uninspired & uninformed

A song and dance

2012-01-25T22:51:00.003Z

You might have noticed a big media circus today, scattered across the radio, internet and the rolling news channels. It'll be all over the front pages tomorrow, too. The whole country gathered around and waited with bated breath while First Minister Alex Salmond announced...well, not very much, really.

It was billed as being an answer to the many questions which have been flying back and forth from Holyrood to Westminster in recent weeks about Scottish independence and the referendum on the issue. Today, finally, it seemed like we were going to get some firm details, some facts, of what an independent Scotland might be like. Something for the voting public to cling to and use to make their decision.

And what did we get? A consultation document, and the promise of a white paper in November 2013. Maybe. If the bill passes by then.

Desperate for some kind of headline, the news outlets mostly seized on the mooted referendum question, although taking a closer look at the small print in the consultation document itself, all we actually have is a proposed possible question, a hypothetical one to raise the interest of the public. Will there be a devolution-max option? Well...maybe. They're going to talk about it and tell us later. Will 16 and 17 year olds be allowed to vote? Umm...dunno, really. Maybe? They're going to talk about it and tell us later.

Essentially, Alex Salmond announced absolutely nothing today. He waffled a decent amount of rhetoric, and waved some bits of paper around, and all of the papers and websites that had reserved the front page for his historic announcement slowly realised that they had tied their own hands - they had to put Alex on the front page now, waving his bits of paper and announcing not very much, because they'd gone and made too much of a fuss about it now.

Once again, it underlines why the SNP are winning in Scottish politics right now. As it stands, nobody really has anything to say. Not much is going on. But only the SNP are making such a fuss about not really having anything to say. Only the SNP are calling media conferences and sending out endless press releases about not much going on. They're rehashing old policies desperately, spinning old rhetoric around in ever-decreasing circles - but at least they're making some noise. That's going to get them at least some attention, and as long as the other parties stick to sitting mutely by and only saying things when they have something to say, Mr Salmond will continue to dominate the front pages. That's why everyone knows what he's up to, while most people still aren't sure if that Johann person in charge of Labour is a dude or not.

shortbread-tin policy-making

2012-01-11T21:24:00.006Z

The Scottish National Party tend to throw up a twee, sort of shortbread-tin populist image in the place of an actual political position, but even I was initially surprised when they announced their referendum plans this week.

They're actually timing it for the 700th anniversary of Bannockburn. And they've openly admitted that.

No, seriously. That happened.

The thing is, the SNP are by far the most competent players in the Scottish political scene at the moment. They could peddle any old bollocks and get away with it. And the other thing is that the SNP are very aware of all of that - they know exactly what people think of them. And in this case, they've rather cunningly used that to their advantage.

Y'see, when they say they're lining up the referendum to coincide with Bannockburn, people go "oh, those crazy tartan-lovers, it's just like them to try to base politics on such sentimentalism". They think that, and then it passes, and the SNP get to hold their referendum in 2014, for whatever reason.

You know what 2014 is? No, not just the anniversary of an historical battle - it's also the last year the Scottish government can hold a referendum before the next set of elections. And that's the really crucial thing.

If the SNP lose the independence referendum - which they're currently on course to do - what have they got left? All they are is an independence party. They're a single-issue party. It's in their name, for god's sake. What would they do for the remaining three years of their term if they held and lost a referendum on their key issue tomorrow?

No, they'll want to put it off until the last possible second, just in case. There's the added bonus they get to work on their currently rather negative polling position too. They can't say that though, so they've wrapped it up in a nice tartan bow - and got away with it.

The thing is, the SNP can get away with these kind of shenanigans simply because the opposition are so bad at knocking them down - the voters in Scotland really don't have much of an alternative.

Labour recently elected a new leader, who was and remains so well known to the electorate that there's still a fair percentage who think she's a man. The Liberal Democrats have continued the process begun in Westminster of slowly shrinking into themselves out of sheer embarrassment, as if every weekly spectacle of Nick Clegg doing his "nodding dog from the Churchill adverts" routine at PMQs is literally draining them of any zeal and joy they ever had for the party or politics in general. The Conservatives are non-existent - I know they elected a new leader too, and I try to keep track of these things, but I can't for the life of me think who it is. I know it should be easy, being as the entire Scottish Conservative Party can share a single car to their conference, but I still can't quite put my finger on it.

Contrast this to the SNP, who are projecting their brand so aggressively that you can't help but notice it, even when it's complete crap. This whole idea about the referendum, for example - it speaks volumes that they're getting away with the ridiculous notion that harking back to a 700-year-old battle is a valid modern political platform simply because the only person to make a vocal job of opposing it is David Cameron. And the Scottish branch of the David Cameron fan club could share a bicycle to the conference.

From time to time, Alex Salmond comes out and says something completely nondescript, often an utterly recycled position that he's stated multiple times in the press, but he does it with such conviction and skill - at least in terms of media management - that it catapults him straight to the top of the agenda, no matter how hard his opponents huff and puff. The man is a consummate professional when it comes to playing the media.

If the other parties don't get their act together and learn to play the game, they're going to get left in the dust. Luckily Alex's weird, twee sentimentalism over the referendum date has bought them two years - by 2014, we really need to find someone better than David Cameron to front the "No" campaign, because as hard as he tries, bless 'im, he's never going to make an impact north of the border. A more cynical man than myself might suggest that he's quietly pleased about this, and is actively trying to derail the "No" campaign so he can get Scotland off his electoral plate, the black hole for Tory votes that it is. But in any case, the opposition in Scotland need a hero - and fast.

rebellion

2011-10-25T09:55:00.004+01:00

The government are insisting that yesterday's European Union referendum vote was "not a humiliation."

Well, what was it then? It certainly wasn't good news for the government - it was the biggest back-bench rebellion since World War Two. Consider that all three major parties were whipping their members for a "No" vote - and there were still 111 Ayes, not to mention a few abstentions. If Labour and the Lib Dems had actually wanted to defeat the government on this one, they could have done. It just so happens the Tories were standing up for the more liberal position on this one - more on that later.

The government really made a fool of itself by imposing a three-line whip - meaning that anyone with a cabinet or government job who broke the party line would have to resign and go back to the back benches. They tried to play hard-ball, but still leaked 81 votes, and that makes them look rather silly. This was always going to get voted down by the commons, given Labour and the Lib Dems whipping in the same direction, but David Cameron decided he needed to look in charge of his party. Now it just looks like he can't control them, even with the most dire threats at his disposal. That's hardly going to inspire confidence, and it points to a deeper seated problem Cameron has been having with his party for some time now.

There are a lot of Tories who were unhappy with Cameron's leadership in the first place, after he failed to win the General Election and had to give up ground to the Lib Dems, the unlikliest of allies. His attempts to control the 1922 Committee, the influential grouping of back-bench Tories, didn't go down at all well either. Europe is the great division between the Prime Minister and his party - many Tories simply don't agree with their leader's position, which is really one of pragmatism on his part.

Cameron has to continue to court the middle-class vote, sticking with the Tony Blair model, and with Labour continuing to refuse to commit to a policy foundation he should be relatively free to do so. This isn't a problem brought on for him by the opposition - this is entirely of his own creation. This is "compassionate conservativism" and his attempt to drag the party closer to the political centre coming home to roost - like a less successful Blair, Cameron has achieved electoral results by betraying some of the principles of his party. We all know how that ended, and Cameron doesn't even have a landslide victory to back up his position.

When he took the reins, David Cameron recognised that the Conservatives couldn't win by being Conservatives - they needed to push for the centre ground, the territory New Labour exploited so effectively in 1997 and 2001. By moving into the middle, Labour alienated the left, and similarly Cameron's move has alienated the right. The Liberal Democrats are the fly in the ointment now - were the Tories in power alone, they could stray back to the right and appease the back benches, but they're held in the centre instead appeasing their coalition partners. This just underlines once again that David Cameron failed to win the General Election on his own, and that wider context is why the EU referendum vote was a humiliation for the government - because it was the first rebellion of many.

a family newspaper

2011-10-22T13:25:00.003+01:00

Oh, oh, actually, while I'm here...did you see the Sun yesterday?

I mean, fucking hell.

Just because the BBC showed a short bit of "dead Gaddafi" footage doesn't make it OK to go completely over the top with the blood and guts.

In case you're a sensible sort and didn't buy it, the front cover was a big picture of a corpse, close-up on the bullet wound to the skull, with the headline "THAT'S FOR LOCKERBIE".

Real classy, eh? And then there's eight pages pretty much just of pictures of corpses, with headlines crowing about how fantastic it is that this guy will never stand trial. One of them was "ROTTING IN HELL WITH HITLER". That's right, they dropped an H-bomb. I wish I was joking.

The whole thing was just sick, a macabre and extremely graphic celebration of death. In a newspaper which will appear on news-stands and in living rooms of families right across the country.

I wish they'd go back to tapping people's phones.

An actual storm of bullets

2011-10-22T13:03:00.003+01:00

I know I haven't done one of these in quite a while, but I saw something today which pissed me off. And it wasn't even a politics thing, although I saw one of those too.

I was in GameStation, minding my own business, buying Crysis 2 at a ludicrously knocked-down price, when I notice what the kid in front of me in the queue is buying.

Now, I am no great expert on children - I try to minimise all contact with anyone under the age of 20. So it's a shot in the dark, but I'm going to say this kid was about 8. Maybe 10, at the very, very most. And he was buying a copy of Bulletstorm for the XBox 360.

Bulletstorm, in case you couldn't figure it out from the name or Wikipedia, is a really, really violent game. You literally get more points the more brutally you slaughter your enemies. There are combos where you make people explode, and celebrate that fact. It's an 18 certificate, and says so right on the box - it should only be sold to people over the age of 18.

To emphasise this point, here's a picture of Bulletstorm. In this picture, the player is getting 50 points for shooting a guy in the throat, which earns him an achievement called "gag reflex".

Now, to set the record straight from the start here, I'm not one of these people who thinks that violent video games create serial killers and rapists. I like video games, and I've played some very violent ones and enjoyed it. In fact, I have personally played Bulletstorm and found it quite funny, in an over-the-top kind of way - it's essentially a spoof of games like Manhunt, which glorify murder rather than have a bit of a laugh about it. And it hasn't twisted my psyche to any great extent - although I suppose I would say that.

The guy at the desk obviously hadn't played the game, and he couldn't count to 18. I mean, he is just a guy in a video game shop, I know, but you'd think he'd be able to count to 18. He obviously couldn't, because he sold the game to the 10-year-old-max kid.

Why is that any different to selling him a bottle of gin? It says right there on the box that it's illegal to sell it to an under-18. He might as well have thrown in a carton of Regal king size and some porn.

Fair enough, the kid's mum was there in the shop and didn't disapprove, but it was the child himself who conducted the transaction. Again, this wouldn't happen with a bottle of gin. As I say, I don't believe it's necessarily going to turn the kid into a serial killer, but I still don't think someone that young should be playing that game. To start with there's almost definitely swearing in it. What it if was a copy of the newest Duke Nukem game, which is awash with swearing, innuendo and breasts, as well as wanton ultraviolence? Would the kid's mum still be OK with that, and would the guy behind the counter still hand it over?

For me it sums up a fundamental irresponsibility which still exists in the video game industry. While there are a lot of good, thoughtful, well-realised video games getting made, and celebrated - Portal 2 winning the big prize at the golden joysticks last night underlines that - there's also a lot of total crap going about. Stuff like and inspired by the Manhunt games, games which are just there to be violent and bloody. They're literally just murder simulators. They're not even good or entertaining games - they just titillate with violence, without trying to tell a story or convey a message.

The great, really great video games, never had to rely on violence like that. Shadow of the Colossus? Yeah, you killed fucking great monoliths, but you actually started feeling bad about it after a while. Okami? You fight with a paintbrush for god's sake. Metal Gear Solid was about the story and the stealth, not the occasional throat-slitting. Christ, even things like Call of Duty have you fighting for a good cause - at least kids are learning that the Nazis were bad and war probably isn't that much fun when you're actually in it.

As I said earlier, I don't even have that big of a problem with Bulletstorm, as I think they're trying to satirise that whole depraved end of the industry, and there's still a bit of creativity in there. I just can't fathom why the guy in that shop felt it was OK to sell it to someone who was so blatantly a minor. With the rise of the DS and the Wii, video gaming actually has become a bit more family-friendly - but there's obviously a way to go yet.

Anyway, that's enough moaning. I'm off to slaughter some aliens in the ruins of a futuristic New York City.

for once, someone isn't resigning

2011-07-20T12:35:00.006+01:00

A couple of thoughts on today's Parliamentary session...

First, it's nice to see David Cameron back in the Commons. He's been rather conspicuous by his absence over the last week or so, maybe we're finally going to see some leadership from the man who supposedly leads the country?

Did Nick Clegg ever think that he'd be sitting on the front bench of the government looking so utterly miserable?

Secondly, the Conservatives are getting very partisan about being partisan, aren't they? Louise Mensch stood up there and berated Labour for being so party-political, before personally bringing up Labour's record with regards to Tom Baldwin. David Cameron did the same thing with repeated reference to Damien McBride. Even when denouncing party politics, they just can't resist getting a shot in.

A big hand to Dennis Skinner, who once again took the most direct approach (it was he of course who asked why we can't just chuck Murdoch on a plane and "send him back from whence he came") in asking Cameron to answer whether he had spoken to anyone at News International about the BSkyB takeover. Cameron once again refused to say so; he simply insisted that there had been no "inappropriate" conversations. This was pressed four times by four different Labour MPs, but he stuck to his guns and indeed his rather lame non-denial denial. He couldn't be seen to say "yes", but he certainly made a bit of show of not saying "no". He got a good heckling and looked quite silly for a brief moment, but there was no clear cut soundbite that'll make it onto the news.

And of course the big issue, the Coulson apology...or rather lack of one. Coming into this, he was looking at a lose-lose scenario. He wasn't going to look good whether he apologised or not, so he's obviously decided to court the Tory benches and try to look defiant. Frankly with the Parliamentary recess coming up, he's going to get away with this one regardless. He's not going to come out smelling of roses, but I think Ladbrokes and Paddypower were a ways off when they gave odds of 4 to 1 on his resignation.

decisive action

2011-07-17T13:53:00.004+01:00

An un-named 43 year old woman has been arrested over phone-hacking? Hmmm. How about an un-named 43 year old woman with lots of ginger hair?

Within two minutes she was of course named as Rebekah Brooks, the woman Rupert Murdoch named as his "top priority" not so long ago.

Chris Bryant, one of the few MPs to consistently talk sense over this, has pointed out that Brooks and indeed Coulson were arrested "by appointment" - they got to walk into the police station and hand themselves over. MP Damien Green had his house stormed by 25 fully armed members of the anti-terror squad. But was there any point in actually physically arresting Brooks anyway? It's not like she's going to get away, with a hundred journalists following her every move...and of course that hair. The Metropolitan Police will be delighted for this to be top of the headlines, as it buries the stories about their involvement in the whole affair, which seems increasingly significant. Indeed, one of the charges Brooks has been arrested on is one of corruption, authorising payments to policemen. Now the police get to look like they're taking strong action over phone-hacking, and more importantly make sure tomorrow's front pages only feature them in a positive light.

There's a wonderful irony in the police managing the news over an issue where the news was managing the police.

Well, arresting Rebekah has actually helped her out on one front - this will almost certainly get her out of facing the Commons Select Committee on Tuesday. If she does appear, she's not going to be able to say anything without prejudicing the police investigation. Again it's a sign of how the police investigation and the public investigation don't sit well together; Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks are both pretty much safe from the public inquiry and indeed the Government now, as long as they're in the hands of the police. She can't risk incriminating herself and the police don't want their line of inquiry to be given away.

Did she and indeed News International know that an arrest was looming when her resignation was accepted?

PMQs report

2011-07-13T11:39:00.003+01:00

PMQs was a bit of a farce.

To start with, the exchange between Cameron and Miliband was just a bit silly. It started out quite well, indeed it seemed as if Ed was willing to be a bit more conciliatory, as if he wanted to really work with the Government to sort out the problems at hand. And then he went down the Andy Coulson route, perhaps not as strongly as he might have done, but he went there nonetheless. So inevitably Cameron went down the Tom Baldwin road, and they both just ended up shouting "he just doesn't get it." Well, congratulations guys, for once you're both right; neither of you fucking get it.

And then came the follow-up questions from the rest of the house. Cameron obviously has his back benches extremely well drilled, because it appeared from watching PMQs that the Conservative party has absolutely no concern about phone hacking or Andy Coulson or indeed anything about this whole crisis. The first ten questions went thus: Labour asked about phone hacking. A Tory asked, to mutterings of disbelief from around the house, about car insurance. Labour asked about phone hacking. The Tories asked about...the Eurozone. Labour asked about phone hacking. The Tories asked about...cable theft. That's right, fucking cable theft. The major, pressing issue of the day is obviously cable theft. You can't hack someone's phone if the phone line has been nicked, right? Labour asked about phone hacking. The Tories asked about carbon emissions. Labour asked about phone hacking. The Tories got about as lose as they ever did to phone hacking by asking about Gary thingy, the computer hacker who got extradited to the States. When a Tory member did eventually give a scant mention to the crisis which has engulfed the entire nation's media and political outlook, he did it as an attack on Labour.

Could the deliberate dodging of the issue be any more obvious? Or was John Bercow somehow doing this on purpose, letting Cameron have a succession of soft-balls from his own court? I highly doubt it, being as Bercow himself is hated throughout the Conservative party and especially by Cameron, and he actually asked at least one Conservative member to leave the house during a particularly intense period of heckling.

But I've gone on long enough for one day. As I say, both Cameron and Miliband hit the nail on the head...they just don't get it.

a call for focus

2011-07-13T10:24:00.004+01:00

The Sun today launched an extremely attack on Gordon Brown - well, there's nothing new in that, really, is there? They were extremely eager to string him up while he was in office - "Brown Toast" I seem to remember was reeled out on several occasions - but he's become a rather more sympathetic figure since leaving office. When he talked about how he cried when he realised his son's illness was going to be spread across the entire national press, that reached out to pluck the exact same heart-string the tabloids thrash repeatedly on a daily basis with people like Milly Dowler and the Soham twins.

The Sun have decided to hit back strongly, claiming that the story they ran wasn't "blagged" at all, but actually came from a member of the public whose son also had cystic fibrosis. Now, to start with, that doesn't really make any sense at all, but in the same way as there's absolutely no way of proving it, there's no real way of disproving it. Even though they haven't actually given a name to Mr Imaginary Concerned Parent yet - I suppose the creative minds down at News International are still slaving away on that one to try to come up with the most sympathetic name possible. Cuddly McHugLove, perhaps? Who would disbelieve such a caring parent as he?

The real problem with the Sun's angle is that they're not attacking the main root of the issue here, which is that the story itself was in rather bad taste. On a normal day people probably wouldn't bat an eyelid, but this week the Milly Dowler and dead soldiers stories are fresh in the public mind and News International are in a rather weak position - which is new for them, I guess. They're now being investigated in America and Australia as well, so they should really be circling the wagons rather than striking out like this.

The political reaction continues to escalate too, as the press and the politicians get themselves worked up into a vicious circle. Every non-Murdoch paper and indeed television channel is running this story at full blast, on all cylinders. They're loving it, being on top for a change - the Guardian in particular have rarely looked so very smug. That's why I quite enjoyed Tom Watson's appearance on BBC News not half an hour ago, where he aimed a broadside at the entire media for their complicity in the spiraling culture of poor journalism, singling out (*cough*former Young Conservative chair*cough*) political editor Nick Robinson as "missing out on the story of his life". The presenters reacted with defensive disbelief. The thing is, the harder the media push this, the harder the politicians feel they have to push it. Both claim to be doing this in the public interest, representing the fury of the populace, but a lot of this fury is now self-fuelled. Did we really need a live broadcast from the Commons Select Committee for Culture and Sport? Did millions of former News of the World readers find themselves riveted to that? Anyway, I digress. Back to attacking politicians.

Where is David Cameron in all of this? I haven't seen hide nor hair of him since he was at Canary Wharf. "Twenty minutes down the road" as Ed Miliband derided him during his conspicuous absence in the Commons, leaving Jeremy Hunt dangling in the breeze. His complicity is clear over both being in bed with Murdoch, and obviously trying to avoid being too involved in the current castigation of the old bastard, and more importantly the hiring of one Andy Coulson.

On the Coulson issue the Conservative response has been glumly predictable. They make absolutely no attempt to clear their own name, but instead throw some of the same shit back in Labour's direction. Tom Baldwin was a spin-doctor working for the Labour administration, who was allegedly involved in some "blagging" of outspoken Tory cash-machine Lord Ashcroft. Cracking.

THIS IS NOT THE TIME FOR PARTY-POLITICAL POSTURING. FOCUS, MOTHERFUCKERS. We are at a crucial time, here. Murdoch is on the ropes. We've never seen him this weak before. His entire media empire is under attack - heck, the whole idea of having a media empire at all is under attack. We're standing at a massive crossroads here, and the last thing we need to do is focus on which political party might be a bit more complicit than the other. You're both in it up to your necks and everyone knows it, boys. Focus on repairing the system as a whole and you can dig both of yourselves out of the mire. Work together for the good of the country for once in your lives.

Cameron continues to manfully dodge the issue, though. He has to appear at PMQs this afternoon, but he's confirmed that he won't be showing up at the Commons debate on phone-hacking later in the afternoon because he's visiting the parents of Milly Dowler. One simple question: why? What new information do they have to impart? What could they possibly add at this point - why do they take precedence over a Commons debate? Is it just because Dave doesn't want to show face, and thinks he can get a little positive boost out of being seen with the parents of the dead girl? Christ, it just seems like everyone is queuing up to use that poor dead girl. The papers can't get enough of her, and even the politicians are in on the act now. Hey Dave, why are you skipping out on the Commons debate yet again? "Uh, because of, um, dead girl." Do you really think people can't argue with that just because you're invoking her name? This is of course a man who had no qualms about using his own dead son as a political tool in the election campaign, so there's no surprise really that he still hasn't found any kind of moral core. The spineless bastard.

The one really lovely image that we've had out of it all, though, is the sight of Rupert Murdoch walking out of his hotel into the maw of a truly epic goat-fuck. It's very satisfying, really; he's made countless people miserable by pilling a literal heap of cameramen and journalists right in their faces, a moving whirlwind of lenses and microphones. Now, he's getting a taste of his own medicine, and boy is it sweet. For everyone else.

escalations part deux

2011-07-11T16:06:00.006+01:00

It's all spiralling out of control over at News Corp...

Gordon Brown has alleged that both the Sun and the Sunday Times illegally accessed his bank, phone and medical records, both running stories based on information they shouldn't have had access to. This drags the rest of News International into the fray - shutting down the News of the World was an attempt to cut off the diseased arm and bury the poison along with it, but it's too late. The poison has spread. Well, to be honest it had spread years ago, but we're only managing to prove it now...we're past the part where the rest of the media was just enjoying a rare advantage over the Murdoch media. There's blood in the air.

The one thing I didn't really expect was for this to hit the Sky takeover bid. I thought that was pretty much nailed on with the loss of the NOTW, the plurality question being reasonably settled, but it seems even Murdoch is now questioning it. The character of News International itself has now been called into question, to the extent that the takeover is in doubt - so Rupert has booted it off into the long grass. He's withdrawn the original undertakings and asked for Jeremy Cunt to refer the bid to the competition commission (which is what Labour have been calling for all along), and while this would definitely put it off for a good year at least, it would keep it alive. Murdoch is scrambling once again - he's made a short-term sacrifice to protect the longer-term vision.

Now, Rebekah Brooks is rather important to the Murdochs right now, in much the same way that Nick Clegg is important to David Cameron - she's acting as a shit-mop, standing between them and the full fury of the public. But it might be getting to the point where she becomes the second red-top to get the chop - I can't see another paper going before she does.

Hell of a time to be a journalist though, eh?

a bloodletting

2011-07-07T17:05:00.002+01:00

Ding, dong, the witch is dead...but not really, right?

Yes, the News of the World is dead, as of this Sunday. But it's not going to mean much, on the grand scale of things; in fact, it's probably actually only going to benefit News International.

Y'see, with the Sun going seven-days to cover the gap in the market (well, the market is already hilariously saturated, but still - those three million readers have got to go somewhere, right?) News International won't be losing a huge amount of cash over this. The advertisers and readers who would deal with the NOTW will naturally gravitate to a paper like the Sun. So he gets to keep the readers, the advertisers, the £800 odd million a year profit...all that really disappears is the scandal.

Oh, and the jobs of a few hundred (relatively) innocent staff members. Which will be win/win in the eyes of a ruthless bastard like Murdoch...because now, his BSkyB takeover is assured. It was never really in a huge amount of danger, but the phone-hacking business and the political interest surrounding it was threatening a wobble. Take that out of the equation, and more importantly the country's best-selling paper, and nobody making a serious case of a loss of plurality is going to be able to keep their argument flying. Even though in actual fact the influence of News International won't have changed a jot - as we've already covered, they'll most likely keep the lion's share of their readers, advertisers and profits by expanding the Sun to an extra day.

Frankly, it's a bit of a masterstroke by ol' Rupert. He's as successful as he is for a reason, y'know...he's excellent at being a scheming, manipulative bastard. He can dig his way out of a hole like a pro. No wonder his proteges make such capable spin-doctors and shysters. He can take a bit of pride in this one, though; he's killed a 168-year old publication, one of the original pillars of British journalism. His statement: "wrongdoers turned a good newsroom bad and this was not fully understood or adequately pursued." Bang on, Rupert...although it's a bit off to be referring to yourself in the third person. News International and its executives have to take the bulk of the blame here - they're the ones who turned that newsroom bad.

reactions

2011-07-06T13:47:00.004+01:00

So, Ed Miliband just used all of his questions at PMQs on the phone hacking business, and got...precisely no-where. First he called for a public inquiry. Then he called for Rebekah Brooks' head. Then he got bogged down in technicalities, and was jeered off - even John Bercow couldn't save him from that.

Today's PMQs has really underlined how predictable this whole mess has been. I mean, was anyone really that surprised to find out that there's absolutely no moral direction at the heart of the News of the World, or indeed News International? And was anyone really surprised that Cameron expressed outrage while at the same time shifting to protect his friends and backers at News Corp?

Cameron's answers had already been predicted by myriad analysts before the debate even began. As long as a police investigation is ongoing, the Government will resist holding a public inquiry. Cameron stated repeatedly that he doesn't want to hamper a police investigation by overlapping it with a public one, and this is a rather clever if predictable move - he's trying to put it off for a while, until public fury has cooled, evidence has been mysteriously shredded, and various News International execs moved on to new positions. And, most importantly, until after the BSkyB takeover has gone through - Murdoch is counting on that, and that means Cameron is too.

Chris Bryant is among a precious few who is actually talking sense right now. As I write, he's addressing a Commons debate about phone hacking and is essentially just giving them a bollocking, in his usual calm, even-handed tone. "The entire political system has failed," he says. And he's right. Labour and the Conservatives are equally guilty when it comes to crawling into bed with Murdoch and enabling his creeping stranglehold over our politics. Margaret Thatcher started it. Tony Blair expanded on it, even. David Cameron actually brought a News International executive into his inner circle in the form of Andy Coulson, who later had to quit over - you guessed it - phone hacking. Is Rebekah Brooks going to be next? Rebekah Brooks, who had David Cameron over for tea over christmas? This is a point that Chris Byrant has hammered home quite effectively during the current debate: politicians have colluded with those at the very top of the media, especially the Murdoch media.

The News International response has been fun, too. They claim that they have assisted the police in their inquiries at every turn, but all of a sudden they've found some new evidence to hand over. All of a sudden, now they've been caught out (again), there is a new raft of papers...containing even more incriminating material. A whole new can of worms has opened up, that they were hoping to keep under wraps. The list of hacking victims will be endless; that's what happens when you bring in a private detective. Their job is to compile information, so compile information they shall.

Of course, the information fuelling the present revelations was actually all included in the files handed over to the police. Which begs the question of why they never found it at the time - and indeed why nobody else did. We know the details of thousands of potential phone hacking victims were in the files - so why weren't all of them contacted at the time? The trouble is, looking back and raking up things like this is only going to slow down the present police investigation. If we have to have a police inquiry and then a public inquiry into the police inquiry, we're never going to get around to having a public inquiry into the actual problems at the root of it all. Which are clearly myriad. There's a danger of getting caught up in revisionism when really we have much more pressing matters at hand.

escalations

2011-07-06T10:46:00.004+01:00

It can't really have escaped the notice of anyone, not even News of the World and Sun readers, that the whole phone-hacking business has blown up quite spectacularly.

It turns out that News International employees really were hacking everyone's phone - even dead people. Milly Dowler, for example, who adorned the front page of so many of their papers back when she originally disappeared, had her phone hacked - and the hacks doing the hacking even deleted some messages, making her parents and the police think she might still be alive. That's got to disturb the moral compass of even the most hardened Murdoch media reader (who usually reserves his ire for parking wardens and immigrants).

It was possible to not give a shit about all the previous revelations, just about - apart from the occasional involvement of Sienna Miller or Paul Gascoine, they would barely have made your average pub debate. Certainly the ones that Paul Mulcaire got jailed for would never have scratched the surface. Nobody really expects celebrities, footballers and the royalty to have that great a degree of of privacy anyway, living as they do in the public eye - they're almost considered fair game, to an extent. But these latest revelations - and we're now including those murdered Soham schoolgirls, various 7/7 victims and their families - are different. They're tailor-made to boil the blood of your average tabloid reader. The victims of these hacks are people that those same newspapers strove to build a huge platform of sympathy for, in order to shift copy, and it's that same sympathy that's now going to come back to bite them in the arse.

This has been underlined by a host of big companies who usually market their products to the millions of readers of the Sun and the NOTW, who have started dropping their ad contracts. Ford and Vauxhall have led the way, with numerous other companies mulling over whether their family image would be tarnished by any connection to the papers. There are relatively few ways to hurt News International, but that's one of them - hit them in the pocket. Everything they do is commercially driven - and this strikes right at the heart of that. They can survive a dip in circulation thanks to their advertising backup and the huge income of Sky TV, which is why their "journalists" can generally get away with doing whatever the hell they like, but this goes beyond mere circulation. If they alienate the consumer, it's going to have a knock-on effect on the companies who want to appeal to said consumer.

It's a multi-faceted bucket of shit that NI are sitting in right now, incidentally; the Sun are also up in court right now on Contempt charges relating to yet more questionable journalism, namely their coverage of the Joanna Yeates murder investigation, when they demonised the wrong suspect. Add that to the looming deadline of the Commons decision on the BSkyB takeover and it's enough to make even the cold-blooded Murdoch himself break into a sweat.

One thing I would underline right now is that while all of this is blowing up, the public consultation on said BSkyB takeover is still going on. If there was ever a time to get involved, it's now. Broadly, that consultation is about the plurality of the media, whether it's OK to allow one man to own such a large percentage of it, but it's got to be worth bringing up the character of that man at the same time, or at the very least the extremely questionable practices of his papers. Taking it as an abstract question of "should one man be allowed to run most of the (supposedly) independent media" is all well and good, until you insert the caveat that the man in question is pure evil.

crying wolf

2011-06-13T10:01:00.003+01:00

So, today's drama on the ever-unfolding soap opera that is the internet, is that some American guy living in Edinburgh has been lying about being a Syrian lesbian. People lie about all kinds of weird shit on the internet, I guess; you've got that old equation of rational person + audience + anonymity = raving shitbag. Trolls, as they are otherwise known on message boards and the like, who exist to stir up trouble, entirely for their own, rather strange, amusement. The thing is, quite a lot of people were taken in by this particular troll. He kept up his weird fantasy of being a lesbian in Syria for several months, and then dramatically killed off his character by having her abducted by the secret police. After a short frenzy of attention, a girl in London came forward and pointed out that the picture on the blog of the Syrian lesbian was in fact her - and the lies came toppling down like dominoes.

This, right here, is why the traditional media is going to survive against the internet. Information coming from, say, the BBC or even Sky has to be first of all verified and then ordered in a rational fashion. The internet is just this bloody great ocean of information - it takes a discerning eye to pick out the fish. Even then, you're half as likely to pull out a welly.

It's because there's absolutely no consequence to lying on the internet; you can say literally whatever you like on Twitter or your blog or whatever, with no real risk of censure. That's why people are still going to come to news organisations to get their news - while their veracity is not always entirely guaranteed, you can have a hell of a lot more faith in them than in the raw, unfiltered torrent of information that is the internet.

Fair enough, not all media organisations are moderated that fully - Richard Desmond's newspapers, for example, just don't bother with the PCC, which is something I'd like to see rectified as soon and as violently as possible. A stronger media watchdog ensures better journalism all round. But as I say, absolutely nothing is going to happen to Attention Seeking American A, the idiot who wrote this blog supposedly with good intentions. Maybe he really did think he was promoting the cause of that under-sold demographic, the Syrian lesbian, but I'd wager dollars to doughnuts in the main he was getting a kick off the publicity, the attention. Why else would he 'kill off' his character in the way that he did? Putting up stolen pictures of someone who clearly uses the internet enough to put her face on it was just asking to get caught. And now he's got himself some notoriety - but he's done immense damage to real Syrian bloggers. He's cried wolf, and relation to a situation where people really are getting eaten by wolves. Ordinary people are abducted daily by the repressive regime in Syria, but an element of doubt has now been introduced about the real cases; christ, I wouldn't be surprised if this ends up running on state television over there. I wonder if he got his motivation from Season 5 of The Wire, where McNulty invents a serial killer to get money redirected to the police, which he then distributes to be spent solving real murders. Technically a noble cause, but one which is recognised in the end by all to be Wrong.

Which brings me back to the point I started at - people will not brook being lied to. The whole foundation of journalism is based on trust - trust between the reader and the writer, and between the journalist and his sources. Incidences like this remind us that Twitter and blogs and so on are not real journalism, in that you can't really trust them. A Washington Post sports journalist underlined this at the start of the last NFL season, by tweeting some lies, ostensibly to prove a point - although he proved it rather too well, as his position as a trusted source away from twitter, which meant several real news organisations picked up on the story and ran with it. THEY had to print corrections - the liar in question just deleted his Twitter. He was suspended by the Post, though, once again emphasising how there are consequences to lying in the real media, whereas there are none in the New media. This is why I still get my news from the BBC, and buy a newspaper most days. They might not have the instantaneous payoff of Twitter or Google Realtime, but they collect together all the true stories, and arrange them in a rational and readable order. Until the internet can find some way of sifting the bullshit from the truth, it's never going to usurp the true media, the Fourth Estate, of its position as the bearers of news.

Oh Balls

2011-06-11T09:07:00.003+01:00

Things just haven't gone Labour's way in the last couple of years, have they? Ever since, well, 2005, it's just been one disappointment after another. There wasn't exactly a mighty fanfare Gordon Brown took over from Tony Blair, and since then the party has been locked into a cycle of electoral defeats and bitter in-fighting. After the 2010 electoral disaster, which everyone and his dog had seen coming at least two years previously, Labour were meant to move on. It was time for a fresh new start, an end to the Brown/Blair bickering, to the ideological divide at the heart of the party.

Well, that didn't exactly go to plan, did it?

The latest revelations, namely the apparent Treachery of Balls, have now been followed by Ed trying rather lamely to shift a bit of the blame onto the Tories. Ed really doesn't have much of a defence; he's been caught red handed with his hand on the knife, for once, so he's just going to have to take this one on the chin. Good news, perhaps, for his boss Ed Miliband, who can stop looking over his shoulder and wearing that kevlar stab-vest around Westminster - for a couple of weeks at least. The description of Gordon Brown as a Volvo couldn't have been more spot on, though. That was masterful.

I mean, come on Ed, you're not really helping yourself here. "Yeah, well, I can't deny any of it, but it was the Tories wot leaked it!" That just makes you look like such a...such a...a politician. And nobody likes politicians! That's why they all strive to play the "I'm just a normal guy, just like you, yeah?" card. Well, except Ken Clarke. There is no accounting for Ken Clarke.

Although,Ed does have a smidgeon of a point - this is really an excellent time for these letters to be released from a Conservative perspective. David Cameron has found himself pulled to and fro in an increasingly ideological contest at the heart of the coalition government and indeed his own party, and was beginning to struggle to appear above it all - an image he strives to maintain at all times. So just when it looked as if he was going to get drawn into the left-wing right-wing grubbing, all of a sudden there are these papers that make Labour look infinitely more grubby! Underlining nicely the left/right divide that was at the heart of New Labour and which echoes through the fractured Ed Miliband camp like a death knell.

That's the most damaging thing about these leaks - they remind us that despite the absence of the two men themselves, Labour are still utterly dominated by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. We saw it when Ed was elected instead of his brother David. We saw it in Ed's first shadow cabinet, the desperate attempts to keep both sides happy. And we saw it when Ed Balls rose to the shadow cabinet brief after the affairs of the Johnson family suddenly became public knowledge. Really, the current Labour leadership need to grow up, move on and form their own identity - Ed's staunch refusal to build any kind of a policy base isn't helping - or they're going to be in opposition for a long, long time. Which is a frankly ludicrous position to be in, given how utterly rubbish and equally divided the parties in government are...

U-turns

2011-06-08T17:55:00.003+01:00

I am making a vicious U-turn on the part where I haven't been doing this thing. It seems to be all the rage at the moment. I had a period of disaffection with politics after the Scottish elections there...it was hard to focus on anything political without wanting to slap several people - some of whom I voted for - for being so very, very stupid. ANYWAY. We can draw a line under that one, for now. Today, my focus is on Westminster.

David Cameron is in stormy waters, at long last. He's spent his career thus far as Prime Minister artfully dodging most problems, deflecting them onto the Liberal Democrats and occasionally an unfortunate underling like Michael Gove. We're coming to a point now, though, where he's going to have to take a stand.

Dave has built his political image around being above the left-right struggle of ideological politics. He sells himself as just being about what's practical and the Right Thing To Do, even when there's a blatant torrent of ideology glimmering just under the surface. His cuts doctrine, for example - blatantly with many ulterior motives, but justified under the banner of the deficit, and laid at the door of George Osborne in any case. Eventual credit, when we get around to having an election again, will wash back to Dave; short-term blame can stick to your Osbornes, Cleggs and Cables. All Dave has to do is remain distant.

The thing is, the nature of coalition government and indeed the way he's set up the Conservative party, doesn't sit well with this. At some point, Dave is going to have to be a leader, and set out some boundaries. He's playing a bit of an Ed Miliband game - not setting a firm policy base on a great many things, and hoping he can get away with winging it. It makes it a bit easier to dodge criticism. Ken Clarke has given him a bit of a problem though, by bringing forward this crazy idea about halving people's sentences for pleading guilty. For once, Dave had to put the foot down. No, he said. No, that's not happening.

While this was undoubtedly the correct decision, Dave has put himself in the game, now. People are asking, aren't the Tories the party who are tough on crime? And by answering yes, he's getting involved in that left-right debate. He's getting involved in politics. Now he has to deal with the ideological debate within the Conservative Party, where a number of MPs are beginning to wonder if they really are the party of law and order. Are they still for locking up yobbos, or should they be hugging hoodies? Christ, half of them don't even know if they're allowed to wear a tie on TV. And don't even get started on Europe, for the love of god. That's a can of worms Dave has been keeping at arms length since he took the party leadership.

Perhaps the most telling issue right now though is health. Andrew Lansley's NHS reforms, which were very, well, Conservative, were naturally enough extremely unpopular. So Dave's move has been to make it personal - he's backpedaled on Lansley's reforms, and tried to make it an issue of personal trust in him. He's been playing that "I like the NHS" card his whole political career, even lowering himself to referencing his dead son several times in televised debates. So now it's not about whether we like the reforms, its about whether we like him - which could work, or it could backfire horribly. The whole mess could land square in his lap, with Lansley out of the picture - although equally it might just quietly disappear, like the Big Society. That was another one that Dave tried to champion as his personal issue, and when it became clear that it was utter horse-cock he managed to make it disappear.

I don't think he can do that with the NHS. It's a far, far riskier game to play - if the Big Society even existed, nobody was that sure what it looked like, so it was easy to hide. The NHS is not easy to hide. It's like John Prescott. And what makes it worse is that people aren't hugely happy with it the way it is, but they'd be even unhappier with any changes that are possible under the current budget. Kind of a lose-lose situation, right there. Harking back, it's the sort of thing Gordon Brown had about eight of in his first two months in government...Dave has done pretty well to put it off this long. But there it is; it's a bucket of shit, it's on David Cameron's doorstep, and it's not going away.

Welcome to government, Dave.

electioneering

2011-04-22T16:57:00.003+01:00

You know, if I wasn't utterly ideologically opposed to everything that they say and stand for, I'd be quite impressed by the SNP. Those fuckers run a bloody effective election campaign. Of course we knew right from the start that they were going to play the Salmond card, go with the public face, "the man you know" over everything else, but I never suspected it would be this successful. Maybe it was because they knew that Iain Gray was going to happen, or maybe that was just an oversight on the part of the Labour Party...it's got to the point where I suspect that most of the Labour Party is praying that they win every seat except for his one. Then they'd get to be in power without his bumbling arse being in charge!

Walking around Dundee East, as I often do as part of my job, you see nothing but Labour posters. There are loads of them. The SNP, by contrast, have almost no visible advertising - apart from the movable billboards carried on the side of most of the buses. And yet, the Nationalists have a comfortable lead in the polls in this constituency, and if the latest out of Ipsos Mori is to be believed, the country as a whole.

Could it just be the Iain Gray effect? Or the Subway Effect, as we'll come to call it in future, the Scottish equivalent of William Hague on a log flume, or David Miliband waving a banana. It's an image that they can throw up in his face at every turn - as indeed the Scottish Sun appear determined to, being as they've taken the Murdoch angle of opposing Labour in every way possible. The paper's editors claim that it's because they get to make individual editorial decisions and think Salmond is best for Scotland - bollocks. They're dancing to the News Corp tune just like their English counterparts, the only variation being that the Conservatives don't have the faintest glimmer of a hope up here so they've had to back a slightly stronger-looking horse.

That's not to say Annabel Goldie isn't a horse; she is absolutely a horse. I don't think she's ever been photographed with her eyes open and her mouth closed. She always gets those two the wrong way round, trapped in the middle of some great roar of laughter in every photo, making one rather wonder if her staff photographers carry a canister of nitrous oxide around at all times and loosen the valves whenever they need her to look jovial and electable. I'd be willing to bet that when away from the cameras, she's as dour and miserable as her policies suggest. Chanting the Tory mantra of "everything's fucked, deal with it" must grind one down eventually, even when you do get to the stirring chorus of "but it was Labour what fucked it".

Being as I'm just rambling now and wandering around the parties, I still haven't heard a single thing from Tavish Scott. I guess he doesn't rate Dundee as a priority, even though we're a literal if muscular stones-throw from whats meant to be his heartlands, which are apparently besieged by the SNP. I actually spent several weeks thinking Nicol Stephen was still the Lib Dem leader, so insignificant has Tavish proved, despite his magnificently Scottish name. And we're actually getting closer to the heart of the original issue here; the Iain Gray effect hasn't helped Labour, but I suspect that the Nick Clegg effect has had a much greater impact. Voters are abandoning the Liberal Democrats wholesale, and they have to go somewhere - obviously the Tories are a no-go, so they're left with a straight shot between Labour and the SNP. You'd think the Libs would be more accustomed to seeking alliance with Labour than the Nats, but frankly of late it's been pretty hard to predict who they'll leap into bed with in the interests of survival and the pursuit of power. The Iain Gray effect has got to be having an effect on those coalition refugee voters too - where do you go, to the First Minister, who is on the front of every paper and bulletin promising everyone the entire world, with a complimentary hand-job which they won't ever receive either, or the guy who darts into a sandwich shop when under the slightest bit of pressure? Apparently when Ed Miliband visited Dundee the other week, none of the press were even told that Gray was going to be in attendance. He just tagged along, trailing in the wake of Ed, who is literally two feet taller than him. Everyone gushed over big Ed, notebooks and dictaphones bristling, then glanced nervously at Gray before darting for the exits, heads held low.

Christ, it must really suck to be Iain Gray.

media savvy

2011-04-14T19:05:00.003+01:00

Haven't done one of these for a while...I've been busy. Wurkin', no less, on an evening paper, which does tend to leave one catatonic outside of the hours of frenzied information-collating...

It does provide a wonderful viewpoint however from which to watch the tentative, careful movements of politicians during an election. Some really interesting things have come out of this election, and we've still got three weeks to election day...

First off, this is Labour's election to lose. We knew that from some way off, with the polls hanging so heavily in their favour. However they're trying their level best to balls it up - there was one thing they didn't really plan for, and that was Iain Gray. They don't know what to do with him. The SNP have been glorying in the fact that everyone knows who their leader is - he is rather hard to miss - while only about a quarter of people claim to know who Iain Gray is. This is a problem for Labour. They really need to hide Iain Gray, because he's just not very good. But equally they don't want to look leaderless...hence the current kind of limbo, where they're not sure who to send out on an issue. Who comes out to condemn the latest employment figures? Should we send Iain? Can we trust him with that? "It is better to stay silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and confirm it". Or something like that.

The SNP meanwhile are bloody masters at getting their man out there. They genuinely have a god-damn media strategy. Just about every journalist I've spoken to during the election so far has said the same thing; we don't care about what your policies are, as long as you give us a story. Alec and the SNP seem to have cottoned onto this much better than any of the other parties - I was speaking to a journo the other day who had received a plaintive phone call from the Liberal Democrats asking why Alec Salmond is on the front page while Tavish Scott is nowhere to be seen. The answer was simple; Tavish hasn't given us any reason to put him on the front page. Alec Salmond turned up in Dundee the other day and was greeted by five journalists, and he brought with him five different spiels. Each hack went away with a different story about a different policy promise, and each felt OK about putting it out front because hey, nobody else is running with this! It's a god-damn exclusive! Every one of them accepts fully that not one of these policies will be carried through, in all likelihood - Alec's answer to the various funding questions was "It'll be in the manifesto", which a) means nothing, if his past manifestos are anything to go by, and b) won't be true in any case - but for the moment our job is just to record the promise. Policy-wise it's not a great long-term strategy, but it's a great way to get your leader's face on the front of every paper, and that's absolutely how the SNP are looking to fight this election. Brand name recognition. People will vote for the bloke they feel like they know, even if they do know him to be a bit of a twat - better the devil you know, right? And meanwhile, Labour aren't sure if they should smuggle Iain Gray out the back door or push him out to wet himself in front of a mob of cuts protestors and press photographers.

I guess there are technically other parties involved...but nobody really cares. Annable Goldie is entirely the wrong shape, and pulls that dreadful almost-gap-toothed grimace of a shrieking laugh in every, single, photo, and Tavish Scott is suffering from the brand name recognition of Nick Clegg. Polling data has suggested that the populace are more fond of long division, stubbing their toes and having a bee trapped in their car than Nick Clegg. The only concern for the Lib Dems is where their support goes - if they flood to Labour, the Liberals might get into a coalition dealy, a weird doppelganger of the one in Westminster. But if they go to the SNP, it's just another four years in the wilderness and one less chance to build a Tory-free image...to be honest, if the Liberals want to start working on that not-Tory image here in Scotland, the least Conservative place on earth, they should probably just start campaigning for Labour. Without mentioning Iain Gray.

What Day Is It?

2011-04-01T12:31:00.005+01:00

It's April Fools day, a fantastic day to cower indoors until well after twelve, if anyone still plays by those rules. So far today, Radio Four have announced that the EU are banning fish fingers for being factually inaccurate, and Portugal claim to have sold Cristiano Ronaldo to Spain for £160 million, to service their national debt. It's a good day for barmy "news" so fuck it, I'm going to join in.

Ed Balls was christened "Edward Smith" but operates under a pseudonym to advance his political image.

Prime Minister David Cameron was today revealed to be a horse in a man suit.

It's also revealed that he stole much of his aloof political style and policy base by infiltrating Tony Blair's dreams.

Theresa May is a deeply closeted lesbian. Approaching Narnia. This is taken to be the root of her viciously anti-gay, anti-women voting record.

There is a smaller man inside John Prescott working him with controls.

Ed Miliband and David Miliband are revealed to be the same person. That's why you never see them together.

Boris Johnson spent several thousand pounds of public money dying his hair that colour.

The actual content of the "apologies, there is no money" note left for David Laws in the treasury in May last year was "I pooped in a secret place".

did i do that?

2011-03-27T13:10:00.003+01:00

Whoops, we did get a bit of rioting last night after all. Did I jinx it?!

Yes, the prayers of the rolling news execs were answered. The BBC reckon about five hundred hundred people got violent in Trafalgar Square, and compiled some nice dramatic footage of the place lit up by fires. This is the part where the numbers go the opposite way, of course - if Sky News reckon there were only tens of thousands of people out opposing government policy, they'll cheerfully insist that several hundred thousand were involved in the disgraceful scenes of rioting that brought the capital to a standstill and tarnished the names of the vile opposition Labour politicians who no doubt encouraged it all with their pinko lefty speeches. Oh, and Channel 4, who thought there were half a million people out marching against the government, will probably put the violence down to three drunk men who probably weren't from around here anyway.

If we go with the rather more believable BBC figures on it all, we've got 500 people causing trouble in a crowd of 250,000. So the media will of course dedicate 90% of the coverage to what amounts to 0.2% of the protesters. It's always the vocal minority who spoil the fun for everyone else, isn't it? Although they're going to have to be pretty fucking vocal, given what a tiny minority they are. Not to worry, they've got all of the media's attention now - the actual protests be damned.

on protests and goats

2011-03-26T22:10:00.003Z

There were some big protests in London today. Depending on how left-leaning your coverage was, there were quite a lot of people there; according to Sky News, "tens of thousands", the BBC reckon a quarter million, and Channel Four News say half a million. We're all just waiting on Socialist Worker piping up that there were seven million people on the streets of London and the Spectator denying anything happened at all - but that it was an outrage nonetheless - and we've covered the full spectrum.

So it was one of those days when the rolling news crews go out and hang around the fringes of a nice peaceful protest, and offer up lavish prayers to the twisted god of trash journalism for a riot. As it was things went off relatively peacefully, so there wasn't really any news. I mean, "widespread discontent with swingeing government cuts" isn't exactly news, is it? Although the networks did do their best to kick something off - Sky News, for example, followed a bunch of anarchists into a branch of HBOS with a full camera crew, because that wouldn't have inflamed matters in the slightest. It turned out that one of them wanted a printout of his ISA portfolio, or something equally cripplingly mundane, and the news crew shuffled back outside to throw stones at police horses and heckle MPs.

Ed Balls got a bit of a heckling, actually, but it was just in that traditional, idiotic protest style; a rather dishevelled looking skinhead shouted a bit at him about child pornography or abuse or something - his tone made it quite difficult to tell - and although everything he said was phrased as a question, in the "what are you going to do" mold, he never actually stopped chanting to listen for an answer. He just kept bawling his question, leaving Ed looking a bit bewildered, struggling to get a word in edge-ways - presumably along the lines of "well, you know, I'm not in government, and I'm not entirely sure that they're legalised child-porn anyway" - before wandering off, right into the maw of a passing goat-fuck.

Sorry, for clarification, a "goat-fuck" is the technical term for that broiling mass of reporters that seems to try to hone in on a news item in an altogether too confined environment. You know those shots on the TV, when you see one rather claustrophobic-looking MP or serial killer with a forest of microphones under his nose, with the occasional dropped camera or trapped pedestrian hoving through the shot? If you turned the camera around so you see what the MP/serial killer is seeing, you'd see a goat-fuck. It's a kind of whirlwind of human bodies and high-tech recording and broadcasting equipment, around twenty people trying to occupy a space that could comfortably fit two. They pile up somewhat at the back to try to get a better view, and lob their mics in the vague direction of News. 80% of them won't get anything usable out of it, and probably spoil everyone else's shot in the mean-time - but it's traditional much in the way that photographers outside courts always try to take pictures through police van windows, which literally never come out. It's just what you do.

Anyway, poor old Ed turned away from the shouty man and stumbled face-first into a sizable goat-fuck. Not Charlie-Sheen-exiting-rehab size, but around the best a man named after parts of his own anatomy could expect on an average Saturday. The reporters smelled a story, and piled up a little higher. "Oooh, that got a bit aggressive, didn't it?" they asked, implying that the shouty man had actually caved Ed's head in and started feasting on the goo inside. The man in question made a desultory attempt to shout some more, then wandered off to be replaced by what must have been Ed's entourage, because they were all waving LABOUR flags. Ed just gave a rather composed interview which actually did answer the man's question after all, not that he'd stuck around to hear it - honestly, I don't think he really wanted an answer anyway - and once again the press wandered off disappointed. The goat-fuck dissolved into a merely seething mass of hacks, who stalked off looking for the next sign of trouble.

What a rubbish protest, eh?

Shit Journalism Digest #6

2011-03-23T13:59:00.005Z

The Daily Mail is always a good place to trawl for sensationalism and overblown right-wing crap, but even by their standards today's effort by Richard Littlejohn, everyone's favorite controversy-generating cunt, is spectacular. Once again I feel kind of bad calling this a "journalism" digest, because Dick Littlejohn is not a journalist; I'm not even sure he's human on any significant level. He ekes out a living enraging and stupefying people, basically getting a reaction out of them to build up his fame. And fuck it, just for today, let's indulge him.

The article can be found here, in a cache, so that the Daily Mail don't get additional hits on their website. Hopefully this will stop it from going to Dick's head quite so much. The only thing we want going to his head is an aneurysm (calm down, I'm being extreme for shock value, inkeeping with Dick's style).

Dicky has attempted to pass off the idea that we shouldn't feel sorry for the Japanese people who got earthquaked and then tsunamied, because of World War Two. The article actually puts pictures side-by-side of a the tsunami devastation and some emaciated POWs during WW2. We shouldn't have minutes silences and things for Japan, because we had a scrap with them 66 years ago. Littlejohn starts off by claiming to "know little and understand less" about the Japanese, before swiftly concluding that they are: "militantly racist and in the past have been capable of great cruelty". That just sounds, well, militantly racist. Especially given the context of ignorance that he established literally seconds earlier.

Skipping the obvious "what the hell" factor for a second, let's focus on this historical angle Dick is taking. The second world war, eh? Now, it seems to me it's hilariously ironic that anyone at the Daily Mail gets to tell people off about the second world war. Because the position of the Daily Mail was that the Nazis were pretty awesome, that Hitler was a great man, and that Britain should enter the war on the side of the Germans. "Hurrah for the Blackshirts" was the headline in 1934, praising Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists. Hitler actually used some Mail leader columns as propaganda.

So...let's never forgive the Japanese for World War Two, yeah? That's fine, if we can equally never forgive the Daily Mail, the newspaper of fascist propaganda. Which has one of the highest circulations and the most popular website in the country...

Perhaps the worst thing is how badly Dick puts across his argument, though. I can understand that extreme ideologies are out there, and in a way it's good that all points of view are represented, so that there's a challenge of some kind to the mainstream - all very democratic - but why does it have to be so badly presented? Why is this man being paid so much money and given a prominent column when he couldn't win an argument against himself?

This is an actual, real, honest-to-goodness paragraph from the article.

"But why Japan and not, say, those massacred in Rwanda or starved to death by Mugabe in Zimbabwe? I don’t remember a minute’s silence for Haiti, although I may be mistaken. I’m sure we didn’t have a minute’s silence for our earthquake-hit Commonwealth cousins in Christchurch, New Zealand, before the Milan game. Maybe we did.

These days we’d have a minute’s silence if Harry Redknapp’s dog got run over."

Uh...wait, what? So you're pissed that we had a minutes silence for Japan, but not for all these other disasters...but you still think there are too many minutes silences? Do you want more, or less, Richard?

There's also a fantastic assertion at one point that no Tottenham Hotspur fans know where Japan is. He then goes on about how there was wonderfully moving tribute to some dead Spurs players, with "genuine sadness", before launching into a rant about the "sickening streak of sentimentality" in the Premier League. After a while, you just start to suspect that Dick isn't sure what his opinion is, so he's putting out evil twins of all of them, a standard, human opinion, followed very quickly by the complete opposite.

The contradictions keep raining in. In the first par, the intro even, he says: "No one with a shred of humanity can fail to be moved by some of the pictures coming out of Japan". Then, a bit further down, when he's started to warm up to his crazed, spittle-flecked diatribe, he says: "Many surviving members of the Burma Star Association still harbour deep animosity to everyone and all things Japanese, 65 years after VJ Day. They won’t want to be associated with the expressions of sympathy over the earthquake and tsunami. And who can blame them?" Uh...so you're not blaming them, but by your own rules, they are without "a shred of humanity". Or maybe that's just you, eh Dicky?

It's profoundly odd trying to read that article and keep track of the narrative, or indeed the argument behind it. It's like watching a dog chasing its tail, but changing direction to spin the opposite way every four seconds. And shitting itself violently all the way around. It blows my fucking mind that this idiot is one of the most-read newspaper writers in the country. I mean, if his job is literally just to stir up some shit to get people buying papers he's doing it very well, but it irks me just slightly that he's doing it under the flag of journalism. He's not a journalist. He's a dubious kind of salesman, at best, and honestly I feel a bit bad for giving him some free advertising right here. Real journalism should have the capacity to make a difference...Littlejohn by comparison is utterly inconsequential. He doesn't inform, he provokes. Other than the little spike in sales for the Daily Mail based on his controversy, what does he actually contribute to the world? Essentially, it would probably be better for the nation's intelligence if we just locked him in a box somewhere.

inability

2011-03-20T14:40:00.002Z

As some kind of sadistic challenge, the university want me to write an essay about contemporary Scottish politics this week. The problem is, this is a journalism course...so technically, I'm meant to remain balanced and impartial. About Scottish politics. Honestly, I don't think I can do it...I'll have to vent a bit in here to try to balance myself out a bit.

One problem is that I don't know when the essay is going to get marked. It might be this month or even next, which would be fine, but the module technically doesn't end until mid-May. So I don't know if I'm meant to formally acknowledge the forthcoming slaughter of the SNP at the ballot box...my current plan is to compromise by not mentioning any specific destruction or indeed their completely inept performance as a "government", but to consistently refer to the Salmond administration in the past tense. Get the point across in a more subtle manner than my usual swearing and graphic hand gestures.

I was presented with a nice example of why his lot are going to run the fuck out of Holyrood earlier this week, incidentally. I've come to frequent Community Council meetings, as part of my duty as a news-hound. At present there's this idea floating around that there should be another bridge over the River Don. The people on the other side of the river think this would be great, because their traffic problem might go away; the people on this side of the river don't like it, because the traffic problem might just turn up on our doorsteps. The idea has actually been floating around for several decades, but has failed to die despite being shot down repeatedly. The current incarnation of the City Council - which sadly we're stuck with for another year as they're getting un-elected next year rather than in May along with the government - has decided that they should try to push this through despite slashing their budget by £150 million.

To pay for it, they decided to bundle it in with the Western Peripheral Bypass plans, which are currently being held up before the High Court because people are objecting to it and the Compulsory Purchase Orders that go along with. The reason they're bundling the two together is because the Scottish Government agreed to pay for the Bypass already, because it's a national traffic matter, of national importance.

When the City Council approved the bridge last month, various community groups asked for it to be called in by the Scottish Government for further appraisal. The Government promptly sent back a letter saying that they are "unable" to call it in, as it is a local issue and doesn't concern them. They're not allowed to get involved in strictly local matters, legally speaking. Which would be a fine enough excuse, if it made any sense in the slightest.

a) It's bundled in with the Western Peripheral Bypass, which apparently IS a national issue. The Government are going to pay for the bridge if it happens. So why not take a look at what you're buying? £14.5 million isn't pocket change in this day and age...would you spend £14.5 million without even looking at what you were buying?

b) A local issue? Really? Technically, this is a far less local issue than, say, Donald Trump's golf course, which didn't need nearly as many CPOs. Not nearly as many people's rights trampled on. But when the Council dared attempt to shoot that down, the Government were only too quick to leap in and save the plans. Salmond was falling over himself to break the law to force that one through. How is that of more national importance than the Don Crossing project?

When it boils down to it, the Government basically do whatever the fuck they like, and try to twist the legislation to make it look like they're following the rules. "Unable", no. "Unwilling" is more like it, because they're backing up the decision of an SNP-Liberal Council. The Community Council ended up sending back a letter to the government saying they were "unable" to understand their decision on this matter, which made me chuckle rather a lot. Welcome to how low my sense of humour has sunk...

I guess we're beyond the point of actually expecting this SNP government to actually do anything though, aren't we? They've proved themselves utterly incapable of carrying off the most basic parts of their job, so I honestly wouldn't expect them to be able to approach a complex planning matter with any kind of competence. Christ, they can't even grit the fucking roads. They spend all the money on ludicrous ad campaigns and then wonder why there's no money left for salt, and instead try to grit the roads with fucking sand.

But that's enough, for now. That's enough things I'm not going to write in my essay. Consider my spleen suitably vented.

I'd better go run a Search-And-Replace on the paragraph I've written already for the word "cunts".

the whole Japan thing

2011-03-16T13:42:00.003Z

Japan, eh? Well, everyone else seems to be talking about it, so I'll bore you a bit more. Be aware that there is a circular irony at play in this post, I've just realised...while advancing an argument about the media trying to find ways to put a local, British spin on the crisis, by focusing on the British press I am in fact putting a local, British spin on the crisis. Ah, the inner hypocrisy of the hack.

One slightly controversial thing to note: in a way, it's good that this has happened in Japan. I mean, if it was going to happen anywhere, Japan is one of the best-prepared places on earth. They've studied this shit, much of the infrastructure is already in place. They're also the world's third largest economy, so they're much better set up to deal with this than, say, any country in Africa. If this had gone down in a third-world country, the death toll would be into millions.

Still, in the British coverage, they're very keen to underline to us again and again why we should care. It's a massive news event, truly global stuff, so everyone wants to report on it. And christ, you'd think everyone would be interested to read about it, up to a point...but still, the press want to impress upon us repeatedly why it's so important for us to care here, all the way on the opposite side of the world. Never mind that man is created equal and we should care about tragedies everywhere...

There is a certain degree of the 'so what?' factor at play, with local newspapers in particular desperate to find some kind of local spin so they basically have an excuse to report on this massive piece of news. Scottish papers are always guilty of trying to 'put a kilt on' stories, and this is all well and good when it comes to things like the Aberdeenshire man who lives over there now, but yesterday in the Press and Journal was a bit grim...they led on the nuclear crisis by talking about how it's not going to affect livestock transport in the UK. Chernobyl affected that, but this one isn't going to - "we're not concerned", someone apparently said. Brilliant! We don't give a shit!

The bigger broadcast networks have made a clearer effort to show us why we should care; they don't go looking for a local man who's moved over there, they move a familiar face in so we can relate to it in some way. Jon Snow is currently in Japan, and I feel much closer to the idea of a nuclear reactor going into meltdown when he's driving away from it with a troubled look on his brow. It's similar to the BBC's coverage of the Libya uprising, most of which involved John Simpson crouching behind a hill. I can't really picture ordinary Libyans getting shot at, but John Simpson getting shot at - I'll tune in for that.

The whole Japan thing is a farce, though. It's blatantly all a massive cover-up. As if earthquakes, tidal waves, whirlpools and meltdowns all happen at the same time...this is obviously the work of Godzilla. See all those shots of people inside the buildings while they're swaying about? There's a giant monster outside shaking the place. The tidal waves were him emerging from the ocean. And if they were to zoom the shot of the exploding nuclear plants out just a bit further, you'd see the big guy lumbering along, breathing fire on shit. They just don't want us to know, because it would freak us out. The world will never find out, until he picks up Jon Snow's van and hurls it into the sea during a live broadcast on Channel Four News...

mojo

2011-03-13T11:46:00.004Z

Maybe it's just me, but when someone strenuously denies they're going to quit, don't you just expect them to quit? All it does is put their face firmly next to the word "quit" in your head.

William Hague's denials were actually not bad, as denials go...he was reasonably defiant, "I'm not going anywhere, so get used to it". The trouble is that most of us remember William Hague as the former Conservative Party leader...who quit. He said he wasn't going anywhere at that point as well. You kind of have to, in politics, especially with the Conservative Party - you can't show any weakness. That's what did for Bill last time...

One or two minor complaints, though. He insists he hasn't lost his "mojo". Now, being of a certain generation, that sends me straight to Austin Powers. Not a connection Bill essentially wants people making, I'd think...it smacks a little of him wanting to be 'cool' and 'down with the kids' (who are, to be fair, presently running his Party). I seem to remember his last attempt at that involving a log flume and a baseball cap that made him look about 14, and the 'quiet landslide' of 2001.

Whoops! There it is! When he says 'mojo', this is the image that springs to mind. The image of a lamb to the electoral slaughter. Bill has, obviously, attempted to build a slightly different image of late...

Yeah. Who's going to mess with that guy? He certainly doesn't have any worries about 'mojo'.

Anyway, we've become just slightly sidetracked. I think Bill's main let-down in his strenuous denial was what he probably thought was the strongest part. "The Prime Minister is extremely supportive [of me] and so are the vast majority of Conservative MPs." So...you've lost the support of some Conservative MPs, Bill? Which MPs are these rebels? How many of them are there? Even if they're a minority, it could still be like a third of the Party...what's their beef with you - the Libya cock-up, or is it just your mojo? These seem like the obvious questions, to me...Bill was obviously looking to lock down the situation, get on top of it before we got to the daily calls for his head in the Telegraph...but it seems to me like he's just opened a can of worms.

perception, revisisted

2011-03-11T14:18:00.005Z

There was an extensive interview with Nick Clegg in the Independent this morning. It was quite interesting...I noted the other day that the public perception of Nick has been utterly dreadful throughout the entire coalition government so far, and he's actually acted as kind of a shit-umbrella for David Cameron and the Conservatives; so enraged were the People with Nick's decision to get in bed with the Tories, they've blamed him centrally for going along with things that weren't even his idea. His complicity is apparently worse than the more run-of-the-mill bastardry perpetrated by the Tories, which everyone expected anyway.

Nick is struggling manfully to change this perception ahead of the AV referendum, though, and David Cameron is actually playing along, for once. Nick confided to the Independent (obviously with the express permission of Dave, but still) that he often heckles the PM quietly from just behind him on the front bench. On wednesday, he claims he told Dave that his position on the AV vote was "complete bilge". Now, for once Nick might actually have the right idea here, but he's going about it in completely the wrong way. To start with, you don't emphasize your difference from the Prime Minister that the rank and file of your party are ideologically utterly opposed to by telling everyone what great mates you are. "We were very good humoured about it. We mutter to each other." I mean, christ, I'm starting to think they're more than just friends...they mutter sweet nothings to each other, now? Christ, it makes you wonder why David Laws had to steal £40,000 to hide his sexuality when the Prime Minister and his Deputy are openly flirting on the front bench...

His main line of defence isn't fantastic, either. "We were right to go into government. We are doing the right things in government". We were right, right, right...wing? Well, not exactly, but maintaining again and again that he's in the right kind of suggests that everyone who has opposed him so far has been wrong. There's no concession to all those students who were led to believe (via a signed document, no less) that Nick wouldn't support a rise in tuition fees. Nor is there any room for those who didn't like that VAT tax increase, or the new immigration rules - never mind that many Liberal Democrats vehemently opposed these things, Nick was right. And that's all that matters, apparently.

I reckon he's done himself no favours by trying to learn about what it is to be in government, in such close partnership with the Conservatives. When you're leader of the Conservative Party, the most important thing is to be Right. You always have to win the argument. The Liberal Democrat Party of old weren't like that; you didn't have to be right all of the time, as long as your heart was in the right place. There's still a lot of fondness in the party for Charlie Kennedy, for example, despite all of his troubles. If Nick really wants to make progress with the Liberal Democrats - and surely step one in regaining his image is to win over his own party - then he need to listen to what they're thinking, for once. Not what he thinks he should be thinking, or indeed what he thinks Dave thinks he should be thinking. He's trying to play to too wide a crowd. The Liberal Democrats won't hate him if he apologises about tuition fees or the VAT, if he admits giving up ground to the Conservatives and making decisions he finds less than palatable in order to be part of government. They will hate him, though, if he refuses to ever admit any guilt - if he turns completely into the kind of politician that he personally railed against before the General Election, and in those debates that propelled him into the nation's political consciousness. What happened to the New Politics?

The Spring Conference in Sheffield is going to be utterly critical for Nick's attempts at a new image. He can't afford to make the same mistakes he did at the Scottish conference; that is, sneaking in the fire exit to avoid the mobs of protesters, refusing to engage with the anger his own party members are feeling, before delivering a mind-numbingly predictable speech which actually might have been written by Cameron himself. Or at least his personal speech-writers. Nick needs to remember who he's talking to here; it's his party. It's the Liberal Democrats. He needs to get himself out of Coalition mode and think about the grass-roots of his own party. If he can't make them like him, he won't be able to budge the national perception of him one iota, not with all the Tory spin-doctors in the world at his back.

the American dream

2011-03-10T19:41:00.004Z

Alright, I know there have been a few posts already today, but what the fuck is going on in Wisconsin? I mean, god-damn, Wisconsin, you just won the Superbowl! You should be on cloud nine right now!

But no, instead the entire place has gone batshit nuts. The Republicans, obviously emboldened by mid-term gains, were attempting to force through legislation which would essentially destroy the Trade Union movement. Now, I know they've never been big fans of the trade union movement in the States, but the latest bout of hostility actually boils down to jealousy - during the recession, trade union members are relatively protected, and are doing a little better than all the non-unionised workers. So instead of thinking - hey, that's great, let's form our own union! - everyone else has gone, why do they get these perks when we don't? Let's bring the 'privileged elite' down a peg or two!

That's a cracking attitude, isn't it? If you see someone doing better than you, don't attempt to rise to their level, drag them down to yours. Is that the America that Jefferson and Washington envisaged? Christ, the "privileged elite"...these are the teachers, the prison guards, the binmen - they're not the enemy! They're not fat cats lording it over everyone with their precious money, they're the very people working for the good of society! But I guess they've never been big on Unions over in the States - smacks altogether too much of Socialism, I suppose. This is all about balancing the books, incidentally, something altogether too familiar to us in the UK...let the great god Money be exalted above all mere human concerns.

This is where it gets a bit nuts, by the way. The Democratic state senators realised that the only way they could stop the Republicans from forcing through the new legislation - which strips public sector unions of their collective bargaining rights - was to get out of the state, so the vote couldn't be held. The lack of 14 Democratic senators meant that there wasn't the necessary majority, or quorum, required to hold the vote. A nice check in the political process, that; make sure that one party can't just hold all their votes on days when the other lot are on holiday. But as soon as they realised what was up, the Republican forces went after the rogue Democrats to a starting degree. They cut off their credit cards and bank accounts, held them in contempt, and dispatched the police to bring them back. In the meantime, thousands of protesters - led, admittedly, by tiresome left-wing jumbo-windbag Michael Moore - gathered outside the State Capitol, protesting in support of the public sector workers. This went on for several weeks.

And then last night, the Republicans decided, somehow, that they could just have the vote anyway, even without the missing Democrats. Surprise surprise, they won! They used a "procedural move", apparently, to hold the vote in committee -which frankly, is just cheating. They cheated. They smuggled the deal through without any reference to the democratic process or indeed due representation of the people, who continue to protest outside the Capitol - but at least they can balance the books now, right? The schoolteachers, binmen and perhaps more significantly the political opposition be damned.

This isn't just the death knell for the trade union movement in Wisconsin - it tolls for the frail spirit of democracy, too. Sheer corruption, on every level.

There's an interesting parallel to the current situation over here, though - the Westminster government are trying to essentially do away with public sector pensions, and a huge number of public sector workers have threatened to go on strike. Maybe the Labour Party will decamp to France...

breakin' the Laws

2011-03-10T18:58:00.005Z

Here's another thing, which I believe many predicted nine months ago but still few will be able to believe...David Laws is about to be ushered back into the Cabinet as Nick Clegg's number two.

So, the man who used £40,000 of public funds to cover up the fact that he's gay is going to go back into a job after just nine months, while three Labour MPs who stole much smaller amounts of money are going to prison. That's a really fair and well-balanced justice system, isn't it? The opposition go to jail, while the government stay in government. It's like Belarus in here. (yes, yes, I know)

Why is there some kind of sympathy for Laws because he's gay? Are people still afraid to engage with the fact that some guys like other guys? Frankly it shouldn't really be an excuse to run up a massive bill for the taxpayer, just because you don't want them to find out what side your bread is buttered on. Christ, Laws is a Liberal Democrat! He's not running for the EDL or the BNP, nobody is going to care which bed he was sleeping in in his shared flat, as long as he doesn't use their money to lie about it! Lying and stealing are things we're not really meant to tolerate from our politicians, especially in a government which ran their election campaign so very, very strongly on cleaning up expenses and Westminster sleaze. And one which appears to feature a male couple as leadership duo...

What's even more hilarious is the way they're trying to sell this as 'poor overworked Nick Clegg needs some help', a blatant attempt to reverse that public perception that he doesn't actually do anything. Right now casually raising Nick's work-rate in conversation will probably yield memories of all those headlines about him skipping out of work at three every afternoon (actually really only receiveing new business at 3, for all the impact that had on the public perception) and going off skiing as the Middle East collapsed into outright revolt. The Tories have very skilfully painted him as a complete bastard - one of the benefits of a coalition is that there are two parties to take the blame for unpopular policies, and David Cameron has done an excellent job of shifting almost the entire shower of shit onto his Deputy. It just makes the Lib Dems look a tad inexperienced, really - they've never been in government before, so they don't quite understand just which part of the spine to slip the blade into. The public perception seems to have swung to the point that Nick Clegg is just a spherical bastard, a bastard every way you come at him, while the Conservatives are working to clean up the budget - and christ, those Labour lot weren't much use, were they? This is the message we get hammered into us time and time again, every press release and every PMQs. It's a god-damn masterpiece Dave's painted so far, frankly.

where there's smoke

2011-03-10T12:41:00.004Z

This morning the newspaper informed me that the display of cigarette packets in shops is going to be banned. They're also going to insist that they're sold in plain white or brown packaging. Aside from being just another step in the war against freedom of choice, I really have to wonder who thought this was a good idea?

Seriously, which smokers out there are buying cigarettes because they like the brightly-coloured packaging? And how many of them are going to be deterred because they can't see the packets behind the counter in the shop? A lot of smokers going cold turkey would cheerfully kick their granny to get a fag, I doubt any are going to be put off by having to rummage under a veiled counter.

Presumably, the idea is to get children to stop smoking. Well, again, is this going to make any difference at all? All those ten-year-olds who are puffing away aren't going into the shops and gazing lovingly up at the displays of delicious nicotine, before choosing the best-looking packet. No, they're lurking in the nearest alleyway having bribed an 'adult' to go buy them for them, which kind of gets around the display issue. Either that or they're buying them by the fag at vastly inflated prices...again, the colour of the packet and the prominence of the display isn't making a damn bit of difference. And once they've started, the nicotine takes hold, and they're in the exact same place as all the other addicts who don't give the slightest degree of a shit about what colour the packet is. Or indeed the dire warnings and pictures of damaged lungs carried on packets...

So what is this actually going to do? Well, essentially, now people aren't going to be able to see the prices. So they'll probably go to the cheaper brands - all this is going to do is mess with the competition levels in the tobacco industry. Maybe there'll be a move towards rolling tobacco rather than pre-packaged cigarettes, generally a bit cheaper...in any case, that's probably why the tobacco industries are railing against the idea, rather than just cultivating their evil image.

In terms of the actual aims of the project, this is really going to do is cost £40 million. That's right, £40 million to hide the fags from view, to make life slightly less difficult for smokers. Isn't there some more constructive way they could be stopping kids from taking up smoking with that £40 mil? And I don't mean one of those cod advertising campaigns where they show passive smoke strangling a baby or burning down the house, I mean something that's actually affecting the societal malaise that leads children to find smoking 'cool'. We need an approach that is actually imaginative and original, which stands a chance of succeeding - not one that just covers up the problem.

foreign policy

2011-03-07T17:19:00.002Z

Seriously, does anyone in the government actually know what the government's position on Libya is?

David Cameron clearly overstepped himself radically when he tried to lead the line with talk of a no-fly-zone, as you could actually hear the Americans laughing from all the way over the Atlantic. This is probably why he's just resolved to not say anything at all about it; he's leaving it to his Foreign Secretary, who appears to have about as much foreign policy experience as your average aging shut-in. First we sent in the SAS to get our people out, then we sent them in again to negotiate with the rebels, before denying that they had been because thanks to some stupendous fuck-up they got captured. Then we admitted that they had been there, because we got them out again, and it wouldn't look good if we were able to just magically produce SAS officers out of a hat, or rather a ship bound for Malta. That would put a whole new spin on the massive cuts to the army, wouldn't it?

Well, that's probably another thing that's keeping Dave's trap shut about the whole thing; while the rest of the world is humming and ha-ing about interventions, with the Americans actually openly (well, not openly, but you know) inviting the Saudis to arm the rebels for them, Britain's army is at its most weakened state for hundreds of years. I mean, really, we've left ourselves utterly defenceless; never mind launching an intervention in a country the size of Europe, we need to be looking out for invasions from France and the Faroe Islands. I guess that's why Dave went on a little tour of the Middle East selling everyone guns the other week. Just let them fight it out among themselves, eh? And we can make a tidy profit selling them guns.

And Nick Clegg is obviously far too busy fire-fighting in his own house to concern himself with the fate of the free world. Although he was off skiing the last time there was a flare-up in the Mid-East, I seem to remember... After the Lib Dems got so utterly thrashed in the Barnsley by-election, he initially attempted to claim that it was never a seat the Lib Dems were going to win anyway - clearly indicated by the way they finished second just 10 months ago. Then he insisted, before the Party's Scottish conference in Perth, that people shouldn't write off the Lib Dems, that they had been written off before and proved everyone wrong. He was rather preaching to the choir though, as only a few hundred party activists had wandered into the hall for his speech, most preferring to mount protests outside which Nick artfully dodged "for security reasons" by nipping in the back door. Malcolm Bruce was heard to remark while queuing to get through the hightened door security, "we never had this problem before we were important"...not to worry Malc, I don't think you'll need to be too concerned come the next parliament.

The government just seems to have lost their way a bit. On the issues they have had long planned out they're steady enough on the Party line - except the Big Society albatross, which even the rank and file Conservative Party is now rejecting - but they're showing quite an inability to react to new and sudden events. Really, last May, they weren't forming any long-term plans for a possible revolution in the Middle East; hence the appointment of William Hague as foreign minister. A perfectly capable politician in his own right, and a very intelligent man, but not one who has learned to roll with the punches on the international stage. There's just a kind of stubborn rigidity about the government on foreign policy, and it's one that has arguably always existed in David Cameron's Conservative Party. It was never really a topic they could run on in the Election - I'd wager that every populist bone in Dave's body wanted to try to harness public discontent over the Iraq War, but he and his Party had all voted for it, so even he couldn't swing that one. Europe has always been the great divisive issue between the leader and the Party, too, so he was never going to have any joy there...over the first months of the coalition, they presented quite a composed, united front, but it seems to have been because they were able to conduct their battles on their own ground, and on their own terms; domestic and in particular economic policy were always the issues of the day. Now that something from outside their ballpark has flared up and caught the public attention, they're learning a new lesson about what it is to be the Government - you have to be able to react to events swiftly and decisively, and risk looking like a tit if you make the wrong call. The divided and slightly confused nature of the government as it stands makes this difficult, as different elements are pulling in different directions in ways which were presumably never discussed in the coalition agreement. This will be a real test for them, and due to the size of the stakes, one that they can ill afford to mess up any further.

sweet irony

2011-03-04T19:29:00.001Z

My favourite story of the day by far; David Cameron has been reprimanded by the head of the Civil Service because his aides have been leaking stories to the press. However, this story has only come to light because it was leaked to the press. I mean...that's just beautiful.

The End

2011-03-03T17:10:00.003Z

WARNING: this is going to be one of those ranty posts. Send the kids to bed, and if you're of a nervous disposition, look away now. There Will Be Blood, or at the very least some very bloodythirsty swearing...

Well, that's it. Game Over. It's official...British journalism is dead.

We have so, so many people to blame for this. It's incredible just how many forces have conspired to force the final dregs of honesty and integrity in this proud old industry struggling weakly into a shallow grave. First in line with hand firmly on the shovel, belying his aging years as he digs for all he is worth, is Rupert Murdoch; the executioner. The evil old bastard has finally got his way; BSkyB is his. He now owns an unprecedented amount of our Fourth Estate, and he's determined to send it the same way as his other news empires in Australia and America...this is a man who complained that Sky News was too impartial. Sky News. He wanted it to be more like Fox News, with a bit more pizzazz...this is also the man who will only allow his Australian channels to show trailers for Fox Movies...expect very similar treatment on Sky in the near future.

Almost as culpable is the Culture Secretary, to whom I will drop all previous pretences of mistaken spellings and dub openly and honestly Jeremy the Fucking Cunt. Jeremy...you sly, underhanded bastard. You couldn't wait to smuggle this one through, could you? This complete bullshit about Sky News retaining its independent directors and being separate from the Murdoch Empire is absolutely laughable, as is the idea you've been desperately trying to circulate in the rest of the press that Murdoch somehow gave up more than he wanted to in this deal. He has got exactly what he wanted. And I don't believe for even the slightest nano-second that he's not going to renege on the independent directors and chairperson idea - I've read his papers and watched his news channels. The man is a born fucking liar. That independent chair will be a puppet, a Murdoch stooge, no doubt about it, swayed by Rupert's dark arts of mind control. Or his fat fucking chequebook.

That "compromise" of course means that the deal gets to swerve the competition commission - very smooth, you sly bastards - and the only hurdles left are a public consultation and an inevitable legal challenge from the opposition media groups. If that public consultation ever comes to pass, I swear to god, I'll write a fucking dissertation for them...not that anyone would ever read it. Our last hope may be the rebel alliance, led by the Guardian, Mirror and so on...and the Telegraph. Ohh, the Telegraph.

The Telegraph...let's not mince words here - because I've been mincing them very fucking finely so far - you fucking idiots. You complete dribbling morons. Yes, I know you oppose the whole coalition deal, and so wanted to make them look stupid by showing up the Lib Dems, as if that would automatically lead to a Tory minority government. But going straight for Vince Cable, the man in a position to make decisions about the entire future of your industry...and in such a dumb, underhanded manner! Posing as constituents is low, even for a Tory rag, which by association should be utterly devoid of morality.

As well as ruining the bond of trust between MPs and their constituents, the Telegraph underlined the evil, twisted image of the press that papers like the News of the World (a Murdoch paper! What a surprise!) had been trying to hammer home in recent years. But what was worse is they got Vince kicked off the job of refereeing the BSkyB takeover, which saw it placed straight into the hands of a Murdoch apologist, Jeremy Fucking Cunt. And now they have the brass neck to complain?! This is your fault, you fucking morons! Christ, I'm glad your circulation is plummeting. Even though that would leave the percentage of papers not owned by an aging Australian supervillain even smaller...the Torygraph have been doing more harm than good lately.

The BBC must be sweating now. News Corp are going to be even bigger before, both in terms of influence and financially, and Murdoch will do his utmost to bring down the BBC. Now, really, the Government should do all it can to protect the BBC...but given the incredibly scant effort they made to investigate the takeover itself, I doubt they'll lift a god-damn finger. This is the first domino, and the rest of them are teetering precariously. There just aren't words for what a complete fucking outrage this decision is...I think even I've run out. For now.

In conclusion...fuck you, Rupert. Fuck you, Jeremy Cunt. And fuck you, Telegraph, you idiots. This is a nail in the coffin for our industry, and there's more than one bastard out there wielding a hammer.

perception

2011-02-27T22:08:00.005Z

Nick Clegg just can't seem to catch a break nowadays, can he?

A luck-break, I mean. Not a break, as in a skiing holiday, because that's exactly what he did catch as the Libyan crisis escalated...and this after he had to strenuously deny claims that he's lazy, because he insists on receiving no new paperwork after 3pm.

The thing is, there are perfectly rational reasons for both of these things; he doesn't get new paperwork after 3 because that would leave him no chance of finishing the mountain of existing paperwork before midnight. And the skiing - well, probably not the wisest move, given the rather upper-class Tory implications of it all - but the man still has a family to see to, and he can't be expected to be on call 24/7. It's not as if he's actually in charge...

But these don't seem to be the kind of things that Nick can get away with any more. They're all over the press like zombies on a fresh corpse. I'd wager David Cameron doesn't receive any new paperwork after half one, and spends three days a week up a Swiss mountain, but he can smoothly dodge criticism for that. He's still relatively waterproof, while Nick has long since been stripped of all protective coatings, and rather seems to absorb all passing criticism like a giant shit-sponge.

It's a matter of credibility. I was reading about an interesting parallel to his situation today in Hunter S. Thompson's diaries from the 1972 Presidential Campaign trail. George McGovern was put forward as the voice of the "new politics" - doesn't that sound familiar? He was meant to be the anti-politician, who would get stuck in about the crusty old elite, unite the youth vote and kick those starched suits out of the White House. Sounds a lot like Nick Clegg right after the debates, doesn't it? Well, the second McGovern won the Democratic nomination, and was up against the incumbent Richard Nixon, he decided to drop the anti-politics stuff, the 'new politics', because he didn't think that kind of line could engineer a win over Nixon. It worked fine against Muskie, Humphrey and Wallace, but he had to step up and play politics for real if he was going to make a serious run at the Presidency.

That, right there, is Nick Clegg going into coalition with the Conservatives. He took the hopes and dreams of the 'new politics' and leapt straight into bed with the establishment. There was some disillusionment over this, but it wasn't the end; that came a few months later, when he dropped Thomas Eagleton as his running mate after it was revealed he had a history of serious mental problems, which had been treated with electro-shock therapy. Eagleton lied to McGovern, promising to come forward with his medical records but never producing them, and McGovern dropped him from the ticket. That was it; he had just destroyed his base. The youth vote, the lefties and the 'new politics' crowd, they were far too sympathetic to Eagleton's situation; all they saw was McGovern dropping his mentally-ill and vulnerable running mate. He looked a stone-cold politician, exactly the kind of starched suit he had been promising to sweep out of the White House.

That, right there, is Nick Clegg voting in favour of the tuition fees bill after signing a pledge that he would oppose it. The same kind of betrayal, the same loss of credibility. After that, McGovern could do nothing right. In many ways, his campaign actually wasn't badly organised; it was just that nobody was really listening any more. He had been in a hard enough fight as it was; it's very difficult to dislodge an incumbent President under any circumstances, without the total loss of your base to contend with. He had already alienated the mainstream of the Democratic party by embracing the anti-politics vote; now, he backpedaled and tried to win back the mainstream's favour, losing that of the fringe. Despite Nixon already becoming embroiled in the Watergate scandal, which eventually topped him, he defeated McGovern with one of the most astonishing landslides in electoral history. He won by a record-breaking 18 million votes, 60% to 37%, with McGovern winning only a single state - Massachusetts. Even McGovern's home state of South Dakota turned its back on him.

McGovern made himself a target. He destroyed his own credibility, first by trying to backpedal to the mainstream strategy after winning the primary, and secondly in the Eagleton affair, where he essentially became what he had always campaigned against. Draw the parallel to Clegg; first he got into bed with the Tories, turning his back on everyone who voted Liberal Democrat to keep the Conservatives out of power, then he went and betrayed them still further by supporting the tuition fees vote. For me, he's suffering the same loss of credibility as McGovern did; he's made himself a target in the same way.

Not to draw too great a line between Cameron and Nixon, but in this analogy that's the part he plays; things are thrown at him every day, and few of them seem to stick. Just as with Nixon and Watergate throughout the '72 campaign; one Gallup poll showed that just 3% of people thought that it was a major issue in the election. Meanwhile, the other guy can't catch a break for love nor money. Everything he does is perceived negatively. He finds himself in a succession of no-win situations. For McGovern this meant a spectacular destruction in the polls....could Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats be heading for the same thing? Clegg has a bit of time on his side, which McGovern never did, but the Scottish Liberal Democrats...well, they're going to the polls in May, and the omens are not good.

distractions

2011-02-25T20:19:00.005Z

You may have noticed that there's been a certain paucity of new material on the site this month. Or you may not have. Regardless, an explanation is mercifully at hand: I've been cheating on this website with another website.

Basically, I had to make a local news website for my course, and it has consumed my life. It's got pictures and videos and everything - I'm slaving away on TV and radio packages even now, which will no doubt end up on there.

It's over on the other end of this link, in case you're interested. There's also a DVD Bonus Directors Commentary blog here.

This should only be going on for another month or so, so hopefully normal service will be resumed on here before long. When I'm not locked into the cycle of desperately seeking facts and people to attribute them to, in between all too short hours of inebriation and sleep.

referendum time

2011-02-19T11:52:00.004Z

So, we're getting the electoral reform referendum after all. It managed to sneak through the Lords just in time, despite the best efforts of Labour. It'll now go up against the Scottish election on May 5...and while it may be condescending in the extreme to suggest that this will be too complicated for Scottish voters to fathom, it is going to create a logistical nightmare given that there are a very large number of people who can vote in one election and not the other. It's also been mooted that because priority will be given to the Westminster based election in terms of counting and so on, we won't get a result of the Scottish election until the following day - so we'd all be forced to actually sleep through the night! A travesty!

This is going to be a big test for the unity of the Coalition, and it's certainly the final nail in the coffin of Cabinet collective responsibility...if we had a written constitution, we'd be tearing it up right about now. Nick Clegg and David Cameron are coming at this from utterly opposing angles, with Dave wholly opposed to the changes and Clegg having put all of his credibility-eggs into that one fragile policy-basket.

Labour meanwhile will be hoping to make this more into a referendum on the coalition government itself, and if polls are to be believed then that would see a favourable outcome for them - which is to say, a No vote. They're not opposed to a change to Alternative Voting, which would see votes drift away from the Conservatives, but they are opposed to the constituency boundary changes that Cameron paper-clipped to the back of the bill, which would be so beneficial to the Tories that it would almost wipe out what they'd lose on the change to AV.

Cameron has been really rather canny about this - he's minimised the harm that the bill could cause the Tories electorally by including the boundary changes to balance things out again. Even if he loses this one, he won't have lost a huge amount of ground in terms of election strategy and he'll also have strengthened the Lib Dems, ensuring the peaceful future of the coalition. On the other hand if it is shot down, he gets stay with First Past The Post and Nick Clegg will take all of the blame. He's getting really rather good at that.

Expect a campaign of desperation from the Lib Dems, then. They're relatively stranded in the polls behind the Tories and Labour, both of whom are pushing for a No vote, and Electoral Reform was the key condition to them going into partnership with the Conservatives. They've taken a hell of a lot of flak to get this one policy to the forefront - tuition fees, VAT tax rises, the sheer fact that they're onside with the Tories - but they clearly think that it's worth the risk. A change to AV could potentially wipe out the support that they're sure to lose because of their concessions to the Tories - they might not gain any ground in the short term, but it would vastly level the playing field in the future.

The big, big problem of it all for Nick though will be communicating this fact to the public. This is not a simple, black and white issue. Electoral reform is an immensely complex thing, with arguments supporting each different system being put forward by parties with hugely biased agendas. There are many who have strong feelings about the failings in the current system, but unless their message can be clearly and concisely communicated then the turnout is going to be abysmal. This is why it might be quite easy for Labour to turn it into a referendum on the government itself - "do you like the government" is a much easier question than weighing up the pros and cons of FPTP, AV, and the crucial boundary changes - which, by the way, neither coalition party will mention at any point. It's in both of their interests for those to remain quietly in the background, despite the significant effect they would have, so they can try to sneak them in alongside the more popular and appealing idea of changing the voting system.

two-horse race

2011-02-15T14:38:00.003Z

The Scottish elections are looming, a mere three months ago, and the Parties are gearing up into campaign mode. While the conference season and the manifestos are a month away yet, we can already glean a few ideas about how things are going to go from this early stage.

First thing is almost obvious enough; this is going to be a two-horse race between Labour and the SNP. The Conservatives were unpopular enough in Scotland before the General Election, where there was a swing to Labour, and their policies since then are unlikely to have endeared them to many. The Liberal Democrats meanwhile - usually a fairly strong force in Scotland - have tainted themselves by getting into bed with the hated Tories, and their popularity has fallen into single figures in some polls. If there was even a smidgen of support for the Coalition going around in Scotland they might be alright, but again, swing to Labour. Many of their MSPs will be relatively difficult to remove, entrenched as they are in the list system, but they're not going to be gaining any ground.

There wasn't much of an SNP turnout at the General Election, but it's readily accepted by most that people vote differently in these two elections when it comes to the Nationalists. If they're so serious about removing Scotland from the UK, why bother sending some of them to Westminster? So, it's coming down to Iain Gray's Labour opposition and the incumbent minority, Alex Salmond and the Scottish National Party.

Labour may hold a handsome 17 point lead in the polls, but this is no reason for them to get complacent. Breaking these polls down in specific areas - especially the North East, a traditional heartland for the Nats - shows that thanks to boundary changes, the position is not much different to that in 2007 when they took power in the first place. For example, Aberdeen Central MSP Lewis MacDonald took his seat by 382 votes in 2007, but if the exact same people turned out and voted the same way today, the boundary changes would see him lose by double figures.

What is different at this election is momentum. The SNP built their base for the last election very methodically and carefully, and took a real run at it. They did fantastically well to gain as many seats as they did, but they're going to have a lot of trouble keeping them all. They don't have nearly as much support from big business as they had in 2007 - the millions of Stagecoach buses chief Brian Soutar apart - and the last four years of government will leave the electorate slightly more wary about their populist promises.

The SNP argue that they've upheld 86 of the 96 promises they made in their manifesto back then. The obvious response is that they failed to deliver on the ten most important ones. The glaring lack of an independence referendum will rankle with their core support, the independence-seekers, and the failure to reduce class sizes or abolish student debt will no doubt hit their popularity with families and students...and first time buyers will probably still be wondering where the support they were promised in 2007 is.

This is why the SNP are likely to run their campaign mainly on personality. The less focus on the previous four years as possible, apart from a bit of tokenism - but they know Labour have far too much ammunition about their recent failings. Alex Salmond has a, ahem, large personality, and will argue strongly that the Man In The Street knows who he is a heck of a lot better than he knows who Iain Gray is. Salmond may be preaching to the converted there, though; polls have suggested that while he's got the Man In The Street as sewn up as he did last time around, the Woman in the street is heavily behind Labour. I fully expect to see Cameron-style posters featuring big pictures of Alex's face plastering the roadsides and billboards of Scotland before May 5.

The possibility of a referendum on Electoral Reform will also have an interesting bearing on the election. We'll know by the end of this week whether it will actually have an effect, being as it needs to make it through the Lords by thursday to actually get the legislation passed in time for it to happen on May 5. Now, I know that technically people aren't that thick, they understand how to vote and so forth, on two bits of paper even, but the issue of who is eligible to vote will cause confusion. In my constituency alone, Aberdeen Central, there are 4,000 people who are eligible to vote in the Scottish elections, but not Westminster ones like the referendum, because of their national and residence status. That's 4,000 people in one constituency alone, admittedly a city-centre one..that's going to be a logistical nightmare across an entire country. It would almost certainly have an adverse affect on turnout for both polls, and turnout is vital not only to the functioning of democracy but also the legitimacy of these elections. A low turnout can completely swing the result of an election - because only the nutters, the vocal minority, bother to come out. Look at France in 2002 - they ended up with a Presidential run-off featuring Jean-Marie Le Pen, an actual honest-to-goodness real-life fascist. We don't want that kind of thing happening up here, thanks very much.

These are just the preliminary concerns, of course. Campaigning proper hasn't really started in earnest yet...and that's where things are going to get interesting. It's going to be a long and complicated 3 months.

Big Scamciety

2011-02-14T11:10:00.003Z

Oh for the love of...Dave just doesn't want to let this whole Big Society thing die, does he? Today he told a bunch of 'social entrepreneurs', whatever the hell those are - it does sound very Conservative though, doesn't it, turning society into a business problem, de-humanizing the whole thing - that it was his "mission" in this term of Parliament.

Let's face it, the Big Society isn't really Big. The only Big thing about it is the scale of deception it's trying to orchestrate. The Tories don't do Big, especially when it comes to Government - they'd much rather that was Small. The whole idea is making government involvement in public affairs Smaller, and essentially hoping that the people will somehow pick up the slack themselves.

Despite the entire scheme threatening to fall apart - with flagship city Liverpool pulling out already, project leader Lord Wei admitting that it's incompatible with "having a life" and various charity bosses being unequivocal in their criticism - Dave is sticking with it. Today he started rolling out the details of a bank fund to help kick-start voluntary projects. The trouble is that this fund isn't very Big...in fact, it's too Small. It's completely dwarfed when put next to, say, the cuts in local authority funding. Which it's basically meant to be replacing.

It's a shit-storm of irony, really. Dave claims that the Big Society is all about empowering charities and getting people into voluntary work for the good of, well, everyone. Sir Stephen Bubb, head of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations, noted today that these very charities are now having to lay off staff and cut down the amount of work they're doing. He said: "you can hardly build a bigger society if the very people at the heart of that vision are cutting back on the work they do".

And a more local example; Aberdeen South MP Anne Begg yesterday described the government's massive cuts to the benefits system as "a con". The numbers are quite hilarious when you look at them...the government has decided that some 200,000 people on invalidity benefits are "fit for work", and ignoring briefly the fact that this in itself appears to be bullshit, there are already 225,000 unemployed people in Scotland. So boost that to 425,000 once you've kicked everyone off benefits....and you know how many job vacancies there are, in the whole country?

33,000.

Yeah, that makes sense, right Dave? Get these spongers back to work! Into jobs that don't exist. The sick and crippled will now be lining up alongside the fit and willing to try to cram 12 of them into each job. Oh, and that's before half of the charity workers in the country are laid off because even the business arm of the Big Society is being starved to death.

The thing is, Dave can't really bail on the Big Society now. It was his idea, his baby; so when it collapses, he won't be able to shift the blame onto Nick Clegg or even Vince Cable. He's dodged numerous bullets over things like tuition fees quite nimbly, but he can see that this is a bucket of shit balanced on his head, and his head alone. So he's not going to give up on it - unfortunately for the rest of us.

So, I'll revise my earlier assessment. The only Big thing about the Big Society is the scale of destruction it's wreaking on our country. Anne Begg is quite right, it is a god-damn con. The Tories try to look all concerned and cuddly, telling everyone that they're really into charity and voluntary work, while they're actually shrinking the size of government to a microscopic size, depriving every public service of funds and leaving the rest of us out in the cold to deal with it on our own. Well, cheers, Dave. Very Big of you.

hangmen

2011-02-10T17:11:00.008Z

Looks like that's another MP off to jail over Expenses, then...hot on the heels of Eric Ilsley, who joined David Chaytor in jail this week, Jim Devine has been found guilty of fiddling his accounts.

The courts are looking to throw the book, shelf and indeed the entire library, brick by brick, at these fairly nondescript, aging, chubby men, who are by no means extraordinary in Westminster circles. The problem of expenses fraud was absolutely endemic in the Westminster system, and literally hundreds of MPs were found to be up to no good. But it's these three who are taking the hit, in full, for everyone else's indiscretions - they were part of a much larger problem, but they're taking the sum of the punishment.

The scandal definitely damaged British politics and public trust in their elected representatives to a great degree, but the official reactions to it have been unbalanced in the extreme. While just about everybody was seemingly involved, only a select few have been picked out to take the full brunt of the righteous anger of the judicial system.

Michael Martin was the first major scapegoat of the scandal, the chief one sent forth by the House of Commons itself. His departure was a rather bizarre spectacle, as he received a 30-second standing ovation from the very MPs who had placed his head upon a platter. Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg all had kind words for him, despite him using his final address to the Commons to attack all of them before becoming the first Speaker to be deposed by the House in some 300 years. Martin made it clear that the blame for the scandal lay firmly at the feet of MPs, who had roundly rejected his proposals to reform the Expenses system, something he claims would have prevented much of the trouble.

The House seemed to think that the sacrifice of Martin would slake the public's thirst for blood, as long as they made enough of a song and dance about it. They were wrong.

Then there was David Laws, the Liberal Democrat MP who was Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Within a week of taking office he was discovered to have claimed £40,000 in expenses so he could rent a room in a flat he was actually sharing with his lover, but had kept the pretense up to hide the true nature of his sexuality. Quite a mitigating factor, perhaps, but this was a man tasked, as part of the New Politics, with cleaning up public finances - and it turned out that he had been effectively stealing from them for several years. Forty grand! Compare that to the 18 grand that got David Chaytor locked up, or the 14 grand that put Illsley away earlier today. Jim Devine is a relative saint, having only claimed £8,385. Despite these numbers, the three former Labour men are going to jail, while Laws was allowed a quiet resignation, with David Cameron publicly expressing a hope that he would soon return to the Cabinet. Bizarre, really, given that the Tories had run so prominently in the General Election trying to harness public anger about expenses to topple Gordon Brown's government.

Looking at the list of people who paid back money in the wake of the scandal, it seems like half of them are in the Cabinet...Nick Clegg is in there, although he only paid back £80 despite claiming literally as much money as he could. George Osborne too...and Andrew Lansley, Michael Gove, Alan Duncan, Chris Huhne (who repaid the cost of a trouser press "to avoid controversy"), and Oliver Letwin. Millionaire Energy & Climate Change Gregory secretary Gregory Barker sold a flat paid for by expenses for a personal profit of £327,000, avoiding capital gains tax by openly deceiving the House - and yet he's in the Cabinet, not jail.

The point is that it seems a trifle odd that so many are getting away with so much, while the library is being thrown at three rather unimportant former Labour MPs. There's no excuse for what they did, but they're being punished to a great degree in the place of a great many other guilty parties who are walking free. There just doesn't seem to be much balance on the scales of justice here - alright, fine, if that's the punishment for this offence, by all means send these guys to jail. Have some god-damn consistency, though, and send the rest of them down too...

I just hope the rest of the House is grateful, that's all. These guys are taking a big, big hit for the team on this one - but they'll probably only be remembered in negative campaign literature. Thus is the hypocrisy of the Commons.

ASBO

2011-02-07T18:28:00.004Z

The Government are pressing forward with plans to scrap the Anti-Social Behaviour Order system in favour of a more streamlined (*cough* cheaper *cough*) alternative. The Coalition are attempting to put a positive spin on this, but the news is coming at it from all kinds of odd angles.

The BBC lunchtime news got some great shots. The panel of children brought before a Cabinet Committee to talk about how the ASBO system should be working was quite hilarious in itself. Not least because of the obviously extremely painstaking selection policy which saw a child of every imaginable minority group represented, creating the unnerving impression that they were about to join hands in a circle and start singing about world peace - I thought multiculturalism had failed? - but also due to the impression that the government are now taking their cue from a bunch of kids.

The new approach claims that "Criminal behaviour orders" will force repeat offenders to change their ways, without much mention of how this is going to be more effective than ASBOs, which apparently are breached in 56% of cases. Well, apparently convicted criminals will have their possessions confiscated - and presumably sold off to service the national debt, which hangs leering over the shoulder of each and every Tory policy. What are the bets that this new anti-social behaviour system will work out cheaper than the old one? Anyone would think the motivation was financial, rather than the betterment of society...what with those massive cuts to the policing budgets and all. Who's going to enforce these new rules - at least to a greater extent than that 56% reoffender rate in the ASBO scheme - with less police presence on the streets?

My favourite proposal is one which could see offenders evicted from their homes. Down with yobbos, up with homelessness! Because young'uns are much more likely to behave themselves when they're removed from a stable home environment.

Anyway, in a Big Society, shouldn't local militias be sorting out these damn yobs on their own, anyway? Surely government intervention shouldn't go any further than the upkeep of a set of stocks in the heart of each population centre to which local Community Councils can drag noisy neighbours and graffiti artists to. But again, the Coalition Cuts are having an impact there, as today we also heard the head of CSV, one of the country's largest volunteering groups, saying the Big Society project is being undermined by cuts to local authorities.

The thing is, the Big Society has never really got off the ground, but it's only now that people are taking notice of this. Is it a coincidence that it's started to rain shit over Number 10 over social policy just weeks after media witchdoctor Andy Coulson left office? The way the news works, it only takes one big story for an issue to become vogue, and start snowballing until the public and subeditors get tired of it - the same way that there can be a rash of stories on, say, dog-maulings, or killer bees, inside an isolated two-week period. In the chaos after Coulson's departure, it seems like the Coalition let a Big Society scoop slip...and now it's snowballing on them. First Lord Wei, then Liverpool, now CSV - and indeed ASBOs tied up vaguely in it too...now, more than ever, the Coalition could have done with a steady spin at the tiller.

muscular liberalism

2011-02-05T10:28:00.005Z

David Cameron announced this morning that "multiculturalism has failed". So that's it, eh? Let's just seal off the borders, quit the EU and the UN, and if possible erect a giant sail in the North-East of England so we can harness the power of the winds to creep off into the Atlantic a few hundred miles. I never liked Chinese food anyway.

Well, he hasn't quite gone to that extent. At first glance, it seems rather a lot like Gordon Brown's "Britishness" initiative - five years old that idea, Dave, must try harder - in that he wants people to have a stronger sense of British identity, of UK nationalism, to stop all these bloody foreigners taking over. I mean, half of them are terrorists anyway, right?

Well, again, not quite to that extent. Dave has this habit of trying to say things in the absolute strongest terms possible, but at the last moment noticing his grandmother in the front row of the audience, and as such he always backpedals ever so slightly in his rhetoric.

For example: "Frankly, we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism," quoth the Dave. So, down with tolerance, but up with...liberalism? Right up until the last word of that sentence, the thing had the air of a pulpit-pounding rant, those pesky Islamists were trembling in terror, and the right wing of the Conservative party was in a lather of outright ecstasy. At last, they thought, the spirit of Thatcherism is back! Cameron has burned his shrine to Blairism and decided that no, its time They stopped coming over here and taking our jobs and talking all funny! At last, after months of this Coalition crap, the Conservative Party is in power! Then Dave noticed granny, smiling sweetly up from the front row, and changed gears on us; "militias" suddenly becomes "liberalism".

I mean, what is really "active, muscular liberalism"? It sounds like mild-mannered liberalism had an accident in the lab one day when it was beavering away for the benefit of all mankind, and underwent a terrible transformation into a hulking monster, green flesh bursting through its garments as it kicked the door off its hinges on the way to sort out Johnny Foreigner.

Really, though, this is just another indication that the Conservative Party remain, in almost every conceivable way, the Conservative Party. There isn't really any Compassionate Conservativism here, and the Liberal Democrats probably don't know what to think (although to be fair, nobody has told them what to think yet)...this, once again is just traditional Tory ideology, clamping down on immigration and minorities. Just like the Big Society thing was actually really about stripping back the welfare state and reducing the size - and responsibilities - of the government. The same goes for handing over public sector jobs to the private, encouraging the City to take up the slack when basically all the Civil Servants get sacked, taking an axe to the NHS, and so on, and so on.

And this has been underlined by the Muslim Council of Britain, in their riposte on the Today Program this morning to Mr Cameron's anti-multiculturalism comments. They don't seem particularly outraged...they just seem bored. At worst, disappointed, in that parental "we're not angry...we're just disappointed" way. "In terms of the approach to tackling terrorism, it doesn't seem to be particularly new." Pft, call this an outrage? This is nothing.

So Dave really has just recycled a Gordon Brown speech from 2006, and added in some of his own rather weak invective. Even the leaders of a Muslim youth group accusing him of feeding "hysteria and paranoia" isn't going to help mask that. Thinking about it, what has actually changed as a result of this speech? I don't really remember being forced into any Mosques under Labour, or witnessing many flag-burning rallies for that matter. I doubt things are going to be any different now - people are just as free as they ever were to be as bigoted as they like, although perhaps under Cameron that's become a little bit more institutionalised. But not very.

Christ, it was all going so well...right up until he spotted granny. For half a second, he was the true Conservative leader, re-born, proudly leading the grass-roots of his party forward into a new age of intolerance and narrow-mindedness...then he retreated to liberalism, and started muttering about freedom of speech and democracy. The sudden excitement which had gripped the old-school Tories across the back-benches withered and died, and one by one they dropped off back to sleep, dreaming of past inglories, and the party that they used to believe in. Deep down, every one of them secretly really wants to get away from all this compassionate Conservativism and blame-shifting onto the Liberal Democrats business, and just be Tories again. But down the front Cameron is backpedalling again...cheers, gran.

tribes

2011-02-04T12:53:00.003Z

There's some very interesting footage on the BBC just now of an uncontacted tribe deep in the Amazon rainforest. Using a zoom lens they've managed to film the goings-on in this remote, primitive village, from over a kilometer, and next month it's debuting on BBC3 as a hilarious new Reality TV series. Alright, I may have made up that last part.

I find it quite interesting, though, the lengths we go to to ensure that these tribes remain uncontacted. Ostensibly the reason this footage is being taken is to work out how they go about their business so that we can prevent them from bumping into illegal loggers. No, it's not just sheer nosiness - presumably the sight of a bunch of guys in a JCB wrecking up the forest would be slightly disturbing to them. But why are we leaving them so totally isolated? Couldn't we introduce them to the wider world in a gentler, more humane fashion? Isn't it rather inhumane to leave them struggling away in what appears to be a pretty difficult lifestyle, devoid of medicine or proper sanitation, when these things are readily available to almost every other person on the planet? Surely it's not just because we can't afford another village on the aid bill, because we're struggling with Africa as it is?

We essentially seem to be living out the Prime Directive from Star Trek, of leaving uncontacted civilizations alone to work the world out for themselves. So is that it, are we just going to leave them there until they figure out a way out of the jungle? If they don't move, will we just leave them there forever? And if one of them does stumble out into Rio de Janiro or wherever, are we going to try to pretend that it isn't there, or that there's nothing unusual about it? We're effectively lying to them as it is...what if, in the course of our entirely scientific observations which are nothing to do with base curiosity, we notice a volcano about to explode and wipe the entire tribe out? Will we still be leaving them to it then? I guess this is what Kirk and Picard were struggling with in every third episode...

At the end of the short there the narrator suggests that it's good for us to have people like these in the world, because it shows us a different, simpler way of living. So, are we really just doing this for our benefit? Surely these folks would have a better life if they knew what those shiny big birds in the sky with the zoom-lenses for eyes were, if they were introduced to some slightly more modern amenities? Or are we just going to keep watching from afar, and see if eventually they invent irrigation and the wheel and so forth, like a microcosm of wider society growing up? It might take a while, like, they hardly seem to have been too adventurous over the last few centuries...

There's a weird kind of voyeurism about it, really, just keeping an eye on them from a distance without announcing our presence or attempting to communicate with them in some way. We'll just sit over here with our technology and keep an eye on them, like our little pet project, the evolution of human culture in a petri dish. Maybe deep down inside we're just a bit worried; worried that for all of our modern appliances, our non-stick pans and Nick Cleggs, we're absolutely no happier than those jungle folks who seem pretty contented just with a bit of stick. So let's just keep quiet and watch, see if they're actually completely contented without Twitter and hair-straighteners - maybe we'll discover that we've wasted the last three hundred years or so.

Actually...maybe it is best to leave them alone. Christ, I might go join them. Life without high-speed broadband and digital watches is probably slightly more fulfilling, when the big thing you do with your day is kill something and eat it. I can't even remember the last time I killed anything, unless you count pixelated zombies. Maybe their lives are, as Thomas Hobbes predicted for those living in a state of nature, "nasty, brutish, and short". But at least they don't have to worry about train cancellations or Windows crashing right before they save their 4,000 word essay. There are certainly times when I find myself envying them.

Shrinking Society

2011-02-03T17:25:00.005Z

Back in the day, the Conservative Party didn't even believe there was such a thing as society. Then, under David Cameron, they discovered that there really was such a thing! But it was rather grubby, poor and ill-educated, and if at all possible it should just be left to look after itself. Really, they wanted as little to do with it as possible.

That was the birth of David Cameron's Big Society plan, where he would get Joe Public to do all the work he didn't want to. Why bother feeding the poor, when they can feed each other? Really, this wasn't a huge shift from traditional Tory policy...keep the machinery of government as small and as removed from the public as humanly possible. Cameron made the slightly dubious decision to launch this scheme in Liverpool, a rather left-wing place at the best of times - so clearly a place he didn't really want to waste government money on. Those scousers can deal with their own mess, until they start buying the Sun and voting Conservative again! So, of course, considerably less than a year later, Liverpool has rejected the plans outright.

This isn't really that damning an indictment on society, of course - it's not that nobody wants to help each other, it's that it's relatively difficult. There aren't really enough hours in the day. Perhaps that's why we have a government to do it? I mean, christ, should be be taking shifts balancing the national chequebook next? Can I take over the MoD for a day and declare war on France? Or perhaps get into the Home Office, and devolve Aberdeen as an independent state - we'd get the oil, and Alex Salmond would be furious! It makes you wonder, really, if people are capable of sorting out all of society's ills, why do we bother with a government at all?

With wonderful comic timing, this was underlined by the very man Cameron put in charge of the Big Society project, Lord Wei, who announced that even he didn't have time to do it. He admitted that volunteering to work for the good of society (uhh...isn't that in his job description?) three days a week just isn't feasible, and that it is incompatible with "having a life". And he's a Lord, for the love of god. A Peer of the realm. He should be spending his days in the House of Lords in a haze of fine brandy and well-upholstered cushions - but even he doesn't have time to do all of the government's social work for them. He says he's had to take on extra work to pay the bills. I guess the Big Society just got one Bigger, if even the Lords are having to climb down and join the rest of us in the rapidly shrinking job market.

Volunteering simply cannot replace public services - and that's from the man who is in charge of encouraging people to volunteer in the place of public services. Shit, I guess the government are going to have to get involved with society now, eh? You know, do some good, improve the lot of the British people - which, once again, I'm pretty sure must crop up somewhere in their job description. Banging on about the deficit and balancing the treasury isn't going to excuse you just not doing your job...to multilate the metaphor that David Cameron loves so much, there needs to be more to life than balancing your credit card debt. There's no sense in clearing that debt if you have to work 25 hours a day and sell your house and children to do it. Because then you've got nothing left, no life to get on with now that you're debt free. In this tortured metaphor, in case you're struggling to keep up, Liverpool is the children.

Of course, the other irony in all of this was that the Big Society venture was meant to be part of Cameron's "Compassionate Conservativism" programme, which was going to convince middle England that the Tories weren't in fact evil bastards, after successive premierships by the likes of Ian Duncan Smith and Michael "I'm not going to hurt you" Howard gave rather the opposite impression. It turns out, though, that leaving the disadvantaged in society to fend for themselves actually doesn't seem all that compassionate...so the plan to show Joe Public that you really do care about him by roundly ignoring him has backfired. Is anyone really surprised? Really?

So, yeah, it looks like there really is such a thing as society. And David Cameron is actually going to need to start engaging with it - he can't fob us off any longer with talk of individual responsibility and the Big Society helping itself out. Not even his own team believe in it any more, and the city where he debuted the whole scheme has pulled out altogether. So roll up your sleeves and take some responsibility, Dave - you're going to have to get involved with all those smelly poor people. Welcome to being in charge.

live from the High Court

2011-01-26T10:44:00.005Z

The Tommy Sheridan trial has made history! Not for being the most overblown parading of egos in the history of the political left, but because the sentencing - which is going on right now - is being Tweeted live from within the court-house.

This is kind of a big deal. You're usually not allowed anything inside a court-room, no mobile phone, no laptop, no cameras, video-cameras or sound recorders. It's essentially why they make journalists learn shorthand. Now, people are going to be tweeting from in there. On Twitter! Thankfully it's just journalists that are allowed it, though, and only this once - otherwise we'd be up to our necks in jurors getting Contempt of Court actions thrown at them for tweeting while in court, saying things like "good god i'm bored, LOL" and "well he does look a bit rapey..."

I guess his takes accurate and contemporaneous court reporting to a whole new level...is this the future of court reporting? Is this how justice will be seen to be done in future - can the principle of 'open justice' be maintained simply by a court tweeter, without any need for a journalist present? Watching a trial in this fashion is actually a lot better than the court reporting that I've done, mostly because you can do it while sitting at home with a pot of tea, rather than on a hard chair in a cold courthouse next to a wee mink in a tracksuit who is next up in the dock...

Well, thankfully enough for those of us attempting to get a job involving reporting, we haven't been edged out by twitter just yet. This is a one-off case, one of general public interest, so I doubt the judiciary will be shelling out on teaching. Although to start with it was just "Sheridan enters court-room...oh, he's left again", and has now moved on to simply being bits from his speech, which again is actually a better way to experience the thing - the man's moral outrage can get a bit repetitive and monotonous when you actually have to listen to the whole thing. This way you can just roll your eyes at each particularly cringe-worthy quote, and get on with life, and if/when he turns on the waterworks, you don't have to watch that either.

What could be interesting about the aftermath of this case is the fate of Andy Coulson, the former Number 10 spin-doctor - he too could find himself up on perjury charges, thanks to his statements to the Sheridan trial about the News of the World phone-hacking business. He was immediately accused of lying, and once Sheridan has been sentenced that would leave the Crown free to focus on other aspects of the trial they might want tidying up. They need to conclude this trial before taking action against other parts of it, basically, but Coulson quitting Downing Street could also have some bearing on the decision whether or not to go after him, if that is taken as yet another admission of guilt from the former editor, who claimed he had no idea what was going on at his own newspaper.

It would complete an interesting circle in the trial, which started back in 2006 when Sheridan won a defamation action against the News of the World, and was subsequently taken to court for perjury in winning that trial. If Coulson was taken to court on behalf of the NOTW, it would mean both sides were lying about who was lying about lying - a fitting way for something involving that particular publication to go, given their tenuous relationship with the truth.

And Twitter now informs me that the judge has buggered off to think about what to do, and will be back in 30 minutes. Thanks to the magic of watching the trial unfold in this fashion, I can spend this time constructively, rather than hanging around the High Court needing to pee but not wanting to go because I just know the judge will re-appear the second I leave the room...whatever sentence Tommy gets, this is a landmark occasion in the judicial system and the way that the administration of justice is conveyed to the public. As convenient as it all is, for the sake of my future career, I just hope it doesn't catch on.

the laundryman

2011-01-24T13:21:00.004Z

So, yesterday I dealt with the impact of Alan Johnson's resignation from the Shadow Cabinet; it seems only proper that the original order should be followed, then, and analyse the departure of Andy Coulson from the Government a day later.

Make no mistake: this is a huge blow for the coalition. Not just the Tories, the coalition as a whole. Coulson may have been a lying, scheming, manipulative bastard, but he was in a job where those characteristics are called for in spades. Even when put next to previous incumbents like Alastair Campbell, the man who apparently re-invented swearing, he was doing a fantastic job.

Think about it. What long-running scandals have been bogging down the Government lately? Where is the intrigue, the ideological angst? There have been plenty of little disagreements and not a small number of gaffes, but all of them have blown over just as quickly as they appeared. Coulson has been right on top of every one of them, smothering the life out of the story before Fleet Street have put pen to paper. He's effectively cut off the government from bad press.

Obviously big policy things like the VAT rise and tution fees stood out as major negatives, but those were both expected and carried out with what appeared to be minimal fuss; despite the rebellion of Lib Dem MPs over tuition fees, is the coalition riven with division today? Vince Cable gave a speech to the Lib Dem conference which basically denounced capitalism, and at the same event Nick Clegg referred to the Iraq War as "illegal" - indeed, he did the same thing from David Cameron's own seat, while filling in one week at PMQs. And yet, both of these things just fizzled out. Only those of us with long and bitter memories can pick out the really serious problems that the government has run into so far, and even we may struggle to isolate them come the next General Election.

Compare this to the media management under previous regimes. Even within the Conservative Party; when he was leader at the turn of the millennium, William Hague's credibility effectively crumbled just because he was pictured wearing a baseball cap. Fast forward to the present regime and he can share a bed with a young man on his staff, and a month later nobody bats an eyelid. It's absurd how much has changed; it's night and day. It's a nightmare for the press.

The coalition have thus far shown a weird kind of unity that has defied every political journalist in the country; even at the Torygraph, who came closest to driving a wedge between the partners when they got Vince Cable and a few other Lib Dem MPs to say nasty things about how the coalition is like a war, with nuclear weapons. Even that blew over relatively quickly - although the repercussions in terms of Jeremy Cunt getting the final say on the BSkyB takeover may be rather more significant - and if the coalition really is like a war on the inside, they're doing a damn good job of giving the exterior impression that it's really not.

Compare that now to New Labour, when MPs and Ministers lining up behind either Blair or Brown were queueing up to stab each other in the back. That was a single, united party, coming off the back of the greatest landslide in British political history, and in hindsight at times it seems far more divided than the supposedly ideologically polarized coalition seems today; there was Blair vs Brown, Campbell vs Mandelson, Blair vs Parliament, Straw vs Blunkett, Brown vs Blunkett, Brown vs Cook, Cook vs Mandelson, Prescott vs the English Language...the list goes on and on. While Alastair Campbell did his utmost to shout everyone into line, there was no stopping many of these rivals airing their dirty laundry in public.

Coulson, by comparison, has over the last nine months or so, been the consummate laundryman. Even when tensions are no doubt bubbling furiously beneath the surface, for the most part they've stayed off the front pages - when they do leave the house, it's with a clean shirt and a cheery smile. It's going to be very, very interesting to see how tidy and united the coalition is going to look now that his steady hand has been snatched from the tiller. At long last, we might get some good scandals out of Westminster.

shakeups

2011-01-23T10:20:00.004Z

The dust is settling somewhat, and it seems there will be no great crisis in the Labour Party over the resignation of Alan Johnson. Everyone just seems to have accepted that his wife was up to no good, muttered "poor bugger" and gone back to work. The Party has singularly failed to turn on itself in outright conflict and dissolution. The top end of the Party is now loaded down with Brownites, but the Blairites don't seem overly angst-ridden; perhaps we really are moving on from the Blair-Brown days. Perhaps, for once, there actually has been Chaaange, rather than just the repeated, monotonous promise of it.

I am quite looking forward to Ed Balls taking George Osborne to task. Of everyone in the Commons, Balls is perhaps the most suited to the grim complexities of the Chancellery; he got a first in PPE at Oxford before specialising in economics at Harvard, and then wrote for the Financial Times for four years before being taken under Gordon Brown's wing in 1994. He's been an apprentice of the Chancellery for fifteen years - he's undoubtedly an economic expert, and he's vastly experienced. He's seen it all.

George Osborne, by comparison, got a 2:1 in History and worked as a temp at Selfridges. He also did some menial data entry work at the NHS, which probably explains why he hates it so much. His dad is a Baronet, though, and he was a member of the Bullingdon Club, which is qualification enough for the Conservative Party. Now honestly, which of these two men would you rather was in charge of the economy?

Not only does Balls know his stuff, but he's renowned for being a bit of an angry man. He's an attack-dog - he won't be giving Osborne a minute's peace. He was roundly rumoured to be the Labour leadership candidate the Tories feared the most, but it's equally possible that they were just trying to get a man named "Balls" elected to the leadership of the Opposition, to help out their pal Rupert's tabloid headline writers. A welcome change all round, really, from Alan Johnson, who was really one of politics' nice guys; all very well for maintaining party unity, but there have been occasions at PMQs when I've seen Osborne very nearly drift off to sleep. He won't try that with an opportunist like Balls shadowing him; he'd wake up with a willy drawn on his forehead in permanent marker. Metaphorically.

Miliband and Balls have been trying to impress the importance of Party unity right from the start; they gave a little speech about it this morning, insisting that their economic ideas were as one, and that while both supported deficit reduction they were opposed to the rash pace of the slash 'n' burn Tory approach. Refreshingly enough, Balls has also noted that Labour need to bring "fresh ideas" and not just "express anger", which is a change from the first three months of Miliband's rule, which has been nothing but criticism with little alternative offered.

There's been something of an insipid, uninspired tone to British politics lately; Labour just complain, the Lib Dems just continually disappoint everyone, and the Conservatives are just relentlessly Conservative. Not to mention tedious - all they ever seem to do is blame their unpopular policies on the outgoing Labour government, or deflect blame onto Nick Clegg. Hopefully, the turbulence of this last week - Johnson joined in the resignation game by government spin-doctor Andy Coulson, maintaining a weird kind of Karmic balance, where one of the nice guys exits in tandem with an unscrupulous lying shitebag - will shake things up a bit. Ed Balls certainly will.

cheerio, cheerio, cheerio

2011-01-21T15:14:00.004Z

Andy Coulson is toast! Yes, the Number 10 spin-doctor has finally caved to all of the furore over the News of the World phone-hacking scandal, and has stepped down from his position as Cameron's Director of Communications.

Andy says that the amount of press attention he's been getting is making it difficult for him to do his job. I mean, is that karma in action, or what? A man who made his name by having reporters stand on celebrities' doorsteps is quitting because there are too many reporters on his doorstep...it's just beautiful.

About time he took some bloody responsibility, frankly. Absolutely nobody believed that he was completely ignorant of what was going on at his paper - he'd have to be a pretty crap editor to have not noticed that his journalists kept coming up with insider scoops on celebrities. And then there's the fact that several of them have directly accused him of telling them to use wiretaps...so we had an unelected man holding a significant amount of power in our government who was on record not only as a cheat but as a liar. It is for the most part a Tory government, I know, but still...!

He went out in classic spindoctor style, too, trying to pick one of those Good Days to Bury Bad News. He went out literally as Tony Blair was sitting down to give evidence to the Iraq War enquiry, and in the thick of a flurry of rumours about Alan Johnson's 'personal reasons' for leaving frontline politics. He tried to smuggle himself out the back door, not quite in the boot of an Audi, but the newsman's equivalent. This could also be seen as one of those 'good resignations', in the Malcolm Tucker lexicon, although I think Coulson already had his one of those in 2007. You can't keep falling on your sword then popping up from the grave at the next re-shuffle too often, or you take on a rather ghoulish air, rather in the style of Peter Mandelson.

There's no way that this is just about the News of the World, of course. He's doing his old boss a bit of a favour here - as well as his new one - as Rupert Murdoch has several spiralling messes on his hands at a moment. Jeremy Hunt is still refusing to divulge Ofcom's recommendation on the BSkyB takeover, even though Robert Peston has all but announced it already, and this ought to take just a smidgen of pressure off of Hunt, at least in the short-term, while he figures out a way to stitch up the bid in News Corp's favour. This was a last opportunity for Coulson to practice his beloved "dark arts", to manipulate the media one final time.

And now he's gone...maybe there'll actually be a proper investigation into phone-hacking! And not just at the News of the World, indeed...legendary Channel 4 anchor Jon Snow has today alleged that there's another major newspaper which has been engaging in similarly dirty tricks, and that they were in his mailbox to boot. He's even called for an investigation to see if the Government were involved in covering up Coulson's cover-up...so while Coulson will have attempted to impose an air of finality through his resignation, this is really only the beginning.

A lot depends, then, on who is appointed to succeed him. The Guardian underlined today that David Cameron is plainly in this up to his elbows, being as he met with former Sun editor and current News Corp executive Rebecca 'Rebekah Wade' Brooks in the days after moving the decision from Hable's brief to Cunt's. I wonder what the two of them chatted about over pate and fine port? Some kind of assurance, no doubt, that the new man would push the deal through...I'd expect to see another Murdoch lackey taking up Coulson's position before very long.

a sudden resignation

2011-01-20T17:06:00.006Z

So much for steadying the ship. Alan Johnson has announced that he is resigning from the Shadow Cabinet for "personal reasons". This is very breaking news, so I do apologise if I'm not fully on top of the facts at all times...as if I'm going to wait to get started on this, though. This shit is huge.

Alan Johnson was supposed to be the safe choice as Chancellor, the man who would unite the Labour Party under their new leader - many of whom were relatively unsure of, being as most of them voted for his brother - and smooth out the transition from old-New-Labour to new-old-Labour. While he might have given the Government an easier ride over the economy than someone like Ed Balls would have done - which is to say, he kept making mistakes and generally failing to show up George Osborne for the strange, creepy madman that he is - he was tremendously useful in moving Labour into the Ed Miliband era, as his clear and public support won over many former David fans - indeed, he was one of them, up until he took the number 2 position.

Ed has been forced into a difficult choice already, then, something which up until now he has avoided - he hasn't even formed a firm policy yet, other than the whole Oppose Everything job. Does he promote the obvious choice, Ed Balls, a man who was groomed for the Chancellor's position by Gordon Brown? He and Miliband were both disciples of Brown, really, but Ed has largely tried to move away from the Brown era as Leader, even criticising his old mentor during the leadership election. Yvette Cooper was the dark horse for the position immediately after Ed's coronation, being as she topped the vote of the Parliamentary Labour Party for Cabinet positions - is she still willing to go up against her husband? Obviously Balls has the better economic experience, and would be viewed as much more of a danger by the Government given his attack-dog image, but would Yvette be a better move to continue the Johnson role of uniting the Party, given her obvious popularity?

Well, even as I write this, it's announced that it's Ed Balls who has got the job. Cooper takes the Home Secretary brief. Well, clearly Miliband has decided that he's confident enough that his own house is in order, and he can make the more aggressive if slightly divisive choice of Balls, to really go after the government and hope that the Labour Party follows in proper formation. Johnson has tried to cement his leader's position even while backing slowly away from him, calling him a "formidable leader".

You don't need to read into Johnson's comments to know that he hasn't been pushed out because of his recent gaffes and economic inexperience. This was really the last thing that Miliband needed at such a formative period in his premiership. It's actually possible for once that this really is all about family reasons, or at least Johnson taking a personal decision that he needs to slow down a bit, get out of the Chancellorship before it gets too heavy. He didn't run for the Party leadership, despite being a very plausible candidate, presumably because he didn't want to be too much in the firing line. Well, the Shadow Chancellery is hardly better...this isn't a great time to be anyone involved with the country's finances, really, even if your whole job is to criticise them. It's entirely possible that Johnson simply would be more comfortable as a back-bencher.

So, Ed Balls is the Shadow Chancellor, his wife is the Shadow Home Secretary (facing off against another woman, Theresa May, which should be fun), while arch-Blairite Douglas Alexander takes over the Foreign Office from her. His old job at Work and Pensions goes to Liam Byrne - another rather easy job, really; unemployment is up, and it's dreadful! Bloody Tories! Grrr! An early and presumably rather unexpected re-shuffle for Miliband, but honestly, this is starting to look a lot more like the team that we expected when his Shadow Cabinet was announced just over a hundred days ago. Ed Balls was always going to end up Shadow Chancellor at some point, and Yvette Cooper is a much better fit for the Home Office than he. Johnson was always going to be a stop-gap appointment, a transition-smoother, and it seems that the transition took place much quicker than any of us really expected.

And a note to our new Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls, courtesy of the man who ushered him into a safe seat to begin his political career proper back in 2005, one T Blair..."nastiness is not the same as effectiveness, and opportunism is not the same as leadership."

a war on two fronts

2011-01-19T18:31:00.007Z

The whole BSkyB takeover mess rumbles on...

After Vince Cable was removed from the position of government authority on the matter for being biased, it was devolved to Jeremy Hunt. Who has now been accused of being biased. Essentially, the Government replaced a man who didn't like Sky enough with one who likes Sky too much. The Shadow Culture Secretary had a piece rather conspicuously splashed across the front of the Guardian, its position made no less conspicuous when you consider how opposed to the takeover the Guardian Media Group vocally is...

Ivan Lewis has called for Hunt to release the details of Ofcom's recommendation about the takeover - it seems likely that Hunt is keeping it under wraps because it recommends shooting the proposal down, which Jeremy wouldn't like at all. Lewis says that Hunt is "on record as having a prejudicial view", apparently having done more research into Hunt's past - extremely clearly biased - statements about the takeover than David Cameron had before he appointed him. Surely it's inconceivable that the Prime Minister knew that he was appointing a Minister to make a decision in bad faith? In any case, it was an interesting move from him - Hunt's pro-News Corp views have been public knowledge for some time.

BBC financial soothsayer Robert Peston - probably the most trusted journalist in the entire country, and not just by merit of the fact he doesn't work for News Corp - says that he's "as sure as I can be" that Ofcom have recommended referring the BSkyB takeover to the Competition Commission, over concerns that the company coming under the sole control of News Corp would damage "media plurality". Ofcom have been told to refuse to comment, and there's been no response either from Jeremy Cunt.

Oh god, what have I said?! I called the Hulture Secretary - no, never mind. Let's skip over it. Repeating it would only draw more attention to it. That's live programming for you, folks...these things happen. Try working for Radio Kent.

News Corp would probably be eternally grateful to Cunt for continuing to fight this particular fire for them for the time being, of course, being as they've got other concerns right now; namely, the News of the World phone-hacking scandal, which is threatening to swallow up the paper whole. Apparently backing the position of Paul Gascoigne, the dottled former footballer who is now attempting to sue the paper for hacking his phone, Ivan Lewis said "no commercial interest however big or small has a right to break the law." He called for a Crown Inquiry into the matter, and while Labour have done this before it seems to be now making its way into firm policy - a rare enough thing in the rather nebulous world of the Miliband era. Gascoigne could be just the thing to tip the whole mess over the edge, as although nobody really takes him seriously - and will be frankly impressed if he turns up to court without a can of lager, dressing gown and fishing rod - he's absolutely perfect tabloid fodder. He's legitimately famous, badly-behaved, completely mad, and the name "Gazza" just lends itself so well to a red-top headline.

Chubby football statistic-shouter Andy Gray has broken Sky Sports ranks, too, to reveal that the NOTW had hacked his phone, and was joined in court by comedian Steve Coogan in attempting to force private eye Glenn Mulcaire to reveal which hacks had employed him to access their voice-mail-boxes. It's a sad irony for the News of the World; Gazza, Andy Gray, Steve Coogan...under any other circumstances, a selection of celebrities that they would happily have splashed prominently across their pages. About the only celebrity movement that the NOTW don't report is when they're suing the NOTW...

Difficult times for the NOTW, and indeed News Corp as a whole. The NOTW may in fact end up serving as some kind of sacrificial lamb, in a way, because as long as it's at the top of the agenda nobody will be pursuing Jeremy Hunt with that much conviction. Murdoch has to pick his battles, now, and I have a feeling that total control of BSkyB will be a much more attractive proposition for him than protecting the News of the World.

Shit Journalism Digest #5

2011-01-17T16:02:00.005Z

And another quick addition, which I feel speaks for itself...

That, right there, might actually be the worst attempt at journalism I've ever, ever come across. It even tops "Anger at locked park toilets" from the front page of the Arbroath Herald. I don't even need to say anything, though...it inflicts the most mortal wounds on itself, simply by merit of being so incredibly, nakedly dreadful. No amount of vitriol I could spout would make it seem any worse.

I think the balance topples over and into a burning ravine of molten shit around about the statement: "I find Tesco, and go in. I almost buy that upmarket pizza; the choice tells me Jo wanted a lovely life, something above the ordinary." And then there's the fact that portions of it are just plain made up; there is absolutely no way that someone actually said "not all men are monsters" to her spontaneously, like the chap supposedly does at the end. That's one of those idyllic quotes that people make up, because they couldn't possibly be real, then attribute to mysterious sources in Season 5 of The Wire. I guess they got away with it then, too...

Oh, just read it. It's actually enlightening, but only into the standards at the Daily Mail today. It actually makes me feel a little dizzy.

Just...wow.

Shit Journalism Digest #4

2011-01-17T15:23:00.003Z

Just a quick one today, focusing on a local bit of news for me...

Last night, there was a 'bomb scare' at the Aberdeen University Hillhead Halls of Residence. I hesitate to call it a bomb scare because there were no bombs involved; the bomb squad were in attendance, though, and apparently some materials which could possibly have been used to make a bomb were present.

Essentially, a Chemistry student, known among his peers for making and pretty much being constantly high on his own LSD, was trying something a bit different by cooking crystal meth. I guess he'd been watching acclaimed American suspense-drama Breaking Bad. Most papers reported on this calmly enough; the Press and Journal stuck it on the front page, with a cursory mention of the fact that the police had refused to confirm that there was any trace of methamphetamine. STV ran a similar story, as did the Herald; what mention of the drug that there was was made calmly and in a reserved, sensible fashion. None of them used the word "sex", for example.

And then, the Daily Record ran with the huge headline: "BOMB SQUAD BUST STUDENT SEX DRUGS LABORATORY".

Hang on, did they just jam the word "sex" in there at random? I mean, I know sex sells and all, but it's a bit uncalled for just jimmying it into every other sentence...oh, wait. They're going to try to justify it. Within a few pars, the story (written by one Paul O'Hare; take a bow Paul!) notes that the "deadly sex drug" is "highly addictive" - true - and "heightens sexual pleasure". Now, while that second part may be nominally true, it's not that high in the list of the effects of methamphetamine. Indeed, if you go through the Wikipedia page for just about any drug, eventually it's going to mention some mild form of arousal...cannabis, for example, apparently causes "increased sensuality and libido". So does cocaine. Both, obviously, are also sex drugs - because the only other possibility is that none of them are. And we've already established for a fact, a stone-cold, honest-to-goodness fact, that meth is a sex drug.

Or could it be that the Record latched onto the most sensationalist part of the description that they could find, and decided that crystal meth is an obscure enough drug that they can get away with essentially bullshitting the public? I'm almost certain that Paul O'Hare knows that the description he's written up is bullshit. Even working for the Retard, he's got to be world-wise enough to know that methamphetamine isn't Viagra. It's a lot of things, a lot of extremely bad things indeed - it's a lot worse than just a sex drug. It's incredibly addictive, and it can be deadly - so the Record have advertised it as being "claimed to improve sexual performance". That's just plain irresponsible in itself.

It's good, though, to know that this is the standard we're working with, though. One possible effect out of about twenty of crystal meth having a mildly sexual connotation makes it a sex drug - well, I'm pretty sure more than one in twenty stories in the Record are sex-based. This is one of them, even. So by the same logic, that would make the Record a sex paper.

A sex paper! And they're allowed to sell this kind of violent pornography in newsagents? Really, there should be a law against it. It should be stored on the very highest of high shelves, coming with a warning of extreme content, and in no circumstances be sold to anyone under the age of 30. Let us just pray that such a depraved publication never falls into the hands of a child or anyone of an impressionable mind.

false appearances

2011-01-14T08:07:00.006Z

Oldham East and Saddleworth: LAB HOLD

Not just a hold, but a convincing win for Labour in Oldham - their share of the vote went up 10%, they increased their majority from 103 to over 3,500, and the Conservative share plummeted from 26% to 12%. The Liberal Democrat vote appeared to hold steady, but don't let that fool you into thinking that Liberal Democrat support is holding steady, and that support for the Tories has bombed. Things are a bit more complicated than they appear.

Those disappearing Tory voters didn't go to Labour - obviously enough - they went to the Lib Dems. It was a tactical vote to support their coalition partners, given the fact that there wasn't really a chance of the Conservatives winning this seat. So while the Lib Dem share of the vote may not have changed visibly, it actually fell among Lib Dems. Had all of their supporters stayed loyal, as Nick Clegg is attempting to claim, shouldn't their share, bolstered by coalition support, have risen? And yet it didn't. For once, the roles were reversed, and it was the Tories propping them up. Labour's majority went up because of those Lib Dem voters who defected, but were replaced in this instance by Tory voters - making one rather wonder about what will happen when the Tories decide to vote for their own party in an election.

I mean, christ, sometimes I wish voting wasn't so damn confidential. I would absolutely love to get my hands on some raw data from that election, and compare it against the one in May. See that swing from the Lib Dems to Labour being offset by a swing from the Tories to the Lib Dems...it'd be a nerd's paradise. Sure, some kind of poll will be conducted sooner or later, outlining 'traditional Tory voters' and so forth, but to have it right now, to jam it in Nick Clegg's face while he's trying to maintain that this means the Lib Dems are actually doing just fine...

Not that this will make a huge amount of difference, short-term. It doesn't change the balance of power in the Parliament, and governments rather rarely gain seats in by-elections anyway - I think it was mentioned that it was something like 1982 the last time a government actually gained a seat in a by-election. The Tories won't be too dismayed by their loss, being as this wasn't a hugely winnable seat, and although Labour increased their majority significantly, they must have been quietly confident of doing so in a straight fight with the Lib Dems. Despite what they say in public, don't think the Lib Dems have really been taken in by these results; they'll know that their share of the vote within their own support was down, and that they'd be considerably harder pressed to maintain anything like comparable levels of support in a seat that the Conservatives actually contest. Essentially, swing seats involving the Lib Dems may be a thing of the past - so we can expect to see them pressing extra, extra hard to push through their Alternative Vote referendum come May (if it ever makes it through the Lords), as it might be the only way they'll get anyone back into government next time around.

back to basics

2011-01-13T09:11:00.005Z

Radio Four woke me up this morning with President Obama's speech from Arizona.

The aftermath to the Tuscon shootings has shown a lot. In a way, the politicians have kind of re-set to their default mode. Obama is being the heroic, big-talking good guy, while Palin and the Republicans look like darkly sinister idiots. Everyone who was being blamed - Palin and the Tea Party, essentially - has been on the defensive. They've been conducting this defensive in the only way they know how; through negative campaigning. That is to say, rather than defending themselves, they come out and tell us about how shit everyone else is. One might take this as a sign that they don't actually have a defence, but there you go...

Palin started talking about a "blood libel", effectively comparing the persecution of her to the persecution of the Jews throughout history. What on earth convinced her to take such a sinister tone?! I guess I can see how she thought that might engender sympathy, but in reality it's just pissed people off even more. I suppose she was never really courting the Jewish vote, anyway...but christ, the last people you want to piss off in the States is the Jewish Lobby. They have dark and mysterious powers, and that isn't a blood libel, it's a bloody fact.

Obama, on the other hand, came out talking about how we need to make this a time of healing. He reminded us all of that wonderful rhetoric that he used to win the Presidency in the first place; "I believe that the forces that divide us are not as strong as the forces which unite us", he said. Compare that to Palin's muttering about blood libels, and who looks like the good guy here? Honestly, forget all about the unpopularity of the previous incumbent, forget about the massive disparity in campaign funding, that right there is why Obama won. And frankly, it's why he's going to win again next year.

All that the Tea Party and in particular Palin have done is damage themselves further. Alright, so their more ardent supporters are whining in on cue with "yeah, but the lefties are just as bad!", but that's just underlining the damn point! At a time when they're under the greatest amount of scrutiny, they're continuing to do the exact things that people are watching for. Honestly, after this, I'd be advising Palin not to run at all in 2012. But then I've been saying that since she bailed on her last job in Alaska...the big quitter. Maybe she knows she can't win, and that's why she's been saying such utterly stupid things, so that she isn't even sent forth to receive a humiliating defeat?

In a way, the Tuscon tragedy has re-set American politics to the level of two years ago. All of a sudden, Obama is the good guy again, Sarah Palin is saying mind-numbingly stupid things, and the Republicans are the baddies again. It just seems like the momentum has shifted somewhat. And as much as really the death of six innocent people shouldn't be used as a political tool, it is regardless having a significant effect...it seems to have thrown everyone back into their stereotypical roles. As such Palin is once again the clown, and Obama is the great orator, the voice of Hope...America just got its President back.

State of Emergency

2011-01-10T17:33:00.002Z

You can't have missed it, surely. A gunman shot six people dead in an attempt to assassinate a Democratic Congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, in Tuscon, Arizona. She survived, but was shot in the head - she's undergoing surgery even as I speak. This is already having massive, massive implications on all kinds of levels - and it's only going to get bigger. Christ, I could write a bloody dissertation about it already...

Almost immediately, despite the shooter being arrested quickly, indeed while still firing his weapon, the blame game started. In the moments after the shooting, a quick-witted reporter asked Giffords' family if she had any enemies: he responded "yeah, the entire Tea Party". It was quickly seized upon that Sarah Palin - remember her? - had recently released a campaign poster featuring Republican target seats, with little crosshairs over the states targeted. There was a list underneath of the names of the targets - Gifford included. The media went wild. This, everyone was instantly sure, was the fault of the Tea Party and the aggressive rhetoric increasingly peddled by many in American politics. Palin and the Tea Party were immediate scapegoats, even though the shooter himself, Jared Loughner, was said to have "mental issues", and had posted online that he was deeply distrustful of all politicians, the US government, saying he believed the government was trying to brainwash him. While he doesn't seem to be a huge fan of the government, honestly, I don't think he was going to rush out and vote Republican either.

The tragic thing here is that Giffords wasn't even that much of a leftie. She was effectively a Southern Democrat, who can be even more right-wing than New England Republicans - indeed, she was a Republican until 1999, and is still a supporter of pro-gun legislation. Essentially the problem seems to be that Loughner met her, once, and "was not impressed".

Essentially, this is an American version of the Phil Woolas affair. We had a politician sacked because politicians say controversial things while campaigning; in the States, where everything is slightly larger, flashier and carries a concealed weapon, a politician got shot in the head.

Sometimes you just have to think...come on, America. Chill out, already! They just seem to take things so seriously over there. Guido Fawkes did exactly the same thing over here - in fact, his was worse, he put the crosshairs over actual people's faces before trying to bring them down - and nobody got killed. In America, they just had to put the crosshairs over the right state, and somebody went down.

This could mean a number of things for the future of American politics. One obvious one is that people will be a little less forgiving of hard-line rhetoric. Which can only be a good thing, right? Less negative campaigning, get the politicians to focus on what they're going to do, what makes them deserve your vote, not ridiculing what their opponents do. Exact same thing should come out of the Woolas affair - less confrontational, negative campaigning, more honesty and frankly, a better atmosphere about the entire business.

Second, if Sarah Palin wasn't screwed before, she really is now. This is the very last thing she needed her name attached to. I never thought she could mount a successful run for the Presidency anyway - how was someone who couldn't even see out a term as Governor of Alaska going to persuade the public that they could do a better job in the White House than an incumbent, who's managed to actually sit through an entire term?

The Tea Party - which would have been one of the main driving forces in any potential Palin challenge - is also screwed. They were on a bit of a downswing anyway, after the mid-terms in which they didn't do nearly as well as people thought they would, mostly due to a number of embarrassing gaffes by inexperienced candidates unused to having their every move scrutinised by the national media. The glare of the spotlight led them to question the constitution, forget the first amendment, and endorse witchcraft. Now, they've been named by the father of an almost-assassinated congresswoman as her main enemies. In America's blame culture, which tends to spin around in circles looking for goats to scape until it spins utterly out of control, the Tea Party became a quick and easy early target. And with good cause! They're the ones who have been driving this movement towards negative rhetoric, well OK, more negative rhetoric, essentially the Blame Obama movement. They didn't really call openly for anyone to get shot, but they did step up the negative campaigning game to unprecedented levels, and if the Democrats and the left followed them, it was only to respond in kind.

In the end, though, the whole of American politics has always been steeped in slightly aggressive rhetoric. It's got a lot to do with the way that the country was formed - a rebellion against a hated colonial government, a union of free states...and in the end a Constitution which contains provisions whereas the populace should rise up and overthrow them should they get pissed off enough. People don't have that strong a relationship with their representatives - a lot of the time there's the feeling that the government are just out to screw folks. There's always been that tension between federal and state governments, that little yearning for independence, but always, bizarrely enough, draped in a cloak of hardcore patriotism and nationalism. People love America so much, sometimes they can disassociate it from the government itself, and that's a dangerous mindset to maintain.

Ach, it's hard to put all the pieces together at this early stage. I'm rambling already. I wasn't just blaming the Constitution for the shooting, incidentally...just thinking out loud. This is not going to be the last post about this, anyway; as I say, this is going to have massive repercussions. This could be the largest defining moment in American politics since 9/11 - everyone is going to have to change their game now, everyone is going to be under scrutiny. It's going to be an absolute free-for-all for the media.

experience counts

2011-01-07T15:51:00.003Z

Reports today suggest that the coalition's flagship 'bonfire of the QUANGOs' programme is actually going to cost more money than it saves. This has sparked no end of hilarity on the opposition benches, and confusion and anger on the other side of the dispatch box. Are the government going to back down on this one too, then? Another u-turn won't be good for their self-esteem...they've kind of brought it on themselves, though. All through the election campaign, they were writing cheques. Not entirely financial ones; policy ones. The kind that now they've actually found themselves in power, they realise they can't possibly afford to cash.

See, what David Cameron brought to the table was the New And Improved Conservative Party, very little of which had any practical experience of government. Yes, there are plenty of fossils in the back benches - it wouldn't be the Conservative Party if it wasn't mostly old white guys - but for the most part this is a rookie government. Cameron himself only became an MP in 2001. So with no practical experience of the reality of government, he put together more than a few populist policies which would look good in the manifesto, sound good on the doorstep, but would ave very little chance of actually being carried through. And when he got into government, it was with the help of another man who had never been near a government, Nick 'lets scrap tuition fees' Clegg. The Liberal Democrats really did become the party of sinking flagships. They talked the talk, but they now appear to be singularly failing to walk the walk.

The lesson which is very important here isn't one for the coalition - they'll learn from their mistakes eventually, you would hope - but for Labour. Ed Miliband has served in government, but only since 2005. Labour are yet to find their policy feet under Miliband, they're yet to work out what their flagship policies are going to be, so this is an extremely important time. Ed is a relatively young, inexperienced guy - so he needs plenty of experience around him. While this not play out that well with the voters (just ask John McCain) it's extremely helpful when you actually get into power, and have to do something realistic within your meagre means (just ask, um, anyone in America). The whole CHANGE thing (or indeed the Nick Clegg "different" approach) might sound very good, but it tends to end in disappointment, because realistically, things can't change that radically. Not for the better, anyhow, unless you happen to take charge of Russia right as the price of oil goes through the roof or something.

Idealism is all very well, but we need a hefty dose of realism too. It would be nice if there was some kind of middle ground in there...but nobody seems to have found it yet. Ed Miliband has four years - less, realistically - to unearth it.

Oldham East and Saddleworth

2011-01-07T12:08:00.005Z

Anyway, in real news - hard news, at least, which is my favourite - we've got a by-election coming up! The first UK by-election, indeed, since the traumatic horrors of the coalition of the damned started to sink into the public consciousness! Next week, voters in Oldham East and Saddleworth will decide if they should return a Labour MP to the opposition, or if they're going to add to the ranks of the coalition.

Labour are riding high in the polls, and their main rivals in the seat, the Lib Dems, could hardly sink much lower...but this is the seat where Phil Woolas was kicked out of Parliament for lying about his opponents while campaigning. Which sets a dangerous precedent in itself, really - but did the local voters turn out to support Phil himself, or Labour? This is the time to find out if it's about the party or the personality...and whether the change from Brown to Miliband has made a real difference. On the surface, it appears as if Labour have gone from having unpopular policies to having no policies at all, but that's up against the policies of the coalition...which so far, seem to have mostly ended in riots.

It's as if the whole of British politics has been leading up to this in recent weeks. Everything could have a bearing on this election, and it's the first opportunity to get a realistic impression of what the public are really feeling about the coalition. The way people vote in polls often differs somewhat from the way they vote in elections - most of the country apparently wanted Nick Clegg to be Prime Minister after the leaders debates, and yet the Lib Dems actually lost seats - so this will be an interesting opportunity to see if the electorate really has deserted the Liberals, and if Labour really have had a new dawn under Miliband.

The whole Vince Cable affair last month? That'll have a bearing, no doubt. It might turn out to be a boost for the Liberal Democrats, actually, being as it created the impression that Vince and the others who were conned by the Telegraph (a newspaper dedicated to bringing down the coalition in favour of a pureblood Tory government, incidentally) actually really do care about the grassroots beliefs of their party, and are willing to liken it to a war and use 'nuclear options'.

Even the economy is doing its bit, and has helped out the Opposition cause by shitting itself violently right on the eve of the polls; wednesday's apocalyptic announcement from HMV was followed yesterday by several other high-street retailers, all with tales of christmas gloom, sales plummeting, confidence spiralling...prior to the election, polls claimed that most people thought the Tories would do the better job of running the economy. Let's see how that impression has panned out, just days after the hike in VAT, shall we?

What would be very interesting is if the Conservatives, seeing this seat as a Labour/Lib Dem marginal, were to come out in support of their coalition partners on this one. A lot of questions have been asked about whether the two parties will be campaigning actively against each other, and while I don't expect we'll see much negative campaigning from either I equally doubt whether the Tory activist on your doorstep is going to try to nudge to toward the Lib Dems instead. If the Tories can't win, though - which isn't certain anyway, their share of the vote has been increasing steadily in the area since 1997, when Woolas was originally installed - surely it would be beneficial for them to increase the coalition's numbers at the expense of the Opposition?

And, of course, you can never count out the fact that voters in Oldham have a history of being a bit...mad. In the aftermath of a series of race riots, they were the BNP's highest polling area from 2001 onwards, although this support appears to have dropped off somewhat recently. But hey, those disenfranchised Liberal Democrats have to go somewhere, right? Maybe the anti-politics vote is the one for them...

In the end, the election is going to serve as a very interesting barometer of how people feel the country is being run. Or at least, that's probably how Labour are trying to spin it; if they can turn this into a referendum on the performance of the coalition, being as it's a seat full of Lib Dems and Labour supporters, Labour stand a much better chance of winning out. However the Woolas factor will be a problem for them, as will the lack of clear policy direction under Ed Miliband, who is mostly working the negative campaigning role just now, picking away at the coalition. Well, this time next week, the polls will be open, and for one day, the eyes of the whole of Westminster, government and opposition alike, will be on Oldham East and Saddleworth.

strange news day

2011-01-06T12:54:00.004Z

After yesterday's tirade of negativity, I've at last found a Good News Story! All is right with the world again!

Awesome Voice Homeless Guy has been given a job on the radio! As such I suppose he has ceased to be homeless, and is now just a guy with an ace voice. Once again, Youtube achieves where society and politics has failed! Well, actually, the Youtube video of Awesome Voice Homeless Guy has attracted as many views as Labour attracted voters last May, so I guess this is democracy in action...

Today has been a big day for batshit crazy news, actually. Witches have threatened the Romanian government - although what's perhaps strangest about that story is that the Romanian government seem to have declared 'being a witch' an official occupation.

Crocodile Dundee is suing Australia! Yes, the whole of Australia! Although that story is a slight let-down, given the headline "Hogan to sue Australia" - I was hoping it might have been Hulk. He's suing them for over £50 million in lost earnings because they dared to investigate whether he was evading tax - how was he going to earn £50 million, like? Surely there isn't that kind of money in the crocodile market nowadays?

Copies of Huckleberry Finn distributed in American schools have had the word "nigger" removed from them, in an apparent attempt to claim that history never happened. That's always the best way to get over things, right? Don't face up to them and accept that they happened - pretend that everything has always been OK! You'll get to see it all happen again first-hand, anyway, when history repeats itself because you didn't learn from any past mistakes.

And, in sports (kind of), some drug smugglers today were caught trying to transport £3,000 worth of cannabis inside an oil painting of Manchester City striker Emmanuel Adebayor. That's right: someone made an oil painting of Emmanuel Adebayor. The traffickers were caught out, however, when they addressed the package to a house in Tottenham. As if there's any love for the former Arsenal striker in Tottenham!

happy new year

2011-01-05T14:29:00.003Z

Yeah, Happy 2011, Britain!

I've been considering new year's resolutions. Maybe I should resolve to be less cynical, to give politicians a chance, to generally be less of a misanthropic bastard about the world?

Well, tough. Have you looked at the news lately? The whole world appears to be circling the drain, or at least that's what the media would have us think. Open the newspaper, turn on the TV or the radio or log onto the internet, and you'll find a general wailing and gnashing of gums. Let's face it: we're fucked. Everything is fucked.

VAT has gone up to 20%! We now need to pay an extra 2.5% in the pound for everything - I even got an email from Ed Miliband about it! I don't even know how he got my address, this must be massive! Music retailer HMV has reacted by swiftly going down the pan, with their share price diving 21% over the course of the morning and 60 shops set to close. Their Christmas sales were abysmal, apparently. Good job we're encouraging the public to keep spending, to keep market confidence and the economy afloat, eh? Oh wait, no. We're doing the exact opposite. Those of us who didn't get a big load of shopping in on the 3rd will inevitably starve to death.

The News also informs me that Jo Yeates, the latest front-page murder mystery thriller, was missing a sock when she was found dead. What vital news this is! That deserves top billing above the murder of a Pakistani governor, an event which could see that entire country spiral into outright chaos, no doubt dragging what's left of their neighbour and joint-custody holder of the Taliban, Afghanistan, down with them. Pakistan is a state armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons, I would add, so this could in fact mean the end of the entire world. But hey - where did that sock go? It could be as vital a clue as that Tesco Finest pizza that dominated the headlines and got 24 hour coverage on rolling news for several days!

Australia appears to have sunk entirely into the ocean. Fans of Neighbours are said to be devastated. Northern Ireland has expressed jealousy, being as there's literally no water there. I guess it all washed down to the other side of the world; a sinister new twist to climate change, perhaps.

The top headline on the Beeb, the splash, is "Drug-smuggling 7/7 hero jailed", the heart-warming tale of how one of the firemen commended for his heroic work in the aftermath of the 2005 terrorist attacks in London has been sent to prison for smuggling cocaine. Brilliant! Even our heroes are bastards now! Next thing, you'll be telling me we can't trust politicians any more!

In other news, lots of much-loved actors and singers are dead, that December we just had was the coldest for a century, the entire country is suffering a backlog of uncollected rubbish, Michael Jackson's doctor probably killed him, and in Westminster there's going to be another inquiry into expenses. As if the last two weren't thrilling enough.

The only bit of good news the front page of the BBC website seems to be able to conjure up is that Prince William and Kate Middleton have announced the details of their wedding plans. Cracking, a couple of millionaires who will never need to do a days work or worry about a 2.5% rise in VAT or diving share prices at HMV are going to prop up the outdated institution of marriage! No doubt David Cameron and Boris Johnson, those lovable scamps, will be camping out overnight on the Mall to get front-row seats for that one.

So, welcome to 2011. Perhaps the world is just trying to lull us into a false sense of outright anguish and despair, and it's actually going to be a brilliant year. Who knows, it might turn out to be every bit as good as 2010!

Or, indeed, 1939.

a prediction

2010-12-30T00:22:00.004Z

Could I throw out a prediction, right here and now?

Michael Gove will be the first Cabinet Minister to get the boot.

The coalition hasn't exactly been popular, so far. And if you list the most obviously unpopular policies, while the main thrust of things is broadly economic, education is pretty much always going to come out on top, unless you're thinking "shoddy policing of large demonstrations/riots". Sooner or later, a goat is going to get scaped. Vince Cable proved last week that the Liberal Democrats can do pretty much whatever they like and survive, given their importance to the broader thrust of the coalition, and George Osborne and David Cameron are hardly going to be the first heads to roll...beyond them, who has been the most prominent Tory minister so far?

William Hague has had his face in the press from time to time I guess, but they can't exactly sack him for being gay...whatever Theresa May thinks...no, from day one, the Cabinet Minister taking the largest share of the hits in the press has been Michael Gove. I can think of four or five little dramas they've had surrounding him already, just in the last six months, and perhaps the only feather in his cap is that he's taking the attention away from the rest of his colleagues. It doesn't help, perhaps, that he looks like a creepy ventriloquist's puppet.

To start with, there was the free schools debacle. Gove announced plans for a huge number of 'free schools' to be set up, with the most successful schools being re-branded as academies, but ran into tremendous opposition from the Unions, Labour, and eventually the Liberal Democrats, who mounted a grass-roots rebellion at their party conference to withdraw support for the proposals. Gove had hoped that some 700 'free schools' would be commissioned - but the eventual number revealed by the Guardian in September was closer to 20. Ed Balls, Gove's opposite number, branded the project an "embarrassment" and a "chaotic shambles".

This was followed by the news that most schools would see a real cut in funding, contrary to previous government statements and an apparent increase in the schools budget. £5bn was to be pumped into a 'pupil premium' project designed to encourage schools to take in pupils from poorer backgrounds, but a study by Gove's own department found that this was an "unpredictable" system which would "increase segregation" in schools.

There have been a host of other setbacks for Michael ever since; he was publicly ordered to re-think his cuts to school sports by David Cameron after incurring the wrath of a whole host of high-profile athletes and sparking what Labour described as a "grass-roots revolt" in the Commons.

Perhaps my favourite was this month, when he compared himself to Chairman Mao, in instigating "a Long March to reform our education system". He was apparently under the impression that everyone has happy, rosy memories of the cultural revolution, which left millions dead (including rather a lot of teachers) and the Chinese education system closed for a decade. If this is any indication of his plans for our education system, we might be better getting shot of him sooner rather than later, before the families of various teachers are billed for the bullets used to execute them...

And then there's the tuition fees problem. That's an Education matter, isn't it? Covered by the Education Secretary? I'd say at present it's by far the most likely issue to cause a head to roll...if only Gove had some redeeming points, some successes he could point to in his defence, he might survive. But thus far, there have been none. There has been only "embarrassment", "a chaotic shambles", "grass-roots revolt"...and that's why in my opinion, when the pressure on the Dave and Nick show grows too much, the eye of their axe will fall upon Michael Gove before any other.

rich white guys

2010-12-28T16:46:00.005Z

There's an unwritten rule in the world which stipulates that crimes will not be widely reported on until they happen to a rich white person. Step forward, Mikhail Khodorkovsky!

Anyone who has actually been paying attention over the last decade or so will have noticed that Russia is essentially a dictatorship. The level of democracy there is an absolute sham; Vladimir Putin and his United Russia Party have stitched up every election they've been involved in, the OSCE want nothing to do with the place, and even WikiLeaks thinks it's a 'mafia state'. But now that a rich white guy is in trouble, the world pricks up its ears!

To be fair, Mikhail has been in quite a bit of trouble for quite a while now. In that he's been imprisoned in a Siberian gulag...chief among his crimes is opposing Putin and his regime, ostensibly now fronted by Dmitry Medvedev, by funding opposition candidates. Mikhail's real mistake was assuming that he could go against Putin using the democratic functions of the state; by now, he's realised that those functions don't actually, as such, function. To start with, there isn't really a political opposition in Russia. As close as you'll get is the Communist Party, who are about as marginalised as they could get; the two other parties 'opposing' United Russia in the Duma are both Kremlin-created sham parties which exist solely to sap Communist support and which actually back Putin's every policy. The electoral system has been set up so that grass-roots opposition parties effectively cannot compete; Putin has raised the bar so that they need a totally unrealistic share of the vote to get into power, and an even more unrealistic share in order to get their running deposit back. Defeating and bankrupting his political enemies in one fell swoop.

Freedom of the press - another traditional checker and balancer of government - is virtually non-existent in Russia, too. There is very little independent media, with all the national TV networks under government control, and journalists who speak out against the regime have a habit of falling down stairs or failing to get out of lifts. If we're talking about affronts to democracy, what about the still-unsolved murder (*cough*assassination*cough*) of Anna Politkovskaya, which was literally a birthday present for Putin? But no, the international outcry doesn't come until the rich white guy gets sent to jail for crimes against money. Of course.

Essentially all of the oligarchs are criminals, in one way or another...they were the ones with enough money to buy off state assets at dirt-cheap prices when everyone else in Russia spent half their day in a bread queue. Khodorkovsky got rich off the misfortune of his fellow countrymen, got fat while others starved. He is a step up from some other oligarchs in that he wasn't actively involved in organised crime at any point, but he's not a long way off...why does he get to be the martyr?

Obviously enough, at the end of the day I'm happy that people are finally taking notice of the affront to democracy that is Russian political culture. And fair play to Khodorkovsky, this is literally the best thing that he's done with his life. You just have to wonder why it's taken this long for the world to sit up and take notice...what really needs to happen, though, is for Russia to sit up and take notice. Putin still enjoys (heavily doctored but still vaguely accurate) hugely positive approval ratings, and while the public don't have that much democratic opportunity to remove him, given the brutal overhaul of the system he carried out in his second term as President, were the truth to out they could at least make life a bit more difficult for him.

Ambassador Miliband

2010-12-28T16:44:00.005Z

There's speculation today that David Miliband might be put forward to become the UK's Ambassador to the United States of America. It's a job he'd no doubt be very good at - he forged a very strong relationship with Hilary Clinton when he was Foreign Secretary in Gordon Brown's government, after all - but it would mean him leaving the House of Commons, giving up his seat and presumably any future aspirations of leading the Labour Party.

It's rather unclear, exactly, who this would be good for.

Would it be good for David? While he seems content enough to sit in the back benches right now, being less of a public problem for his brother, does he really want nothing further to do with parliamentary politics? It would be kind of a sideways move for him, and there's not a huge amount of career progression in it...parliamentary politics are in his blood, after all. He's been a hugely important part of the Labour movement over the last 15 years.

So would it be good for Labour? It's possible it would solidify support for Ed Miliband, without his brother hanging over his shoulder in the Parliament...however, it would remove one of their most experienced figures, in the top two most popular members of the Party if the leadership election was to be believed. Forget all of the Youth and Change and so forth that's been touted at the forefront of politics nowadays, what Labour need in opposition is a bit of experience. People who know what it's like to be in Government - people who won't make the mistakes of your Camerons and Cleggs, who had absolutely no idea what it would be like before they got into power. David Miliband has been involved in government at the very highest level, he knows the realities of what's involved, and he and people like him are vital to the Labour Party going forward, if they have any aspirations of taking power back within the next generation or so.

A Labour Party united under the leadership of Ed Miliband would presumably be bad for the coalition government, but they're said to be happy at the prospect of one of the most dangerous members of the Opposition being removed from the equation. Not to forget that they'd also gain a competent, well-connected and politically grounded Ambassador in a key position...he would be a considerable feather in the government's foreign policy cap. David Cameron is certainly quite happy to have Blairite characters on his side - Lord Hutton and even Alan Milburn being notable examples. Whether David would actually want to be a part of the coalition government right now is another question entirely...and that's why I, personally, can't see it happening.

less than a merry christmas

2010-12-27T18:06:00.005Z

It's been anything but a happy Christmas for the Coalition government. A poll published in today's Guardian finds popular support for the coalition at its lowest level yet, with more people now opposed to the coalition than in support of it. A mere 43% of people now believe that the coalition government was a good decision for the UK in May, while 47% are opposed to it. Support for the Liberal Democrats is down to 13%, with the Conservatives on 37%, with only a slim majority of the dwindling number of Liberal supporters being in favour of the coalition. There is good news only for Labour, who sit on top of the pile with 39%, their highest level of support since the bounce they received from Gordon Brown's succession as party leader.

While a strong 76% of the Conservative party supports the coalition, John Redwood, in a hilarious display of irony, voiced discontent with the Liberals. He said that they have been taking all of the credit for the coalition's "nice" policies, grabbing all of the positive headlines. There haven't exactly been a lot of those, have there? And John is slightly overlooking the fact that the Liberals have acted as an effective shit-shield for the Tories over the past few months, soaking up the majority of the public's anger over tuition fees. Nick Clegg and Vince Cable in particular took a lot of flak, the latter in particular lately seems to have been buried in an avalanche of shit, taking focus almost entirely away from David Cameron and the Tories - and John Redwood reckons they've been taking all the credit? That'll explain their massive slump in support, then...?

The poll also revealed that dwindling numbers of people, even Conservatives, believe that 2011 is going to be a good year. While the Tories may blame the previous administration for literally all of their ills, people still seem to think that life under Labour in the early part of 2010 was better than life under the coalition in 2011 will be. Even among Conservative supporters, the number of people who believe that education and the NHS will have a decent 2011 was almost down to single figure percentages.

A bad day all round for the NHS and education, actually, with the Guardian again coming out with EXCLUSIVE figures in a leaked report showing more cuts looming for the health services. A secret Whitehall report leaked to the paper claims that a fresh round of cuts are going ahead which will see waiting times rise, and predicts that proposed reforms will have at best "patchy" results. Michael Gove is in hot water as well, as he always seems to be - he's been forced into a hasty u-turn over providing free books for school children after the poet laureate labelled him worse than Scrooge. The Education Secretary was forced to cut his christmas break short to rush through some consultations to flip-flop on the issue, and even so hasn't managed to avoid the negative headlines. Gove's position seems to have been embattled from day one, and I doubt the Tories will be able to cover this one up even if William Hague really does come out.

A pretty grim festive season for everyone involved in British politics, really - apart from the Opposition. I wonder if Ed Miliband had his brother over for christmas dinner? I wonder if he managed to win a cracker-pull against David without the Unions weighing in on his side...

reminiscence

2010-12-22T17:12:00.003Z

I've been thinking about Richard Nixon a lot, lately. OK, that sounds weird...

I don't know why, I just keep buying books about him. It all started with All The President's Men, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward's account of their Washington Post investigation which eventually led to the downfall of the President. Being an aspiring journalist, I was pretty much obliged to read that at some point. Today, though, I ended up buying Nixon's anti-Soviet tome The Real War in a charity shop, probably one of the least relevant books to anything going on in the world today...and I'll probably thoroughly enjoy it.

What I was thinking about on the way home from the charity shop, though, was about Nixon's Presidency. Or, to be more exact, his first run at the Presidency, when he was defeated by Kennedy in 1960, and what impact his had on him. Y'see, Kennedy was a massive underdog. He essentially fought dirty against the relatively naive Nixon, and won by the narrowest margin in American electoral history. Kennedy pulled out every trick in the book; he infamously went to the toilet right before a televised debate, before leaping back onto the stage just as the cameras went on, leaving his opponent looking visibly stunned and confused. Kennedy's whole campaign was about making himself look good, and his opponent look bad; we know today, for example, that Jack was far from the fit young go-getter he put himself across as in TV spots and commercials. He was actually pretty ill, racked with back pain, and only pulled himself together with a considerable array of medication to do those TV spots where he's sailing, golfing, whatever. He was really the first media management candidate, the first spin-doctor. That echoed through history in its own way, culminating today in twisted creatures like Andy Coulson, but it had some very immediate effects for American political culture.

What impact did that defeat have on the young(ish) Richard Nixon? It's undeniable that he learned important lessons in that election, and perhaps that's what framed his cavalier attitude to electoral fairness which would eventually see him run out of Government. Kennedy went down as one of the most popular Presidents in history, while Nixon went down as the most vilified. He must have been livid after being beaten so narrowly by a complete underdog - and that's what underlined his determination not to be beaten again, even when he was a long way in the lead. Let's face it, McGovern never really mounted a huge challenge to an incumbent Nixon in 1972. Like Vladimir Putin and United Russia today, Nixon could have won by a considerable margin even without having the Campaign to Re-Elect the President plant provocateurs in the campaigns of McGovern and other Democratic nominee Ed Muskie. There was no way Nixon was going to let himself be beaten by another underdog Democrat, not after Kennedy. Even in 1968, when he took the Presidency, Nixon used a lot of Kennedy techniques - he spent a lot of time on television, carefully polishing his image, and let Spiro Agnew do a lot of the tough-talking which solidified their bid with the Right. He even ran on a catch-phrase, which proved successful: "Nixon's The One". In 1972, it was "Four More Years". Following in the footsteps of Kennedy, another media management candidate.

And christ, when it came down to it, hadn't Nixon been a better President than Kennedy, policy-wise? Apart from getting his brother to take care of the Cuban Missile Crisis, what did Kennedy really achieve? The civil rights bill only got passed after he died, and that was largely out of sympathy for his passing...Nixon, by comparison, opened dialogue with China, he ended the Vietnam War (um...after a fashion), he ushered in the 'Decade of the Environment'...and still, he goes down as one of the most hated men in American political history, all for a paranoia and a determination not to be beaten again that he learned at the hands of John F. Kennedy.

Honestly, if it wasn't for Kennedy, would Watergate even have happened? If Nixon had won a fair fight in 1960, would his policy toward electoral fairness have veered so far toward the paranoid and illegal? People say that Nixon ruined trust in the office of the Presidency...well, I'd be tempted to argue that it was Kennedy who ruined that trust in the mind of the President himself.

the nuclear option

2010-12-21T17:38:00.007Z

I've found an unlikely ally in the battle against News Corp...Vince Cable.

Apparently in an attempt to curry favour with me after reading my last post, Vince told an undercover Telegraph reporter that he had "declared war on Rupert Murdoch". Nice one, Vince! Although, technically, as Business Secretary for the entire government, aren't you meant to be steering clear of Party Political biases when it comes to takeovers such as that proposed for BSkyB? This revelation comes hot on the heels of yesterday's big headline, which was that Vince was holding back the "nuclear option" of quitting the government outright as a way of ensuring Liberal Democrat policies received as much credence as Tory ones in the coalition. Whoops.

What's very, very interesting about this is that it was brought out by Robert Peston, the BBC's economy guru. The Daily Telegraph were either holding onto it as a future bombshell, or just sitting on it in general - what could the editorial motivation behind that have been? They obviously weren't worried about the veracity of the story, given that yesterday they published another large story from exactly the same source - could it be that they were trying to do Rupert a favour? Keeping News Corp onside, in case they do succeed in gaining that absolute stranglehold over the British media that they're striving for?

Well, to be fair to the Telegraph, they do have previous in this field. They eked out those Expenses stories over the course of weeks, months even, despite the fact they had bought all of the information in one big package. A sensible business decision, really - spread out your bombshells, and sell more papers. It works fine right up until someone hands a copy of your as-yet unpublished material to Robert Peston. The Telegraph Media Group also signed a letter sent to Cable in October, alongside the BBC, Channel 4, and the Guardian, Mirror and Mail newspaper groups, calling for him to intervene in Murdoch's Sky takeover bid. Probably not that worried about offending the man, then...

The reactions to this are going to be interesting. It may or may not be good news for News Corp (I can already see them scheming about how to turn it to their advantage - it's going to get harder for Vince to actually shoot them down without accusations of politicising the issue now) but also, crucially, for the Coalition Government. Yes, Vince should really be keeping his head down after the whole Tuition Fees business blew up - yesterday's revelations about him considering his future seemed bad enough. In autumn there were all kinds of rumours about Cable quitting the coalition in protest, and while he strenuously denied it all at the time, it turns out that he was pondering such action...he compared being part of the coalition to fighting in a war. This will strike a chord with a lot of Liberal Democrats, I should think, who are equally unhappy bedfellows with Cameron's Tories - but it shows the extent to which Vince is determined to keep the bruised and battered "soul" of the Liberals alive in the Coalition. They took a huge beating over tuition, but Vince may have convinced some that he still sticks to the broad principles of the pre-Coalition Liberals after all. This might stem the flow of support away from them, somewhat, and nullify some of the accusations that the Libs are simply propping up a wholly Conservative government.

He won't be getting sacked, either...he's far too important to the Coalition, not just as a similar kind of shit-mop to Nick Clegg, soaking up blame for unpopular policies in the place of the Tories, but also because of the effect he could have if he WAS removed from power. Then, the nuclear option really would blow up in the Coalition's face, as the disaffected Liberals would have a high-profile figure to rally around. As it stands the rebel element in the Lib Dems doesn't have a strong leader - Simon Hughes was meant to be that figure throughout the tuition debacle, but he bitched out and just abstained, both from the vote but also from the rebellion. If there was Vince Cable figure standing against the Coalition, though, it wouldn't be long before a lot more MPs went and sided with him - potentially leading to the outright collapse of the coalition.

Just this morning, Cameron was admonishing the Business Secretary for the statements originally published...but said he was still on good terms with Vince. Those terms might have been soured a bit today. A lot depends on how important the Prime Minister sees the Liberal Democrats as being to the future of the coalition - obviously he harbours ambitions of running a purely Tory government for now, but in the short term is he happy enough for something which is good for the Liberal Democrats but damaging to the credibility of the Coalition as a whole to slide? He doesn't have to worry about bad press to that huge of an extent, despite his instinctive PR leanings - he's got a fixed term to lean on for the next four years at least, so bad headlines now will have long faded into the memory come May 2015. Maintaining the support of the Liberal Democrats is vital in the mean-time, however, which is why Cameron will no doubt let this slide again...while this will no doubt be far from the last drama between the coalition partners, Vince Cable for one will be much, much more careful about what he says in future.

freedom of choice won't feed my children

2010-12-19T12:44:00.005Z

Not to focus on football again, but something has been plaguing my mind - something connected to the wider world of media and politics, to boot. Sky TV.

Rupert Murdoch and his News Corp are currently in the middle of attempting to buy out the remainder of BSkyB. Pretty much every other media group has voiced concern about this, and Ofcom urged Vince Cable to investigate it (as if he has any moral authority left...). The creation of such a monopoly in the news media controlled by one man would be a massive blow to the supposed independence and impartiality that is already being marginalised to a massive degree. And you don't have to take my word for it - we've got case history. Rupert Murdoch has already ruined one thing - football.

Before Murdoch and Sky pumped billions upon billions of pounds into the "top" leagues in football, there was almost a level playing field. Teams from Scotland and the like could hold their own in Continental competitions - christ, in 1983, Aberdeen played against a Swiss team in the semi-finals of the Cup Winners Cup. When was the last time a Swiss team got to the semi-finals of anything? Now, the quarter finals and even the previous stages of the Champions League are populated soley by teams approximately four countries. Italy, Spain, England and Germany. Occasionally Lyon slip in there, but they don't tend to get far. Murdoch just seems to create monopolies wherever he goes.

And once those big leagues got a taste of money, they went mad for it. Now, teams are racking up huge amounts of debt to try to compete at the top level. Do you know how much money a team can make just from television revenue for getting into the Champions League? Or even the English top flight? That's why you see teams like Portsmouth bankrupting themselves trying to chase the dream, trying to keep up with the other big boys who have long since sold their souls to foreign backers willing to pump billions in to keep them on top. That's a disease which has spread beyond the big leagues - look at Dundee, who just had their 25-point deduction for financial irregularities upheld. That'll be the death of the club. Cheers, Rupert.

The money doesn't just have a hold on the teams, either - the fans have been sucked in as well. Attendances at every single Scottish Premier League team are down, year upon year, as more and more people decide they'd rather pay to watch ten games on Sky per week than go see their local team. Before Sky, options were limited; if you wanted to see a game of football, you basically had to go see your local team. Now, there's almost absolute freedom of choice - with Sky and ESPN, you can watch a live game from almost anywhere in the world at almost any given moment. Which would be all well and good, but it means nobody is going to see their local teams any more - which is killing them. Fair enough, eh? Why would you pay £22 to go sit in the cold watching Aberdeen when you can be watching Barcelona in the warmth of your living room?Never mind that in 20 years, there won't be an Aberdeen - there will only be Barcelonas, a remaining elite of increasingly cash-bloated billionaire giants, with grass-roots football all but extinct. And nobody will be able to afford to go see football in the flesh, because the exclusivity of it all will mean only those who own their own oil fields will be able to afford tickets. Won't that be nice?

Freedom of choice isn't all it's cracked up to be, is it? It's Metcalfe's Law all over again...the more connections there are in a network, the more likely it is that monopolies will develop. The Sun is already looking increasingly like a Manchester United compared to papers like the Independent, which is languishing in a lower division, with sinking attendances and dubious financial backing. So let's not let the news media go the way of Scottish football, eh? Rupert Murdoch can take his money and [extensive expletives deleted]

relegation

2010-12-12T11:02:00.003Z

Lately, I'm seeing a lot of similarities between the Liberal Democrats and Aberdeen Football Club. They've both had a rather embarrassing time of it this week - one was torn apart by division over tuition fees, forced into a lose-lose position, and the other was torn apart by Heart of Midlothian, surrendering without fight or dignity in a 5-0 reverse. And they've both had their disagreements with their leadership in recent months - Nick Clegg faced a rebellion of 21 of his MPs on thursday afternoon, with 8 more abstaining, while Aberdeen manager Mark McGhee was sacked. Both men appeared to have lost the dressing room and the support of the fans...and yet one struggles on in his job.

One of the principle concerns for the Aberdeen board was that the players didn't appear to be playing for Mark McGhee - there were rumours that they hated him and his assistant Scott Leitch to the extent that they were actually losing deliberately to get them fired. On yesterday's performance at Tynecastle, it appears that this isn't true - some of the players simply aren't performing for Aberdeen.

And more than half of Nick Clegg's team in the Commons refused to play for him on tuesday afternoon, rebelling against their leadership, sparking huge division over what used to be a core grass-roots policy for the Party. Before the coalition deal was struck, the Liberal Democrats were quite a solid Party, claiming at times to be a more united force for the centre-left than Labour. Now, they couldn't seem more divided. In today's Observer, Richard Grayson, a former director of policy for the Party, says that on a basic level the Lib Dems have more in common with Ed Miliband and Labour than with Nick Clegg and the actual Lib Dem leadership. He says that the grass-roots of the party remains in the centre-left, regardless of the leadership's current centre-right position, and intimiates that this is a position which will out-last the leadership. Essentially, the manager won't be here forever - we're playing for the shirts, for the club, not him. Actually a more noble position than that of many of the spineless Aberdeen players.

What we may see in May in the Scottish elections is a similar effect for the Liberal Democrats which Aberdeen have been suffering of late at Pittodrie. The fans are deeply unhappy with the way that the club is being run, and have been voting with their feet - attendances sank, and then spiralled, with the stadium often not even a third full. This placed financial pressure on the board, and they assented by relieving McGhee of his position - if the Liberal Democrat supporters were to abandon their Party in a similar fashion, would it see a change of leadership at the top? Well, probably not, not in the very near future anyway. Therein lies the rub.

The light at the end of the tunnel shines a little brighter for Aberdeen, however. They will have a new manager on Monday in the form of Craig Brown. Notorious for his good defensive organisation skills, and with a vast wealth of experience of Scottish and international football, he should at least be able to motivate the players enough to get the Dons out of the relegation spaces and competing again - and to cut out the dead wood, the players who aren't playing for the team. If he can get the players playing for the shirts again, the fans will return to Pittodrie. It may be some time before the Liberal Democrats have the same luxury though - and in the mean-time, the risk of relegation to a less prestigious level looms large.

protesters are idiots

2010-12-10T09:18:00.004Z

Listening to the Radio Scotland and for some reason they're focusing on those student riots yesterday instead of the new Aberdeen manager! What's going on? Well, when in Rome, I guess...

Was there actually a tuition fees vote the other day? I honestly think I might have dreamed that. After all, there's nothing about it in the papers...ALL the headlines are about the protests now. All of them. Nice work, you muppets! This isn't publicising the issue, it's obscuring it. Who is going to be positively affected by the actions undertaken by the protesters yesterday? Today's Press and Journal features a big picture of Charles and Camilla looking shocked on the front - yes, the same picture that's on every paper today - and there literally isn't a mention of the actual tuition fees vote until page five. I'm pretty sure these "protests" could actually have been organised by provocateurs working on behalf of the coalition government, as they couldn't have done a better job of obscuring the real issue at hand.

The debate on the radio quickly turned to the police tactics - yes, not tuition fees, but police tactics - with various former Socialist MSPs and the like coming out against the police method of containment, or 'kettling', which basically involves compressing the crowd/angry mob into a small space. This does piss them off quite a lot, but it also makes them easier to control.

As you might have gleaned from my slightly anti-violent-protest angle, I'm pretty much fully behind the police here. Imagine being in their shoes! Imagine there's you and a relatively small group of your mates, up against tens of thousands of angry people setting fire to things and chucking bricks around. All you have to defend yourself is a stick and a plastic shield. You would be shitting it! Christ, I'm surprised they don't freak out more.

They got a polis on the radio to defend his profession, and he made a simple but extremely salient point...

"Well, what's the alternative? When 40,000 people go off the organised route and start causing chaos, what are you meant to do?"

"Aye, well, you could organise it better so the route is better..."

Yeah, but what do you do when they do deviate from the route? How do you plan for things like that? There have been literally no suggestions as to what can be done when 40,000 people come out of nowhere and start going wild. What alternatives do the police have? These people have to react minute-by-minute to events, it's got nothing to do with the prior preparation at this point...they've got an obligation to stop public unrest and disorder. The protestors should be glad that all that's happening to them is kettling - oh no, they have to stand close together in a big mob. They've been doing that all day! That's pretty much what they're there to do! They should think themselves bloody lucky they're not in France or Russia, who would have cracked out the rubber bullets and tear gas ages ago.

And frankly, if someone started throwing bits of concrete at my horse, I'd be going after them with a baton too. That's just shitty behaviour! And as for defacing statues of Winston Churchill and smashing the original windows of a 10th Century building at the Treasury - again, who are you trying to impress? What is this going to achieve? You can note your distaste for the government's policies peacefully. Even better, you could do it properly and democratically, and vote them out at the next possible opportunity, and feel pretty bloody silly for being part of the electorate which put them in power in the first place.

So, sorry, but no. Absolutely no sympathy for the 'protestors'. From here on in, I'm going to ignore their antics, and try to focus on the politics at hand...even though for the most part, they've ruined that too. I wonder if anyone will look back on this week and remember it as the week the Liberal Democrats tore themselves apart? Or will they remember it as the week a bunch of idiots wrecked up central London and provided some very graphic images - including one of a couple of shocked royals - which will no doubt stick in the memory far longer than the specifics of one unpopular vote by a pretty unpopular government.

tuition

2010-12-09T17:44:00.008Z

Huh. The tuition fees bill just got approved. Literally two minutes ago. How interesting...

The government won a majority of 21 in both votes, down on their actual majority of 80. Three-quarters knocked off their majority? Well, that's a bit of a black eye for the Government, I guess, but especially for the Lib Dems...they seem to have succeeded in neither supporting or opposing the policy in any firm way - apart from Nick Clegg, David Cameron's personal shit-mop - and as such lose out in every way. More of them voted for the proposals than against...

In fact, this is a lose-lose-lose scenario. The Tory government get their majority hammered, making their future look decidedly shaky, the Lib Dems end any chance of being taken seriously ever again, oh and all of the young people in England are screwed too. I guess Ed Miliband and the Opposition might come out of this one quite well...that's about it though.

Additionally, so many people have come out of this looking like idiots. Oddly enough, at number one in my list is...students. Well, not students in general, who have my general sympathy, but the student protesters who are, even now, fucking up the middle of London. They went down there to try to persuade the government to raise their university fees, and then went about doing this by wrecking up the place. Hmmm. What was the rationale there? Did they think that burning stuff and injuring policemen was going to endear them somehow to the politicians? Literally, how is violence going to help in the slightest? This happens every god-damn time. Bloody hippies.

Next up on the idiot-list, some of the politicians have taken a completely ludicrous stance here. Take Lee Scott, the Conservative MP who is an aide to Transport Secretary Philip Hammond - he decided to abstain, so he had to resign his position. He's essentially resigned in protest - but why only abstain? Why not do it properly and actually vote against the bill? You've lost your job already...

Christ, even Simon Hughes, who was supposedly leading the rebellion earlier on - he's abstained as well. Where the hell is the point? If you're going to make a protest, make a god-damn protest - no, not by beating up a police officer, but we covered that already - you're not exactly maintaining your morals if you don't vote against it. Who actually shows up to abstain from a vote? Where's the point? Were these people elected so that they could represent their constituencies by doing nothing?

Ed Miliband says its a "bad day for democrathy". He does make one salient point - this is a hammer blow to the Lib Dems, but more widely, British politics. They're probably doing themselves a few favours with the Tory/Lib Dem swing voters, but they're doing irreparable damage, which will last at least a generation, among students and young people - one of their core demographics. Their failure to properly stand up to this, on top of their broken promise, has sunk their electoral future - but as Ed points out, it's damaged basic trust in politicians in general. It's an open-and-shut case of effectively lying to win votes - and while many of them may turn out to oppose the government, quite a lot of those protesting students might just be turned off politics altogether.

espionage

2010-12-05T09:49:00.004Z

Going around the Sunday Papers, it's been a pretty rough weekend for the Liberal Democrats. Vince Cable is pondering whether to vote for his own policy or not in next week's tuition fees vote, while Nick Clegg is out on the front line in a lot of papers defending government policy. He's really turning into the great defender of government policy, isn't he? You'd think people would expect Dave to have a more public profile over the big issues, but he seems to be quite happy to continue using the Lib Dems as a shield, a kind of shit-mop to keep his own house clean, while he spends all of his time in the limelight talking about football. Which he patently doesn't actually understand, as anyone who saw him pulling random numbers out of the air when asked to predict the weekend Premiership scores the other day will attest.

Today, though, brings up my favourite bad-news story for the Lib Dems yet - it's been alleged that they've been infiltrated by a Russian spy. 24-year-old Katia Zatuliveter, a researcher for Lib Dem MP Mike Hancock, has been taken into custody by MI5 and now faces deportation over claims that she's been engaging in espionage - the first Russian spy to be uncovered inside the UK Parliament since the Cold War. Mr Hancock insists that Katia's done nothing wrong, and was planning an appeal against the deportation order. Mike is on the Commons Defence Select Committee, and represents naval city Portsmouth, which makes the claims seem sliiiightly more credible - what seems rather more incredible is that the Russians would look to infiltrate the Liberal Democrats. Katia is alleged to be a 'sleeper' agent, a deep-cover type, in place since 2008, so if it is all true this was clearly planned out well in advance - so why a Lib Dem MP? Did Putin really see the ConDem coalition coming a mile off? Are there no end to his dark powers?! Or were the Tory MPs a bit edgy about hiring one of those immigrant types as a researcher?

Espionage is all the rage this week, isn't it? First Julian Assange, now this...

Seriously, though, this does raise questions about the vetting procedures for who can get access to the sensitive matters of Parliament. She had been spoken to by the police on "four or five" occasions before, including when passing though Heathrow. She had "left Mr Hancock's employ" over that, but he decided to keep her on, apparently - so this is as much down to him personally as anyone else. There have definitely been clear suspicions about this for several months now - and it's not as if Russia haven't been above spying on us -as we proved earlier this year with all those deportations. Now, obviously, Katia is innocent until proven guilty and must be given the benefit of the doubt until then - but that's no reason to be overly trusting of the Russians. This week we also heard from a senior FSB agent who refuted Putin's claims that Russian agents don't use torture or 'harsh interrogation methods', and WikiLeaks "uncovered" them as a "Mafia State" - well, that's nothing new, WikiLeaks. Someone needs to remind Russia that the Cold War ended twenty years ago.

whistleblowing

2010-12-01T07:39:00.007Z

Wikileaks...again. They're pretty determined to dominate the headlines this week, eh? Today's revelations: the Americans are pretty worried about Pakistan's nuclear program. Apparently it's a concern that terrorists might steal a nuclear weapon and hold the world to ransom.

Well, no shit. I'M pretty worried about that!

Wikileaks are now being referred to as "whistleblowers". The thing is, leaking things like this is going to make all the diplomats of the world a lot more tight-lipped. Would you say half the things that you do, if you knew that every single word was going to be notated and pored over by the whole world? And it's Good To Talk, dammit! Closer diplomatic ties, sharing little bits and piece of information, has been credited in recent years with preventing numerous terrorist attacks. So are WikiLeaks aiding terrorism now? As if printing the exact names and locations of diplomats important to the West was a good idea...and as if Assange needed any further similarities with Bin Laden...

He's really coming out of this as a bit of a knob, Mr Assange. He's in hiding, and Interpol are now actively looking for him in connection with a rape in Sweden. How convenient, that they've suddenly started caring about that now that he's all over the news...but regardless, it's becoming increasingly clear that his motives in all of this are hardly as pure as the driven snow. If this was really about freedom of information, he'd just release everything he's got, instead of drip-feeding it out over a longer period to cause maximum scandal, holding back the juiciest tidbits for a slow news day when they can dominate the headlines. He probably also wouldn't be being done for espionage for stealing said information.

Well, if it's attention he wanted, then it's working...

EDIT 6/12: Oh, and today I see WikiLeaks have gone for it and actually published a list of potential terrorist targets. As I noted in this post, locations of people and things important to the West...well, that's a nice Christmas present for terrorism, right there. It's downright bloody irresponsible, is what it is. Any FOI respect Assange might have been flirting with has just gone right out the window.

leaks

2010-11-29T17:06:00.006Z

Those crazy cats at Wikileaks have been up to no good again. Well, either that or they've been up to lots of good, depending on your position. If you're of the latter opinion, it's unlikely you're in government...

This time, they've uncovered a series of diplomatic cables to and from American embassies, including ones from officials in Saudia Arabia, Bahrain and Abu Dhabi, urging the US to bomb Iranian nuclear sites. I don't think "uh-oh" even does it justice. In all, over a quarter of a million cables have been leaked, pertaining to a large number of things; everything from Iran to one saying that Prince Andrew is very rude. Oddly enough, though, the US seems to come out of it all apparently not really wanting to bomb Iran. Which is almost surprising...for some time, there's been this general idea that Iran was Next, it was the next Rogue State on the list after Iraq, and that the USA would leap at any chance to bomb the heck out of them. Supposedly, the only thing keeping them from doing so was the presence of Russia and China hanging around just behind Iran, and the faint possibility of nuclear weapons. Well, apparently not. The rest of the middle east was begging them to bomb them silly, and yet they demurred. Hmm.

The USA claims that these leaks endanger their national security, and not just because they make them look a bit daft. On a basic level, leaks like this - which are rather blunt and less than discreet in nature, just screeds of information printed without any kind of editing - make little attempt to safeguard the identities of certain individuals. Certain individuals who might find themselves in hot water if they were to be caught in the wrong place, saying the wrong things to the wrong people at the wrong times. Now, a certain set of people make a living by doing and saying these things, in a rather clandestine fashion...but things like Wikileaks can effectively put a spotlight on them. What about all of these Arab diplomats who were asking the USA to go wild on Iran? What's going to happen to them now? I should think they're less than safe...

These cables were kept secret for a reason. And not just to protect all parties concerned from embarrassment - it makes foreign policy a little difficult if you're 100% transparent about everything you do. In a way, Wikileaks are interfering with US foreign policy...and indeed, Hillary Clinton says that these releases were an "attack on the world". There's even talk of charging the Australian hacker who founded the site, Julian Assange, of being prosecuted under the Espionage Act.

Wikileaks is founded on the principle that they uncover information that is hidden, unavailable to the general public, and make it, well, available. I guess it's a question of how far we want to carry Freedom of Speech. Is it more important than human lives? Numerous human lives? Generally, you can make the argument that people can have freedom of speech as long as they also employ a little common sense in exercising it - do some of the things Wikileaks disclose fall under this heading?

Obviously, there's a public interest defence here. Wikileaks will argue that the Public needed to know about this, that this is important information to be in the public political consciousness. The same goes for the Iraq War Papers, which actually might have held even more of a risk of getting spies and soldiers killed. They might argue that leaking the papers will discourage the public from supporting further wars in future, which would arguably save lives...however, if they're so concerned with Freedom of Speech, why should a particular political spin be applied?

What doesn't help is the way Assange is acting about the whole thing. He's just announced that he's going to be leaking details about a "major US financial firm" next - maybe his plan is to take down the world's economic markets as well as the US Government? Honestly, coming out with statements like that makes him sound like a terrorist, or possibly a rubbish daytime TV psychic. More someone who's interested more in publicity than freedom of speech? Well, they say that information is power...and that power corrupts...

escalation

2010-11-26T23:40:00.005Z

This referee's strike may not be showing up the incompetence of Scotland's match officials, but it's doing a wonderful job of showing up how inept the people who run the game are. The SFA are turning a disaster into an apocalypse.

They almost managed to get over the referee's strike by drafting in officials from other countries. Trouble was, they didn't tell these unfortunate foreign scab refs just WHY they were being brought in - and in some cases, they straight up lied.

You'd think referees the world across would have sympathy for the supposed thrust of the Scottish referee's argument, that they're criticised too heavily, that their every decision is picked apart in ludicrous detail and that they're blamed for every manager's failing, game upon game. What were these Polish, Portuguese, Luxembourgian and Israeli officials thinking when they agreed to take over this weekend's SPL card? Well, they certainly weren't thinking about the plight of striking refs. They thought it was an exchange program. The SFA lied to them.

Poland cancelled their involvement as soon as they found out. Although they looked almost as daft as the SFA when they gave their reason as being "oh, turns out we've got matches to officiate in our own country this weekend". Like they didn't know there would be football this weekend?! That's only been happening for the last, oh I don't know, hundred odd years? That meant the Polish joined the list of countries refusing to cross the picket lines - Holland, Iceland, Norway, Ireland, Wales, Estonia and Sweden had already demurred. No wonder the SFA started lying about it, after all those rejections...

The Portuguese delegation obviously only found out when they were half-way to Scotland, as the officiating team they sent were pictured getting off their plane in Glasgow only to turn around and get straight back on the next flight back home. I guess they're not going to referee that Motherwell game at the weekend then...

And then the Israeli delegation, who make up a large proportion of the remaining refs, came out with a statement saying they had had no idea that the Scottish refs were on strike, that they had been told that it was an exchange deal, some kind of experience-gaining opportunity, and that they would be reconsidering their position. As of right, right now, the SFA claim that the Israelis are still on board and that the matches will go ahead...but that's starting to look increasingly doubtful. Sky Sports News and ITV News, the perennial rumours-as-facts merchants, are playing up the Israelis leaving angle heavily already.

Oh, and to top it all off, Hugh Dallas has just been sacked. He's the guy supposedly in charge of refereeing at the SFA, y'know. Supposedly, this is all some massive coincidence, and he's being dismissed because he said some stuff about the Pope in an email the other week. Aye, right. As if the head of the referees being sacked on the night of the greatest refereeing crisis in the history of Scottish football has absolutely nothing to do with that very crisis. Nobody's buying that one. Dallas is the blood sacrifice, a hopeful punt from the SFA that a head on a pole outside the city walls will placate the baying mob while Rome burns on the inside. A tad dramatic, perhaps, but not thaaaat far from the truth; Scottish football is on its knees.

Blaming Dallas's Pope comments is a bad move, to start with. Just feeds the whole Celtic FC conspiracy nut angle - that's absolute catnip to the paranoid element in Celtic's support. And boardroom. Honestly, they didn't need the excuse. We're in the middle of a fucking disaster here! Sack the man for being shit at his job, not for some supposed other infraction! Frankly, they need to make that clear. Celtic and the Catholic Church are not in charge, and sacking him over this email doesn't exactly send that kind of message. Dammit, grow a set of balls, SFA! Sack him under your own steam and prove you're still in charge of your own house, or the knives will be out for you next!

In fact, sacking a rather long list of people is the first step out of this bloody mess. Neil Lennon and John Reid should be next on that list - they both need the entire book and most of the library thrown at them for bringing the game into disrepute. They've basically brought down the entire system with their paranoid delusions. As if the entire league is biased against one of the Old Firm! If anything, the odds are firmly stacked in their favour. Anyway, Dougie McDonald should probably get the bullet too for lighting the blue touch-paper. Dallas won't be the only one, that's for damn sure. Other SFA heads will roll by Monday morning, I'll guarantee that.

And at the end of the day, a weird, traumatic day for Scottish football, we're left with utter uncertainty. Are tomorrow's fixtures actually going ahead? It says a lot about the SFA that absolutely nobody is taking their assertion that the games are still on as gospel. They've lost the trust of basically everyone in Scottish football. It may well come down to it tomorrow that the teams will have to ref a half about, and Aberdeen will have to let Derek Young play the whole second half because he agreed to bite the bullet and ref the first. Or maybe they'll just call the whole thing off, underlining what this whole affair is blossoming into - a hefty kick in the balls for the fans. But I doubt anyone down at the SFA is thinking about that right now...

bad publicity

2010-11-25T12:10:00.005Z

They say there's no such thing as bad publicity. Well, UKIP are trying their hardest to disprove this, by once again pulling off a daft stunt in the European Parliament. Godfrey Bloom, MEP for Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire, chanted the Nazi slogan "ein volk, ein reich, ein Fuhrer" at a German MEP as he attempted to make a speech. Not the smartest or most well-thought-out of heckles, to be sure, and although it's making headlines and garnering a bit of publicity for UKIP, it's hardly positive publicity. Because everyone thinks they're Nazis now.

Is it any surprise that this has happened less than a month after Nigel Farage, master of the political publicity stunt, returned to the leadership of UKIP? Nigel Farage, who was fined by the European Parliament in March for a tirade against the Council President, Herman van Rompoy, in which he said the President had "the appearance of a low-grade bank clerk, and all the charisma of a damp rag". He also referred to Mr Rompuy's homeland Belgium as being "pretty much a non-country". Now, that was one which the Daily Mail readers could relate to! Bloody Belgians, telling us what to do, eh? That guy does look like a bank clerk! Yeah! Let's vote UKIP!

Later, Nigel denied that this was all just a big publicity stunt to get the Eurosceptics whipped into a frenzy before the General Election. Nobody believed him. This incident, though, smacks of something a bit more sinister - if anything, I'd think Nigel will be just as horrified by Bloom's remarks as anyone else. Not because they personally offend him, but because it's dreadful PR. It's going to have the exact opposite effect of his Rompuy rant - it's not going to win over any Daily Mail readers, or even the majority who buy it for the pretty pictures. Right-wing parties should steer clear of Nazi slogans and the word "fascist", by and large. It never ends in positive PR, unless they're trying to sweep up the aging hide-out German war-criminal vote. The fascists of today are sort of blue-collar Nazis, who pretend every bit as much to themselves as to the rest of the world that they're actually reasonable people with legitimate concerns. They cram themselves into cheap suits before brawling in the streets. Nigel Farage had done an even better job of legitimising and destigmatising UKIP than Nick Griffin managed with the BNP. Letting the mask slip like this is only a step backwards for them, because all that's going to get reported is the UKIP MEP chanting Nazi slogans in the Parliament, not the underlying issues he's trying to make a point about.

It will make headlines for that reason alone, though. I believe the majority of people won't read far enough into the story to work out just why he was chanting these things. They're not going to disect the intricacies of EU politics on the back of this, and in that respect if this was a publicity stunt, it's a spectacular failure. I mean, I've gone this whole article without discussing the underlying issues. It would take too bloody long, frankly. What's much easier is to report the outrage - Lib Dem representatives calling Bloom a "national embarrassment", Labour accusing them of staging the event to "brew up a storm to make headlines back home". Which I'm quite happy with, frankly - they say that journalism is reporting what someone wants to repress, and everything else is just PR. Well, we've managed to skip the PR part, discussing the issues about how democratic the EU is, and go straight for the part that UKIP would rather keep quiet; that they're raving right-wing nutcases.

industrial action

2010-11-22T22:20:00.003Z

Today the Scottish FA is considering bringing in foreign referees to officiate in SPL and SFL games over the weekend because the Scottish whistlers have voted to go on strike. They're protesting against the large amount of criticism that's been levelled at them in recent weeks, and while they haven't specifically named Celtic boss Neil Lennon as being the prime culprit, everyone knows that he's the root of the problem.

This all began with the now infamous incident of Dougie McDonald daring to correctly not give Celtic a penalty, after initially pointing to the spot. After making the award, he went over and consulted his linesman, before changing the decision. Correctly, one might add. Celtic went on to win the game anyway, so this had literally no effect whatsoever on anything. At all. Still, Celtic decided to kick up a massive stink; the linesman ended up resigning altogether, because his family were getting threatened in the street by crazed Celtic fans. The plot thickened when it conspired that McDonald had slightly concealed the truth about what actually went on in his discussion with the linesman when explaining the situation to Lennon and Celtic chairman John Reid, and the pair of them now call for his head at every turn. Now, that might be fair enough, as a referee relies on his credibility, but at the end of the day there was absolutely nothing wrong with the decision itself. The refereeing behind it was, for once, sound.

Now, Celtic are calling for every referee to declare which team he supports. Clearly, they're convinced that the country's officials will queue up and all declare an undying love of Rangers, which is why they've been so very, very tough on a club which finishes in the top two in the league every bloody season. Now, I'll be the first to admit that refereeing in Scotland is a bit of a problem, and has been for some time. The problem is not, however, bias. There is no great conspiracy against Celtic FC or any other club. And to suggest so with such vigour is covering up the real issue at hand - one of base incompetency.

This isn't just coming from a blinkered club-centric viewpoint. There's complete inconsistency in the performances of many Scottish referees which affect every team just as badly. To be frank, they've ruined more than a few games of football. Not by being biased, just by being plain bad. The Daily Record, although hardly a credible source, carried an incredible story the other day, claiming that 80% of Scottish refs had failed a basic refereeing test. Administered by the SFA. Even by their own standards, they're rubbish. But by making the whole thing about issues of impartiality rather than competence, Celtic are covering up the larger problem completely. About bias, the referees can justifiably spit out the dummy and go on strike. If it was about just exposing their lack of ability to referee, it would be an altogether different proposition.

Let's make one thing clear. Celtic FC's position on this whole mess is utterly deluded. They're convinced that the referees are out to get them, that everyone is against them, and that it's all part of some great conspiracy against them. They've even brainwashed a very recent signing, Gary Hooper, into coming out with paranoid madness like this in interviews - he claimed that referees are always against Celtic because they think it'll make them look good if they stand up to "one of the biggest clubs in the world". Deluded is not the word. Lennon is even promising to fight his touchline ban which he got for calling a fourth official - in front of a television camera, which picked up every word - a "fucking dick". The man's clearly cracked.

In a way, I kind of hope we do get foreign referees in this weekend. It would be an interesting experiment, to see if the officials from other countries are actually any better. I seem to remember thinking that the referees in UEFA Cup ties are always a bit better, if slightly unused to the rough-and-tumble nature of Scottish football. If the foreign (I say foreign, they may well be Welsh) lads come in and do a decent job, although it might for the meantime continue this ludicrous argument about bias, it will show up the generally poor standard of Scottish refereeing. Maybe, we could just let the likes of Willie Collum stay on strike for good, and get some decent officials in instead.

never had it so bad

2010-11-21T15:58:00.005Z

Lord Young has quit over his allegations that the British people have "never had it so good". David Cameron has reluctantly accepted his enterprise tsar's resignation despite insisting that he should stay - a double blow for the Prime Minister. Lord Young had asserted that the "so-called recession" wasn't a big issue, and claimed that due to low mortgage rates "the vast majority of people have never had it so good".

He's right though, isn't he? I mean, in the last year alone, 850,000 people found that they didn't ever have to go into work again, and could sleep late and watch Jeremy fucking Kyle to their hearts' content. Sounds brilliant! 22,000 businesses went bust over the same period, strengthening the hold Tesco have over the vast majority of our lives - which surely will culminate in all-new ClubCard offers! And as for those low, low mortgage rates - that must be why there's been an absolutely massive surge in house sales! (Oh, wait...) This truly is an exciting time to be alive.

There's a weird, backwards logic going on when someone has to resign from the Government because they claim that things in the country aren't completely shit. Wouldn't it usually be the other way round? Lord Young got in the way of the fundamental basis of everything that the Conservative government is doing, by intimating that Labour didn't actually bring the country to the brink of collapse. Indeed, claiming that the majority of people in the country have never had it so good would kind of attest that the place has been well-run for the last 13 years! And that wouldn't do at all - after all, Cameron and Clegg underline at literally every opportunity that everything is the fault of the previous Government. While certainly there's truth in there somewhere, it's getting just a little bit repetitive - PMQs is an absolute nightmare in tedium nowadays.

Labour's position on this has been a little odd as well. As mentioned above, Lord Young is effectively fighting their corner, albeit in a very odd way. He's undermining the Tory justification for cuts, although the part where he deemed another 100,000 job losses "within the margin of error" probably didn't do anyone any favours. What are Labour supposed to say? "No, that's rubbish! The place is a shitehole, we ruined everything! The country is in the gutter and things have never been worse!" Instead, Shadow Treasury Minister Angela Eagle claimed that Cameron didn't want to sack one of his close friends because he "secretly agrees with him". Uhh...unlikely, frankly, and not a fantastic line of attack either. It's a good job Ed Miliband is coming back off paternity leave soon, because Labour's responses to the coalition have been rather poor lately.

Papal fallibility

2010-11-21T12:03:00.005Z

So, the Pope has taken the entire world by surprise by deciding, rather suddenly, that condoms are actually OK "in some cases"! That's kind of huge. Because it's literally the complete opposite of what he's been saying before. Is the Pope allowed to make U-turns? I thought he was meant to be infallible? Indeed, as he's essentially God's mouthpiece, was this actually a policy flip-flop on the part of God? While apparently the Church is still absolutely opposed to contraception (just not...absolutely), in the same interview as the condom comments Benedict states that he cannot continue to produce "infallible statements". Maybe that was just a caveat in case the whole condom bit didn't pan out, though.

Is this an admission not only that the Pope can be wrong, but that traditional Catholicism is fundamentally ill-adjusted to the modern world? The condom thing was always just a bit thick, really. And it's not as if there's been some massive advance in condom technology from the rather recent days when the official line of Catholicism was to actually blame them for Aids (the Archbishop of Nairobi claimed a few years back that “AIDS…has grown so fast because of the availability of condoms"). There were even vague appeals to science at one point, with the Church claiming that the Aids virus was much more likely to be able to get through a condom, despite the idea being roundly rejected by the World Health Organisation. Well, the Aids virus hasn't got any bigger, and there's been no revolution in the design or reliability of condoms - so why the sudden retreat?

Well, the Vatican denies that this is actually a retreat. Or at least, that it is "a revolutionary turn"...well, perhaps not in terms of concrete Church policy, but it definitely is in terms of attitude. Benedict had previously been seen as an utterly uncompromising figure, especially over the issue of contraception, and the idea that he's even considering an alternative approach is massive in itself. The Aids epidemic itself is probably what has encouraged this re-think, and there's been debate inside the Church for some time now over whether accepting the use of condoms in order to stem the spread of the disease would be the 'lesser of two evils'. This appears to be the line that Benedict is going along with.

It's all been met with jubilation by pro-condom campaigners, like Aids groups and even dissident Catholic movements. Jon O'Brien, leader of Catholics for Choice, called it "a marvellous victory for common sense". The Catholic Church finds itself at something of a cross-roads, with their dogma and indeed founding principles of the church like Papal infallibility on the line. They might be moving to join the rest of us in the 21st century, but it remains to be seen how such a move could affect the fundamental bases of the religion.

2010-11-18T10:57:00.007Z

So, I see we're going to help bail out Ireland's banks. How nice. Something like £7 billion, we're going to contribute to their emergency loan? And there was me thinking we were skint, and had to make major cuts to all public services. I guess things aren't so bad in Britain after all!

It's all been very interesting considering the policy position of the Tories on this, though. It seems a bit like their position as the Government differs somewhat from that as Conservatives. Aren't the Tories meant to be against the Euro? George Osborne had this to say: "We're going to do what is in Britain's national interest. Ireland is our closest neighbour and it's in Britain's national interest that the Irish economy is successful and we have a stable banking system". Bit of a change from the ol' Doom and Gloom, Everything is fucked so we need to make enormous cuts to Everything attitude, eh? Although it is still a bit defensive, George. Although yes, I guess we do technically have a stable banking system. The bankers didn't get hit that hard by the CSR.

But OK, yes George, you're bang on the money. (Sorry). Britain needs a strong Irish economy, for a variety of reasons. We do rather a lot of trade with them - Cameron claims we do more with them than with Brazil, India, China and Russia combined, which doesn't seem like a great plan to me, but hey, I'm not in charge - so we could do without them sinking into a cash-strapped black hole. The Northern Irish economy is also rather prone to fluctuation based on what's going on south of the border. So, yeah, we need to keep Ireland afloat, as a country - and the government as a whole has accepted that. The Tory part of it, however, must be seething.

The Tories are EuroSceptics, after all. They would bloody love it if the Euro went under - they'd see it as a victory for the Pound, and a sign that Britain did the right thing keeping out of the Euro-Zone. As it is, we're using those pounds to keep the Euro afloat - and that must really rankle with the hard-core anti-Europe Tories. Europe has long been the big divide between Cameron and his Party, the one thing where he struggles to keep them in line. Some old-school Tories, John Redwood and Douglas Carswell, have already come out against this rescue scheme. Redwood says "The UK should make it clear that we are not part of any Euroland rescue or facility", while Carswell added the slightly more inflammatory "Britain should do all it can to support our friends and neighbours. Not by bailing the Euro out, but by helping countries out of the Euro. The misery and pain in Ireland will only stop when Ireland has freed herself from monetary union."

So, plenty of support for Ireland, but not for the Euro. We don't really have much choice but to be involved now; we've literally invested in the future of the Euro. The Tories may see us as "propping up" a failing currency, but we kind of have to, now. There's no easy way out from here. And that's not going to sit well with the dyed-in-the-wool Tories, not in the slightest.

on her majesty's secret service

2010-11-18T09:52:00.004Z

Whoa. Haven't done one of these for a while. Not that there's been a lack of material going about...

I mean, we're going to have a Royal Wedding! Get in, an extra Bank Holiday next year! Obviously enough that dominated every front page in the world, making it one of those good days for bad news. The Tories actually tried to smuggle out two bad news stories under cover of Royalty...

The first, and perhaps most significant, was that the UK is to pay out millions of pounds in compensation to former inmates of Guantanamo Bay who were subjected to "harsh questioning". That's right, a huge payout to the victims of torture, basically admitting complicity. That Binyam Mohamed guy, one of the first torture celebrities, is among them. He was huge news, front page stuff, when the government were denying involvement, but now...well, he's not marrying Prince William, is he? This monumental story was relegated to the briefs in the Financial Times. Seriously. Half the front page was dedicated to the Royal Wedding, and the government paying out money to people they were involved with torturing gets a single column inch, squeezed into the corner. The mind boggles.

There was another one, as well; another big Government u-turn. Well, a Cameron u-turn, specifically, but we're all getting rather used to the nebulous, malleable quality to his policies nowadays. Basically, he tried to hire two Tory aides as his official photographer and film-maker. While the rest of country and literally every other sector comes under the axe of job cuts, Cameron takes on some new staff, entirely based around his image. They've now stopped being on the public payroll and gone back to being on the Conservative Party payroll, making the whole thing look as if it was really about saving the Tories a little bit of cash - at the taxpayer's expense. A bit of a gaffe, all round, being as the job description for the pair of them would have been to improve the PM's image. You know, take nice pictures and videos of him looking all heroic and shit. As it is, they've made him look worse. This is the one that people have really latched on to as being "covered up" by the Royal Wedding, as there was a certain inevitability about the torture payouts - and it actually broke before the Royal stuff did.

The thing about the Royal Wedding is that it's technically not even news. They actually got engaged in October, and the wedding isn't until next year. There's also a paucity of basic facts beyond that - the rolling news channels have been getting particularly repetitive over this one. They run out of things to say after literally 15 seconds, and have to go around again, like the helicopter they've got circling the Palaces even though you can see by the lack of flag that nobody's in. I think the news channels might just be pissed that the future King has been engaged for a month, and managed to keep it from them. Hence the over-reaction, to try to prove they've still Got It. We get Total Coverage now, long after the horse has bolted. It's given Dave a great opportunity to look like a cast-iron Tory again, though - he says he slept on the Mall before Charles and Diana's wedding. I don't think a whole squad of photographers and film-makers could make him seem any less of a toff now...

The Woolas Precedent

2010-11-08T10:53:00.004Z

Last week saw the bloody spectacle of a Shadow Cabinet Minister being stripped of his electoral victory, banned from Parliament for three years, and unceremoniously dumped from the Labour Party and apparently the political world in general. Phil Woolas, ironically enough an Immigration Minister, was found to have made up loads of lies about his Lib Dem opponent in the Oldham East & Saddleworth seat, which he won by 103 votes. I say ironically, because he made lots of aspersions that judges found to be "racially inflammatory", claiming that his opponent was both in cahoots with and funded by Islamist extremists. The Muslim Public Affairs Committe UK accused him of engaging in "disgusting Islamophobia" and "stoking racial tensions" in an area which has seen large-scale race riots in the last 10 years.

Apparently, Woolas's statements were in breach of the Representation of the People Act 1983, and he was kicked out of Parliament by an Electoral Court, the first of its kind of be convened in almost a hundred years. Now, apart from the personal embarrassment to Mr Woolas and indeed Ed Miliband, who picked him as a Shadow Immigration Minister, this is also a big deal for the way that elections will be fought in future. Essentially, politicians now need to watch their tongues. They can't just say anything they like about their opponents, and indeed they can't say anything which might be deemed "racially inflammatory". Which raises one rather glaring point for me...

What are the BNP going to do now?!

I've been getting quite a lot of letters from them - well, I say 'I', in reality someone who used to live in my flat has been getting them, but I feel the fact the BNP are involved means I can retain the moral high ground even while opening other people's letters. Anyway, he appears to have been a paid-up member, to the extent that lots of the (begging for money) letters are actually signed by Nick Griffin himself, and not photocopied on or anything.

The point is, they're about 80 to 90% racially inflammatory crap, and guess where the BNP tend to do most of their business? Place like Oldham, where racial tensions are high. Places where they can capitalise on that "white Sun-reading vote". They're due up in court for racism inside the next few days, now that the courts have set what I'm going to call The Woolas Precedent, they're never going te be able to publish another pamphlet without landing in the dock. There was a copy of this month's HOPE AND GLORY, the BNP magazine, waiting for me (well, technically not me, but we've been over this) when I got home today, and it contains some absolutely amazing invective and outrageous statements. "There is nothing vibrant or dynamic about losing your job to Easter European workers or finding that you can't spot a white face in your high street". "Our cultural heritage has been savaged as we're forced to accept barbaric religions and the criminal scamming culture we always knew was present in poor countries". I mean, holy shit! Free speech is one thing, but that stuff is definitely over the Woolas Line. And it's not even aimed at one candidate, it's aimed at the entire Establishment, or as Nick Griffin calls them in the letter accompanying the magazine: "lairs, cheats and traitors!" That's right, lairs. They're a bunch of lairs. He even refers to the Equalities Commission as "bigots". I love that Nick Griffin gets to call the Equalities Commission bigots, even after he's gone on record denying the holocaust and denouncing various religions and everyone who isn't white. Wasn't him that said "there's no such thing as a black or Asian Briton"? Well, just lets see him try that at the next General Election. He'll be out on his ear in minutes - if he actually manages to win anything, that is.

Mid-Term-ism

2010-11-04T20:22:00.005Z

So, there was that whole Mid-Term thing last week. The Democrats took a hell of a beating, I heard! Well...sort of.

That's what you'll have read in every paper. That the Democrats got KILLED, they got SLAUGHTERED, it was an embarrassing THRASHING for Obama, and that the Republicans now rule American politics once again. That's not entirely how it transpired, of course; that's just how it's being presented.

Y'see, the GOP only snatched Congress. The Senate stays Blue, or relatively so, for now. While this is obviously far from a positive result for Obama, it could be much, much worse. Indeed, most Presidents face similar, if not worse odds. This is always how it goes! People vote en masse for the guys who aren't in power, and then two years later do the exact same thing, because when it comes down to it they just resent The Man and authority. Nobody likes The Man. If statistics haven't failed me utterly, I reckon Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton both lost Congress and the Senate in their first mid-terms, and both won re-election two years after. The standout Democrat and Republican of the last generation, and both faced a slightly more uphill struggle than Barack after the mid-terms.

But what would the Obama presidency be without media hype and exaggeration? I mean, he practically won the election in 08 off the back of a huge wave of hype, not to mention the several billion dollars spent on keeping the media sweet. These mid-terms were the most expensive polls in electoral history - shouldn't Barack have been more than comfortable in this environment?

Well, maybe not. Something has changed since he took power, even just in the bare rhetoric of his television appearances and debates. Where once Barack would have responded to a question with a snappy one-liner, some well-thought-out buzz-phrase, now he rambles for a couple of solid minutes about policy. It's hard not to think he's lost his touch a little bit - but maybe he's just coming to terms with the realities of the biggest job in the world. It might just be that he doesn't have time for the trivialities of populist rhetoric and Hope and Change and so forth, now he's down to the pragmatic brass tacks of the job itself. "That Hopey Changey Thing", as Sarah Palin called it, was the style of a Presidential Candidate. Now, Obama is rocking the Incumbent look, and he's playing a whole different game.

Several things ended up going in his favour in the end, anyway. The Tea Party thing kind of imploded a little bit, as in the last days of campaigning the "inexperience" of the Tea Party candidates was thrown into sharp relief under the uncompromising glare of 24-hour media scrutiny. Candidates who were once media darlings turned out to be devotees of witchcraft, who didn't know their way around the Constitution. Generally, they ended up looking a bit silly. So the Republican gains weren't quite as huge as expected, and in reality I would call it a sobering result for the GOP. For my money, they still haven't come to terms with that defeat in 2008. They haven't sorted out any new kind of identity, they haven't found a new figurehead - all that they've got is AntiObamaism, which is all very well for superficial poll gains, but which contains very little substance beyond general negative campaigning. If the Republicans are really going to give Obama a run for his money in 2012, they need to move forward. To an extent, the Tea Party movement is just holding them back, bogging them down in populist tit-for-tat with the Establishment. And for the love of christ, they need to move on from Sarah Palin. The woman who couldn't see out a term as Governor of Alaska is never going to get elected as President. I mean, seriously, come on.

So, contrary to what you might believe from the media, all is not lost for Obama. His Presidency is not entirely on the rocks, and his coat is not on a shoogly peg. Not yet, at any rate; he's got another two years to mess up before he's in any serious kind of trouble. And even then, it'll be reliant on the Republicans actually getting their act together and putting together a platform they can actually run on, rather than just undermining their opponents at every turn. Mid-Terms are so called for a reason - they happen Mid-Term, halfway through the game as a whole. The scoreline as it stands isn't entirely beneficial for Obama, but there's still plenty of time left on the play-clock. Lesser men than he have come back from much greater deficits. Let's not write the man off just yet.

the Convict vote

2010-11-02T08:24:00.006Z

John Humphreys woke me up this morning with the news that the government is finally giving in to the European Court of Human Rights on the issue of allowing prisoners to vote.

Initial thoughts; well, which political party is going to be courting the Convict Vote? Something like 148 in every 100,000 people in the country are in prison (one of the highest incarceration rates in Europe, apparently), I'm sure at least one of the Parties is looking at that little percentage bump with hunger in their eyes...it won't be the government, though. As if anyone in prison is going to vote for the Party that put them there. I'd think they're going to end up voting along slightly radicalised lines.

All kinds of arguments have kicked off over this already. The ECHR contests that it's everyone's right to vote in a democratic society, and prisoners are still officially people. Now, of course the right to vote is a fundamental human right - surely that's why it's being taken away as a punishment? Voting in an election is all about deciding what's best for society. Why should people who have been deliberately separated from that society get to have a say in how its governed? Maybe if they're going to get out within the next four years...but still. The point of putting someone in prison is because they're deemed unworthy to take part in society for a period of time, right? So why do they still get to take part in the most fundamental part of (democratic) societal discourse?

Well, apparently, this is going to stop prisoners rioting so much. They won't bother rioting, because they'll have a legitimate way to express their concerns, by voting. The chap involved in the ECHR case actually argued that on the radio this morning. So if prisoners today are pissed off about something, they won't riot; no no, they'll wait four years so they can vote about it instead. Yeah, that would make sense. I know they're in prison, but I doubt they're utterly irrational in that particular direction.

There are numerous political problems here, too, especially for the Tories - just to start with, if you could imagine any political party being nicer to convicts, would it really be the Conservatives? The Conservatives. Their supporters are making similar noises - one of their MPs was on the lunchtime news just now absolutely spitting feathers. They would get a fantastic amount of horrific publicity, but frankly this isn't a bad year for them to bite this particular bullet. If they're going to have to get it done at some point anyway, with the EU looking over their shoulders, it's probably better to get it done as far away as possible from a General Election. A week is apparently a long time in politics, so four years should be enough for even this wound to heal...

That EU involvement, though, that has the potential to be more serious. It's a reminder for all the Tories that the UK is still signed up to the EU Convention on Human Rights, something Dave promised to do away with in favour of a UK-specific. They're getting used to broken promises, I guess, but Europe is an absolutely pivotal issue for many Tories and one where Cameron has already had no small amount of friction with his Party.

We've spent decades being told by campaigning politicians that they'll be "tough on crime". I wonder how they'll change that spiel when they're canvassing down the local prison?

coalition divided

2010-10-29T11:07:00.003+01:00

The cracks are starting to show in that dodgy Lib Dem coalition, and it finally seems to be falling apart.

No, not the one in Westminster with the Tories; the Lib Dem - SNP coalition that's currently running Aberdeen City Council! The coalition had wanted to close the city's Northfield Academy, but after numerous parent and pupil protests the SNP gave their backing to keeping the school open - weirdly enough, joining forces with bitter rivals Labour. And so it was confirmed at a furious meeting of the Council last night that the school will remain open, with the coalition partners openly throwing insults at each other.

Lib Dem councillor Richard Robertosn said "it is not a conincidence that there are two SNP councillors in Northfield. I think you are an absolute disgrace for raising party political issues". Boom! He was jeered and heckled by SNP councillors. An SNP representative, John West (not the salmon guy, I presume) had a crack back at the Liberals, saying "it is quite refreshing to see them [the Lib Dems] jump off the fence with such energy. It is just a pity they jumped off on the wrong side". The old Lib Dem Fence Sitters chestnut! Haven't heard that one in a while...

While both sides insist the coalition will continue, The Press and Journal "understands" that there may well be turbulant times ahead, and the Labour opposition have certainly hinted strongly at this by calling for the Lib Dem council leader to consider his position. And all of this so soon before a Scottish election...this, if there ever was one, is a time at which the SNP want to avoid controversy. They're in enough trouble as it is, what with not actually having done anything since they took power. Indeed, this is actually a case where they've both been critisised and failed to get anything done...impressive stuff. I wonder what the next Council election in Aberdeen will deliver? I'm willing to bet it won't be a Lib Dem - SNP coalition, anyway.

George Osborne's Face

2010-10-28T12:56:00.003+01:00

Despite my little rant after Ed's first appearance at PMQs, I still watch the damn things religiously. This week was quite interesting...but not because of the sparring between the PM and the leader of the Opposition. They came out with all the usual predictable tedium. What was interesting was watching how everyone else in the chamber reacted to the two of them.

The Tory front bench was fascinating. In the middle was Dave prevaricating wildly, mostly struggling manfully to look sincere but only managing to look smug, but that's nothing particularly new. He's been pursuing a more aggressive line of rhetoric of late, but it's still just rhetoric and sound-bites. An interesting moment was when he got ahold of a leaked Labour memo about how Ed Miliband should prepare for PMQs and mockingly read it aloud, ironically enough mirroring most of the advice contained in it in the process. "Have a cheer moment", he read, as the Tory benches cheered wildly.

George Osborne wasn't cheering that much, though. In fact, he didn't seem like he was even in the room, mentally. He sat with his mouth open, gazing into the middle distance with an odd, puzzled expression on his face. Occasionally his head would move up and down as he watched Dave's hand moving up and down just in front of his face, but that was as animated as he got. Basically, he looked like he was really hung over, and was struggling not to interact with the outside world in case he was sick. (Of course now it'll turn out that he's had a stroke, and I'll feel really bad...) His one moment of passing joy was upon being passed an envelope containing a poppy; a sharp-witted Tory staffer had noticed that the Chancellor had gone on television minus a little red plastic flower, and had actually borrowed one from a policeman outside to try to save some face. George didn't actually put it on, of course; to do so so late in proceedings would have just drawn attention to its absence. Which really raises the question of why they had to pass the damn thing to him in the first place...

Nick Clegg's posture has got worse and worse, week on week, while he's been on the governing side of the House. You'd think he'd be relishing this, his one opportunity in life to sit that close to the dispatch box on the government side. This is the most power he'll ever have in life, and he looks gutted about it. Ed Miliband actually occasionally makes reference to how glum Nick looks half the time. "Look at the deputy prime minithster! He lookths tho sthad!"

Frontline politics is really turning into a perpetual motion machine of vitriol and contempt, as far as my involvement with it goes. If you count that little dig at Ed's lisp, I've had a dig at literally everybody in this one post. That's probably the closest I'll ever get to balanced, though...I now appear to despise everyone equally.

getting defensive

2010-10-19T08:18:00.005+01:00

Today may not be CutsDay for most of the country - that's tomorrow, with the Comprehensive Spending Review. However, today was a grim day for the Ministry of Defence, as the Defence Review was announced. Basically, it adds up to an 8% cut in defence spending, but rumour has it Cameron personally intervened at the last minute to shift it down a gear from 10%. I wonder if that was media pressure getting to him again? He certainly does seem kind of malleable to that at times - if that actually is the case, then I guess Liam Fox's plan to leak the proposed details in advance has paid off. Well, it was either him or Hillary Clinton...

There are some interesting details in the review that the press are already latching onto, though, some easy-to-spot hiccups that just about anyone should be able to grasp (like the maths behind the Child Benefit cuts, that "divide by two" sum that caught the nation's imagination). Basically, we're going to scrap the aircraft carrier that we've got, the flagship the Ark Royal, and cut back production of further carriers. However, the Navy threw the toys out of the pram somewhat about this, so Cameron has agreed to finish production on the two carriers currently under construction (apparently it would be more expensive to not build them, somehow), but one will be "mothballed" and will never actually carry a plane, while the other will have to wait until 2020 to be fitted out with new fighter jets.

So we're building aircraft carriers, which aren't actually going to carry any aircraft. That's going to be kind of a hard one to sell, frankly...I mean, where's the point? What's even worse is that to cover paying for what are essentially going to be enormous, empty, sea-bound multi-story car parks, we're cutting back seriously on our surface fleet. So, no more boats either. The only thing we're going to be left with, basically, is some submarines, and even they're going to have less warheads on them. Trident is getting put back by another government term as well, apparently, as yet another administration pass the buck on that tricky political football.

The government say that the carrier currently under construction will be used as a stop-gap measure, carrying helicopters. Helicopters? Really? I'm just getting pictures in my head now of a slightly more mobile oil rig. Doesn't this reduce the effective strike range of the carriers somewhat? We're going to be getting to the point where we'll have to sail right up to Iran or whoever and chuck stones at them off the deck. Shock and awe, it will decidedly not be.

Which only leads me to one conclusion...Cameron is a double-agent. The only way any of this could make any rational sense is if he's deliberately weakening our naval forces; he's working for the Argentinians! They'll be launching a fresh attack on the Falkland Islands any day now!

Oh, and as precursor to tomorrow's Comprehensive Spending Review, I'd just like to point out the evidence supplied on this website, before the Tories go off blaming Labour for all of their troubles again. It technically doesn't make Labour's actions any better, but it does make the Tory argument seem a bit rich; look at public spending as a percentage of GDP. Interesting stuff, eh? For those of you too lazy to navigate to another site and interpret a graph (wait, here's a version on the Guardian confirming it!), basically it points out that while spending has gone up massively year upon year, Labour's spending as a percentage of GDP was never actually all that high. Indeed, Thatcher spent more while in power. Even John Major, with a credit crunch looming, spent a higher percentage of the country's money than Tony Blair ever did. Not justifying the relatively poor state of the nation's finances, of course, but it is a little food for thought for the next time the Tories try to scrabble their way toward that unfamiliar moral high ground.

blood sports

2010-10-18T20:33:00.002+01:00

Arsene Wenger has today been forced to defend his Arsenal squad against accusations of being overly aggressive. Ho-ho! What delicious irony! This from the man who constantly goes on about teams being too rough on his poor over-paid prima donnas, punishing them for playing such nice, ineffectual football.

Yes, it has a degree of humour to it, and any occasion to poke fun at the French windbag is appreciated, but I find it a little hard to join in on this occasion. The trouble is that it's propagating the myth that football is morphing into a dangerous blood-sport full of viscously wild tackles and near-death encounters. This has been almost entirely constructed by the press, but they've been egged on to a great extent by people like Wenger, and indeed Alex McLeish, who was complaining about Arsenal's tactics tonight.

It's all been brought on by a spate of bad injuries, broken legs and so forth, that has been all the rage in the English leagues over the last month or so. Now, I've been watching football for quite some time now, and I wouldn't say it's getting any more or less violent. That is to say, I absolutely reject the notion that tackling today is undertaken with any more malice or gusto than in days gone by. There are, however, several things which have unhelpfully changed in the game; one is the football boots. Or more specifically, the studs.

That infamous de Jong tackle that broke the Newcastle boy's leg? A poor tackle, yes, but still mostly down to his studs being stuck in the turf because he was wearing blades. Another one which sticks out in my mind simply because the gruesome image is still burned into the back of my eyeballs was Alan Smith's double-broken leg for Manchester United a few years back (before the recent spate of ultra-violence, you'll note). There was no chance of blaming tackling in that instance, of course, as the only thing that hit him was the ball. I have no idea why blades haven't been banned by now. They're even worse on artificial pitches; I'm always surprised when anyone comes out alive after 90 minutes wearing blades on a plastic pitch. The number of ligament injuries you see as it is ludicrous; a recent one being 16-year old Aberdeen prodigy Fraser Fyvie, who the club for some reason allowed to play on a plastic pitch against Alloa while wearing blades. He ruptured his cruciate ligament, and his dad says he may never play again.

So, boots and pitches both have their parts to play, but surely those alone couldn't have broken all those legs and fuelled the ongoing media witch-hunt. I mean, the chief medical officer of FIFA was actually calling for criminal prosecutions against bad tacklers the other day. There has to be some kind of conspiracy going on, surely!

No. I don't buy it at all. I actually think football used to be more primitive and violent. I mean, other than de Jong, a world-cup winning footballer, who is your Vinnie Jones character nowadays, your Duncan Ferguson? Mark Van Bommel is an oft-cited one, and yet he's one of the world's most decorated players, and was actually the second-most fouled player in the World Cup. It doesn't help that literally every single game is going out in 3D high-definition on Sky nowadays, with instant replays from eleven different angles of every slightly dodgy tackle.

And the minute a meaty full-back does snap that tricky winger in two, there are two hundred separate versions of it on YouTube racking up several billion views each, complete with a hundred comments all going "LOL look at al that blud!!1". We get these things shoved in our faces nowadays to such a great extent that football seems to have more of everything than it used to. I'd wager if anyone was keeping a record of these things, you'd find there is absolutely no statistical upward trend in the number of bad tackles or even fouls this season, in any league. It's something that's been constructed mostly by the media, and embraced gleefully by managers as it gives them something to point the finger at when their overpaid stars don't quite live up to their reputations. We can only hope a couple more of them have high-profile affairs so the papers have something different to obsess about.

incentives

2010-10-18T20:03:00.005+01:00

Huh. A further education school in England is offering £5,000 to any one of their 15,000 pupils who manages to fail their A-levels.

Now, is it just me, or is that a bit backwards? Shouldn't they be offering them an incentive to pass? Certainly there's precedent for that; the same article there talks about a school that offered pupils £150 who pupils who actually showed up from time to time and passed five exams. Now, that makes sense; if you want the money, go to school and learn things. Never mind the whole improving your future prospects business, this is hard cash we're talking about!

The other plan, though...well, to be fair, they also have to meet attendance targets there. But that school are showing some serious confidence; basically, they're saying that if you turn up to all of their classes, you literally cannot fail your A-levels. They say they don't expect to pay out to any pupils. So...really, are none of those kids going to turn up to class all year, then stroll into the exam, write their name, then stroll out again with £5k in their pocket and get a job as a plumber and make more money than all of their mates who went to university anyway?

They say it's a move to boost the confidence of anyone thinking of starting an A-level course (or indeed sending their kids on one); they're willing to basically put a substantial bet on them passing, right from the off. You'd think their current 98.9% pass rate would be a decent enough way of getting this across, but I guess that wouldn't have grabbed the attention of the national press. Or me. I might sign up, actually.

They're going to have to step up their admissions scrutiny process, though. There are bound to be loads of kids after a quick buck applying to the place now. You don't even have to be clever to do it - in fact, it's better if you're not! It makes it easier to fail and grab that big prize! This has to be one of the great innovations in educational motivation techniques - rewarding failure.

So, anyway, nice publicity stunt, Deliberately Unnamed School. I'm impressed. Schadenfreude has kicked in something rotten, though, and I for one kind of hope they lose their 98.9% record as well as a small fortune. The rich, scheming media whores that they are.

benefits

2010-10-17T11:22:00.006+01:00

Radio 4 woke me up this morning with the news that George Osborne is going to be "revolutionising" the benefit system. Well, that's nice, thinks I. Trouble is, as usual, George seems to be going about things all the wrong way; his latest measure is apparently to fine everyone who commits a benefit fraud offence of any severity to the tune of £50. Hey, that seems like a good idea in principle...right?

Hm. Y'see, I spent monday morning last week sitting in Aberdeen Sheriff Court, just watching some trials go down. Well, not jury trials (nor was there any sign of Phoenix Wright) because it was only Summary Court, but it gave me at least a slight insight into the current state of the justice system; something George Osborne has obviously never had.

He's never going to see a penny of those £50 fines. I saw so, so many people go up before the Sheriff on benefit fraud charges and for unpaid fines, and the general theme was that there was really nothing the Sheriff could do to get the money off them. They simply didn't have it. I guess that's why they turned to benefit fraud, eh? There was one guy who had, appropriately enough, been given a £50 fine back in May. He had managed to pay £5 of it so far. The court gave him another three months to pay it, on the condition that he find £15 to bring in the next day (and I do wonder how he got that £15? Not legally, I'd wager).

And then there was the old guy who hadn't declared his earnings, and thus nicked £1,500 of benefits. They had set up a direct debit to just take that money out of the guy's account every month until he had paid it off, but when you actually worked out the maths it appeared that it would take him over three years to cover it. The Sheriff gave him 160 hours of community service to do in the mean-time. He was the only person in the entire three and a half hours of court that I watched who actually got sentenced to something, incidentally. The other twenty or thirty people were to come back next month.

Now, I'm not arguing for lenience for benefit fraud cheats; quite the opposite. Pragmatically, just adding a £50 fine to a lifetime of debt to the state isn't going to deter these guys one bit, and it's not even going to bring in much extra cash. It's also going to jam up the court system with people coming back every three months to explain why they haven't paid their £50 yet. What might be more effective is Iain Duncan Smith's proposed "three strikes" rule, which would see benefits suspended after three offences, although whether the measure would ever get that severe is apparently negotiable - despite calling it "three strikes", like there's some kind of actual number of strikes, apparently "it will be a flexible measure, depending on whether the fraudster has any dependants and the type of the fraud". So they won't be making that stick most of the time, then.

It's generally accepted across the Parties that Something Has To Be Done about Benefit Fraud, which now constitutes a £5 billion black hole in the welfare budget. However, this is one of those problems where it's actually going to cost more money to plug that hole; an example being Osborne's proposal to hire a mobile task force of 200 inspectors who'll check every benefit claim individually, and to construct a high-tech data tracking system. It's the same as the Get Back To Work thing, which would cost even more; even with the Comprehensive Spending Review looming, and all of the talk of billions of pounds involved, this just isn't at heart an economic issue. It's the traditional Tory goal of trimming back the Welfare State.

Not that that's a bad thing, as far as Benefit Fraud is concerned, of course. I'm not 100% convinced they're going about it the right way. None of the proposals seem to be preventative measures, more going down the route of deterrence rather than outright societal reform - at no point does anyone seem to think we can directly affect the culture of living off benefits. Aren't people going to just find new ways to cheat the system? It's almost like the supply-side bias in drug prohibition, the idea of locking up all the dealers without ever addressing the demand that really keeps them going. At some point, the politicians are going to have to hold up their hands and admit that they don't know what the answer is, how they can stop people taking drugs and stealing benefits. Admitting that would be the first step on the road to actually finding out.

double standards

2010-10-15T17:57:00.005+01:00

Oh, Nick Clegg. Oh dear.

It's like watching a very basic Introduction To Politics guide. An Idiot's Guide, if you will. Nick Clegg has announced that the coalition government are going to pledge £7 billion over the next 4 years toward improving the education of poor young children in England. Aw, what a nice guy, right? There couldn't possibly be a bad angle to take on this story. Well, as Director General of Misanthropic Gits Incorporated, I'm here to bring you the bad news.

What's with the timing, Nick? Were you taking a bit of flak over the whole university tuition fees thing? Was your blatant retreat from your principles eating away at your base? Well, this was the PERFECT time to put out an announcement about investing in the youth of tomorrow, wasn't it? Nobody will see that as a blatant move to try to win back voter support. Nice work.

Oh, but motivation aside, it's still got to be a good thing, no? Investing in the kids. Can't go wrong with kids. Thanks to this money, the poorest children in England can now aspire to go to University. Except that they can't possibly afford to, because in order to save money, Nick is going to make University astronomically expensive. The devil is in the details...really, Nick, you shouldn't have mentioned University at all. The wounds are still a bit raw for another bucket of salt.

Next question; where exactly is this £7 billion going to come from? Well, coalition sources have refused to say exactly. Hmmm. I guess it's coming straight out of other budgets, then? I mean, I assume they didn't find a money-tree growing in the back garden of the Treasury. Although that might have explained Labour's spending policies...it just makes all of the recent talk about the cuts being 'really difficult' but nonetheless 'necessary' sound a bit hollow, when you can magic up £7 billion to arrest a slump in popularity. A couple of negative headlines, and the money starts flowing again? It doesn't add up.

The government took a huge hit over the Child Benefits issue, for a comparatively meagre saving of £1 billion. They had no choice, though! We HAVE to save money everywhere! And it is a billion pounds. A whole billion! But apparently, when it comes to this latest, confusingly similar issue, "the right thing to do is to invest in the future, even if it makes it harder today." Huh. Kind of a double-standard, there. Especially given that the Browne Report today revealed that Universities could be losing out to the tune of £4.2 billion...that's an 80% cut to the teaching budget. That kind of sucks, because there are loads of poor kids who are going to be aspiring to go to University, now...so even if they can muster the 12 grand or whatever it's going to cost, there'll only be one lecturer.

This was a Lib Dem manifesto pledge, so they're taking the credit for it. Much-needed credit, after the week they've had; this is exactly the kind of sweetener they need to help wash down all the bitter pills they've been prescribing lately. Cameron really came through for them here, I guess...it's lovely to see the coalition partners working so well together. However, if you bother to examine the details at all, then you notice that it was also a Tory manifesto pledge. That's right, this was always going to happen anyway. The Lib Dems just happened to announce it to coincide with their recent difficulties...some might call that politicking. But then, some have called me cynical.

So there you have it. That's how you can portray a £7 billion investment in The Children as a bad thing. Politics is awesome.

running Wilders

2010-10-14T19:21:00.003+01:00

Hm. Remember all that business about the Dutch government collapsing, and the far-right Party For Freedom emerging as a weird kind of favourite? Well, it all came true. Geert Wilders, still on trial for overt Islamaphobia, was sworn in by Queen Beatrix as a member of the ruling coalition today. He personally gives the coalition, also containing the PVV and the Christian Democrats, a majority of one in the 150-seat Parliament.

Now, I've always been outstated in my belief that coalition governments are rubbish. They're generally weak and ineffectual, given to collapse, and as this latest debacle underlines, give unprecedented power to small groups or individuals who technically don't deserve any. They create Kingmakers, if we care to consult the Nick Clegg lexicon. So if the Lib Dems losing seats but getting into government in the UK was a limited example, this lays it out perfectly; one guy, one crazy, crazy guy, has assumed a large amount of power in Holland, thanks to coalition government.

And make no mistake about it, he's a madman. He's got a mullet, for christ's sake. An actual, real-life mullet. Oh, and he's a massive racist! He's currently on trial for Islamophobia, inciting racial hatred and so forth, something that sparked a huge freedom of speech debate on an international scale. Which just served to give him a load of free publicity, and indeed it was after the court case began that the Party for Freedom rocketed up in popularity. The man is actually such an enormous shit that he was banned from entering the UK. He tried to get through Heathrow in 2009 and was bundled straight on a plane back to the Netherlands - another brilliant publicity stunt. That got international press coverage, and yet when he actually was admitted some time later, almost nobody noticed. You'd think there were lessons to be learned in there somewhere...

Anyway, to the contemporary issues. Wilders may support the coalition's economic liberalism, but in return they're going to clamp down heavily on immigration, especially from Muslim countries. Geert says he's also going to pursue (i.e. demand, now that he has them over a barrel) a ban on burkhas, and mandatory citizenship classes for immigrants (that they have to pay for themselves). That'll just be the beginning, too; other fun things he supports include a ban on immigrants getting the vote, banning the building of mosques and preaching in any language other than Dutch, and an actual law prioritising Christianity and Judaism over all other religions.

So he gets to run wild with all of that shit, just because his single vote (one, out 150 - how democratic is that?) is propping up the coalition government. Perhaps it is representative though; the Party of Freedom is, according to various polls, one of the most popular in the country. The only reason Wilders is their only MP is because he was the only one who stood in the elections. So this might just be a taste of what's to come for the Dutch people, unless Wilders' current tenure is enough to scare them off - at the next election, it could get a lot worse. Never mind Kingmaker, he might just end up being the King.

a good day to break bad news

2010-10-13T18:33:00.007+01:00

So, those Chilean miners, eh? Every hour or so there's a little burst of jubilation on the rolling news, in between the drawn-out repeats of the first miner emerging and the laboured explanations of just exactly how that big drill works anyway. The world's attention is quite firmly on Chile, though, with some two thousand journalists camped out down there, and the remaining hacks still hanging around the UK were all watching Prime Minister's Questions. This, if there ever was one, is a day for the politicians and PR companies to unload their bad news. The world is looking the other way; in the words of Peter Mannion MP, "I could rape a cat now, and nobody would notice".

Somehow I managed to tear myself away from the magic of the miners long enough to watch some of the PMQs, anyway. As did all of the MPs, except for David Miliband, who was nowhere to be seen. Presumably he was watching Sky News. It was rather low down the pecking order for the media, however, as both the BBC and Sky chose to broadcast the emergence of the ninth miner rather than give a bit of scant regard to the ruling of the country. Actually, even Dave seemed to be elsewhere, at least in mind, as he was the first to mention the Chilean miners...Harriet Harman called him a "glory grabber". That's one word for it, anyway.

Somewhat ominously, Miliband got to open his first PMQs by reading out the names of some dead British soldiers. He threw the Prime Minister a soft-ball question about that, as well as praising him, clearly looking to start off as he doesn't intend to continue...it was a marked contrast to how Ed Balls would have opened his first PMQs, anyway. Presumably he would have gone with a right hook to the jaw.

To be fair, in the end the national press didn't actually miss a whole lot by tuning into Chile instead. No really decisive blows were landed, and Cameron and Miliband had the air of two men who know they're in for the long haul. They're going to be doing this weekly ritual for the next four years, unless the Queen cracks and randomly dissolves Parliament in a fit of boredom and senility. Ed seemed relatively cool and collected, for all of the 12 minutes he actually spent facing off with the Prime Minister. Both men ticked all the boxes, actually; they both praised the other, they both fired off a tired cliche about the other, and they both managed to draw a chuckle from their back benches with a line which in any other company would have no doubt prompted a groan. Cameron got his by referring to Ed as "not red but Brown", which unfortunately alluded more to the previous incumbent of the Labour leadership rather than Ed having shat himself, while Miliband's thigh-slapper was about the ominous prospect of a BBC strike. Wonderful.

Well, that's that, then. That's what we're going to be in for on a Wednesday afternoon, and indeed across much of the political battlefront, for the next four years. British politics is now about these two disarmingly similar-looking men cracking feeble jokes and winning narrow victories which are forgotten by the following week. The drama of the general election and the leadership race is over; Parliament is back in full session, and we're back to standard practice. I wonder what's going on in Chile?

teaching values

2010-10-12T23:32:00.004+01:00

Vince Cable and Nick Clegg are facing a Lib Dem revolt over the issue of tuition fees. Business Secretary Cable endorsed Lord Browne's review earlier today, which concluded that there should be no cap on how high university tuition fees in England can rise.

Essentially, what this means is that the big posh universities can charge up to £12,000 a course, and the university selection process for many budding students will be based on the best school they can afford, rather than the best they can get into. It doesn't seem very fair, attacking the poor (again), but it does seem very Conservative...

Which is one reason why it doesn't sit that well with the Liberal Democrats. Tuition fees have been a bit of a sticky issue for them of late, after initially pledging to do away with them altogether in England, before retreating from that, and now apparently swinging completely in the opposite direction. There was also their brief flirtation with the idea of a graduate tax, also swiftly abandoned in favour of continuing half-decent relations with their Tory bedfellows.

There was a significant Party rebellion over the issue of schooling at the Lib Dem conference too, of course, when the membership overwhelmingly voted to veto Michael Gove's plans for Free Schools. Education has always been a kind of core issue for the Libs, and it's increasingly becoming their Achilles heel.

The main problem is that during the election campaign, every single Lib Dem MP, Cable included, signed a pledge to oppose any increase in tuition fees. Nick Clegg even recorded a video aimed at student voters saying that tuition fees in general were "wrong". Now, apparently, things have changed and it's no longer "feasible" to oppose such things. Yet another U-turn from the Party of Broken Promises, eh? This appears to be something which they fundamentally oppose, and every one of them signed a pledge attesting to that fact. Now, they're saying that they were wrong to do that. They're admitting they were wrong. And that's a dangerous precedent to set. It's like a football referee reversing a decision; you almost never see it. Because the second they let that hint of doubt seep in, the players will question twice as hard each and every decision he makes. How can the Liberals make any kind of promise now? How can we ever trust them again, if they're just going to turn around after the election and abandon every pledge that they made? Christ, it's worse than that - in effect, they openly lied to win votes.

This is the point where the Lib Dem back benches need to stand up and be counted. They need to stand up to the precious few of their number who have been sucked into the Tory Cabinet and apparently brainwashed into not being Liberal Democrats any more. If 42 of the 57 Lib Dem MPs rebel and vote against the Government on this, it will be enough to defeat the bill. That seems like a lot, but Clegg and Cable seem to be the only ones endorsing this madness so far. MPs are meant to be representatives of their constituencies, and these Lib Dem MPs are representing voters who wanted them to oppose tuition fees. If they turn around and vote this bill in now, it'll be the end of them. It's just one factor, of course, in their continuing litany of treachery, but it's a signficant one, and an easy one for your campaigning activist to put across on the doorstep. "The Lib Dems lied to you at the last election, they abandoned their values and gave you a Tory government when you voted for the exact opposite".

Well, that's what they'll say in England, anyway. We've still got free university tuition up here in Scotland...for now.

rolling coverage

2010-10-10T18:02:00.003+01:00

The rescue of the Chilean miners (you know the ones, the most famous buried miners in the world) should get underway in the next couple of days, and as such the world's entire news media has been scrutinising the globe to try to remember just where the heck Chile is so they can go there for the first time ever. There's a hint of that time a large earthquake revealed the existence of a previously unknown island called Haiti.

This miners' rescue is going to be good, though. Solid News content, all human drama and intrigue. The best bit for me, however, is just how long it's going to take. It's estimated that it'll take at least an hour to winch each miner up the half-mile long rescue shaft, and there are 33 of them - so we're guaranteed at least 33 hours of increasingly repetitive drama. It's going to be like watching two seasons of '24' back to back - thrilling at first, and with definite highlights, but eventually you start to get the feeling you've seen the same guy emerging from the same hole every couple of hours. The likes of Sky News are going to have to keep complete rolling coverage, though - Total Coverage, indeed - which should be a laugh in itself.

A couple of recent examples spring to mind; remember the Raoul Moat debacle, where commentators struggled to ad lib continuing coverage of what was basically a man sitting next to a river for six hours? They ran out of things to say after twenty minutes. Even the appearance of a half-crazed Paul Gascoine didn't liven that one up to any great extent. Imagine that, but stretched out over the same amount of time as the General Election and the ensuing coalition talks. Dimbleby was on the BBC for about three days solid; there was a Twitter campaign to Let Dimbleby Sleep. Well, Kay Burley or someone is going to be stood in front of that mine for a day and a half, looking increasingly bored and unkempt, trying to fill in those hour-long pauses between bursts of jubilation.

Seriously, how interesting are they going to be able to make it? We'll get a wee profile of each miner as he emerges, no doubt, which will extend little further than "well, he's a miner, not doing that well financially, hence the mining, oh and he's got a wife and son there - yes, they're hugging now - and he seems in need of a shower. And no doubt a proper toilet." That's all there's going to be! Miners are not the most thrilling people, and rumour has it they're going to keep quiet about what went on down there until they can write a book about it and make enough money to never work again. So after the first hour, which will contain three recaps on how the drill that got them out works, there's going to be absolutely nothing to it. Those commentators are going to have to fill hours, literally about 30 hours of dead air, with some kind of pleasing babble that won't encourage people to turn off their sets or indeed jump off a bridge. It's going to be awesome.

from the shadows

2010-10-08T11:12:00.005+01:00

Ed Miliband announced his Shadow Cabinet today, and it's fair to say that it contained a few surprises. Not in terms of personnel, as that had already been decided for him by the parliamentary Labour Party, bu in terms of positioning.

The Party's MPs had been relatively kind to Ed, voting by and large for his "generation", with a wholescale rejection of the Blairites. The average age is comparatively young, with even some more senior figures who supported Miliband - such as former Welsh Secretary Peter Hain - missing out on the cut. Yvette Cooper, former journalist and wife of leadership candidate Ed Balls, came out top of the member's poll, as apparently the most popular MP in the Labour Party (um, David Miliband excepted). As a result, it was strongly rumoured that she would beat her husband to the position of Shadow Chancellor and effectively Ed Miliband's Number Two.

Surely not, thought I. Not after a leadership race which saw personal relationships pitted against professional ambitions; surely after watching her husband be groomed for the Chancellorship for many years under his mentor Gordon Brown, Yvette wouldn't swipe it from under his nose. He was also the candidate most likely to deal serious damage to the Tories, being an absolute political attack-dog. I was almost as confident about Ed Balls getting the Chancellorship as I was about David Miliband getting the leadership...

So, yes, of course, I was wrong again. Alan Johnson is new the Shadow Chancellor. Um...what? Alan Johnson, who openly endorsed David Miliband for the leadership? Alan Johnson, 60 years old, the oldest man in the shadow cabinet indeed, the second in command to Ed's 'New Generation'? Joining Neil Kinnock and Ken Livingstone in what must be one of the oldest New Generations for, um, generations. I don't entirely mind that, incidentally; I'm not a huge fan of these young, polished, identikit Oxbridge twats running our politics. That's another rant for another day, though. Ed Balls actually got the Home Affairs gig, not an insignificant position by any means, but frankly both he and Alan would be better suited to switching jobs. Balls says he's "surprised", which is about the only thing today which isn't surprising.

Alan Johnson. It's a blatant move from Ed to try to sew up Party unity after a bruising leadership contest - Alan is a trademark loyalist, who won't kick up a fuss, and will encourage a bit of Party bonding. At the same time, though, he's not a hugely ambitious choice; George Osborne is surely breathing a sigh of relief to know that he'll be facing off against this genteel old fellow rather than Ed Balls, who appears almost constantly incandescent with rage.

A couple of more positive points; Labour do still remain the more progressive-looking of the two Cabinets. The Shadow Cabinet is 44% female, compared to the 17% in the Tory Cabinet (sorry, did I forget about the political presence Liberal Democrats again? HOW TRAGIC), and contrary to what I said earlier about "Oxbridge twats" are actually only 37% Oxbridge twats, compared to a staggering 61% of Cameron's Coalition Cabinet. They're also younger, although that's no great surprise given the presence of fossils like Ken Clarke on the Tory side... Oh, and incidentally, Peter Hain made it in after all. Ed is able to fill a couple of positions by appointment, and he's just slotted Hain back into the Welsh Secretary position and added Shaun Woodward, who defected to Labour from the Tories under Blair, as Northern Ireland Secretary.

All in all...well, it's an interesting choice all round from Ed. The crucial point is that the Labour Party has the right to select its Shadow Cabinet every two years, so this is by no means the set-up that Ed will carry into the General Election. I very much doubt that Alan Johnson will keep that number two slot for five years, mainly thanks to the less-than-secret ambitions of one Ed Balls. This is very much a transitionary Cabinet, and perhaps one which will settle the Labour Party somewhat while they get used to life in Opposition once again.

media management

2010-10-06T11:29:00.009+01:00

We all know David Cameron's history as a PR man, and he's always been very concerned with appearances and image, from airbrushing his campaign posters (which were big pictures of his face, the ego-maniac) to carefully doctoring press releases and even Nick Clegg's speeches. He's been used, in Opposition, to largely having the media on his side, with everyone attacking the Government and really only the Mirror standing up for Labour. However, things appear to be a bit different when you're actually living on Downing Street...

Dave has, for once, fallen foul of the media somewhat. He's been doing not too bad a job so far, getting everyone talking about the right things (like William Hague's sexuality rather than Michael Gove's enormous gaffe over schools, or the "AV Referendum" rather than the Electoral Reform Referendum) but that's unravelling somewhat with George Osborne's child benefit plans.

They came as something of a bombshell to start with, even to his own Party; Iain Duncan Smith was caught giving a few decent soundbites about "not loving" the idea and wishing for "alternatives", but the real trouble was that some of the maths of the issue really caught the public imagination. The fact that a household with only one parent earning £44,000 could lose the £2,500 child benefit allowance while a household with two parents earning just below the threshold and raking in up to £86,000 would keep the extra £2,500 seems to fly in the face of the supposed "fairness" principle. It's an easy bit of maths, both for the papers and their readership, and it looks tremendously unfair. So everyone ran with it.

And then everyone picked up on the fact that Cameron hadn't mentioned this particular cut in his election manifesto, despite harassing Labour at every turn for not specifying the cuts they would make. Indeed, he actually said in the manifesto that he would look to defend the universal right to child benefits, as part of the Tories' general commitment to Family Values. The Prime Minister was forced to apologise, actually uttering the words "I'm sorry", amid all kinds of talk of 'broken promises' and 'u-turns'. Welcome to the Big Job, Dave; thankless task after thankless task.

The actual story itself didn't come as any kind of a surprise to me - in fact I would have run with the headline "Tories Are, And Continue To Be, Tories" - but the extent to which the government appears malleable under press and public scrutiny did. For example, Dave attempted to appeal to his party's base, who clearly felt threatened by the benefit plans, by offering a transferable tax allowance for married couples. However, it was quickly pointed out that this too differed from the manifesto pledges, which were aimed at a different tax bracket, he shifted ground once again. That issue of the marriage tax break will cause a little friction with the Liberal Democrats, incidentally, who still appear unsure about the Coalition after a Conference in which members overwhelmingly voted to veto Tory schools plans. Oh, and it'll probably wipe out just about the entire saving of £1 billion that the child benefit changes would make. So it's not even economic anymore, it's just classic Conservativism, eroding the welfare state. Death By A Thousand Cuts, and all that. It is an interesting angle on how press and public interest can affect public policy-making, though...

mid-terms

2010-10-06T11:29:00.008+01:00

American politics is rearing its airbrushed head across the Atlantic and into our news once again, with today’s ‘revelations’ in the Guardian that the Republicans are hovering up a lot more funding in the run-up to next month’s mid-term elections. Up to six times more funding, even, mostly from big corporations and Wall Street. Surprise surprise; the Party of Big Business is getting some support from Big Business. The GOP are apparently now sitting on a war chest of some $6 billion, six times more than the resources than Barack Obama has hoarded in the blue corner.

These are dangerous times for Obama, with his popularity on the wane and the Republicans - still devoid of a leading figurehead although they are after the fall of McCain - closing fast in many key marginals. There’s also that weird anomaly the Tea Party, which seems to be eating into everyone’s base - they’re proving a worry for the Republicans.

This should be the True Test of Obama, if there will ever be one. American elections are largely about money, and Obama’s big win in 2008 was achieved with a hefty financial backing, certainly well in excess of what the McCain (*cough*-Palin*cough*) campaign had at their disposal. So how will the Hope bandwagon stand up without its hours of extra television airplay and millions of bumper-stickers? Is it really the force of political optimism, or was it all based on money?

If the first 18 months of Obama’s Presidency has been anything to go by, though, it’s Fear rather than Hope that will dominate these mid-terms. Contrary to the message that was conveyed before the election, there appears to be quite some opposition to Change within America. Obama ran on things like Healthcare Reform, and won the election by what is in America a handsome margin - and yet, a few months later, when actually faced with the promised reforms, the people baulked. This was pushed along by the hysterical Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks of the media, but it’s the GOP who are in the end benefiting from it all - except for that chunk of support that’s gone to the Tea Party, of course.

Is the Republican Party ready to go back into government yet, though? They’re in a decent position to embarrass Obama and seize a decent proportion of the House and the Senate, severely curtailing the President’s ability to implement his precious Change. However, what is different about the Republican Party today compared to the Party that got a good solid thrashing in 2008? Certainly I’m not an expert on this, what with that bloody great ocean being in the way and my main fascination with America nowadays more focusing on the NFL, but to me it doesn’t seem like there’s been any great change. They’re essentially profiting from Obama’s slump in popularity, without having provided anyone with any fresh reasons to vote for them. If they were to be spirited into government tomorrow, would they have any more of a clue about how to run the country compared to in 2008, or indeed throughout the latter George Dub-Yah years?

This is a time of great uncertainty in American politics. The Republicans are in the unusual position of being on the rise despite having done little to recover from an electoral drubbing just two years ago, while the incumbent Democrat President is increasingly embattled. There's even that weird anomaly of a third-Party interest at stake, with the Tea Party movement throwing everyone's poll stats off-target. It's a pretty horrific time to be a politician over there, I'd imagine...but it's a pretty great time to be an observer. Especially given my own personal position, of near total ambivalence...I don't mind who wins, as long as somebody gets hit.

distraction

2010-10-01T10:48:00.002+01:00

As you’ll no doubt have noticed, David did jump ship in the end. Instead of ending the Miliband soap opera now dominating Labour, it appears to have sparked even fiercer levels of inspection and analysis from the press - ironic, given that the fierce levels of inspection and analysis from the press are precisely the reason that David quit. So, it’s left Ed’s Generation in the strange position of not including someone very directly in Ed’s actual generation, while including the likes of Ken Livingstone and Neil Kinnock, who have a combined age comparable to that of the universe.

Lets leave the ol’ Miliband soap opera to one side for a while, though, and focus on the actual important things that are going on. David Cameron, the cunning bugger that he is, has picked this moment to have a spat with the armed forces, while the gaze of the nation is on Manchester and the Milibands. First, there was a leaked memo from Defence Secretary Liam Fox which in no uncertain terms rebuked Cameron for underfunding the armed services. Cameron attempted to distance himself from the row, but still rejected Fox’s statement, which in turn has angered the Army. So we can add the armed services to the list of people “Worst Hit By The Cuts”, joining the young, old, rich, poor, sick…everyone except bank managers, it seems.

The SNP have had an even more blatant slip-up partially covered by the Milibandisation of the news agenda, although it’s fairly par for the course for them by now. In that the issue is more what they haven’t done, namely anything that they said they’d do. This time it’s their “flagship” Alcohol Bull - sorry, Bill - which has suffered yet another defeat in Holyrood. Nicola ‘the’ Sturgeon had hoped to bring in a complex new set of rules changing how old you need to be to buy alcohol in certain shops in certain areas. The gist of the idea was that you could get drunk in a pub and make a nuisance of yourself until the age of 18, but you had to wait until you were 21 to have a drink while safely contained in your house. Strange ideas, indeed, but not quite as strange as a minority government trying to push through controversial legislation in the run-up to an election; it was never going to get through. It’s almost as if the SNP were just trying to remind people that they’re still around, in case their few remaining supporters forget to vote for them come May. Not that it’ll make much of a difference to their inevitable demise (…says the man - nay, soothsayer - who had metaphorically stopped taking bets on David Miliband being Labour leader by now).

Of course, the electorate will be too embroiled in confusion and outright panic while at the polls next May, thanks to another of yesterday’s revelations; the ballot paper for Nick Clegg’s Big Fat Compromise is apparently too complicated. It’s been recommended that the electorate - especially, unbelievably enough, the “under-educated” - might not be able to fathom just how to tick Yes or No on the Electoral Reform referendum form. I’d suggest that it was simple enough, “Do You Want AV?”, up until Nick caved to Tory pressure to paperclip some horrific compromises on the back of the form…instead, it’s going to read something along the lines of “Do you want AV, but only hand in hand with yet another redistribution of constituency lines and sizes, which will actually benefit the Tories to the extent that changing to AV won’t actually affect anything in the slightest?”. Well, I for one won’t be having too much trouble ticking the “No” box…

Ah, it appears we’re heading into Silly Season, here. I’ve got an almost unending supply of vitriol for literally every political party now; at last, parity has been achieved. Labour somehow has the leader that none of its members or MPs wanted, the Lib Dems are U-turning sell-outs who don’t even have the trust of their own membership, the SNP are under-achieving nincompoops who have spent an entire term proving that they couldn’t effectively run a bath, and the Conservatives infuriatingly persist in being the Conservative Party, and as such a force for Evil. And we wonder why nobody likes politicians…

Milibands: Additional

2010-09-29T12:02:00.004+01:00

Hmmm. Breaking News: former Labour leader Neil Kinnock announces "we've got our Party back", hailing Ed Miliband's "magnificent" first speech as Labour leader.

And this hot on the heels of the revelation in the Guardian that Gordon Brown may have had a hand in his old apprentice's succession to his throne, after he apparently persuaded John Prescott (always an influential figure but apparently not influential enough to win the position of Party Treasurer in the same vote that saw Ed creep into power) not to come out strongly in favour of David.

Now, both of these statements are just part and parcel of the circus that tends to surround these coronations, but it's been striking something of a personal chord with me. Ed Miliband has cast himself as the sort of anti-New Labour candidate, while David is the voice of continuity, apparently soon to be snuffed out. There's no place in the New Generation Labour Party for a man who helped construct their greatest ever electoral victory, apparently.

That's my problem with Ed Miliband's current approach. He seems to have forgotten that New Labour was the most successful approach that the Labour Party ever undertook. Yes, in the long run they came to be seen as The Establishment, which is never going to win you much favour, but surely there's some merit in the fact that there was a long run at all. Before Tony Blair and Gordon Brown came along, Labour had never really had a long run. Christ, Neil Kinnock reckons We've Got Our Party Back? You never even won one election, Neil, never mind three! Is that what the Labour Party wants, now? A return to being unelectable?

Frankly, the answer is No. The Labour Party, if I read the results correctly, voted for David Miliband. Labour MPs also voted for David Miliband. Both of these groupings voted for the guy who was sticking up for Labour, not castigating them. I'm by no means arguing that New Labour should have continued, or that its time was not up, simply that as a political movement it deserves a bit more respect. There are four years before the next General Election to wipe the slate clean, to Move on and Change. Ed seems to have got caught up in that Tory slash 'n' burn immediacy, the importance of the now now now, which seems to be the In Thing in ConDem Britain. I, personally, am going to look back with a degree of fondness on New Labour, on an unprecedented three electoral victories. I actually feel more like that was my Generation, and I'm half Ed Miliband's age. He's making me feel old.

That's it, though. I suppose we all have to be focussed on the future now, to hell with the past. I'll cheerfully be proved wrong about Ed's Generation, if they do manage to topple the Tories. We really do need Unity from here on out, so I'll just fix my gaze on the horizon alongside Ed, and try to ignore the crowing of Neil bloody Kinnock, who suddenly thinks he can paint himself a better man than those who really made Our Party great, if only for a little while.