politics

I’m typing this on a radio keyboard and I’m cynical as hell because my back’s on fire, and somewhat (read: quite a bit, lol) off my tits on painkillers. With that caveat in mind:

No confidential service should ever provide information publicly that could lead to the identification of its users. Regardless of intentions. I’m sure there are reasonable exceptions and that’s a whole other debate, which is beyond the scope of my current pained keyboard jizz. The recent National Bullying Helpline media ruckus, via its head, Christine Pratt, was started by, essentially, a breach of confidentiality. I won’t recap the affair, I’m sure, unless you’ve given up news, you’re aware of the background.

I don’t think Christine Pratt should be subject to vilification beyond a breach of confidentiality. I don’t think there is much of a story. It was reported, initially, with very few journalists even attempting The Five Ws. The headline should have been “Charity head relates anecdote which may or may not relate to Gordon Brown”.

Gordon Brown could be a massive toss pot, and I’m really not a fan, and wouldn’t vote for him, but in this internets age are anecdotes enough? Is that what constitutes news?

I really can’t attribute any specific blame to journalists, politicians, or people who consume news, but there’s bigger things to address. Like the economy, particularly, the thing that will constrain whichever government is elected. Or minor distractions (at least to me, I’m really not interested in photographing towns and cities, or people – they’re annoying) like photographers being subject to hassle from police under anti-terrorism powers (link via @glinner). Or retarded UK libel laws.

I could segue into some kind of righteous list of stuff that’s more important than anecdotes, but, I don’t know about a lot of things, and, as I have done in the past, would be falling into the trap of talking about complicated things in a simplistic, and somewhat biased way. As is the internets wont.

It could be argued that anecdotes about one of the people in charge of our country are important, that the character of a politician is something we are right to want to know about. Given their personality informs their decisions. My problem with that is that there are a minority of people who are both talented, and arseholes, so judging on personality alone isn’t enough, and can distract from real issues, like the economy, or the police wasting their time with photographers and the like, or other complicated things.

Nick Clegg, and David Cameron did themselves no favours by joining in.

We need a grown up nuanced debate, and what we’ve got is a circus. Professional trolling. Roll on the election. I’m sure it will be very depressing, and I do hope Jeremy Vine gets out his cowboy suit again. Yee har!

On the Observer website, front page, to the left (no pun intended), is David Mitchell’s face, along with a sub heading that says “I’ll tell you what really offends me”. It got my blood boiling, a bit, because I was thinking: pray tell, what is this ironic thing you have decided to be upset* about for entertainment purposes. It’s something about his face. Given I’ve decided to be upset about something for entertainment purposes it may as well be his curmudgeonly** face.

But, as is often the case, he actually said something interesting; not that I’m implying that he doesn’t say interesting things, he does. He’s just got one of those faces. The face of an angry village gardener. He’s one of those people who, when they’ve totally lost their rag, and are angrily berating, could only elicit laughter. Evolution is efficient. There must be a reason for it. Other than everyone being accidental occupants of 1 in 100 billion planets, in an ever expanding universe, we’re all going to die eventually, and there is no god.

He’s annoyed with Hazel Blears. For those of you who aren’t in the UK she’s a kind of news troll, who craves attention in a very sad way, and is pulled out of the sack as often as Polly Toynbee, every time her party, New Labour, fucks up. Her intellectual news repertoire can be defined as such:

• The Tories are worse.
• I agree with the tabloids, but the Tories are worse.
• In my constituency people don’t care.
• We never do anything wrong.
• I’m a common person just like you, I’ll pretend to be as ignorant.
• Tora! Tora! Tora!
• Bloggers are all cynical about politics. (lol)

She’s Polly Toynbee for truly thick people.

Anyway, she had a go at Russell Brand and that knob-end Jonathan Ross, again, by suggesting that they pay a fine the BBC received for that stupid phone call that generated a few headlines. The one with that doddering Manuel bloke (¿¿ qué he hecho yo para merecer esto ??).

Aside from the utter stupidity and bandwagon jumping***, any amount of government expenditure, be it social, or hospitals, or porn, dwarfs in comparison to the government debt generated in the last 9 months. When it comes to this government giving anyone financial advice, or lecturing anyone about waste, or anything of that nature, they are the biggest hypocrites.

I heartily approve of Russell Brand’s Twitter stream, it’s a little bit like his radio show****, without the censorship imposed by a political class that have disappeared up their own arses. It could do with Matt Morgan interjecting occasionally.

And, before I leave you, for some toast, the Tories are a bunch of cocks too. People say that a crippling bad back affects your temperament. They can go fuck themselves.

* Yeah, I know, everything below this point I’m only mildly upset about in real life, and I am actually quite mild and pleasant.
** Thank-you Richard Herring.
*** This blog post could be.  I’m not an impartial judge.
**** If radio wasn’t invented and we had to rely on telegraphs, we’d have something like Twitter.

On your BBC.  It’s not like there’s anything else going on.  A good use of the license fee.  Everyone is affected by knife-crime.  So let’s wheel out grieving relatives of knife crime victims and ask them what they think should be done nationally.

Sure to be as objective as past media treatments, see 5cc here for selected highlights.

Recently I had a casual conversation with someone about Simon Amstell’s Never Mind The Buzzcocks, which led to a broader discussion about contemporary comedy. I’m of the opinion that Simon Amstell is very funny, and they were of the opinion that Simon Amstell is nasty and picks on people. It’s indicative of a wide gap between the internet generation (it’s not an age thing – it’s an information thing) and everybody else. I have some opinions on ‘modern’ humour. Just like I possess an anus.

Sex and morality – still a big issue for many, there are a whole generation of people that openly discuss issues that were taboo. In part through things like sex education in schools, in part changing attitudes, and in part because of the internet. There are plenty of subjects that people do not consider shock-worthy. Superficially it seems callous, but in my opinion, honesty does not equal not caring.  Humour based on things that were taboo does not cheapen debate, but signifies willingness to talk openly about issues that were considered in bad taste. It’s the inverse of Victorian double standards. People don’t look the other way. In the previous paragraph I placed modern in quote marks because I believe people like Daniel Defoe, William Hogarth, later Samuel Butler, countless others, did the same thing (some would say they did it better, and the comparison is disproportionate – I agree  – but the point is about precedents). It’s not new.

Take the Russell Brand/Jonathan Ross ruckus – moral decline? In some ways I am glad to live in a country that is still shocked by bad behaviour – the exact opposite of moral decline – on the other-hand I think some of the more vitriolic responses to the Russell Brand/Jonathan Ross ruckus were driven by people who are unwilling to talk about sex because they think it’s immoral outside of marriage, which is a shame, because it happens. It happened in the past too . When people point to things like teenage pregnancy rates in the UK as a sign of moral decline, it’s worth noting that among the industrialised nations Japan, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Denmark, and France, have far lower rates of teenage pregnancy, with attitudes towards sex that are far more open than ours. A willingness to talk about sex does not equal immorality, any more than Victorians not talking about sex equalled morality. Nor does it equal ‘the answer’ – I won’t pretend that I think an unwillingness to talk about sex is the reason for the UK and America’s high teenage pregnancy rates. I have no doubt at all that it’s more complicated than that, and requires impartial inquiry, free of the shackles of mere opinion such as this.

If people were campaigning against Russell Brand/Jonathan Ross because they invaded the privacy of Georgina Baillie (whom seems reasonable and intelligent) I think they’ve got a fair point – but they weren’t – they were complaining about it been ‘grossly offensive’. Not a gross invasion of privacy, or good old fashioned bad manners, but an issue of taste, decency, and morality. Combined with a general sense of anger towards the BBC.

I don’t know many people on my side of the debate who thinks what Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross did was edgy, or anything other than mildly amusing (at best – many people thought it was rubbish – they can both be far funnier), but the reactions to it exposed a divide and a mutual misunderstanding from both sides. As BBC license fee payers those who found the broadcast offensive were absolutely within their rights to complain. But in the rush for judgement many people feel as if their views were ignored because they were not suitably incensed or represented. I felt quite angry about that at the time, and was as rabid, or worse, than the people I criticised. I was wrong and I regret that. Retrospect is a fine thing. Emotions running high do not lead to a quality debate or bode well for free speech.

Honesty being mistaken for nastiness – Simon Amstell’s humour is based on honesty. His stand up and his presenting. When he is picking on some celebrity he doesn’t do so with anything other than the truth. This is no more apparent when a celebrity on Never Mind The Buzzcocks (available on iPlayer here) says something along the lines of ‘yeah – so what’ and the audience applauds. I think this is a natural Twenty First Century reaction to Twentieth Century celebrity. PR, image making, to an extent the machinery of media production, is no longer transparent to the audience, and people like Simon Amstell are a reaction to that. The divide in the opinions of Never Mind The Buzzcocks viewers after the exit of Mark Lamarr exactly mirrors the cultural divide. One could almost get Hegelian about this sort of thing,

Disability and the use of politically incorrect language in satire – there was a bit of a fuss as a result of Simple Jack in the film Tropic Thunder, over the use of the word retarded. Again, I think many people missed the point; in Tropic Thunder Simple Jack was presented as a film that starred Tugg Speedman as a cognitively impaired lad who could talk to animals. It it was presented as a film that bombed (failed miserably at the box-office). The point was that it bombed because Tugg Speedman played ‘the full retard’ – as Kirk Lazarus, method actor extraordinaire, pointed out. People do not want to see people who are greatly cognitively impaired in films, they prefer people like Rain Man or Forest Gump, idealised, sanitised versions of disability. The film was as much a satire of cinema audiences as movies and actors. Everyone picked up on the use of the word retard and a blacked-up Robert Downey Jr (Kirk Lazarus was a satire of stereotypes in method acting), but not what was spelt out by Kirk Lazarus about movie depictions of the cognitively impaired. People were too busy being offended to notice. Tropic Thunder was a great satire. & Tom Cruise was brilliant in it (click here for a tasty morsel, or even better, buy the DVD).

My back is killing me but I’ve got to say something.  I’m angry.  This isn’t a matter of left or right.   It isn’t a matter of past bad behaviour by the Tory party. Old things like Official Secrets Act prosecutions for documents leaked in the public interest or industrial action by unions -  wrongs do not justify other wrongs.  This is about now. If you don’t defend the rights of people you disagree with ultimately you’re weakening your own position, because, chances are, there are, or will be, people who disagree with you.  Damian Green has been part of a series of embarrassing leaks on government immigration issues.  As an MP it is his job to hold government to account.

In my opinion his leaks have encouraged casual racism, and aided those who have remarketed themselves as an anti-immigration party.  But – regardless of whether I agree with him, I think the police actions, presumable MPSB, were extremely heavy handed, and signify the steady aggregation of laws that could be used to stifle democracy and freedom of speech. From the police arresting teenagers for holding signs with the world ‘cult’ on them, to routinely detaining protesters under anti-terror legislation, to local councils spying on residents because of secret allegations,  to casual photographers being told they can’t photograph freely,  to prohibition of protest within areas that may cause offence to elected officials, to detention without charge, to the constant drip-drip of scare stories telling us how afraid we should be, to identity cards ripe for official abuse and spying, to hassling journalists at protests,  to proposed databases of your web browsing and email history.

FOR EXAMPLE.

At what point do people of all political stripes speak up?  Is it really OK for those who are left leaning to justify this because it’s a Tory?

Apparently Boris Johnson and Michael Martin knew about this before the Home Secretary.

Amazing…

I’m left leaning/apolitical/probably a wimpy lib-dem voter – but I think I’d like to be someone who speaks out rather than stays quiet.  I sodding hate politics; but I keep getting forced into saying something, because, morally speaking, I think it is right to do so.  You’re welcome to deal with your own conscience.

Put a bet on John McCain.  Not because you think he’ll win, but if the unthinkable happens, at least you’ll be a little better off.

I love political drama in the UK press because things play out like a soap opera or third-rate thriller. Commentated by people of questionable rationality. Unlike me. If I were in charge of a BBC television channel I would commission a show in which political correspondents commentate on apes. Like A Life of Grime but with apes and Nick Robinson as John Peel. “Hey, if the good ship ape-house were the titanic, and this was a bad metaphor – Julius, alpha chimp, of the political jungle – his body language is telling – he wants to urinate, or stimulate an erection, AND (inhales), the ramifications for the king are spectacular. Look out for ice-bergs! Over to you Sophie”

All apes ever get credit for is fiddling with themselves, lobbing shit at people, picking fleas off each other, and hanging around. I think that is very unfair and my idea for a television programme would solve the issue.

Sometimes it is necessary to be simplistic.

£400,000,000,000

400 billion pounds is a conservative estimate of UK government money going to help troubled financial institutions.

$690,565,489,736.23

At $1.72641 per pound. The current exchange rate. Roughly $690 billion.

60,943,912

Population of the United Kingdom from the CIA World Factbook (July 2008 estimate).

£6563.41

Price per man, woman, and child, in the UK

$11331.14

Price per man, woman, and child, in the UK at $1.72641.

$700,000,000,000

A figure put forward by the US Federal Reserve in a package to rescue troubled financial organisations.

£405,465,677,330

That figure in the Great British Pound.

303,824,640

Population of the United States of America from the CIA World Factbook (July 2008 estimate).

$2304

Price per man, woman, and child, in the United States.

£1334.54

Price per man, woman, and child in the United States in the Great British Pound.

I’m no fan of the Labour Party.  I’ve gone into why in the past and won’t bore you.

The present problems with certain UK banks are not the fault of the UK government.  The reasons are quite abstract, but can be summarised by a loss of trust in the US banking system, precipitated by the problems with complex repackaging and selling of debt in the last 9 years.  (It started under Clinton, so it’s not entirely a Bush problem – although the unchecked free market policies of his government have played a large part).  The failure of Northern Rock would not have happened, despite widespread over-lending in the mortgage market, without the backdrop of the so-called ‘credit-crunch’.   UK government policy, and Gordon Brown, are not to blame.

Likewise short sellers are not responsible for the situation.  Short selling has been better explained by the likes of Robert Peston, but it’s essentially borrowing an asset, selling it at market price, buying it back at a lower price, and giving it back to whoever you borrowed it from.  That way you profit from falls in the stock market.  Of course, if the price goes up, you end up losing money.  It’s not risk free – by any means.  Short sellers can only profit when prices are falling.  The only potential abuse is traders breaking the law and spreading false rumours.  That isn’t happening.  Short sellers are an easy scapegoat. Alastair Darling (chancellor of the exchequer), Alex Salmond (Scottish nationalist leader), and Vincent Cable (an irrelevance) have attributed blame to short sellers.   They’re talking out of their arses.

The only thing they’re right in saying is that short sellers make the situation worse.  But they’re a symptom, rather than a cause, despite what politicians say.  This armchair economist is somewhat in favour of some kind of rules to limit short selling in these kinds of situations.  It’ll be difficult to do though because it’s international.   It’s going to get worse before it gets better.

Promise rings are worn as a symbol of commitment to remain chaste until marriage. A pop band wearing them, and therefore promoting them, is no different from a comedian using them as material. Why? Because in both cases they’re examples of people expressing an opinion about sex. My opinion about promise rings is that they’re often worn and promoted by people who disprove of people who do not live as Christians. Given a chance some would enforce their brand of Christianity on others. Preventing teaching of things like evolution, acting against gay rights, and and anything that contradicts scripture. I am not against people making a choice to live as Christians and follow scripture but I’m against anyone dictating what other people can and can’t say. The unfortunate political baggage that comes with promise rings has made such things hot-button topics of the so-called “culture wars”. The culture wars have caused much self-censorship in the US media.

At the 2008 MTV VMAs Russell Brand mocked the Jonas Brothers, and their vow of chastity. In free societies people can choose to wear promise rings, but in a free society people should be able to mock public figures that wear them, in the same way that Jordin Sparks what free to make the telling comment that “It’s not bad to wear a promise ring because not everybody, guy or girl, wants to be a slut.”

Similarly Russell Brand’s political comments were hot-button topics of the culture wars. I think they were funny. Using the word retarded is quite different than making fun of people who are disabled. It walks a fine line because all kinds of words with cultural baggage could be justified along similar lines. Intention is not an excuse in itself. So I’ll elaborate a bit because I think it’s an issue of specificity, context, and current usage. Retardation is one of those horrible medical terms of old that was applied to a whole host of things that would be given clear diagnosis today. It’s not a specific medical condition. The context of joke was about world leaders and potential world leaders – aimed at people in a position of power. The current usage of retarded is not primarily used as a phrase to mock disabled people. That’s a good test of politically incorrect phrases: What’s the specificity? What’s the context? What’s the current usage?

What I find particularly funny is that Russell Brand was trolling – pure and simple. The act ticked every box of the so-called culture wars. People are discussing it days later, the ratings were up in key demographics, all the parties involved get more attention (Jordin Sparks’ media profile has increased significantly, the Jonas Brothers got some headlines, so did Russell Brand), and this is the power of trolling. It’s a demonstration that the self-censorship in the US media of the last 7 years may not sell as well, or give as bigger buzz, as having diverse opinions represented in popular media outlets.  In publicity alone the MTV VMAs 2008 are a win.

The up-in-arms comments against Russell Brand on Internet forums have been retarded: So why pander to these people?  They want to tell you what to do – including what you can and can’t say.

On a lesser note some Twilight fans are completely mental.

If you catch me, in some green and pleasant carbuncle, beating my arms against the earth, face down, febrile, crying “It’s retarded!  For fuck’s sake! Why does it work?  IT MAKES NO SENSE”, you’ll know I’ve been watching too much of the news.  Today’s examples come from John McCain and Barack Obama’s political campaigns.  I have nothing against either of them – it’s the campaigns, I find it extremely dull, and depressing.  Moreover the fact that things like showing your kids waiving at a video screen that has no eyes to see, and public tough talk on foreign policy, can, in themselves, affect public sentiment towards you. It makes baby Jesus weep.  In my head at least.  I’m not suggesting it’s ubiquitous.

It’s like PR: Say, for instance, a star wants to seem more family friendly – it’s arranged so that they’re photographed on a family day out, or eating an ice cream in the park (where have you heard the ice-cream line before?), and, it’s not that it’s fake; it could reflect reality, but that the pictures are just snippets, tiny parts of a picture that you won’t see the whole of.  Because, by necessity, we can’t all know each other. The specific problem is the degree to which people base their judgements on such superficial illustrations of complicated things. The news media shares blame for reporting things in such uncritical terms; by and large, unless the correspondents are total fuckwits, they know it’s a game.  They’re playing it too.  They know how complicated the world is really.

Based on how PR – through ice cream in the park, tough talk, waving at electronics, etc. – affects public image, the public must lap it up.

Are we really that retarded?  Isn’t it all a bit exploitable?  What would happen if people told the truth?  (It’s usually far more complicated than you think, you fucking dolts).  They’d fail.  Hard.  Yeah, I’m that fucking cynical.

And the worst thing?  You’d think celebrity news is inherently more dishonest than coverage of really important things, like the next leader of the free world, but it isn’t.  Celebrity news has evolved to the point where the viewer/consumer is in on the game too, rather than excluded.  Take Perez Hilton or TMZ or MrPaparazzi – they’re honest about PR.   Pictures of Gordon Brown eating an ice cream in the park?   Perez Hilton would draw cocks on the pictures in MS Paint.  The rest of the media would report them unedited.

CLICK HERE. Hull is near David Davis’ constituency.  Yet another innocent photographer been bothered by the police.  Labour – preventing terrorism by letting innocent photographers be hassled and intimidated by the police.  This is what Prime Minister Gordon Brown must of meant when he said  we need “21st century methods to deal with 21st century challenges”.  Hassling innocent photographers.  Look forward to a piece from David Aaronovitch defending this sort of thing, in the form of a “if you don’t want Nazis don’t vote for them” argument, that conveniently overlooks the way the Nazis seized power, in a blur of Brown nosing.  If you have UK citizenship Send David Davis money.  There’s PayPal – it takes less than ten minutes from start to finish.  There are very few politicians who’ll fight this sort of thing, much less any that would quit.  So it’s worth a few quid just to get the issues in the press.

Vote anyone but Labour or the BNP.  There is convergence in their attitudes towards policing.

Edit:

I’d just like to point out that this sort of thing isn’t the fault of the police.  The police enforce laws, they don’t create or regulate them.

The Sun is more pro-freedom than The Guardian. It used to be the other way around. No doubt we can look forward to articles by those on the left defending Labour because “they’re to the left of the Conservatives” – but Labour aren’t to the left of the Conservatives – they’re left in the sense of Soviet Authoritarianism. I am on the left – next general election I’m voting lib-dem – but I will never vote Labour again. Arresting teenagers over placards was the straw that broke the camels back for me. I think The Guardian are apologists for the Labour party and their lack of criticism is part of the reason Labour will lose heavily at the next election.

The public debate about civil liberties is often portrayed as a done deal by Labour. That people are generally in favour of anti-terrorism law and in some ways that is true. But it depends, largely, on how the question is framed. I think one of the terrible things about the present government is that it has shifted all debates away from evidence and into the territory of rhetoric and fear. David Davis needs to shift the debate back to evidence – the fact that the police haven’t needed 28 days yet – the fact that previous laws the government have introduced for one reason have patently being used for others. It doesn’t take long to find evidence of that. Here’s some ideas for headlines with which to attack Davis’ opponents:

From the RIPA act being used against people by local councils, often because of malicious complaints (check the figures), to Section 5 of the Public Order Act being used to target protesters/people wearing T-shirts with “bollocks to Blair” written on them. Or evangelical Christians getting hassled by the police in predominantly Muslim areas (what has that got to do with the police? Do we want nannies?) Or the way the Countryside Alliance was treated by the police (just ask some people who were there). Or the way that a whole act was possibly passed because Tony Blair found Brian Haw distasteful. Or the way that anti-Scientology protesters have been arrested for calling Scientology a cult, and had the police hassle/intimidate television crews. This is something Labour people will defend to the hilt. With the “politics of fear”.

David Davis could become a prison martyr by wearing a “bollocks to Brown” T-shirt. Under laws introduced by Labour he could be arrested for that.

The public needs the following points driven home:

• That “nothing to fear/nothing to hide” assumes that laws only target the guilty when the laws have already frequently been used against innocent people. There are easy to find examples suitable for tabloid exposure.
• The laws target ordinary people (there are many examples) and that you could be next if a neighbour makes a malicious complaint about you.
• That Labour talks “the politics of fear” attempting to emotionally bully the public into complying with laws aimed at controlling the public.
• What matters is evidence – that the Tory party will support any law providing there is evidence that it is needed – Gordon Brown has shown by his policies are not based on evidence.
• The Tories are tougher than Labour because they follow the evidence and don’t flail in the wind/waste their time with laws targetting members of the public.
• Question the motivations of people who defend the repugnant use of such laws.

And those points need to be driven home relentlessly. Essentially David Davis has already won – the public mood is right – but if he wants to really hurt Labour he needs to stridently make the case. Everyone that supports his goals should pick a bullet point and ram it home to someone. Also, send him some cash, as much as possible:

http://www.daviddavisforfreedom.com/

Even if, like me, you think he’s wrong to support the death penalty, and disagree with him on many other things. Even £50 makes a difference. But someone should send a few cars worth of cash for a lol at Labour.

I’m still voting lib-dem though.

David Davis on Sky News.  I think everyone is seriously underestimating David Davis, and how David Cameron could benefit from this.

Please watch this first – it’s a potent demonstration of why the David Davis meme has resonance. Next people will be arrested for being “offensive” about the Labour party. People are being arrested for less. Nice teenagers from middle-England.

David Davis has taken an issue that politicians care a great deal about but few voters. It’s not top of the list of things to worry about. Despite polls containing questions with the “in exceptional circumstances” caveat. People will support any old rubbish in exceptional circumstances. I think the polls have unintentionally magnified public concerns about terrorism. Being obsessed with Islamic terrorism is something grubby people do on the Internet. Real people, who type with their index fingers, and are crap at Googling, are more worried about the basics – crime, health, and money.

The balance is about to change. People are going to become more concerned about money, and the economy. So when, in July, Davis has his by-election it is possible that the government will face attack on two-fronts: Civil-liberties issues from David Davis, and The Economy from the mainstream Conservative party. If the Conservative party plays it wisely. If they do David Davis can be used as a stalking-horse to attract voters previously lost to the Conservative party. Furthermore he’s almost deniable. He’s acting on his own principle – not on behalf of the Conservative party.

That could be used to deflect almost everything from Cameron. But looking at today’s papers it looks as if instead the Conservative party has put its collective palm to its face. Doing Gordon Brown – a man that possibly favours arresting teenagers for holding placards – a huge favour.

Where the Tory press sees disarray, and futility I see opportunity. A credible attack on two fronts – much like Martin Bell and New Labour. The way the Tory press is responding is self-destructive. If David Cameron stays neutral, pops David Davis into a pretentious white suit, he could on to marketing gold dust. Without actually being held accountable if it backfires.

However, that’s me – I’m not a Conservative, I’m not Labour, and I’ll probably vote Lib-Dem. I think David Davis’ support for the death penalty is wrong, and he’s a little to the right of Alan B’Stard. But I think he is right about civil liberties, and hope that his passion is used to its fullest.

This. He wasn’t allowed to make the statement in Parliament. I think it’s a shrewd political move, and a good speech. Viva YouTube.

If the economy further falters, inflation hits, and the housing market hits the lows some are predicting, issues surrounding the threat of terrorism will be quite far down the list of worries among voters. In the early nineties people were more worried about losing their house than the IRA – despite innocent people frequently being hurt or killed. Right now it’s as if there’s major economic issues affecting the UK, and Gordon Brown is saying “quick, look over there, swarthy terrorists! Lettres de cachet will sort it out! DON’T DISCUSS HOUSING or INFLATION or HBOS/B&B/GRANITE”. That’s probably an average Gordon Brown cabinet meeting. And David Davis has resigned. If, as I do, you think that the political mood among voters is changing rapidly, he’s made a very smart move, and, his position will become stronger as the economy worsens. People are less likely to be bought off by Gordon Brown playing King of France in the next few months. The next election will be about The Economy – not who is the toughest or is prepared to wipe their arse on the Magna Carta.

I was going to write a long rant about this, but instead I’ll summarise: the man’s a tit, and he’s in the process of sealing Labour’s defeat at the next election. He’s very good at reading yesterday’s public mood. Blair was good at preempting it. Don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows etc. But even Blair wouldn’t have made a point of principle out of a vote like that. And that’s saying a lot given the Iraq war.

It occurs to me that people who have never been wrong are either lying to themselves, arrogant pricks, or exceptionally boring people. I’ve been wrong loads of times. I pride myself on knowing that – because if you can acknowledge your own stupidity you have gone some way to rectify it (apart from the unknown unknown stupidity). Some of the things I did as a teenager, retrospectively, shock me*, and I’m pretty sure that applies to lots of people (I have a collection of funny anecdotes about various people that I’m saving for later to smuggle out in the form of fiction). My attitude towards things like youth crime and bad behaviour are borne out of the knowledge that people can change. Rather than people being lost causes – immutably good, or bad, or clever, or stupid. I believe in non-religious redemption. And I think the ideal society enables people to redeem themselves and, within reason, forgives.

And there’s an important caveat: I was lucky enough to have a good family network, to have gotten well paid jobs, to have been born with a bit of smarts and good memory, with people constantly pushing me back into education, and a host of little things many just don’t have. So don’t mistake this for an argument that given the will it’s easy for people to make something of themselves. A kind of “I did it, so I don’t see why anyone else can’t” argument. Such arguments are right-wing bullshit. Oft spouted by self-made men who forget they’re not normal. If idiot kids don’t have the support networks that are available to many people by default, then it’s a shame if they live in a society that offers poor alternatives.

* Can’t say I was ever a danger to anyone other than myself though. Other than the occasional punch-up.

Let’s shoot the shit Internet public. If it’s the case that:

• The behaviour of children is mostly influenced by their upbringing – which, for most people, is provided by their parents.
• Said parents were children in the past.

It seems very strange to call for a return to the past in order to deal with moral panics bad behaviour among young people.  Maybe I’m saying is way out there illogical because you rarely hear it used as a defense against fucked up rose-tinted diversionary over-simplistic actively harmful nostalgia “things were better in the past”.  The good old days.

Cause there is no moral vacuum, people are generally less fucked up than the past (less: racism, wife-beating, children-beating, abject poverty, bad health, ignorance, and a lot of other negative shit, man),  and people that tell you otherwise should be birched.   The future, upcoming recession aside, is bright and I’m pretty optimistic.  Optimistic is not equal to complacent.

Just for the record Brown talks a great deal of bollocks too.

I’ve just watched Hilary Clinton concede. But this is not specifically about her. To get that far in politics politicians must really want the job. With a burning passion. I think that is no more apparent when you see a politician spouting platitudes and clichés in order to win votes. Because, working with the assumption that most politicians are good people, with noble intentions, and intelligent, they must know how predictable and boring much of what they have to say is; the soundbites, staged impromptu style visits on demographically correct representations of voters, day after day. Promising to listen, to restore some aspect of a mythological past, or the promise of change. Thing is, they may very well mean it, and if they’re tolerating the bollocks machine to get elected, I don’t envy them in the slightest. That’s a hard world. Man.

Watch this.

Produced by Gregg Mills, of Berkley, – The Bastard of Art and Commerce.

I don’t know if this has happened. I do not wear a tin-foil hat. Astrotufing is when you create the appearance of grass roots support artificially. It can be achieved in numerous ways on the Internet, much as in real life. For instance: One way to astroturf is to use coordinate a few people via something like an internet mailing list – or instant messaging – and have ‘on message’ commenting on forums such as the BBC’s Have Your Say section/Sky’s equiv., and discussion groups on the websites of newspapers. It makes economic sense. It takes very little time to do, you just need a few committed people with time, it gets a message to large Internet audience, and online discussions are increasingly being quoted in the traditional media. Either as examples of public views, or as part of audience interaction. If people are commenting as individuals there’s no problem.

But it’s easy for two or more people with an Internet connection to covertly manipulate a popular online discussion, and have their views disproportionately represented. This can be achieved with things like sockpuppet accounts. Sockpuppet accounts are Internet identities set up to give the appearance of another person. One person can comment in a single online discussion using multiple identities and the people reading their comments are none-the-wiser. So, for example, two people with three sockpuppet accounts each could appear to be as many as eight people. If someone running an Internet forum were to check their visitor logs they would see multiple people commenting from the same computer. But they could not prove they were the same people because in many homes computers are shared between members of a family.

On top of that there are things like Internet proxies and anonymising tools that allow people to mask where their internet connection is coming from.  Which is as it should be.

It does mean that Internet discussions should not be relied upon as being representative .  Ever.

The situation with the BBC is not wholly of its own making. The corporation has been pressured to be popular, and, simultaneously, a public service broadcaster. And many people moaned when it was a public service broadcaster, during the patriarchal age of broadcasting. Now people are moaning that things have gone too far the other way. Quite correctly. My argument against popularity at the expense of quality is fairly simple: If the BBC makes programmes in popular formats, that are of the same quality as those available on commercial channels (or worse), there is nothing to distinguish it from the commercial channels. Making questions about the license fee inevitable. That is the situation today.

The assumption about an audience, needed to arrive at a conclusion of inaccessibility, is worrying. Accessibility is totally wrong. The most patriarchal thing since Abraham is that broadcasting needs to be accessible. I don’t necessarily think there’s an assumption people are stupid, but suspect there’s an assumption people are not interested in complexity. So, as a result, controversial issues turn into tabloid, bite size chunks, which alarm people irresponsibly, or presentation heavy documentaries, light on detail and low in accuracy. Maybe people being turned off by politics, science, the arts, and current affairs, is, in part, because they associate it with ‘accessible’ broadcasting. People sense that they’re being spoken down-to.

There should be an assumption that the majority of people are not stupid, and that complex subjects should be presented to inform. That is a different assumption from accessibility, because it assumes the viewers are intelligent and capable of learning. That not everything in a documentary needs to be so dumbed down it is accessible to the majority of viewers. People are capable of looking things up that interest them. The BBC used to produce decent fact sheets. As such there is zero replay value in many BBC current affairs programmes, and documentaries, because the information within them is so light very few people would have a problem with remembering their contents. Unless distracted by the special effects, and music track.

The BBC needs to compete to survive and in order to compete, with the other channels, many of whom are now producing documentaries of acceptable quality, the BBC needs to produce documentaries that are better. They desperately need to take a step-backwards. Until the late nineties BBC documentaries were the envy of the world. The BBC is the broadcaster best placed to attract the next David Attenborough(s) and needs to do that right away if it is to survive.

And the BBC could. Because the talent tucked away in places like BBC 4, a channel that receives a tiny fraction of the license fee and speaks for itself. Likewise Radio 4. Accessibility should be regarded as a failed experiment.

It virtually goes without saying that producing reality television, from talent shows to DIY, when everyone is doing it, makes the BBC less distinguishable from the commercial channels. Sacrificing long-term survival for short-term popularity. BBC 3 is, to my mind, schizophrenic, veering between sub-Channel 4 youth television, and, occasionally, decent drama/comedy. Half of what is on BBC 3 is done on commercial channels, and often better. I don’t think there is a dearth of talent – the talent is out there – the BBC needs to aggressively seek it out.

Someone needs a big brush to sweep away accessability and replace it with talent. Talent should reflect the subjects they’re involved in. There should be no more broadcasters covering subjects that leave them so out of their depth they look stupid.

Much of the above applies to the rest of the media but I don’t care about them as much as the BBC. I would like to be able to mock foreign friends about how much better BBC documentaries are than theirs. I felt smug when I could do that.

This.  I think the video demonstrates my point and I will say nothing further on the subject.

Tonight’s local election coverage on BBC News 24 is, aside from David Dimbleby, completely crap.  I am currently watching Jeremy Vine do a really shit American accent, dressed as a cowboy, reading out truly woefully described statistics about the Liberal Democrats.   It’s really difficult to watch.  It’s as if someone has decided that local election coverage needs to be fun.  Fun in the sense of   BBC Children’s Television fun.  My eyes feel soiled.  I hope someone puts the Jeremy Vine clip on YouTube because I did not make this up but doubt anyone will believe me.