with me on this, please go to the nearest window, stick your head out, and shout:

Rich people, we're sorry. We've committed the sin of envy, the sin of covetousness, and the sin of slander. We have believed the lie and borne false witness against you. Forgive us for the nasty things we said. Please don't go. We want you here. We are all better off with mega-successful neighbors. We're going to tear down the "Keep Out" signs. We're going to stop robbing you of the rewards you've earned, confiscating your wealth as if you were convicted criminals. Please come and do what you do: increase the quality of life for all of us.

Now, I don't know what your reaction to reading that was, but *clever reveal* THAT'S THE POINT. I don't know how to describe my reactions to these pieces. On the one hand, there's a sense of disbelief, as though you've just witnessed someone chowing down on their own chod bin contents and pronouncing it to be as delicious as the finest Haribo. On the other there's a depressing element of 'where do you start' - it's so many kinds of wrong at once, like moving into digs previously occupied by students armed only with half a pack of J-cloths and Happy Shopper polish. It's an unequal struggle, is my point.

It's virtually impossible to comprehensively describe. There needs to be a new set of words to describe the emotional response to reading one of these articles. I've tried to make a list:

Anger
Annoyance
Animosity
Disappointment
Disorientation
Despair
Ennui
Flaberghastliness (already a compound emotion)
Irritation
Sarcastic
Shock
Slaptacular (yet to make it into the OED, nevertheless a perfectly expressive word)
Superior, in a somewhat pointless and hard to defend way
Weariness

Plus about 7 others I don't have a name for. It's one of those times that you wish English lent itself to compound nouns as easily as German does. It would mean that wingnuts have achieved something - the response to their madness would have outpaced antidisestablishmentarianism with ease, and make a good go for Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.

In the end though, it just makes me wish I was the sort of person who only made the same mistake once. The lesson is clear: don't get out of the boat. One day, perhaps I will learn this.

Quick! You DO NOT WANT TO MISS THIS!

2010-07-21T17:25:00.004+01:00

The Daily Mail's latest 'Teh Kidz r In THEIR ROOMS DOIN STUFF!!111eleventy!' piece is brilliant.

First, there's the Brass Eye nature of the piece itself. But more importantly, the commenters have invaded and totally Speak You're Branes'd it.

You DO want to get out of the boat for this one. Quick - before the mods figure out what all the kool kids are talking about and delete it all!

I-Dosing: How teenagers are getting 'digitally high' from music they download from internet
They put on their headphones, drape a hood over their head and drift off into the world of ‘digital highs’.
Videos posted on YouTube show a young girl freaking out and leaping up in fear, a teenager shaking violently and a young boy in extreme distress.
This is the world of ‘i-Dosing’, the new craze sweeping the internet in which teenagers used so-called ‘digital drugs’ to change their brains in the same way as real-life narcotics.

Thank you, Daniel Bates, for this sterling work. Comment samples:

When I started I-Dosing a year ago it was just for fun. I had an otherwise normal life. Fast forward to now... I've been layed off, I lost my car, and I I-Dose every chance I can get. To pay for my fix I rob unlocked cars and a couple of times prostituted myself, just for the iTunes money. I'm probably losing my apartment soon, but I don't care, all I need is my iPod and my headphones. Can't wait to iDose again...

- Stuart Miller, Sheboygan, USA, 21/7/2010 13:51

I was at a local basketball court in Philadelphia and some friends and I were playing a game. A couple of guys came down the street and they were listening to headphones. They were talking crazy and started fighting. Turns out, they were "dosing." My mom was so upset she sent me to live with my aunt and uncle here in California.
- F Prince, Belair, US, 21/7/2010 13:17

They're probably high on Cake too.
- Harry, Glasgow, 21/7/2010 11:45
I've just tried i-Dosing and I'm TOTALLY WASTED!!!
- Harold Bishop, Queensland Australia, 21/7/2010 3:31

Of course, this being an internet and, worse, a Daily Mail Internet, there's always some cretins who don't get it but do manage to sound like massive wankers...

This is crazy! Soon there be private grants to study this, then the government grants. Soon anyone who dissagrees will be labeled "insenative" or worse. The lawyers will sue for the "victims"; welve step programs, support groups and the new defense for mass murders. The music made me do it.Political pressure will be brought to bear and our now government controlled heath system will require all health insurance to cover it. Hundreds of millions of dollars will be wasted on a fantisy, money that could be used to treat real disease.

- William Tyson, Laguna Woods CA USA, 21/7/2010 5:16

In the end though, I'm forced to come back to robii of Loughborough, who seems to have spotted what Daniel Bates apparently didn't.

This story is nonsense

- robii, Loughborough, UK, 20/7/2010 20:23

Nevertheless I URGE you to check it out. I mean, look at the capital letters - I must MEAN IT, mustn't I?

Is Alexander Chancellor the world's most pointless human being?

2010-07-09T17:10:00.003+01:00

The Guardian employs a lot of idiots in its comment pages. Probably so that gullible fools will write long, angry rants about their idiocy, thereby increasing their webtraffic. But Alex has been writing for years and years - way back when dead tree was the norm and interwebs were for porn, I remember finding his column in G2 and wondering if, having read the title of his articles, it would be possible to sue the corpse of CP Scott to get my time back.

Still, Al, as I'm sure he hates to be called, Al, who has perfected the art of bringing mediocrity to a new middle over many years (sample titles: 'It's looking quite clement out' and 'Everything's all electronic nowadays isn't it?'*) has managed to be quite stunningly offensive today.

Raoul Moat: Why the police should stop flattering him

Fugitive gunman is getting a lot of public sympathy

I have to ask: how is it possible to type this, without your own medulla oblongata realising what must be done for the good of humanity and ceasing respiratory functions immediately? This is the worst thing since Al's autobiography Is it time for tea yet? and other amusing incidents from my life.**

--------------------------------------
*Probably.
**Almost certainly.

A Straw-Man Pissing Contest? How Very Gauche.

2010-07-06T16:48:00.007+01:00

Ante-Script

A while ago I found a solution to the problem that certain displays of idiocy tend to push my rant button, resulting in the counterdispaly of a blogpost that itself displayed my compulsive need to respond to certain types of fuckwit in print rather than just my internal monoshout.

That solution was: stop visiting CIF.

Don't get me wrong, I love a good rant. But it was interfering with my life of lounging around on taxpayers handouts that, as a leftie, I almost certainly do.

Anyway, today I got out of the boat. Hence the following.

Script
So, every so often, people who were once broadly on the left, drift to the right in their old age. In Mark Steel's case this meant leaving organised Trotskyism for free-wheeling Trotskyism. More usually it marks a more drastic break with your past. Classic examples include: Christopher Hitchins, David Aaronovitch, and of course, Nick Cohen.

Today Peter Bracken* has decided to join this band of bluster and, as is traditional, he has bravely launched an attack on a strawman. There seems to be an inherent need when these people defect to vociferously attack some perceived holy cow, as though the Tories (who in this situation might be analogised to the big kid in the playground who's got all the Transformers to Peter's weedy but needy asthmatic) will welcome them into the Kool Kids Klub once the ritual beating of the little kid (who, as we thankfully reach the end of this oddly over-written analogy, is whatever right-wing idea about what the left is this time, or if the motive is sectarian, something that can be attributed to the many tentacled monster that is the SWP) is complete.

Of course, if you're going to do this sort of thing, it's vital that your screed attack some version of your enemy that everyone with 'common sense' (a term which in politics is an effective simile for 'ignorance') can agree to dislike.

In Peter's case, this is

the section of the left denies the mainstay of the authentic left's agenda: liberalism.

Which is of course, rubbish. Liberalism is not a left-wing position but a centrist, and crucially, non-ideological one. Liberalism is pragmatic and comfortable with the wielding of power over others, the left is revolutionary. Even the right-wing of the labour movement, the aim is to alleviate the effects of inequality and the worst of poverty, a sure recognition of the desire to change the status quo, that cannot be authentically called liberal. Liberalism is distinguished from reaction largely by its recognition of and compassion for the poor. To the extent that one attempts to change this situation it is a left position, because that is the extent to which the existence of class conflict is recognised and arms are taken on behalf of one side against the other. You will look in Marx in vain for support of the Whigs, but you can see the faint ghost of Marx when liberals defend the minimum wage.

Anyway, having made a mess of his political categories, Peter goes on.

a left that aligns itself against the west cannot be a progressive force, especially one which vents its opposition by finding cause with the grotesque illiberalism of theocratic and proto-fascist regimes

Of course, the left aligns itself against capital and its forces, not 'the west'. And who are these lefties that align themselves with theocrats? Well, Peter provides a list, but unfortunately they do not seem to mean what he thinks it means. 'The Left' (a mysteriously monolithic beast to someone who claims to be on the left and should therefore know better), is guilty of

morally depleted rationalisations that "explained" 9/11 (the US had got its comeuppance).

Funny, cos the article he links to says

there is also the feeling that all the ‘civilised world’ (a phrase which Western leaders seem able to use without a trace of irony) is paying the price for its glib definitions of ‘terrorism’ and its refusal to listen to what the ‘terrorists’ have to say. There are very few people on the planet who devise carnage for the sheer hell of it. They do what they do for a cause; because they are at war. We might not like their cause; but using the word ‘terrorism’ as an alibi for thinking what drives it will get us nowhere in stopping the violence.

which actually seems to be saying "if we mindlessly use the word 'terrorist' we will have no clue as to how this event happened." How terribly glib. Of course, Peter is in no way being glib by suggesting that the US did nothing to anger anyone, and conflating the US Government with its people (an error he has in common with Al Qaeda).

The rest of his bobbins isn't much better, I'm afraid. Having made his exceedingly palpable hit by finding Comrade Beard's secret communique to the Supreme Soviet, outlining Teh Left's Like Totally Universal Position on 9/11, he moves on to attack people who support the Palestinians. This isn't really worth bothering to come back on, as it's a permanent feature of these kinds of articles that you have to side with the aggressor against the victim: it's all part of the posturing. Notable that he doesn't provide a link for that one though.

The ones that there are links for are so misrepresented that it's easy to see why he couldn't even quotemine them. For example, he complains of

the fanciful opinion – expressed only recently by Seumas Milne – that China, far from being an exemplar of human rights abuses on a colossal scale, is in fact an exemplary bulwark against a rapacious, capitalist hegemony.

Curious, as the article is about the strikes that have undermined the state recently and what this means for the economy. At no point does he defend Chinese state repression. Seriously, go read it. I'll wait.

Done? OK, so next up is an attack on Zizek and Callinicos. Fine, except that again, he just displays stupidity. When Zizek says

The problem is that such a simplistic liberal universalism long ago lost its innocence. This is why, for a true leftist, the conflict between liberal permissiveness and fundamentalism is ultimately a false conflict.

he does not mean, as Peter implies, that the Iranian government doesn't kill people, he's saying that calling your society a liberal democracy does not wash the blood off your hands. You'd really have to be remarkably obtuse not to see that.

Amazingly he then manages to be even more facile.

Alex Callinicos himself is a member of Socialist Workers' party, which implores Iraqi insurgents to "use whatever means necessary" to defeat the western coalition. He is a supporter of an organisation, in other words, that apparently condones the use of terror to destabilise a fledgling democracy. An honourable opposition to the war in Iraq is one thing; an express wish to see Islamist insurgents prevail is quite another.

Here's why this has teh stoopid:

If you're opposed to the war in Iraq, it is in no way inconsistent to support the Iraqi people against their occupation. In fact it seems, if you're genuinely progressive, the obvious response to the unchecked aggression of a superpower. Peter doesn't like the word 'imperialist' when applied to the US, but if he can think of a more appropriate one, I invite his submission.
A genuinely leftist critique of Iraq would have to talk about the nature of the invasion and its effect on the people, otherwise it is not leftist or even political, but handwringing drivel.
It ignores the consistent, genuinely terrifying use of terror used to both topple the Iraqi government and then to impose a neoliberal nightmare of the occupiers' choosing.
The use of the phrase 'Islamist insurgents' is particularly telling. 'Islamist' is in no way implied by support for the Iraqi people. 'Insurgents' is a funny way of talking about Iraqis. If there are insurgents in Iraq it is surely the foreign military powers that are imposing the new political order. Foreign fighters in Iraq even at the height of the 'insurgency' were relatively few, though a flood of arms into the country did seem to be noticeably present. You know, in amongst all those American invaders.
Fledgling democracy is a lovely turn of phrase, but in the context of Iraq can only mean the successful imposition of a regime approved of by the victors. The Iraqis did not make a revolution against Saddam and they did not choose the form of their new government. They are being asked to participate at gunpoint.

He then has the nerve to call those on the left who genuinely support self-determination for the Iraqis 'nihilistic' and claims for himself the mantle of defender of freedom. Sometimes, one is tempted to think that some people would really benefit from a bit of extraordinary rendition, if only to remind them of what 'support for a fledgling democracy' really means.

To conclude:
I didn't like this very much, and I don't think much of its author either. This is a reductivist, dishonest and ignorant account that wears its simple-mindedness on its sleeve.
----------------------------------------------
*No, me neither.

Football

2010-07-02T07:14:00.003+01:00

Anyone who watched Mock The Week last night will have seen the weird spectacle of Russell Howard stealing Richard Littlejohn's material.

Now, I really don't know much or care about football*. But for fuck's sake: it wasn't a war, it was watching 11 millionaires not be very good at their jobs. After all, it's not the first time we've seen that recently.

--------------------------------------------------------
*Just to be clear, I don't hate football, some of my best friends like football etc. It's just very dull to me. And I don't like displays of nationalism at the best of times, least of all in sporting events, because I can't for the life of me see what the point is.

One of these things is very much like the other

2010-07-01T22:11:00.002+01:00

So, late, cryptic and probably way behind everyone else, I thought I'd do a quick post on the whole twuntfest that is the Coalition. Don'tworry, I'm not going to go into what others have said, far better, and elsewhere. Instead I'm going to offer a quote. It should probably be on the other blog, in fact, but even fewer of you fuckers read that one. Besides, there's an original anecdote in this one.*

The kind of crisis Friedman had in mind was not military but economic. What he understood was that in normal circumstances, economic decisions are made based on the push and pull of competing interests ... However if an economic crisis hits and is severe enough ... it blows everything else out of the water, and leaders are liberated to do whatever is necessary (or said to be necessary) in the name of responding to a national emergency. Crises are, in a way, democracy-free zones - gaps in politics as usual when the need for consent and consensus do not seem to apply.
- Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine

The only addendum I'd insist on is that there is a consensus on this occasion - the consensus of the political class and the media. It's only unions, right-wing economists, centrist economists, and left-wing economists and those tiresome types who keep thinking we should try to build a better world rather than a worse one who don't agree.

------------------------------------------------
*True story, a friend who claims to have some kind of centre-left credentials announced her admiration for Ken Clarke yesterday, on the basis of the 'we're too poor to afford new prisons' policy. Just to be clear: he's not a nice man, he's a bastard standing next to a shower of cunts. There is a difference. And remember, if a Tory ever does the decent thing, it's either an accidental spinoff of something evil (in this case unnecessary and destructive public sector cuts), or just plain accidental. Stopped clock etc etc...

Breaking News: Interweb Still Populated by Fucking Idiots

2010-06-04T21:35:00.003+01:00

Just to be clear: Michael Gove is a fucking cretin who should never be allowed near educational policy. Or anything more dangerous than play-dough. What's fascinating is that even after Laurie Penny has been moderating the comments on her blog, these are the kind of twats that she feels compelled to let through.

She's decided that she needs to appear reasonable to people with no sense of history, culture or perspective but the boundless arrogance that ignorance bestows on anyone with an ISP and a finger to stab at a keyboard with. I suffer from no such handicap. These guys are adverts for what happens if you don't pay attention in school, or are taught by Tories, which amounts to the same thing.

Anyway, take a trip to Speak You'RE bRanes, Penny Red style. I'd spell out the ways that they're wrong but I credit you with being smart enough not to need it - i.e. I assume you weren't repeatedly hit on the head as a child*.

------------------------------------
*You've just thought of a dumbbell joke, haven't you? I'm fucking psychic. Wait, what's that over there? In the corner? Did that just ... move?

Farewell to All This

2010-06-03T15:48:00.011+01:00

I'm changing location. I'm leaving my beloved North East behind and going to the midlands. Obviously there are a lot of problems with this, chief among them being that I won't be in the North East, with its vibrant music and political scenes, cool buildings and sea view.

Instead I will be in a miserable, accent-less limbo that for reasons best known to themselves, quite large numbers of people have chosen not to leave. So I thought I'd mark my leaving with some photos of my last weekend on Tyneside, which it has to be said was as close to perfection as you can get. Dear reader, I know you're fascinated, so I will tell the story in stages.

SATURDAY

Saturday kicked off with the anti-EDL demo, which was the largest and most confident that I've ever been on in Newcastle - and one where we outnumbered the racist scumbags. This is a good thing, obviously. Also they were effectively contained by the rozzers and there was no violence, at least during the day. Certainly though their boasts of getting 2,000 hooligans to the Toon were idle ones. It's hard to estimate numbers accurately but when I and a comrade left our demo to have a quick snoop it looked like there were 4-500 tops. Still a lot, but considering how big they've been trying to make this, not as bad as it could have been. I'd say there were about a third as many again of us on the UAF demo, and there were another couple of hundred or more up at Monument where the TUC were doing their event. So all in all a successful day, and hopefully the twats won't be coming back.

After that, on to the Doctor Who exhibit at Centre for Life. This was ace. You must go. YOU MUST GO.

Following which, Evolution Emerging was on - a load of free gigs down the Ouseburn. Got to see the amazing Let's Buy Happiness again and the even more amazing Mammal Club, followed by the lovely Soundtracks for a B-Movie, who once their technical problems were sorted out turned out to be purveyors of beautiful instrumental music.

SUNDAY
On Sunday the weather was manky but Evolution proper had started, and luckily I'd got my grubby mitts on one of these...
Which meant I could actually see and hear the Futureheads, unlike people who were inside the venue...

MONDAY
Then Monday, it was Slow Club, Brilliant Mind, Mammal Club again and De La Soul. Fucking ace.

So, although I'll deeply miss Tyneside and all those who've been kind enough to put up with me at various points over the last decade, seriously: what a way to go.

Intriguing, Yet Inescapable Venn Diagram

2010-05-18T19:38:00.005+01:00

Statistics show the inevitable outcome of this contest. Only one has BOTH requirements to lead.

PS Damn you McDonnell, DAMN YOU!

UPDATE: Actually, I was misinformed. Hoorays for McDonnell, Raspberries, as per, to the PLP-Project Stitch Up.

SATC 2

2010-05-18T19:17:00.004+01:00

Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it.

Do not get out of the boat.

UPDATE:
Mark Kermode's verdict deserves a full airing*, as do Laurie Penny and Lindy West's views.

*Particularly the bit where he starts singing The Internationale. No joke.

Fucking Lib Dem Wankbastwats

2010-05-11T23:04:00.003+01:00

Oh well, at least it's taken the difficulty out of the decision for when the government falls this autumn. Never voting for those fuckers again, even if Nick Brown is the alternative.

Hopefully the same will go for most other core Labour voters who, like me, made an unwise choice.

Fuck. Them.

Politics of the Street*

2010-05-11T07:40:00.002+01:00

Overheard whilst doing the paper sale on Saturday:

Daughter: "Who won the election then?"
Mother: "No one."

--------------------------

*Northumberland St to be exact.

Aaaaaargh.

2010-05-06T18:50:00.007+01:00

I'm going to vote in a minute, and I still don't know what I'm going to do. I want to vote for someone who isn't a complete twat. Really, I do. But this was the headline in the Torygraph today. So I'm probably going to vote for someone I despise, whose party has disappointed me and, somewhat worse, been responsible for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of deaths, and who have done nothing to reverse the legacy of Thatcher. Because if I don't, and this happens,

What am I supposed to tell whatever little Christies might ever turn up? But equally, it's Nick Brown's fault we've come to this in many ways, so if I vote for him I'm rewarding failure, which New Labour don't believe in. Gordon Brown's always talking about rights and responsibilities, after all.

Which would be fine, if it was them who pay for their errors. But it's not, is it? It's us. Fuck.

I'll just have to toss a coin or something, I think. Jesus. Thank you Labour. I should have been a lifelong voter for you*, but I believe in equality, social justice, internationalism, and not bombing the shit out of brown people and scapegoating foreigners, so somewhere along the line I feel we've parted company.**

-------------------------------------------
*until our glorious proletarian revolution, anyway. At which point you'd all have been shot as collaborators, you reformist motherfuckers.

** Of course, I also felt this way in 2005. My MP wasn't such a nob then though.

My empty life, and other fables

2010-05-05T21:39:00.005+01:00

I really don't like The Road. It's the epitome of American navel-gazing, the peak of a long hill which offers such notable vistas as Six Feet Under, Heroes, Buffy, and, well, pretty much everything except for Knight Rider*. Most American drama justifies itself on one, flimsy premise**: it's about the emotional journey of the character(s). In other words, it's a one-way trip to Narcissism Village, pop: you, the most specialist person in the wholest worldz. The Road is one such 'journey', only because Cormac McCarthy doesn't want to leave it to chance that the reader might not understand this, he's made it a literal journey as well.

Woo hoo, road trip!

Except not, of course. Because this is a trip through a dying Earth, which has no hope, no life and only fear and the inevitable knowledge of death pressing down upon us. A world in which children are a burden, or a curse, or objects of pity. It's rubbish. It's rubbish because it has to go so far to set up its misery-lit premise that it tells you straight away that its concerns are nothing to do with human experience. It's a cynic's mud bath, sure, but bears no relation to real trauma, with its ocurrence in a complex, dynamic world where torture happens down the road from family dinners. It's the worst kind of navel-gazing 'ooh isn't everything really terrible, when you get right down to it, there's no point doing my homework or anything even 'cos it's all so pointless' teenage bollocks. Grow the fuck up.

Sorry, saw it the other night and it reminded me of how much I hated the book. Anyway, made a change from the election, didn't it?

--------------------------------------
*At least Buffy killed vampires and had the world's sexiest GBF. Six Feet Under had miserable talking corpses. Jesus, get over yourselves, it's only life for fuck's sake, and you're all missing it!

** [picks almost at random] Oi! The Good Wife! I'm looking at you! No one cares about you or your husband. Or your dangerously perfect kids. The only thing anyone cares about is how Cybil Shepherd's best mate from Cybil is suddenly a high-powered lawyer. Now fuck off.

Fuck Me

2010-05-04T18:31:00.003+01:00

I've always believed you shouldn't judge by appearances, but do I even have to tell you who this prick is? Jesus.

Sweet Christ I want to stab him in the eyes even before I've seen his politics...

Oh, and Just One More Thing...

2010-05-03T20:22:00.004+01:00

Hmm. Indeed.

Nearly 17 years after she was evicted from Downing Street, there is no mistaking Baroness Thatcher's star quality. The former Prime Minister, wearing a striking cerise dress rather than her usual blue, was treated like royalty when she dropped into her old home for tea.
All hostilities were apparently forgotten as the current tenant, who has confessed to admiration for her leadership style, welcomed her with a handshake on the doorstep and ushered her inside.

Gordon Brown escorted his old foe around the rooms she occupied for over a decade, as well as a spin around the garden. He took her into her old study, still known as the Thatcher Room, where they discussed the current political situation for almost an hour. ...

After more than two hours, she emerged clutching a small bouquet of flowers given to her by John Brown. His father, the author of Where There Is Greed: Margaret Thatcher and the Betrayal of Britain's Future in 1989, bowed as she left.

How odd. But then, I'm sure that isn't part of a wider trend...

Lady Thatcher, who played a leading role on the world stage for more than 11 years as Premier, is reported to have advised Mr Blair about the correct approach to international meetings and how to handle world leaders. ...

The two politicians are reported to have mutual admiration for each other's strong leadership styles. Earlier this year, Lady Thatcher reportedly described Mr Blair as "a great patriot" and someone who would not "do Britain down".
Meanwhile Mr Blair has always stressed that he will not reverse the main elements of Lady Thatcher's right-wing revolution, amid signs that he too admires some of her achievements.

Ho hum.

Labour's Last Minute Election Push

2010-05-03T19:58:00.005+01:00

Hmm. They're right - Labour hasn't been perfect. I choose to interpret this admission as a sign of strength. You know, similar to this.

But wait, there's something else on the mat. What's this?

Click to enlargerate.

Hmm, good points. As Chief Whip, Nick has had a lot of influence over which bills get through, so maybe I should give this seasoned statesman a chance after all.

Oh.

Election Shitcast LIVE 1!one!!!

2010-04-29T20:44:00.025+01:00

20:44 Highlights so far:
Tory leader complaining that there's not enough industry in this country.
Lib leader wishing that the three parties had more in common.
Brown's what-am-I-like gag fail.

BTW loved that workfare dig, DC. Nice to know that if I'm ever on the dole again I'll have to take whatever shit job they offer me, no matter how ill-suited it is. Cheers.

Oh, and that bit about how the boss of Marksies likes you. I'll definitely file that under relevant. And if I ever want advice on aggregate demand management I'll definitely ask a luxury food shop about it, rest assured.

20:47 GB got one in on the inheritance tax bit. Nice.

20:48 NC now getting GB for the same thing. Nice too, I suppose.

20:50 DC in favour of inheritance. What a shocker.

20:56 Sorry for being slow - they're deliberately doing tit for tat to keep NC out of the debate, aren't they?

20:58 NC 'by all means pay them lots of money but no bonuses'. I agree with the second bit, although the first should obviously read 'by all means have them shot'.

21:00 GB: bankers are massive fucking liars so it's important that we give them money.
DC: who gave our economy to the banks in the first place, eh? Eh?
Indeed, Dave. Who would have done that?

21:03 GB: DC wants to cut Corporation Tax.

DC: I don't understand the EU or the Euro, and I want to make that quite clear.

21:04 NC demanding the bank levy again. Good.

21:05 GB on the Tobin Tax. Also good. But which is best? There's only one way to find out...

... talk, it turns out.

DC: People with no history of debt have trouble getting loans.

Well no shit, Sherlock. Their credit rating will be low because they can't show they can handle debt well. It's called a fucking credit report. Jesus.

21:09 GB: I heart biotech in this region.

What about the NE Gordy? Where's the love? Where's that Centre for Life lovin'?

21:10 DC for some reason no one can fathom manufacturing seems to have been on the decline since the '80s.

If only someone in power had been able to stop them, 'eh? I'm really not sure this argument helps who he thinks it helps.

NC's point about sustainable development was pretty good.

21:12 NC: who'd have thought that bankers would turn out to be a bunch of selfish bastards?

GB: Universities yay *ahem*do not mention funding cuts to pay for Olympics*ahem*

DC: The government should buy things from my friends.

21:16 Question: if you have 9 energy ministers and 2 of them are the same person, how many energy ministers do you have?

21:18 Wow, what a great question from Joe McThicko there. Was there any point to that, other than to pre-empt Littlecock's next column? "Why do you love furrins and not work for us and do exactly what I want despite me not being able to articulate a coherent question, bitchez?"

21:21 Oh, immigration. Great. Because this NEVER comes up. Sweet Christ, why do we keep hearing from whining NIMBY fuckwads at the moment?

21:24 NC hates nasty people with crates of crime, apparently.

21:25 DC: NC can't get away from this 'amnesty' idea.

'Get away from' seems an odd way to phrase 'keeps saying he wants' but maybe that's just me.

DC and GB: the worst thing we can possibly do is behave in a humane fashion now. Because if we do that, we might have to behave well tomorrow, too.

NC: I am proposing an amnesty, but of course I will be treating people abused by the black economy as criminals, so settle down your Daily Fail aneurysm poppingness.

21:33 NC: I want 1-bed flats to house families.

21:35 Oh no, NC di'nt just mention Scotswood, I just KNOW he di'nt. Uh-uh.

21:41 I think I'm losing the will to live.

21:49 DC wants to give teachers a licence to touch kids. Fill in RC joke of your own choosing. Loving DC's 'heads need to be in charge' bollocks. Dear DC, heads are in charge. Ask any staff body whether the SLT have any problems enforcing diktat. What you mean is Gove's insane plan to start treating teachers as badly as the private sector treats its employees.

21:55 re DC and heads. 4,000 pages a year?!!!! eleventy!! How do those poor heads manage?

21:56 DC: I'm standing here for a simple reason - I'm too shit even to run my parents' multi-million pound empire. There will be difficult decisions, but hey, they'll never affect me or anyone I know. Change change change change change change change change change change change change.

21:58 NC: Boo! Just kidding. Change change change change change change change things can only get better it could be you.

21:59 GB: Thanks for coming to my show. We're all individual! Boo! No, really, boo. That's a Tory boo. A big scary boo. If we fuck you next year it's completely different from them fucking you now. *Psst* I don't like being the bad guy here, but those two are just rubbish. *rictus grin*.

22:01 David Dimbleby: *coffin-dry dust cough. Possibly some words. Hard to say.*

Give Me Profits or Give Me Screaming Death

2010-04-24T06:45:00.006+01:00

Airlines really are masters of publicity, aren't they? Fun as it was to watch Ryanair vow to break the law, seemingly because O'Leary seems to think that A Christmas Carol is a cautionary tale about the fiscal dangers of buying a goose, Willie Walsh has confirmed his place in the nation's heart as an anti-Stephen Fry: A National Cunt's Cunt.

Apart from running half-empty flights and his appalling record on industrial relations, for me his low point has to be when he decided that he should have been able to fly his planes wherever he jolly well pleased during the recent volcageddon.

I'm really not sure what he's doing in human society, let alone running an airline - he hates his staff, he hates his passengers and wants them to die, screaming. Wouldn't he be happier in a Carmelite monastery somewhere?

The Final Sign of the Degeneration of Culture

2010-04-21T21:07:00.005+01:00

And so it has come to this.

This is the symbol of people with a vague sense of how to deal with Tories, and probably the only thing that will happen this election at all.

This is an image that has achieved national prominence as a symbol of political engagement and ambition. Just stop to think about that for a second.

Sometimes I long for a more civilised age...

Too Long for Facebook...

2010-04-16T22:04:00.004+01:00

... but at the moment it feels like a Mayfly Golden Age of Telly. Oh CRT-based goodness, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
1) Bestest Doctor Who evar.
2) Ashes to Ashes that doesn't make we want to punch myself in the eyes, ears and throat.
3) New series of Outnumbered.
4) World Championship Snooker.
5) Return of You Have Been Watching (funny despite being the most awkward panel show format before the invention of The Bubble)
6) Miranda Hart is currently on BBC2. OK, it's a fairly specific half-hour window, but you gots to take whats you can gets eh?

The only downside is that Mad Men has finished for the time being. And see last post re: dull men in suits.

Obligatory 'How Do I Vote' Handwringing Wangstfest

2010-04-15T22:56:00.003+01:00

So, now the three suits have spoken, and a nation has shrugged, what have we learned? Three things really:

1) Whatever Nick Robinson says, this was about personalities and not policy. Because (a) there were very few substantial policy differences to discuss, and (b) this was a political beauty pageant, in which 3 men in suits were put up for 61 million people to gawk at, and then be asked what they thought about them (there was even a scrolling tickertape recording a live Ipsus Mori reaction to it, like the world's dullest lie detector test).

2) All three parties (a) hate public servants, and (b) hate them furrins.

3) The stare-eyed bloke who was sitting behind the BBC presenters discussing the real-time polling, looking like he's touching cloth, is probably already a YouTube hero.

Leaving us where exactly? I'm one of those who normally grits my teeth and votes Labour for fear of the other lot, but the MP in my constituency is such a massive cock that if I try to put the cross in the Labour box this time my own arm might rebel against me and punch me in the face for my presumption. Which leaves a choice of two, since TUSC aren't standing here.

CHOICE A: The Greens.
Not perfect but the best of a bad bunch by a long way, in that they have some policies I actively like, rather than am simply prepared to tolerate. Investment in public transport and raising taxation on the wealthy whilst lowering it for the poorest, for example, or abolishing PFI and decreasing class sizes. I'm prepared to ignore some equivocation in the preamble on immigration as the named policies are largely positive if limited, and a fluffily worded manifesto (cf Sarah Lucas' 'New Labour has its back to the wall in the far corner of the last chance saloon'). So inasmuch as anyone since RESPECT can meet this description, they're the ones I'd 'like' to vote for.

CHOICE B: Lib Dems.
Despite having only one policy that I actually like (and the Greens have that one too) - abolishing the ID card scheme - they're still not as bad as the other two in most respects. Their manifesto is quite annoying, lots of giving figures without references to projected receipts and borrowing, pointless pictures littering the document like a desperate financial pages editor, that sort of thing. Plus their policy on Royal Mail is clearly designed to privatise it, which is very shitty.

But here's the familiar old problem, the one faced by every voter with some kind of idea about the way they would like the world to be. Do you vote for the least of all evils or the least worst of the ones who might actually win?

Mark Steel summed this up neatly when commenting on Blair years ago:
'I know that there are those in the Party who still cling to the old-fashioned belief that we should at least aim to do something. Well let me say this: if you persist with this outdated rhetoric, you will lose us the election and we will never be given the opportunity to do nothing!'

If the Lib Dems do well, they won't do very much, but they might not be as bad as the other two will be.

On the other hand, there would be real change if there were a significant Green victory across the country (although there won't be). But, having been involved in fringe politics for a few years now, I know how important it is for the smaller parties for every increase in vote, because it helps when you're building your movement both to know that the support is there and to be able to show to those outside your base that the support is tangibly there.

In short, Meh.

Fixed That For Ya.

2010-04-14T22:53:00.004+01:00

Saw a Tory poster today, but noticed an unaccountable printing error. Never mind, through the power of Microsoft Paint I've resolved the issue.

No need to thank me, I'm happy to help.

What Is Missing.

2010-04-12T08:08:00.005+01:00

This is a picture of the Neasham Cross, a 13th century sculpture held in the vaults of Durham cathedral.
In the centre is Christ, but what I'm interested in is what is around him. At his feet is an eagle. On the right a winged bull, and on the left an angel. Above, you can see, the sculpture has been lost.
What's interesting is that we know what the image would have been at the top of the cross. In Christian iconography, each of the four gospel authors are represented. The eagle is John, the winged bull is Luke and the angel is Matthew.
We know then what is missing from the cross: a winged lion (Mark).

Seeing this caused me to reflect on the nature of 'what is missing' in cases like this. The item presented to us we know to be incomplete, because we know what a cross should look like. The detail about the image on the cross we can also guess, because we know what the other images signify. We can therefore make a very good guess about what the original sculpture was. There is no real doubt about this: everything we know about religious art tells us what is missing.

Yet, no one living can possibly have seen it. In this photograph, taken in the early 20th century, the top piece is missing.

So what is 'something missing'? You probably know the Neasham Cross even less than I do. Until you started reading this, you had no awareness that it was missing from your life, let alone that it too was missing something. More, it is unlikely that you knew what the iconography meant (I certainly didn't until I read the information accompanying the exhibit). So can you be said to be missing it? Yet it seems odd to say the cross itself is missing a piece, since the cross simply is, and has no perceptions of itself.

So what is it that is missing? Physically, a piece of shaped stone. To us, something more complex, which has to do with the way we weave meaning out of the world we are presented with. You don't have to view this as a theological question, as that is only the form of visual language that allows us to know what the image was, in the same way as you can guess the missing word at the end of this .

There is undoubtedly an emotive, intuitive aspect to this notion of missingness. If I lose my favourite pen, or a relative dies, I will feel, to differing degrees, their absence in my life, in a way that is hard to give shape to. In the case of a lost pen, I might miss the balance or the ease of flow of the ink, but ultimately it will not prevent me from writing*. If my daughter dies, I miss not only the person I had experience of but the anticipated future life with them: experiences I could not possibly know and yet can now feel sure would have happened even if I could not say what any of them are.** The emotive aspect of all this would come under the heading of 'grief' or 'loss' but this is merely to label a response to what has happened, and does not help us to understand the notion of missingness itself.

Wittgenstein thought that when we come up against philosophical problems like this it is a result of being 'bewitched' by language itself. All meaning is open, he thought, nothing is hidden. If this is the case, missingness is exactly what it appears to be: part of a language game of possession. The cross ought to be a certain shape and ought to have a particular image, yet it does not. I ought to be writing with my fountain pen but I am writing with a biro. I ought to be going to the park with my daughter but I am going to her funeral. This is an alluring concept - 'what is missing' is when we talk about things in such a way as to leave a definable hole, a gap between what is and what we think and feel to be its ontological imperatives.

Yet all of this leaves us back where we started. What is missing here is an understanding of how we come to have expectations about anything at all. It is possibly the most basic act of human cognition there is and yet it is utterly mysterious.

I feel that there's more to be said on this subject, so I'll probably return to it when I have had a chance to think it over some more. In the mean time, any contributions gratefully received.
---------------------------------------------
*insert own joke here.
** I don't actually have a daughter, which adds another level of oddness to an already confusing situation.

Like Sarah Jane with a Shiny Sixpence*

2010-04-07T18:06:00.004+01:00

I happened to catch Starsuckers on More 4 last night. I don't know how legendary it's got on the intertubes yet, but for those of you camped out at one of the more farflung webtaps, it's a doc that looks at how and why the celebrity industry is maintained and why it's a Bad Thing.

Chances are if you read this that you're already some kind of pinko commie type who is quite happy in your own mind about why celebrity 'n' circuses are a bad combination, but Starsuckers stood out as an entertaining and neat job, looking at how the cult of celebrity is nurtured in childhood, the extent to which public images are manufactured and the way it feeds into churnalism.

To top it all off, it's been the subject of complaints from Bob Geldof and Max Clifford, which has a pleasing symmetry to it (as well as reminding you that if these two are the alpha and omega of celebrity the alphabet must be somewhat adumbrated).

It also has this rather neat ad:

In short the only qualms I had involve the programme's suggestion that celebrity is linked to a biological imperatibe to seek the alpha male and female. I'm always suspicious of Evolutionary Psychology, and I don't think that celebrity is simply about finding an alpha to look up to and get close to. Celebrity is a fully grown cult, a bastard culture, the sum of its social parts - any biological imperative can only be a component of that. Where is the biological imperative for the Priory? Yet it is an essential part of many celebrities' public narratives, recorded by the wandering minstrels** of our times, the 3 am girls. *ahem.* If you see what I mean.

Nevertheless, a smart, funny and insightful documentary.

-----------------------------------------
*cf:

**Wandering Minstrels:

Wow, what a bunch of utter cunts

2010-04-02T14:06:00.003+01:00

Thanks to Don't Panic, here's a bunch of utter bastards. This is what the Tories are really like, and we will all do well not to forget it.

Might be a good idea to bring this up the next time someone tells you the class war is over: seems like one side is still waging it, so why aren't we? TUSC FTW, I say.