More reasons for Brown to go
A common reason cited against getting rid of Gordon Brown by lefties is that replacing him with another Blairite would not change anything. Ideologically, perhaps. But then it’s quite difficult to figure out what this government stands for ideologically anyway. But there are now overwhelming strategic reasons for getting rid of Brown.
Let’s start with the assumption that none of us want a massive Conservative party victory at the next general election. To keep the Tories at bay then this New Labour government has to avoid two things at least:
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You are being watched
Surveillance, it seems to me, comes in two categories differentiated by purpose; that is, all surveillance efforts will fulfill one, or both in some mixture, of two purposes. The first is the easiest, and the most etymologically obvious: surveillance is investigative.
A typical example of such surveillance work would be a phone tap. You initiate a phone tap to find out things you didn’t know before; it is an investigative tool. But it is worth noting that this investigative function for surveillance is effective precisely in so far as it is covert; a subject aware of observation behaves differently.
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Afghan realities
There are two good pieces at Comment is Free written by Afghan women.
Malalai Joya, who was formerly the youngest Afghan MP, notes that ‘Almost eight years after the Taliban regime was toppled, our hopes for a truly democratic and independent Afghanistan have been betrayed by the continued domination of fundamentalists and by a brutal occupation that ultimately serves only American strategic interests in the region.
You must understand that the government headed by Hamid Karzai is full of warlords and extremists who are brothers in creed of the Taliban. Many of these men committed terrible crimes against the Afghan people during the civil war of the 1990s.’
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Friends of the Honduras dictatorship
Meet Jim DeMint. Jim is a United States Senator from South Carolina, one of the most conservative members of Congress and a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Silly Analogies.
Worried that Barack Obama might merrily lead his country to dictatorship, DeMint has claimed the administration is eerily redolent of Orwell’s 1984; has suggested that America now resembles Germany just before WWII; and has speculated that the Hopey One may – in the words of ABBA – finally be facing his Waterloo. He’s also protested Obama’s habit of exporting his tyranny abroad, supporting “despots like Ahmadinejad, Chavez, Castro” and the ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya.
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Greens: 21st century Stalinists?
Scratch Jean Lambert, get Lavrentiy Beria; Green politicians are totalitarians in the making, just itching to refound a carbon-neutral Gulag Archipelago.
This, anyway, is the position of Times hack Antonia Senior, who has obviously given the matter a great deal of thought. Her stark warning must be heeded at once by anyone naïve enough to cast the odd tactical vote for the Green Party, in the misguided belief that they are a harmless enough functional equivalent for the old-style moderate social democracy unavailable elsewhere on the ballot paper.
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Norwich North – initial thoughts
Results from Norwich North:
Chloe Smith (Conservative) 13,591
Chris Ostrowski (Labour) 6,243
April Pond (Liberal Democrat) 4,803
Glenn Tingle (UK Independence Party) 4,068
Rupert Read (Green) 3,350
Craig Murray (Put an Honest Man into Parliament) 953
Robert West (BNP) 941
Bill Holden (Independent) 166
Howling Laud (Monster Raving Loony) 144
Anne Fryatt (NOTA) 59
Thomas Burridge (Libertarian) 36
Peter Baggs (Independent) 23
Some initial thoughts and questions to kick off discussion:
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CEO contradicts Cameron on links to big business
As part of the Tory re-branding exercise, Bloomberg reported on 1st July:
David Cameron, whose Conservative Party is on course to win power in the U.K. in the next year, said he wanted the government to broaden its base of contractors away from large companies including Capita Group Plc. “At the moment in the civil service there’s a sort of mentality of ‘no one got fired for giving the contract to Capita,’” Cameron told an audience of volunteer workers in London today. “We’ve got to have a culture that’s a little bit more experimental and is prepared to take a bit of a leap sometimes with a small organization.”
Yesterday Bloomberg interviewed the CEO of Capita, who said:
“Conservative party members of a very high level have expressed considerable interest in Capita and outsourcing,” Chief Executive Officer Paul Pindar said in a telephone interview today. “If the Tories win the next election and some of the strong statements they’re making on reducing their cost base are followed through, we could see some good opportunities.”
…
“We thought Cameron’s remarks were flattering, and we’ve talked to other members of the party who thought so too,” said Pindar.
Clearly Mr Pindar failed to get the memo from Cameron to keep shtum and toe the line. Still waiting for Cameron to embrace ‘Red Toryism’ and small businesses.
Richard Desmond happy with High Court win
Richard Desmond, philanthropist, pornographer, adherent of Godwin’s Law, and Great Architect of The Daily Express was jubilant last night after spending a jolly few weeks socking it to silly biographers in the High Court.
Desmond, once described as ‘an appalling man’ by Britain’s most appalling man, told his own newspaper: “It was worth it to stand up in court and set the record straight”, apparently unaware that he’d actually lost the case.
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Pseudoscience is not a valid educational choice
Anyone who’s passionate about science, as I am, cannot help but be seriously concerned by the growing extent to which anti-scientific ideas, and the groups and organisations that promote them, are increasingly creeping into public life and attracting mainstream political support.
While it’s easy to ridicule the purveyors of anti-scientific ideas when they’re to be found at the lunatic fringes of mainstream politics, and one thinks immediately of Nadine Dorries’s ridiculous claim that ‘Tridents aren’t weapons of mass destruction’ and David Tredinnick’s expenses claim for astrology software, the kidding around has to stop when one finds sizeable sums of public money are being routed to organisations that promote pseudoscience as a matter of public policy.
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We don’t have an easier time over recess!
Grrrrrrrrr – so cross listening to the radio on Wednesday morning with Andrew Pierce of the Telegraph opining on MPs going off on ’82 days’ holiday. Holiday? My backside! If he thinks not being in Parliament equals being on holiday, then I trust he applies the same standards to himself – and any time he spends outside of the Telegraph offices he counts as holiday too!
The truth is that for both MPs and journalists the job can and should involve more than being in the main office. Getting out and meeting people, for example, is a major part of doing either job well. When Sunny asked me to write a short piece on what MPs do in recess I didn’t think I would have time before I go away. But I’m maddened by the hatred and vitriol from the radio towards the summer recess as if all MPs do no work during it.
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