Theme tune.
| Permalink
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Boycotting boycotts.
There are times when I wonder just what some of my blogging comrades have been smoking. Why else would some respond in such a vehement fashion to the decision of Total Politics magazine to interview Nick Griffin, of which they have a perfect right to do and which really ought to cause no ructions whatsoever?
To call the justifications and calls for a boycott of TP's blog awards piss-poor would be putting it far too kindly. As an extension of the "no platform" position, it errs on being arguable, until you note that "no platform" has been an ignoble failure. No platform not only fails to confront the BNP for what it is, it also gives them carte blanche to claim that they're persecuted simply for who they are and for what they stand for; adhered to not just by Labour but by others, it's doubtless helped to result in two BNP MEPs and their highest ever number of local councillors. Just what do those proposing a boycott of TP's blog awards hope to achieve through doing so?
It equally doesn't follow that allowing Griffin to appear in TP will be a "further acquiescence to the BNP message being accepted as a normal part of British political discourse". We don't know how TP is going to approach the interviewing of Griffin: one suspects that he's hardly going to be given a soft soap interview. It's also an attempt to shut the stable door after the horse has bolted: unfortunately, Griffin and the BNP now are a normal part of British political discourse, and that they haven't been before has only added to their lustre in any case.
Lastly, it's claimed that this doesn't fit with TP's mission statement to be “unremittingly positive about the political process”. Even if you don't accept that bringing the BNP into the political process to expose them for what they are is a good idea, then why shouldn't a magazine which is dedicated to politics interview the leader of what is a major political party even if it isn't necessarily positive? The grouping continues by arguing "[L]est we forget, this is a party which abuses that process". As opposed to our current representatives, held in the highest esteem by everyone, and whom would never sink to such levels of political skulduggery. Rather than getting involved in daft, half-baked boycotts, we'd be better putting our collective efforts into exposing the BNP's manifesto for the general election when it arrives, which might just achieve something. Letting Iain Dale hang himself with his own rope is in any event a far better option.
To call the justifications and calls for a boycott of TP's blog awards piss-poor would be putting it far too kindly. As an extension of the "no platform" position, it errs on being arguable, until you note that "no platform" has been an ignoble failure. No platform not only fails to confront the BNP for what it is, it also gives them carte blanche to claim that they're persecuted simply for who they are and for what they stand for; adhered to not just by Labour but by others, it's doubtless helped to result in two BNP MEPs and their highest ever number of local councillors. Just what do those proposing a boycott of TP's blog awards hope to achieve through doing so?
It equally doesn't follow that allowing Griffin to appear in TP will be a "further acquiescence to the BNP message being accepted as a normal part of British political discourse". We don't know how TP is going to approach the interviewing of Griffin: one suspects that he's hardly going to be given a soft soap interview. It's also an attempt to shut the stable door after the horse has bolted: unfortunately, Griffin and the BNP now are a normal part of British political discourse, and that they haven't been before has only added to their lustre in any case.
Lastly, it's claimed that this doesn't fit with TP's mission statement to be “unremittingly positive about the political process”. Even if you don't accept that bringing the BNP into the political process to expose them for what they are is a good idea, then why shouldn't a magazine which is dedicated to politics interview the leader of what is a major political party even if it isn't necessarily positive? The grouping continues by arguing "[L]est we forget, this is a party which abuses that process". As opposed to our current representatives, held in the highest esteem by everyone, and whom would never sink to such levels of political skulduggery. Rather than getting involved in daft, half-baked boycotts, we'd be better putting our collective efforts into exposing the BNP's manifesto for the general election when it arrives, which might just achieve something. Letting Iain Dale hang himself with his own rope is in any event a far better option.
Labels: bloggocks, boycotts, British National Party, Nick Griffin, no platform, Total Politics
| Permalink
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Crap.
These last few days I haven't really known what to write about - nothing that unusual, some days I don't, and only settle on something after browsing the blogs to the right or punishing myself by reading the tabloids. More out of character though is that after that I've still had to push myself to get something down, and the post on Monday I re-wrote a number of times and I'm still not even approaching semi-satisfied with it. Running out of things to say, when news hasn't exactly been slow, is probably a blogger's nightmare, although it hasn't stopped me before, ho ho ho.
I'm going through one of those faux-existential or crisis of confidence (confidence, hah, that's a joke on its own) moments that fog my mind every so often - not just is there any point to this, but whether there's any real point to anything at all. I've managed to convince myself in the past that there is, otherwise surely, as pointed out, I wouldn't have been spouting this constant stream of bilge for approaching 5 years. Increasingly though, I wonder whether I'm right. And the more I think about it, the more I'm certain I'm not.
I'm going through one of those faux-existential or crisis of confidence (confidence, hah, that's a joke on its own) moments that fog my mind every so often - not just is there any point to this, but whether there's any real point to anything at all. I've managed to convince myself in the past that there is, otherwise surely, as pointed out, I wouldn't have been spouting this constant stream of bilge for approaching 5 years. Increasingly though, I wonder whether I'm right. And the more I think about it, the more I'm certain I'm not.
Labels: bloggocks, miscellany
| Permalink
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Craig Murray legally threatened by Quilliam Foundation.
At the beginning of last week I wrote on how Melanie Phillips had responded to an attack on her by Ed Husain, of the Quilliam Foundation, by making the exact arguments that he predicted she would - attacking him as still being an Islamic extremist despite now dedicating himself to helping those who had became radicalised.
Mel at least didn't set m'learned friends after Husain for his piece. That is however exactly what the Quilliam Foundation has done to Craig Murray after he reported, with good faith, that the Foundation, a charity which relies on the government for funding, had not published any accounts as of yet, in this post.
It does though seem that some of those in Quilliam who have past experience with subterfuge have put it to good use. Yesterday Craig received a phone call:
Craig continues:
Quite charming behaviour, I would say. Also charming is the lawyer's letter, from Clarke Wilmott LLP, which takes Craig's initial post and reads it in the most hyperbolic fashion imaginable. Apparently, it "constitute[s] express, clear and obvious statements to the effect that The Quilliam Foundation has acted illegally, that it is engaged in financial and accounting impropriety and that ... this impropriety is directed particularly to reward the directors of The Quilliam Foundation favourably and disproportionately". A level of disproportionality equivalent to Israel's attack on Gaza, perhaps?
Not that Clarke Wilmott has actually provided any evidence whatsoever that Quilliam has filed its accounts, despite the threatening letter, although as Unity points out in the comments, according to the Companies House website they filed them on the 10th of this month, 6 days after Craig's post. Craig's post was then at the time correct; only now that it is not have they complained about it, and rather than asking for it be clarified, they've sent the lawyers in with ominous demands for recompense.
As Craig suggests, for an organisation ostensibly set-up to defend Western values, the attempt to stifle criticism only after the foundation has actually responded to that criticism is rather at odds with their commitment to free speech. Still, the uses of public money, eh?
Mel at least didn't set m'learned friends after Husain for his piece. That is however exactly what the Quilliam Foundation has done to Craig Murray after he reported, with good faith, that the Foundation, a charity which relies on the government for funding, had not published any accounts as of yet, in this post.
It does though seem that some of those in Quilliam who have past experience with subterfuge have put it to good use. Yesterday Craig received a phone call:
A man telephoned me and said that he had been following my blog for some time and was most impressed by it, and would like to know how to make a donation. I replied truly that I was extremely grateful, but the website really was just me, and therefore I did not request donations, unless for some specific expense like an election campaign.You may be surprised to hear that people do not generally phone me up out of the blue and offer cash, so I was a bit suspicious. I did go on and suggest that if he wanted to be helpful he could buy my books, but he lost interest in the conversation very quickly in a manner that just seemed wrong compared to his initial eagerness.
Craig continues:
So when I got a letter today from lawyers threatening libel action, I wondered if this was an attempt to get financial information on what funds they might target. So today I phoned him back. He gave his name as Ed, so I asked directly if he was Ed Husain or Ed Jagger of the Quilliam Foundation. At first he replied "I am not Ed Husain". I had to ask again before he admitted he was indeed Ed Jagger of the Quilliam Foundation.
I put it to him that he had lied when he phoned and said he wanted to make a donation. He said that he just wanted to establish my contact details for the lawyer. I said that if he had asked me openly and honestly, I would have told him. He concluded by saying that any further communication should be through our lawyers (which will be tricky as I can't afford one: Unlike Jagger I am not funded by taxpayers' money.)
I don't suppose there is any law against Mr Jagger telephoning and lying to me about wishing to make a donation. Indeed I would write it off as a harmless ruse, and amusing he had been caught. But for an organisation funded by the taxpayer to telephone someone and lie to them is quite a different thing.
Should anyone wish to make that point to Mr Jagger, the number from which he telephoned me was 07780 685592.
Quite charming behaviour, I would say. Also charming is the lawyer's letter, from Clarke Wilmott LLP, which takes Craig's initial post and reads it in the most hyperbolic fashion imaginable. Apparently, it "constitute[s] express, clear and obvious statements to the effect that The Quilliam Foundation has acted illegally, that it is engaged in financial and accounting impropriety and that ... this impropriety is directed particularly to reward the directors of The Quilliam Foundation favourably and disproportionately". A level of disproportionality equivalent to Israel's attack on Gaza, perhaps?
Not that Clarke Wilmott has actually provided any evidence whatsoever that Quilliam has filed its accounts, despite the threatening letter, although as Unity points out in the comments, according to the Companies House website they filed them on the 10th of this month, 6 days after Craig's post. Craig's post was then at the time correct; only now that it is not have they complained about it, and rather than asking for it be clarified, they've sent the lawyers in with ominous demands for recompense.
As Craig suggests, for an organisation ostensibly set-up to defend Western values, the attempt to stifle criticism only after the foundation has actually responded to that criticism is rather at odds with their commitment to free speech. Still, the uses of public money, eh?
Labels: bloggocks, Craig Murray, Ed Husain, Ed Jagger, legal threats, Quilliam Foundation
| Permalink
Thursday, October 29, 2009
How very cosy.
Nadine Dorries, that noted flag carrier for lying and libel, has managed to wring a whole £1,000 from Damian McBride over the supposed libels he sent to Derek Draper while they were considering the setting up of the now infamous "Red Rag" website. McBride, fairly enough, decided it wasn't worth the potential cost of going to court, even though these remarks about the sainted Ms Dorries were never actually published, were private remarks sent from one person to another and which would never have entered the public domain had Derek Draper's email not been "hacked" by persons unknown and sent to Guido Fawkes. It would have been fun of course for McBride to argue in court that Dorries had no reputation to defend, and considering that Dorries' lawyer has turned out to be Donal Blaney, hardly the most feared silk in the libel capital of the world, you would have rated his chances.
Alas, it was not to be. It is of course completely irrelevant that Dorries spent that weekend herself making clearly libellous accusations that Tom Watson knew about McBride's behaviour and did nothing about it, something which both the Mail on Sunday and the Sun have now paid far larger sums out in damages to Watson for repeating. It is also by no means hypocritical that Guido, a person who laughs at libel laws and declares that he is above such things, has profited from delivering the writ to McBride. Fawkes is also, of course, a libertarian blogger and in no way associated with the Conservative party, despite the fact he has earned from delivering a letter on behalf of a Conservative MP, the other of which was also delivered by a piss-poor Tory blogger, and which was from the offices of the equally piss-poor Donal Blaney, a Tory blogger. Is that clear? Good.
Alas, it was not to be. It is of course completely irrelevant that Dorries spent that weekend herself making clearly libellous accusations that Tom Watson knew about McBride's behaviour and did nothing about it, something which both the Mail on Sunday and the Sun have now paid far larger sums out in damages to Watson for repeating. It is also by no means hypocritical that Guido, a person who laughs at libel laws and declares that he is above such things, has profited from delivering the writ to McBride. Fawkes is also, of course, a libertarian blogger and in no way associated with the Conservative party, despite the fact he has earned from delivering a letter on behalf of a Conservative MP, the other of which was also delivered by a piss-poor Tory blogger, and which was from the offices of the equally piss-poor Donal Blaney, a Tory blogger. Is that clear? Good.
Labels: bloggocks, Damian McBride, Guido, libel, Nadine Dorries, smearing
| Permalink
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
List-o-rama.
Just noticed, thanks to Socialist Unity, that as well as my entry on inventor of blogging Iain Dale's list of left-wing blogs, I've also rather strangely made 30th on the Labour list, what with my being a card-carrying member and all. It also doesn't make a whole lot of sense: I make 30th on the Labour list and 60th on the left-wing list, yet Though Cowards Flinch, which came above me on the left-wing list (38th), only scrapes into the Labour list at 100.
I'm sure there's some reasonable explanation, and as before, you can't really complain when you don't vote. Dale's mechanisms for voting though are not exactly transparent, and you do have to wonder whether there's any point whatsoever to carrying the entire charade on.
I'm sure there's some reasonable explanation, and as before, you can't really complain when you don't vote. Dale's mechanisms for voting though are not exactly transparent, and you do have to wonder whether there's any point whatsoever to carrying the entire charade on.
| Permalink
Thursday, September 10, 2009
The prime mentalist is back.
Have you missed the glitz and glamour of politics over the summer? The spirited debates, the back and forth, the agreeing to disagree, the rapier wit of the finest of their profession, crushing their opponents with humour whilst also making serious substantial points? Or have we just all been waiting for Peter Mandelson to get in trouble again for going on someone's yacht?
The old cliche or witticism, depending on your view, is that politics is show-business for ugly people. The difference surely is that while show-business might be viewed as a game, politics is the ultimate one. The two do now though overlap more and more: Bono gets up on his soapbox while Gordon Brown rings Piers Morgan and Simon Cowell to make sure that Susan Boyle is "OK". Politics has always shared the bitchiness which is inherent in celebrity culture, and smearing is old as the delusions which both grandeur and power bring. Margaret Thatcher was a mad old bat; John Major tucked his shirt into his underpants and was the ever gray man; Tony Blair was a liar and messianic, both of which more than had an iota of truth in them; and now Gordon Brown, formerly accused of being autistic and of various mental disorders, is said to be taking one of the MAOI class of anti-depressants.
According to who? Supposedly, as always, these rumours have been circling Westminster, and it takes one "brave" individual to finally give voice to them, of course much easier in these days when you can say whatever you like about anyone on this glorious interweb and someone will inevitably believe it regardless of any evidence. That person was John Ward, who has his legion of sources and naturally the psychoanalysis to back it up. Since he first posted on it, it's been picked up by "The Mole", Simon Heffer, Matthew Norman, who should really know better, and now finally by Guido, who demands to know who will ask Gordo about his drug addiction, since if it's on the internet it simply must be true. John Harris' piece in today's Graun also seems to be an indirect response to it, but is far too kind to come out and play with the rumours.
It's tempting to not give any credence whatsoever to these stories and to ignore them completely, but seeing I'm writing this mess I've obviously decided otherwise. It's also equally easy to point out that even if true, Brown is hardly the first politician, let alone prime minister to suffer from mental health problems, and that others have dealt superbly with their demons whilst in high office. There's also the fact that if you weren't under severe strain while prime minister, especially considering the far from benign conditions which Brown has faced over the last year, if not two years, then there's probably something wrong with you anyway. There is however also an argument to be made that if true, then the public deserves to know, even if fraught with difficulties. It's only too obvious from the comments of most, including Guido, that there is still severe prejudice and a fundamental lack of understanding when it comes to mental illness, as ably illustrated by his continued use of Brown as a clown with a legend which includes the word "bonkers". Arguably, there was a case when David Blunkett was still home secretary and suffering from something approaching severe depression as a result of his relationship with Kimberley Fortier that he could have be "unfit" to hold such a high post of office. Yet equally clearly it's apparent that the only person who should be able to make such decisions and offer such advice would be an actual psychiatrist; if Brown is taking MAOIs, then he doubtless has been prescribed them by one. If he considered that Brown could not continue in his job as a result of his illness, then he would have told him so, just as that doctor would have told anyone else that they should consider taking time off in the same circumstances. This doesn't seem to be the case.
There is however also a case to be made that this is politics of the very worst kind. It wasn't so long ago that newspapers were outraged, disgusted and so deeply deeply shocked by the smears which err, they printed, from private emails between Damian McBride and Derek Draper. These were rumours, as many accepted, which had been swirling around Westminster. Nonetheless, it was a disaster for Brown, there were allegations that Brown had to have known, as well as other ministers in close proximity to McBride, which individuals later had to apologise for after legal action was taken. Only on Monday did Guido deliver to McBride a writ from Nadine Dorries for comments which were allegedly made about her in the emails. Four days later and the exact same person is indulging in what are almost certainly also libellous claims were they to be proved to be unfounded. If I were McBride and Draper's legal advisers I would suggest that they argue that Dorries doesn't have a reputation to be libelled, but whatever you think of Brown's tenure as prime minister, a case can at least be made that he does.
Labels: bloggocks, Damian McBride, fall of Gordon Brown, Gordon Brown, Guido, gutter sniping, mental ill-health, politics, smearing
| Permalink
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
Rankers.
Little disappointed that in Iain Dale's latest attempt at ranking every blog in the known universe I've dropped from 18th last year to 60th this on the left wing list, but it's probably to be expected when I didn't so much as mention the vote (I didn't vote myself so can hardly complain), and also when most of your blogging buddies boycotted the whole thing. Also probably not too much to be upset about when Tom Harris, that well-known leftie tops the poll, and when Alastair Campbell, Luke Akehurst and Harry's Place all also make the top ten, but major thanks to all those who took the time to vote for this waste of space as always.
It has at least finally motivated me to update the blog roll to the right, so I've removed pretty much all the dead wood (I think), updated the links to those that have moved and also added a whole boatload of links to those that should have been on it ages ago. If for some reason I've inexplicably forgotten you or you want to be linked to, leave a comment and I'll sort it out at some point in the next century.
It has at least finally motivated me to update the blog roll to the right, so I've removed pretty much all the dead wood (I think), updated the links to those that have moved and also added a whole boatload of links to those that should have been on it ages ago. If for some reason I've inexplicably forgotten you or you want to be linked to, leave a comment and I'll sort it out at some point in the next century.
Labels: bloggocks
| Permalink
Monday, August 17, 2009
Twitter twatter.
I'm sure that I'm not the only person who's getting thoroughly sick of both the hype and churnalism surrounding Twitter, or more appropriately, Twatter. The latest is that 40% of the messages sent on it are "pointless babble". Shurely shome mishtake? Shouldn't that be 99.9%? You also know that when the government appoints a "Twatter tsar", to go with all the other inexplicable tsars it seems insistent on appointing, the other one being Arlene Phillips as a "dancing tsar", that its demise hopefully won't be that far in the future.
David Cameron, for once, wasn't too far wrong in his view that too many twits might end up making a twat. I can see the point of the likes of Facebook, despite not using it, and do have a MySpace account although again I never use it, they're just not really for me, mainly because I prefer to operate under something of a semi-anonymous shroud. Twitter though, with the exception of when it is clearly put to good use, such as when instant updates are necessary such as on breaking news, reporting on protests and organising around them, seems to be beyond pointless; it's a glorified instant messaging service where every stalker and sad sack can follow your ever so fascinating immediate thoughts on what your sandwich tastes like, what it's like being stuck in a lift, and why the NHS is brilliant. Obviously, accusations of hypocrisy can be levelled against a blogger for criticising such "micro-blogging", and some bloggers do indeed do little more than those on Twitter do, but I'd like to think for the most part I put more thought into what I write here than many do with their numerous updates throughout the day (although blogging has been deliberately lighter this month).
Then there's just the wishful thinking, such as Sunny's that Twitter challenges right-wing dominance online. This would be amusing if it wasn't so tragic. If the NHS couldn't find enough people who could relate their own experiences of its service in a supportive fashion then Daniel Hannan would be more than right in calling it a sixty-year old mistake. Those doing so are clearly apolitical; they support the NHS, not the political arguments behind it. The entire hype behind online political campaigning has got all out of proportion to its actual value and use: there has been no indication whatsoever that the success of campaigns in the US can be translated to this country. Indeed, repeated attempts by the Conservatives to do so have failed abjectly, from their "Tosser" campaign to more recent calls for donations, whatever their size, appropriating from last year's US campaigns. If the Tories, the main players online as we are forced to admit can't do it, how can anyone?
Twitter provides what the other social networking sites do: circle jerks, where like-minded people share like-minded things, all while stroking their egos. Again, I'm not going to pretend I'm also not guilty of this, but Twitter just exacerbates the problems inherent in blogging. It is essentially meaningless, not even giving extra quality to real life relationships like Facebook does. Doubtless I'm about to be flayed alive in the comments, but once again the hype and the defences of it simply fail to live up to the reality.
David Cameron, for once, wasn't too far wrong in his view that too many twits might end up making a twat. I can see the point of the likes of Facebook, despite not using it, and do have a MySpace account although again I never use it, they're just not really for me, mainly because I prefer to operate under something of a semi-anonymous shroud. Twitter though, with the exception of when it is clearly put to good use, such as when instant updates are necessary such as on breaking news, reporting on protests and organising around them, seems to be beyond pointless; it's a glorified instant messaging service where every stalker and sad sack can follow your ever so fascinating immediate thoughts on what your sandwich tastes like, what it's like being stuck in a lift, and why the NHS is brilliant. Obviously, accusations of hypocrisy can be levelled against a blogger for criticising such "micro-blogging", and some bloggers do indeed do little more than those on Twitter do, but I'd like to think for the most part I put more thought into what I write here than many do with their numerous updates throughout the day (although blogging has been deliberately lighter this month).
Then there's just the wishful thinking, such as Sunny's that Twitter challenges right-wing dominance online. This would be amusing if it wasn't so tragic. If the NHS couldn't find enough people who could relate their own experiences of its service in a supportive fashion then Daniel Hannan would be more than right in calling it a sixty-year old mistake. Those doing so are clearly apolitical; they support the NHS, not the political arguments behind it. The entire hype behind online political campaigning has got all out of proportion to its actual value and use: there has been no indication whatsoever that the success of campaigns in the US can be translated to this country. Indeed, repeated attempts by the Conservatives to do so have failed abjectly, from their "Tosser" campaign to more recent calls for donations, whatever their size, appropriating from last year's US campaigns. If the Tories, the main players online as we are forced to admit can't do it, how can anyone?
Twitter provides what the other social networking sites do: circle jerks, where like-minded people share like-minded things, all while stroking their egos. Again, I'm not going to pretend I'm also not guilty of this, but Twitter just exacerbates the problems inherent in blogging. It is essentially meaningless, not even giving extra quality to real life relationships like Facebook does. Doubtless I'm about to be flayed alive in the comments, but once again the hype and the defences of it simply fail to live up to the reality.
Labels: bloggocks, bullshit, new media, new media bollocks, politics, social networking websites, Twitter
| Permalink
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
The exposure of NightJack and a potential disaster for blogging and journalism.
The decision by the Times to "out" NightJack, and Justice Eady's corresponding ruling that bloggers have no right to anonymity must rank as one of the most short-sighted and potentially damaging to journalism episodes in quite some time.
Quite why the Times took it upon itself to discover the true identity of the winner of this year's Orwell prize for blogging is itself a mystery. Its justifications, such as they are, that he revealed details about cases and gave tips on how to evade justice, are pitiful. NightJack had done nothing to attract attention to himself other than presumably putting himself forward for the Orwell prize, and the fact that he could write to such an ability that he pulled in readers who admired his ability to analyse both his job, the politics surrounding it and the social problems which he had to deal with. NightJack had actually stopped blogging shortly before he won the Orwell prize, and had put his sights on writing a novel, rather than bringing out a book of the best of the blog, for which he had presumably had numerous offers. He didn't even turn up to receive the prize, as someone wanting to remain anonymous would never have done, and had also undoubtedly not economically benefited from his writing.
It would be tempting to put down the reason for the Times exposing Nightjack as simple jealousy that they didn't have a writer of such calibre prepared to put pen to paper for them, yet the Times has been one of the few newspapers that have given space to reasonably well-known bloggers to write original pieces for it. Likewise, the smug neo-con Oliver Kamm was taken on by the paper and is now one of its leader writers as a direct result of his stultifying blogging and obsession with attacking Noam Chomsky. Quite rightly, others have remembered how the Sunday Times treated the Girl With a One Track Mind, the sex blogger who was outed in a fashion which would have shamed the tabloids. It isn't an exact comparison, as Zoe Margolis had just published a book of her blog and didn't write about anything as high-minded as Nightjack, preferring to detail her tedious sex life in a pseudo-intellectual style, but it seems to have been a portent of what was to come.
The main reason though for why this is such an ill wind for journalism as a whole is the implications it has for whistleblowing, which if the Times had stopped to consider for a second it would have surely noted. Eady has in effect ruled that anyone in the public services who wants to bring attention to something which they think is a cause for concern, but which by doing so they would breach "discipline regulations" has no right to protection. Arguably, Nightjack was not performing such a public service in his writing, but this surely still has a potentially chilling effect for those who do. In fact, what this ruling seems to do is ensure that those who do want to whistleblow will have to go to publications like the Times for protection; if they do it themselves through blogging then newspapers have a justification for uncovering their true identity.
Newspapers concerned with the protection of their sources will be deeply worried by this ruling. If Nightjack has no right to privacy, then just who does? According to the Times' analysis, Eady based part of his decision on the previous ruling concerning George Galloway's exposure of Mazher Mahmood, a battle which this blog was involved in. Ironically, it was then the Times' sister publication which was fighting against their top reporter having his cover blown, but the two cases are surely completely different. Mahmood was a journalist who had ruined people's lives and had arguably been involved in entrapping individuals to develop his stories. When he himself failed to entrap Galloway in a similar fashion, he reacted to the publication of two grainy, unclear photographs in a ridiculous fashion, claiming it put his life in danger, something which was treated with short shrift. Mahmood was a hypocrite; Nightjack is not, and was not exposing anyone.
Just how potentially damaging this ruling could be is illustrated by the current battle going on in Northern Ireland, where the Sunday Tribune journalist Suzanne Breen has been defending herself against attempts by the police service of the province to obtain the identity of her sources, who informed her that the Real IRA had claimed responsibility for the murder of two soldiers outside Massereene barracks in Antrim in March. Unlike Mahmood, Breen's life almost certainly would be threatened should her source be revealed, yet that hasn't stopped the police from treating her life with such apparent contempt. Less seriously, this surely also threatens journalists who write under pseudonyms, something which the Times has again also overlooked; why should they be protected when bloggers aren't?
Furthermore, isn't the current situation in Iran, where those trying to let the world know what is happen are having to resort to Twatter further evidence of how dangerous this ruling is? According to Eady, those doing so are indulging in public activity where they have no right to anonymity, the kind of idea that would delight totalitarian regimes everywhere. Similarly, newspapers would be outraged were the government to do what the Times has just done, demanding that they reveal the source for sensitive articles, claiming it would be a threat to press freedom. It turns out that all the Times and News International care about is their own self-interest, which rather undermines their repeated past criticisms of Eady and the Human Rights Act for establishing a privacy law by stealth. It seems that celebrities are protected, while everyone else is fair game. The Times may yet come to regret their supreme selfishness and lack of dedication to protecting sources bitterly.
Quite why the Times took it upon itself to discover the true identity of the winner of this year's Orwell prize for blogging is itself a mystery. Its justifications, such as they are, that he revealed details about cases and gave tips on how to evade justice, are pitiful. NightJack had done nothing to attract attention to himself other than presumably putting himself forward for the Orwell prize, and the fact that he could write to such an ability that he pulled in readers who admired his ability to analyse both his job, the politics surrounding it and the social problems which he had to deal with. NightJack had actually stopped blogging shortly before he won the Orwell prize, and had put his sights on writing a novel, rather than bringing out a book of the best of the blog, for which he had presumably had numerous offers. He didn't even turn up to receive the prize, as someone wanting to remain anonymous would never have done, and had also undoubtedly not economically benefited from his writing.
It would be tempting to put down the reason for the Times exposing Nightjack as simple jealousy that they didn't have a writer of such calibre prepared to put pen to paper for them, yet the Times has been one of the few newspapers that have given space to reasonably well-known bloggers to write original pieces for it. Likewise, the smug neo-con Oliver Kamm was taken on by the paper and is now one of its leader writers as a direct result of his stultifying blogging and obsession with attacking Noam Chomsky. Quite rightly, others have remembered how the Sunday Times treated the Girl With a One Track Mind, the sex blogger who was outed in a fashion which would have shamed the tabloids. It isn't an exact comparison, as Zoe Margolis had just published a book of her blog and didn't write about anything as high-minded as Nightjack, preferring to detail her tedious sex life in a pseudo-intellectual style, but it seems to have been a portent of what was to come.
The main reason though for why this is such an ill wind for journalism as a whole is the implications it has for whistleblowing, which if the Times had stopped to consider for a second it would have surely noted. Eady has in effect ruled that anyone in the public services who wants to bring attention to something which they think is a cause for concern, but which by doing so they would breach "discipline regulations" has no right to protection. Arguably, Nightjack was not performing such a public service in his writing, but this surely still has a potentially chilling effect for those who do. In fact, what this ruling seems to do is ensure that those who do want to whistleblow will have to go to publications like the Times for protection; if they do it themselves through blogging then newspapers have a justification for uncovering their true identity.
Newspapers concerned with the protection of their sources will be deeply worried by this ruling. If Nightjack has no right to privacy, then just who does? According to the Times' analysis, Eady based part of his decision on the previous ruling concerning George Galloway's exposure of Mazher Mahmood, a battle which this blog was involved in. Ironically, it was then the Times' sister publication which was fighting against their top reporter having his cover blown, but the two cases are surely completely different. Mahmood was a journalist who had ruined people's lives and had arguably been involved in entrapping individuals to develop his stories. When he himself failed to entrap Galloway in a similar fashion, he reacted to the publication of two grainy, unclear photographs in a ridiculous fashion, claiming it put his life in danger, something which was treated with short shrift. Mahmood was a hypocrite; Nightjack is not, and was not exposing anyone.
Just how potentially damaging this ruling could be is illustrated by the current battle going on in Northern Ireland, where the Sunday Tribune journalist Suzanne Breen has been defending herself against attempts by the police service of the province to obtain the identity of her sources, who informed her that the Real IRA had claimed responsibility for the murder of two soldiers outside Massereene barracks in Antrim in March. Unlike Mahmood, Breen's life almost certainly would be threatened should her source be revealed, yet that hasn't stopped the police from treating her life with such apparent contempt. Less seriously, this surely also threatens journalists who write under pseudonyms, something which the Times has again also overlooked; why should they be protected when bloggers aren't?
Furthermore, isn't the current situation in Iran, where those trying to let the world know what is happen are having to resort to Twatter further evidence of how dangerous this ruling is? According to Eady, those doing so are indulging in public activity where they have no right to anonymity, the kind of idea that would delight totalitarian regimes everywhere. Similarly, newspapers would be outraged were the government to do what the Times has just done, demanding that they reveal the source for sensitive articles, claiming it would be a threat to press freedom. It turns out that all the Times and News International care about is their own self-interest, which rather undermines their repeated past criticisms of Eady and the Human Rights Act for establishing a privacy law by stealth. It seems that celebrities are protected, while everyone else is fair game. The Times may yet come to regret their supreme selfishness and lack of dedication to protecting sources bitterly.
Labels: anonymity, bloggocks, journalism, Mr Justice Eady, NightJack, privacy law, sources
| Permalink
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Spinning and kicking while down.
One of the things that newspapers specialise in is kicking people when they're down, usually after they were the ones that were primarily responsible for building them up in the first place. A recent case in point was the sudden deflating of James Corden and Mathew Horne, having been ridiculously over praised for the middling Gavin and Stacey, who were little less than assaulted over their film, Lesbian Vampire Killers, their piss-poor eponymous BBC3 sketch show, and a charity appearance which was deemed to be little better.
More pertinently politics wise is the way that Damian McBride has been set about since the "smeargate" emails emerged of him batting about ideas for a blog in which Tories had their private and personal lives appraised for gossip value. The latest example is in today's Graun, where McBride is linked to an "infamous incident" back in 2004, so infamous that this self-confessed politics nerd has no recollection whatsoever of it. More astonishing than the fact that McBride was fingered as the person responsible for leaking details of the meeting to the Sunday Times is that a "secret investigation" was launched in which phone records and presumably security assets were used to find the culprit. It says more about Downing Street's paranoia and fury at the slightest criticism at the time than it does about how much of a "wrong 'un" McBride always was.
Peter Wilby pointed out yesterday that prior to the last two weeks McBride had hardly been mentioned in the papers, his existence and apparently his dark arts of no interest to anyone when both sides were profiting from his dripping of poison. In 2004 the Graun mentioned McBride but once - and that was in a City diary. Even last year, at the apparent height of McBride's operations, he was only mentioned in dispatches 34 times, and 5 of those were in the little read online lobby column by "Bill Blanko", the rest mainly coming from reports concerning the defenestration of Ruth Kelly. As spin doctors go, you can hardly get more visible than Alastair Campbell, while it seems you can hardly get less visible than McBride was. Only once he had fallen on his sword did we learn about his work in the shadows, mainly briefing Tory newspapers, the ones so outraged by the smears which would never have emerged and seemingly never have been used if someone hadn't hacked Derek Draper's email account, with venom about under performing ministers. Almost every whisper about plotting by various pretenders to Brown's throne seems to have originated with McBride - either that or he's just a handy receptacle to now blame.
There is something in the argument made by various bloggers that the journalistic lobby at Westminster, because it is complicit in the spinning, cannot be trusted to tell us the whole truth about what goes on there. At the same time, the idea that blogs can be trusted to do just that is equally spurious, if not more so. However much bloggers denounce the MSM, the two are inseparable because they cannot operate without each other. Guido had to sell the emails to Sunday newspapers because they would have not gained the same coverage that they would have on his site, however much he and Iain Dale boast about their visitor figures. Gossip is well suited to the web because it requires few resources: just a few indiscreet individuals. Genuine investigative journalism however, such as that which brought down Jonathan Aitken, or more recently exposed the rendition programme or the Saudi slush funds needs constant backing up and funding. Even when it comes to videos which expose the truth, such as the one showing Ian Tomlinson being pushed over by a police officer, it requires the reach of a paper like the Guardian for it to truly spread quickly: if it had simply been sent up to YouTube or a blog like the dozens of others of the G20 protests, it would have taken days for it to reach critical mass.
Perhaps the biggest reason for the pique and faux outrage which followed McBride's resignation then is that it wasn't a blast against the spin culture, which after all cannot operate without the media's connivance, even as they decry it, but rather because one of their finest sources for muck had been forced outside of the circle. The motto was and remains, "don't get fucking caught". That applies to journalists and spin doctors equally.
More pertinently politics wise is the way that Damian McBride has been set about since the "smeargate" emails emerged of him batting about ideas for a blog in which Tories had their private and personal lives appraised for gossip value. The latest example is in today's Graun, where McBride is linked to an "infamous incident" back in 2004, so infamous that this self-confessed politics nerd has no recollection whatsoever of it. More astonishing than the fact that McBride was fingered as the person responsible for leaking details of the meeting to the Sunday Times is that a "secret investigation" was launched in which phone records and presumably security assets were used to find the culprit. It says more about Downing Street's paranoia and fury at the slightest criticism at the time than it does about how much of a "wrong 'un" McBride always was.
Peter Wilby pointed out yesterday that prior to the last two weeks McBride had hardly been mentioned in the papers, his existence and apparently his dark arts of no interest to anyone when both sides were profiting from his dripping of poison. In 2004 the Graun mentioned McBride but once - and that was in a City diary. Even last year, at the apparent height of McBride's operations, he was only mentioned in dispatches 34 times, and 5 of those were in the little read online lobby column by "Bill Blanko", the rest mainly coming from reports concerning the defenestration of Ruth Kelly. As spin doctors go, you can hardly get more visible than Alastair Campbell, while it seems you can hardly get less visible than McBride was. Only once he had fallen on his sword did we learn about his work in the shadows, mainly briefing Tory newspapers, the ones so outraged by the smears which would never have emerged and seemingly never have been used if someone hadn't hacked Derek Draper's email account, with venom about under performing ministers. Almost every whisper about plotting by various pretenders to Brown's throne seems to have originated with McBride - either that or he's just a handy receptacle to now blame.
There is something in the argument made by various bloggers that the journalistic lobby at Westminster, because it is complicit in the spinning, cannot be trusted to tell us the whole truth about what goes on there. At the same time, the idea that blogs can be trusted to do just that is equally spurious, if not more so. However much bloggers denounce the MSM, the two are inseparable because they cannot operate without each other. Guido had to sell the emails to Sunday newspapers because they would have not gained the same coverage that they would have on his site, however much he and Iain Dale boast about their visitor figures. Gossip is well suited to the web because it requires few resources: just a few indiscreet individuals. Genuine investigative journalism however, such as that which brought down Jonathan Aitken, or more recently exposed the rendition programme or the Saudi slush funds needs constant backing up and funding. Even when it comes to videos which expose the truth, such as the one showing Ian Tomlinson being pushed over by a police officer, it requires the reach of a paper like the Guardian for it to truly spread quickly: if it had simply been sent up to YouTube or a blog like the dozens of others of the G20 protests, it would have taken days for it to reach critical mass.
Perhaps the biggest reason for the pique and faux outrage which followed McBride's resignation then is that it wasn't a blast against the spin culture, which after all cannot operate without the media's connivance, even as they decry it, but rather because one of their finest sources for muck had been forced outside of the circle. The motto was and remains, "don't get fucking caught". That applies to journalists and spin doctors equally.
Labels: bloggocks, Conservatives, Damian McBride, Derek Draper, fall of Gordon Brown, Gordon Brown, Guido, Paul Staines, politics, smearing, spin
| Permalink
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Spin, smears and faux outrage.
"Let's go to work."Having finally been reconnected to the joyous environment which is the internet this morning (turns out it was nothing whatsoever to do with the East London cable outage, so it could have been fixed early last week if it wasn't for Tiscali saying to me that it was), I've been following the McBride/Draper smear "scandal" with something approaching detachment, which all things considered is almost certainly the best policy. All the adjectives you can use to describe the emails sent between McBride and Draper which mysteriously found their way into the (dirty) hands of Paul Staines, something which itself is curiously not being remarked upon, couldn't really begin to do justice to what is one of those stories which energises Westminster and the lobby hacks, and now also the insular world of "popular" political blogging, and which everyone else is just mystified and turned off by.
Probably the most ludicrous notion inspired by this faux outrage is that Labour could lose the next election because of it, and that the party has suffered "reputational damage" thanks to emails exchanged between a civil servant and a spin doctor handed the most poisoned chalice in current British politics. Labour will lose the next election because in the words of Roy Hattersley, the party is neither new enough nor Labour enough. Its one remaining claim to power was its economic record, a record which has since been flushed into the gutter. The only surprise of the last few months has been that the Conservatives have not built a bigger opinion poll lead, which is almost certainly down to just two factors: that the Tories' policies, those which they have, are only likely to make things worse; and that David Cameron has not yet sealed the deal with the electorate to the extent which Tony Blair did.
The other only slightly less ludicrous factor is the amount of sheer hypocrisy being exhibited by all of those involved. You would require a stomach of iron constitution not to feel sick at Staines describing the emails between Draper and McBride as "obscene"; this is the blogger who has variously implied that Mark Oaten was a paedophile, that routinely referred to the prime minister as the "prime mentalist", suggesting that he suffered from high functioning Asperger's syndrome without a scintilla of evidence and who has unmoderated comment fields where the invective and insults would be unfit to print on toilet walls. Staines' propaganda and self-promotion is that he provides the stories which the newspapers and "mainstream" media won't touch, but he is in fact as parasitical of them as any other blogger. The reality is that they give him stories and he gives them stories, all while claiming that he's about to blow the mainstream away. The sort of gossip and smears which are evident in the Draper/McBride emails is Staines' meat and drink, and he uses the old fallacy of urging those skewered to sue if his claims are false, hence the still unsubstantiated claims from him that John Prescott had an affair with Rosie Winterton, which you would have thought might have came out by now if it had happened.
At its heart, there is a fundamental lack of honesty from all those involved. The material which Staines acquired is the kind of gossip which most engage in, however untrue much of it is. Only last October there was the "scandal" involving George Osborne, Peter Mandelson and yachts, where we learned that Mandelson had dripped "poison" about Gordon Brown into the ears of his supposed political enemies. Osborne's error was to blab to others what Mandelson had told him; his comeuppance came when Mandelson revealed that Osborne might have attempted to obtain a donation from his host. The golden rule of all this is don't get fucking caught. These are not new developments; the briefing and counter-briefing is as old as politics itself. What is relatively recent is the venom with which the briefings are given, and that does originate with New Labour, although even John Major had his moments, such as his "bastards" comments. Both Brown and Blair surrounded themselves with such ardent followers that they would do almost anything to attack the other, hence we had Brown being described as "psychologically flawed" and it being put about that he was gay, while Mandelson, the master of the "dark arts", was himself smeared on various occasions. This is still continuing today, such was the rift created, hence Stephen Byers and Alan Milburn not hiding their satisfaction at McBride having to resign.
Again, if it wasn't so vomit inducing the Conservative response to this would be hilarious. Their attempts to pin this directly to Gordon Brown are understandable, although still repugnant. Yes, he kept McBride around, knowing full well what he was capable of and indeed what he had done in the past, but that he would have personally authorised the smearing of his opponents is nonsense. If anything, the Tories' efforts to paint themselves as completely above such tactics is setting them up for a fall in the same way as Labour did. Cameron has more or less done everything but pronounce himself a "pretty straight kind of guy" and that he will be "purer than pure". Let's be clear: if the Tories genuinely wanted to put an end to the age of spin, the very thing they would not have done is emulate Labour in appointing a former tabloid journalist as their chief media strategist. Say what you like about Alastair Campbell whilst he was in Downing Street, at least he never had to resign because of his journalism, or found himself accused of leading the bullying of those under him as Andy Coulson has. The Tories also know that they don't need to engage in such smearing to such an extent as perhaps they and their opponents have in the past: they now know they can rely on the likes of Staines and other malignant bloggers to do that for them. That those that can't write a sentence without using the word "cunt" or similar have been so celebratory over this "scandal" ought to tell you something about the sort of discourse which politics has now sunk to, which blogging has in many cases only made worse.
The only thing that has been got right by all involved is that Labour simply doesn't understand the internet and doesn't understand why it's so unpopular online. The broad reason is that those in government are always in opposition when it comes to the internet, as those opposed have more that unites them than unites the supporters, but the other main reasons are that the internet provides alternative voices not represented elsewhere, hence why libertarian blogs are so popular, and that British right-wing bloggers have taken their cue from the originators in America, like the Drudge Report. The Red Rag site which Draper was looking to set-up was meant to be an attempt to beat Staines at his own game, something which it was never going to achieve, and which also fails to understand that you have to fight gossip and intrigue not with more of the same, but with content and argument, which as Sunny points out is where the left in America succeeded. Draper's LabourList was an honourable attempt to do something similar, but was doomed to failure because Draper himself was involved, far too associated with the past and inextricably linked with the party itself. LabourList was and is simply not critical enough, while ConservativeHome, nicknamed Continuity IDS because of its to the right of Cameron stance, gets it right. Mr Eugenides recognises this, praising Liberal Conspiracy because it is the best attempt so far by the left to get organised and push things forward in a similar way to the American left. Its success is also though because while Labour supporters or sympathisers are contributors, it is completely independent of any party.
The biggest mis-step of all though was that Draper and McBridge imagined that those identified needed smearing. Nadine Dorries, after all, is possibly the biggest joke in British politics, and she has lied and mislead people on so many occasions that no one needs to make things up about her to show just how disreputable she is. Likewise, the idea that the public themselves will be turned off by such tactics is ignorant: they themselves call politicians every name under the sun, often quite deservedly, and the contempt in which they are held only continues to grow. You feel like telling all those involved to stop protesting so much whilst also suggesting that they get over themselves. This will be remembered not as another great New Labour scandal but yet another example of the Westminster bubble getting excited with itself while everyone else is just bemused and alienated.
Labels: bloggocks, Conservatives, Damian McBride, Derek Draper, fall of Gordon Brown, Gordon Brown, Guido, Paul Staines, politics, smearing, spin
| Permalink
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Half-assed blogging.
Apologies again for the half-assed blogging so far this week. I'd like to say it's because I've got something major in the works, but I haven't, it's just me not managing my time properly. Here then are two outstanding posts which more than merit your attention:
Stumbling and Mumbling - Gordon Brown: a defence
Unity - Woolas: the Minister for Invertebrates
Stumbling and Mumbling - Gordon Brown: a defence
Unity - Woolas: the Minister for Invertebrates
Labels: bloggocks, links, personal shit
| Permalink
Thursday, February 05, 2009
The boys are back in town.
A warm welcome then to the newest member of our blogging brethren, Alastair Campbell. Speaking as we were of psychological operations, the sudden adoption of the web by so many of yesterday's men, whether they be Derek Draper, John Prescott or now the person most destructive of our politics in modern times seems to show just how terrified New Labour are of losing power. As the cliché goes, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and even when those who once held it have the left the stage, they still want their successors to continue to wield it, for good of us all, obviously. The biggest quandary is how they possibly think their re-emergence, even if only into the online world, will help Labour rather than harm it even further.
Labels: Alastair Campbell, bloggocks, death of Labour, New Labour, politics
| Permalink
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
From the sublime to the ridiculous.
The problem with the election of Obama for our own parliamentary equivalents is that it doesn't exactly show them in the most flattering light. Here's a master of oratory who's managed to inspire millions to go to the polls, and here's our bunch, left looking like a stood-up date on a particularly filthy evening. Whilst we've learned the lesson the hard way about charisma and the apparent "everyman" quality, you're still left absolutely bewildered, wondering where our own personal Obama might suddenly come from. With no suitable candidate in sight, we instead have to make do with both Gordon Brown and David Cameron fighting over which of them is most like Obama, reminiscent of two little boys at school squabbling over who the new girl likes the most.
Appropriately enough, the anti-Barack Obama decided upon today of all days to stick her head above the parapet and talk about something she clearly has absolutely no knowledge of whatsoever. I'm talking of course about the walking, talking, Labour-vote destroying robot which is Hazel Blears. Hazel Blears deciding to talk about political disengagement is a little like getting David Irving to talk about the problem of Holocaust denial; Blears, with perhaps only Tony McNulty for company, is the epitome of everything that an member of parliament should not be. She's loyal to the point of willing to sacrifice herself instead of the leader, or at least was to Tony Blair; she refuses to answer any question with anything resembling a straight answer; she has not a single apparent ideological bone in her body which might explain why she's joined the party she has; and when faced with overwhelming odds against her, she starts making things up. These might all be qualities which are essential to rise up the ranks of almost any political party today, but for those of us who actually want our representatives to have some specialist knowledge of any subject whatsoever, excepting motorbikes, or heaven forbid, even be more intelligent than we are, Blears and her friends, overwhelmingly Blairites, incidentally, are everything that is wrong with our politics as it stands.
All things considered, it therefore takes quite some chutzpah to imagine that you're suitably qualified to lecture anyone on political disengagement. Blears isn't interested in just why people are politically disengaged; she wishes to apportion blame. Predictably, it's not the fault of the politicians themselves for having indistinguishable policies, all the charm of a wet Sunday night in Salford or for prostituting their wares to the gutter press, but rather the media itself and additionally, bloggers.
Says Hazel:
Serious and helpful as in spelling out the bleeding obvious, as your humble narrator set out at the time. The liar in chief himself had to have balls to come out and attack the feral beast, having used said beast to get elected and then stay in power, but he of course didn't attack those most responsible for the cynicism with which politics in this country greeted, the Daily Mail and Sun, because if he had they would have chewed up said balls and spat them out in double-quick time. No, he instead attacked the Independent, which nobly stood up him to over the war and many other things, for daring to put its opinions on its front page, something the other tabloids had been doing for decades. Disingenuous could have been a adjective invented to describe Tony Blair, but he at least made the speech on his way out. Blears you would have thought still desperately believes she's on the way up.
In any event, Blears' claim that somehow it's just the media that exaggerates differences of opinion and bad days is simply nonsense. Blair himself was again partially responsible for this: he demanded and expected complete and utter unstinting loyalty. Read Alastair Campbell's diaries and see how he complained bitterly whenever the Labour party resisted his latest wheeze on principled grounds, with him condemning his colleagues for not "being serious". Blair went for such an uncompromising stance both because he wanted to be seen as the indomitable, strong leader, but also because the media had a hefty role in ensuring that Neil Kinnock never became prime minister. Campbell and Blair himself didn't want to see a Labour prime minister on the front page of the Sun again on election day inside a light-bulb, but the ends, suppressing all dissent and Faustian pacts with the likes of the Sun never justified the means. Politicians have themselves to blame as much as anyone else.
Blears continues:
As Unity has already argued, this is the equivalent to suggesting that only politicians are allowed to have complete freedom of speech. Blears is correct in suggesting that comment has swelled as investigations and genuine journalism has declined, and that the Guardian's maxim, that comment is free but facts are sacred has irrevocably broken down, but the idea that commentators are viewed as valid as elected politicians is abject nonsense.
As is her follow-up point:
Even before the advent of the blog, commentators had to deal with letters in green ink as well as to the editor, and also the occupational hazard of appearing in Hackwatch in Private Eye, not to mention being parodied by Craig Brown, as many of those considered to be the most influential have been. Half of blogging is mocking what the mainstream thinks, or disagreeing with it, especially the likes of Polly Toynbee, so ruthlessly watched and baited by the right online. The only way in which Blears' statement makes sense is if you remove the word "commentariat" and replace it with "tabloid press", but she's hardly about to start attacking them.
Ah yes, that's it; what's wrong with our politics is that politicians themselves don't have enough space to inculcate us with their philosophy and policies. Once they have we'll realise just how wrong we are about the lack of difference between them.
She then gets onto those of us pathetic and vain enough to run blogs:
If Blears thinks that Guido represents vicious nihilism, then she presumably hasn't read the finest of our swear bloggers, more's the pity. She does have something resembling a point regarding how the most popular blogs are right-wing; partly that is obviously because the government is nominally left-wing, but it's also because the left is far more disparate than the right tends to be in this country. As Unity has again already stated, politicians' blogs are almost notable only for their dreariness, with perhaps only Tom Watson and Tom Harris, excluding Bob, rising above it. Blears sees most bloggers as having a disdain for politicians and the political system, but while some are only concerned with the propagation of their own political world view, there are hundreds if not thousands of others who blog because they care about that self-same political system, and think that the current lot are debasing it through their very actions. Of course Blears would see this as a threat: she's wholly satisfied with how things are at the moment, where loyalty to the party counts above what is actually best for the country. She likes how this government has not been held to account for the Iraq war, for the complete abandonment of those that it was elected to defend, and for being in complete subservience to the City over everyone and everything else. Bloggers, for all their faults, and they are myriad, are the future. Barack Obama and the Democrats in America recognised this, and they treated them as more than equals. Instead of learning from their harnessing of the web, Blears only sees the dangers rather than the opportunities. She dares not imagine that she and her party are the problem, not the solution.
Appropriately enough, the anti-Barack Obama decided upon today of all days to stick her head above the parapet and talk about something she clearly has absolutely no knowledge of whatsoever. I'm talking of course about the walking, talking, Labour-vote destroying robot which is Hazel Blears. Hazel Blears deciding to talk about political disengagement is a little like getting David Irving to talk about the problem of Holocaust denial; Blears, with perhaps only Tony McNulty for company, is the epitome of everything that an member of parliament should not be. She's loyal to the point of willing to sacrifice herself instead of the leader, or at least was to Tony Blair; she refuses to answer any question with anything resembling a straight answer; she has not a single apparent ideological bone in her body which might explain why she's joined the party she has; and when faced with overwhelming odds against her, she starts making things up. These might all be qualities which are essential to rise up the ranks of almost any political party today, but for those of us who actually want our representatives to have some specialist knowledge of any subject whatsoever, excepting motorbikes, or heaven forbid, even be more intelligent than we are, Blears and her friends, overwhelmingly Blairites, incidentally, are everything that is wrong with our politics as it stands.
All things considered, it therefore takes quite some chutzpah to imagine that you're suitably qualified to lecture anyone on political disengagement. Blears isn't interested in just why people are politically disengaged; she wishes to apportion blame. Predictably, it's not the fault of the politicians themselves for having indistinguishable policies, all the charm of a wet Sunday night in Salford or for prostituting their wares to the gutter press, but rather the media itself and additionally, bloggers.
Says Hazel:
Famously, Tony Blair called the media a "feral beast" in one of his last speeches as prime minister. But behind the eye-catching phrase was a serious and helpful analysis of a 24-hour broadcast media and shrinking, and increasingly competitive, newspaper market which demands more impact from its reporting – not the reporting of facts to enable citizens to make sense of the world, but the translation of every political discussion into a row, every difficulty a crisis, every rocky patch for the prime minister the "worst week ever".
Serious and helpful as in spelling out the bleeding obvious, as your humble narrator set out at the time. The liar in chief himself had to have balls to come out and attack the feral beast, having used said beast to get elected and then stay in power, but he of course didn't attack those most responsible for the cynicism with which politics in this country greeted, the Daily Mail and Sun, because if he had they would have chewed up said balls and spat them out in double-quick time. No, he instead attacked the Independent, which nobly stood up him to over the war and many other things, for daring to put its opinions on its front page, something the other tabloids had been doing for decades. Disingenuous could have been a adjective invented to describe Tony Blair, but he at least made the speech on his way out. Blears you would have thought still desperately believes she's on the way up.
In any event, Blears' claim that somehow it's just the media that exaggerates differences of opinion and bad days is simply nonsense. Blair himself was again partially responsible for this: he demanded and expected complete and utter unstinting loyalty. Read Alastair Campbell's diaries and see how he complained bitterly whenever the Labour party resisted his latest wheeze on principled grounds, with him condemning his colleagues for not "being serious". Blair went for such an uncompromising stance both because he wanted to be seen as the indomitable, strong leader, but also because the media had a hefty role in ensuring that Neil Kinnock never became prime minister. Campbell and Blair himself didn't want to see a Labour prime minister on the front page of the Sun again on election day inside a light-bulb, but the ends, suppressing all dissent and Faustian pacts with the likes of the Sun never justified the means. Politicians have themselves to blame as much as anyone else.
Blears continues:
And I would single out the rise of the commentariat as especially note-worthy. It is within living memory that journalists' names started to appear in newspapers; before then, no name was attached to articles. And in recent years commentary has taken over from investigation or news reporting, to the point where commentators are viewed by some as every bit as important as elected politicians, with views as valid as cabinet ministers. And if you can wield influence and even power, without ever standing for office or being held to account by an electorate, it further undermines our democracy.
As Unity has already argued, this is the equivalent to suggesting that only politicians are allowed to have complete freedom of speech. Blears is correct in suggesting that comment has swelled as investigations and genuine journalism has declined, and that the Guardian's maxim, that comment is free but facts are sacred has irrevocably broken down, but the idea that commentators are viewed as valid as elected politicians is abject nonsense.
As is her follow-up point:
The commentariat operates without scrutiny or redress. They cannot be held to account for their views, even when they perform the most athletic and acrobatic of flip-flops in the space of a few weeks. I can understand when commentators disagree with each other; it's when they disagree with themselves we should worry.
Even before the advent of the blog, commentators had to deal with letters in green ink as well as to the editor, and also the occupational hazard of appearing in Hackwatch in Private Eye, not to mention being parodied by Craig Brown, as many of those considered to be the most influential have been. Half of blogging is mocking what the mainstream thinks, or disagreeing with it, especially the likes of Polly Toynbee, so ruthlessly watched and baited by the right online. The only way in which Blears' statement makes sense is if you remove the word "commentariat" and replace it with "tabloid press", but she's hardly about to start attacking them.
There will always be a role for political commentary, providing perspective, illumination and explanation. But editors need to do more to disentangle it from news reporting, and to allow elected politicians the same kind of prominent space for comment as people who have never stood for office.
Ah yes, that's it; what's wrong with our politics is that politicians themselves don't have enough space to inculcate us with their philosophy and policies. Once they have we'll realise just how wrong we are about the lack of difference between them.
She then gets onto those of us pathetic and vain enough to run blogs:
This brings me to the role of political bloggers. Perhaps because of the nature of the technology, there is a tendency for political blogs to have a Samizdat style. The most popular blogs are rightwing, ranging from the considered Tory views of Iain Dale, to the vicious nihilism of Guido Fawkes. Perhaps this is simply anti-establishment. Blogs have only existed under a Labour government. Perhaps if there was a Tory government, all the leading blogs would be left-of-centre?
There are some informative and entertaining political blogs, including those written by elected councillors. But mostly, political blogs are written by people with a disdain for the political system and politicians, who see their function as unearthing scandals, conspiracies and perceived hypocrisy.
Unless and until political blogging adds value to our political culture, by allowing new and disparate voices, ideas and legitimate protest and challenge, and until the mainstream media reports politics in a calmer, more responsible manner, it will continue to fuel a culture of cynicism and despair.
If Blears thinks that Guido represents vicious nihilism, then she presumably hasn't read the finest of our swear bloggers, more's the pity. She does have something resembling a point regarding how the most popular blogs are right-wing; partly that is obviously because the government is nominally left-wing, but it's also because the left is far more disparate than the right tends to be in this country. As Unity has again already stated, politicians' blogs are almost notable only for their dreariness, with perhaps only Tom Watson and Tom Harris, excluding Bob, rising above it. Blears sees most bloggers as having a disdain for politicians and the political system, but while some are only concerned with the propagation of their own political world view, there are hundreds if not thousands of others who blog because they care about that self-same political system, and think that the current lot are debasing it through their very actions. Of course Blears would see this as a threat: she's wholly satisfied with how things are at the moment, where loyalty to the party counts above what is actually best for the country. She likes how this government has not been held to account for the Iraq war, for the complete abandonment of those that it was elected to defend, and for being in complete subservience to the City over everyone and everything else. Bloggers, for all their faults, and they are myriad, are the future. Barack Obama and the Democrats in America recognised this, and they treated them as more than equals. Instead of learning from their harnessing of the web, Blears only sees the dangers rather than the opportunities. She dares not imagine that she and her party are the problem, not the solution.
Labels: bloggocks, clueless Blairites, cynicism, gutter press, Hazel Blears, media analysis, political disengagement, politics, spin
| Permalink
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Nadine Dorries just cannot stop lying.
What is it exactly that causes individuals to lie and mislead when they know full well that their untruths are likely to be quickly exposed? Is it because they genuinely can't help themselves or that they've got so used to repeatedly bending reality that they come to believe it themselves? I ask only because a repeated serial offender has been caught once again lying through her teeth:
Yes, we're referring to the glamorous and flagrant Ms Nadine Dorries, Conservative MP for mid-Bedfordshire, and the complaint made against her by Sunny Hundal regarding her blog being funded out of the incidental expenses allowance (since changed to the communications allowance), which expressly forbids such funds to be used for party political activities or campaigning. Sunny was good enough at the time to put up for all to see the complaint and the evidence which quite clearly showed that Dorries was apparently abusing the allowance, especially regarding her vindictive attacks on female Labour MPs in marginal seats who had a record of voting not to lower the time-limit on those seeking an abortion.
It was therefore a surprise to learn that John Lyon had dismissed the complaint so apparently out of hand when the evidence was so transparently damning of Dorries' conduct. Despite not claiming to know who Sunny was, and also erroneously describing him as a Liberal Democrat, Unity noted that Dorries or her web-hosts had subtly altered the site after the complaint had been submitted, removing the text which suggested that the site was funded out of the inicidental provisions allowance, and ostensibly moving the blog away from Dorries' constituency website, although it was quite obvious that both still used the same address. At the time Unity wondered whether she was going to plead ignorance and apologise, but by the account give by Dorries herself this apparently wasn't necessary, as John Lyon had cleared her entirely.
Except that wasn't the case at all. Sunny, having been busy with both preparing for a well-earned holiday and also attending the Labour party conference, hadn't had time to post himself on the response of Lyon to him regarding the complaint. He now has:
In other words then, the complaint to all intents and purposes was upheld, and not only that, Dorries had apologised for the confusion caused. Presumably because Dorries provided evidence that showed that the blog had not been funded out of the incidental expenses provision after all, as the site claimed, Lyon decided to accept her apology and take the matter no further.
All of this though is rather different to the complete bill of health which Dorries gave her own readers the impression she had been given. She failed to inform them she had apologised or that she been upbraided on 3 separate counts, even if the complaint was not subsequently upheld. Iain Dale, the inventor of blogging, therefore took this up on his own site:
There is no apologising to be done because the complaint itself was, as Lyon in his letter to Sunny makes clear, fully justified on almost all counts. Iain though seems to have been mislead by Dorries herself by yet again not revealing the full facts of the matter, and trying to make out that she has been the innocent party through blatant omission of them. Dorries ends her post with the following:
Dorries is of course quite right. Sunny and Liberal Conspiracy made a completely legitimate complaint about a member of parliament apparently abusing their allowance, one which the parliamentary standards commissioner agreed was wholly justified in bringing, and which was upheld on 3 counts, with Dorries herself apologising. Ms Dorries on the other hand has yet again lied to the very people that she is meant to be serving -- her constituents -- through omitting those facts and only revealing the parts of the letter which apparently exonerated her. It shows her up to be fundamentally dishonest, which has been the most overwhelming feature of her politics up till now. I think it's well worth repeating again the final paragraph of a previous post of mine:
How many more examples of exactly the above does the Conservative party need before it takes action against Dorries for her behaviour? Perhaps that's one that Iain Dale could answer for us.
Today I have received a letter from John Lyon CB - the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards - in response to a complaint made about my blog by a Liberal Democrat (sic).
...
For the record, John Lyon's letter to the complainant states the following:
"The position is that no Parliamentary resources have been used to fund Mrs Dorries' weblog. Questions about whether its content is consistent with the rules in relation to Parliamentary funding do not therefore arise."
He goes on to state, "No further action on any point is required, and therefore consider your complaint now closed."
Yes, we're referring to the glamorous and flagrant Ms Nadine Dorries, Conservative MP for mid-Bedfordshire, and the complaint made against her by Sunny Hundal regarding her blog being funded out of the incidental expenses allowance (since changed to the communications allowance), which expressly forbids such funds to be used for party political activities or campaigning. Sunny was good enough at the time to put up for all to see the complaint and the evidence which quite clearly showed that Dorries was apparently abusing the allowance, especially regarding her vindictive attacks on female Labour MPs in marginal seats who had a record of voting not to lower the time-limit on those seeking an abortion.
It was therefore a surprise to learn that John Lyon had dismissed the complaint so apparently out of hand when the evidence was so transparently damning of Dorries' conduct. Despite not claiming to know who Sunny was, and also erroneously describing him as a Liberal Democrat, Unity noted that Dorries or her web-hosts had subtly altered the site after the complaint had been submitted, removing the text which suggested that the site was funded out of the inicidental provisions allowance, and ostensibly moving the blog away from Dorries' constituency website, although it was quite obvious that both still used the same address. At the time Unity wondered whether she was going to plead ignorance and apologise, but by the account give by Dorries herself this apparently wasn't necessary, as John Lyon had cleared her entirely.
Except that wasn't the case at all. Sunny, having been busy with both preparing for a well-earned holiday and also attending the Labour party conference, hadn't had time to post himself on the response of Lyon to him regarding the complaint. He now has:
A few months ago I submitted a complaint, with the help of some Liberal Conspirators to the Parliamentary Standards Commission against Nadine Dorries MP. In short, it was regarding her blog. Last weekend I had a response.
The most relevant parts of the letter stated:
The rules of the house, however, do require Members to make a clear distinction between websites which are financed from public funds and any other domain. At the time of your complaint, Mrs Dorries’ website did not meet that requirement. Nor was it appropriate that she use the Portcullis emblem on the weblog given its contents. And the funding attribution on Mrs Dorries’ Home Page should have been updated to reflect that the funding came from the Communications Allowance and not from the Incidental Expenses Provision.
To these three technical aspects, our complaint was upheld. But, the Commissioner adds:
I am, however, satisfied that Mrs Dorries has take effective action to rectify the situation, for which she has apologised…. She has expressed her regret for the confusion caused.
In other words then, the complaint to all intents and purposes was upheld, and not only that, Dorries had apologised for the confusion caused. Presumably because Dorries provided evidence that showed that the blog had not been funded out of the incidental expenses provision after all, as the site claimed, Lyon decided to accept her apology and take the matter no further.
All of this though is rather different to the complete bill of health which Dorries gave her own readers the impression she had been given. She failed to inform them she had apologised or that she been upbraided on 3 separate counts, even if the complaint was not subsequently upheld. Iain Dale, the inventor of blogging, therefore took this up on his own site:
I have waited a few days to see if he might do us the honour of posting about it on Liberal Conspiracy, and maybe apologising to Nadine for the smear. But not a bit of it. He's remained silent on the matter.
There is no apologising to be done because the complaint itself was, as Lyon in his letter to Sunny makes clear, fully justified on almost all counts. Iain though seems to have been mislead by Dorries herself by yet again not revealing the full facts of the matter, and trying to make out that she has been the innocent party through blatant omission of them. Dorries ends her post with the following:
I think this has been a most revealing episode as to his type of politics - it's certainly not mine.
Dorries is of course quite right. Sunny and Liberal Conspiracy made a completely legitimate complaint about a member of parliament apparently abusing their allowance, one which the parliamentary standards commissioner agreed was wholly justified in bringing, and which was upheld on 3 counts, with Dorries herself apologising. Ms Dorries on the other hand has yet again lied to the very people that she is meant to be serving -- her constituents -- through omitting those facts and only revealing the parts of the letter which apparently exonerated her. It shows her up to be fundamentally dishonest, which has been the most overwhelming feature of her politics up till now. I think it's well worth repeating again the final paragraph of a previous post of mine:
Out of all the MPs that this blog has covered over the last few years, it's safe to say that none (with the exception of dear Tony) has been as underhand, as genuinely unpleasant, manipulative, vindictive and dishonest as both Dorries has been and apparently is. She is both a disgrace to politics as a whole and a liability to the Conservative party.
How many more examples of exactly the above does the Conservative party need before it takes action against Dorries for her behaviour? Perhaps that's one that Iain Dale could answer for us.
Labels: bloggocks, Conservatives, fucking liars, Iain Dale, John Lyon, Nadine Dorries, Sunny Hundal
| Permalink
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
More shameless self-aggrandisement.
18th on the left-wing list; 60th on the full list, up from 195th last year. Major congrats also to Anton Vowl and 5cc, both of whom broke into the top 155, and Question That, who just broke into the top 200.
Again, huge thanks to everyone who voted for me. It really does almost make it all worthwhile.
Again, huge thanks to everyone who voted for me. It really does almost make it all worthwhile.
Labels: blog lists, bloggocks, Iain Dale, self-promotion
| Permalink
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Shameless self-aggrandisement.
It would be remiss not to mention that creator of blogging Iain Dale's yearly rankings of left-wing blogs have just been released, and your humble narrator is doubly humbled and really rather staggered to have jumped from 72nd last year to 18th this. A huge thank you to everyone who voted for me, especially considering this is the first I've so much as mentioned the voting here.
For the most part I don't think anyone will have any problem with the results, but doubtless the boycotts which some bloggers, including Justin and Bob Piper advocated hurt them in the rankings when both should have most certainly ranked higher than I did. I really didn't see the point of such boycotts; just look at it as a bit of fun which really doesn't mean a great deal, or at least put aside the differences some have with Iain Dale over it, as it's quite apparent that he's not cooking the figures. It doesn't do any harm, and it most certainly does promote UK political blogging, if not perhaps over the long term.
Anyway, thanks again, and hopefully next year I'll drop to a more anonymous position once more.
For the most part I don't think anyone will have any problem with the results, but doubtless the boycotts which some bloggers, including Justin and Bob Piper advocated hurt them in the rankings when both should have most certainly ranked higher than I did. I really didn't see the point of such boycotts; just look at it as a bit of fun which really doesn't mean a great deal, or at least put aside the differences some have with Iain Dale over it, as it's quite apparent that he's not cooking the figures. It doesn't do any harm, and it most certainly does promote UK political blogging, if not perhaps over the long term.
Anyway, thanks again, and hopefully next year I'll drop to a more anonymous position once more.
Labels: blog lists, bloggocks, Iain Dale, self-promotion
| Permalink
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Going lower than ever thought possible.
Out of all the joys that the internet has brought us, the ability for those with a tendency for hypochondria to self-diagnose themselves via the easy availability of the symptoms for every disease known to man is one of the lesser benefits. Even worse though is those who then take these self-same symptoms and rather than diagnosing themselves, attempt to pin the diseases and disorders on others, especially those involving mental health. This level of sub-Freudian projection is contemptible enough when it's directed against celebrities and others in the public eye, but when it enters political discourse it represents something resembling a new low in gutter-sniping.
Witness then Guido bringing the question completely out into the open, behind the witless low-level building up of the idea which has been going on for several months now. Gordon Brown, fairly and simply, is quite possibly bonkers. The evidence presented for this is weak beyond belief. It amounts to around three things: that Brown was labelled "psychologically flawed" long ago by Blair's briefers during one of the internecine battles between TB and GB; that Brown has been acting strangely, apropos an article by that man noted for his own completely rational and inoffensive behaviour, Bruce Anderson; and lastly, that even by the standards of a politician he's been making increasingly bizarre statements. To this you could add the pathetic diagnoses by the green ink brigade of autism, or Asperger's syndrome.
You don't have to have even the slightest medical training to treat such facile, shallow nonsense with the contempt it deserves. It ought to be remembered however though that this isn't just the imaginings of the usual suspect squad of bloggers getting ever more drunk on their own delusions of grandeur: George Osborne joked when asked by Mary Ann Sieghart whether his own knowledge of dinosaurs when a child was "faintly autistic" by saying "we're not getting into Gordon Brown yet"; and for a while it almost seemed to be Conservative policy to treat Gordon Brown as weird, hence Cameron's description of him as "that strange man in Downing Street".
To give these claims the sort of scrutiny which they don't deserve, we're for a start dealing with highly conflicting descriptions of what Brown genuinely is like. While some may class him as a Stalinist or a control freak, others have talked of his mildness, even warmth in private, and have been disillusioned by his failure to show this in public. Even if we take at face value the stories of Brown's rages, almost all delivered, incidentally, by either Blairites or those predisposed against Brown, of the smashing of mobile phones and otherwise, they don't even begin to be explained by mental illness or autism: rather, this is a person under intense pressure and stress, reacting at times in ways which he doubtless instantly regrets. It might be someone not enjoying the job which they so coveted, but it is not even slightly abnormal, let alone descending into mental ill-health.
More than anything, this perhaps comes down to what you regard as the qualities that a politician should always have on display. We seem increasingly to want our politicians to always be presentable, to always instantly know what to do, and at the same time to be incredibly open with everyone. In short, we never want them to put a foot wrong, be off-message, or be consumed with anything other than constant public service. This, more than anything, is what is currently delivering us identikit politicians, overwhelming upper-middle or upper-class, with next to no experience other than from within political parties, all of whom look more or less the same and indeed, offer more or the less the same. They can deliver a speech brilliantly, pretend to empathise, emerge as brain-shatteringly normal or at least act like it, and pass the barbecue test, but none of this qualifies them in the slightest to actually run a country. Surely we ought to have learned this lesson by now, whether by the examples of either Bush or Blair, yet we seem more than ever to lap up the spin we so profess to detest while railing against the outsider, the abnormal, those who don't seem to fit in.
Surely the greatest example of how you don't always need to be of complete sound mind, even if you are, when in a position of such authority is Churchill. Everyone is aware of his life-long battle with depression, of the "Black Dog" as he called it, yet its effects did not prevent him from serving as arguably the greatest prime minister this country has ever had.
This is not of course to suggest that Brown is on anywhere near the same plain as Churchill; he quite obviously is not. Yet the whispering about his own mental ill-health, completely unsubstantiated, is designed to put the final nail in his coffin, to ostracise him completely, to persecute him for daring to be anything other than he really is. The political reality Brown has to face is that he never forced his hand early enough to force Blair out when he could still have averted Labour's apparent inexorable decline. However much some want to pin all the blame solely on his shoulders for the economic weather we are now facing, the main opposition party cannot even begin to explain what things it would have done differently to Labour, or what it would have cut or not funded to the same extent as that as Brown did. He has chosen the entirely wrong policies to pursue since becoming prime minister, such as 42 days detention and the expansion of the school academy system, not to mention the 10p tax rate debacle, but there is no evidence whatsoever, indeed, some to the contrary, that another leader would do any better. The Conservatives are heading back to power, but if they or their cyphers think that they'll earn any kudos for descending to the politics of the sewer, lower even than that which New Labour has at times sunk, then they are certainly sorely mistaken.
Related:
Lib Con - The 'Gordon Brown is insane' meme
Witness then Guido bringing the question completely out into the open, behind the witless low-level building up of the idea which has been going on for several months now. Gordon Brown, fairly and simply, is quite possibly bonkers. The evidence presented for this is weak beyond belief. It amounts to around three things: that Brown was labelled "psychologically flawed" long ago by Blair's briefers during one of the internecine battles between TB and GB; that Brown has been acting strangely, apropos an article by that man noted for his own completely rational and inoffensive behaviour, Bruce Anderson; and lastly, that even by the standards of a politician he's been making increasingly bizarre statements. To this you could add the pathetic diagnoses by the green ink brigade of autism, or Asperger's syndrome.
You don't have to have even the slightest medical training to treat such facile, shallow nonsense with the contempt it deserves. It ought to be remembered however though that this isn't just the imaginings of the usual suspect squad of bloggers getting ever more drunk on their own delusions of grandeur: George Osborne joked when asked by Mary Ann Sieghart whether his own knowledge of dinosaurs when a child was "faintly autistic" by saying "we're not getting into Gordon Brown yet"; and for a while it almost seemed to be Conservative policy to treat Gordon Brown as weird, hence Cameron's description of him as "that strange man in Downing Street".
To give these claims the sort of scrutiny which they don't deserve, we're for a start dealing with highly conflicting descriptions of what Brown genuinely is like. While some may class him as a Stalinist or a control freak, others have talked of his mildness, even warmth in private, and have been disillusioned by his failure to show this in public. Even if we take at face value the stories of Brown's rages, almost all delivered, incidentally, by either Blairites or those predisposed against Brown, of the smashing of mobile phones and otherwise, they don't even begin to be explained by mental illness or autism: rather, this is a person under intense pressure and stress, reacting at times in ways which he doubtless instantly regrets. It might be someone not enjoying the job which they so coveted, but it is not even slightly abnormal, let alone descending into mental ill-health.
More than anything, this perhaps comes down to what you regard as the qualities that a politician should always have on display. We seem increasingly to want our politicians to always be presentable, to always instantly know what to do, and at the same time to be incredibly open with everyone. In short, we never want them to put a foot wrong, be off-message, or be consumed with anything other than constant public service. This, more than anything, is what is currently delivering us identikit politicians, overwhelming upper-middle or upper-class, with next to no experience other than from within political parties, all of whom look more or less the same and indeed, offer more or the less the same. They can deliver a speech brilliantly, pretend to empathise, emerge as brain-shatteringly normal or at least act like it, and pass the barbecue test, but none of this qualifies them in the slightest to actually run a country. Surely we ought to have learned this lesson by now, whether by the examples of either Bush or Blair, yet we seem more than ever to lap up the spin we so profess to detest while railing against the outsider, the abnormal, those who don't seem to fit in.
Surely the greatest example of how you don't always need to be of complete sound mind, even if you are, when in a position of such authority is Churchill. Everyone is aware of his life-long battle with depression, of the "Black Dog" as he called it, yet its effects did not prevent him from serving as arguably the greatest prime minister this country has ever had.
This is not of course to suggest that Brown is on anywhere near the same plain as Churchill; he quite obviously is not. Yet the whispering about his own mental ill-health, completely unsubstantiated, is designed to put the final nail in his coffin, to ostracise him completely, to persecute him for daring to be anything other than he really is. The political reality Brown has to face is that he never forced his hand early enough to force Blair out when he could still have averted Labour's apparent inexorable decline. However much some want to pin all the blame solely on his shoulders for the economic weather we are now facing, the main opposition party cannot even begin to explain what things it would have done differently to Labour, or what it would have cut or not funded to the same extent as that as Brown did. He has chosen the entirely wrong policies to pursue since becoming prime minister, such as 42 days detention and the expansion of the school academy system, not to mention the 10p tax rate debacle, but there is no evidence whatsoever, indeed, some to the contrary, that another leader would do any better. The Conservatives are heading back to power, but if they or their cyphers think that they'll earn any kudos for descending to the politics of the sewer, lower even than that which New Labour has at times sunk, then they are certainly sorely mistaken.
Related:
Lib Con - The 'Gordon Brown is insane' meme
Labels: bloggocks, fall of Gordon Brown, Gordon Brown, Guido, gutter sniping, mental ill-health, politics
| Permalink
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Dour.
Dour prime minister's team respond to a jokey petition with a jokey video that likely took all of 10 minutes to put together and cost precisely nothing. Dour bloggers and Tories respond by being more dour than the dourest man on Earth. World continues to turn while Dizzy's face goes a familiar shade of red.
Labels: bloggocks, cunts, Gordon Brown
| Permalink
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Kamm's the man!
I'm a bit slow on the uptake on this, but I've just noted, via Matt T, that Oliver Kamm has been elevated from writing the occasional column for the Times to being a full-fledged leader writer.
This is of course a triumph not just for Mr Kamm, but for blogging in general. It proves that you too, as long as you're right-wing pretending to be a leftist, spend most of your energies stalking one of the world's leading intellectuals without laying a glove on him once, and defend the indefensible to the hilt, can become one of those individuals that can boast that you've sucked Rupert Murdoch's cock. This medium truly is changing the prevailing mainstream environment.
This is of course a triumph not just for Mr Kamm, but for blogging in general. It proves that you too, as long as you're right-wing pretending to be a leftist, spend most of your energies stalking one of the world's leading intellectuals without laying a glove on him once, and defend the indefensible to the hilt, can become one of those individuals that can boast that you've sucked Rupert Murdoch's cock. This medium truly is changing the prevailing mainstream environment.
Labels: bloggocks, fellatio, Oliver Kamm, Rupert Murdoch, Times-watch
| Permalink
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Schillings after Murray again and weekend round-up.
The freedom of speech denying shysters at Schillings are once again threatening Craig Murray, this time before he's even published anything. Unity has the letter from the scumbags, reproduced here in full:
As Murray himself says:
Craig provides more information about Spicer and the mercenary outfit, sorry, I mean private security group, Aegis, that he is CEO of here, here and here. Aegis have used their legal talons before to shut down the website of a disaffected former contractor who had embarrassed the firm by hosting "trophy videos" of Aegis mercenaries, sorry, employees, shooting at Iraqi vehicles for no apparent reason. Having provided defence for a ghastly oligarch with a criminal record and with other serious allegations made against him, Schillings are now providing cover for those who have profited so handsomely from the Iraq war, lest anyone say anything unhelpful about their brilliant role in bringing democracy to that benighted country. It's difficult to give lawyers a worse name, but Schillings seem to be trying to up the ante considerably.
Elsewhere Harry's Place are also facing legal action from other unpleasant individuals, but then, who cares about Harry's Place?
Other things worth reading/perusing today:
Anthony Barnett: a new poll shows less than 10% of Labour members support 42 days
Erwin James interviews four young men in a YOI, and their stories are hardly typical of the evil yobs that the tabloids like to imagine are those who perpetuate knife crime
The always good value Marina Hyde on Abu Qatada
Three quite wonderful articles/posts by Rachel North
Oh, and today is this blog's third birthday, like you care. It feels more like twenty.
PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL
Mainstream Publishing Company (Edinburgh) Limited
7 Albany Street
Edinburgh
Scotland
EH13UGBY POST AND FAX: XXXX XXX XXXX
OurRef: SMS/JXR/ww/A131/3
ON THE RECORD
NOT FOR PUBLICATION
08 July 2008Dear Sirs
The Road to Samarkand - Craig Murray
We represent Lieutenant-Colonel Tim Spicer OBE, C.E.O. of Aegis Defence Services Limited (”Aegis”).
We are instructed to write to you with regard to ‘THE ROAD TO SAMARKAND- INTRIGUE, CORRUPTION AND DIRTY DIPLOMACY’ (”the Book”) written by Craig Murray and due to be published in September 2008 by you (http://www.rbooks.co.uk/search results.aspx) to be sold in England and Wales by Random House Sales Department.
We have reason to believe that the Book may contain serious, untrue and damaging defamatory allegations about our client.
Please confirm by return whether the Book is due to be published in England and Wales in September 2008 and if so, the exact date. Please also confirm whether the Book is due to be published in any other jurisdiction, setting out each jurisdiction, together with the publication date and publisher concerned in each case.
Importantly, we require you to confirm by return whether or not the Book contains any reference to our client, and if so, we require you to set out in full each and every reference to our client in its entirety to give our client the opportunity to take legal advice and to respond to any allegations in good time prior to publication.
Any widespread publication of the Book containing defamatory allegations concerning our client would be deeply damaging to our client’s personal and professional reputations and would cause him profound distress and anxiety. We remind you that you would be responsible for that damage and any subsequent republication of the allegations. We also put you on notice that you will be liable for any special damage or loss suffered by our client as a result of the Book and we reserve all our client’s rights in this regard.
We note from your website http://www.mainstreampublishing.com/news_current.html that Mr Murray is due to speak about the Book at a ‘Mainstream author event at the Edinburgh International Book Festival’ entitled ‘Lived Lives’ on 12th August 2008 at 4.30pm in the RBS Main Theatre, Edinburgh. We hereby put both you and Mr Murray on notice that all our client’s rights are reserved in relation to any defamatory comments or publications made by you or Mr Murray in relation to that event.
Please immediately take into your possession all drafts of the Book pre-publication, all notes, emails, correspondence, memos, images and other documents relevant to the publication of this Book, and preserve them safely pending the outcome of this dispute. They will need to be disclosed in due course if litigation has to be commenced. Also, you will need to disclose the financial arrangements for the sale and licence of the Book to other publications.
In the circumstances, we require that you confirm immediately that you agree to undertake on behalf of Mainstream Publishing Company (Edinburgh) Limited not to publish any libels regarding our client in any editions of the Book or at all.
We require the above undertaking by 4pm on Friday 11h July 2008, failing which we will have no option but to advise our client with regard to making applications to the High Court for an injunction to restrain publication and/or for pre-action disclosure. You are on notice that we will seek to recover the costs of any necessary applications from you.
We await your response by return. In the meantime all our client’s rights are reserved, including the right to issue proceedings against you without further notice.
Yours faithfullySCHILLINGS
cc. Craig Murray Esq.
As Murray himself says:
Schillings are a firm of libel lawyers dedicated to prevent the truth from being known about some deeply unlovely people. They managed temporarily to close down this blog (and several others) to keep information quiet about the criminal record of Alisher Usmanov. Now they are attempting to block the publication of my new book in the interests of mercenary commander Tim Spicer, one of those who has made a fortune from the Iraq War. It is sad but perhaps predictable that private profits from the illegal Iraq war, in which hundreds of thousands of innocent people have died, are providing the funding to try to silence my book.Libel law in the UK is a remarkable thing - Schillings can go for an injunction when I haven't published anything about Spicer yet and they haven't seen what I intend to publish. People might conclude that Spicer has something to hide. You will see that they also are attempting to censor not only the book, but what I say at the Edinburgh Book Festival on 12 August. I can assure you that they will find it impossible to affect what I say about Spicer at that event.
Craig provides more information about Spicer and the mercenary outfit, sorry, I mean private security group, Aegis, that he is CEO of here, here and here. Aegis have used their legal talons before to shut down the website of a disaffected former contractor who had embarrassed the firm by hosting "trophy videos" of Aegis mercenaries, sorry, employees, shooting at Iraqi vehicles for no apparent reason. Having provided defence for a ghastly oligarch with a criminal record and with other serious allegations made against him, Schillings are now providing cover for those who have profited so handsomely from the Iraq war, lest anyone say anything unhelpful about their brilliant role in bringing democracy to that benighted country. It's difficult to give lawyers a worse name, but Schillings seem to be trying to up the ante considerably.
Elsewhere Harry's Place are also facing legal action from other unpleasant individuals, but then, who cares about Harry's Place?
Other things worth reading/perusing today:
Anthony Barnett: a new poll shows less than 10% of Labour members support 42 days
Erwin James interviews four young men in a YOI, and their stories are hardly typical of the evil yobs that the tabloids like to imagine are those who perpetuate knife crime
The always good value Marina Hyde on Abu Qatada
Three quite wonderful articles/posts by Rachel North
Oh, and today is this blog's third birthday, like you care. It feels more like twenty.
Labels: Aegis, bloggocks, Craig Murray, legal threats, Schillings, seen elsewhere, Tim Spicer
| Permalink
About
- This is septicisle
Links
- Bloggerheads
- The Sun - Tabloid Lies
- Liberal Conspiracy
- Lenin's Tomb
- D-Notice
- Daily Mail/Express Watch
- Councillor Bob Piper
- Craig Murray
- Comment is Free
- Rachel from North London
- Straight to the Point
- Paul Linford
- The Ministry of Truth
- Mask of Anarchy
- Osama Saeed - Rolled-up Trousers
- Pickled Politics
- Stop the BNP
- Post Hegemony
- George Monbiot
- Melon Farmers
- Jews Sans Frontieres
- Blood & Treasure
- Five Chinese Crackers
- Chicken Yoghurt
- tygerland.net
- Action on Rights for Children
- Jailhouselawyer
- Nosemonkey
- Between the Hammer and the Anvil
- Mr Eugenides
- Tampon Teabag
- Retired Rambler
- Politaholic
- Stumbling and Mumbling
- Ten Percent
- Iraq Dossier - Blog
- Bill's Comment Page
- Mike Power
- Unrepentant Communist
- A Very Public Sociologist
- Though Cowards Flinch
- Socialist Unity
- Dave's Part
- Shiraz Socialist
- Leftwing Criminologist
- Through the Scary Door
- Dirty Leftie
- Konichiwa, Bitches
- Eric the Fish
- Mad Ranter
- Qwghlm
- Chris Paul - Labour of Love
- Capital D
- Sim-O's Random Thoughts
- Mediawatchwatch
- Never Trust a Hippy
- Pigdogfucker
- Rhetorically Speaking
- Enemies of Reason
- Griffindor - Lee Griffin
- Bleeding Heart Show
- Hopi Sen
- Transform
- anticant
- Love and Garbage
- Cynical Dragon
- Tory Troll
- Wardman Wire
- The Daily (Maybe)
- The Curmudgeon
- Greenman's Occasional Organ
- Freemania
- openDemocracy - OurKingdom
- Penny Red
- Yorkshire Ranter
- Dave Cole
- Heresy Corner
- Back Towards The Locus
- Daily Quail
- Spy Blog
- Alix Mortimer
- Scribo Ergo Sum
- Westminster Wisdom
- Robert Sharp
- John B
- Angry Mob
- Blurred Clarity
- Hagley Road to Ladywood
- No Sleep 'Til Brooklands
- Stirring Up Apathy
- Tabloid Watch
- The Lay Scientist
- Next Left
- Third Estate
- Sadie's Tavern
- Don Paskini
- Harpymarx
- Splintered Sunrise
- The Polemical Report
- Bad Science
- Pavlov's Cat
- In defence (somewhat) of George Osborne.
- Fear, panic and politics win yet again.
- Alternative pledge card.
- Reporting according to your own biases.
- The Gaza protest prosecutions and assorted thought...
- Tomorrow never comes until it's too late (or, the ...
- Insert rhyme or "joke" about labour here.
- Intensely relaxed about getting filthy rich comes ...
- Scum-watch: A great victory for liars.
- Scum-watch: The anti-Conservative bias of Basil Br...
- July 2005
- August 2005
- September 2005
- October 2005
- November 2005
- December 2005
- January 2006
- February 2006
- March 2006
- April 2006
- May 2006
- June 2006
- July 2006
- August 2006
- September 2006
- October 2006
- November 2006
- December 2006
- January 2007
- February 2007
- March 2007
- April 2007
- May 2007
- June 2007
- July 2007
- August 2007
- September 2007
- October 2007
- November 2007
- December 2007
- January 2008
- February 2008
- March 2008
- April 2008
- May 2008
- June 2008
- July 2008
- August 2008
- September 2008
- October 2008
- November 2008
- December 2008
- January 2009
- February 2009
- March 2009
- April 2009
- May 2009
- June 2009
- July 2009
- August 2009
- September 2009
- October 2009
- November 2009
- December 2009
- January 2010
- February 2010
- March 2010
