Thursday:
Looks like it is the week for tossing out our traditions of British Justice, Liberal Democracy and the Rule of Law. Now the Archpillock of Canterbury is having a go!
This has caused quite some considerable discussion already, and a few brief words from my Daddy Alex.
The Archpillock's suggestion is that rather than one law applying to everyone, we might like to try having different groups of people – and by different groups he means religions – running their own brands of laws in a sort of competition to control most souls.
Let's start with the BIGGIE: this is ILLEGAL.
That is illegal in the sense that the European Court of Human Rights ruled that a scheme "to establish a plurality of legal systems based on differences in religious belief, to institute Islamic law (the Sharia)" (sound familiar?) was a pressing threat to democracy, indeed it was incompatible with fundamental democratic principles.
They further described the Sharia as "a system of law that was in marked contrast to the values embodied in the Convention [the European Convention on Human Rights]"
Let me just say that again: that's the EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS. Not some never-heard-of-them Liberal milksops; not some politically correct pinko commentariat. The CONTINENT'S top court; some of the most senior legal opinions IN THE WORLD.
Now, let me just get this out of the way first: the Sharia law is NOT incompatible with English Law because we are a CHRISTIAN Nation, and more importantly it is DEFINITELY NOT because our laws are based on the "Ten Commandments" (printed and published by Mr Moses on behalf of Mr God, Number 1 Mount Sinai Gardens, Mount Sinai, the Desert).
At least HALF of the "Ten" are completely IGNORED by our laws:
#1: I am the Lord thy God: thou shall have no other gods before me
Always good to get the culturally sensitive existential statements in up front, but these days, just as terms and conditions apply, other deities are available.
#2: Thou shall not make for yourself an idol
Pop Idol, however, not actually illegal.
#5: Honour thy Father and Mother
Good advice, but in fact not required by law.
#7: Thou shall not commit adultery
Grounds for divorce, maybe, but not for criminal prosecution.
#10: Thou shall not covet thy neighbour's house, ass or wife
Actually, what with envy being the basis of all Capitalism, and almost all advertising relying on us doing a BIT of coveting, far from being illegal this one is pretty much obligatory…
And there's one…
#9: Thou shall not bear false witness against your neighbour
…that's only a BIT against the law. Perjury is, of course, illegal, but only in a Court of Law. And Certain Christians seem to have some difficulty understanding that denying evolution or making up stories about gay daddies might get them in hot water if it WAS against the law to "bear false witness".
Then there's another couple of Commandments that actually ARE in our laws but have fallen into disuse recently…
#3: Thou shall not make wrongful use of the name of Your God
It's those tricky blasphemy laws (Anglicans only, sorry Mr the Pope)
#4: Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy
Subject to Sunday Trading Laws, relaxed by arch Anti-Christ Mr Major Minor and his Heretical Conservatories. Or does the Church of Thatchianity worship Mammon!
Which only leaves us with:
#6: Thou shall not kill (or "murder" if you prefer the version with loopholes)
#8: Thou shall not steal
And it is difficult to think of ANY system of laws that would NOT proscribe at least one of those!
English Law (and I use the term English imprecisely, because I mean the Law in England AND Wales, although it is DIFFERENT from the Law in Scotland, though it IS the basis of the law in America [A: except Louisiana] and a lot of the Commonwealth) is based on the PRINCIPLES of EQUITY and CONSISTENCY.
That is, legal decisions should be FAIR and should be PREDICTABLE.
Our laws come from three sources: the "common law" (which means "those things that were generally supposed to be the law before the Norman's took over"); "statute" (or "things that the King said" which nowadays means all of that paperwork that the Labour spew out of Parliament every waking minute); and "precedent" (that's NOT "president" like the Monkey-in-Chief, it means decisions that judges have made before – it's that CONSISTENCY principle in action!)
Precedent is why lawyers are always going on about old cases (it's not vanity… well not JUST vanity).
But EQUITY overrules precedent (and also statute!) so even if it's been the law for centuries, or if the Labour have just made it up last week, if you can show that it's not FAIR, then you can get the law overturned.
(Although usually your lawyer will try to show that your case is significantly different to any that has ever come before.)
In CONTRAST the Sharia is a REVEALED system of law. Yes, like the Commandments. That is to say that it is supposed to be perfect and unchangeable. Which is why there are five different versions of it!
Okay, just to be fair, there IS a distinction between the Sharia itself, the perfect principle of the Law as spelled out in the Qur'an, and the Fiqh or "deep understanding" that is the main body of Islamic jurisprudence (i.e. the book of "what we think He meant").
(And far be it for me as a humble soft toy to suggest that an OMNIPOTENT creator god ought to be able to create a set of laws that are COMPREHENSIBLE without the need of interpretation.)
The Archpillock turns logic topsy-turvy with his assertion that this makes the Sharia in someway an "unfinished" work. To suggest that legal positions derived from a fixed text can evolve requires a positively POST-MODERN attitude to interpretation and re-interpretation.
Because the PROBLEM with revealed law is that, ultimately – and you can't get MUCH more "ultimately" than "Mr God said it" – ultimately you cannot change the details just because you've decided that they're wrong.
And to try and WHEEDLE around it – as the Archpillock does – with weaselling words like:
" ...nobody in their right mind...would want to see in this country a kind of inhumanity that sometimes appears to be associated with the practice of the law in some Islamic states [such as] the extreme punishments [and] the attitudes to women..."
…is ENTIRELY to miss the point. The Sharia is an ALL-OR-NOTHING job.
There is no NUANCE to be had in the requirement to BEHEAD gay daddies. (Despite the Wikipedia's almost HILARIOUS attempts to suggest that "smite off their heads" might actually be a mistranslation of "admonish off their heads".) You cannot WISH AWAY the imbalance of power between men and women that is implicit in the Sharia exemplified by the different rules for different genders on marriage and divorce and indeed dress and the fact that a woman's testimony counts as half the value of a man's.
The other fine principle of English Law, often quoted, is that everything is permissible unless specifically banned.
Often this is contrasted (satirically) with codified systems such as the Napoleonic Law that you find in France and other places in Europe [A: and Louisiana] (usually one conquered by, er, Mr Emperor Bonaparte) where allegedly NOTHING is permitted unless specifically allowed.
But the Sharia goes FURTHER – it doesn't just tell you what you CAN'T do: it tells you what you MUST do to. Often involving SCISSORS.
Freedom from Conformity is at the HEART of Liberalism; Laws that COMPEL behaviour are against everything that we stand for.
When it comes down to it, most Law is there to settle disputes between PEOPLE. In CRIMINAL law, the dispute is between ALL OF US and someone who is doing harm – because we cannot operate as a society if we let people do harm to others. But mostly it is because two people have a disagreement and they need someone to sort it out.
There is NOTHING to stop them going to their Priest or Vicar or Rabbi or Imam or Militant Atheist Baby Elephant and asking them to help them decide. Arbitration is to be ENCOURAGED and, so long as both sides are happy with the outcome, it would certainly cut down on all the cases that are clogging up our judges' calendars.
But what happens if the Vicar and the Baby Elephant have DIFFERENT answers?
[A: Nobody is a bit surprised?]
That is when you end up in court.
It's just no good if you have MULTIPLE legal systems, not all of which are based on equal protection for all parties. People will be unable to settle their arguments if one person insists on one law and the other demands the rights to use another.
That is why you need ONE set of laws.
The Archpillock of Canterbury, Mr Dr Row'n' Rapidly Backwards Williams, is very well supplied with expensive London homes, jewelled sticks, attractive frocks and a large staff. And yet he appears to have flown this kite without ANYONE warning him that it might be the TEENSIEST bit CONTROVERSIAL; and he seems to have gone out in public and said it without thinking to run it past ANYONE from the real world whatsoever.
As Mr Brian, quoted in the Londonpaper tonight, puts it: "For goodness sake, get someone who's got common sense to read your script before you say anything."
Although the Archpillock himself has apparently having gone into hiding, his apologist in chief Bishop "Lack of" Hulme-ity has been all over the media like a rash. His defence amounts to: "You're pig ignorant and you haven't listened to what he said!" Well, we HAVE listened and WE'RE not the ones sticking our fingers in our ears and saying "CAN'T HEAR YOU!"
This attitude of "you are too ignorant to question US!" is as old as the hills. For the best part of two thousand years, the church's response to any challenge has been "We know stuff that you don't – it's in Latin; don't you understand?"
The REAL outrage is NOT because people have not understood. It is because they HAVE.
Oh, and speaking of stuff that folks know: Bish Hulme said how dare we criticise the highest religious authority in the land. Well, that AIN'T the Archpillock – that would be his BOSS, Mrs the Queen. Go and look up what "established church" means sometime you ignorant, arrogant snob!
Apparently Mr Dr Row'n is VERY HURT by all of the criticism that has been heaped upon him. Perhaps he should retire to a monastery for contemplation and healing.
Or perhaps he should just RETIRE.
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Friday, February 08, 2008
Day 2589: Oh Bugger!
Sunday
Mr Clogg has taken the Prime Monster to task over his obsession with transforming Great Britain into a POLICE STATE!
From endlessly expensive I.D.iot cards to tracking our movements with talking CCTV; from fingerprinting schoolchildren to bugging the private meetings of our MPs: this government has made us the most SPIED on, least TRUSTED people in the Western World.
Like the idea that the government could corrupt our coroners and control their courts, the notion of breaching the confidence of discussions between a constituent and their MP – or a defendant and their lawyer – undermines the very RULE of LAW that defines Great Britain.
As a LIBERAL elephant, this is completely ANATHEMA to me. I have never REALLY understood how CATHOLICS could be so OBSESSED with the sanctity of the CONFESSIONAL – suddenly, now I feel that I do!
As the CRISIS concerning the bugging of MP Mr Sidiq Khan continued to unfold, the policeperson responsible claimed to be in FEAR for his life – no doubt he is afraid that someone will violate his human rights… oh.
Meanwhile, the man at least theoretically responsible, Mr Man O'Straw, the Sinister Minister, denied knowing what was going on.
Which is ANOTHER failing of this government – they do not even KNOW what their secret police are UP TO! And worse, they seem not to CARE!
This really has pushed my OVER THE EDGE! I can hardly believe it, but I am starting to think that the Conservatories – Mr God who does not exist help me, the Conservatories! – might be better than this lot. Though you might need a MICROSCOPE to see it!
Corrupt, shallow, nepotistic, incompetent, upper-class nincompoops they might be, but they are still ONLY venal and selfish. And these things are FINITE: once sated, they will stop.
The Labour are MAD and DANGEROUS and they won't stop because they think they are on a mission from Mr God (see above).
THEY HAVE GOT TO GO!
Mr Clogg has taken the Prime Monster to task over his obsession with transforming Great Britain into a POLICE STATE!
From endlessly expensive I.D.iot cards to tracking our movements with talking CCTV; from fingerprinting schoolchildren to bugging the private meetings of our MPs: this government has made us the most SPIED on, least TRUSTED people in the Western World.
Like the idea that the government could corrupt our coroners and control their courts, the notion of breaching the confidence of discussions between a constituent and their MP – or a defendant and their lawyer – undermines the very RULE of LAW that defines Great Britain.
As a LIBERAL elephant, this is completely ANATHEMA to me. I have never REALLY understood how CATHOLICS could be so OBSESSED with the sanctity of the CONFESSIONAL – suddenly, now I feel that I do!
As the CRISIS concerning the bugging of MP Mr Sidiq Khan continued to unfold, the policeperson responsible claimed to be in FEAR for his life – no doubt he is afraid that someone will violate his human rights… oh.
Meanwhile, the man at least theoretically responsible, Mr Man O'Straw, the Sinister Minister, denied knowing what was going on.
Which is ANOTHER failing of this government – they do not even KNOW what their secret police are UP TO! And worse, they seem not to CARE!
This really has pushed my OVER THE EDGE! I can hardly believe it, but I am starting to think that the Conservatories – Mr God who does not exist help me, the Conservatories! – might be better than this lot. Though you might need a MICROSCOPE to see it!
Corrupt, shallow, nepotistic, incompetent, upper-class nincompoops they might be, but they are still ONLY venal and selfish. And these things are FINITE: once sated, they will stop.
The Labour are MAD and DANGEROUS and they won't stop because they think they are on a mission from Mr God (see above).
THEY HAVE GOT TO GO!
Day 2588: British Bare-ways
Saturday:
Oh, all right, they are German.
Why is it that NUDISM is so intrinsically HILARIOUS? And at the same time so FRIGHTENING that it is against the law!
Even so, there has got to be SOMETHING wrong with the phrase "flying as god intended".
Oh, all right, they are German.
Why is it that NUDISM is so intrinsically HILARIOUS? And at the same time so FRIGHTENING that it is against the law!
Even so, there has got to be SOMETHING wrong with the phrase "flying as god intended".
Day 2587: Good Eiggs; Rotten Egg
Friday:
I am VERY impressed with the news from the good little Isle of Eigg that not only are they now fully supplied with electrical energy for the first time and ALL of it comes from their very own renewable sources!
I am considerably NOT impressed though by the Internet bank Egg who have apparently taken the UNILATERAL decision to cancel the credit cards of one-hundred and sixty-one thousand people; that is more than one in fifteen of their customers.
The Eigg scheme is a combination of windmill and hydro-electric and solar power providing more than 95% of their needs, with battery storage (and emergency diesel generators) to cover any gaps. This has been in the planning for TEN years, ever since the islanders gained their independence from the absentee landlord that used to own their little island. With help from Europe and the Lottery added to their own contributions they have seen their dream become a reality.
Good for them! We should take careful note and see how successful this is – it could be the blueprint for a much larger, nationwide energy self-sufficiency plan!
Such LONG-TERM planning is, of course, not to be found in the world of BANKERS. They are too busy playing with their small change.
The Egg bank was recently bought out by the gigantic Citibank Group and they have made a "review" of their new acquisition and decided to SQUEEZE the customers for more money.
They claim that they are cancelling all those credit cards because these people's "credit risk" has worsened – meaning that they are more in debt – which would be bad enough, since they are not going to give people the opportunity to put their credit risk right. But there is the SUSPICION that actually, Egg are REALLY getting rid of the GOOD customers, the ones who pay off their bills every month… i.e. the ones who do not give Egg whopping great interest payments every month.
This, of course, is because it is EGG'S credit risk that has worsened, what with the Credit Crunch making banks realise that the REALLY risky customers are… other banks.
I am VERY impressed with the news from the good little Isle of Eigg that not only are they now fully supplied with electrical energy for the first time and ALL of it comes from their very own renewable sources!
I am considerably NOT impressed though by the Internet bank Egg who have apparently taken the UNILATERAL decision to cancel the credit cards of one-hundred and sixty-one thousand people; that is more than one in fifteen of their customers.
The Eigg scheme is a combination of windmill and hydro-electric and solar power providing more than 95% of their needs, with battery storage (and emergency diesel generators) to cover any gaps. This has been in the planning for TEN years, ever since the islanders gained their independence from the absentee landlord that used to own their little island. With help from Europe and the Lottery added to their own contributions they have seen their dream become a reality.
Good for them! We should take careful note and see how successful this is – it could be the blueprint for a much larger, nationwide energy self-sufficiency plan!
Such LONG-TERM planning is, of course, not to be found in the world of BANKERS. They are too busy playing with their small change.
The Egg bank was recently bought out by the gigantic Citibank Group and they have made a "review" of their new acquisition and decided to SQUEEZE the customers for more money.
They claim that they are cancelling all those credit cards because these people's "credit risk" has worsened – meaning that they are more in debt – which would be bad enough, since they are not going to give people the opportunity to put their credit risk right. But there is the SUSPICION that actually, Egg are REALLY getting rid of the GOOD customers, the ones who pay off their bills every month… i.e. the ones who do not give Egg whopping great interest payments every month.
This, of course, is because it is EGG'S credit risk that has worsened, what with the Credit Crunch making banks realise that the REALLY risky customers are… other banks.
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Day 2585: DEFENDING THE RULE OF LAW (and possibly TOYCHWUD): To the Last Man Elephant
Wednesday:
Above the Law; Beyond Belief; Out of Control; Round the Bend!
No, it is not TORCHWOOD – I shall get to that in a minute but I am too CROSS about this not to mention it first – it is the Government's crooked contrivance to corrupt our coroners' courts: their latest angle on abolishing the Rule of Law.
How IMPOSSIBLE it seems that we are sending our young soldiers off to fight wars in Afghanistan and Iraq allegedly to try and bring the Rule of Law to those countries, while at home we are casually tossing it aside.
My Daddy Alex has raised the subject with the Federal Policy Committee and discovered that it is EVEN WORSE than we imagined, with blatant bribery built in as standard!
I hope that Mr Huhney-Monster will be quickly KILLING this TO DEATH… and then hitting the Home Secretary, Ms Jacqui Spliff, and the Sinister Minister of Justice, Mr Man O'Straw, over the hear with it!
Anyway, it's Wednesday so it is time to stop going on about evil plans to destroy the world and have another of Daddy's reviews…
Above the Law; Beyond Belief; Out of Control; Round the Bend!
No, it is not TORCHWOOD – I shall get to that in a minute but I am too CROSS about this not to mention it first – it is the Government's crooked contrivance to corrupt our coroners' courts: their latest angle on abolishing the Rule of Law.
How IMPOSSIBLE it seems that we are sending our young soldiers off to fight wars in Afghanistan and Iraq allegedly to try and bring the Rule of Law to those countries, while at home we are casually tossing it aside.
My Daddy Alex has raised the subject with the Federal Policy Committee and discovered that it is EVEN WORSE than we imagined, with blatant bribery built in as standard!
I hope that Mr Huhney-Monster will be quickly KILLING this TO DEATH… and then hitting the Home Secretary, Ms Jacqui Spliff, and the Sinister Minister of Justice, Mr Man O'Straw, over the hear with it!
Anyway, it's Wednesday so it is time to stop going on about evil plans to destroy the world and have another of Daddy's reviews…
If last week's "Sleeper" was a (superior) example of "typical" Torchwood, then this weeks is almost a distillation of all the successful elements of series one. Helen Raynor takes such familiar elements as Sapphire & Steel-esque "time breaks", mixing time zones in the style of "Captain Jack Harkness", and "ghosts from the future", from her own season one story "Ghost Machine", and wraps them up in a cosy tale of love across time, itself done last year in the much praised "Out of Time".
This story is for Tosh. It is typical in ensemble series like this to forefront one or other of the characters to give them some meaty screen time and take the weight off the leads for a week. And it's a tragic love story. That's also fairly typical of these character-centric episodes. And the screen convention where we accept that "they fall in love in 45 minutes and then she never mentions him again" (as well as the fact that both actors are very sweet and honest in the roles) helps to ease us over the more unbelievable aspects of this relationship.
Toshiko's boyfriend du jour, the no doubt ironically named Tommy, is from 1918 and, from his perspective, he has known Tosh for four days. Fast doesn't come into it! In fairness, he's been to war, to the trenches of World War One no less, and that changes the conventions a bit. (In fact, perhaps the real surprise is that he doesn't leave a handful of coins on the bedside table!) Mind you, he was already ready to go back to Tosh's place even before he was given the news that he would be going "over the top" the next day.
The perspective he brings of "war is always with us" is, I'm afraid, crushingly banal. Sight of the Iraq war on a television screen leads to Tommy brooding that nothing has changed. Which is obviously nonsense from a man who has supposedly been driven bonkers by the rat-infested, open-sewer hell that was trench warfare. He comes from a war when more people died per hour than the total number of British servicemen killed in Iraq. If anything, he would be laughing at us for the idea that our sanitised, video-game coverage is anything remotely like seeing the real horrors of war. Not that there aren't those horrors in Iraq, but we seriously do not see those on our tellies!
Meanwhile, from Toshiko's perspective, she's known Tommy for four years – that in itself is interesting, raising the suggestion that she was already working for Torchwood when having a screaming fit at a Space Pig and the ninth Doctor – but if she has then when did her feelings for him arise? She spent most of last year – at least when not being seduced by psychotic lesbian star poets – mooning over Owen. Does that necessarily fit with someone who is thinking of the guy in the freezer as potential boyfriend material? Or perhaps it does, Tosh being a person who is looking for impossible relationships so that she has an excuse to leave her life on hold. We just never saw those moments when she asked Ianto to slip him out of the ice box for her.
Ianto gets, perhaps, the most lovely moment: a profound and loving kiss with Jack, that at last seals their relationship for us. It's a very vulnerable moment too: he's just asked Jack if, given the chance, he would return to his own time and Jack has told him he's found people to love here.
In many ways, though, I'd be so much more interested in the stories not told. Torchwood 1918 looks fascinating, with their clockwork tricorders and cut glass accents, and raises the question of whether Jack was involved in the organisation then. Throw in the tantalising hint "they all died so young" and you wonder if there isn't another spin off you'd rather be watching.
And wouldn't it have been fascinating to see Tommy's trip though time from his point of view, and glimpse the changing faces of Torchwood over the passing decades?
Next time… Oh by the way, darling, I deal with aliens. Rhys and Gwen have some explaining to do to each other. Let's "Meat".
Monday, February 04, 2008
Day 2586: Bring Me Sunshine (State)
Thursday:
Oh, I was NOT going to write to you again about the American elections before next Tuesday's Super Double-Duper Tuesday, but there have been significant developments, following the votes in Florida.
Senator Edwards has admitted what we all knew: it's between Hillary-Billary and Barry O.
And former Mayor Rude-y Giuliani has achieved the biggest ever cock up in a Presidential election.
This is all the more SURPRISING when you remember that the Floridians broke the rules and brought their primaries forwards to January, meaning that they only count HALF for the Repluticrats and NOT AT ALL for the Dumbocrats.
It seems rather an ODD time for Senator Edwards to call it a day. The twenty-six delegates that he gained in those little warm-up primaries aren't going to be enough to let him be "kingmaker" come the summer. Could he REALLY not have hung on for another week to see how Super Tuesday panned out for him? Well, at millions of dollars a day, actually he possibly couldn't. After a poor third even in his home state of South Carolina, it's possible that the money just ran out. Even to coast to the finish line next week – stopping spending – would have been an admission that he wasn't in the fight and an invitation to humiliation. When the real choice becomes obviously between "him" and "her", for Senator John being a gooseberry was just asking to get squished.
Commentators were quick to guess that Senator John would INSTANTLY endorse Mr Barry, and were clucking about how the Barry O campaign had clearly learned to be clever and done a deal. Clearly they HAVEN'T because Senator John hasn't endorsed anyone yet. He's really not got the leverage but it's possible that he's hanging out for a shot at the VP from whoever will offer it. Though of course THAT is only on the cards if they don't offer the second seat to EACH OTHER!
And now that it's down to the two of them, it seems that they've stopped being QUITE so nasty to each other, and it's just possible that both camps have realised that they might not just have to work together but that together they might have to make a "dream ticket" work.
DECLINING the opportunity in the latest debate to rule it out, at this stage speaks volumes. They still had their disagreements, but they've left the BITTERNESS at the door (at least for now!) and have clearly agreed that it's time to start turning the fire towards the Replutocrats.
Which is clearly BAD NEWS for whichever SCHMUCK ends up strapping himself to the target!
Meanwhile, my old fluffy sparing partner, Mr Frank Luntz was on the Newsnight show telling Mr Paxo how Super Tuesday will play out for the Replutocrats, saying he CONFIDENTLY expected Senator Oven-Chip to take HALF the states up for grabs.
Now, obviously that SOUNDS like a COMMANDING position for the superannuated warmonger, but what it REALLY means is that the Replutocrats are SPLIT right down the middle, with half their supporters favouring a geriatric from the military-industrial complex and the OTHER half wanting a god-botherer of some flavour (the flavours on offer being oily-and-rich or country-nut).
A joke: why are the most populous states in the Union on the coast? Because of all the people who are BACKING SLOWLY AWAY!
So with the Governator backing him in California and Mayor Rude-y endorsing him for New York, Senator Oven-Chip stands to win some of the really BIG delegate numbers next week, and that may see it all sewn up.
EXCEPT, there is a bit of a HIDDEN DANGER for the Replutocrats here.
You see, it seems like the moneyed factions may have decided that some old geezer whopis… annoyed them off a lot is just the FALL GUY they need to stand up to get mown down by the Clinton Gang. But the Bring-on-the-Rapture wing of the party still actually believes in winning. So when (not if) Senator Oven-Chip goes down, there are going to be a whole HORDE of Jebus-loving rednecks, furiously convinced that THEY WAS RIGHT about who should have been picked. And they'll be looking for payback. It might be quite a while before the Replotocrats can put THAT coalition back together again.
Mr God bless Amnesia!
Oh, I was NOT going to write to you again about the American elections before next Tuesday's Super Double-Duper Tuesday, but there have been significant developments, following the votes in Florida.
Senator Edwards has admitted what we all knew: it's between Hillary-Billary and Barry O.
And former Mayor Rude-y Giuliani has achieved the biggest ever cock up in a Presidential election.
This is all the more SURPRISING when you remember that the Floridians broke the rules and brought their primaries forwards to January, meaning that they only count HALF for the Repluticrats and NOT AT ALL for the Dumbocrats.
It seems rather an ODD time for Senator Edwards to call it a day. The twenty-six delegates that he gained in those little warm-up primaries aren't going to be enough to let him be "kingmaker" come the summer. Could he REALLY not have hung on for another week to see how Super Tuesday panned out for him? Well, at millions of dollars a day, actually he possibly couldn't. After a poor third even in his home state of South Carolina, it's possible that the money just ran out. Even to coast to the finish line next week – stopping spending – would have been an admission that he wasn't in the fight and an invitation to humiliation. When the real choice becomes obviously between "him" and "her", for Senator John being a gooseberry was just asking to get squished.
Commentators were quick to guess that Senator John would INSTANTLY endorse Mr Barry, and were clucking about how the Barry O campaign had clearly learned to be clever and done a deal. Clearly they HAVEN'T because Senator John hasn't endorsed anyone yet. He's really not got the leverage but it's possible that he's hanging out for a shot at the VP from whoever will offer it. Though of course THAT is only on the cards if they don't offer the second seat to EACH OTHER!
And now that it's down to the two of them, it seems that they've stopped being QUITE so nasty to each other, and it's just possible that both camps have realised that they might not just have to work together but that together they might have to make a "dream ticket" work.
DECLINING the opportunity in the latest debate to rule it out, at this stage speaks volumes. They still had their disagreements, but they've left the BITTERNESS at the door (at least for now!) and have clearly agreed that it's time to start turning the fire towards the Replutocrats.
Which is clearly BAD NEWS for whichever SCHMUCK ends up strapping himself to the target!
Meanwhile, my old fluffy sparing partner, Mr Frank Luntz was on the Newsnight show telling Mr Paxo how Super Tuesday will play out for the Replutocrats, saying he CONFIDENTLY expected Senator Oven-Chip to take HALF the states up for grabs.
Now, obviously that SOUNDS like a COMMANDING position for the superannuated warmonger, but what it REALLY means is that the Replutocrats are SPLIT right down the middle, with half their supporters favouring a geriatric from the military-industrial complex and the OTHER half wanting a god-botherer of some flavour (the flavours on offer being oily-and-rich or country-nut).
A joke: why are the most populous states in the Union on the coast? Because of all the people who are BACKING SLOWLY AWAY!
So with the Governator backing him in California and Mayor Rude-y endorsing him for New York, Senator Oven-Chip stands to win some of the really BIG delegate numbers next week, and that may see it all sewn up.
EXCEPT, there is a bit of a HIDDEN DANGER for the Replutocrats here.
You see, it seems like the moneyed factions may have decided that some old geezer who
Mr God bless Amnesia!
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Day 2583: Phew! That Was Close
Monday:
I understand that it would IRONIC if the Earth was smashed to pieces on Daddy Richard's birthday.
I understand that it would IRONIC if the Earth was smashed to pieces on Daddy Richard's birthday.
Day 2582: A Degree from the University of Oxford (… that's Oxford Street McDonalds)
Sunday:
"…once you have got a qualification in management you can probably go anywhere," said Mr Frown.
"After all, McDonalds are opening a branch on every high street, these days!" he could have added.
Whatever happened to studying because it was a GOOD thing to do? Life seems to be only about getting the qualifications that will get you a job.
The government are OBSESSED with this CULT of WORK as the cure for all ills. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised: after all they are the LABOUR party. (Mind you, I don't know what the Conservatory Party's excuse is!)
It is not that there is NECESSARILY anything wrong with receiving your training from McDonalds. I certainly don't think that McDonalds should NOT be training their wage-slaves er employees. Indeed, McDonalds OUGHT to be training their staff ANYWAY. It is just that I am slightly DUBIOUS about the benefits of shoehorning on-the-job training into the academic framework of GCSEs and A-Levels.
And then there is the idea that the McA-Level will help you qualify towards a University application. But an application to study what? I may be being old-fashioned about this, but if you are going to study literature or languages or science or space, don't you need an APPROPRIATE degree? I am concerned that this may actually be a TRAP for young people, forcing them to stay on one vocational path.
After a while, McDonalds can start to provide housing units for their staff, along with education, and then it's a short step to them providing you with your McHusband or McWife and owning your life entirely!
(Daddy Alex says they could be renamed IMCdonalds… I'm sure that at least Mr Will will get the connection.)
But perhaps it DOES seem like it would make that training into a more PORTABLE commodity. If it enables OTHER employers to recognise the qualities that some poor McDrone has developed while slaving over a hot griddle, then surely that is to the GOOD. Although, isn't that what a CV is for?
Education ought to be a form of LIBERATION – a route to freedom from ignorance, poverty and conformity.
This just seems like another scheme for the Labour to score higher on their A-Level and degree targets, and as a bonus they are CRUSHING those freedoms, and leave people dumb, poor and identikit.
A good education ISN'T something that JUST ends in a job – it is one that leaves you BETTER EDUCATED. We need to go back to school and find a better answer!
"…once you have got a qualification in management you can probably go anywhere," said Mr Frown.
"After all, McDonalds are opening a branch on every high street, these days!" he could have added.
Whatever happened to studying because it was a GOOD thing to do? Life seems to be only about getting the qualifications that will get you a job.
The government are OBSESSED with this CULT of WORK as the cure for all ills. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised: after all they are the LABOUR party. (Mind you, I don't know what the Conservatory Party's excuse is!)
It is not that there is NECESSARILY anything wrong with receiving your training from McDonalds. I certainly don't think that McDonalds should NOT be training their wage-slaves er employees. Indeed, McDonalds OUGHT to be training their staff ANYWAY. It is just that I am slightly DUBIOUS about the benefits of shoehorning on-the-job training into the academic framework of GCSEs and A-Levels.
And then there is the idea that the McA-Level will help you qualify towards a University application. But an application to study what? I may be being old-fashioned about this, but if you are going to study literature or languages or science or space, don't you need an APPROPRIATE degree? I am concerned that this may actually be a TRAP for young people, forcing them to stay on one vocational path.
After a while, McDonalds can start to provide housing units for their staff, along with education, and then it's a short step to them providing you with your McHusband or McWife and owning your life entirely!
(Daddy Alex says they could be renamed IMCdonalds… I'm sure that at least Mr Will will get the connection.)
But perhaps it DOES seem like it would make that training into a more PORTABLE commodity. If it enables OTHER employers to recognise the qualities that some poor McDrone has developed while slaving over a hot griddle, then surely that is to the GOOD. Although, isn't that what a CV is for?
Education ought to be a form of LIBERATION – a route to freedom from ignorance, poverty and conformity.
This just seems like another scheme for the Labour to score higher on their A-Level and degree targets, and as a bonus they are CRUSHING those freedoms, and leave people dumb, poor and identikit.
A good education ISN'T something that JUST ends in a job – it is one that leaves you BETTER EDUCATED. We need to go back to school and find a better answer!
Day 2581: Let's Blame the French!
Saturday
Oh hurrah, just when it looked like the world's economy was going to go to hell in a handcart, along comes the jolly old French to offer up a SCAPEGOAT.
The news that a Rogue Trader has cost top French bank Société General a whopping €5 billion, even better that the bank had been warned in advance, gives the economic incompetents who are running Great Britain and America the chance to point their fingers and say: "THEY were dumping their dodgy deals; THEY'RE to blame!"
Of course, the reality is that it was almost certainly the other way around.
Far from CAUSING the mad selling panic last Monday, Soc Gen were UNLUCKY enough to get caught up in it. Their Trader, Mr Jerome Kerviel, had left them in a sticky position with a number of deals that meant they would have to sell shares at a loss. What would NORMALLY happen, though, is that you could HIDE this by bundling those losing shares up with some NEW deals and roll the whole lot forwards in the hope that eventually you would come clean. Sort of like an endless DOUBLE-or-QUITS bet. Except of course, it can't REALLY be endless. And when a day like last Monday comes along and EVERYTHING is going downwards, suddenly there nowhere left to hide and you have to make the losses become "real" – i.e. cough up the dosh.
So, Société General didn't start the Market's plunge… but they might well have made it a whole lot WORSE because when other people might have stopped trading, they just had to keep on selling and it kept the spiral going.
And yet, and yet… funnily enough, there ARE some people who are treating Mr Kerviel as some sort of HERO – and not just for BOPPING the NOSE of a big institutional bank. The slightly loopy and yet disturbingly CREDIBLE suggestion is that by a DOMINO effect, he may have SAVED THE WORLD! Because he left the bank owing billions, THEY dumped them on the Market, that turned a fall into collapse which in turn panicked the Federal Reserve enough that they actually woke up to the danger inherent in America's poor economic position and THAT is what caused them to cut interest rates so dramatically that it might actually make a difference.
Or it might not, but that is the sort of chain of logic – and by logic I mean whimsical fantasy – that city traders love to cling to in a crisis. And lo, the markets did recover a bit.
Until the next panic!
Oh hurrah, just when it looked like the world's economy was going to go to hell in a handcart, along comes the jolly old French to offer up a SCAPEGOAT.
The news that a Rogue Trader has cost top French bank Société General a whopping €5 billion, even better that the bank had been warned in advance, gives the economic incompetents who are running Great Britain and America the chance to point their fingers and say: "THEY were dumping their dodgy deals; THEY'RE to blame!"
Of course, the reality is that it was almost certainly the other way around.
Far from CAUSING the mad selling panic last Monday, Soc Gen were UNLUCKY enough to get caught up in it. Their Trader, Mr Jerome Kerviel, had left them in a sticky position with a number of deals that meant they would have to sell shares at a loss. What would NORMALLY happen, though, is that you could HIDE this by bundling those losing shares up with some NEW deals and roll the whole lot forwards in the hope that eventually you would come clean. Sort of like an endless DOUBLE-or-QUITS bet. Except of course, it can't REALLY be endless. And when a day like last Monday comes along and EVERYTHING is going downwards, suddenly there nowhere left to hide and you have to make the losses become "real" – i.e. cough up the dosh.
So, Société General didn't start the Market's plunge… but they might well have made it a whole lot WORSE because when other people might have stopped trading, they just had to keep on selling and it kept the spiral going.
And yet, and yet… funnily enough, there ARE some people who are treating Mr Kerviel as some sort of HERO – and not just for BOPPING the NOSE of a big institutional bank. The slightly loopy and yet disturbingly CREDIBLE suggestion is that by a DOMINO effect, he may have SAVED THE WORLD! Because he left the bank owing billions, THEY dumped them on the Market, that turned a fall into collapse which in turn panicked the Federal Reserve enough that they actually woke up to the danger inherent in America's poor economic position and THAT is what caused them to cut interest rates so dramatically that it might actually make a difference.
Or it might not, but that is the sort of chain of logic – and by logic I mean whimsical fantasy – that city traders love to cling to in a crisis. And lo, the markets did recover a bit.
Until the next panic!
Day 2580: Quantum of Solero
Friday
Ooh, James Bond!
Mr Daniel has been spending AGES trying to explain what "Quantum of Solace" actually MEANS. I think he should not bother – it is not like it is as important as how many EXPLOSIONS he escapes from, now is it!
"Quantum of Solace" is one of the few remaining titles that Mr Ian Flemming came up with that haven't yet been used for a movie. The others are "Risico" (which you COULD use but isn't iconically cool and memorable the way "Goldfinger" is), "The Hildebrand Rarity" (it's a FISH) and my personal favourite "Property of a Lady". (Although the PLOT, such as it is, was used for the Fabergé Egg at Sotherby's part of "A View to a Kill"; just as the plot of "Risico" is the main bit of "For Your Eyes Only" and "The Hildebrand Rarity" contributes bits to "Licence to Kill".)
Unlike Doctor Who titles – which are usually just "The Something of Something Else (usually Death!) – James Bond titles are REALLY HARD to do properly. They kind of need to sound like they are ALMOST a familiar phrase or saying, but perhaps twisted a little – like "Live and Let DIE" or "You only Live TWICE".
This is why "Licence to Kill" is a RUBBISH James Bond title (mumbles something about the film, no it's very good really) and why "Tomorrow Never Dies" is obviously trying TOO HARD.
I rather like "Quantum of Solace" though, and will look forward to seeing it very soon!
Ooh, James Bond!
Mr Daniel has been spending AGES trying to explain what "Quantum of Solace" actually MEANS. I think he should not bother – it is not like it is as important as how many EXPLOSIONS he escapes from, now is it!
"Quantum of Solace" is one of the few remaining titles that Mr Ian Flemming came up with that haven't yet been used for a movie. The others are "Risico" (which you COULD use but isn't iconically cool and memorable the way "Goldfinger" is), "The Hildebrand Rarity" (it's a FISH) and my personal favourite "Property of a Lady". (Although the PLOT, such as it is, was used for the Fabergé Egg at Sotherby's part of "A View to a Kill"; just as the plot of "Risico" is the main bit of "For Your Eyes Only" and "The Hildebrand Rarity" contributes bits to "Licence to Kill".)
Unlike Doctor Who titles – which are usually just "The Something of Something Else (usually Death!) – James Bond titles are REALLY HARD to do properly. They kind of need to sound like they are ALMOST a familiar phrase or saying, but perhaps twisted a little – like "Live and Let DIE" or "You only Live TWICE".
This is why "Licence to Kill" is a RUBBISH James Bond title (mumbles something about the film, no it's very good really) and why "Tomorrow Never Dies" is obviously trying TOO HARD.
I rather like "Quantum of Solace" though, and will look forward to seeing it very soon!
PS:
This has been my seven-hundredth (and oneth) diary, brought to you by the miracle of filling in all the gaps from last year!Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Day 2578: TOYCHWUD: Sleeper
Wednesday:
No giant chickens were harmed in the making of this production!
No giant chickens were harmed in the making of this production!
The second episode of the second season is a darker and in a lot of ways more predictable tale than "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" last week: For the first time Torchwood lives up to its "above the law" braggadocio when an attempted burglary leads to the team stumbling across an alien infiltrator, programmed to reconnoitre the Earth and prepare the way for invasion. And she has no idea.
In spite of the overtones of Guantanamo, this show could have been written any time in the last hundred years – just swap in "al Qaeda" or "the Commies" or "the Nazis" or "the Kaiser" or "the Yellow Peril" and the "ooooh, foreigners" metaphor works just the same. On the other hand, it doesn't patronise us, either: there's an old fashioned abuse of power story going on here too – Babylon Five, for example did it in "In the Shadow of Za'ha'dum" – but here no one takes the "but this is wrong" position; all of Team Torchwood are on board with Jack's approach, leaving us to make up our own moral minds. Even Ianto's comic teasing seems more concerned about the mess he might have to clean up than any violation of Beth's rights.
Actually, those comic moments are more evidence of the Ianto re-think that seems to be really working so far this season. It was also a good week for Gwen, who managed to do caring and empathetic while still being on-side, which almost makes her good cop (to Jack's bad cop) seem more sinister.
The show hangs on the strong central performance of Beth, convincing as the human woman in denial and chilling as the name, rank and serial number infiltrator. The side-step into whether she is or isn't "human" is more left as an exercise for the viewer than explored in depth but it does form a backbone for what is going on in much the way that it didn't in last year's in some senses similar "Cyberwoman". But this succeeds in making you care about the protagonists in a way that Chibnall's kitten-heeled horror really didn't, the episode really taking off at the point where Beth manages to kill – or at very least seriously maim – her partner. It somehow manages to connect the alien possession horror to the real world, something that the Lisa/Ianto relationship in "Cyberwoman" – with both of them working for a fantasy organisation – never did
The flaws where they come are more in the area of the plot. An invasion plan that relies on just five agents, all of them in the Cardiff area, and just happening upon the means of ending the world… it stretches the credulity a little. If they are such a small group, then they're a bit wasteful of their resources, just to make a couple of crude "suicide bomber" moments. But if there are many of them, and that’s what the closing "twist/threat" of "they're already here" seems to say, then why didn't they activate too? It smacks of an "ooh, scary" ending that's just not going to be followed up.
The prosthetic initially looks quite good when, nicely mixed with CG, it "opens up" from the arm. But where is that blade weapon supposed to have come from? The T1000 might be liquid metal and able to adopt any shape, but these are biological beings with their technology concealed inside an ordinary human frame. (Or is it all concealed behind magic force-fields?) And, to be fair, it does look a bit silly.
In many ways, though, this is what we expect an all-in-a-days-work episode of Torchwood to be like. They detect the aliens, they abuse due process and civil liberties, they exchange witty and sexually charged badinage and then finish by blowing the threat away. "Sleeper" does all of these things plus a few grace notes for the thinking viewer to latch onto. But it does do them with style, and that's so much better than anything equivalent from last year.
Next time… and Tosh said it was so difficult meeting interesting people. Tragic love across time and the usual end of the world in "To the last Man".
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Day 2584: Dither and Flip-Flops
Tuesday:
General APOPLEXY grips the Conservatory Party once more on the news that they have comprehensively NEUTERED their attack over the Mr Peter Vain affair and lost themselves the chance to take pot shots at Postman Pat.
I'm referring, of course, to Mr Derek Con(servatory)way who has had to APOLOGISE to the House of Commons for finding a neat way around the Student Loan problems for his son (or indeed sons… or indeed sons and wife).
"It is a WITCH-HUNT!" says another of the witches!
Which must make Mr Balloon the WITCH-FINDER GENERAL!
"You're FIRED," he said, "LET'S BURN HIM!"
This leaves Mr Balloon without a line of attack on the Labour's money woes. Anything he cares to name will see Mr Frown knock him to the boundary with a straight bat:
"And they said I couldn't increase my majority over the Conservatories! You accuse us over some small… uhh… incompetences, but you've had to SACK one of your own MP's because he was… uhh… having it away with great sacks of my… uhh… taxpayers' wonga! That, Mr Speaker, is the difference between the Conservatories and the Labour: they're… uhh… crooked because they MEAN it whereas we are just… uhh… a bit RUBBISH… uhh… hang on…"
Mr Balloon's latest Flip-Flop, this Change of Mind to get "Tough on Crime; Tough on the Conservatories of Crime", has left Dave's Mate Mr "Mate of Dave" Robinson with egg on his face, after he explained earlier why Mr Balloon was going to chicken out of punishing Mr Con(servatory)way.
Obviously sacking him IS the RIGHT thing to do – if it had been someone working for Tesco or ASDA employing their kids to collect the trolleys, then handing out great big bonuses even when all the trolleys are still scattered around the far end of the car park, you can bet that the management would want to see their P45 printed pretty smartly! And Mr Balloon managed flip to the right conclusion after being wrong for only twenty-four hours – which is a record for him!
"There is no question of dither here," clarified Mr Balloon. "It's straightforward, Decisive Dave – yesterday I decisively decided to back Mr Con(servatory)way to the hilt; today I decided decisively to plunge my dagger into his back… to the hilt. Simple, no nonsense, diametrically opposed potions. That's my way, the new way, the Conservatory Way! (er, he's fired, by the way.)"
General APOPLEXY grips the Conservatory Party once more on the news that they have comprehensively NEUTERED their attack over the Mr Peter Vain affair and lost themselves the chance to take pot shots at Postman Pat.
I'm referring, of course, to Mr Derek Con(servatory)way who has had to APOLOGISE to the House of Commons for finding a neat way around the Student Loan problems for his son (or indeed sons… or indeed sons and wife).
"It is a WITCH-HUNT!" says another of the witches!
Which must make Mr Balloon the WITCH-FINDER GENERAL!
"You're FIRED," he said, "LET'S BURN HIM!"
This leaves Mr Balloon without a line of attack on the Labour's money woes. Anything he cares to name will see Mr Frown knock him to the boundary with a straight bat:
"And they said I couldn't increase my majority over the Conservatories! You accuse us over some small… uhh… incompetences, but you've had to SACK one of your own MP's because he was… uhh… having it away with great sacks of my… uhh… taxpayers' wonga! That, Mr Speaker, is the difference between the Conservatories and the Labour: they're… uhh… crooked because they MEAN it whereas we are just… uhh… a bit RUBBISH… uhh… hang on…"
Mr Balloon's latest Flip-Flop, this Change of Mind to get "Tough on Crime; Tough on the Conservatories of Crime", has left Dave's Mate Mr "Mate of Dave" Robinson with egg on his face, after he explained earlier why Mr Balloon was going to chicken out of punishing Mr Con(servatory)way.
Obviously sacking him IS the RIGHT thing to do – if it had been someone working for Tesco or ASDA employing their kids to collect the trolleys, then handing out great big bonuses even when all the trolleys are still scattered around the far end of the car park, you can bet that the management would want to see their P45 printed pretty smartly! And Mr Balloon managed flip to the right conclusion after being wrong for only twenty-four hours – which is a record for him!
"There is no question of dither here," clarified Mr Balloon. "It's straightforward, Decisive Dave – yesterday I decisively decided to back Mr Con(servatory)way to the hilt; today I decided decisively to plunge my dagger into his back… to the hilt. Simple, no nonsense, diametrically opposed potions. That's my way, the new way, the Conservatory Way! (er, he's fired, by the way.)"
Friday, January 25, 2008
Day 2577: 'Ndividual Health Service
Tuesday:
Mr Clogg has announced exciting new Health policies for the Liberal Democrats.
The aim is to enable people to take charge of their own health needs, rather than having some remote minister dictate to them what they will get.
The Health Service is a BRILLIANT thing: looking after the poorly is truly a mark of being civilised. But too often the bureaucracy put in place by the Labour leaves doctors and nurses struggling to meet Whitehall's targets instead of the needs of their patients.
It is time to put a stop to that by putting people back in change.
Key proposals begin with a Patient's Contract, that will give you a GUARANTEED maximum waiting time, and if the NHS cannot meet that time, then you will be able to go private.
People with long-term needs will be able to take control of the money that gets spent on their care, freeing them from dependence on the state and letting them make the decisions about what treatments serve them best.
And there will be a "Care Guarantee" for the elderly, backed up with two BILLION pounds of funding, for a personal care payment based on need not means testing.
There has been some comment that this guarantee is not as generous as the "Free Care for the Elderly" policy that the Liberal Democrats in Scotland implemented while they were in coalition government.
The Labour's Ivan (t to have My Cake and eat it) Lewis said:
"…frankly this amounts to a retreat and U-turn by Mr Clogg on previous Liberal Democrat policy which said that elderly people would get free care regardless of income."
Nice admission that it WAS us who got that done in Scotland, by the way.
But we have got to bite the bullet on this one. Mr Clogg had the BOTTLE to admit that it would be impossible to afford such a scheme – indeed, it has proved far more expensive in Scotland than budgeted – and it would be DISHONEST to promise something that we could not really do.
Instead we have come up with a costed and affordable proposal to tackle the tragedy of old people having to sell their homes and spend their life savings on care.
That didn't stop Mr Ivan saying:
"…the guarantee is not worth the paper it is written on."
Although, the paper it's written on is STILL worth more than the Labour's offer of, er, doing nothing.
Going further, the Liberal Democrats propose to deal with the scandal of the Labour's QUANGOCRACY, where they pick all of their UNACCOUNTABLE chums to serve on the local Primary Case Trusts. We would replace these with locally elected Health Boards.
We know from our community campaigning that nothing motivates people like a threat to their local hospital or doctors' services. So this would give people the chance to get involved and solve problems DIRECTLY through the Ballot Box.
And we would let people decide to spend more (or less!) on their local health needs, by giving them the power to add an extra slice to the level of their local income tax.
Ultimately, controlling the MONEY is what give people real POWER over outcomes, and that's why Mr Clogg has "got down to brass tax" (you might say!)
Now, you KNOW that that is going to mean different solutions, and different OUTCOMES, in different areas. But it ALSO means that people are going to have the power to CHANGE things if they don't like it.
The CRISIS of the NHS at the moment is not that it hasn't got the money or the drugs or the skills or the people. It is that everything is controlled from the MUDDLE in the MIDDLE and if they find a solution that works in one place, they IMPOSE it on everywhere else. Without thinking whether everywhere else wants or needs it.
The National Health Service was founded sixty years ago based on a LIBERAL ideal – freeing people from the burden of sickness.
Now it needs another Liberal ideal – freeing people from the burden of CENTRALISM – to see our NHS continue to flourish for another sixty years!
Mr Clogg has announced exciting new Health policies for the Liberal Democrats.
The aim is to enable people to take charge of their own health needs, rather than having some remote minister dictate to them what they will get.
The Health Service is a BRILLIANT thing: looking after the poorly is truly a mark of being civilised. But too often the bureaucracy put in place by the Labour leaves doctors and nurses struggling to meet Whitehall's targets instead of the needs of their patients.
It is time to put a stop to that by putting people back in change.
Key proposals begin with a Patient's Contract, that will give you a GUARANTEED maximum waiting time, and if the NHS cannot meet that time, then you will be able to go private.
People with long-term needs will be able to take control of the money that gets spent on their care, freeing them from dependence on the state and letting them make the decisions about what treatments serve them best.
And there will be a "Care Guarantee" for the elderly, backed up with two BILLION pounds of funding, for a personal care payment based on need not means testing.
There has been some comment that this guarantee is not as generous as the "Free Care for the Elderly" policy that the Liberal Democrats in Scotland implemented while they were in coalition government.
The Labour's Ivan (t to have My Cake and eat it) Lewis said:
"…frankly this amounts to a retreat and U-turn by Mr Clogg on previous Liberal Democrat policy which said that elderly people would get free care regardless of income."
Nice admission that it WAS us who got that done in Scotland, by the way.
But we have got to bite the bullet on this one. Mr Clogg had the BOTTLE to admit that it would be impossible to afford such a scheme – indeed, it has proved far more expensive in Scotland than budgeted – and it would be DISHONEST to promise something that we could not really do.
Instead we have come up with a costed and affordable proposal to tackle the tragedy of old people having to sell their homes and spend their life savings on care.
That didn't stop Mr Ivan saying:
"…the guarantee is not worth the paper it is written on."
Although, the paper it's written on is STILL worth more than the Labour's offer of, er, doing nothing.
Going further, the Liberal Democrats propose to deal with the scandal of the Labour's QUANGOCRACY, where they pick all of their UNACCOUNTABLE chums to serve on the local Primary Case Trusts. We would replace these with locally elected Health Boards.
We know from our community campaigning that nothing motivates people like a threat to their local hospital or doctors' services. So this would give people the chance to get involved and solve problems DIRECTLY through the Ballot Box.
And we would let people decide to spend more (or less!) on their local health needs, by giving them the power to add an extra slice to the level of their local income tax.
Ultimately, controlling the MONEY is what give people real POWER over outcomes, and that's why Mr Clogg has "got down to brass tax" (you might say!)
Now, you KNOW that that is going to mean different solutions, and different OUTCOMES, in different areas. But it ALSO means that people are going to have the power to CHANGE things if they don't like it.
The CRISIS of the NHS at the moment is not that it hasn't got the money or the drugs or the skills or the people. It is that everything is controlled from the MUDDLE in the MIDDLE and if they find a solution that works in one place, they IMPOSE it on everywhere else. Without thinking whether everywhere else wants or needs it.
The National Health Service was founded sixty years ago based on a LIBERAL ideal – freeing people from the burden of sickness.
Now it needs another Liberal ideal – freeing people from the burden of CENTRALISM – to see our NHS continue to flourish for another sixty years!
Day 2576: Actually, it IS the Economy, Stupid!
Monday:
In THEORY the stock market works like this: extremely clever (and highly-paid) City chaps study a company, decide what future income they might get, work out how risky it is and then set a price based on how much money they would need to have now to get the same sort of interest. Other chaps guesstimate that it's worth a bit more, so they will buy. The market averages out the estimates of value and works out the right sort of price.
In PRACTICE it works like this: "Ooh look a fluffity little kitten!" "Arrrgh, arrgh; sell, Sell, SELL!"
An extremely clever analyst, yesterday
So we get another STOMACH-CHURNING day on the stock markets with billions of (sort of imaginary) pounds disappearing out of the window. And occasional (less imaginary) City chaps also jumping out of the window.
Today's "fluffity kitten" was in actual fact the American Monkey-in-Chief, probably causing the panic by saying he was going to TAKE ACTION. (That's ALWAYS a cause for worry.)
Mr Shrub's announcement of an "emergency economic stimulus package" does TWO things.
First, it shouts from the rooftops: "This is an EMERGENCY!!!"
Second, it reveals that the Monkey-in-Chief's PLAN is… more tax cuts, at a time when the US government has never been in more debt.
Obviously that means more BORROWING, and – in the current climate of credit shortage – that means that the PLAN is to make the Credit Crunch crunch HARDER.
And, of course, tax cuts also mean a protracted WRANGLE between the Monkey and the Democrat-controlled House over the budget. Hardly the most PACEY of "emergency" action.
Clearly, someone had to take GENUINE emergency action to deal with the Monkey-in-Chief's emergency action, and so the Federal Reserve stepped in to throw money at the problem.
On the one fluffy foot, there is nothing like shocking the markets with an announcement in order to announce that you are making the biggest rate cut for 26 years for saying "PANIC NOW!"
On the other fluffy foot, it does seem to have worked.
And yet, of course, the FUNDAMENTAL problem is that there is just too much BORROWING, so is MORE borrowing by the US Government coupled with making it easier for people to borrow MORE, really really the solution?
Mr Frown is quick to reassure us that the British economy is in great SHAPE and we do not need to worry. After all, why worry about the world's largest consumer economy toppling over like a mortally wounded BRONTOSAURUS, especially when you are standing right next to it?!
Interest rates are LOW, inflation is LOW, unemployment is LOW: what could possibly go wrong? …as the Captain of the Titanic probably asked himself. Because judging how the voyage has been going is no excuse for not looking ahead to see what you're headed towards.
As Mr Vince "Strictly Liberal Democrat" Cable has been saying for some time, conditions in the BOILER ROOM suggest that we might not be as UNSINKABLE as the Prime Monster likes to pretend. Just like America, we have been holding off the "iceberg of recession" though consumer spending, fuelled largely by CREDIT. Rising house prices have given people the ILLUSION of magical ever growing pots of money under their houses which they can use to borrow bigger and bigger mortgages against. Which is fine so long as house prices DO continue to grow. Oh, and indeed, dear.
But it's not just the voters who've been running up a BIT OF A TAB, with Mr Frown achieving RECORD levels of government borrowing in December. Perhaps he was maxing out the credit cards for Christmas along with the rest of us.
Mr Frown's famous GOLDEN RULE is: the budget should balance over the course of the business cycle. Without getting too TECHNICAL, that means in the good year, you spend LESS than you take in tax so you can REPAY your government loans while things are going WELL. Then, when things start to go BADLY, you can borrow a bit more to TIDE you OVER.
Mr Frown has NOT done this.
He DID repay a lot of borrowing at the start of his ten years as Chancellor – he sold off the 3G licences and windfall-taxed the banks and raided the pensions in order to pay back the huge loans that Mr Fatty Clarke left him with.
That was GOOD.
But then he started to spend money like it was going out of fashion, so much that he was borrowing to meet the gap between tax receipts and spending even when the economy was booming. By FUDGING the start date of the "business cycle" (which you can do because no-one can agree on what a "business cycle" actually is) he managed to make it add up so that the big repayments at the start still cancelled out all the extra borrowing. Even though it's not supposed to work that way.
Which was BAD.
Now, he has left himself with not a lot of room to manoeuvre. Meaning he has to come over all MEAN to hardworking members of our public services like policepeople and, er, MPs.
Instead of controlling spending in the good years so that he can smooth the economy over the bad ones, he has EXAGGERATED how well things were doing by being MORE generous than he needed too, so he will have to slam on the brakes all the harder now, EXAGGERATING the impact of the slowdown as well.
Remember how DIFFICULT it was in the first years of the Labour, when they stuck to the ludicrously tiny spending plans that the Conservatories had made up so that it looked like the economy could work – the ones that the Conservatories themselves had no intention of sticking too? Remember that? Well he's going to have to do it all again now.
So here's a NEW GOLDEN RULE for Mr Frown: don't break the RULES and don't spend all the GOLD.
In THEORY the stock market works like this: extremely clever (and highly-paid) City chaps study a company, decide what future income they might get, work out how risky it is and then set a price based on how much money they would need to have now to get the same sort of interest. Other chaps guesstimate that it's worth a bit more, so they will buy. The market averages out the estimates of value and works out the right sort of price.
In PRACTICE it works like this: "Ooh look a fluffity little kitten!" "Arrrgh, arrgh; sell, Sell, SELL!"
An extremely clever analyst, yesterday
So we get another STOMACH-CHURNING day on the stock markets with billions of (sort of imaginary) pounds disappearing out of the window. And occasional (less imaginary) City chaps also jumping out of the window.
Today's "fluffity kitten" was in actual fact the American Monkey-in-Chief, probably causing the panic by saying he was going to TAKE ACTION. (That's ALWAYS a cause for worry.)
Mr Shrub's announcement of an "emergency economic stimulus package" does TWO things.
First, it shouts from the rooftops: "This is an EMERGENCY!!!"
Second, it reveals that the Monkey-in-Chief's PLAN is… more tax cuts, at a time when the US government has never been in more debt.
Obviously that means more BORROWING, and – in the current climate of credit shortage – that means that the PLAN is to make the Credit Crunch crunch HARDER.
And, of course, tax cuts also mean a protracted WRANGLE between the Monkey and the Democrat-controlled House over the budget. Hardly the most PACEY of "emergency" action.
Clearly, someone had to take GENUINE emergency action to deal with the Monkey-in-Chief's emergency action, and so the Federal Reserve stepped in to throw money at the problem.
On the one fluffy foot, there is nothing like shocking the markets with an announcement in order to announce that you are making the biggest rate cut for 26 years for saying "PANIC NOW!"
On the other fluffy foot, it does seem to have worked.
And yet, of course, the FUNDAMENTAL problem is that there is just too much BORROWING, so is MORE borrowing by the US Government coupled with making it easier for people to borrow MORE, really really the solution?
Mr Frown is quick to reassure us that the British economy is in great SHAPE and we do not need to worry. After all, why worry about the world's largest consumer economy toppling over like a mortally wounded BRONTOSAURUS, especially when you are standing right next to it?!
Interest rates are LOW, inflation is LOW, unemployment is LOW: what could possibly go wrong? …as the Captain of the Titanic probably asked himself. Because judging how the voyage has been going is no excuse for not looking ahead to see what you're headed towards.
As Mr Vince "Strictly Liberal Democrat" Cable has been saying for some time, conditions in the BOILER ROOM suggest that we might not be as UNSINKABLE as the Prime Monster likes to pretend. Just like America, we have been holding off the "iceberg of recession" though consumer spending, fuelled largely by CREDIT. Rising house prices have given people the ILLUSION of magical ever growing pots of money under their houses which they can use to borrow bigger and bigger mortgages against. Which is fine so long as house prices DO continue to grow. Oh, and indeed, dear.
But it's not just the voters who've been running up a BIT OF A TAB, with Mr Frown achieving RECORD levels of government borrowing in December. Perhaps he was maxing out the credit cards for Christmas along with the rest of us.
Mr Frown's famous GOLDEN RULE is: the budget should balance over the course of the business cycle. Without getting too TECHNICAL, that means in the good year, you spend LESS than you take in tax so you can REPAY your government loans while things are going WELL. Then, when things start to go BADLY, you can borrow a bit more to TIDE you OVER.
Mr Frown has NOT done this.
He DID repay a lot of borrowing at the start of his ten years as Chancellor – he sold off the 3G licences and windfall-taxed the banks and raided the pensions in order to pay back the huge loans that Mr Fatty Clarke left him with.
That was GOOD.
But then he started to spend money like it was going out of fashion, so much that he was borrowing to meet the gap between tax receipts and spending even when the economy was booming. By FUDGING the start date of the "business cycle" (which you can do because no-one can agree on what a "business cycle" actually is) he managed to make it add up so that the big repayments at the start still cancelled out all the extra borrowing. Even though it's not supposed to work that way.
Which was BAD.
Now, he has left himself with not a lot of room to manoeuvre. Meaning he has to come over all MEAN to hardworking members of our public services like policepeople and, er, MPs.
Instead of controlling spending in the good years so that he can smooth the economy over the bad ones, he has EXAGGERATED how well things were doing by being MORE generous than he needed too, so he will have to slam on the brakes all the harder now, EXAGGERATING the impact of the slowdown as well.
Remember how DIFFICULT it was in the first years of the Labour, when they stuck to the ludicrously tiny spending plans that the Conservatories had made up so that it looked like the economy could work – the ones that the Conservatories themselves had no intention of sticking too? Remember that? Well he's going to have to do it all again now.
So here's a NEW GOLDEN RULE for Mr Frown: don't break the RULES and don't spend all the GOLD.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Day 2571: TOYCHWUD: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Wednesday:
Sitting and watching the new series of Torchwood with my daddies, we are thrilled by the opening car-chase.
"Did you see a blowfish in a sports car?" asks heroic Gwen of a passing little old lady.
"That's a great opening line," says Daddy Alex.
The Torchwoodmobile drives off and the little old lady looks after them and says: "Bloody Torchwood!"
"No," says Daddy Richard. "THAT'S a great opening line!"
We are now eagerly (and nervously) anticipating episode two to see if this was an opening FLUKE or a genuine sign of having GOT IT RIGHT at the second attempt!
To keep you going until tonight, here is Daddy Richard's report on episode one:
Of course, I have not seen this yet at all, because I am TOO LITTLE, but there is Torchwood for Tots on TONIGHT at 7pm, followed By Torchwood Moving Wallpaper, followed by episode two after bedtime. Happy watching!
Sitting and watching the new series of Torchwood with my daddies, we are thrilled by the opening car-chase.
"Did you see a blowfish in a sports car?" asks heroic Gwen of a passing little old lady.
"That's a great opening line," says Daddy Alex.
The Torchwoodmobile drives off and the little old lady looks after them and says: "Bloody Torchwood!"
"No," says Daddy Richard. "THAT'S a great opening line!"
We are now eagerly (and nervously) anticipating episode two to see if this was an opening FLUKE or a genuine sign of having GOT IT RIGHT at the second attempt!
To keep you going until tonight, here is Daddy Richard's report on episode one:
So Russell "I Hate the T" Davies sits the creative team behind Torchwood season one down and says to them:
"Right, so I gave you a lovely, sexy leading man and you make him sulk for a year; I give you a lovely sexy leading lady and you make her have ugly, unpleasant sex with man who thinks the word "f***buddy" is an acceptable substitute for conversation with a lady; I give you a lovely exciting sexy secret base and you go and kill my pterodactyl. So sit quietly while I break your fingers, because I'm going to be doing the typing this year."
Because someone, and it's pretty certain that it's the mighty Russell, has taken this show in hand and shown them what it's supposed to be.
Sexy, outrageous, funny.
The biggest difference in John Barrowman when he was back on Doctor Who was to see him grinning – and thank goodness if he doesn't spend a lot of "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" grinning too. And even when he's not flashing those famous teeth – when he's locking lips with rival Time Agent Captain John, when he's shyly asking Ianto out on a proper date, even when he's giving the serious "I'm immortal" speech – he's clearly having fun at last.
What is interesting to see is the way that each of the other members of the team have also been rebooted in different ways, some subtly, some less so. Owen announces that he's over his womanising days (to the relief of an audience heartily sick of "ugly git sex") while Toshiko is abruptly much more confident, to the extent that she comes out with lines like: "Is no one going to say he's hot?" Gwen is much more focused and "in charge" to the extent that she had clearly taken it on herself to be team leader in Jack's absence. Ianto gets his lack of lines in the first series turned into a character trait: partly with him performing a series of comic head gestures; partly with him keeping his interjections to often witty one-liners while becoming unable to express himself when long sentences are required, when it matters.
In what is in many ways a revised Torchwood pilot, we get to see all the team members demonstrating their talents and their resilience in the face of a hostile intruder. Both Owen and Tosh show "in the field" application of their specialisms, be it medicine or technology. Gwen demonstrates leadership, courage and intelligent detective skills. And Ianto knows his way around an office. Oh, that was an unfair joke, he is clearly trying to be an apprentice Captain Jack, though not yet fully sure of himself as the opening standoff demonstrated. And as Gwen says, they just keep coming back stronger.
And to be fair it's a much better pilot than the one Russell wrote for them last year, even without pterodactyl. The music was familiar and yet more raw and grungy. The direction was sharper, more stylish, whether it was the swooping circles around Jack and John as they, er, engaged at the Bar Reunion, or the comic timing of team Torchwood's heads leaning in together in their big car. The actors seemed more involved with the drama.
Last year's "Everything Changes" had much potential but also set up a lot of the flaws that the series developed – too much darkness, too much team angst; not enough warmth, not enough laughs; too much Jack frowning; not enough characterisation for Tosh, none for Ianto; too much Owen getting his end away. The good stuff is there as well, but it wasn't what series one picked up on.
Still, the first series of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" had many of the same problems and they didn't get fixed until James Masters arrived at the start of series two. (Oh, you probably saw what I did there.)
Even if it's true that he phoned up and asked for the gig, it's an inspired piece of casting. Captain John: Captain Jack's equal and opposite, another rogue Time Agent (both now survivors of the destroyed Time Agency) who has a history with Jack but hasn't had the… opportunity to better himself that meeting the Doctor gave to our hero. Does any of this sound at all familiar? And then he goes and delivers – almost word for word – Roger Delgado's speech to Jon Pertwee in "The Doomsday Weapon" (that's the superior novel with the moral debates filled in of "Colony in Space", if you insist). We just knew that James was going to be back for more, after all they've already killed off one Master(s) in the last year. (Yes, you may groan.)
It's not difficult to say that he's playing Spike all over again, all jaunty, confident sexuality (even if it's Jack who's the immortal). But, as Alex says, who'd have thought that it would take Spike turning up to prove to this series that it doesn't have to be "Angel".
The plot is, thankfully, paper-thin – three McGuffins have washed up through the Hellmouth, sorry, Rift and threaten Cardiff's continued tranquillity. Golly gosh, Captain John wants to steal them for himself, who'd have thunk it. But it's all about getting there, not about where we're going, and he manages to spark off, bounce off or piss off all the regulars in his little game of hide and seek, before they turn the tables on him, to his rather charming surprise.
My dear fried Nick felt that the bomb-in-a-box twist was an intrusion of Chibnality into the story, but I have to say that explosion-ex-machina is also very Russell. It drives the next character moves, which is for John to put Gwen in peril so that the rest of the team will save him, and for Gwen simultaneously to take charge and go all self-sacrificey. And the resolution – ooh, it takes all of Torchwood combined to fix it – isn't half cheesy, but it is a good message for the series.
The other thing that James Marsters brings with him from Buffy is the ability to go into the past. No, not just time travel – though that may be possible as he, at least, has a presumably functioning Vortex Manipulator – but into that history with Jack, and into the Time Agency. The last scene rather obviously set up that there is some story to unfold over the season's arc – who is "Grey"? But also, more intriguingly, who could bring down the Time Agency? More broadly, who could bring down a time-active power? The obvious answer is only another time-active power – so who? Clearly this is "Torchwood" mirroring the Time War between the Time Lords and the Daleks. Of course, one Dalek – Dalek Caan – does still survive, so they have to remain a possibility.
(A possibility that opens fewer storylines did occur to me, which is that this is a reference to the Family of Blood. They did obtain a Time Agent's Vortex Manipulator in their pursuit of the Doctor, and they were bloody-minded enough to have brought down the Agency just to get hold of one. But that offers so few possibilities for story-telling that I think it’s unlikely to be the answer.)
And of course, in best RTD tradition, there is the "Make Lawrence Miles' Head Explode Moment of the Week": Captain John (aka The Master in this spin-off line) reveals to Jack "there are only seven of us left". Compare with Lawrence Miles' Eighth Doctor Adventure: "The Adventuress of Henrietta Street": The man in the blue rosette (aka The Master in this spin-off line) reveals to the Doctor "there are only four of us left".
Cue endless speculation about who are the seven/four? And if seven, is Blake one of them?
All in all, this is what we were expecting last year – adult, certainly (with all that mano-a-mano snogging, but not so much with the f-ing and blinding, Owen even using a "good grief" where an "f" would have gone last year), but Doctor Who to its beating heart.
So, as John might ask of Jack, can they keep it up?
Next time: oooh, that's a cool "trailer for the whole season like what Doctor Who does 'cos it gets a Christmas Special". Oh, sorry, forgot, next week, "spooky" detective time, in "Sleeper".
Of course, I have not seen this yet at all, because I am TOO LITTLE, but there is Torchwood for Tots on TONIGHT at 7pm, followed By Torchwood Moving Wallpaper, followed by episode two after bedtime. Happy watching!
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Day 2575: Oh Carolina!
Sunday:
News from the United States of Amnesia*.
Michigan voters decided that the Republican contest was too much fun, and kept the whole circus alive by making Senator Mitt Mormony into the "Comeback Creep".
He has also picked up the Nevada caucus, with a huge 51% of Nevadans voting for the "please don't invade us, Utah" option.
But from South Carolina, where Mr Mormony was pressed into a humiliating fourth behind Fred Flintstone, rival Senator Mick Hucky-Mucky-Puppy delivered a STINGING rebuke to the Moron from Mass, saying "the following Replutocrats were real swell fellas: Senator Oven-Chip… that is all!"
What all of this means is that the Replutocrats are in more of a muddle than ever. The dividing lines in the party between the rich-as-Croesus faction and the lunatics-for-Jebus wing (as in President Bush's Brother, O Jebus Bush) are only getting worse.
The ultra-rich look increasingly like they are going to hold their noses and vote for superannuated war maniac Senator Oven-Chip; while Senator Mucky-puppy is out trying to appeal to the Jebus-ite tendency who, as I've said before, are mad keen for another folksy monomaniac, so long as he's not the current folksy monomaniac who, hard as this is to believe, isn't down with Mr God enough for them. Senator Mormony is probably going to fall between two stools by trying to wear both HATS – not easy, but at least he has TWO FACES to go with them.
(That joke, © Yes Prime Minister)
None of this is good news for the man famous for ranting at his staff, late starter Mr Rude-y Giuliani, one-time head guy in New York – I think that means they called him Don Giuliani, though now he is retired he must be Don Rulin'.
HE had hoped to be the one to pick up the anti-religious (aka "I'm Sane") votes but it seems Senator Oven-Chip may have beaten him to the punch, there. We'll have to see what happens in Florida to see if Don Rude-y can pull it back, or if he'll be swimming with the fishes.
Things are so much simpler for the Democrats now, where it has turned into a straight BITCH-FIGHT between Hillary-Billary and Barry O. And you don't need to be a fluffy toy to know which of those two is the b… est candidate. Ouch!
Bad week though for Senator John Edwards, whose cunning plan after Iowa – to hint that he might throw his weight behind Mr Oklambama – seems to have BACKFIRED spectacularly, with the voters in Nevada squeezing him out almost entirely. Far from positioning himself as kingmaker, and potential vice-presidential material, he seems to have made himself irrelevant in the eyes of most voters. Which, of course, he is.
Since last I wrote about this, Governor Richardson has dropped out of the race, seeing which way the wind was blowing and bowing out gracefully. I still wouldn't rule him out completely for the vice-president's ticket, though: Hillary-Billary seems to be picking up votes in two KEY Democrat constituencies: women, obviously, and also the Hispanic community who, traditionally, organise better but below the radar compared with the more vocal black constituency that are tending to support Mr Oklambama.
Next the Democrats follow the Replutocrats to South Carolina, and Mr Barry is hoping to do well which will help him bounce back, then everyone is off to Florida for Mickey-Mouse's vote before super-double-duper Tuesday in February really starts to sort things out.
Mr God Bless Amnesia*
*Where all Replutocrats are campaigning as the "pro-change, anti-Washington" guy and seem to have forgotten just exactly WHICH party is currently IN the White House! They've certainly forgotten to remember to invite the Monkey-in-Chief to any campaign functions!
News from the United States of Amnesia*.
Michigan voters decided that the Republican contest was too much fun, and kept the whole circus alive by making Senator Mitt Mormony into the "Comeback Creep".
He has also picked up the Nevada caucus, with a huge 51% of Nevadans voting for the "please don't invade us, Utah" option.
But from South Carolina, where Mr Mormony was pressed into a humiliating fourth behind Fred Flintstone, rival Senator Mick Hucky-Mucky-Puppy delivered a STINGING rebuke to the Moron from Mass, saying "the following Replutocrats were real swell fellas: Senator Oven-Chip… that is all!"
What all of this means is that the Replutocrats are in more of a muddle than ever. The dividing lines in the party between the rich-as-Croesus faction and the lunatics-for-Jebus wing (as in President Bush's Brother, O Jebus Bush) are only getting worse.
The ultra-rich look increasingly like they are going to hold their noses and vote for superannuated war maniac Senator Oven-Chip; while Senator Mucky-puppy is out trying to appeal to the Jebus-ite tendency who, as I've said before, are mad keen for another folksy monomaniac, so long as he's not the current folksy monomaniac who, hard as this is to believe, isn't down with Mr God enough for them. Senator Mormony is probably going to fall between two stools by trying to wear both HATS – not easy, but at least he has TWO FACES to go with them.
(That joke, © Yes Prime Minister)
None of this is good news for the man famous for ranting at his staff, late starter Mr Rude-y Giuliani, one-time head guy in New York – I think that means they called him Don Giuliani, though now he is retired he must be Don Rulin'.
HE had hoped to be the one to pick up the anti-religious (aka "I'm Sane") votes but it seems Senator Oven-Chip may have beaten him to the punch, there. We'll have to see what happens in Florida to see if Don Rude-y can pull it back, or if he'll be swimming with the fishes.
Things are so much simpler for the Democrats now, where it has turned into a straight BITCH-FIGHT between Hillary-Billary and Barry O. And you don't need to be a fluffy toy to know which of those two is the b… est candidate. Ouch!
Bad week though for Senator John Edwards, whose cunning plan after Iowa – to hint that he might throw his weight behind Mr Oklambama – seems to have BACKFIRED spectacularly, with the voters in Nevada squeezing him out almost entirely. Far from positioning himself as kingmaker, and potential vice-presidential material, he seems to have made himself irrelevant in the eyes of most voters. Which, of course, he is.
Since last I wrote about this, Governor Richardson has dropped out of the race, seeing which way the wind was blowing and bowing out gracefully. I still wouldn't rule him out completely for the vice-president's ticket, though: Hillary-Billary seems to be picking up votes in two KEY Democrat constituencies: women, obviously, and also the Hispanic community who, traditionally, organise better but below the radar compared with the more vocal black constituency that are tending to support Mr Oklambama.
Next the Democrats follow the Replutocrats to South Carolina, and Mr Barry is hoping to do well which will help him bounce back, then everyone is off to Florida for Mickey-Mouse's vote before super-double-duper Tuesday in February really starts to sort things out.
Mr God Bless Amnesia*
*Where all Replutocrats are campaigning as the "pro-change, anti-Washington" guy and seem to have forgotten just exactly WHICH party is currently IN the White House! They've certainly forgotten to remember to invite the Monkey-in-Chief to any campaign functions!
Day 2574: Dither and Delay
Saturday:
People seem to have forgotten – in the face of the Prime Monster's now-you-see-it-now-you-don't General Election – that Mr Balloon spent last year working up a reputation as a FLIP-FLOP-FOP, with such masterpieces as being against and then for Grandma schools and for and then against Hugging of Hoodies.
He's now come out AGAINST the government's policy of supporting the Northern Rock, even though he was previously FOR it.
In Prime Monster's Questionable Time, he accused Mr Frown of "DITHER AND DELAY!" not once, but three times.
The Conservatory Policy on Northern Rock will be announced, er, sometime later this week.
The Liberal Democrats, as you know, have been calling for the Rock to be taken into temporary public ownership since November. This is not a "good" solution, because governments are NEVER any good at running businesses: the 1970s saw THAT theory tested to destruction. However, it does secure public control over the company's assets against which so very much of our money has been loaned.
Admittedly, this would see the shareholders lose out, which is a SHAME. Except some of the larger shareholders are Hedge Funds who jumped in AFTER the bank's share price crashed, buying up stock dirt cheap in the hope of making a killing if the Bank of England came to the rescue. Which it did.
Anyway, isn't the POINT of investing in shares that you get a better return in exchange for taking a RISK? If the government is going to guarantee you NO risk, then isn't that getting money for NOTHING – and at the taxpayers' expense! No, if you wanted a SAFE return, then you should have put the money in a bank… which, ironically, the government would NOT have promised to bail out if it got into trouble. There is something wrong with this system.
Speaking to "The Week in Politics" Mr John Deadwood, chair of the Conservatory review group for benefiting stinking rich city types said that the Conservatories would reject all forms of nationalisation. His solution, he said, was for the Bank of England to show a bit more banking common sense before handing out great big loans like this.
Which isn't a terribly PRACTICAL solution as the Bank has ALREADY given them the money. Mr Deadwood may be caught in a TIME LOOP but for the rest of us that decision has been and gone.
So, that's the Conservatories without a policy. No change there. What about the Labour?
Well, Chancellor Sooty has announced what he has been told to do by Mr Frown (speaking to him from India on his Virgin Mobile roaming tariff).
He's going to have Northern Rock issue government backed-bonds. That means that the stock market will buy some and maybe eventually all of the debt, paying back the taxpayer. Unless the bankrupt bank defaults on the loan, in which case the taxpayer picks the tab right back up again. Fortunately it is very rare for a bank not to be able to pay its debts, and the only recent example is the… oh dear.
Add to that, Chancellor Sooty is going to take a "shareholding" in the Rock so that the public can "benefit" should the bank recover and he'll insist on having a say in who goes on the Board of Directors. So, basically all the WORST aspects of nationalisation – government ministers tinkering in the boardroom; the taxpayer taking the risk of losses – without the advantage of actually securing the loan against something.
Still, at least – like the Conservatories – the Labour can claim to be BUTCH against NATIONALISATION. Even when it might be in everybody's interest.
People seem to have forgotten – in the face of the Prime Monster's now-you-see-it-now-you-don't General Election – that Mr Balloon spent last year working up a reputation as a FLIP-FLOP-FOP, with such masterpieces as being against and then for Grandma schools and for and then against Hugging of Hoodies.
He's now come out AGAINST the government's policy of supporting the Northern Rock, even though he was previously FOR it.
In Prime Monster's Questionable Time, he accused Mr Frown of "DITHER AND DELAY!" not once, but three times.
The Conservatory Policy on Northern Rock will be announced, er, sometime later this week.
The Liberal Democrats, as you know, have been calling for the Rock to be taken into temporary public ownership since November. This is not a "good" solution, because governments are NEVER any good at running businesses: the 1970s saw THAT theory tested to destruction. However, it does secure public control over the company's assets against which so very much of our money has been loaned.
Admittedly, this would see the shareholders lose out, which is a SHAME. Except some of the larger shareholders are Hedge Funds who jumped in AFTER the bank's share price crashed, buying up stock dirt cheap in the hope of making a killing if the Bank of England came to the rescue. Which it did.
Anyway, isn't the POINT of investing in shares that you get a better return in exchange for taking a RISK? If the government is going to guarantee you NO risk, then isn't that getting money for NOTHING – and at the taxpayers' expense! No, if you wanted a SAFE return, then you should have put the money in a bank… which, ironically, the government would NOT have promised to bail out if it got into trouble. There is something wrong with this system.
Speaking to "The Week in Politics" Mr John Deadwood, chair of the Conservatory review group for benefiting stinking rich city types said that the Conservatories would reject all forms of nationalisation. His solution, he said, was for the Bank of England to show a bit more banking common sense before handing out great big loans like this.
Which isn't a terribly PRACTICAL solution as the Bank has ALREADY given them the money. Mr Deadwood may be caught in a TIME LOOP but for the rest of us that decision has been and gone.
So, that's the Conservatories without a policy. No change there. What about the Labour?
Well, Chancellor Sooty has announced what he has been told to do by Mr Frown (speaking to him from India on his Virgin Mobile roaming tariff).
He's going to have Northern Rock issue government backed-bonds. That means that the stock market will buy some and maybe eventually all of the debt, paying back the taxpayer. Unless the bankrupt bank defaults on the loan, in which case the taxpayer picks the tab right back up again. Fortunately it is very rare for a bank not to be able to pay its debts, and the only recent example is the… oh dear.
Add to that, Chancellor Sooty is going to take a "shareholding" in the Rock so that the public can "benefit" should the bank recover and he'll insist on having a say in who goes on the Board of Directors. So, basically all the WORST aspects of nationalisation – government ministers tinkering in the boardroom; the taxpayer taking the risk of losses – without the advantage of actually securing the loan against something.
Still, at least – like the Conservatories – the Labour can claim to be BUTCH against NATIONALISATION. Even when it might be in everybody's interest.
Day 2573: Chinese Takeaway
Friday
From Tiananmen Square, that huge, implacable face stared out at us – yes it was Mr Huw Edwards doing a BBC News report, live from China as Mr Frown flew in to ask, very nicely, if we couldn't have some jobs please.
Chairman Frown
There is a NEW formula, nowadays, for talking to the People's Republic of China – avoid all talk of PEOPLE. And anything to do with being a REPUBLIC. And don't call them CHINA either – it's Chung Kuo.
Anyway, apparently it is OKAY to talk about global warming – that way you can be mildly CRITICAL and they can say "ahh, but we are improving and anyway, you did all this first". What you MUST NOT do is mention human rights, because they are not interested and frankly they think we have got to be kidding anyway what with our record of Guantanamo Bay, Abu Grahib, rendition flights and Celine Dion.
President Sarcastic of France kept to this formula, and managed to flog a whole load of ATOMIC POWER STATIONS as a result. The Monkey-in-Chief went and talked to the Dalai Lama and since then the Chinese have CRUSHED HIS CURRENCY like a bird's nest in soup.
Great Britain, of course, has a LONG history of FRIENDSHIP with the region, going back to the Boxer Rebellion and the Opium Wars. Er… they probably won't remember that though, will they?
For us in the West, Human Rights in the Middle Kingdom remain a VEXED and COMPLICATED question. We cannot just IGNORE them as we have in the past and pretend that they are some poor country cousin, especially as they grow in POWER, both diplomatically and, perhaps more importantly, financially.
Because, although remaining "communist" in name – in fact the Communist Party has basically replaced the old Imperial Bureaucracy, a sort of bizarre feudal meritocracy-cum-corruptocracy – the truth is that the PRC government has changed its policies considerably since the 1970s, and particularly since the economic powerhouse that is Hong Kong was absorbed back into the Republic in 1999.
However, that financial success may in fact be the key, as a burgeoning middle class, with higher income levels and better, broader education may lead to more freedom of thought in the East just as it did – eventually – in the West.
From Tiananmen Square, that huge, implacable face stared out at us – yes it was Mr Huw Edwards doing a BBC News report, live from China as Mr Frown flew in to ask, very nicely, if we couldn't have some jobs please.
Chairman Frown
There is a NEW formula, nowadays, for talking to the People's Republic of China – avoid all talk of PEOPLE. And anything to do with being a REPUBLIC. And don't call them CHINA either – it's Chung Kuo.
Anyway, apparently it is OKAY to talk about global warming – that way you can be mildly CRITICAL and they can say "ahh, but we are improving and anyway, you did all this first". What you MUST NOT do is mention human rights, because they are not interested and frankly they think we have got to be kidding anyway what with our record of Guantanamo Bay, Abu Grahib, rendition flights and Celine Dion.
President Sarcastic of France kept to this formula, and managed to flog a whole load of ATOMIC POWER STATIONS as a result. The Monkey-in-Chief went and talked to the Dalai Lama and since then the Chinese have CRUSHED HIS CURRENCY like a bird's nest in soup.
Great Britain, of course, has a LONG history of FRIENDSHIP with the region, going back to the Boxer Rebellion and the Opium Wars. Er… they probably won't remember that though, will they?
For us in the West, Human Rights in the Middle Kingdom remain a VEXED and COMPLICATED question. We cannot just IGNORE them as we have in the past and pretend that they are some poor country cousin, especially as they grow in POWER, both diplomatically and, perhaps more importantly, financially.
Because, although remaining "communist" in name – in fact the Communist Party has basically replaced the old Imperial Bureaucracy, a sort of bizarre feudal meritocracy-cum-corruptocracy – the truth is that the PRC government has changed its policies considerably since the 1970s, and particularly since the economic powerhouse that is Hong Kong was absorbed back into the Republic in 1999.
However, that financial success may in fact be the key, as a burgeoning middle class, with higher income levels and better, broader education may lead to more freedom of thought in the East just as it did – eventually – in the West.
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