Wrinkled Weasel's World

Au Revoir Mon Amis

2011-06-17T12:08:00.001+01:00

Time to quit while I am behind. WW has never been massive, though at one time the blog was getting 4-5 thousand hits a week and managed to do ok in the Wikio rankings. But that was not what it was about. I was never going to find a niche because I am interested in too many things and if I may say so myself, most readers do not have time (or the intellect) for the kind of considered, researched material it has mostly been.

Over the weeks, my posts have been fewer and the readership has declined. Some readers came for distraction, which is ok, but the high level of debate in the comments section was severely limited to the few. In the end, everything that needs to be said has been said, several times over.

So rather than flog this to death, it is time to move on. There is seven year's worth of stuff here and it is by no means parochial or ephemeral. If you are interested search the archives.

I am moving on to something that is not only very interesting to me, but in the three months I have been doing it, it has been a modest success. www.rock-legacy.com is not only a labour of love, but I have been fortunate in engaging the interest of the music world. It means I can do what I was never able to do with WW and that is go to primary sources for truly new material.

Out of that I have become involved in what for me is a very exciting project. I am in partnership with Richard Tandy and Dave Morgan (ELO) on a re-issue and promotion of one of their albums.

www.earthrise-tm.com

Rock Legacy itself is time-consuming and unlike WW, I have no shortage of subjects or willing participants. So there you are. No big deal, no hissy fit. I am just moving on.

Wrinkled Weasel's true identity

2011-06-13T15:50:00.004+01:00

The real Wrinkled Weasel

Since I have now been outed by the MSM, like this chap I thought it was time to come clean.

I am not really a miserable right wing old male git. That was just a hoax. In reality I am a lesbian from The Forest of Dean who votes LibDem, with an interest in intimate topiary. The idea for WW came about because I felt that men (the bastards) who were essentially white, middle class and therefore oppressive to everyone else deserved to be satirized.

I was sitting in the Ayn Rand Women's Centre one day, discussing with my sisters over a cup of fair-trade Barley-Cup how we might best fight the menace that is white middle class straight men. After dismissing a mass Bobbit option, (by a democratic vote of 7 to 4) we decided to put up a blog which was so egregious and so politically incorrect that it would discredit WMCSMs forever.

Sadly, this did not go according to plan because people thought it was real. Not only that, some readers complimented "WW" on his comments.

So now you know the truth. Kind Regards, Moonstar Olthorpe.

Bob's here, Dave

2011-06-10T00:57:00.053+01:00

It's been a strange week for me. A lot of activity last weekend and predictably I caught a cold. That would not have been remarkable if it were not for me not being able to breath properly, to the point of having to get an ambulance. A moment to forget.

Over at Rock Legacy, the work of doing interviews and transcribing them carries on. I am behind with this due to other kinds of illness that I will not bore you with. At last, I have posted a piece with Nick Magnus, which will be of interest to prog fans. Next week, I have a piece with Nicki Gillis, from Australia. It's difficult to describe Nicki, but she is doing a world tour right now and when we last talked she was off to Nashville. One thing we talked about was her work with Frank Ifield. Yes he is alive and well.

It is enormously difficult to get musicians to talk, cooperate or be very much use, so when they do I feel rewarded. The ones I get to talk are not difficult or inarticulate and of course they want to collaborate. This is not always the case. This week, through no fault of my own I have mangaged to piss off a major rock star. And I mean major - a household name for decades and someone who is always on TV.

Because of what appears to be a very simple misunderstanding, the major rock star has had a hissy fit and sent me a lengthy email, in red lettering, in capitals. I hardly believed at first that it was he who had sent it, but it appears so. I am afraid he has conformed to your worst suspicions that major rock stars do not believe it is necessary to be reasonable or to treat us mere mortals as anything other than utter contempt. His nail - spitting communication, and its format is the sort of thing I would delete on sight, due to me thinking the sender was a loony.

Ah, dear readers, if only you knew.

The Telegraph is running with a story about leaked memos that supposedly show nefarious plottings by Brown, Balls, et al, to get rid of Tony Bliar. Strangely, these memos are all capitalised, even the hand-written ones from Brown himself. As for the content, it mystifies me. Its mostly utter bollocks, the sort of thing people come up with if they are paid to do something but are not sure what it is. Riddled with spelling mistakes and with no regard for syntax, it records the fact that at the time of the 7/7 bombings, the Brown conspiritors had nothing better to do than engage in occult Machiavellian intercourse, pregnant with malignity and little else.

My highlight of the week, apart from still being alive, was a wonderful stay with another rock star, this time, a nice one. He told me a story, given to him by one of the principals:

When the Traveling Wilburys was just an idea, Dave Stewart asked Bob Dylan to come over to his house. Dylan duly got in a taxi and asked the driver to go to the address.
Dylan knocks on the door and a little old lady answers it. "Hi" says Bob, "I'm Bob." Dylan says he is meeting Dave and the little old lady says, "Dave's not here right now, but you can wait in the front room and have a cup of tea." After about an hour or two, the door opens and in comes Dave. Except that it is another Dave, just another bloke called Dave, and not Dave Stewart.

Unfortunately Dylan made a mistake. He went to Acacia Avenue, not Acacia Terrace.

Well, what would you do if Bob Dylan appeared by accident in your front room?

Bon Weekend

This Cannot be Right

2011-06-09T19:50:00.011+01:00

News today that an MP has been arrested on suspicion of Sexual Assault, and named to the press, is to me an outrage.

This man is innocent until proven guilty. He now faces trial by media. His female accuser basks in anonymity.

This MP, who I am not going to name, will find his life turned upside down. There will be an intrusion into his life that none of us would wish on anybody. Whatever the outcome, he has been named and shamed. If he is charged and found guilty, then he must face justice, if not he will have suffered badly on the word of another. And his life will not be the same again.

What is wrong with us? Can nobody see how damaging this kind of thing is to society? Is there not a case to be made for anonymity on both sides until the verdict?

You do not have to look far back into the past to see how damaging the reporting of serious crime can be to someone who turns out to be innocent. This is a travesty of natural mercy and justice and must be stopped.

BBC Bias facts number 193494339

2011-06-08T15:12:00.015+01:00

Over at the Coffee House, Rob Liddle posted a piece in which he writes: "nobody wants to appear right wing."

I take his point. Its the kind of slur that goes along with "homophobic" and "capitalist", terms which have been commandeered by the linguistic terrorists to shut down debate and scare people away from facing the issues.

My comment on his piece ran thus:

A quick search in the domain: bbc.co.ukreveals that the phrase "right wing blogger" yields 638 results,whereas "left wing blogger" gets 484 - about 25% less.
Simply "left wing" gets 355,000, "right wing" gets 459,000 and again, just a bit less than 25% more references.
Itis not for me to make grandiose suggestions as to why this is, but byrepitition alone, the phrase "right wing" is being drilled into thesubconscious of the BBC's subscribers.
And BTW, "right wing extremism" clocks in at over 3,500 whereas "left wing extremism" gets a piddling SIX!
Ifanybody had the guts to stand up to this organisation and reveal it tobe what everyone knows it is, we could save ourselves a lot of moneyand protect the public from having to pay to be propagandised.

Clearly the BBC, one of the organisations who push, with evangelical fervour, a left-leaning liberal view on the rest of us, has made an editorial decision to equate "right wing" with "extremism" but cannot bring themselves to do likewise with "left wing" Res Ipsa Loquitor.

If it dresses like a slut and walks like a slut, it's a slut

2011-06-07T11:20:00.038+01:00

The recent occurance of something called "Slut Walks" disturbs me. It came out of a Toronto police officer's advice that, "women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised."

Let us leave the rights and wrongs of this for a moment. Let's consider the scenario of the female who gets blind drunk on some coloured fizzy alcohol beverage and hase a one night stand. In the morning she feels a combination of guilt, self-loathing and anger. Instead of taking responsibility for her actions she decides that the casual sex encounter was rape. The police are called in, a man is arrested and his life is turned upside down.

False allegations of rape are particularly bad, not only because men tend to suffer disproportionately, but also because for women who have experienced rape, it moves justice a few paces further away. When a woman cries rape and it was not rape, the biggest damage is to real victims.

So another case goes to court. A woman claims she has been raped. There is a jury trial. It transpires that the couple were seen laughing, drinking and petting earlier in the evening. The woman wore clothes which were skimpy and designed to show off the maximum amount of flesh. Her friends say she was very drunk.

This jury has been convened in the Midlands somewhere. The jurors are chosen according to the system which is supposed to be random and supposed to reflect a cross-section of the general public. Given the nature of the general public, and in particular the concentrations of conservative individuals whose religious beliefs proscribe immodesty, is is not possible that if the "victim" is perceived to be a "slut" by certain jurors, might they not come to the conclusion that she was "asking for it"?

Fixing Talent Shows

2011-06-03T11:26:00.002+01:00

An anonymous blogger has claimed that "Britain's Got Talent" has been fixed to favour a contestant who was talent spotted by Syco (Simon Cowell's production company) some time ago. Syco and Sony BMG, the parent company utterly deny the claim and have called in the police. The blogger's site has been taken down.

There is no suggestion that this story is true, but whatever the facts, talent shows have in the past been rigged. Opportunity Knocks certainly was. The famous "Clap-o-meter" was not linked to the audience, but to a studio assistant who worked it in favour of Hughie Green's choice.

Perhaps the biggest scandal which blew apart Opportunity Knocks was that of an Australian Band, New World.

Mike Hurst, their producer, told me what happened:

Mickie Most

Mickie Most introduced me to an Australian band called New World. They were on Opportunity Knocks. So, my first comment was, “Surely, we are going to see if they win it” and Mickie said, “Oh, they will”. That was my first intimation that things weren’t quite as they should be. A guy from ATV who produced the show said, “and when they win the final..” and I looked at him and said, “How can you be so sure?” and he said, “Don’t worry, we are very sure. They are going to win.” That’s when it all came home and I realised it was fixed. The fix was nothing to do with me; I was just going to make a record. Mickie came up with the song, Rose Garden. Which Lynn Anderson had just got out in the States.

In those days, records that came out in America, by Americans, which were hits, there was a time-lag. Today everything comes out all over, instantly. In 1970, there was at least a four or five week gap in terms of release. So what happened was that, if people got wind of something that was about to become a hit in the States they did a cover version for the UK and Europe market. Mickie Most loved covers. It was an easy way, and he said, “Let’s do Rose Garden”, so I did the track. As soon as it came out, Lynn Anderson’s arrived as well. Lynn Anderson’s went to number one, and New World’s went to number five. In Europe, in Germany, for reasons I cannot understand, they went for the New World version and it was number one in Germany. The follow up singles, I really did not like them. I wasn’t picking the songs of course; it was Mickie Most at RAK Records. He’d got this song, Tom, Tom Turnaround which I produced, reluctantly, but it was a bloody great hit. There were others more or less all the same. At that point, I gave up on it. I really couldn’t take anymore and I’d had enough. It was great to have the hits, but they just weren’t my cup of tea.

Of course, the fixing scandal of Opportunity Knocks blew open and that’s what killed New World. They were at my house in Henley, rehearsing. They got a phone call and literally ran out of the house. I had never seen people move so fast. They had a car waiting to take them to Henley station. They went back to London and the next thing I heard, the band had been arrested. Of course they could never be accused of anything but they were material witnesses to the Opportunity Knocks fix. After it all got out it destroyed their career. But it didn’t bother Mickie. He just took it where it came from.

Mike Hurst

(You can read about Mike's career in the music business over at www.rock-legacy.blogspot.com by clicking the "Producers" tab.

Coming up on Rock Legacy this week...

2011-05-23T19:59:00.003+01:00

You know, I am very enthusiastic about Rock Legacy. It is attracting the kind of people I always hoped it would; musicians who are happy to give time and thought to the pieces we do. True to its remit, the majority of the material is from first hand sources. Fans and historians alike will be able to reference it.

This week I shall be sharing a major interview with Nick Magnus. Nick is well known to the Prog Rock cognoscenti. Nick is best known for his long-term collaboration with Steve Hackett, but has also delivered some stunning solo albums along the way. Earlier, he was a founder member of The Enid. He is an ace when it comes to understanding and breathing life and soul into silicon chip music paraphenalia.

I am indebted to readers for pointing me in the right direction when it comes to subjects. I must single out Smoking Hot, who insisted that I check out Chantel McGregor. Also Dave Clemo, a very accomplished musician in his own right, whose latest material will be explored soon. He tipped me off about Nicki Gillis, who should be in touch soon about her UK tour.

Also coming up, an exclusive demo by Carl Wayne, sadly no longer with us, but well known to fans of The Move. This is one for the vaults and certainly a must have for fans.

If you haven't already done so, check out my interview with Tom McGuinness and read guest writer Raymond Benson on The Canterbury Scene.

I am also delighted, and somewhat relieved, to have completed phase one of The Mike Hurst Story. It's 20,000 words and you can access it on the "Producers" tab.

Readers are encouraged to tell me about their favourite bands and people, and if I like them too, I will do my best to contact them and do a piece.

I'm Spartacus and it's Ryan Giggs

2011-05-23T14:11:00.002+01:00

nobody in particular

To draw a football analogy, Bloggers 5, Ambulance Chasers 0. The law has come into further disprepute over the super injunction fiasco. Not content to chase public bodies for ludicrous amounts of compensation (which they always settle out of court) for allowing their employees to use a stapler without proper training, Messrs Sue, Grabbit and Runne have of late mined a deep vein of cash in the form of super injunctions. These have been taken out by, as far as I can tell, utter nobodies. Had these nonentities gone to Max Clifford for maximum exposure, poor Max would not have been able to match the amount of chatter that the name Ryan Giggs has generated. Apart from the fact that he is an octogenarian in terms of a football career I knew little of the man, and could not have cared less who he was playing away with. In the bubble of mediocrity and sychophancy in which he lives, Mr Giggs somehow felt that his reputation should come before freedom of speech, particularly the freedom that is taken away by people with money.

So yes, I am Spartacus and I name Ryan Giggs as the utter git who has attempted to gag the free press.

Line up folks and join the chorus.

(PS, I live in Scotland.)

Parliament's Climate of Fraud

2011-05-20T13:41:00.000+01:00

Years ago I worked for several well known businesses. Before that I worked for a large Government Department on contract. I submitted expense claims that probably amounted to well over a hundred contracts. Not once did I cheat. Read that again. Not once did I cheat. The majority of the claims were for black cabs, for which, in those days, we did not have to produce receipts. You simply sent in your bill and your cab fare. As far as I know, nobody else cheated either. I guess you might say I was old-fashioned, but the idea of cheating the tax-payer was well off the agenda. I could have doubled my income had I done so, and believe me, I had plenty of reason to do it.

What did not exist, in that department, in those days, was an ethos of fraud.

A couple of decades later I was unfortunate enough to work for a railway company. The situation was quite the reverse. Almost everybody stole from the company, including my boss, who departed, with a clean sheet, when he was eventually found out. Almost on day one I was advised on how to steal from the system.

So, there does not have to be a climate of fraud in any corporation. The extent to which it occurs is premised on whether those in charge will do anything about it, and of course, if everybody is at it, those who choose to be honest can get a rough ride. I reported a colleague who tried to get me to steal, during my first week there. He was "questioned" by my corrupt boss and eventually moved with a promotion. I would probably have kept quiet, but I was pressured to defraud and that was a bridge too far.

Well, if I can do it, how come our MPs cannot? It is clear there was a climate of laxity at best, and at worst, an encouragement to steal. Theft is for people who are weak, for people who are essentially sociopathic. So it is all the more worrying that our Parliament was complicit in mass fraud, and it took a newspaper to reveal it and get something done.

Today we see the jailing of a former Labour Minister. The judge's summing up is damning:

Passing sentence, Mr Justice Saunders said Morley was guilty of "blatant dishonesty" and had "thrown away his good name and character."

He said: "I am satisfied from the nature of the mortgage transactions and the correspondence that the excessive claims were made deliberately and are not explicable even in part by oversight."(Telegraph)

Elliot Morley simply failed to apply normal standards of morality to his job. What is much worse is that there are still many who, for reasons that are inexplicable, have not been arrested and charged, most of them are Labour. It is clear that the Labour goverment had 13 years to address this issue and ignored it right up until election time, making sure that any prosecutions would arise after the vote.

I am aware of some Labour politicians who were never involved. Sadly, they have chosen to stay very quiet over the issue, probably because of party loyalty. It makes you wonder if there was ever one man or woman among them who had the guts to speak out. Apparently not.

Elliot Morley

Today there are one or two more cases pending, though not necessarily over expenses. The ground swell of public opinion is anger, not disbelief. But the public wants blood. A jail sentence, in these cases seems to me mis-placed. Those found guilty have terminated their political aspirations with extreme prejudice. They should of course be made to pay back every penny, and they should be made to do community work, out of doors, in a high vis jacket, with the words "thief" on them. These people need to be taught a lesson, not accommodated in a cushy open nick for a few months.

Will anything like this ever happen again in our Government? Evil shape-shifts. Wickedness is a rat run. The authorities have plugged one hole, but there will be many others. I behoves the Government to be vigilant, swift and moral.

Chris Huhne - How long will he last?

2011-05-15T10:49:00.000+01:00

There is little doubt in my mind that stories like the Chris Huhne saga are subject to the controls and whims of Fleet Street. Remember that Mark Oaten was exposed shortly after he decided to run for leadership of the Lib Dems. The implication is that of course they knew what he was up to but were prepared to keep a lid on it until Oaten got too big for his boots. It is also curious that David Laws has been given an easy time of it. I have been unable to find out exactly which "six breaches" of Parliamentary standards he was guilty of. Fleet Street is reluctant to go for him it seems. Certainly, had the findings in the Laws case been published in full, it would cast doubt on the "it's cos I is Gay" defence. (Interestingly, Ivan Massow agrees with me "Cooking the books had nothing to do with being gay, it was due to his utter lack of integrity." he writes) But that does not suit Fleet Street, or the Political Classes; Laws is in.

Chris Huhne most certainly is out. The question is how long has he got? The news today is that there is a tape which, while not being conclusive, certainly paves the way for an investigation. Did someone say, down in the vaults of the Establishment, "Mr Huhne has become a nuisance. Let's hope he meets with an accident."

I doubt he will last the week at this rate. The MSM have decided to go for him and that is that.

Eurovision 2011

2011-05-13T21:30:00.002+01:00

Weasel's comments and predictions for Eurovision 2011, over at www.rock-legacy.blogspot.com.

I have reviewed all the finalists and placed my bets. Am I right or wrong?

Quote of the Decade

2011-05-11T12:26:00.000+01:00

In seeking to criticise the actions of the US over the death of his father, Omar Bin Laden said:

"We maintain that arbitrary killing is not a solution to political problems"

Super Injunction

2011-05-09T10:57:00.000+01:00

I am really very disappointed at the weekend revelations of who has a super injunction and why they got one. None of the people concerned are remotely of interest to me and what they have been getting up to is, well, to say the least somewhat predictable.

A bit of spanking? A bit of rumpy pumpy outwith the marriage? A visit to a reasonably priced prozzie?

The only reason I can imagine that these rather very sad people got a Super Injunction is because it has somehow replaced adoption of a poor black kid as the latest must-have accessory.

So, folks, perhaps you should aspire to getting one for yourself.

Go on. Go on, go on, go on, go on, go on.
Go on. Go on, go on, go on, go on, go on.
Go on. Go on, go on, go on, go on, go on.
Go on. Go on, go on, go on, go on, go on.
Go on. Go on, go on, go on, go on, go on.

NB: No C list celebs were harmed during the writing of this post.

Elections: The election result is about the mood, not the politics

2011-05-06T10:51:00.000+01:00

Just had a look at the latest results of the local elections. If there is a story, a big story, it is not Nick Clegg. Clegg, along with his party, is a side-show. All I will say on that is that Cameron should now support Clegg to the hilt and do everything he can to strengthen the position of his deputy. It goes along with the old rule about being nice to people on the way up because you will certainly need them on the way down.

Tories on the way up?

Yes. Latest figures show they have actually made a net gain in the number of councillors and one council. This is astounding. The "others", the parties of the loony left and right have made massive losses, many, I suspect, have had voters migrate to the main parties. Except the Lib Dems, that is. Labour has not done as well as it may seem. They are clearly benefiting from an anti-Lib Dem vote.

No, the astonishing thing about yesterday's election is that the Conservatives have not only remained resistant to everything we have been fed about them, the people have given them what at least is a partial thumbs up to the way they are running the country. A majority of voters support the need for economies. You have to be deluded to be in favour of continuing the profligacy of the last government. Finally, people are catching on to this and the vote last night proves it.

The AV vote has yet to come in, but see my post below about that. Nobody wants weird changes to the system in times of stress. It is sad news for those who want voting reform because it will be a long time before there is a political will to do this again.

Scotland has its own story. My local MSP Iain Gray, scraped in with 150 votes. Gray of course is the leader of Labour in Scotland so his personal result is nothing short of a near disaster. Alex Salmond must be more than his usual oleaginous self this morning. Don't get me wrong, I voted for him, but he does have a way of looking far too pleased with himself.

The fact is, in Scotland, the result has little to do with Labour. Politics works in Scotland. The SNP have managed a rare balancing act of being old fashioned socialists and at the same time have mostly avoided becoming obessed with providing free translation services for Lithuanian Lesbians.

Some of us remember that it was the SNP who assisted the fishing industry during the fuel crisis a few years ago when Gordon Brown absolutely refused to help. This kind of thing gets remembered. Labour has been just about crap at everything, having never really torn itself away from the Westminster government. Your man in the street sees potholes being repaired, gets free prescriptions and a mood of fairness about austerity. Nicola Sturgeon's dumping of PFI, almost the day the SNP formed a government, was far-sighted and showed clear blue water between the SNP and Labour. All these things are easy to see and they are real.

So, really, this is not about politics - I mean the result - it is about the voters' reaction to the times we live in and we either dismiss that which we do not understand (AV) or cleave to what we know (The Conservatives and the SNP)

All the rhetoric in the world cannot stand against our basic emotion to hunker down, stay calm and wait.

Change? Not at the moment, we are too stressed out

2011-05-04T13:54:00.001+01:00

An observation on tomorrow's vote:

I emailed a friend the other day, in fact two days ago, and he hasn't replied. This is unusual for him, but for the fact that tomorrow he has an important event, unrelated to the vote. I say important; in fact it is very important and certainly something that will have absorbed his time and energy for some days and in reality my email was of little consequence.

In times of stress people shut down a little bit. If I am doing a particularly difficult bit of driving during poor conditions, I turn off the radio.

Well, we are living through quite a lot of national stress right now. Anybody who is not suffering from what are for some, catastrophic rises in the price of base commodities is very lucky, and, probably very wealthy, or living somewhere not in Europe.

We stare into an abyss. The indicators are that in real terms we shall be relatively impoverished. Most of us understand why this is. Most of us know that 13 years of maxing out the national credit card created a bubble that has now burst. And it's payback time. Those who are lucky enough to have work and an income are paying the bills, not just for themselves, but for every screwball "initiative" that was designed to inflate the state, and in so doing, maintain Labour in power forever.

Well, that investment did not work. Sooner or later people were going to resent the fact that feckless, anti-social tatterdemalions were getting social housing, benefits and free everything in return for making no contribution to society whatsoever, and in some cases, actively seeking to destroy our society all together.

So we live in a time of stress. We also live in a time when hatred of minorities is acute. Some might link economic stress and scapegoating, but that would be something of a glib answer. Hatred is not the preserve of the envious poor. I read that a man called Philip Sallon was the subject of a horrendous attack in London recently. Sallon, some might argue, was asking for it. Flamboyant is not the word. Sallon is also fairly showily gay. Being different is clearly something that attracts hatred. Being gay clearly does and there seems to be an anti-gay element to an attack that resulted in a fractured skull and broken bones. In an interview, Sallon's pal Boy George expressed dismay at the attack and told a paper of "his fears of a growing intolerance towards people who stand out from the norm".

"Growing intolerance"? Society has always been intolerant to people who stand out. Not a lot has changed. Intolerance is not "growing", it is endemic in our society. It is merely the case that there is a tectonic slip between what we are supposed to think and say officially and what really think, mostly, privately.

However and whatever, it is with a shed load of irony that another flamboyant character, John Galliano, the fashion designer, has been dropped from his sponsors and employers, Christian Dior, for allegedly making several anti-semitic remarks and also hurling insults at an Asian. He is about to stand trial and we shall find out if he has a case to answer.

So, perhaps there is a prevalence of hatred, perhaps it is more shocking in times that are thought of as liberal. Whatever the case, people are stressed and quite honestly do not have a lot of time for anything other than their own personal problems.

My case here is that perhaps the collapse in the "Yes" to AV vote, and the poor showing of Labour in Scotland, suggests that change on this kind of scale is not wanted at a time when there are too many changes to contend with and they are all too close to home for comfort.

COMMENTING IS ON FOR THE TIME BEING

Dead Terrorists

2011-05-03T20:19:00.000+01:00

THEY DON'T LIKE IT UP 'EM MISTER MANNERIN'

Who do you think you are kidding Mister Laden...

So, Farewell then
Obama Bin Laden
Your name
caused confusion
perhaps
it is for the best

I read that five people, of dusky middle eastern appearence have been arrested for taking photos and videos of a nuclear power station. With a view to what?

In the end it will be a battle of the people. Over in Pakistan, the people have been keeping mum about Osama. Over here, we need vigilance, vigilance I tell you. We are the eyes and ears of the war on terror. And unless we have the Muslim population of this country on our side, our defenses will be sorely tried.

In other news, more and more luvvies are signing up for AV. Yes to AV they say. Well, if an actor says it's good for the country, what more do I need?

Shameless plug once again but if you keep on visiting this blog, that is what you are going to get.

Read my interview with Tom McGuinness over at www.rock-legacy.blogspot.com

Not the Royal Wedding

2011-04-29T10:26:00.001+01:00

I wish the Royal Couple well. An emotional and very long event. (There wont be a a dry seat in the Abbey).

While the world of politics takes a break today for something else, I thought I would just drop a line to the few souls who miss WW.

Several things have made me want to dash to the keyboard over the past few weeks, but alas, I am busy with the other blog and related projects. I now have several interviews with musicians to transcribe and edit. Those who agreed to talk have been very generous with their time.

Angela Eagle, who has most certainly some sort of habit of sucking piss off a nettle, appears not to enjoy being the butt of a fairly thin, desperately un-groovy allusion to popular culture. "Calm Down Dear" I think the phrase was, used by David Cameron at some point during the machinations of the Mother of Parliaments, possibly in a failed attempt to be with it. Elsewhere, someone was arrested for playing Kung Fu Fighting, since this was clearly a terrible slur on a passing oriental.

The lesson for today then is not to speak to anybody but your closest and most trusted friends and relatives, becuase otherwise you may become the target of some playground bickering. Only in this case, instead of telling teacher that he or she was "mean to me", the stakes have been upped to include parliamentary debate and recourse to the increasingly preposterous plod, who seem to have nothing better to do than to look for scapegoats and undermine the rules of common sense and justice. I don't blame the police by the way, they are institutionally incapable of thinking for themselves - the direction comes from above and they are still carrying out the daft political diktats of Labour.

This nonsense is changing. Eric Pickles is clamping down on wasters and self-styled guardians of the wheelie bins. If all else fails, Pickles can sit on detractors.

There is a real world out there that needs to be addressed. Since the police have taken to burying their heads up their bottoms over black on black violent crime, what better displacement activity than to arrest anybody who plays crap disco music. Gosh, perhaps Anybody who plays crap 70s disco music should be arrested.

Symbolism is overrated in my opinion. I don't have much to do with manufactured observances and I only dance naked in the moonlight at the solstice, a natural and entirely politically resistent occurance.

We are coming up to a referendum on our voting system. A lot of people, including me, are being influenced by the "stars" who have aligned themselves one way or another. I am inclined to do a tally of the loonies, the luvvies and the liars, and then vote for the solution they don't endorse.

Labour is desperate. They mostly want AV. It is the only way they can see a return to Government. That in itself should be a warning.

Soon on Rock Legacy I shall be publishing a review of a Chantel McGregor gig and a review of her new album, doing a piece on an incredible keyboard player and a few snapshots of things like The National Steel Guitar, how When I'm Dead And Gone got to be made and all sorts of stuff. Raymond Benson, a prolific and respected American writer and musician has sent me a piece about the Canterbury Scene, which will go up later today.

In the meantime I wish you well. WW is not dead, merely hibernating and attempting to do some actual primary resource journalism, and unless you have a juicy, first-hand bit of info to pass on, things will just tick over for the time being.

For those who seek a genuine and refreshing alternative to today's big bash, here is a song that I remember from the days of Children's Favourites. God help me if it contains references to sensitive orientals.

Chantel McGregor - On Tour

2011-04-22T17:30:00.000+01:00

Just a bit of news of Chantel McGregor. If you want to know more about this amazing performer, just pop over to:

Songs

2011-04-19T18:49:00.000+01:00

Songs are funny things. Nobody knows how to get a hit. You can try to get a hit but it is not until that hit comes out of the blue and you think that maybe you have something that the whole thing clicks. Of course, you can turn out drivel and people will buy drivel, especially if it ticks all the boxes, but then you have to think ten or twenty years down the line and if it is drivel, well, then you wont even be thinking about it.

I am doing an interview next week with Tom McGuinness, he of Manfred Mann, McGuinness Flint and The Blues Band. McGF had a big hit with "When I'm Dead and Gone" and the story of how that song was inspired will be revealed on www.rock-legacy.blogspot.com in a week or two. I loved that record. I bought it when it first came out and I still play it. It has stood the test of time.

Another artist you may like to check out is Catherine Howe. I have just posted an interview with Catherine, together with a review of her new album English Tale. It's a collaboration with Vo Fletcher and Ric Sanders (he of Fairport fame).

Catherine's songs are really rather good, as befits a Novello winner. See you, over at

Tandy Morgan interview for Rock Legacy

2011-04-13T15:29:00.000+01:00

Over at Rock Legacy I have just done an interview with Dave Scott Morgan about his 80's collaboration with Richard Tandy. There are some good tracks to listen to if you like that sort of thing. I do. You can read it HERE.

Tandy and Morgan toured extensively as members of ELO. If you are familiar with the Electric Light Orchestra, you will hear the similarities.

Over at the other place..

2011-04-07T00:34:00.000+01:00

Coming soon over at my other blog www.rock-legacy.blogspot.com

For ELO fans and indeed any lovers of intelligent European-influenced electronica and pop; an exclusive interview with David Scott Morgan, who toured as a member of ELO for five years and has had a working partnership with Richard Tandy for over four decades. The Tandy-Morgan album, Earthrise is discussed in detail.The interview will be published in the next few days, but until then, here is a song from Earthrise, Thousand Worlds.

I am very excited indeed to have a forthcoming interview with Catherine Howe. Catherine won an Ivor Novello award for her song, "Harry" and after quite a break from the business is writing, singing and recording again and will be talking to me about her new album. I couldn't decide which video to put on this blog so here is Catherine's re-recording of "Harry". You can see the others over at:

Edward Stobart dies

2011-03-31T19:27:00.000+01:00

This blog regrets to pass on the sad news of the death, age 56, of Edward Stobart. Edward was the son of the famous Eddie Stobart, who survives him. As a former, early member of the Eddie Stobart Fan Club and Eddie Spotter, my condolences are with his family and friends.

Edward turned an ordinary haulage firm into a national icon. The lorries always cheer me up on a long, tedious journey. Very British, very sturdy, very Eddie.

Marc Bolan - Early Recordings

2011-03-30T21:17:00.000+01:00

Over at Rock Legacy, there's a short piece about Marc Bolan and one of his first recordings for Decca Records. Of course, a music track is included.

Fingers crossed, but coming up on RL, I have clinched an interview with a former member of a major rock band and brilliant songwriter. Bookmark the site now! Demos, interviews, stuff you have never seen anywhere else.

Jethro Tull Article

2011-03-26T11:46:00.000Z

Author, Theatre Director and Musician, Raymond Benson has dropped in a marvellous post over at Rock Legacy. It's an appreciation of the band, and in keeping with the brief of Rock Legacy, a potted disco/history for those who are new to Jethro Tull

http://rock-legacy.blogspot.com/2011/03/jethro-tull.html

Taking a Break

2011-03-25T00:54:00.002Z

I'm taking a break from doing this. I shall be busy building up my other blog, the music one.

www.rock-legacy.blogspot.com

comments are closed

The Secret World of Whitehall - BBC 4

2011-03-25T00:27:00.002Z

Michael Cockerell's three part series, The Secret World of Whitehall is a must see, if only because it is like a TWMFL course (Teaching Whitehall Mandarin as a Foreign Language). It is not just that Senior Civil Servants are, on the face of it Civil but not necessarily Servile during their tenure. It is the case that they appear to remain so long after they have gone. But like all natural diplomats, they have a way of understatement or simply a well timed silence, to import a fairly readable meaning.

The programme gives us a picture of the quite different ways in which Whitehall is allowed to operate with a Prime Minister and his advisors, but there are certain non-negotiables. The first is the first hour's briefing with the Cabinet Secretary on national security. One of the first duties, we learn, is that every incoming PM must provide handwritten instructions to the Captains of our Nuclear Submarines, who presumably will only open them in the event of the destruction of the British Government due to all out war. We don't get the details of course, but we do get a peek at COBRA, the situation room that becomes the hub of activity in a crisis.

The personalities in the programme are large. Some appear affable, most exasperated and some interviewees, particularly the political ones, just your usual bastards. All of them appear to have been avid followers of Yes, Prime Minister, the comedy show based on the interplay between a PM and his Cabinet Secretary.

You will not learn much that has not already been said or reported, which is in itself an exemplar of the new style of Number Ten operations which operates these days on a 24-hour news cycle. But as I said, the most revealing thing is the lingua franca of government. And perhaps also, that Tony Blair got through three Cabinet Secretaries before his fourth, Sir Gus O'Donnell, who has only stayed on to the present in order to ease the transition to coalition government.

Sir Robin Butler is probably the most concise and most revealing about the relationship with the three PMs he has served.

If you said something critical to Margartet Thatcher, she would be affronted but it woudln't rupture your relationship. If you said something critical to John Major, he'd be sad and ask If I really thought he had made such a mess of it. If I said something critical to Tony Blair, he would say, "You are absoulutely right. I quite agree with you". But you never really knew if he did.

I have seen the first two episodes. So far the words "Gordon" and "Brown" have not passed the lips of the present Cabinet Secretary. If you are wondering why, perhaps I can enlighten you:

http://wrinkledweasel.blogspot.com/2011/02/gordon-brown-and-sir-gus-odonnell.html

(I would at this stage have liked to post a guest piece from a senior ex civil servant who is most certainly in a position to cast some light on it all, just for this blog, but despite his agreeing to do so over six weeks ago I have nothing to give you. You never know in the end if a "Yes" is really a "No". I guess I'll have to learn Mandarin.)

Public Sector employment will always be kept high

2011-03-24T11:58:00.002Z

Unemployment is at its highest in the last 20 years and is expected to rise. That is a great bit of material for Labour. It is the sort of line they can trot out in any interview and it has the added value of being true. It also appeals to those with a visceral hatred of Tories, thus, keeping Labour supporters in a convenient, windowless box. For Labour voters are generally stupid. They typically believe in free everything for everybody and if they are unemployed Labour voters they can draw their benefits without referring to their consciences.

There are however a lot of details in the headline. For a start, the number of people on state benefits has reduced. The claimant count in February stood at 1, 450,000 - down by 128,000 on the year. There has also been an increase in private sector jobs. A significant portion of the job losses, not necessarily redundancies but simply not replacing natural wastage, was in the public sector, well before the Coalition government took over.

Yes, it was a Labour government that has been responsible for the majority of job losses in the public sector - in the year ending December 2010, the public sector workforce was reduced by 123,000.

There is a distorting effect to consider, of youth non-employment, and by "youth" it is defined here as the 18-24 age group. John Philpott, Chief Economic Adviser at the CIPD said of this sector:

1 in 8 young people in this age group are unemployed and almost 30% of those classified as unemployed are full-time students.

A number of things strike me here. The first is that if 30% of people classified as unemployed are in fact full-time students, then the truth of the situation becomes clear; the creation of non degrees and daft qualifications has been an industry in itself and has had the effect of massaging the figures for some time.

The second is that Labour were quietly dumping public sector jobs during 2010. I would like to know what these are and in what parts of the public sector these came from.

Obviously experts can be picked to back up a point but they almost all agree that it is youth unemployment that is the biggest cause for concern. Almost all agree that the private sector cannot be expected to mop up this large reservoir of unemployed youth.

It seems an intractable problem, but there is more bad news. Labour kept themselves in power almost entirely on the back of a public sector jobs boom. In 2003, Labour was creating jobs at four times the rate of the private sector, inflating it to 5.3 million. And that was in 2003. In 2008, the increase was massive, due mostly to the official figures reflecting the government's aquisition of RBS and Loyds, in the wake of the banking crisis. By 2010 the figure was 6.195 million.

Unfortunately the picture is not as clear cut for the Tories. They too depended heavily on an inflated public sector, and despite all the claims, public sector employment peaked at a 13% increase during the Labour administration and began to decrease long before the change of government.

The simple fact, the only real fact I can deduce from all of this is that all governments are spending our money on preventing an employment meltdown, largely by keeping the inflated public sector in business, which means that those who work in the private sector are paying to keep the government popular and in power, regardless of political pursuasion.

Get Out of That

2011-03-24T00:41:00.000Z

by Wrinkled Weasel

According to Google, it is Harry Houdini's 137th birthday. Well, it would be if he was alive. Harry and me go way back. I was mad keen on magic and still am. When I was about 12 years old I was taken to see Man of Magic at the Piccadilly Theatre in 1966. Stuart Damon played Houdini. To be honest from what I can remember, it was not that good; a bit of a mishmash of songs, tricks and bits of business. The critics didn't like it either and it was taken off after 135 performances. As one observed, "the sort of fare that impresario Harold Fielding was used to assembling for the London coach trade." Of course, Stuart Damon was later to become well known to British audiences at the time for his role in The Champions, another fairly ersatz show about three semi-super people who had a headquarters in Geneva. Of course, none of it was shot anywhere outside of Elstree, with their headquarters being the Labour Exchange in Harpenden or somewhere.

Houdini does not really figure in my list of great magicians. He was primarily a showman and a huckster. David Blaine comes to mind. Sure, you cannot figure how it is done (oh, yes I can), but somehow, when he gets out of the box you just shrug and think, yeah, ok.
Many real magicians are not so well known, people like Rober Harbin or Ali Bongo or Patrick Page, Dai Vernon or David Devant. These people were amazing and more importantly entertaining. When David Nixon came along, he was a likeable chap and you didn't mind being fooled by him because he was so charming with it. Houdini was a bruiser with an ego and little formal education. His skill was showmanship. There's no escaping that fact.

Epitaph with wrong birth date

Weasel's Alternative Budget

2011-03-23T10:54:00.000Z

Taxation was once upon a time only used to raise revenue for armies and the occasional excesses of pervy monarchs. These days it is quite clearly a mechanism for social engineering, so I thought I would do a budget of my own, given the topical nature of budgets, and this being a blog that is supposed to at least pretend to be topical.

My budget will be a carrot and stick budget. Some may call it popularist, but I know where the votes come from. Here goes:

A freeze on duty on fags and booze.

Legalise cannabis and tax it at the same rate that tobacco is taxed.

Legalise Prostitution, but enforce strict tax regime according to what is on the menu and how disgusting and perverted the service is. VAT will be charged, and customers who are VAT registered can claim it back if it is for entertaining business clients.

Car Tax. This is currently related to engine size and green credentials. I would scrap that and tax vehicles according to how cool they are. For example, a Dodge Charger would be exempt of all vehicle tax, but a Rover would have a £500 tax disc. All White vans will attract the top rate of tax unless they have a tacho in them which records adherence to speed limits and use of phones whilst driving.

While realising that people need a break from crippling taxation, I must address the deficit. Accordingly, I have created a brand new tax, effective immediately on wordage and packaging of food. The first layer of packaging is free, as long as it can be demonstrated that the purchaser can open it without needing medical attention for lacerations. All instructions, such as "serving suggestion" or "may contain nuts" (the latter, especially if it is a banana) will be taxed at 5p per character, per item.

This next initiative has been difficult, but I am reducing the BBC's TV licence from £145.50 to 70p. Of course, the BBC may wish to conduct a campaign against this move, or even attempt to do a lot of programmes that attack me, but at 70p, they are not going to find it very easy are they?

But we still have to make economies due, as my predecessor often asserted, to the global meltdown.

Therefore, I regret that it has been necessary to impose a tax on any organisation that uses the word "Green" in its literature or remit. "Global Warming" will attract a similar rate, which will be 20% of net income.

But the tax imposition must go further, my friends. Cycling has become a blot on the landscape. So with immediate effect, lycra, if used for making cycling clothes will attract a special VAT rate of 100%. Bicycles themselves will have a flat, index-linked, premium of £1000.

I have now to address the cost of the public sector. All PFI contracts will be subject to re-negotiation or cancellation. All PFI interest payments, currently amounting to billions of pounds will now be subject to Zero interest. Furthermore, all public sector workers who cannot actually put their finger on what it is they actually do, will be personally taxed at 60%, thereby snatching back at least some of the public money they are wasting.

And finally, the rabbit out of the hat.

All taxation on holidays and travel will be suspended between May and October, and that includes personal as well as business travel. This will encourage industry and cheer everyone up.

I commend my budget to this blogosphere.

Hell is shrinking. At least on Earth it is.

2011-03-21T23:35:00.000Z

Traditional depiction of Hell with Red Hot poker up the bum top right

by Wrinkled Weasel

There is a bit in the Bible about Hell:

Therefore hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure: and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth, shall descend into it
(Isaiah 5:14)

It would appear that Hell has an unlimited capacity to accomodate new recruits. But here on Earth it is a different story. The number of places of sanctuary for the truly evil are declining. It's partly geographical and political, but it is mostly a function of the information age. Sooner or later, but these days, sooner, you will be found and brought to account. Where can a modern despot flee? Somalia?

It is only, I think, in the last ten years that tyrants have begun to understand this. And of course, most tyrants are bullies and most bullies are cowards.

Twas always the case and always will be. To have a fanatic who believes in what he is doing is much more dangerous. Gaddafi is no fanatic, religious or otherwise. Gaddafi is a coward, surrounded by cowards. His strength has always been in his ability to cause those around him to cower in fear.

Gaddafi is fighting for no cause other than his own skin. Those who work for him, largely out of fear, know this. As soon as it becomes clear that ageing Russian technology is no match for a B-2, and it already has, a lot of Libyans will abandon their enforced loyalty to their be-decorated fruitcake leader and scarper.

The rhetoric is always the loudest and most bombastic from cowards. I don't think Saddam Hussein was a coward, but many around him were, and the fled, not once, but twice, in the face of opposition, after all the promises to the contrary of Muhamed Saeed al-Sahaf, Saddam's information minister.

I was interested to note that another tyrant, who rules his country with a combination of fear and bribery, just as Gaddafi did, has been very cool about Western intervention and the kind of precedent it makes; that of assisting a poplular uprising in a rogue state. He is Vladmir Putin. I am sure he is sleeping a little less comfortably tonight, as he most certainly begins to see that in a world that is shrinking, there is no longer nowhere to hide except in Hell. And Hell, at least on Earth, is a very small place.

I agree with Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

2011-03-21T12:48:00.002Z

Fenton Tower aka Archie's House

It's a sunny day here, and from my window, as I type this, I can see Archie's House. For those of you who do not get this reference to popular culture, Archie is a character in a TV series called Balamory. Balamory is mostly situated, for the purposes of location shooting, on the isle of Mull. Go there and you will believe that nothing else of cultural value has ever happened, for the shops in Tobermory/Balamory are full of trinkets designed to capitalise on the the show.

I say this to make the point that there is a very flimsy veil between reality and fiction sometimes. I do not live on Mull by the way. Archie's House, for reasons I do not know, is really a castle on the Scottish mainland. It stands on the summit of a rolling hill and commands a view for miles, which is what castles generally did as a defensive measure. But anyway, I can see it now. Archie's House, resplendent in pink, in the sunshine.

Perhaps I should talk about Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and my provocative headline, for of course, I generally hold this woman to be mephitic.

The bit I agree with her about is this. She writes in The Indy:

At the end of the long coffee-drinking evening, most of us seemed to feel that helping rebels in Libya was necessary. But the real passions were raised over what the West does next. Their movers and shakers cannot go on cultivating hideous leaders and then turning on them when the winds change. They embrace Saudi Arabia and in the same moment shoot down Libya. Such hypocrisies will no longer be swallowed by people who are now globally connected.

Somehow I feel myself agreeing with Yasmin. Perhaps I should visit Archie's House and give myself a reality check.

Coming Soon - WW's Rock Legacy

2011-03-20T16:55:00.000Z

It is becoming impossible to do justice to the music sections on this blog, so I have created another one. From now on, some of the longer music articles will migrate to it and new ones will be added. The plan is to create a credible database of primary historical material from musicians, producers and commentators. Believe it or not, there are people out there who cannot name The Beatles. A legacy needs to be addressed before the people who were at the hypocentre of the Pop and Rock explosion are no longer with us. The whole story has not yet been told.

Hence:

If this interests you, please bookmark it, or go to

http://rock-legacy.blogspot.com/

If you are a fan of a particular band, or you are a musician and want your work to be remembered, please get in touch.

Jet Harris dies

2011-03-18T22:28:00.000Z

Another milestone, another legacy that is lost forever. We need to capture the last 50 years of popular music before there is nobody left who was there. Jet Harris has gone and the relatively young age of 71. He had cancer. Here's to Jet. Here's to the band that I emulated in front of a mirror and practiced the "walk".

These guys were pioneers. Let's not forget that.

Going Tits Up Down at the Nick - by Stephen Maybery

2011-03-18T20:16:00.002Z

Guest Poster Stephen Maybery has a take on one of this week's less taxing stories:

By God you need a sense of humour in this day and age although you’d be arrested if you were so indelicate to laugh at the wrong things, the sort of jokes pub comics had them in stitches with in days afore, when you could enjoy a fag and clout the missus without being banged up for the rest of your natural. I think that at this point I should confess that I am not politically correct, save a lot of explanations further down the line that will.

Now this is all about humour, laugh? You’ll have diarrhoea ‘till doomsday by the time you’ve got through this lot. Down on the Jurassic coast, often referred to as Dorset, the panjandrums of authority, starting with the police have finally lost their marbles, that’s assuming they had any in the first place, and they certainly didn’t have any balls to substitute for them. A woman police officer visited Purbeck School in Wareham to talk about a playground spat, a task vital to the security of our nation.

When she was out of the room, the right on P.C was referred to by some of the boys as P.C Nipples. Thirteen year old lads taking notice of a pair of Bristols, whatever next, at that age they should long since have been taught the superiority of homosexuality, and a proper appreciation of a nice pair of nuts. Anyway, the upshot of these remarks was that someone, probably the teacher, undoubtedly constipated with political correctness, immediately rushed off to inform the officer of what had been said about her. The PC, obviously as daft and as humourless as the teacher, set in motion the modern equivalent of an excommunication, a full bell book and candle job.

A “restorative justice conference” was called into being. Apart from the five boys and their parents round the table, there were three uniformed officers and, now get this folks, a plain clothes community safety manager, all that was missing was Jasmine Buggerall-Brown sitting in on the pow-wow and insisting the children should be charged with racism.

But there are a few questions that need to be asked, P.C nipples? Take it from me, thirteen year old lads know the difference between nipples and knockers. What was the dame wearing to illicitate such a comment? Why did such a production have to be mounted? Have they called time on common sense in that neck of the woods? And if the actions of the police are representative of a front line service then the sooner we get those cuts the better.

As the Bard so memorably said “Much ado about nothing.” Hours of time wasted, thousands of pounds down the drain, and all for the want of an old fashioned clip around the ear.

Move over Obama. A true global statesman has emerged

2011-03-18T14:35:00.003Z

The West is in disarray over Libya

2011-03-18T12:44:00.000Z

But the endgame is now inevitable

by Wrinkled Weasel

The United Nations vote says it all. The Security Council has voted to authorize military action and the imposition of a no-fly zone. There was no opposition, but several abstentions. The usual suspects of course abstained, but the fact that Russia and China did not object says a lot. Germany also abstained, which is probably down to two things; one is the utter confusion about what is going on in Libya, and the second is impending domestic elections that are by no means a foregone conclusion for Angel Merkel. She has already appeased the anti-nuclear lobby in the wake of the Japanese disaster.

People who are in a position to know about these things admit to me that they do not know what is going on either. The escalation of the situation in Libya has been almost without parallel.

Philip Stephens, writing in the FT (£) had this to say before the UN Resolution:

The west is left in disarray. Once familiar positions on the merits or otherwise of intervention have been upended. Barack Obama has considered the legacy of Iraq and insisted that nothing could be done without the sanction of the UN Security Council. France’s Nicolas Sarkozy has argued for shooting first and checking the legal fine print later. Britain has leaned more towards Paris than Washington.

Divisions within the European Union have been mirrored by temporising in Washington. Just about everywhere, collisions between the realism that prizes short-term stability and the enlightened self-interest that supports Arab democracy have been excruciatingly painful. Has the west got it right? Probably not. Were there any easy choices? Certainly not.

Stephens's commentary over the last few weeks has probably been more enlightening than the plethora of babble and squeak, but he has to acknowledge that there are no easy answers.

All I can do is to re-state my opinion that the British have a different attitude to waging war than almost any other country. Cameron is following in the footsteps of Thatcher, in that he has acted decisively and quickly, whereas the USA prefers a slow burn, and the use of black propaganda and behind-the-scenes pursuasion.

Obviously Cameron has done a bit of behind-the-scenes pursuasion, but the speed at which he has done this is astonishing.It is worth remembering that he has managed some kind of consensus at the UN in a matter of days; a watertight legal mandate. This contrasts starkly with Tony Blair who spent months conniving with Bush to get a resolution over Iraq.

What happens over the weekend will be decisive however. At this moment the British military machine will be moving troops and equipment. As always, the Yanks have come in too late, but of course, the role they play will be a game changer. Colonel Gadaffi is playing the Hitler scenario. He will not live this out. Nobody can give him sanctuary and nobody wants to, except for somewhere like Somalia or North Korea. Gadaffi will fight to the death and he will take as many of the Libyan people with him as he can.

The genii is now well and truly out of the bottle and the endgame is now a world issue.

WW's Weekend Window on The World

2011-03-18T08:00:00.001Z

I wonder what he is thinking this time?

People are up in arms this week because Silvio Berlusconi has allegedly paid for sex. Well, think about it. How many world leaders do you know who are lookers? Poor bloke dyes his hair and has a fake tan. I dare say he has to resort to tablets in order to keep it up as well as paying for it.

Of course, there are a few lookers. Here is Laura Chinchilla. She's the President of Costa Rica and this Chinchilla is no dog. Bow, Wow. Costa packet, too. She's a real cutie underneath it all. A couple of weeks ago she was exhorting fellow Costa Ricans to wear white to acknowledge International Women's Day "as an expression of that desire to live in peace".

Isn't that nice.

I have yearned for the years of yore this week. Nostalgic for Strawberry Mivvis, Harpic and Parma Violets. In fact all things English. Well, they've all gone. You can't even get a Halal version of them, which shows how bad things are. Some of us long for the twang of willow on leather on a hot, English sunny afternoon. Cricketers always wear white, Ms Chinchilla, so I guess their desire to live in peace is quite a commitment.

I realised this week that my phone is nearly five years old. It would be no good to either Silvio Berlusconi or national treasure Stephen Fry, for you cannot switch it on and find new friends of like mind who just happen to be needing a blow job on Hampstead Heath. As for "Apps", it's primary application is a phone. Indeed, I have never worked out what else, if anything, it does.

This weekend I shall have to attend to things that grown in the great outdoors. So I shall buy some seeds and plant them and watch the cats pull them up. Then I shall plant some seedlings and watch the Chickens pull them up and perhaps rescue a few, and low and behold I shall have a fine crop of mouldy home-grown headless green stuff that can go in next year's compost. That is, if I have enough time to harvest it between showers, hail and snow.

It's more about being one with the Earth than the final product, after all.

Here's a bit of music trivia: Mike Hurst (see side bar) rescued Colin Blunstone from a life of misery. Mike would not put it that way of course, but Colin Blunstone was on the verge of going back to normal life and a proper job after the disbanding of The Zombies. On a not very good quality Skype connection of mine, Mike Hursts remembers:

Coming to a potential disaster near YOU

2011-03-17T20:07:00.000Z

GUEST POST FROM GITFINGER:

The Steam Path.

Being people, people are not very good at handling dangerous things of their own making. Because the dangers are of their own making they become defensive about them, protective, in all sorts of ways that reduce their defences and protections against the dangers. The more dangerous (‘safety critical’), and so the more politically sensitive the industry you work in the more you have to defend it, protect it, and keep its secrets, and the more you have to be one of the gang, tough-minded, unflappable, fearful only of showing fear. You downplay the dangers, you overplay your skills, you make a joke of the failures that occur, especially if they are not your fault. You confine your fear to fear of the mighty contempt of your colleagues that will be yours always if you break ranks, risk jobs, if you look like a coward by showing so much as mild concern.

What would happen, say, if you were working in one part of one plant belonging to a safety critical industry and something that just wasn’t right happened in your particular working space? Say you’re working in some part of a plant that has daily and nightly dealings with high pressure steam, that depends ultimately on steam, that has the uses of steam at its very core. Say that there shouldn’t be any steam where you are working today but steam there is, suddenly, without warning, great, near-scalding billowings of it.

In the training and in the manuals you have been told to alert some higher up. Squeal, in other words, scream to mummy, drop someone it in it maybe but, much worse, show that you can’t handle difficulties yourself. So you find a wheel that drives a valve and you spin that wheel or maybe another few wheels, as many wheels as you have to spin until the steam stops coming and just goes somewhere else. There is your result and your contribution to the smooth running of the organisation, problem solved.

Now move to a few moments later. Suppose now that you are someone else working somewhere else. There should be no steam where you are working today but steam there is, suddenly, without warning, great, near-scalding billowings of it. This time there are no handy wheels that drive valves. But, this time, you have a giant door that opens to the world. You also know where there is a giant electric fan. You and three others just like you open the door and manoeuvre the fan so that the steam that shouldn’t be there is blown out into the wide blue-grey yonder and so to beyond your concern. There is your result and your contribution to the smooth running of the organisation, problem solved.

The management need never know and if even if they do find out it is not in their interests to advertise the event. Not if they’re managing a safety-critical industry. The public might worry that the same mentality would prevail no matter what the problem was. As it is, the world need never know any more than that things near you were a little steamier than usual that day. The trouble is, the greater the danger, the more those handling it need that mentality.

A stranger in a strange land - LOVING THE ALIEN

2011-03-17T10:58:00.008Z

LOVING THE ALIEN

by Wrinkled Weasel

A commenter called Revenai, on this POST makes the following observation:

migrants usually don't want to bother with the disadvantages that living in the country brings, they seem to prefer the town and cities where they have access to their own ethnic markets and places of worship.

He made the comment in the context of migrants to this country, and of course it is true, but the same could be said about British Ex-Pats. Whatever your origin, it takes a certain type of toughness and tenacity to survive alone in a strange land, away from the familiar trappings of home.

Tuscany is so full of Brits it has been comically called Chiantishire. Cheeky cockney criminals prefer Marbella. The Dordogne is riddled with them. In the town of Eymet, there is a shop called L'Epicerie Anglaise. These places have there own English newspapers, shops, Churches and cricket grounds.

In some of our former Colonies it is unthinkable that wealthy whites mix with the local population, apart from having them as servants. What is left of the white, former ruling class in places like Zimbabwe, have, by necessity, pulled up the razor wire and the shutters and rarely take part in anything other than White European social ventures.

So, I would argue that the propensity to agglomerate into cultural ghettos is a universal trait. As I said, it takes a certain type of person to go without Marmite and Theakston's Old Peculiar. It takes true grit to be a stranger in a strange land.

I don't blame anybody. I live in Scotland, and believe me, being English here is not easy. I try and fit in as best I can, but the Scots are nationalistic and prickly about the English asserting themselves in a nationalistic way, in their country, to the point of beating them up if they display overt signs of Englishness, such as talking aloud. Others just get cold-shouldered.

The latest example is of a 65 year-old English widow who lives in Findochty. She is being forced to sell her home after what has been described as a local hate campaign:

'It is shocking but it's been made obvious that I am no longer welcome here. The only option left to me is to leave.
'I had no idea problems like this existed here. I didn't think I would be treated any differently to anyone else.
'I came here looking for some peace and quiet, but I never found it.'

Anti English Race Hate in Findochty,Scotland

A local resident told her to her face, "You'd better leave here".

I know I am going to get grief for the last bit, but its true. The same can be said of racist attacks in England. People simply cannot cope easily with people who are not like them. In extremis, they attack. It is ignorance and fear manifest.

So none of us come out of this particularly well. We go abroad and demand that people accomodate our Britishness, so we cannot really moan about it when people come here and demand that we accommodate their own culture. Can we?

Hidbound by Political Correctness, we have stifled debate about this. Perhaps a little satire might ease the inhibitions:

Midsomer Madness

2011-03-17T00:27:00.000Z

Animal Rights Activist Wins Right to sue former employer over "philosophical" beliefs, as TV Writer is suspended for "racist" remarks.
by Wrinkled Weasel

The blogosphere is alight with the Midsomer Murders story. Even I had to have a go. The writer of the long running murder mystery show has been suspended by his bosses, over remarks made about the lack or omission of non-white people in Midsomer Murders. A week or two earlier, an Animal Rights activist won the right to sue his former employer who allegedly sacked him over his "philosophical beliefs".

This seems to me to be a case of two issues which boil down to what people think and the kind of lives they lead and the impact this has on their day jobs.

I have to say, when I learned of the Animal Rights chap I reacted in two ways. The first was that my distaste for such people goes back to the days when I lived in Bristol. They had a campaign of bombing people at their homes. One such bomb went off under a car and injured a passing mother and child. I really have no sympathy for them or their cause. I do however, acknowledge their right to hold such views and that to sack someone for holding an extreme view is a dangerous road.

Brian True-May said some things that can only be interpreted as racist. Sorry but there is no other way to do so. However, racists abound and racists have a right to work, just as animal rights acitivists have a right to work. The alternative is to only employ nice unassuming people who pay their taxes and complain about the wheelie bins.

What is interesting to me is the difference in reaction to these people. True-May has been villified. The animal rights guy is now a hero, with the backing of the law. Of the two, only the animal rights guy is prepared to break the law in support of his beliefs. It puzzles me.

Could it be that the judge is pandering to a liberal left consensus? Surely not.

A timely post, but in a bad way

2011-03-16T00:33:00.002Z

by Wrinkled Weasel

I have been discussing, on and off, with a friend, the subject of realities. See the plural there. What we know as reality is in fact a fairly frangible commodity. Periodically, throughout our lives, we exchange one reality with another.

What I mean by this is the difference between an everyday life and an extraordinary life. Both are real, but they generally do not overlap.

Fukushima is probably going to become a metanym, just as Hiroshima and Nagasaki did. It will become a metanym because its name will be a short-cut to the devastation caused by an earthquake. Lockerbie is the same. In metonymy you get a compression of an idea that is easily understood because the idea, or event in the case of Japan, is a compression of an intense reality, so intense, that the use of a metanym somehow allows us to even speak of it. The alternative is to say, "The death and devastation and agony of" Japan, to such a degree that it becomes a euphemism, at which point it illustrates the difficulty with which we cope with alternative realities.

With me so far? Simply, our normal version of reality, let us say on a wet Tuesday at number 20 Acacia Avenue, does not readily allow for the discussion of alternatives. We find ourselves using shortcuts which become so familiar that they lose the intensity of the experience they represent.

What is happening in Japan is that there are people who got up one morning and did not go to work or worry about the bills that needed paying or that their kid was being bullied at school. They got up to find the side of their house missing and their children swept away to their deaths. There then followed a confrontation with a new reality; without water, without power, without communication. It was profound and final and unmitigated.

Sitting in our comfy homes we become very acclimatised to normality, or the reality we generally inhabit. It does not take much to upset us. We get upset because the bins are not emptied. We get upset because there is a power cut. Many are so dependent on the stability of the reality in which they live that they are useless without it; de-skilled and disoriented.

There is a curious flip side to all of this. Whilst it is not agreeable to be brutally confronted with another reality, such as the one in Japan, it behoves us, from time to time, to step out of our comfort zone. Some do this by involving themselves in dangerous sports. Some journey around the world. Some live on a boat. Some give all their posessions away. The methods of getting an alternative reality are as myriad as the number of alternative realities.

And yet, we cleave to the normal, the predictable, the safe. Indeed, we risk social separation if we so much as step out of the generally accepted norms.

Over the years I have met several people who have had periods of intensity in their lives that you could describe as an alternative reality. There was the Rock Star who had little over three years at the top, right at the top, and then sank, more or less, into obscurity. Anyone who fought in a war understands this, and that brings me to the point. Assuming a normal life, assuming the generally accepted reality after an intense experience is not only difficult, it can impact badly on your mental health. We know this from the number of service personnel who find it hard to adjust on their return from a war zone.

So what is to be done? I do not propose for a minute that we ignore opportunities in life to experience intensity. Often it can be sublime, even if it involves near-death experiences. What we need to do, I think, is to challenge ourselves about the reality we presently inhabit, and ask ourselves, are we really fulfilled? The next question we must ask is, what will we do if our reality breaks down? Are we prepared, or do we fold when the gas goes off?
Future generations of children must learn to cope with adversity and concepts like fear, and learn to deal with them.

The extent to which the lucky survivors of Fukushima will cope is directly related to how they have been nurtured and formed. If it was purely a theoretical exercise, I am afraid they are in trouble. Strength is formed in a crucible, which is hot and dangerous. It is also purifying and removes things that cause the product to collapse under stress. Better the crucible than the safety net. At least, if the young are exposed to some danger they will understand it and perhaps fear danger less.

But back to realities. In 1970, Alvin Toffler published a book called Future Shock. Part of his thesis was that peoples' ability to cope with the future; too much change in too little time. He said that this change made the sense of "normalcy" a moribund concept, becuase life was changing at too fast a rate to enable that kind of comfort zone of "normalness" to exist.

Germane to this piece is his comment on technology, for it is this that is at the centre of debate over Fukushima. Toffler wrote:

the horrifying truth is that, so far as much technology is concerned, no one is in charge.

He goes on to say that man must either vaquish the process of change, or vanish. Critical reception to Future Shock by academics was not good, and that remains the case today. He is seen as lighweight and mediagenic. He is criticised for not placing his thesis in the context of workability and of not properly taking on board the human condition:

The main drawback of the ‘future shock’ thesis was that it did not help people find their way into that domain (Source: http://www.metafuture.org/articlesbycolleagues/RichardSlaughter/futureshock.htm ) by domain, the critic means, I think, worldviews, paradigms, social interests.

By accepting and understanding that the human condition is frought with alternative realities, and embracing them, the impact of Future shock, or any seismic shock for that matter, can be somewhat mitigated.

Being ENGLISH is NOT about Race

2011-03-15T14:31:00.000Z

by Wrinkled Weasel

The "Black Farmer" and friends

There is a TV programme called Midsomer Murders. According to the Telegraph the writer of the series has been suspended, yes suspended, for reportedly saying:

Well, we just don't have ethnic minorities involved. Because it wouldn't be the English village with them. It just wouldn't work.

A few general observations first. First is that Midsomer Murders is a work of Fiction. It is not real. Second, I wonder how many similar works of fiction, from Africa, India, Yemen, etc, have white Europeans in them, and if they do, are they portrayed "sympathetically"? Of course not, they are about being African, or Indian or Yemeni.

You may argue that these societies are not multicultural. You may argue that centuries of White oppression have not endeared them to us. You may even argue that we should insist that drama reflects reality. I would suggest, if you do, that you have misunderstood the nature of fiction. It is not there to reflect reality, it is there to make an artistic statement. It just so happens that Midsomer Murders makes a statement about something that is not popular.

What I take issue with is not a work of fiction but the opinion of Mr True-May (the author) who believes that the show is "The Last Bastion of Englishness".

What he has done is to fail to see that Englishness is about an attitude, a cultural worldview and a sense that people should be treated fairly and equitably. By insisting that there be no black faces in Midsomer Murders, he has alienated a lot of English people who are every bit as English as he is, and perhaps more so.

I understand part of the problem. To insist on having rough parity with the demographic is absurd. Shows like East Enders insist on it and the results are laughable. So does Dr Who. It's pandering to political correctness.

But at the same time, back to Englishness, what defines us is love of our country and pride in our achievement. Anybody can subscribe and all are welcome.

Water Nymph Gets Serious

2011-03-15T10:48:00.002Z

CHRISTINA REES

Christina Rees is a writer, broadcaster and member of the General Synod of the Church of England. She is a tireless activist for equality in the Church. Christina pops up as a talking head on many issues, primarily the current battle in the Church over the ordination of women Bishops. The reason for my interview was not to get the latest soundbite, but to scratch beneath the surface of one person who is influential in making changes in our society; to find out if they are human or not and to try and reveal the strands of experience that make them who they are as humans and what distinguishes them as agents of change.

Christina grew up on a boat, a wooden schooner, which her father had bought in 1946. Built at Block Island, off Long Island in the USA.

The Tappan Zee measured 38 feet over all and was 14 feet wide. Christina, together with her father, mother and two siblings sailed the oceans and inland waterways more or less continuously from the age of 5 to 15, beginning their incredible journey in 1958. In the introduction to her first book, Sea Urchin, she writes:

We know how to relate to people if we see their cars or sip tea with them in their houses and speak to them about their jobs, but how do we relate to people who have discarded all points of reference, who have abandoned the set criteria used to determine exactly who they are and where they fit in society?

For the full article, go to the WAVELENGTHS 3 TAB or CLICK HERE

In the meantime, here is a little little montage:

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Aftershock sparks European Panic

2011-03-15T00:24:00.001Z

The Earthquake in Japan has shocked the world with its intensity and devastation, and moved the political tectonic plates in Europe.

by Wrinkled Weasel

Germany has suspended plans to extend the life of its ageing nuclear power plants in the wake of the Japanes earthquake. Switzerland has followed, putting "blanket authorisation" for nuclear development on hold.

This is not logical. Nothing has changed. There has been no seismic shift in the seismology. So why have two wealthy European governments suddenly announced a U-turn and should the UK be doing the same?

I am not a geologist but I am certainly a cynic. Angela Merkel has three German state elections to face in a few weeks, and the anti-nuclear power lobby is strong.

The Guardian reports:

It was inevitable, then, that the earthquake in Japan would trigger yet more debate over Germany's nuclear future. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Stuttgart this weekend to protest against Angela Merkel's plans to extend the life of 17 German nuclear plants for an average 12 extra years – an event given extra bite following the crisis in Fukushima.
After the demonstration, the chancellor appeared on TV to reassure voters that Germany's power stations are safe. "The events in Japan are a critical moment for the world," said Merkel on Saturday evening in Berlin. "Germany can't just carry on as if nothing has happened," she conceded, ordering immediate safety checks in all nuclear power stations.

Well Angela, I have news for you. Germany can carry on as if nothing has happened, and so can the rest of the world, because nothing has changed about the nature of earthquakes; they are not getting worse and neither are they getting more common, they are only getting more reported, with pictures.

We still have such a thing as the grandly titled British Geological Survey. It was the first in the world, founded in 1835, when Britain still had a bit of credibility. But I digress. The BGS, and indeed any other credible recorder of global seismic activity will tell you these simple facts:

Earthquake acitivity is not increasing.
Clustering may make it look that way

Clustering affects all natural random phenomena and it is something which gets the press in such a tiswas. A few weeks ago you saw headlines like "Seven more die of xyx3453 Flu in Retford". The truth is, thousands die of flue every year, year in, year out. Most of them either have pre-existing medical conditions, or they are simply too old or too young to fight it. All it means that the nature of randomization means that the effects will be, obviously, not nicely spread out.

Switzerland is interesting because the Swiss are naturally cautious. It is highly unlikely that the guys at CERN allowed the building of a highly complex piece of kit in an area prone to serious earthquakes, but they do happen, even in Switzerland, all the time. One took place in Evian les Bains, just across Lake Geneva in the French shorline, last week. Evian is just over 50 km from CERN, but they had nothing to worry about because it had a magnitude of 1.8, as opposed to one of 9 or nearly 9 in Japan.

And what about the UK? Well yes, we have had a few this week too. We had one in Argyll and Bute in February, magnitude 1.3 and one near Dingwall, Highlands, also in February measuring 1. Germany's last quake took place on St Valentine's Day with a magnitude of 3.9 Magnitude is calculated by using a raft of data, but the designation, shown as a number does not readily reveal the seriousness of such an event, for magnitude increases exponentially. In the official classification of "Normal", "Big" and "XXL" the German event was "Normal". In other words it was no different from the thousands of minor movements of the earth which take place all year round. (Source Geofon, Potsdam)

propaganda or what?

Of course, it is sensible to review measure which protect us. Of course, it behoves governments to act, but the jerking of knees in this instance has caused more seismic activity in Germany than anything on the old Richter Scale.

Songbird - a clever alternative to WMP

2011-03-14T20:04:00.002Z

I raving about this. Raving. I was fed up with Windows Media Player. It always does things I don't want it to, lots of things, and its looks miserable. I have tried a lot of alternatives and none of them appealed except one: Songbird. Songbird is a very adaptable media player that will do what you want it to. It will play almost anything, unlike WMP which skip things for no particular reason or because it thinks you have nicked the file.

Songbird is free. Songbird rocks. Just give it a try and then you can do what it does best and that is to record and play stuff in Ogg format or FLAC, lossless audio. Of course it will still play all your MP3s.

The interface is understandable from the beginning and I haven't even checked out all the options. It does take a while to load and it does default to its homepage but that is a small price to pay for a media player that does not bugger you about.

Get it HERE

There is no Prize for being dispassionate

2011-03-14T12:22:00.000Z

Oscar Wilde said that sentimentality was the bank holiday of cynicism. He was not wrong.

by Wrinkled Weasel

Halle Berry gushes at Oscars

Awards are the worst kind of tribute. They kow tow to sentimentality and wishful thinking, at least in this era they do. Take the Oscars. Every year somebody gets an Oscar for having cancer. As Michael Douglas said, after appearing recently at the ceremony, "There must be easier ways to get a standing ovation". When you listen to the poor, dolled-up winners, gushing and reciting a bit of well-rehearsed faltering wit, you cannot help wondering if self-deprecation has become the flip-side of arrogance.

Sentimentality is not just the preserve of Hollywood. It now affects book prizes, and in particular a current obsession with anything that is not English. Take a look at the shortlists for British and USbook prizes. Five books were shorlisted for last year's Orwell. Of the five, one was by Petina Gappah, billed as "The Voice of Zimbabwe", another is a book about Kenya and yet another is a book about Turkish Kurds and another is about Islamism by someone called Kenan Malik. John Kampfner makes an appearance, but Kampfner is a cypher for the comfy left. The winner of last year's Owell wrote about Alzheimer's. Its winners are a a tribal paradigm of the liberal left consensus. Polly Toynbee? Yasmin Alibhai-Brown? Paul Foot? Peter Hitchens? No wonder Nick Cohen turned up pissed out of his head at the 2009 shortlist show.

The Guardian can barely bring itself to review a book that is not written by somebody with a funny name, about somewhere that sounds exotic.

Tips to authors - if you want to get published and shortlisted in Britain today, call yourself Adomati Plange and write about the "plight" of Armenian sex trade workers.

We are plunging into a very silly obsession with anything foreign. I am always mildly amused when I meet some English type with a Chinese symbol tattooed on their person and secretly hope that the Chinese symbol reads "Schmuck".

As for religion, that too has not escaped the current desire for all things foreign and exotic. After all, if you can wear a saffron robe, smoke a bit of hash and learn to play a digeridoo, it has to be more fun than the stuffy old CofE.

It is not as if any of this obsession with stuff that is African or Indian or Turkish or whatever is particularly edifying or true. Most of these places are unremitting shit holes like everywhere else and any attempt to mitigate this is purely a Western Liberal fantasy, and a cynical one at that.

We seem to have fogotten our heritage, our British heritage. We have forgotten that the life expectancy of people on certain Glasgow social housing estates are less than in Yemen or North Korea. we have forgotten that we are the cradle of the Industrial Revolution and the hypocentre of a contemporary rock and pop culture that changed the world.

When it comes to liberality and sentiment, perhaps it is time to point it in the direction of home, but of course, it is not exotic enough to engage the faddists.

David Cameron ignores Star Trek's Prime Directive

2011-03-13T18:47:00.001Z

At today's Spectator Coffee House Fraser Nelson has ventured some praise for David Cameron:

I've been increasingly impressed with the way he has made the case for a no-fly zone - knowing that it is an unpopular cause outside of the Arab world.

If the comments have anything to go by, this is not a popular opinion. Even if we disregard the anti-Cameron sentiment, the general feeling is that Cameron should leave well alone in Libya.

Primary in the debate is the subject of intervention in the affairs of another country. And so it should be. Star Trek is very clear about this: It is the Prime Directive.

The Prime Directive, also known as Starfleet General Order 1, is one of Starfleet's most important binding principles about noninterference in another culture's internal affairs, natural development and progression. The Prime Directive forbids Starfleet officers from interfering with the social order of any planet. (TNG: "Half a Life") Violation of the Prime Directive is generally considered a court martial offense followed by severe punishment unless sufficient justification can be made for the violation. Even though there have been incidences where Starfleet personnel have decided on strong ethical grounds to ignore the Prime Directive, on the whole it is believed to do a lot more good than harm. (TNG: "Justice", VOY: "Prime Factors")(Source: http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Prime_Directive )

Star Trek, or the people who wrote it, are right. It does not matter if Klingons are smelly, egregious people who eat disgusting food. You cannot go wading into intergalactic warfare just because Klingons are not like us.

The bit I like about the Prime Directive is that "Even though there have been incidences where Starfleet personnel have decided on strong ethical grounds to ignore the Prime Directive, on the whole it is believed to do a lot more good than harm." Yes, it does more good than harm. But not always.

On Earth, the same rule should apply. Since 1945, almost all instances of waging war on a sovereign state by those of another sovereign state have ended in disaster. It is not just that one state has assumed a specious case for hegemony, it is that the natural evolution of cultures has rarely benefited from armed Conquest.

There are obvious examples of this, such as Vietnam, which is possibly why Mr Obama is not chomping at the bit to join Cameron in flying in, all guns blazing. Either that or he just cannot make up his mind.

We in Britain are having an internal battle. Certain religio-cultural groups in this country are waging war on us. They will not win, because ultimately you cannot change the way people live by coercion. Even if these religio-cultural groups succeed by sheer weight of numbers, they will not subjugate an indigenous population. Given this, it is not unthinkable that in 50 or 70 years time - no more - Britain and perhaps Europe, may need the assistance of another continent to overthrow a tyranny.

If that happens, will the naysayers be moaning about intervention, or will they be pleading for help?

Wisconsin - where? what? who? why?

2011-03-12T12:08:00.000Z

Is Democracy a neutral mechanism?

Wrinkled Weasel

Scott Walker, Governer of Wisconsin

Wisconsin is a state in the US. That much most people in Britain know. A look at the map reveals it is Northern and that in the East it is bordered by Lake Michigan and has just over five and a half million residents. Its capital is Madison and the largest city is Milwaukee.

So much for the geography lesson. The "what" is what is going on there to make me interested enough to write about it.

Ripon, Wisconsin

If you visit a place called Ripon, you will discover a little white clapboard house. Ripon boasts less than eight thousand residents but it also has the benefit of being the "birthplace" of the Republican Party. The Mayor has a blog, just like me, but he has not updated it since November 4th, 2009. I can only assume he got fed up with the blog, but he has a tagline. (We all like a good tagline)

A place to share and exchange ideas, ask questions and think out loud - Please feel free to leave your comments and ideas. Be nice, be polite.

It's a nice tagline, but unfortunately, the Mayor of Ripon has neglected to allow a comment facility, and besides, Mayor Aaron Kramer retired from office in January 2010.

Aaron Kramer is probably not someone you are going to bring up in any conversation anytime soon, but this sort of detail paints a picture. After all, we are discussing real people in a place far away, out of mind, out of sight. But tonight, Aaron Kramer will tuck his kids into bed and maybe chew on a Rye Krisp cracker and Smucker's peanut butter, because both commodities are made in or near Ripon and I imagine that former Mayor Kramer to be the kind of guy who feels it is important to support local business and not worry too much about his waistline.

You will of course have heard of Senator Joe McCarthy. His name has the kind of synonymity that Hitler would die for. Even today his name is being used as a byword for Senate hearings into the Radicalisation of American Muslims.

So perhaps, with the state being the birthplace of the Republican Party, and the McCarthy connection, it would not surprise you to find that the current governer, one Scott Walker, is a Republican, even though Wisconsin is considered a "swing" state.

Why do you need to know? Well, Scott Walker has engineered what has become a highly controversial victory over public sector workers in Milwaukie. Essentially he has removed the right to collective bargaining. He has done this by getting a majority vote in circumstances that appear somewhat baroque to even the jaded critics of our British Parliament.

Under the bill, known as the Budget Repair Bill, now passed, public sector unions will not be able to bargain for health and pension benefits, and will be limited in what they can seek in pay raises. They can also, now opt out of paying union dues which was compulsory whether you were in a union or not. A technical rule of the local law required that fiscal measures required a quorum to pass it, causing 14 Democrats to flee across the state line. The reasons are again, somewhat recondite, but essentially they tried to boycott the bill and failed. Gover Scott Walker signed it on Friday. If you want a fuller explanation of the law and what the implications are, which go far deeper than a bit of union reform, look here:

http://lezgetreal.com/2011/02/the-rest-of-wisconsin%E2%80%99s-tea-party-agenda/

Again, this would not be particularly newsworthy were it not for the mayem and anger that the bill caused. Rival factions have been vocal and on occasion physical, in their thousands, out on the street of Milwaukee. Scott Walker publicly did not rule out calling out the National Guard.

It is seen in the States as a battle between the rule of law, by Republicans and the right of collective bargaining, by the Democrats. Republicans have even rolled out the British exemplar of the battle between democracy, as they see it, and the rule of the mob, that of the miners' strikes, led by Arthur Scargill. One right-wing commenter quotes Thatcher:

There has come into existence a fashionable view, convenient to many special interest groups, that there is no need to accept the verdict of the majority: that the minority should be quite free to bully, even coerce, to get the verdict reversed...Now that democracy has been won, it is not heroic to flout the law of the land as if we struggled in a quagmire where civilization had yet to be built. The concept of fair play - a British way of saying 'respect for the rules' - must not be used to allow the minority to overbear the tolerant majority. Yet these are the very dangers which we face in Britain today...

Now, that there is no doubt that had the Democrats attended they vital session, they would have lost and the mass migration was designed to sink the bill, but the Republicans tweaked it, and as policiticians do, they simply found a form of words that they could point to and tell the public that what they were doing was legal. Even the opposition admit this: "I think we're screwed," observed a union member.

This issue comes down to the kind of tension that communities are experiencing everywhere, to be specific, the tension between a public spending deficit, and the need to reduce it and the erosion of rights, jobs and bargaining abilities of public sector employees.

There have been claims, by the Democrats, that the bill does not have popular support. This may or may not be true, but the people of Wisconsin elected Scott Walker and elected a majority Republican legislature, regardless of manifesto omissions. There is no doubt that the flimsy fibre of democracy is beign stretched.

On the left, of course the liberals are coming out in force and the usual suspects, such as Rev Jesse Jackson have trotted over to Milwaukee to rally the antis, but to get to the core of the argument, perhaps it is best left to this writer from the Huffington Post:

This is the most important fight of our lives. Despots and wannabe dictators always try to destroy unions so they can assume complete control. This fight is about our democracy and it is up to us to save our democracy and our nation's future.
(Stewart Acuff, Utility Workers Union of America)

It interests me that both sides claim this is a fight about democracy. And yet, it should not be. Democracy, for what it is worth, takes place when a Governer is elected. He wins by a simple majority and has de facto carried the will of the majority.

To somehow claim that democracy is the privilege of a minority, however noisy, is preposterous. The Republicans won. No use crying about it now. In order to win they used the mechanism that the opposition signed up to. The Democrats would not be moaning now, if they had won, that the very fabric of democracy was under threat. They too signed up to a mechanism that is becoming increasingly susceptible to subversion and corruption. It would be better to ask if the concept of democracy is a neutral concept, because this to me seems to be the issue. And it is always the minority party who shouts loudest and claims "unfair", regardless of whether that minority is Republican or Democrat. You have stick with the programme if you are to give it any degree of absolute credibility, through good times and bad.

We in the UK have now seen how Democracy is a neutral mechanism, but by its very nature it is a glib solution and only of use once every four or five years. The rest of the time, politicians do as they please. And so, citizens of Milwaukee, I suggest you forget your current line of attack, and think a little deeper about by what mechanisms the kind of rights and freedom you seek can be gotten. For, democracy does not seem to be working.

Weasel Music Biz Exclusive

2011-03-11T01:05:00.001Z

MIKE HURST TALKS!

by
Wrinkled Weasel

CLICK HERE TO GO STRAIGHT TO ARTICLE

The year is 1962. Lights flood the small performance area at Quaglino’s, a night club in St James’, London. A few people sit in the audience, but they are shrouded in darkness. Mike Hurst, at the age of 18, has come for an audition and stands like a rabbit caught in the headlights waiting to do his song. He’s auditioning for The Springfields and he gets the job. It’s a big break. Within a year, The Springfields are cracking the USA charts, being the first British act to do so. They play the Carnegie Hall. Back home, The Island of Dreams peaks at number five in a British Pop Chart dominated by American artists. They are headlining everywhere, including the Royal Command Performance at the London Palladium, a show watched on TV by 23 million people. Suddenly, a teenager has more than he could have ever dreamed of. Everyone wants to know him. How was he going to handle it, and what was he going to do when the bubble burst?

51 top 40 singles and 25 gold and platinum albums later, I caught up with Mike to find out how he faced fame, fortune and failure. It is the story of one of the most underrated performers and record producers still working today. For a young man whose mother had put him on the stage at the age of four, and who, not long after appeared on the same bill as Max Miller and Sid Field in variety, life has turned full circle. Mike Hurst still produces records, runs training courses for young people who want to get into the music business and still has a passion for theatre, including pantomime, all of which benefit from having some of Mike’s friends along who just happen to be among the most prolific and highly rated session musicians of the last fifty years.

Mike Hurst’s story is compelling, not only because almost everyone in Twentieth Century popular music knows where he fits in, but also because his career spans half a century and is a cogent narrative of the radical changes in music and culture that took place. What took place was a transition in pop, which had its beginnings in stage variety, to a culture shock of rock and roll that absorbed and reflected massive changes; about attitudes, youth, identity, and so on. At the hypocentre of this period of rapid and profound change was the 1960’s London Scene. Everyone in the business knew everyone else. They played the same venues, relaxed at the same clubs and took comfort stops at the same terrible motorway services. In those early days of liminality and mohair suits, nobody suspected that within five years the world of popular music would change forever. As Hurst says of the variety acts like Anne Shelton and Russ Conway, “They all got blown away”. This is the story of an individual who made his mark during one of the most intensely creative periods of the last century.

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE

Games without Frontiers - Airport Strikes

2011-03-09T11:09:00.002Z

It's a Fokker

by Wrinkled Weasel

Yet again the holiday plans of thousands are in jepoardy due to threatened strikes by ground workers in Spanish Airports. Workers at the state-owned company Aena are planning strikes set to take place over several months, timed to coincide with high volume travel dates, including Easter and the Royal Wedding. The dispute centres around Spain's plans to privatise the company which employs around 12,500 ground staff.

You may recall that, last year, Spanish Air Traffic Controllers were marched back to their stations at gun-point after the government took a tough line on the disruption, but this dispute is more serious because it lies at the heart of the European Debt Crisis.

Spain said in December it wanted to partially privatise
state airport operator AENA, which it says could be worth up to
30 billion euros ($42 billion), alongside its state lottery as
part of plans to reduce the national debt. (Reuters)

I can see where the Spanish government is coming from. Spain is one of the PIGS, a member of the unflattering, Groucho Marx style club that comprises Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain. Spain has the fifth largest economy in the EU but its gross debt as a percentage of GDP has almost doubled in four years. Of the PIGS, Spain is the least likely to default on or restructure its debts, and it is a long way from its fellow PIG, Ireland, but it is still on the sick list.

What is happening?

Europe is reeling from decades of Daddy Warbucks largesse, generosity it could not afford, given to people who thought there was no tomorrow. What was a politically convenient stance, that of increasing public spending and supporting rampant capitalism, has simply, come home to roost. Spain has already taken severe public sector measures and the privatisation of Aena is just another cut in the budget.

If anything, the ground staff at Spanish airports are victims of poor expectation management and authors of their own greed, but as austerity and debt hits home, people will start jumping up and down and demanding they get to the head of the queue.

As I have said before, when you have somebody by the balls it focuses their attention. None of us are going to escape the consequences of our actions. All of us are heading for older cars, cheaper food, cheaper holidays and higher utility bills. If the workers at Aena fully understood that they are as much a part of the problem as the people they are going to stuff over this Easter, perhaps they might show a little more sympathy.

Quiet

2011-03-09T00:47:00.001Z

I have been quiet recently. The holiday put me in a mellow mood, certainly not a rant mood. Also, I have been working on your behalf! In the next seven days I am going to post the first part of a long interview with Mike Hurst. It's not just about Mike, it's about the Sixties and the maelstrom of creativity. Mike just happened to be in the middle of it, but it is his story nevertheless. There are not only lots of contributions from Mike himself but also from his mates, Clem Cattini and Ray Fenwick. If you don't already know who they are google them and you will see they were and are major players in the last 40 odd years of music.

Here's a teaser, a sample from the piece. Hurst is describing the Mighty Garvey sessions that he did with Manfred Mann, and in particular, Mighty Quinn:

Tom McGuinness and Mike Hugg wanted to do the blues but the fact is they were a pop/rock band. Manfred was incredible. He was the most laid back character I have ever come across. You went into a session, from the day before or the week before and he’d taken the master tapes home and lost them. So life was quite strange. He’d sit there and read the paper most of the time as well. I didn’t want to do Mighty Quinn. They came to me and asked if I would produce it and I listened to the Bob Dylan demo and it was horrible. I didn’t think there was a hit in it. I could not hear anything in the song. Manfred persuaded me to do it, and I was doing an album with them anyway (Mighty Garvey), so I agreed to do Mighty Quinn and it was number one everywhere in 1968. They had a sound a bit like the Byrds, with Tom McGuinness’ National Steel guitar. I tried to make it sound more American. It was after all, a Dylan song. It could have been a mistake because of course they are English, apart from Manfred, who is South African, but as it turned out, it wasn’t a mistake. Klaus Voorman did the flute on it as well as playing bass. In retrospect the song had a great hook.

People pieces, I like. I have been lucky so far and have been able to get some movers and shakers. Some pieces are still being negotiated because you just don't get interviews with people who are being pursued by Panorama by sounding nice on the phone.

The point of this is that I am trying to establish some credibility. I am trying to raise the bar. When you come here I want you to feel that, despite our limited resources, you can expect similar standards to the ones you get in the MSM. It's not easy, but the traffic I am getting now justifies it.

So please bear with me. I have not given up, I just want to do more, better.

And if you are curious, this is what Mike Hurst did with the strange case of Manfred Mann and Mighty Garvey:

Frog Blog

2011-03-07T00:58:00.000Z

From Under the Napkin

by Wrinkled Weasel

Over the sea, in the land we take the piss out of but secretly love, France, I mean, there is the sort of trouble that we should know about. First, a lesson in Karma, for what goes around comes around. Erstwhile President, Jacques Chirac is finally going to court on corruption charges after years of claiming Presidential immunity and fielding legal spoilers of the kind that would inspire our Silvio Berlusconi. Chirac is charged with siphoning off public money to fund political party activities.

One French President, Mitterand, had a last meal of Ortolans. Ortolans are tiny endangered birds that are drowned in Armagnac, cooked and eaten whole, or perhaps, sans tête. This is highly illegal. The eater usually consumes these little birds from under a napkin, not because it is against the law to eat them, but to preserve the aromas and stop God seeing them do the deed.

I mention the Ortolans because the idea of a Frenchman hiding from God under a napkin rather appeals to my sense of humour. Somehow, it gives one an insight into the ontological proclivities of the average gourmand. However, reality intervenes at times and Monsewer Chirac is to be held to account.

There has been a distinct shift to the right, and I am not talking about trousers. Little M Sarkozy, dispite, or perhaps because of his habit of insisting on being surrounded by dwarves for all public appearences, is now less popular than his National Front opponent. This may have someting to do with the fact that the leader of the NF in France is no longer a fat old slobbering anti-semite and anti everything that is not a French fat slobberer, but his good-looking daughter, Marine Le Pen, who has so far managed not to be too vocal about immigrants, but vocal enough to gain favour with the sans-culottes.

It is a fact that people in Europe are fed up of having the issue of immigration swept under the carpet. The far right have wised up to the tricks of the trade. Get yourself a chick and not a fat slobberer. Make the face of hyper nationalism look attractive. It appears to have worked.

I think people are right to discuss immigration even if the political parties of the centre don't want to know. All I suggest is that we peek under the napkin once in a while and check out what they don't want us (or God) to see.

Jane Russell

2011-03-06T16:37:00.002Z

My Encounter with the two and only Jane Russell

by Wrinkled Weasel

Brunette Bombshell, Jane Russel died last week aged 89. I bumped into her sometime ago. She was radiant and fragrant, in a babypowder MILF kind of way. Enough to penetrate the boozy, smoky fug of Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club.

Possibly the only thing I miss about London is that you can just bump into some interesting people, and not just celebs either. I once had a fascinating conversation with the sister of Sir Stanley Spencer, the British 20th Century artist. There was just me and her, in a gallery at the Royal Academy. I also remember a burly policeman suddenly opening his arm and catching me, in order to stop me bumping into Her Majesty the Queen, who was in The Strand, apparently making a private visit to her bankers. I did not see her, my mind was elswhere, and a small person got out of a very big black car. I took me a moment to figure out what was going on.

Jane Russell was on a visit to Ronnie Scott's and so was I. That night it featured Anita O'Day and O'Day paid tribute to the star. Russell was a large lady. In fact, in my usual befogged way I stumbled into her in a doorway at the club, narrowly missing a collision with her substantial pointy attributes. I think I said, "Excuse me, Ma'am". Her look of disdain was penetrating and I stepped aside. She must have been in her sixties, but appeared reasonably well-presented.

The world seems to channel itself through singular cultural portals which has the effect of making the world seem small. It is not. What it is is selective. Occasionally there is over-spill, as for example, when an erstwhile interviewee discovered his likeness on the side of a mud hut in Africa, but largely, unless you are famous in some way yourself, this is not going to happen. By and large, the notables of this world inhabit the same rat runs, and unless you move in those places, you will only ever see them on television. Which is a shame, because really, you have no idea how they smell.

Wake up, and smell the diesel

2011-03-06T13:12:00.002Z

by Wrinkled Weasel

I wonder what you are going to eat for tea/dinner/supper tonight. The reason for this is that, recently, I have been making a lot of things from pulses, eggs, potatoes and stuff from the back of the cupboard. Apart from my little break, I have had to be a bit careful of late. Careful with money.

I think I know what's on your mind. It is not the revolutions that are sweeping the Middle East. It is not the latest by-election which humiliated the Lib Dems. It is not even the role of the Church in society today. What it probably is is the cost of fuel and food. Curiously enough the cost of fuel is linked to the problems in the Middle East, so in a way, you are thinking about it. But what is on your mind is the increasing cost of your journey to work, and your stagnant income and the erosion of what you might call (if you are wealthy enough) mad money. This is different to standing still money or walking around money. Mad money is what you spend on a night out or a new pair of shoes or a Ryobi bench saw.

Right now, you may not have mad money. You may not have much walking around money, but what you have to have is standing still money. That is the money that you must, absolutely must spend each month, and it includes petrol and diesel.

Alan Duncan, a former oil trader among other things, tells us that £1.30 per litre of petrol will look like a luxury in a few months time and foresees auto fuel reaching £2 a litre.

What will this mean to people like me who are already beginning to make the kind of economies that you only saw during the days of food rationing? It means at least a doubling of your standing still costs. Not only on the journey to work, but on everything you need.

Right now, governments and regimes all over the ME are falling. What will make a government shudder in the civilised world is the cost of basic commondities. They have you by the balls. Very few people will allow their minds to wander when someone has them by the balls and perhaps now, after all the spin and the lies and the stealth taxation, people, ordinary people will wake up and smell the diesel.

Why I Am Not An Atheist, by Jim Baxter

2011-02-28T19:18:00.000Z

To call someone an atheist is to suggest a definite attitude, even if that attitude is a negative one. To me it suggests a reaction against something, a rejection of a philosophy. And that certainly seems to be how many atheists present themselves. I don’t reject religion. Not really. Not f I’m being totally honest with you. It’s simply not something that means anything to me. Religion is something that I seldom notice. Sometimes of course the religious will tell me that I’ll notice all right when it is too late. That used to annoy me. Not now.

I know religion only as something other people have in their thoughts. I recognise that it is important to them and that it is for many something that is at the very centre of what they do and how they view the world and everything in it. But I have no reaction to it. It seldom even occurs to me that it's there. I am therefore not something that can be defined in terms of the absence of something that others have in their thinking. Nor am I interested, not any more anyway, in arguing about it.

Oh, I used to argue, and not that long ago either, sometimes just for the sake of continuing an argument that would change nobody’s views. I understand why some people who are happy to call themselves atheists get so worked up about those who refuse to see their ‘sense’. I understand them because I used to be one of them. And not that long ago either. Eventually even I had to recognise that I was no different from some religious people, by no means all, who become incensed when they are the ones to be disagreed with. These attitudes are not unique either to atheists or to religious people. They merely mark out intolerant people.

So, if I am an atheist it is only in the sense of fitting a dictionary definition of the word. Even then I would say that if I am an atheist of any kind then I am a ‘recovering atheist’. That doesn’t mean that I have moved any closer to having religious beliefs myself. I haven’t and I never will. Trust me on this. I’d say rather that my sympathies are now with the forgiving in all matters of faith, the meek in that regard. We shall inherit the Earth.

Hols

2011-02-27T23:29:00.001Z

Blogging will be light this week, for I am off for a break. The wife and kids all look as though they need it.

Back soon. WW

The Irish may have spoken, but they are pissing in the wind

2011-02-27T12:30:00.001Z

Springtime for Rompuy and Euroland, Winter for Ireland by Wrinkled Weasel

Dublin

The Irish elections have resulted in a catastrophic defeat for the ruling Fianna Fail party. The words "political annihilation" have been used to describe the defeat, which prompted a massive turnout of the electorate in the wake of large cuts in public services and tax increases. The measures, forced upon the Republic of Ireland by the EU/IMF bailout is apparently non-negotiable. One analyst says that the cost of servicing the debts incurred on the back of the banking crisis amounts to 85% of Ireland's income tax revenue.

What strikes me about this is that this was where the UK was headed when Gordon Brown was in power. To be fair, the global crisis in banking was headed off quite quickly and dare I say, efficiently, at least as compared to the Irish situation. Perhaps the key difference is not Gordon Brown, but the fact that we are not in the Eurozone, constrained to propping up a massive Ponzi Scheme.

Britain has used a number of levers to work the global problem on a domestic level. Inflation, the secret tax collector has done most of the work accompanied be devaluation. And it is the latter that has made all the difference. We are not in the Eurozone. We have not suffered by having an artificially high currency. We are, however, not immune. The UK has lost billions in the Irish Banking sector. RBS, which is mostly owned by the British Government and owns Ulster Bank, wrote off £1.16 Billion last year on bad Irish debt. Lloyds, in whom the British Government has a 43% stake, similarly wrote off £4.3 Billion.

So, although we may be thankful that we are not in the Euro currency fiasco, we are being affected and it will be taxpayer's who, as usual foot the bill, for there is no question that private bankers will be paying towards the crippling public debt in Ireland, nor is it likely that the change in government will affect the loan agreement with the EU.
The Irish people may have spoken, but it will change nothing. The lesson to be learned is that although the economic crisis is global, it has been unduly worsened by the madness of protecting the Euro.

Friday Driving Song

2011-02-25T14:59:00.000Z

I have mentioned Michael Chapman before but you might have missed it. Three extraordinary albums, Rainmaker, Fully Qualified Survivor and Wrecked Again. He's still touring at the age of 70.

Another Country

2011-02-25T12:18:00.001Z

Retford - Take Water and Sandwiches

By Wrinkled Weasel

Britons returning from strife-torn Libya have apparently made criticisms of the government's evacuation strategy. One man, a former career soldier, described the operation as "shambolic". He should know better. What was he doing in Libya in the first place?

It has always been a source of wry amusement to me that British Citizens who return from the Costa Del Sol or Retford, still complain about the funny food and the lack of the things they are used to. It is as if they do not understand that they are somewhere else. Wolfy, one of our writers did a piece about piracy (WW passim). The pirates will pick up anybody who looks vulnerable and take them as hostages, with a bit of torture on the side, just to maintain some pirate credibility.

When you go abroad, nay, when you step outside your door, you must assume some responsibility for your action. It is no use travelling to some terrible corner of the world, getting into trouble and then expecting someone to get you out of it. It adds insult to injury to then complain about it when they do.

Young Weasel went to Nepal last year to make a film and ended up being hijacked by Maoists. He was fine (he told me after the event). I knew, when Young Weasel announced his plans, that there could be some danger. I also knew that he posseses a certain amount of skill with people, courage and tenacity. It means that, although I was concerned, I felt that he was doing what he enjoyed most. Certainly, YW was aware that he was his own man and I am sure it never occurred to him that he was doing anything other than being very explicitly somewhere else.
You cannot travel any distance without taking account of your safety. If you do get into trouble, then perhaps people may be able to help, but first remember; nobody forced you to go and if you are surprised or shocked by what you find, and if you get tummy trouble or die horribly, you should be contemplating your options, not thrashing about expecting the nanny state to bail you out. And that applies whether you are in Rio or Retford.

Faking Good, Faking Bad

2011-02-25T10:28:00.000Z

You Are What You Pretend To Be

by JIM BAXTER

Kurt Vonnegut wrote that. The words were spoken by a character in one of his books but it is quoted sometimes as though it were Vonnegut’s own philosophy and therefore great with wisdom. Shakespeare has Duncan say that there is no art to tell the mind’s construction in the face. People often quote that too, as wisdom, apparently ignorant of the context – that it was spoken by a man who was about to be murdered by a close associate whom he should have known better. That Shakespeare wrote the line doesn’t mean that he believed the philosophy. If he did he was a fool and that seems unlikely. Similarly, as a philosophy, the words spoken by Vonnegut’s character is complete rubbish, and that is not necessarily a reflection in itself on Vonnegut. It’s a common fallacy to assume that especially pithy aphorisms spoken by an author’s characters must be the opinions of the author, and this is not to invoke ‘literary theories’ such as deconstructionism or other quintessentially French entertainments.

The ‘philosophy’, for now I must put sardonic makers around it, applies, in any case, only to attributes which are not readily testable. If I pretend to be a concert class cellist that doesn’t make me one and I can be found out soon enough. But I may be a nasty person and pretend to be kind and not be found out unless I am careless and let the mask slip. If I pretend to be kind does that make me kind? What about the other way around? If I am an emotionally battered person who desperately wants to be liked I may pretend to be nasty, not because I truly am but because I wish to control the rejection from others that I have come to expect by causing it myself. Does that make me a nasty person or I am a really a kind person who just needs a little more understanding?

Well, no. You are not a kind person in that latter case. In that latter case you really are what you pretend to be because you are not pretending because it is all about you. When you do bad you are what you do if you are getting what you need. You are always what you do if what you do is bad and it makes you feel better about yourself or saves you from something.

If we are impatient, spiteful, irrational, needy, histrionic, selfish, thoughtless, self-regarding, and so many more things that are so much to be disliked then to the extent that we are those things those things are really us. We are not ‘under too much stress’, ‘having a bad day’, or ‘not really like that’. We really are like that.

In Robert Bolt’s, ‘A Man for All Seasons’, Thomas More is depicted as insulting some of his important friends when he knows that he himself is doomed. He does this for them, to make it easy for them, to save them from association with him if they choose to believe his insults, dislike him for them, and save themselves. That is what they do choose.

But then he is a saint. For most of us, you can be truly good, or if you’re bad enough you can fake good, but you can’t fake bad unless you are really good and you want to relieve people of the burden of liking you, entirely for their sake. Most people who behave badly do so entirely for themselves and their own precious opinions of their own worth, and the more they do it, the more they truly are the type of person who behaves badly. They truly are who not who they pretend to be but who they pretend to themselves not to be.

Mike Hurst's All Time Favourite Tracks

2011-02-24T12:53:00.000Z

As Promised Mike Hurst's All Time Favourite Tracks

WAVELENGTHS 2

Thursday on WW - The man who produced this song

2011-02-24T00:03:00.003Z

by Wrinkled Weasel

Later Today, the first part of my talks with Mike Hurst. Is the name unfamiliar? He produced this, the first and original recording of The First Cut is the Deepest by PP Arnold 44 years ago. The song was written by Cat Stevens, but technically Cat's release was later and so is a cover of his own song. Hurst produced both. PP Arnold is backed by a band who later became known as The Nice. And what ever happened to Mike Hurst? A "favourite tracks" piece follows later today and in a week or two the full Mike Hurst Story.

UPDATE: Mike Hurst's All time favourite tracks on WAVELENGTHS 2

Labour's appeasement of Libya goes back, way back.

2011-02-23T22:54:00.001Z

Labour did plenty of deals with Libya

by Wrinkled Weasel

The wires are alive tonight with reports that a former Libyan Justice Minister has claimed that the country's leader, Col Gaddafi ordered the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 and also says he has proof that not only did Gaddafi order it, he ordered the freed suspect, al-Megrahi to place the bomb.

Well, there are many ways to look at this development. Perhaps it is no surprise to some. Perhaps, the source of this has an interest in gaining a place of safety somewhere, perhaps even the USA. Certainly it will play well over there.

I have a long memory. I remember WPC Yvonne Fletcher. Interestingly, the name of Jack Straw returns to the world of murk and grubby pragmatism once more. In 2009, The Times published a story that a deal was done between Straw and the Libyan government over the death of the police woman, for whom no one was ever charged. This is what the article said

The Libyan killer of a British policewoman will never be brought to justice in Britain after a secret deal approved by Jack Straw.
The Foreign Office bowed to Libyan pressure and agreed that Britain would abandon any attempt to try the murderer of WPC Yvonne Fletcher, shot outside the Libyan embassy in London 25 years ago.
Anthony Layden, Britain’s former ambassador to Libya, said this weekend he had signed the agreement with the Libyan government three years ago, when Straw was foreign secretary. At the time Britain was negotiating trade deals worth hundreds of millions of pounds with Libya.
The deal followed a visit by Tony Blair, then prime minister, to meet Colonel Gadaffi in March 2004 after Libya announced that it was ending its nuclear weapons programme.

Oh dear. What else would Labour have done to prop up its doomed economy? Sell their grandmothers? Tell Lies? It seems as if they were prepared to do anything to appease a despot and keep their own corrupt regime in power.

Sea Monsters

2011-02-23T14:14:00.002Z

By Wolfy

I am an armchair seafarer with cred. I grew up in a seaside village in Connecticut where many old houses sported Widow Walks and I spent two years as an expat in Bermuda, which is as close to being at sea as one can get without actually sailing about . . . come to think of it, I recently read of the launching of the world’s largest cruise ship and it’s dimensions were practically the size of the island of Bermuda, so there you go. As a child I read Robin Lee Graham’s Dove, the tale of his five year solo sailing trip around the world and I dreamed of doing the same some day. I was obsessed with Jacques Cousteau, still am really, and I fully admit to fantasizing that I was aboard the Calypso during my days of Turtle Tagging in Bermuda (my Bermudian shipmates now know why I insisted they speak in French accents only).

I understand the strong desire to go to sea, despite the perils of seafaring. They told Columbus he would sail right off the edge of the earth didn't they? But he took to the waters with little trepidation. Since ancient times, tales of storms, sea monsters, and sirens have returned to land on the lips of sailors, and what good has it done? Has it thwarted others from setting sail? No! To the contrary, the fools keep coming. And for as long as men have been traveling the oceans, there have been pirates. Once people figured out that the ocean was a great way import and export, the pirates figured out the ocean was a great venue for thievery.

Funny thing is, modern society seems to think that pirates are a thing of the past, only to be conjured in modern times by Johnny Depp and old scratchy films like Captain Blood. But yesterday’s news reminded the world that pirates are alive and well off the coast of Somalia and stretching far into the waters of the Indian Ocean. I have been fascinated with stories of Somalian Pirates for a couple of years now -- I won’t claim to have read every word written about them or to have solutions to the problem, but I will say that ultimately my interest in them is born of my wonder of the mystery of what happens on the sea. I used to listen to Harbor Radio when I lived in Bermuda and late at night one could hear the most horrendous dramas playing out: a sinking sail boat, a tanker caught in a storm, the airlifting of a mortally ill sailor . . . these were things that Land People knew nothing about. It was an unseen world.

Four Americans were murdered by Somali pirates yesterday and the story is still unfolding. What we do know is that their luxury yacht was captured by the pirates only a few days ago and then the U.S. Navy shadowed the yacht for many miles while attempting to negotiate the release of the American hostages. The New York Times tell us there was a breakdown in talks over money sometime early yesterday and “the situation quickly went south from there.” The Navy is claiming the pirates fired their weapons first and the pirates are claiming the Navy fired first. And now? The Navy is holding several Somali pirates prisoner on board a U.S. Naval ship and what they’ve got now is a Hot Potato.

I was amazed at comments in the New York Times and even among some of my Facebook friends. It quickly became apparent to me that this may be the first time people have read about pirates off the eastern coast of Africa -- kidnappings and hijackings have been occurring for many years now, but it took the killing of Americans to bring this international problem to the forefront in the States. There were calls to dispose of the pirates at sea and to commence air raids on Somali villages, “That’ll teach ‘em to mess with Americans!” There seems to be no collective memory of the failed U.S. mission in Mogadishu in 1993 (see Black Hawk Down) and no logical thought put into these reactionary solutions.

Slaughtering them wouldn't be right, bringing them to the U.S. for trial wouldn't be right either. They should be returned to the Somali government to stand trial really and again, this is another non-solution, because the Somalis won't try them. Somalia needs to be held responsible for the actions of their citizens in international waters. The U.S. and countries who use the Indian Ocean need to rely heavily on diplomatic tools to solve Somalia's problems. This is a problem of poverty at it's base, plain and simple. And so far the Somali pirates have been doing alright for themselves -- they earned a cool £650,000 for the safe return of British pleasure sailors Paul and Rachel Chandler back in November.

Death means little or nothing to the pirates. If we kill them, more will take their place. Showing strength and force won't frighten them -- there must be a concerted effort to work with Somalia to stop the trend of piracy. The Wikipedia entry on Somali Pirates sums up the answer to this plight quite nicely, “Ultimately, many authors argue that the long term solution to Somali piracy is political securitisation. Governments would have to employ socioeconomic measures such as poverty alleviation and good governance in order to deal with piracy (and even terrorism) effectively. In particular, a sustainable solution requires the establishment not only of effective governance but also the rule of law, reliable security agencies, and alternative employment opportunities for the Somali people.”

And what do I think of the Americans who lost their lives yesterday? It is a fact that they were fervent missionaries and when I think of missionaries, only one image comes to mind -- yop, Klaus Kinski in Fitzcarroldo, a little feverish German in a white linen suit and Panama hat dead set on bringing opera to the people of the Amazon. He succeeds in maiming, murdering, and going completely insane. And he destroys a perfectly lovely riverboat in the process. The voice of Caruso tames no wild beast, especially not Kinski. So there you have it, I believe missionaries are just as extreme as pirates and terrorists are.

I read a news release in Reuters last year that caused me to write a short story about the pirates: “Somalia’s transitional government called on Russia on Friday to explain why it had cut 10 Somali pirates adrift in the Gulf on Aden without navigation equipment or much hope of survival. Russian forces last week stormed a hijacked oil tanker in a rescue operation that killed one pirate. Russia said 10 others arrested were later set loose aboard one of the small vessels they used in the attack. A military official said they were stripped of their weapons and navigation equipment. Russian media later quoted a military source saying the pirates were now likely dead.“

The story, I Was A Pirate, was my attempt to be there, get inside the skin of a pirate. Flawed as the story might be, it accomplished something very important for me personally -- it allowed me to see both sides, which I can only hope the powers that be can do in the next few days. The Russians scuttled their captured pirates without any international remorse, but the U.S. Navy won’t be able to so simply dispose of their booty of pirates. I suppose many thought new pirating would be discouraged by the Russian’s actions of last year, but it was only a temporary solution, a singular solution for that particular incident. The world will be watching the Navy over the next few days, as will I. Whatever happens, I predict pirating will prevail for some time to come.

A perv's guide to literature

2011-02-23T10:26:00.001Z

Those of you with literary bent (I have started already) may find the following, shall we say, vocabulary, useful in defining a genre that hitherto has been neglected. Those who are new to our country and wish to take part in its rich and diverse language will also benefit.

Lunge. verb. Can refer to that moment when a gentleman or lady moves towards a part of another gentleman or lady.
Gusset. noun. Parts of clothing that conceal or support naughty bits.
Nomenclature: A collection of naughty words
Quiver: verb. An action, perhaps involuntary, caused by touching or almost touching.
Kumquat: noun. Although many fruits and vegetables are deemed pervy because of shape, this one rests on its name alone.
Fagottini: Often confused with a type of pasta. Quite a lot of Italian words sound rude, so you can always rely on using one or two, such as pizzicato or even, vibrato. The latter has much going for it since it conceals the word, bra.
Muffler: Useful for keeping things warm
Futtock: Most parts of the body can sound funny if you have an imagination.
Crevice: A sprightly, portmanteau noun for any part of the body that may be rude.
Trouser: The single trouser, such as in the phrase trouser area.
Scunthorpe: More or less self-explanatory, as is Staines.
Bulge: Again, can be attributed to various rude bits.
Moist: It is a sad fact that most naughty parts of the body will be moist at some point, but you can use this to your advantage.
Flange: Not just a convenient guitar effect
Gyratory: Sally Traffic often slips "Hangar Lane Gyratory" into what sounds like a perfectly innocuous traffic bulletin.
Vestibule: All containers or areas are a rich source of perv delight.

There may be more....

McBride ll - Power Never Sleeps

2011-02-22T11:46:00.000Z

by Wrinkled Weasel

Over at the Speccie, Fraser Nelson brings us an exclusive: Damien McBride, Brown's former ratfucker-in-chief has become Head of Media at CAFOD, the Catholic Church's overseas aid charity. Of course, this is just another stepping stone in Mr McBride's journey back to the kid of power and authority that henchmen like him live on. Before too long, he will be working at the Vatican for one of the Cardinals, and then, perhaps the conversation might go something like this:

Cardinal: Come in, Mr McBride...I've been expecting you.

McBride: Your Eminence.

Cardinal: We have a problem. World Poverty.

McBride: Would you like it....eliminated?

Cardinal: Yes, perhaps it would be better if Poverty was...taken care of. It has become a nuisance. Do you think you may be of assistance in this matter?

McBride: Is the Pope a.. erm, yes, Your Eminence. A few, shall we say, well placed emails will sort it.

Cardinal: Mr McBride, perhaps the details are best left to you. Oh and Damien, you will be pleased to know that I have dealt with the Guido situation.

McBride: Oh yes, your Eminence? Can I get on with it then?

Cardinal: Yes, and remember, my son, Illegitimis non carborundum

Comment Moderation

2011-02-21T18:53:00.000Z

I regret that comment moderation has been applied to this blog due to the comments of anonymous bigots. It's a sad state of affairs, but I will not tolerate persecution of any community or comments that incite hatred and ignorance.

Breaking: Gadaffi en-route to Isle of Wight

2011-02-21T18:25:00.001Z

GADAFFI FLEES TO COSTA DEL FAILED DESPOT by Wrinkled Weasel

Tonight sources in the small island on the South Coast of the UK (teletext) have claimed that the Libyan Leader and camping enthusiast has moved his tent and cadre of highly trained pneumatic guardswomen to the Isle of Wight. Speaking from Newport a speaker said that the Colonel will be accomodated at Carisbroke Castle, scene of King Charles the First's exile. Meanwhile, the Intenational Community have condemned the move, declaring that the Isle of Wight has become a haven for "Despots, brigands and Jet Harris, formerly of The Shadows". Local residents are known to have mixed feelings. "Well he seems like a nice chap, but the erection of tents and portaloos is strictly controlled on the Island after the trouble we had with hippies and Robert Stigwood", said a local, "And this time of year he risks the danger of getting his assets frozen".

NO2HS2

2011-02-21T15:57:00.001Z

I must declare an interest. I am prejudiced against wasting £30 billion of public money to shave 33 minutes off the journey time between London and Birmingham but nothing or only a few minutes for other destinations. Travelling to the Continent will require a connection from Euston to St Pancras stations on part of the commuter-standard North London Line .

The economics don't stack up and the environmental impact is horrendous. Why should people's homes and lives be wrecked to satisfy the hidden demands of The Trans European Rail Network . That's not merely the unspoken elephant in the room but the iron bonds to shackle the countries of Europe together. It looks good on a map (see p42 for the UK and p27 for the whole of Europe).

If £30 billion can be afforded to improve the UK's transport infrastructure then surely reinstating the public transport links that feed into the main networks would make more sense economically, socially and evironmentally. This second and third level network was first cut in the Sixties by Dr Beeching, without a cheaper flexible alternative system to replace it, and now this year with the removal of local authority transport subsidies.

Please update your Newspeak Dictionary

2011-02-21T13:12:00.001Z

You will find the following quotes in the "About this Blog" tab:

Dialogue, as we are choosing to use the word, is a way of exploring the roots of the many crises that face humanity today. It enables inquiry into, and understanding of, the sorts of processes that fragment and interfere with real communication between individuals, nations and even different parts of the same organization. In our modern culture men and women are able to interact with one another in many ways: they can sing dance or play together with little difficulty but their ability to talk together about subjects that matter deeply to them seems invariable to lead to dispute, division and often to violence. In our view this condition points to a deep and pervasive defect in the process of human thought. (Bohm, Factor and Garrett 1991)

"If the structure does not permit dialogue the structure must be changed"
— Paulo Freire

People are hell bent on shutting down dialogue. Certain words have become so politicised that you are no longer able to say them. As a concession, you are only able to say them if you belong to the particluar sub-culture to which they refer. For example, there used to be a blog called "Suspect Paki". It was run by a Muslim. There is also a blog called "Trauma Queen" that is run by a gay para-medic.

These people have been party to a language hi-jack. They tell us that they can use a certain word, but I cannot. Thus, the basis of dialogue is slewed in favour of those who have more words at their disposal than me. There is somthing hostile about the way in which communities insist on having a language of their own. The two examples above are actually not very good, but they point to the primary problem, which is one of etymological hegemony.

Abortion has recently gotten the same treatment. A Californian Congresswoman, writing in the Huffington Post, has declared that

Abortion is is a word employed by intolerant people to cast shame on women who choose it.

This statement fields no alternatives, or even a rationale, it is merely accompanied by a sob story. This is not surprising because all arguments emanating from the Politically Correct are cleverly designed to bypass rationality and go straight to emotion. The liberal elite have no real philosophy to deliver, merely rant and rhetoric and because their arguments are so weak they rely on shutting down debate.

The aim of the Newspeak Dictionary in Orwell's book is clear, as told by Orwell himself:
The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought -- that is, a thought diverging from the principles of IngSoc -- should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meaning and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meaning whatever.

So what I am saying is that whilst this hi-jacking of language may be justifiable on certain limited grounds, it does nothing to further dialogue.

We must be careful; people use terms that are dangerous and so cliched that they will only be taken in subliminally. I notice that Brian, in his post below, slips in one or two. His use of the term "religious nutter societies" offends not only me, but they will be something of a blow to the many religiously based organisations who have fought to make our society a better one.

Not all religious people are nutters. The "nutters" pushed for the abolition of slavery. The "nutters" have huge medical missions overseas who deal with anything from cataract operations to HIV/AIDS. The "nutters" refused to fight and instead volunteered for dangerous non-combatant duties during WW1 and WW2. The "nutters" are behind organisations like the Salvation Army, who provide, among other things, help to street prostitutes.

So, please don't tolerate etymological terrorism. Please do not slip in cliches that are not only offensive but actually highly inflammatory and hate-inspiring. If you tolerate this, one day, you will not only not notice what's going on, you will no longer have the words to express it.

Dave, This Is Stupid

2011-02-21T12:26:00.002Z

David Cameron plans to let private companies, charidees, religious societies bid to run public services

In theory, it's a good idea until one remembers the sod off or buy attitude of our utilities that factor a percentage of disgruntled customers (the churn rate) into their business plans. If "your call is important" they would employ more call-handlers and if they really cared about providing good service and keeping your business they would be English speakers.

The future will be dominated by foreign-owned companies intent on using Rip-Off Britain as a milch cow to brighten their domestic balance sheets. The costs of the services will increase, what you receive will fall and the government can wash its hands (or wipe them on the back of its trousers, more like) and claim it's not their fault, make a complaint to the national service regulator, OffUK.

The contracts will be like a honey pot to international organised crime wishing to launder its money through front companies. Look at the multi-£ billion farce of carbon-trading credit thefts. Digressing, I find it hypocritical that the very people who rant about privatising air rave about doing the same for carbon. They're both molecules that cannot be owned but for one some very clever-clever financial types have monetised it for their masters' evil bidding. And what if an ultra religious group sets up a company to run the contraceptive and abortion service with all the service standards box-ticked and then goes into voluntary liquidation, thereby achieving its concealed aim of removing choice?

This isn't to say that our public services are good at the moment. By and large they are shit, mismanaged by incompetents with two aims, to maximise their salaries and impose their PC bigotry on us. As a result, the staff are inadequately trained, demotivated, lack proper leadership and inspiration and are often poorly-paid.

The solution is not to offload the public services but to re instill, preferably with a reign of merciless terror over the upper ranks, the public service ethos. Public service is boring but if done well is satisfying. Reform public services, don't abdicate responsibility. Eric Pickles, the Communities and Local Government Secretary (change that daft title to Minister of Municipal Works) is the very image of the great Alderman Albert Foodbotham of Bradford (I live in Peter Simple's World for part of the year). Go to it Eric, rattle your chain and thump your desk. Action this day!

Update: I have removed the word nutter, meaning extremist, from the phrase religious nutter societies. I have no problem with moderate religious societies like, for example, The Salvation Army, just the extremist sects who promulgate hate like that political nutter party, the BNP. Glad that's clarified things.

Pictures - You need no more.

2011-02-21T10:54:00.002Z

All I will add is that in the Top picture, Gadaffi has a throne of Gold Leaf and Brocade, and Blair has a white plastic garden chair that looks as if it cost £2.50 at B&Q. A Clever, if slightly obvious metaphor.

The Moment

2011-02-20T09:16:00.001Z

What physicists are working towards, although not all of them know it, is that solidity exists only in the fraction of time known as the moment and the moment is real only phenomenologically. You recall your chair as solid throughout the time you have been sitting on it but what you recall are the moments in which it was solid. Its solidity is a bridge to the future which is constantly collapsing just behind the moment and passing into being just ahead of it.

Where is the solidity of your chair a fraction of a second ago? Where is that now? To illustrate this arcing away of reality in all dimensions from the moment or reality coalescing toward it consider the moment represented as a magnet, with the force lines round it as both the decay and coalescence patterns of the phenomenological moment, which know neither past nor future.

Trouble is, you’ll still have to eat and pay bills. Those moments do not arc away. Sleeping rough feels solid all the time.

They never stop being our kids

2011-02-19T23:08:00.000Z

If you are old enough to have grown up children, then this is for you. Photos by Pepper.

Pictures by David B Pepper

http://www.davidbpepper.co.uk/

http://davidbpepper.blogspot.com/

Hypocrisy or Stupidity

2011-02-19T17:59:00.000Z

Members of the Primate Order Considering Taxation Reform

Labour MP Chuka Umannu of the Treasury Select Committee is moaning that Barclays only paid the equivalent of 3% of its profits in Corporation Tax last year. The rate is 28%. Apparently, Barclays offset their losses from the previous year against the tax bill. That is a bad thing for the Left as Tax is a Good Thing because it means that Town Hall Chief Executives and Diversity Coordinators can have salaries competitive with Premier League footie players.

So it follows that the tax system should be altered to remove any loopholes or allowances. Er, the tax code more than doubled in length between 1997 and 2010 when Labour were in power and it's the longest in the world. It's sooo hard to solve a problem when there's only thirteen years available.

That would be the Barclays that didn't need bailing out with taxpayers' money, the Barclays whose President and Group Chief Executive, Bob Diamond, popular Lord Mandelson claimed was the unacceptable face of capitalism a month before the election last yearand then helped prepare for a Treasury Select Committee grilling in January this year.

Why doesn't Chuka Umannu demand that Anthony Charles Lynton Blair opens the curtains on his network of companies and partnerships to ensure he pays every last penny of tax due? After all, he's "a kind of straight kind of guy" with nothing to hide from his Cabinet.

It's suddenly gone very quiet.

in perpetuity

2011-02-19T12:10:00.001Z

It takes the Weasel a long time to figure things out. For example, lying. People tell lies, and some people lie all the time as a sort of default, but for ages it never occurred to me that this happened. I still don't get it really, which is why I have bought so many bad cars from dodgy dealers and why, after responding to several offers in my email, my penis is still only three inches long.

What I wanted to mention though, was a conclusion I came to about t'internet.

A year ago, this blog was trundling along, but I became frustrated by an erroneus precept; that whatever I wrote about, whatever profound thoughts or revelations were committed to this blog, it was all ephemeral. Not anymore. You see, through my dimwitted techno fog I began to notice a remarkable thing. Stuff I wrote, no, dashed off, ages ago is being accessed. Now, you might think it was the kind of post that included key search words (you know the kind and I don't want the traffic) but it isn't! Take a look again at the side bar. Presently you will see a piece about The Alan Parsons Project. It was just one of those posts and I did it on a day when I thought I may as well rather than not. No big deal, no real master plan.

The reason that the APP post has appeared on the side bar is that somebody somewhere has posted it in a forum, or facebooked it or tweeted it or a combination of all three. That post, that, between you and me, I did not give an enormous amount of thought to, has come back to haunt me.

So folks, I have learned my lesson after seven years of blogging. What I write now will be here (wherever that is) for bloody ever. What I write will be read, considered, laughed at and derided, long after I am gone.

And do you know what? In a hundred years time, some biographer or chronicler of "blogs" will assert, with some authority, that Wrinkled Weasel had a three-inch penis.

Bernie has a watching brief on Bahrain F1GP

2011-02-18T17:38:00.000Z

Ecclestone:We have never been involved in religion or politics

With protests in Libya, Bahrain and Yemen, three of the most repressive regimes in the Middle East, and the UN's Human Rights chief now wading in to condemn the violence against protestors the area is fast becoming a troublesome problem for Bernie Ecclestone, Formula One's big (little) daddy.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay says security forces responded in an "illegal and excessively heavy-handed" manner against peaceful demonstrators.
In a statement issued by her office Friday, she condemned the use of live ammunition against protesters in Libya, the use of electric tasers and batons in Yemen, and the use of military-grade shotguns in Bahrain.
Pillay says "particularly egregious are the targeted attacks on journalists, lawyers, human rights defenders and even, in the case of Bahrain, doctors and medical personnel attending to injured protesters".

(Washington Post)

A recent race at the Bahrain circuit had to be cancelled because medical attendants were too busy elsewhere dealing with less mechanical carnage. Which poses a problem for Ecclestone who is reportedly watching and waiting. There is a time limit on this though. In a week's time he will have to make a decision. The race weekend begins 11th March and the teams need to be there with all of their equipment and drivers a week before that for testing.

This may appear not to amount to a hill of beans, given the political state of play, but whether Bernie likes it or not, a lot of people will be watching to see if there is linkage, tacit support for those "egregious" attacks. There is no doubt that had this been a game of cricket, public opprobrium would have caused an abort. Financially, of course, a cricket tour is a minnow and GP1 is a behemoth. Bernie elects to turn a blind eye to politics and religion: "We've never been involved in religion or politics. We've never made a decision on this. It's not for us to run a country", he says.

Countries like Bahrain need all the international credibility they can get. Given the nationalistic nature of events like the Grand Prix, I cannot help wondering if Bernie is burying his head in all that desert sand.

WW loses control of blog

2011-02-18T14:19:00.001Z

Democracy is a pain. It is worse than listening to other people until it is your turn to talk. The problem with democracy is that it creeps up on you while you are not looking. And anyway, some people don't play the game according to the rules. Not only that, democracy has a fatal flaw; it plays into the hands of the mob. If, for example, we allowed genuine democracy, that is, one person one vote, on everything, then hanging would be back on the agenda and possibly free fags and booze.

My problem is this. I have recently been joined on the blog by two co-contributors. Sadly, they have turned out badly because they insist on thinking for themselves and in some cases, even arguing with me. I am actually in a minority in my own little world and I risk a coup d'état from within.

Take a look at our side bar. You will see a list of "popular posts". I have no control over these because they are generated by some nasty little algorithm that prefers Royal Wedding stories and costume dramas over the proper stuff we do. And of course it is self fulfilling; the longer these posts stay in the charts, the more people will read them. Now I know why Right Said Fred felt so upset about Brian Adams.

When you give freedom to people, they go to the sweet shop and demand all the Fruit Salads and Candy Prawns in the store. When you give freedom to people they get punch drunk and start ordering pizzas with weird toppings. I never gave my kids any choice when they were little, of food or what they could wear or where they could go. And now they hate me. Actually I didn't and they don't. What I did not have was that thing where you go to someone's house and they say "would young Weasel like a sandwich", and I say "Young Weasel only has brown bread and it must be buttered on one side and by the way is that lettuce cruelty free?" That way lies entourages and a special assistant who blows coke up your ass.

The difficulty with sudden, catastrophic democracy and freedom in general is that it can be ugly and sometimes does not serve the best interests of those who seek it. I am not entirely convinced they even know what they truly want and when they get it if they will be happy. Revolutions can be ugly and may just replace one despotic regime with another.

Ah well, it is time for another generation to fight for causes. As Wordsworth said, The Child is the Father of the Man...France (at the beginning of the Revolution) lured me forth. Wordsworth wanted to be where the action was because he did not trust the media:

Like others, I had skimmed, and sometimes read
With care, the master pamphlets of the day;
Nor wanted such half-insight as grew wild
Upon that meagre soil

And so the spirit of revolution rolls on in the hearts and minds of all who hold truth and justice above some flawed invention of humankind. I am glad I have lost control.

Faces of the Egyptian Revolution

2011-02-18T01:22:00.000Z

DREW CORNICK REPORTS FROM CAIRO:

I initially decided to come to Cairo, when I heard that the revolution had started. Having been on the front lines of many large scale social issue protests in the states, I thought it was time to broaden my horizons, and what better chance than with a Revolution; and quite a peaceful one at that. Also coinciding with the onslaught of the revolution, I came up with the concept Project Uprising, which I am hoping to evolve into a community of activists and story tellers from around the world who will focus on the social issues affecting them, and provide support and exposure for their photos and stories; and this seemed like a great way to start.

I arrived in Cairo 3 days before Mubarak officially stepped down, I should have been here a day earlier, but Lufthansa had cancelled my flight due to low ticket sale volume. And had tickets not been more expensive, I would have been here at least a week earlier, but since I am financing my own trip, I had to make certain concessions.

I have only been hassled one time, by only one guy in his early 20's on the night Mubarak resigned. Strangely enough he was a protest supporter but, apparently he had a bit of nationalist sentiment. However, when he had confronted me, in Arabic, nearly 10 other protesters surrounded him and told him to piss off, and escorted me away saying, "Everything is going to be alright, and Thank you for being here, and welcome to Egypt." It was truly remarkable, that complete strangers came to my rescue. Apart from that guy, I have been welcomed with open arms and open hearts. One protester was so delighted that I took his photo, he gave me his scarf as a gesture of appreciation.

Another remarkable thing is that, for the most part Egypt is completely united presently. Men, women, children, seniors, Muslims, and Christians, are all standing together, getting to know each other and re-building their communities.

"I actually feel safer here, than I do in Los Angeles."

People from home ask me all the time, don't you feel scared, or that you are in harm's way, and in all honesty, I have never felt safer before. The people that are out protesting are really trying to protect members of the press, as they want to get their stories out.

While there have been a few isolated incidents of reporters in harm’s way; you could count them on one hand, you have to realize that throughout this revolution, there have been over 5,000 reporters, journalists, photographers, videographers, bloggers, and technical support staff here, so even 10 people getting harassed is less than 1% of the population of the media here in Cairo. None-the-less, I play it safe and very pragmatically, and try not to draw a whole lot of attention to myself, but that can be rather difficult, traveling around with a large digital SLR wrapped around my neck.

When I pull out my camera to shoot, I try to look for not only visually stunning shots, but shots that are really going to move people. I have started shooting, what I call the "Faces of the Egyptian Revolution," which is a collection of close up shots of individuals who have partaken in the revolution. However, anything that shows life in a different perspective that the typical life of most people in the metropolitan western world, such as tanks and armed soldiers lining the streets, and impoverished protesters, who have nothing to lose and have been out in Tahrir since the beginning. Ultimately, anything that is going invoke some kind of emotional response to the photo.

Drew Cornick is a photo-journalist and activist who lives in Los Angeles, California.

Soon on WW - exclusive report from Cairo

2011-02-17T22:50:00.002Z

Drew Cornick

"I actually feel safer here, than I do in
Los Angeles"

Drew Cornick reports from Cairo where he has been talking to protesters and making a photographic record of the scenes:

I have only been hassled, one time by only one guy in his early 20's on
the night Mubarak resigned. Strangely enough he was a protest supporter
but, apparently he had a bit of nationalist sentiment. However, when he
had confronted me, in Arabic, nearly 10 other protesters surrounded him
and told him to piss off, and escorted me away saying, "Everything is
going to be alright, and Thank you for being here, and welcome to Egypt."
It was truly remarkable, that complete strangers came to my rescue. Apart
from that guy, I have been welcomed with open arms and open hearts.

Full story to follow

photo copyright: Drew Cornick

On Betrayal

2011-02-17T16:16:00.005Z

Weasel's right, of course. (Witch Hunts - Who's Who below)

In situations like this the cliched quotation of E M Forster, "I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country " is trundled out but may I take the opportunity to quote Joseph Conrad, "They talk of a man betraying his country, his friends, his sweetheart. There must be a moral bond first. All a man can betray is his conscience."

One thing I, as an outsider, find contradictory in "The Land Of The Free" is the power of the House Committee hearings to subpoena citizens to attend and gaol them for contempt if they refuse, like Dashiel Hammett, to attend.

America has fought a continuous civil cold war between the libertarian and authoritarian threads that are woven together into the Star Spangled Banner since the first colonists stepped off their boats. It is because of the far-sighted genius of Thomas Jefferson that separation of religion and State was written into the Constitution.

On Recognising The Famous

2011-02-17T16:15:00.000Z

Make a habit of going to fancy London restaurants and you’ve only got yourself to blame if you notice some famous people from time to time. If you don’t want to notice them, if you keep your eyes fixed to the floor when you’re moving and fixed to your plate when you’re eating then what are you doing there?

I loathe the famous. They sit there being all famous and yet demanding their privacy at the same time, in public. What kind of fools bring that curse down upon themselves? They deserve all they get.

Their fame is bad enough but they are nearly always resentful if you so much as notice them. Noticing this resentment, however incipient or subliminal, is I suspect what makes a lot of people who are not usually craven morons actually approach the famous with some craven moronic remark such as, ‘Your work has given me such pleasure.’, or ‘Do your Michael Caine’, just to get them back for their resentment - sometimes the famous bring that kind of approach on themselves by their attitude. Then again, many other people who approach them like that, it has to be acknowledged, really are just craven morons.

All that would be fine. Avoid the places where the famous go and all will be fine. Except that it’s not. What if there’s a nice little restaurant or bar that you go to, been going to for years since they started up, your custom has helped support them through difficult times? You go there to relax, order your baked eggs and start the relaxing that you’ve gone there for. You look idly about the room. The part of your brain that comments on what you’re seeing at any time directs your gaze to someone it thinks you might know. You can’t instantly tell why it is you know them or from where and while you are working that out your gaze is left on pause. Too late, you know. Too late, because the object of your gaze, some oaf off the telly or the films, has now turned to meet it. And you, on your own territory, in your own place of habit, get ‘the look’.

If the look were a blank one or slightly mystified then honour could be saved by shouting across, ‘Sorry, thought you were someone I know personally’ and that might be that. But it’s not. The look is of sod-you weariness, hostility, hatred. They have already decided why you are looking at them. The frailties of memory, mistaken identity, the faulty processes of recognition and event-placement do not occur to their grotesque egos. No, according to them, you are fascinated by them.
The worst thing to do now would be to turn away fast, burning with resentment at your own folly.

Never do this. NEVER. This oaf has invaded YOUR TERRITORY. No, you must raise them to the point of emotional bankruptcy. It won’t cost you much. Screw your eyes up and scrutinise them like they’re a dodgy piece of fish that someone is trying to charge you for. Then, feigning realisation, set your look instantly to ‘desiccate’ and treat them to a nine-pointer on the Pinfold Scale of Utter Disdain. I once sent an especially loathsome ‘comedian’ back several paces, literally, and I know what ‘literally’ means, just with that look. You would know his name. That shitbag won’t come in to ‘my’ bar again.

The famous are like criminals, the recognisability of their faces is as initially arresting and then revolting as news of the most offensive crime. They have by their own actions abdicated many of the privileges of the honest citizen. They should be mug-shotted, then locked away, segregated, kept out of the sight of decent people who just want to have a drink or a meal in peace.

Witch Hunts - but who's who?

2011-02-17T02:06:00.002Z

Witch hunt is an emotive phrase in the US and it is possible that most treat it like a disease that has been largely eliminated. They had a vaccination in the mid fifties. The metaphor is not quite right though. It was not a vaccination, it was an epidemic, and it is still fresh in the minds of some who still govern the US today, over 50 years later. That is why there has been considerable opposition to the planned hearings in Washington, chaired by Peter King, Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee on the "Radicalization" of American Muslims. I was astonished to find the number of web search results linking these hearings with the McCarthy hearings on Communism.

It caused me to take a look at those hearings of 50 years ago. And then I decided to give up because they run to many thousands of pages of transcript. They do, however, for all the hours of testimony and cross-examination, have a depressing leitmotiv:

Mr Glassman's reply to the last question was predictable: "I stand on the Fifth".
Glassman would just not take the bait. If Chairman King's hearings take place, I expect there to be similar un-enlightening babble.

Sometimes you arrive at a story from a place you never expected. This happened with me. I was not looking at Muslims or McCarthy, I simply did some searching around the word "denounce", with particular reference to the Huffington Post. It seems Huffpo have tried a similar style with people they don't like. In a story headed, "Haley Barbour won't denounce Confederate licence plate" Huffpo focuses on the subjects unwillingness to "denounce" something that is to us an obscure piece of American history. It is not the only story on that particular media platform which goes for the "so and so refuses to denounce" routine. This time it is Speaker John Boehner on the issue of President Obama and his right to US citizenship and also his religious faith. Boehner simply refused to comment on what are fairly absurd rumours.

When the host of NBC's "Meet the Press" asked Boehner whether he, as speaker of the House, had a responsibility to "stand up to that kind of ignorance," Boehner told David Gregory: "It's not my job to tell the American people what to think. Our job in Washington is to listen to the American people." (Huffpo)

Now, you can argue that anybody who refuses to answer a question like this has something to hide, but what you cannot argue is that the two instances, fifty years apart are in any way different. Nobody should be required to "denounce" anybody else or give a statement that may incriminate themselves.

You may ask yourself, who here is conducting a witch hunt. You might even ask me, but don't bother, I take the fifth.

Epeli "Pex" Uluilakeba Campaign

2011-02-16T23:37:00.005Z

Epeli Uluilakeba, known as Pex to his mates, is a 29 year old Fijian former soldier who is facing deportation. He served two tours in Iraq, was badly wounded and suffered from severe PTSD. He got into trouble, was sent to Colchester and dismissed the Army. But Pex is a devout Christian and pulled himself together and trained to be a plumber. But he's not allowed to work in this country or even sign on to a GP.

The full story is here on the EURefendum blog. There is an update here.

I'm sure that you, like me, have been deeply touched by the brilliant writing of Skiplicker on his blog. If this country cannot properly look after men and women who have been mentally and physically injured on her behalf, just as it fails to care for old people and young children, then it truly deserves to become the cashpoint of the world.

Please make a donation, if you can, to the appeal (see the links), but just as importantly, please copy the links to Richard North's posts and Christopher Booker's article onto your blogs. Let's send this story viral. It is well known that the 697 odd press officers in the MoD and the thousands off others in government monitor blog memes so the more references to Pex the better. Who knows, the BBC and the rest of the British mediocre might even bother to follow a decent Human Rights story for a change.

Picture: Pex, front right, with colleagues in al Amarah - taken by Philip Hewett before he was killed in the same Snatch Land Rover where Pex sustained his injuries.

Khodorkovsky Trial - a legacy of the Revolution

2011-02-16T13:44:00.003Z

Most Wars and Revolutions begin with lies from the oppressors and end with the lies of the victors.

The iconic frames of Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, on the steps of St Petersburg, were pure fiction, told years later under the supervision of the Russian government. The picture of the baby and pram rattling down the steps is quite iconic, and as compelling as that of the Napalm Girl. But unlike the Napalm Girl, Eisenstein's was concocted to re-write history.

The murky world of the Russian elites is perhaps a little nastier than the political and commercial world that we in the UK are used to. Internicine squabbles tend to result in unexplained disappearences, unexplained deaths and a mangling of the rule of law.

This is nothing new. A little over a century ago, people took to the streets of St Petersburg to protest about living conditions, but they had no agenda for toppling Tsar Nicholas ll. Indeed their petition to him was remarkably restrained:

We are beggars, we are oppressed and overburdened with work, we are insulted, we are not looked on as human beings but as slaves. The moment has come for us when death would be better than the prolongation of our intolerable sufferings

This demonstration of people power has resonance on this hour.

The revolution of 1905 was put down, but not in any way like the myth depicted in the film Battleship Potemkin, by Sergei Eisenstein. It took another decade for the bloody revolution to pave the way from monarchy to republic, but the Duma, the present Russian Parliament, was first formed in 1906, no doubt as a concession to the masses.

It is at this point that history can cast light on the current political and social climate in Russia. It is at this point that the philososphy of revolutionary rhetoric becomes concrete and unequivocal:

I am writing these lines on the evening of November 6th. (1917)The situation is critical in the extreme. It is absolutely clear that to delay the insurrection now will be inevitably fatal. I exhort my comrades with all my heart and strength to realize that everything now hangs by a thread, that we are being confronted by problems that cannot be solved by conferences and congresses (even Congresses of Soviets) but exclusively by the people, the masses, by the struggle of the armed masses.

- Vladimir Lenin

The word is overthrow and Lenin was in no doubt about the scope of this overthrow. It was, curiously enough, our own King George V who played a key role in the fate of Nicholas and his family. After their arrest, Nicholas asked David Lloyd George to provide a place of exile in England but King George intervened and pursuaded Lloyd George to refuse asylum. Tsar Nicholas and his family were moved by the Bolsheviks to a remote Siberian city and shot.

The mood music of the next 100 years in Russia had been set. Opposition was crushed without mercy. Dissidents vanished or were declared insane and imprisoned. The trappings of civil moderation have been corrupted to follow the wishes of the bandits who currently hold the balance of power. It is happening now, in Russia, still one of the most powerful states in the world.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/khodorkovsky-verdict-was-ordered-from-above-claims-judges-assistant-2215075.html

On the Road Again

2011-02-15T23:38:00.001Z

Go over to Smoking Hot's blog if you want a great late night read of his adventures cruising his Mustang through Iowa and an encounter with a friendly cop.
http://nothing-2-declare.blogspot.com/2011/02/john-wayne-clint-eastwood-meryl-streep.html

CBS reporter sustains "brutal sexual attack" at the hands of Cairo mob.

2011-02-15T22:12:00.001Z

Lara Logan, correspondent for CBS news in Cairo has been attacked and sexually assaulted by a group of rioters. This is the statement from CBS:

(CBSNews)
On Friday February 11, the day Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak stepped down, CBS correspondent Lara Logan was covering the jubilation in Tahrir Square for a "60 Minutes" story when she and her team and their security were surrounded by a dangerous element amidst the celebration. It was a mob of more than 200 people whipped into frenzy.
In the crush of the mob, she was separated from her crew. She was surrounded and suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers. She reconnected with the CBS team, returned to her hotel and returned to the United States on the first flight the next morning. She is currently in the hospital recovering.
There will be no further comment from CBS News and correspondent Logan and her family respectfully request privacy at this time.

Journalists take risks in war zones. They aim to uncover the facts, not distortions of the truth. The cost can be high and this news is very bad. It's not just that she is white or American or a woman, or that she has a baby son at home and a husband. It is that she wanted the truth to be seen and heard and today, that truth has been trampled into the ground.

A Big Society First Needs A Small Society

2011-02-15T19:36:00.010Z

With thanks to Multi-Generational Life

Jim Baxter's recent post Cultural Differences pointed out how Muslim families in general take responsibility for looking after their elders within the home. In my experience this is mirrored in Hindu, Sikh and Chinese families as well.

Of course this practice happens as well, though to a much lesser extent, in white British familes. Before the creation of the Welfare State and the promise of care from cradle to grave, the alternative was charitable almshouses or, dreaded as much as the shame of a pauper's funeral, the workhouse. For reasons of love and duty and stubborn pride in standing on one's own two feet and looking after one's own, it was the social norm to care for aged relatives in the family home. The generations experienced each others' wisdom and charms. Toleration of differences and making allowances were vital lessons learned sharing an often crowded household. It wasn't perfect by any means but it worked for the few years of retirement that the grandparents had earned.

As British society grew wealthier and individual rights and expectations were recognised so, paradoxically, dependence on the State grew. People moved away from their home towns to seek better jobs and houses, equal opprtunities and equal pay legislation and contraception empowered more women to seek careers, and incomes and aspirations leap-frogged upwards. Despite all the alleged benefits of the modern age, people work as hard and as long as before to afford necessities that were luxuries or unheard of by their parents' generation. As a consequence, care for children and the elderly and infirm was gradually contracted out to the State. After all, the Welfare State was a right and it had been paid for through tax so people were only getting back their dues. What was intended as a safety net for the needy became an easy chair for all.

And so the majority of our old people live for their final months or years in nursing or care homes and hospitals. Often the family home has to be sold to meet care home fees, causing anger that the State has broken its promise and deprived the family of the parents' life's work and an inheritance for the children. Care of the elderly has become professionalised, taken from the amateur with intimate lifelong knowledge of the personality and tastes of the individual to changing teams who, with the best will in the world, can not provide bespoke care and understanding to patients they have only known as bundles of symptoms causing inconvenience and trouble.

Because caring was historically undertaken voluntarily within the family, it is now a low-paid occupation. Regrettably, this tends not to attract the best candidates. To improve their status and self-esteem, some carers consider themselves superior to their charges who, especially from the viewpoint of some workers from poor countries without a welfare state, are unwanted and at the bottom of the social pile because they would otherwise be cherished and cared for at home by their families.

Nursing was originally a caring profession for women acting in support of male doctors. With increasing aspirations for higher status and the increasingly technological nature of medicine, nursing has become a graduate profession. In addition, the curse of professional managers has resulted in increasing demands for productivity on wards. All activities must be paper-trailed to satisfy the accountants and lawyers. There is both less time for nurses to care for patients in the old sense and an unfortunate attitude that some jobs are infra-dig for BScs rather than duties to be taken in one's stride. Ensuring patients are fed and watered clean and finding five minutes in a day to hold a hand and chat are surely the minimum that should be expected.

But is it right that we offload our parents,the most valuable members of our families next to our children, onto the State? The State that struggles to grit roads in winter yet subsidises windmill companies, that loses our tax details, that wastes hundreds of £billions in schools that still fail to teach the basics of reading and writing to a quarter of pupils after eleven years? Would you lend your MP your car to drive?

Who do you trust with your family's lives? Who knows you all best? You and your wife. So before we moan that the government should work better, let's take a reality check and realise that the only people with our best intentions at heart are ourselves. We must rediscover what our ancestors knew through experience, that independence from charities or the State based on close family bonds , what I call the Small Society, is the best and strongest building block of a Big Society. For only when we can guarantee our families' well-being through mutual trust and self-reliance can we begin to trust and care for others. And only then can we honestly claim to have a Big Society fit for purpose. There will be a cost to our standard of living and our individualism may have to take a back seat occasionally, but the change from the rat race to the human race will be worth it. And the government, banks and big business will hate having their power challenged as we cast off their chains of unreachable affluence that bond us to them.

Berlusconi, in the footsteps of Capone?

2011-02-15T13:07:00.001Z

It is difficult to take seriously someone who looks like a Computer Generated Image of himself.(Does anybody remember Max Headroom?)

Silvio Berlusconi, has managed to hang on to power by methods that would impress Machiavelli. Berlusconi could teach his friend Vladimir Putin a thing or two if it not for Putin having the benefit of the FSB to deal with electoral anomalies and opponents who have "become a nuisance". Putin has the FSB and allegedly, Berlusconi has the Mafia and several major media platforms. Berlusconi also has the problem of the Italian legislature, but he has cleverly dodged them, making sure, among other things, that any prosecution would be subject to a statute of limitations. The problem is, none of this has been able to stick. There have been countless trials and investigations that have ultimately gone nowhere. His tentacles have even reached the highest levels in the British political class.

So it will be a supreme irony if the means of Berlusconi's downfall is the result of his current prosecution; a drab, tawdry trouser area trial.

Al Capone's stock with anybody that liked that sort of thing went down somewhat on St Valentine's day, 1929. It focused a lot of attention on his affairs and Capone had appeared to have overstepped the mark from being just bad to being bad and careless. Too many bodies, too many public officials making embarrassed apologies for the crimewave.

Well, they got Al Capone for tax evasion and he went to jail. On his release, complications connected with syphilis caused his health to decline seriously and he died of a heart attack. At the time of his death his physician concluded that Capone had a mental age of 12.

Will there be a tipping point? Will there be a point at which too many loose ends and one too many double-crossed associates decide that time is up? Who can tell, but it takes very little, in the end, to bring down the all powerful because they have to be lucky all the time and the opposition only have to be lucky once.

UPDATE: Silvio Berlusconi is to face three women judges in the latest round of prosecutions.

The Big C

2011-02-14T22:40:00.000Z

A comedy about a suburban, fortyish woman teacher coming to terms with a diagnosis of terminal cancer in her own way? Put aside any preconceptions and savour each half-hour long, perfectly polished and cut gem on Channel 4. It is brilliantly funny from start to finish of every episode. Starring Laura Linney and Oliver Platt and supported by a company of equally talented actors with scripts expertly crafted by geniuses, it is my gold standard for television quality this year. If you enjoyed the excellent Six Feet Under this is for you.

It is the best medicine for me.

Cultural Differences

2011-02-14T20:22:00.000Z

The killing of, usually young, women by members of their family for departing from the family’s culture or demands in any one of a number of ways appears to be over-represented in the statistics in what we know of such killings, over-represented by Muslim families, although that type of murder certainly happens in other cultures. Some argue that the motives for such killings have their roots in customs which predate Islam. Others point out that the Koran does not sanction such extra-legal activities, much less encourage them; the same cannot be said of the Bible.

If murderers think they have a ‘right’ to murder young female members of their family then they should be thought of only as murderers because their murdering is not sanctioned by Islam, whatever they may think or claim. If it is true that such murderers are treated relatively leniently by the courts in predominantly Muslim countries then that is a political matter, not a religious one.

The UN has estimated that there are around 5,000 such murders a year worldwide, which may be a substantial underestimate, according to some sources.

Much harder to find are statistics on how many women are murdered each year worldwide by their husbands, male partners, or ex-husbands and ex-partners, because those women have tried to leave those husbands or partners. One thing is sure – when such cases are reported in the media it is seldom that you hear news of the murderer’s religious beliefs.

Maybe Muslims are over-represented in these statistics too. I very much doubt it. So few of those we learn of have names which suggest Muslim origins.

Whatever type of killing it is a woman is dead. Is it the case that if a Muslim has killed a female family member it is an ‘honour killing’ and his religion should be linked to the murder, but if any other man has done it it is simply murder and his religion is irrelevant, even though in the great majority of cases it will be outrage to his ‘self-esteem’ – honour, if you like, which has motivated him? Wrinkled Weasel seems to think so. Now that is bias. And that's just one word that you might apply.

I don’t know much about Islam. None of my best friends are Muslims. None are Christians either. I have noticed one thing about Muslim families though, and call this stereotyping if you like: they look after their old people. Overwhelmingly. Oh, far, far FAR more than they murder. They keep their elders at home, however infirm they become. We in the civilised ‘West’ park our old people in ‘care homes’ when they become too much bother, park them there for them to be lonely, confused, isolated, patronised, neglected, treated as half-wits and sometimes downright abused by strangers paid to ‘care’ for them who wish only finally to be rid of them, as we do. Muslim families tend not to do that. That much I do know.

BBC Bias #342889 - Negative references to "M" word omitted

2011-02-14T16:44:00.005Z

There is a long piece on the BBC website today by Duncan Kennedy, about an "honour killing" in Italy. You know the story by now: a young girl emigrates with her family from Pakistand to Italy. As she engages with Italian and European culture, she is distanced by her traditional family. Kids falling out with parents is not news worthy. But it did not stop there. Mohammed Saleem felt his daughter Hina had brought shame on his family so he slit her throat 28 times.

The BBC wants us to understand how Mr Saleem feels and why he was minded to restore honour to his family.

But wait a minute. There is something missing, not one reference to Islam, not one mention of the M word, "Muslim". It is almost as if the BBC do not want us to make the connection between Islam and its sanction of murder or its connection with the throat-slitting of any sentient being. Take a further look at the BBC's site and type in Muslim. It's nearly all good news and then the only really negative one is a report of a Channel Four report. Yes Muzzies are a positive influence everywhere in the globe, even Egypt! And strangely, a comment function is not available on this story.

It reminds me: The BBC had to be told to quit showing that video clip of Tory MP John Redwood, the one where he tries and fails to mime the Welsh National Anthem, every time Redwood was quoted on TV. Strange then that it never showed Labour MP Chris Bryant posing in his underpants for a dating site, whenever he spoke or Labour MP,Sion Simon's lamentable "rap" video or indeed, Gordon Brown's extraordinary grinning and hebephrenic performance on YouTube . Bias at the BBC? It's all there if you look for it, and however clever they are at hiding it, one day they will get found out. I personally am waiting for their "Gillian Duffy" moment. mp3's please to my postbox.

In the meantime, in case you have not seen it, here is the Prime Minister who never was doing a cross between Benny Hill' Fred Scuttle and Frank Spencer. It gives the impression that someone off camera is holding up a "Smile" cue card at random moments.

"Canoe Man" pleads, Please call me John

2011-02-14T13:49:00.001Z

Rasputin

John Darwin, also known as the "Canoe Man" is known to be applying to the courts for cliche re-alignment after making a complaint about his unfortunate epithet.

Darwin has recently pleaded with the national press to think of another title for him.

"I only used the canoe about three times and then used it to stage the disappearance. I am actually more interested in tennis and Airfix modelling and the occasional long distance walk." he said. "And now, not only have I served time in prison, but I shall be forever known as the canoe man. if I had known it was going to hang around my neck like this I would have pretended to jump out of a plane without a parachute. At least I might be known then as 'parachute man' or 'Ryanair man', which sounds a bit more exciting.

His wife Ann (56) also known as "Canoe Man's Wife" has filed for sequestration of nomenclature in the High Court and is seeking to become known as Bernice Ecclestone.

In other news, there have been reports that David Aaronovitch has not been seen since the death of Jeremy Beadle:

McGuinness/Garfunkel

Art Garfunkel is currently residing in a safe-house in Derry.