Rants Archive 2005
Update (the second)
(Yes, I'm feeling slightly better this evening, thanks).
I regret to report that it seems that Asda and Tesco have caved in
to the loonies now. See the very splendid and worthwhile Mediawatchwatch
site for the latest.
*^%$£$*!!!!
I'm in a crap mood tonight.
I was denied my lie-in this morning by what I can only call a
'grungy' feeling in my guts. Mucus, I think. I don't why it affects me
when I'm trying to grab some extra sleep, but it does. It's Saturday
morning, usually, the only morning I get the chance for some extra Zs,
but the Bank Holiday brought the same result.
Add to this the fact that I don't seem to able to eat big meals
anymore (an unfortunate problem to have at this time of year), and the
fact that my blood sugar levels are through the roof (giving me that
'heavy-legged' feeling), and you can see why I'm rather pissed off with
things at the moment.
Groups of pimples have re-appeared across my shoulder and on my
right hip. And my right eyelid has started twitching, which
makes browsing a right royal pain.
I don't know whether all (or some) of this has to do with the fact
that I haven't used my lightbox since last Friday
morning. I hope so, because I don't want my hypochondria to kick in
with wild imaginings as to what else could be causing all this.
I'm also bored. So bored, in fact, that I started going through
Blogger sites at random, just to see what a lot of total strangers are
up to. I went through them with a large degree of listlessness. There
are an awful lot in Portuguese for some reason. Then there are ones
which are full of photographs (hey! there are special sites you can do
that on, you know! Or, at least, create a different page to put all
those pics of 'modern sculpture' or your bloody dog on!); there are the
ones which have embedded audio/video on them, which leap out at you
before you have any chance of stopping them.
And this is all before you even get to the verbal content of them.
If it's not some hyperactive 14-year-old girl from Wisconsin who's
unable to type anything other than txtspk, it's a whole load of
other Americans who absolutely insist on telling you about
their special relationship with "Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,
in whose blood my sins were washed away" (sounds pervy to me,
buddy); or it's the wet-behind-the-ears-and-around-the-crotch college
Republican who insists that Bush is surrounded by a governmental
machine which has been infiltrated by red Islamic vegetarian Democrats
who are planning on assassinating the little monkeyprick and replacing
him with a world government under the control of the Illuminati.
Well, I suppose freedom of expression is indivisible, and it takes
all sorts to make a world (but just a few sorts to destroy it). But all
this did nothing to elevate my mood. It merely bore in on me ever more
firmly the realisation that things have got much worse in 2005 if you
believe in the right to dissent. Here, in the so-called United Kingdom,
peacefully protesting against the Government's policies can get you
arrested and sentenced under anti-terrorism laws. That same
Government is hell-bent on introducing not only an ID card system which
will be hideously expensive and deeply dangerous, but now wants to add
systems which will be able (at least, in theory) to track everyone's
motor journeys at any time.
In the equally soi-disant United States, the authorities
can spy on you, tap your phones, intercept your mail and trawl through
your private life without a warrant because some DC shyster has told
Bush he has the power to authorise it and that that magnificent
document The Constitution is "just a goddam piece of paper".
You can have your ass hauled halfway across the continent to be thrown
in solitary on suspicion of being active in environmental campaigns,
and have corrupt prosecutors throw charges at you which carry mandatory
minima of thirty years in maximum security; charges which they
know they can't prove, but will use against you to try to get you to
cough to something (plea bargaining must be the most odious
practice ever introduced into the legal procedures of an allegedly free
country - it reduces justice to a mere commodity to be haggled over).
So, as we stand on the threshold of 2006, the same crooks, bunglers
and murderers are in power in Washington, London, Moscow and Beijing;
they are surrounded by the same amoral chancers from ideological
axe-grinding cliques and avaricious corporations, and the media are
still stuffed with people who defame the honourable trade of journalism
by merely regurgitating the vomit which they themselves are fed by that
self-same élite, rather than doing what they are supposed
to do: question power and the powerful on the real issues
facing our world, and keep questioning the bastards until you get the
truth out of them. Instead, anyone deemed 'unsound' to those in power
is either silenced by being denied access to the media; or, where such
a tactic would be too obvious (as in the cases of, say, Noam Chomsky or
Harold Pinter), reported in such a way which encourages the great
publics of our lands to think that these few voices are 'brilliant
minds, of course, but dreadfully wrong'.
And so it goes. Indeed, so it has already gone. We are
facing assaults on our liberties which are as dangerous as the assaults
from the same sources on the ongoing viability of our existence as
societies and as a species. We are all encouraged to talk about
something else, to think the same as everyone else and consume
ourselves to extinction.
What is worst of all is the feeling that there is no pulling out of
this dive into the Land That Reason Forgot. Who (singular or plural)
will save us from our zombification? Hard to see. The official
political opposition in our respective countries is either enfeebled by
its own cowardice or stymied by its own desperate desire for power for
its own sake, and hence trying to outflank the governing party on
exactly the same extreme. In DC, in Westminster, in the Duma
and the People's Assembly, the cry goes up: "We will do the same,
but we'll manage it better!".
Happy new year.
Update
I've had a reply from Sainsbury's. It contains the following
paragraph:
"Our entertainment range is particularly important at Christmas
and we take many factors into consideration when deciding which titles
to stock. Ultimately, the most important factor is what our customers
want. In response to some to some of the feedback we have received, we
have decided not to sell the Jerry Springer DVD's this Christmas."
I can't say that I'm impressed by this. Apart from the
mental-fundyists, has any of the feedback shown that people really did not
want this DVD on Sainsbury's shelves? Does Sainsbury's only listen to
that 'some' of the feedback they think will lead to bible-spouting
pickets outside their stores if they don't cave in to it?
Sorry, Sainsbury's, this just won't do. Trouble is, I'm a bit
stymied for supermarkets now. Of the ones in our area, Tesco is
throttling smaller outlets in town centres through its acquisitions
policy; Asda are owned by the despicable WalMart, and the likes of Kwik
Save, Lidl & Aldi are far too common, m'dears. And the
nearest Co-op supermarket is probably about fifteen miles away.
Ah, decisions, decisions! Isn't ethical consumerism wonderful?
You Can't Buy. Better?
I've always tried to hold the view that anyone is entitled
to hold any opinion whatsoever on whatever subject, and
be able to express that opinion peacefully, be it in words,
music or images. It doesn't matter whether I agree with the views
expressed or not; even at its most venal, it's nothing other than
enlightened self-interest. After all, if I tried to stop someone else
expressing their views, they would feel justified in trying to do the
same back to me, and I'm not bloody well having that.
Similarly with things like banning books, plays, movies, songs,
whathaveyou. What is out there must remain out there. Yes, even
Mein
Kampf. I've read it. Quite, quite barking for the most part. But
I credit most of my fellow humans with the intelligence and good sense
to see that for themselves. The only people who could possibly be taken
in by it are those already highly susceptible to its twisted reasoning.
The other problem with censorship, as I see it, is twofold:
1) Who do you get to do it?
2) How do you get them to stop?
1) has usually been dealt with in the UK by handing it over to
various groups of that section of our class-bound society known
generically as The Great And The Good. This almost invariably comprises
people who went to the same schools, the same universities, and into
the same sorts of career. That this system has worked just about
tolerably well is down to nothing more than a degree of
conscientiousness on their part, rather than anything codified in
statute or guideline. This means that when they do get it hideously
wrong, there's little you can do except write to the papers or to your
MP. This sometimes works, but it's a pretty hit-and-miss way of doing
it.
In less happy lands, however, 1) is usually seen as the duty (or
pleasure) of the State, and is carried out entirely in line with the
political exigencies of the day. In such countries, protesting doesn't
do much good, unless you have a taste for martyrdom (which would be
pointless anyway, because your plight would not be known by the public
for precisely the same reason).
2) follows on from 1), in that wedges can have very thin ends
indeed, and you have no idea how thick they can get. It can be all very
well if a body (or group of bodies) is set up to make sure that, say,
hard-core pornography does not become available to minors. It becomes a
problem if that same organisation then indulges in what, in the modern
trend for discordant language, is called 'function creep', and decides
that fully-grown adults shouldn't have access to it either.
This is perhaps an extreme example, but the tendency of groups charged
with controlling what we may see, read or hear to quietly expand their
remit is an observable fact, and the manner of their doing so may be so
subtle, so gradual, that by the time they've done it, it is a fait
accompli and cannot be stopped, let alone be reversed.
What is more dangerous still is when these bodies come under the
effective domination of people with ideological axes to grind, be they
political or (in this supposedly post-ideological age) religious. Worse
even than that is when such people band together outside of
that formal structure and campaign (often with a sound volume way out
of proportion to their membership or public support) to censor whatever
it is that they are offended by. The sheer fanaticism of such people is
difficult to counter effectively except by naked ridicule, and that's
not always possible if the corporatised media live in fear of reprisal
from these groups (there's a passage in Heinlein's Stranger In A
Strange Land which describes this process).
Which is why I find this
story particularly worrying.
I mean, I don't particularly want to buy the DVD anyway (leaving
aside the teensy-weensy technical difficulty of not even having a DVD
player), but I certainly wouldn't want to stop anyone else from doing
so. I certainly don't see why a tiny bunch of bigoted zealots should
stop them in any case.
It's bad enough having politicians censoring things without your grocer
trying it on as well, so the following has just gone from Mental Towers
to Sainsbury's:
I note with concern a report in The Independent
(http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article331082.ece) which
says that your company has withdrawn the above item from sale under
pressure from a small group of religious activists.
I'd be grateful if you could confirm the following:
a) that the DVD has been withdrawn from sale or display in your
stores,
b) that this was as a result of complaints from the organisation
calling itself "Christian Voice",
c) That only a handful of complaints was actually received.
If any of the above are totally or substantially correct, please
could you explain why your decision to remove this particular item was
taken in the face of so few complaints, and those from such a tiny
group of people of known extreme views? Would you give in so quickly to
such a small group of activists for any other cause?
Does your company intend to rescind this decision and return to
stocking this DVD, or does it intend to continue to accede to the
unreasonable demands of a tiny group which is seemingly dedicated to
preventing the vast majority of us from making a free choice?
I think it only fair to state that if this decision is not
reversed, I will find it very difficult to continue shopping at
Sainsbury's, as I do not believe in supporting censorship of most
sorts, but especially this kind.
Thank you for your attention.
We should always bear in mind that from controlling what we are
allowed to read, hear or watch, it is only half a step further on to
controlling what we say. From there, it is only half a step further on
to controlling what we think...
...and the next step down that line leaves us standing at the gates
of the gulag and the gas chamber.
I'll let you know what, if anything, I get back from Sainsbury's.
Ring Out!...Out! Out! OUT!
Mobile phones.
I don't have one.
I wouldn't have one if you paid me (or, at least, not unless the
sum were sufficiently large: in which case, I'd have one but leave it
switched off all the time).
For most people, what the hell is the point of having one? Unless
you're a medical professional on twenty-four-hour call, or on a waiting
list for a transplant, I fail to see any reason for them. All they do
is annoy other people.
As I don't drive (and that's another category of the wilfully
self-'disadvantaged' I'm happy to be in), I travel a lot by bus. In the
last couple of years, I don't think I've undertaken a single journey,
however brief, which has not been cut across by the ringtone, that
latter-day crime against musical sensibilities. This is then followed
by an apparently obligatory thirty-five seconds during which the callee
delves through her (it's usually a 'her') pockets, handbag or even an
entire week's shopping to find the wretched instrument and stop the
racket.
(It's funny - that is to say, not funny - how ringtones
lodge in your head. Even the most innocuous of melodies can turn into a
sworn tormentor in just a couple of hearings. Hear it in the morning,
it's stuck between your ears for the rest of the day, frequently in an
environment where there's no chance of being able to get to, say, a
compilation of classic death-metal tracks, in order to flush the
bastard thing out).
One is then treated to one side of someone else's conversation
conducted at a volume which suggests that the person at the other end
is working in a steel plant, as shouting seems to be the only method of
getting the message through.
The conversations themselves (or, at least, the fifty per cent of
them which are all too clearly audible) are not exactly of global
import either, being largely of the "Where are you?" "I'M ON THE
BUS!!!" variety, or the semi-tantalising "I LEFT IT ON THE
TABLE IN THE KITCHEN!!!" sub-genre (leaving one to speculate as to
what, exactly, has been left thereupon: her cheque book? Her Dutch Cap?
What, then?)
To this list of offences must be added the ones committed by those
who seem to have totally missed the point of the term 'mobile phone'
(i.e. the first part), and who wander off leaving it on the table, in
their coat pocket (said coat being draped over the back of their
chair), on their desks. All of which leaves the rest of us to either
put up with the dreaded bingly-bingly-beep time and time again, or to
be brave and answer it ourselves. I have a colleague who used to be
terrible for this: in fact, one week I'm sure I spent more time in
conversation with his wife than he did.
And this is all for...well, for what, exactly? Rather like
the way in which it has come to be the accepted wisdom that having more
and more television channels is far better than having just a handful,
it has become gospel that the mobile phone is a Good Thing. It's
promoters claim that ease of communication is a boon in these
hurry-scurrying times. But, as with television, you don't get better
communication, only a damn sight more of it, and of an ever-lowering
quality.
Besides which, why would anyone in their right mind (apart from the
very rare categories I cited at the top of this rant) want to
be easily contactable at any time? I know that I certainly don't. Given
that nearly all the calls I take on my landline at home are from people
trying to sell me things (Telephone Preference Service
membership notwithstanding), it's a positive relief to know that 'they
can't catch me'.
This is not to say that you can't have a little fun with them. A
few years ago, I had to have a mobile phone in work so that I could be
contacted in an emergency if away from my desk. The phone was returned
after a couple of years because it was never needed. It's not as if
it's a big building in any case. But I and two similarly-equipped
colleagues were having a conflab in a distant part of the building one
morning, when one of us (not altogether wisely) announced that he was
going for a pee. I and the other sysadmin gave each other a meaningful
look as our co-worker went in through the door of the Gents. We
estimated the time it would take him to get into the cubicle, lower his
fly and let go...then we dialled his number.
He questioned our parentage after that, I don't understand why.
But this is the tiniest of boons conferred by these wretched
devices, and doesn't begin to make up for the annoyance not only of the
mobile phone itself, but of the arrogant, self-regarding rudeness
of so many who have them. Nothing, it seems, not even the most
fundamental social rules, must be allowed to come between them and
their tedious conversations about spare socks or dorky boyfriends.
Which is why I salute the actor Richard Griffiths for his
insistence that a woman whose phone had gone off three times
during the same performance leave the theatre. Mr Griffiths did the
same thing last year, when some tosser's phone rang no fewer than six
times in the course of a play.
(Read the full story here).
I just wish I had the sang froid, the nerve, the courage,
to insist that one of these tormentors leave the bus
immediately...while it is still in motion at about twenty five miles
per hour.
Failing that, why haven't they developed portable blanking equipment
which renders all space within a radius of, say, thirty metres,
impenetrable to signals? I'd buy it like a shot.
More Slipped Discs
I've remarked before (see Grrr²!! on 25/06/05 below) on the
ever-increasing desperation of multinational 'entertainment'
corporations to protect their outmoded business models against the
reality of technological development.
Well, now another of these dinosaurs has fallen into the tar-pit.
Sony/BMG has dropped itself into a potentially bottomless pit of
poo by the use of a form of 'copy protection' on many of its audio CDs
which is not only seriously intrusive, but could totally screw up your
PC.
Read about it here.
The only recourse we mere 'consumers' (or people, as I
still think of us in my unreconstructed commy-liberal way) have is to
boycott Sony/BMG's products. Luckily, there is comprehensive
information at the corporation's own
website which tells us who and what we need to avoid.
(It must be admitted, though, that not all the artists featured
have their CDs deliberately corrupted by the corporation's stupidity.
Indeed, some artists who have had their 'product' faffed about with in
this way are pretty pissed off about it. Check, as they say, your local
listings.)
A better idea is to avoid buying any 'copy-protected' CDs at all.
Ever.
Better still, write to the corporation in question and tell them
that you won't buy any of their releases until they stop being
so thuggish, arrogant and just plain bloody stupid.
***STOP PRESS!***
Sony/BMG seem to have turned chicken, at least for the time being.
See here.
A Message To The People Of Iraq
This is the 'democracy' Mr Blair wants you to have:
82-year-old Mr Walter Wolfgang is dragged from his seat at the
Labour Party's annual conference after telling Foreign Secretary Straw
that he was talking nonsense about Iraq. Mr Wolfgang, a party member
since the time when Tony Blair was just figuring out how to wank, was
later prevented from returning to the conference hall by the police
using powers granted under the Terrorism Act.
Another delegate (the chairman of a constituency Labour party) who went
to Mr Wolfgang's assistance was also attacked by these thugs and
forcibly ejected.
Luckily for us all, this was all captured on camera and the footage
shown around the world (even on the BBC!). This led Labour Party
chairman Ian McCartney (a man who is the living embodiment of the
philosopher Hobbes' description of human existence, in that he is
"nasty, brutish [...] and short") to give a humiliating apology to Mr
Wolfgang (but not to the other victim), and for Blair himself
to give a completely insincere and unconvincing apology from the
conference platform.
In other developments, Labour MP Austin Mitchell had his camera seized
by police and the images on it deleted, and delegates were prevented
from taking sweets into the venue lest they be used as missiles.
All this in the name of 'security'. Whose?
We now quite clearly have a government of corporate puppets, with an
ingrained Blackshirt mentality, surrounding a leader full of Messianic
delusions standing at the heart of a huge personality cult. This may
have given Mr Wolfgang a touch of déja vu - he came here
in 1937 to escape something similar in Germany.
Elsewhere, six peaceful protestors have been found guilty of
'aggravated trespass' for handing out leaflets protesting against a
business conference held at Lancaster University last year; a
conference which was attended by corporations with very dubious
business ethics (weapons systems manufacturers BAE and pollution
specialists Shell, for example). The University (where the six
activists are students) is headed by a man with no experience of
running a university, and so presumably with no notion of the key part
that universities have to play as bulwarks against the erosion of the
freedom to dissent.
More details on the case of the 'George Fox 6' here.
This is the 'freedom' Mr Bush wants you to have:
Anti-war campaigner Cindy Sheehan (who lost her son to Bush's
illegal war on your country) is arrested for addressing a peaceful
protest outside the White House, whose illegitimate resident refuses to
answer her questions about the real reasons for his war on a
defenceless country with a strategic location close to Israel which
just happens to be sitting on huge oil reserves.
Cindy Sheehan has asked Bush for a meeting many times, having conducted
a protest outside Bush's bunker in Crawford, Texas during the alleged
president's lengthy summer vacation there. Still Bush refuses,
prefering instead to send out one of his goons to make an anodyne
statement to the corporate media, or encouraging vicious personal
attacks on her through his contacts and supporters in those same media.
And just to think, people of Iraq: all this could be yours
too if you'd only stop fighting to remove illegal occupiers from your
sovereign territory! I can't imagine why you don't give in right away...
Kissing The Rings
I want to be one of the first to say, "Sod the London Olympics".
To do so is, of course, to lay myself open to accusations of
killjoyhood and spoilsportism, emanating either from those whose
intellectual horizons spread no further than the nearest tabloid
headline or TV hype-fest; or from those who have a vested interest (be
it political or financial) in this Triumph Of The Shill.
I don't care. I've already found myself, in the nine hours between
the news from Singapore and sitting down to type this, having to bite
my tongue, faced as I have been with the cooings and jubilations of
those who are easily taken in.
For who, exactly, will benefit from all this?
Oh, says the Blair regime, this is a great chance for the
reinvigoration of the East End of London. Yes! Let's move all those poor
people out of the communities they've grown up in, scatter them to the
four corners of Greater London or even beyond and pull down their homes
with the assurance (nothing on paper, mind) that, once the athletes
have all gone home, they will be able to move in to brand-new,
all up-to-date accomodation!
Except, of course, that once the Olympic Village is vacated by its
intended guests, some high-sounding reason ('Financial prudence'
for example, or 'It would be irresponsible of us not to try to
recoup our investment') will be found to hand all this
infrastructure over to property speculators with close (but largely
unprovable) links to the government of the day, who will then sell the
apartments off for ludicrous amounts of money to members of the Smart
Set who have more money than sense. The 'natives' of the East End will never
go home again, and the social cleansing of yet another part of London
will be accomplished.
Property prices have already started to rise after the
announcement, pricing more and more people out of homes near their
places of work, thus forcing more of them to commute ever-longer
distances, causing ever-worsening pollution. Perhaps we may see a new
event in subsequent Olympiads: the 50 metre asthmatic hack? Although
the competitors would all be disqualified because their nebulisers
would contained banned substances.
And while we're on the subject of transport, how is a city (and a
country) which has perhaps the worst-developed and worst-resourced
public transport system in the developed world going to cope? Perhaps a
variant on the bus lane principle; except that, in this case, the
cordoned-off lanes and specially-favourable traffic signals will be
reserved for the nobs of the IOC, their corporate owners and possibly
even the athletes.
What financial benefit will there be for those who are not within
that forever-charmed circle which surrounds Greater London, or who do
not have property or businesses in convenient locations? Studies of
past Games have suggested very strongly that the supposed benefits are
nothing like as substantial as they are made out to be in advance
(unless you're within the Circle, natch). Nonetheless, it is inevitable
that our taxes, already misdirected from what we need to what the
élite want, will be used to prop the whole enterprise up.
For propping up will be required, make no mistake: the Greek
government all but bankrupted the country to host the last Games;
Montréal is still paying off its debts nearly thirty
years later. Don't ask the corporate 'sponsors', the Nikes, Cokes (as
in 'Cola', rather than Colombian Marching Powder, although...) and
Microsofts, to pay: they will take their moment in the light, take the
cash, and take off.
So it'll be left to the general Mugginses to fund the shortfall,
both beforehand and for years afterwards. After all, this is a prestigious
project, and cannot be allowed to fail, even if it means putting
the entire population in hock for a generation or more. Yes! So what if
our schools are in crumbling buildings? Who cares if people have to
wait eighteen months for an MRI scan on their fractured skull? This is important,
fergawdsake! We simply mustn't pass up the chance of showing
the world how tacky we can be, darlings!
And, heaven forbid that anyone should protest against all this. The
coming of this Festival Of Twisted Priorities will no doubt be used as
yet another excuse for the current regime's determination to bar-code
the entire population of the U.K. ("We must have a Safe Olympics!").
In any case, as we have seen in Scotland in the last few days, police
will be encouraged to break heads, certain in the knowledge that the
corporate media (themselves slavering at the possibilities involved in
being able to plaster 'sport' on every page, not just the
front) will report on what a wonderful job the Brave Boys In Blue are
doing to keep us safe from dangerous anarchists and extremists.
The letters and opinion columns are already filling up with the
saccharine exudations of those who are naturally delighted with
the outcome, especially as it allows the True Brit to take a break from
his customary occupations of whining, whinging and mingeing and indulge
once more in the national sport: celebrating the Shafting Of The French.
And all this as a result of a decision taken, after the usual
procedure of cajolery, politicking and outright bribery, by an
organisation which, as the American writer Dave Zirin
has aptly said, has contained so many ex-fascists that a photograph of
its meetings would look like an out-take from footage of the
Nürnberg Trials.
In case you're still not sure, ask yourself this: if you had to
choose, where would you have preferred to have been in the summer of
2012? Paris? Or Walthamstow?
Sound And Fury, Signifying Nothing...
I'm spending the day avoiding Live 8, that festival of
pointlessness playing at a corporate-sponsored venue near you right
now!
For pointless it certainly is: it will change precisely nothing.
The problems of poverty and starvation are not things which can be put
right by a bunch of has-beens (McCartney, P Diddy, etc.) and
never-will-bes (erm...) plugging their collective back catalogue while
thinking that what they're doing is so worthy, so kewl.
The problems are to do with the way in which our world is ordered;
where wealthy Western corporations (and the governments they own and
control) rip the under-developed nations off for their raw materials,
keep wretched dictatorships in power and then, when the need becomes so
great that it can't even be ignored by our corporate media, offer those
self-same victims 'aid'.
But this 'aid' comes with strings attached: in order to qualify for
it, the countries in need must agree to a programme of 'restructuring'
which involves 'liberalising' their economies. In other words, opening
their internal markets up so completely that those same Western
corporations can dump their surplus production on them, thus destroying
those countries' indigenous businesses, which in turn makes it more
difficult for those countries to export to the wealthy world; and
'liberalisation' also means the compulsory privatisation of public
services, as it has in South Africa, where the charges made by the
newly-'liberalised' water companies can no longer be afforded by the
poorest, so leading them to have to resort to water from infected
wells. Hence widespread cholera outbreaks in the townships. Such a
triumph for capitalism - I doubt if that even happened under Apartheid.
Have we heard St Bono of Arselick (The Prince Of Celtic Bollocks)
or Lord Geldof sounding off about this? If they've mentioned it, it
hasn't been reported; ergo, given the fact that the official media hang
on their every word, they haven't said it. Instead, we have Bono and
Bob simpering over two proto-war-criminals, telling them how wonderful
they are and posing for photo-opportunities with their heroes; and how
that cartel of cretins calling itself the G8 are "the stars of the
show".
It is the policies of the G8, their commercial backers, and other
unrepresentative bodies such as the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund which have put (and kept) the poor poor for two
generations or more (in the over-developed world as well as Africa,
Latin America and South Asia). Why expect them to reverse the habits of
decades and do something which will really work now?
Even the protests are becoming worthless, as the self-styled Make
Poverty History campaign has the requisite politicians and B-list
celebs and luvvies on board: march alongside that wonderful Gordon
Brown, wear white to show how pure you are, don't criticise
capitalism and don't mention the War!! The result is the street
equivalent of the official media reporters 'embedded' with the
occupying forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere: nothing of worth
is said, nothing of worth is even allowed to be hinted at. And, in the
meantime, the real protests, by groups and individuals not on
the golden leash of official approval, can be marginalised and go
unreported (except when convenient, when the protestors get fed up of
the obtuseness and pettiness of officials and police, and decide that
they will not be pushed any further: then they can be written off as 'agitators',
'anarchists' and 'fringe elements' who are there simply
to riot).
All worthless. Totally worthless. A sideshow, nothing more.
So, who's going to have the nerve to tell the safely 'embedded'
little tin gods of pop ('Sir' Bob, 'Sir' Paul, 'Sir' Elton and - it
surely can't be long delayed - 'Sir' Bono) to shut the fuck up
and, if they're really so concerned, to try to storm the
Gleneagles Hotel and tell a few firm truths to those who have the power
to improve the lives of billions, but choose not to do so?
Grrr²!!
It's been a week for being generally pissed off, chums.
First off, I bought (through a friend of friends, who happens to
work in a record shop somewhere) a copy of the new Kraftwerk live
double-CD "Minimum-Maximum". I got it last Friday week but,
what with one thing and another, it was Sunday before I could take the
time to listen to it. So into my hi-fi (am I being unintentionally retro
in calling it that?) it went.
Listened to Disc 1. Sublime stuff. "Autobahn" sounds just
as I guess Ralf & Florian always hoped it would sound live. "Neon
Lights" was just breathtaking - always one of my favourites, but
this was something special.
In went Disc 2. About three minutes into "Trans Europe Express"
(the second track), it started looping back about five seconds, and
kept doing it.
Thinking that I'd got marks on the disc's playing surface (it was a
humid day, and I was sweating a bit), I cleaned the disc using a cloth
and liquid for the purpose. Put the disc back in. Nope, same problem. I
even resorted to the tried-and-trusted method favoured by the late,
great John Peel; that is, I wiped it on my trouser leg. Still no joy.
I went to see if would play on my PC. And found that it wouldn't
play. Or, at least, it would not play in Winamp, WMP, Real or any of
the media player programs I have. Reason? EMI had decided to
'copy-protect' the release. The only way it would play in my PC would
be for me to install some crappy media player from the disc itself, and
then listen to it in greatly reduced sound quality (128kbps).
Your Judge's wig hit the window at this point. I mean, by what
frigging right does a record company have to sell me a product, and
then completely dictate the way I can use it? If I buy an album, I want
to listen to it in the player of my choice, using the hardware
of my choice, and via the software of my choice. If
someone tries to deny me that, then they are interfering with my
rights: to charge me the same amount as for a proper, legitimate
copy for the privilege is just...how can I put it...taking the piss.
Especially when the record company (and the cartel of which it is a
prominent member) keeps trying to claim the moral high ground over
file-sharing, disc-copying, and so on, thus implying that it views us
all merely as potential criminals who must be protected from their
depravity by having ludicrous restrictions placed on their freedom to
do what they will with what they have paid good money for!
And it's not as if these measures actually work in any
case: the file-sharing networks are full of this album already, and
it's only been out less than three weeks.
A snotty e-mail is on its way to someone at EMI, even though I've
now got hold of a proper copy (catalogue number 560 6112, if
you need to know).
********
I spent a large part of last weekend composing a letter to my MP.
You see, the Second Reading of the Identity Cards Bill is coming up in
the House of Commons on Tuesday (28th), and I wanted to try to dissuade
him from voting in favour of it again, like he did at least twice in
the last parliament (the Bill fell due to lack of time).
The letter ended up being 8½ pages of quite detailed
argument, which I won't go into right here, but you can see the broad
thrust of my argument here.
Having polished it as much as I could, I posted it on Monday.
I'll say this for him, his response was quick. I received his reply
on Wednesday. In one (poorly-typed - I think his secretary must have
been in the bog, and he did it himself) paragraph, he managed to score
in the high nineties on the Missing-The-Point-Ometer. The gist of it
was that he's still going to vote for it.
Well, the gist of me is that I am still not going to vote
for him. If I'm still permitted to vote by then, of course...
********
I mentioned elsewhere
that
I'd
bought a digital camera at long last. And very nice it is, too.
I'm still getting to grips with it, but one thing which is annoying
is the way that the bloody thing devours batteries. I have to
remember not to use the TFT screen unless I have to, but
sometimes I have no choice.
Yes, I do have a set of rechargeable batteries (NiMH), but
they're of the lowest power rating (1300 mAh), so need removing and
recharging after only a few pictures. I went to buy a set of 2600mAh
ones on Thursday, but they were out of stock.
********
This week, we serfs were told that the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha-von
Battenburg clan (a group calling itself 'The Royal Family')
cost us about £35million a year to keep. Yes, and the
rest of it, because the costs of 'security' weren't included, nor the
parts of their luxurious lifestyle whose expense are buried in the
vaults of various government departments.
And yet there are still people who practically orgasm when
these inbred parasites pop up to grace them with their presence. You
can find a lot of these people in the media: how else can you explain
the fact that ITN's main early-evening news bulletin the other night
not only gave a whole nine freaking minutes to William
Windsor's graduation ceremony, but made it the lead item?! OK,
in one sense, good luck to the boy; at least he seems to be more
intelligent than his father, grandfather and his screwed-up changeling
kid brother combined, but even boys from impoverished backgrounds get
degrees, without having had the advantages of the 'best' schools that
privilege can buy.
And supporters of all this cack are exactly the sort of
people who rail against European institutions for being 'undemocratic',
'elitist' and 'out of touch'.
********
Hating hot, humid weather as I do, I was really looking forward to
the thunderstorms we had been promised by virtually every forecast for
Friday. There's nothing better than that clean, fresh feeling in the
air after a good storm. If you haven't been struck by lightning in the
meantime of course, in which case I'm told that the combined odours of
ozone and scorched flesh can detract from one's pleasure somewhat.
So, before leaving for work on Friday morning, I made sure that
everything was unplugged and disconnected: the modem and microfilters
for the PC, all aerials, and everything electrical. All that was left
switched on and connected was the fridge, for obvious reasons.
The result? Nada, nitchevo, zilch, nowt, sod all. Not a
flash, not a rumble; just a couple of heavy showers, which didn't do
much to ease things.
You can't even rely on the weather to be bad, now...
Nothing Has Changed...
A general, end-of-week whinge round-up for you, chums:
Item: The unrest in Uzbekistan has stirred Jack
Straw, the UK's Foreign Secretary and War-Criminal-In-Waiting to a
hand-wringing response in which he states that it is clear that the
Uzbeks want freedom and democracy.
Well, maybe they do, but if so then it has been obvious for quite some
time. Like, during the time when the UK's ambassador to Tashkent, Craig
Murray, was reporting back to London on the vicious abuses of the
Karimov regime, the torture and killing of dissidents, and the fact
that 'evidence' obtained by the regime's goon squads was being used by
'Her Majesty''s Government as reasons for keeping a whole load of
Muslim men in indefinite imprisonment without trial (or even charge) in
maximum-security prisons and psychiatric hospitals in England.
Craig Murray's reward for speaking out was to be the victim of a
campaign of smear and innuendo by Straw and his department which
eventually forced Mr Murray out of the diplomatic service.
(See his
website for further details).
Furthermore, the US regime has expressed its 'concern' over events in
Andijan. Not 'concern' over the shooting down of unarmed men and women
in the streets, however; just 'concern' that some alleged 'Islamic
terrorists' had been sprung from jail during the unrest. Karimov is, of
course, a trusted ally of the Bush-shites; the US taxpayer subsidises
his terror to the tune of millions of dollars, much of which goes in to
'training' the security services. The US claims that they are teaching
the thugs 'less repressive security techniques', but that's just code
for 'types of torture which don't leave so much of a visible mark'. The
US now have a military base in Uzbekistan, so they are eminently
grateful to Karimov. So much so, in fact, that they will ignore
brutality which, in more convenient circumstances, would lead to
threats of invasion or bombing from the chickenshit White House.
Item: We expect hypocrisy from politicians. That
seems to be the only thing they're capable of producing successfully
nowadays. Here
we have the sight of Hazel Blears, the curiously-named 'Minister For
Antisocial Behaviour' (I would have hoped that she would be against
antisocial behaviour but, quite frankly, nothing surprises me anymore),
wanting young people (specifically young people, note) who are
undertaking community-based sentences to be forced to wear special
uniforms to mark them out to the gawpers who might see them.
Well, that's a great way to reintegrate minor young offenders
into the community, isn't it? And that'll really reduce the
likelihood of them becoming further alienated and reoffending! Way to
go, Hazey baby! After all, they do it in the good ole' Yoo-Ess-Of-Ay,
so it must be worth copying heedlessly over here, mustn't it?
Oh, Dreary Bleary does admit that it's 'very hard' to generalise about
why parents are failing to control their children - and then goes on to
generalise. "Partly, it's time...we have all got less of it".
Tell it like it is, sweetie.
In particular, tell it to those parents who both have to work to ensure
that the family can get by, because this government has overseen the
widening of the gap between the hyper-rich and the rest of us in the
last eight years, and doesn't intend doing a thing to reverse it -
after all, "You can't tax the rich: if you do, they'll leave the
country." (A. Blair, 2001).
Those same parents are often the ones who also have to work long hours
because their employers insist upon it, probably having the condition
written in to their contract of employment. They can do this because
the 'business-friendly' Blairistas are fighting tooth-and-nail to keep
the UK's absurd exemption from the European Union's limitation on
working hours, claiming that such a limit would 'hurt business'. Any
business or enterprise which can only survive because its workforce are
working 50 to 60-hour weeks is almost certainly run by people who can't
run a business. But, then again, this is what they do in America, so it
has to be the way forward, hasn't it?
If parents weren't forced into a long-hours work culture, then they'd
be at home longer (and more effectively) to supervise their children,
wouldn't they? Case, as they say, solved.
Item: Far from 'listening' as he claimed to be
doing when he stood, shell-shocked, before the media the day after his
little empire started to come apart earlier this month, it is quite
clear that Anthony Charles Lynton Blair QC MP, has no intention of
doing so. If he had, he would surely have thought again about
reintroducing the ID Cards Bill to Parliament so soon afterwards. Yet
it seems that, even with a sharply-reduced majority, he is determined
to press
on with a scheme which has already more than surpassed the original
estimates as to its cost, will be a severe threat to our basic
liberties and, moreover, simply won't do the things the government
claims it will.
(Go to No2ID's
website for the full background).
This comes a couple of days or so after a shopping mall in Kent stated
its intention to ban all people of a certain age (i.e. under 25) from
entering their premises if wearing a 'hoodie' or a baseball cap.
Now, I don't have any problem with the principle of such a ban.
But only on the grounds that such garments tend to make their wearer
(especially at that age) look a proper prick. Using people's clothing
as the sole determinant of their likely character or morals, however,
is petty and piddling. What's more, nothing seems be put in place to
stop the shops in that mall from selling those very same items.
Presumably you can buy them, but if you attempt to try them on in the
shop, some hired thug in a uniform the wrong size for him will sling
you out.
But who cares if you can make it seem as if you're doing
something? Yes! Let's have CCTV on every street! Let's all be
scanned! Let's all have bar-codes, without which we are liable to
prosecution and imprisonment! Let's allow half-cock shopping centre
managers to make sweeping judgements on the basis of total ignorance!
After all, it'll make us all feel safer, won't it?
Won't it?
Item: And finally, Esther...For years I've been
buying Green & Black's organic chocolate. OK, as I'm diabetic, you
might say that this is a foolhardy course of action. But I need an
emergency supply of carbohydrate around the place, and why not enjoy
myself at the same time as staving off hypoglycaemic coma? Besides
which, it has a far greater proportion of cocoa fat in it than that
sickly, over-sugared, vegetable-fat-laden mess that the Brits insist is
'real chocolate'.
So it came as very sad news to me to read that Green & Black's have
sold
out. Worse still, they have sold out to Cadbury Schweppes, one of
the prime purveyors of that corrupted abortion which is known by our
European neighbours, euphemistically, as 'English chocolate'.
Not only do I deprecate the very idea of yet another product
being bought up by a huge, multi-national monster (especially one with
close links to the Coca Cola Corporation. Why? See here for why), but it's also
worrying to consider the possibility of Green & Black's ethical
trade policy becoming, sooner or later, the victim of
'rationalisation', 'vertical integration', or whatever the 'in' phrase
of management-speak might be at the time.
The Chief Executive of CS, one Todd Stitzer (an American - can you see
a theme here, boys and girls?), claims that the agreements G&B has
with cocoa farmers in Belize are perfectly safe because, "Our
businesses share a passion for ... ethical values".
These, presumably, are the same ethical values outlined in a letter
Cadbury Schweppes sent to fair-trade campaigners just one year ago,
when it refused to accept the principle of fixing the prices it pays to
cocoa farmers, claiming that, "the best way forward is to
liberalise the market".
Yeah, in the same way that raw material producers in Latin America,
Africa and Asia have all been screwed by the same 'liberalisation' in
recent years, at the behest of such unaccountable bunches of the
terminally corrupt as the World Bank and the IMF.
So, no more Maya Gold for me, alas. I will not contribute to the
profits of such a stupid and selfish company.
Anyone know of any other ethical chocolate producer?
Item: Actually, there's something else as well,
but it relates to an ongoing situation at work. Referring to it even
obliquely here may well lead me in to the same problems as faced a few
months ago by Joe Gordon (see Write A Blog And Win... on 11/01/05 below).
Unlike Joe, however, I lack the contacts to be able to walk into a new
job within a few weeks. So, I must remain silent - if only for the time
being.
This Time, A Plague On Our Own Houses
Another group of idiots are at it again, too.
I reported
last year on Wrexham County Borough Council's attempts to solve the
problems created by its own serious mismanagement of council housing
down the years by trying to persuade us tenants to vote to transfer
ownership and control of our homes to a private company (or 'Registered
Social Landlord', to use the Orwellian).
We rejected the proposal by a surprisingly large majority on a
turnout far higher than that seen in local (or, indeed, parliamentary)
elections.
There was some interesting fallout from this result. A few weeks
later, the then-leader of the Council (who claimed to be personally
against the policy, but who nonetheless endorsed it every chance she
got) came within a handful of votes of losing her supposedly safe ward.
Shortly afterwards, she resigned the leadership. Her replacement lasted
but a few months before the ruling Labour group imploded in an
acrimonious fashion which was a joy to behold for those of us who have
long suffered their arrogance and stupidity, and left control of the
council in the hands of an amorphous coalition made up primarily of the
Liberal Democrats.
As the Lib Dems were as hell-for-leather for privatisation as the
Dim Labs last time around, guess what they've just announced?
Yes, once again they will be 'consulting' tenants on stock
transfer. It's not clear at this stage quite what form the
'consultation' will take, but it is clear that what will be on offer
will be all-but identical to what we turned down last time. Except that
this time, or so I'm informed by a very reliable source, the Council
will be allowed to spend money putting the case against as well
as in favour. Yes, I can just see that happening, can't you?
Also, it seems they won't be spending upwards of £200 000 of our
money on hiring a firm of private consultants to parrot the Council's
favourite line.
But the dangers will be the same, the threats will be the same and
the promises of a golden future will be unchanged. Just see Defend
Council Housing's website for a taste of it.
We must be vigilant again. Watch this space...
In-tractor-ble
I see they're at it again.
Our wonderful, independent, freedom-loving farmers look as if
they're starting their tricks once more. This morning, they attempted
what was laughingly called a 'blockade' of an oil refinery in Ellesmere
Port, Cheshire (the same one as you can see in this photograph,
incidentally), in a protest which was supposedly about fuel prices.
Some of you may recall that, in September 2000, the same mobile
mob, along with their strange bedfellows the truckers, carried out a
number of similar activities, which were allowed to bring a small
degree of chaos to this land.
Well, having seemingly not been too arsed about fuel prices for
four and a half years, they're trying it again. Of course, there's a
small matter of an election campaign going on, so they must have deemed
it ripe time to put the 4x4 round the back of the cowshed for safe
keeping and drive their nearly-new tractors at 5 mph along the main
road once more (not that they don't do that anyway, of course).
A few questions occur to me:
1. Why are they so up-in-arms about the price of their fuel when
their farm vehicles use so-called 'red' diesel, which suffers a very
low rate of excise duty?
2. Why, if their businesses are so close to failure (as they
claim), can they seemingly afford to spend days away from their vital
work to stand around threatening people outside petrol plants?
3. Why, when protesting peacefully outside an arms fair can get you
dragged into a court, faced with a tiny amount of hearsay evidence and
malicious gossip from a policeman or a local petty official and be
lumbered with an 'Anti-Social Behaviour Order' (ASBO) which means up to
five years in prison if you dare to so much as blink within
five miles of a dealer in weapons of slaughter; why, I ask, is there
not likely to be any use of such orders against these
'protestors'?
4. And why, when the farmers keep going on and on about how townies
don't understand them and should keep out of their business, and are
usually dead certs to vote for pro-unfettered-free-market canidates and
parties, are they so keen on being subsidised to the nines?
For the farmers who have the time and leisure to take part in these
publicity stunts are, almost without exception, lowland dairy farmers
who have been allowed to sponge off the taxpayer for sixty years. These
subsidy junkies already have the best of it in many ways; now they want
the rest of it too.
I, for one, am willing to cut a deal with the David Handleys and
Brynle Williamses of this land: I'll stay off their land and stay out
of their business on the condition that they keep their hands out of my
pockets.
"Don't Give Them Hope, Give Them Religion"
I have a worrying update from my earlier piece (see Chopping The Wood(Craft)... on 17/03/05 below)
on the decision of the UK Government to remove all funding from The Woodcraft Folk.
It seems that they've found an alternative use for the money they
denied Woodcraft - and quite a sum in excess of that.
The same quango which made the decision to screw Woodcraft (on
clearly political grounds, because of its anti-war campaigns) has, it
seems, decided to hand out over £1.3 million to a number of
Christian evangelical groups to "work with young people".
So who are we talking about? Well, how about Youth For Christ,
an organisation whose mission statement includes the wretched failure
of so-called 'abstinence-based' programmes and phrases like "taking
good news relevantly to every young person in Britain" (£235
000)? Or the Message Trust, whose stated aim is "to give
every young person in the Greater Manchester region repeated and
relevant opportunities to accept Jesus" (£168 000)?
(To get some perspective here, Woodcraft's annual grant was about
£17 000)
Many of these groups are associated with the Evangelical Alliance,
a group of fundamentalists with a strong influence on the
proto-war-criminal Blair.
As they say in the US (where this sort of skewing of public funding
has long been the norm), go figure...
A Plague On All Their Houses...
I'm sick of electioneering already...
(Click on the graphic to see it in its full splendour)
"...And Into The Hole He Goes..."
I'll be accused of being uncharitable, of course. Of being
unfeeling, tactless, de mortuis non nisi bonum, and all that
sort of stuff.
But the positive lather of media coverage of the death of
Karol Wojtyła (aka 'John Paul II', which always looked to me
like the title of the second album of a Beatles side-project) is
setting my remaining teeth on edge. It's up to about 8.9 on the
Dianameter already.
(There's another piece I may write sometime about our society's
unhealthy obsession with death - or, rather, its wallowing in
onion-sniffing, mawkish sentimentality which has its most visible
component in the piles of flowers and soft toys which are left, almost
as if in obedience to some obscure statute, at the scene of tragedies,
however small in the cosmic scale).
Anyway, back to our Celebrity Corpse Of The Week. Like with the
Princess-fest in 1997, the media coverage has been as hyperextended as
a crocked footballer's knee ligaments. BBC Television News seems to
have decamped entirely to Rome - Huw Edwards, Jeremy Bowen, Jon Sopel,
they're all there to cover a story which could have been done perfectly
appropriately with one reporter and a camera crew. Other broadcast news
outlets have been similarly generous with their resources.
Of course, as in 1997, we have been given the 'pretty' version of
Wojtyła's life, times and conduct: indeed, I'm only surprised that that
simpering twerp Tony Blair didn't describe him as 'The People's
Pope', although he may well do yet - there's plenty of time, and a
substantial Catholic vote to court in order to save him from his just
deserts.
So, let's have a wee bit of balance, shall we? Another fault of our
age is that the media are blinded by those who are 'media-friendly',
and they seek to pass that bedazzlement on to the rest of us.
Wojtyła was, of course, extremely media-savvy. The
immediate comparison in my own mind is with Ronald Reagan, another
world figure whose surface sheen disguised an ideological hinterland
which varied from the vacuous via the daft to the downright vicious:
and still there are people who think that Reagan was a greater
president than Washington, Lincoln and FDR combined - it's certainly a
strategy that works.
But what of Wojtyła? What was behind that smiling, gurning polyglot?
Some have credited him with the fall of 'Communism' in Eastern
Europe. In the man's defence, he did state quite categorically that
this was a foolish claim to make for him. But if the rise of Solidarity
in Poland was the beginning of the end of the Soviet empire, then his
backing of it certainly made him a key figure in subsequent events.
But then what? It is evident that Wojtyła was not happy with how
things turned out. He clearly wanted Poland remade in the image of his
own thinking. He was troubled by what 'freedom' had unleashed, and
desired a Poland which would have been nothing much more than a
medium-paced theocracy. That he was unable to deliver that outcome,
even with his willing little helper Walesa in office, he would no doubt
regard as his greatest failure.
He was very selective in his support of 'freedom', then. Certainly.
This can be seen by events in the 1980s, when some priests in Latin
America tried their best to stand up for the poor and oppressed of
those nations who were, once more, suffering from the depredations of
brutal dictatorships (all of them supported by the US) and the dreadful
economic consequences of the endemic corruption typical of such regimes.
This, surely, was what Jesus would have done? Well, it wasn't what
Wojtyla wanted. He ordered the priests to stop what they were doing at
once, or face punishment or removal. They shouldn't, he said, get
involved in 'politics'. The murder of Archbishop Romero by El
Salvador's CIA-funded gangsters seemed to leave Wojtyła largely unmoved.
And yet there were few more involved in 'politics' than himself,
especially when it involved the internal workings of the church. Over
his 26 years in office, Wojtyła ensured the preferment of those of like
mind into the College of Cardinals, thus helping to swing the odds in
favour of his successor being of his own stamp. At the same time, he
sought the removal from influence (and, indeed, from the church
altogether) of clerics and theologians who dared gainsay any part of
his own personal ideology.
He also seemed to be trying to assure himself of a quorum on The
Other Side as well. This can be seen by the indecent haste with which
he canonised Teresa of Calcutta (poor woman had scarcely had time to
cool before she was elevated to sainthood). Similarly, his canonisation
of Balaguer, one of the founders of the Opus Dei sect (which was an
apologist for the murderous regime of Franco, amongst others) raised
questions about Wojtyła's probity.
That he was an ideologue can be gauged by his behaviour in regard
to ecumenism. The rapprochement with the English church, which
was certainly novel in recent ages, cooled off very quickly when
Wojtyla realised that he couldn't stop Canterbury doing things its way.
His church's relationships with the Orthodox churches of Eastern Europe
also foundered on his dogmatic behaviour, such as muscling in on their
territory in Ukraine, for example. His stance was 'my way or nothing',
a failure of mind shared by that other great religious philosopher of
our times, George Walker Bush.
Although he preached much against poverty (and, while we're at it,
could someone please tell Bono to shut the f*ck up!?), his
church's financial, property and business holdings continued on a
massive scale. And the one thing he could have done above anything else
to ease the pressure on the world's resources - permit the use of
reliable contraception by his followers - he could never bring himself
to do.
This also has been a major factor in the spread of HIV and AIDS not
being checked, especially in those countries in Africa with large
Catholic populations. To Wojtyła, the condom was The Glove That Dare
Not Speak Its Name.
Similar lack of a humane perspective has led to millions of people
being trapped in violent marriages in countries where Catholic dogma
still holds sway over the legislative process.
The bigotry of the church continued largely unabated under his
rule. So it has continued to be possible for gay people to be told time
and again that, in the church's eyes, they will burn in hell for their
hideous crime of loving someone. And when the Catholic archbishop of
England compares abortion to Nazi ideology, hardly anyone is at all
surprised. And yet this is the pope who, for an unconscionable length
of time, stalled and procrastinated about the vicious perverts amongst
his priesthood, with damage done to individual victims and to the good
name of his establishment which may never be undone and which, at least
one hopes, will never be forgotten.
Karol Jozef Wojtyła brought an unaccustomed glamour to the papacy,
then. But that blinded people to the fact that what lay beneath was the
same, hyper-authoritarian, sexually-obsessed and arrogant narrowness
which had long been there. His twenty-six years in office were one long
missed opportunity to drag the Catholic church into the twenty-first
century. Now instead, his successors will have the job of trying to tug
it back into the twentieth.
Chopping The Wood(Craft) or Work For Peace, Lose Your Funding
Tyranny comes in many forms, and doesn't need to be obvious or
overt in the way in which it develops. Indeed, the lower-key and the
more insidious its growth, the better (from the point of view of those
instituting it). That way you can lull the dear populace with emollient
statements until that Great Day is reached when you no longer need to,
as there's nothing they could do anymore to stop you.
Wedges can have very thin ends indeed.
Which is why I don't think it's paranoia which causes me to worry
about what is happening to The Woodcraft Folk.
This is an educational organisation for young people which aims to
help build, as their website puts it, "a world based on equality,
friendship, peace and co-operation".
Noble ideals. So noble, in fact, that the UK government has given
it annual grants for its activities every year since the mid-1960s.
Every year, that is, except this one.
In late February, in the early weeks of The Year Of The Volunteer,
Woodcraft in England received a tersely-worded letter from the
Department for Education and Skills (DfES) saying that, in the
Department's view, the organisation did not "represent good value
for money", and so would not be receiving any funding from the
Department for the next three years.
Well, so what? It's public money, isn't it? You have to be careful
how you spend it, don't you?
Well, aside from the fact that we're talking about a little over
£50 000 a year for three years (a piddling amount in state
budgetary terms), why have Woodcraft been deemed to be so seriously
lacking now after all this time? And why is that estimation of lack of
value not, it seems, shared by the devolved Scottish Parliament or
National Assembly of Wales which have either maintained or increased
their grants to the organisation?
Well, perhaps a small clue to the real reason behind the decision
is that Woodcraft, like many organisations, affiliated to the Stop The
War Coalition, a movement set up to oppose the illegal invasion and
occupation of Iraq. One of the chief architects and pushers of those
crimes against humanity is one Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, currently
Prime Minister of the UK (under license from BushCo Inc., Crawford, Tx).
Blair doesn't like talking about the war, insisting that it is time
we all 'move on', and anyway the war's over, isn't it? (Heads in
Fallujah and Abu Ghraib - at least those still attached to living
bodies - nod sagely in agreement at this point).
Blair also doesn't like his views being challenged. There was a piece
in The Guardian today, by a Labour insider, describing the
lengths to which the party machine will now go to ensure that new
candidates for Parliament and local councils are compliant to the will
of the Dear Leader.
Combine these two strands, and it explains why for the first time
in forty years an organisation dedicated to getting children to think
for themselves, and to realising the importance of coming to your own
conclusions without being pushed and propagandised by the powerful, has
lost all of its central government funding.
I think I've remarked before about how you can tell someone's
mindset by the way they use language. In this case, we find, in the
letter Woodcraft received from DfES, the following excuse for
withdrawal of funding:
The organisation, said the Ministry, "does not have
sufficiently robust outcome indicators".
(Quoted in this
article in The Guardian)
What in the name of George Orwell does that mean? What is
an 'outcome indicator'? How does one judge the robustness of the beast?
Trot it round a paddock to see if it runs out of wind? Fire
pea-shooters at it? Get Chris Evans to host it? See how it reacts to a
brief glimpse of Janet Jackson's nipple?
What sort of language is this to be used by a Department for Education?
Anyway, if you live in England (or even if you don't), and are
worried by yet another example of the Revenge of the Powerful on those
who have the temerity to try to evade their bounden duty to conform to
the will of the self-important, please consider making a donation to
the Woodcraft Folk.
Better still, write to the Secretary of State herself:
The Rt Hon Ruth Kelly MP
Secretary of State for Education and Skills
Sanctuary Buildings
Great Smith Street
London
SW1P 3BT
(As ever, be firm but polite; ranting never got anyone
anywhere - I should know...)
Ask her to explain her Department's action - preferably in plain
language.
Your input may be valuable - after all, there's one of them there
elections thingies coming up soon, and Ruth Kelly's majority in Bolton
West is far from unassailable.
Highgrove? To Hell!
At this point, I was going to rant in my customary style about the
forthcoming marriage of Charles Phillip Arthur George Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
von Battenburg to the woman he's been knocking off for about
twenty-five years.
(And what a curious...erm...coincidence that the announcement was
made on the same day that the House Of Commons was busy shoving through
the odious and dangerous Identity Cards Bill which, our triviaphiliac
media being what they are, was scarcely mentioned on any news programme
or in any newspaper as a result).
For once, I've found that a professional journalist has expressed
my views in exactly the way I would have done.
I've often disagreed with Polly Toynbee of The Guardian
(and hope to again in the future), but this time she has it 100%
correct.
Read her excellent article here.
Some Appreciation!
In the late spring of last year, one of my colleagues marked her
25th year working for the organisation.
It has long been customary for the senior management to mark such
milestones by sending a message of thanks to the individual concerned.
She received it a few days ago - only about eight months late.
On the top of the sheet of paper was written:
Cerfiticate Of Appreciation
Yes, that's right: Cerfiticate.
I mean, bugger me down dead but is this the best we can
expect? We are, after all, talking about one of the biggest departments
of the whole UK civil service here. And one, moreover, which is
currently going through a colonic spasm of insistence that letters from
staff to the 'customer' must be written in 'Plain English',
irrespective of how badly they may read as a consequence.
So how have we got to the pass whereby the department seems to be
led by people so functionally illiterate that they can let an
abomination such as this happen? All they would have needed was two
seconds with a spell-checker (or even with someone who was properly
educated, or who thinks that correct spelling matters).
But I'm afraid that such disregard for getting it right in these
circumstances walks hand-in-hand with an equally cavalier attitude
towards the feelings and morale of the staff in times of immense
uncertainty for us (see here for what I'm talking
about).
********
PS: The rot seems to start from the very top. I've
just seen a press briefing about the 'modernisation' (i.e. cutting
& privatising) of the department. One of the 'questions' which the
top bods might be asked by journalists is, apparently,
"Doesn't this prove you except the department is
inefficient?"
I hope that this is an acception to the rule...
God Helpers?
I've been in a happy state of atheism for over 25 years now.
Religion is a private matter, and should be kept so.
I've always been deeply suspicious of the motives of gospellers,
evangelists and missionaries.
More than ever when I read stories like this.
Write A Blog And Win...A Place In The Dole Queue
I'd never heard of Joe Gordon until today.
Then, on my daily trawl through The Register, I came across
his
story.
It's a scary thing when employers start to believe that they not
only have the right to order you about when you're on the premises, but
that they can decide who you communicate with (and in what way) when
you're sitting in the comfort of your own lovely home.
Joe Gordon had, by independent accounts other than his own, worked
very hard for Waterstone's in the eleven years he'd been with them,
even to the point of doing a fair bit of work in his own time and at
his own expense to promote his employers' events and services.
For some jumped-up little twerp of a new branch manager to sack Mr.
Gordon without any warning whatsoever (and to use one of the favourite
boss-yob catch-all excuses of 'bringing the company into disrepute')
for writing a blog which seldom mentioned Waterstone's at all, and then
in only a pretty oblique and generalised fashion is beyond what we
should be prepared to tolerate in a supposedly 'free' society.
If, in fact, we do actually live in such a one.
It's particularly worrying that a business which, one would
suppose, relies on the fact that we do have freedom of expression,
should take such action.
If you buy books from Waterstone's, perhaps you'd like to consider
an alternative stockist (perhaps not Amazon, though; they run
Waterstone's website. Also, they call themselves Hatchard's in
London and Hodges Figgis in Dublin).
Perhaps you'd also like to write to the company's head office at:
Waterstone's Booksellers Ltd
Capital Court
Capital Interchange Way
Brentford
Middlesex
TW8 0EX
to tell them that you won't be buying from them again until such
time as the matter is resolved to Mr Gordon's satisfaction (a tribunal
case may be pending).
(Please be polite. Firm, but polite. It creates a stronger
impression that way).
You may also wish to consider a boycott of HMV, which owns
Waterstone's.
What I hope you will also do (as I will) is to support Joe Gordon's
blog at http://www.woolamaloo.org.uk/.
What with the whole nasty business of the ID Cards as well, we are
in danger of losing what few rights we still have. Waterstone's (and
other companies who try the same thing) can't be allowed to think that
they own the minds of those whom they employ. Else we might end
up with a song like this (with apologies to Merle Travis and Tennessee
Ernie Ford):
'You work eleven years, and you toil and you sweat,
When a new branch boss who's a right little get
Says, "Boy, I don't like it that you're writing a blog,
So I'm going to flush your career down the bog".'
Get The Blue-Noses On The Run!
Robert A. Heinlein, whom I used to consider a great writer before I
grew out of the infantile fantasies of what is nowadays termed
'Libertarianism', still has some wisdom to offer us nonetheless...
In the Notebooks Of Lazarus Long, which form a long
interval in Heinlein's interminable novel Time Enough For Love,
the book's eponymous hero says:
"Freedom begins when you tell Mrs. Grundy to go fly a kite."
I thought of that line earlier today when I read about the
continuing fuss over BBC Television's decision to televise a
performance of Jerry Springer - The Opera this coming weekend.
The BBC, it seems, has received thousands of complaints
about this, from people apparently upset that the show contains a lot
of swearing and some blasphemy.
How much swearing? Well, apparently, there are 8000 'obscenities'.
This is in just over two hours (not lncluding the interval, it seems,
where one might reasonably expect a few in the theatre as people
desperately try to get a drink and go for a pee before the performance
resumes). I've worked out that I could say the word fuck about
300 times in a minute. That means that, if they let me take over the
show, I could get it to finish in just under half an hour, and everyone
could get out in time for the last bus home.
Blasphemy? Well, apparently there's a transvestite Jesus in a
nappy...or something. And Jesus and Satan spend a few minutes swearing
at each other. The details don't seem to matter.
They certainly don't seem to matter to the people making such a
holy stink about it. We have a parade of the usual suspects. The
evangelicals are in the lead once again - you know, the people who put
the mental into fundamentalist. They are 'outraged',
'incensed' (I thought fundies didn't bother with incense?). They
have paraded outside BBC offices and studios with placards bearing the
deeply-witty slogan 'BRITISH BLASPHEMY
CORPORATION'. Some have burned their TV licenses
in protest - or at least have burned copies of their licenses -
I daresay they don't want the knock on the door while they're watching My
Favourite Hymns on Sunday morning.
Something calling itself the Christian People's Alliance Party
has called for the Controller of BBC2 to be suspended. I don't suppose
it took long for both members of that outfit to agree on it.
Leading in the decibel stakes comes a mob calling itself Mediawatch.
Older readers may remember an organisation called the National
Viewers And Listeners Association. This was led by a cranky old bat
from Birmingham called Mary Whitehouse, whose name swiftly became a
by-word for footling, prissy self-righteous outrage. Well, after La
Whitehouse went to the great editing suite in the sky a few years ago,
the organisation reinvented itself under its new name. And a neat name
it is, too - Mediawatch. It sounds very official, doesn't it?
Very high-minded. Very concerned.
Well, as renaming Windscale nuclear processing plant to Sellafield
has proven, you can change the name, but it still pumps out the same
old poison. Changing Chernobyl ('Wormwood') to, say, Krasnaya
Zemlya ('Beautiful Land') wouldn't make the soil less lethal.
So it is with Mediawatch. As under the old name, so with
the new. This group of self-appointed, almost entirely white,
middle-class busybodies want to stop anyone seeing this programme.
That's right - they want to stop any adult from being able to
make up their own mind about the show - or, indeed, about anything at
all.
Leaving aside the fact that they have, not for the first time, been
basically dishonest in their claims about the programme - the figure of
8000 naughty words was reached by multiplying each word by the number
of people in the chorus - even if the claims were true, what on earth
gives this tiny number of impudent prudes the presumed right to tell
anyone what they may or may not see? Especially when they themselves haven't
even seen the programme they're so upset about?
One may expect ignorant behaviour from religiously-motivated people
of a certain stamp - that brand of latter-day puritanism which has its
roots in small-town America. (Puritanism, let us recall, was defined by
H.L. Mencken, the Sage of Baltimore as "The haunting fear that
someone, somewhere, may be happy"). These are people who are
obviously so insecure in their own beliefs that they fear deep-down
that they will be unable to withstand the pressure of anyone being
permitted to hold and express a contrary view.
(To redress the balance, I should say that last year, the BBC
dropped a satirical cartoon about Karol Wojtyla (you know, the fella
they carry around Rome in a chair) after complaints from 6000
Catholics. None of them had seen it, either).
But what is the motivation of self-regarding cliques such as Mediawatch?
Well, to some degree, it is much the same as their more overtly
religious allies. But they go further. They are not energised solely by
their own moral certainties.
To put it briefly: they hate people they deem to be morally
inferior to themselves. In this category they seem to place all
intelligent, sane, rational, broad-minded adults. If you doubt this,
then just consider : they think this programme is unsuitable for anyone
to view, however intelligent, sane, well-balanced or discerning.
What exactly do they fear? Perhaps it is the same fear
which motivates the religious fanatics. After all, it must always be
borne in mind that the Pilgrim Fathers didn't leave England in a huff
because they were prevented from practising their religion : they left
because they were unable to prevent anyone else practising theirs.
But I think it is something more than that. As I said, Mediawatch
is an organisation with a very narrow field of membership. In this,
they clearly define those who work in the broadcasting media
(especially the BBC, towards whom they, like Whitehouse before them,
seem to have a particular hatred - commercial television, despite its
consistently lower standards (especially in recent times), has seldom
if ever come into the gunsights of their low-calibre weapons) as being not
quite their class, whatever class they may think themselves as
being. Those running the BBC are, in their eyes, people not to be
trusted, with a strong tendency towards immorality, blasphemy, and all
the other 'offences' which certain types of human mind have Magimixed
out of thin air.
In short, they're snobs.
But they are dangerous. When the NVLA first got going in the late
1960s, they got short shrift from the then-Director General of the BBC,
Hugh Carleton-Greene. He, clear of sight and broad of mind, saw them
for the tiny bunch of blue-nosers that they were, and would not treat
with them. They might have gone away for good, simply being content
with muttering quietly to themselves or penning green-ink missives to
the Daily Telegraph. Unfortunately, Greene's successors, such
as Alastair Milne, were not made of such strong stuff, and paid undue
attention to their grumblings. This gave them a spurious and undeserved
credibility, and they took full advantage of it. They now wield a media
presence and influence out of all proportion to their tiny number, and
they are sufficiently obsessed and sufficiently cunning to make full
use of it.
And therein lies the danger. I may go on another time about the
corrosive nature of censorship itself, but in the meantime we must,
whatever our views on particular TV programmes, books, movies or
what-have-you, recognise that no-one has any right to tell an
adult what they may or may not have access to.
It is time - more than time- that we tell these self-appointed
paragons of 'decency' to SOD OFF and leave us to make up our
own minds.
