Monday, February 01, 2010 

Does she know something we don't?

One of those slightly strange not quite spam messages that very occasionally falls into your inbox:

Hi there,

 I visited your website for the first time last night ( http://www.septicisle.info/labels/Gordon%20Brown.html ) and I noticed that you had some condolence/sympathy and funeral related resources within it. You've done a great job of organizing and listing helpful information and I was wondering if you would consider listing my website as a resource for your visitors?

Obituaries Help is a completely free resource for a person looking for condolence/sympathy and funeral related examples and resources.

...

Melanie Walters - Webmaster

There aren't too many who feel much sympathy for Gordon Brown. Does Melanie Walters then know something we don't on the funeral score? I think we should be told. Mel, do get back in touch. Unless you're going to send the same message again, in which case don't.

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2/01/2010 09:34:00 PM | | | links to this post

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.

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1/27/2010 09:52:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, December 07, 2009 

If one word could sum up the decade, what would it be?

Gosh, that's a hard one isn't it? Best I can come up with is six letters, begins with f and ends in d. Surely a much more difficult challenge would be describing the decade at length (more than 50 words) whilst using as few expletives as possible. The only bright spot that we're coming towards the end of the "noughties", as no one is calling it, is that the next decade can't possibly any worse. Can it?

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12/07/2009 11:02:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, November 23, 2009 

The daft correspondence post.

Excuse the lack of an actual post today. Instead I was delighted to receive the following email from Total Politics magazine:

Dear Obsolute,



I am writing from Total Politics magazine. We are a political lifestyle magazine with a circulation of 20,400, including MPs, MEPs, political journalists and all councillors down to district level. Each month we feature a ‘Blogger Profile’ in the magazine. This is a short piece of roughly 400 words, written by the blogger, answering a few broad questions that we set out. I was wondering whether you would consider featuring in the next edition of the magazine in this way? Thanks for your help,



Best Wishes



Catherine Shannon





---------



Catherine Shannon
Editorial Intern

TotalPolitics
Heal House
375 Kennington Lane
London
SE11 5QY

T: 020 7091 1260

Twitter: @tp_interns

This message is intended to be received and read by the person(s) to whom the underlying communication is addressed. The contents of and information contained in the message may be private and or confidential. If this message has been sent by mistake or malfunction to you and you are not the intended recipient, you should not make any use of it or otherwise reproduce it for any purpose or disclose or forward it to any person , other than to tell us that you have been sent it in error, or to delete the message without further use. Please would you as a matter of courtesy tell us you have received this message in error by calling us on +44 (0) 207 0911 260



Total Politics is an imprint of Biteback Media Limited
Registered in England Co. No 06455159;
Regd Office: Manfield House 1 Southampton St London WC2R 0LR UK
Trading address: 375 Kennington Lane, London, SE11 5QY

All enquiries to info@totalpolitics.com
© Biteback Media Limited 2009

To which the inevitable reply had to be:

Dear Katherine Channon (sic),
I would rather be buggered by a badger than appear in Lord Ashcroft and Iain Dale's self-aggrandising propaganda sheet.

Best Wishes

Obsolute

P.S. A rather interesting biog of old friend Dominic Whiteman has been posted up on SpinProfiles, while the first in the series on immigration are up on Lib Con.

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11/23/2009 10:48:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, October 01, 2009 

Nothing really changes.

An enlightening poll of US attitudes prior to their entry into the war, from the archives of Life magazine, now available on Google:

Of course, appeasement in this country was highly popular even after Munich, but would 29% of advocated selling to both sides in a war between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, say?

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10/01/2009 09:56:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, April 28, 2009 

Now for something completely different...

In lieu of an actual post, here are some completely random facts:

According to today's Graun, the Japanese Communist Party has over 400,000 members. The Labour party only had a similar number back in 2007, and now has less than 200,000.

The 1975 referendum on whether the UK should stay in the European Economic Community had a turnout of 64.5%, despite the fact that the previous year had seen two general elections. In contrast, the turnouts at the 2001 and 2005 general elections were 59% and 61% respectively. Interestingly, the only major newspaper to call for a "no" vote in the referendum was the Morning Star. How times change. As for whether the general election of 2010 will have a turnout higher than 65% remains to be seen.

Oh, and if you want something else to read, Rachel on the acquittal of the 7/7 "accomplices", Chris on the "Evil Poor" problem and Dave on the atrophy of the left are all worth a gander.

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4/28/2009 11:45:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, December 24, 2008 

Christmas Eve miscellany.

Just a few words and links today. Here's what I left on the Grauniad article regarding Zavvi's entering administration:

Can I be so bold as to put in a defence of Zavvi? Perhaps it's just my local store, but the prices in there, at least on the new releases are usually competitive or better than HMV's, the staff are far friendlier and helpful, and you actually felt like they cared about you. It's all well and good saying support your local independent, but the sad fact is that they hardly exist any more: it's either Zavvi and HMV or the utter hell of a supermarket. Music is no longer an art to these people; it's become a commodity. If Zavvi and eventually HMV goes then we'll have genuinely lost something for good.

David Semple writes of the best Marxist analysis of the financial crisis he's come across so far.

Aaron puts in a superb rant on the bailiffs issue, and my post was also cross-posted over on Lib Con, sans the description of Green as "fat and greasy", should you feel the need to read a load more comments.

Anton Vowl rips into the Sun and its fetish over "Our Boys", while the paper itself complains about the MoD refusing to pay for gifts from the public to be sent over to them, which is quite obviously what public money should be spent on rather than anything else.

Finally, if you want to read something cracked from err, someone cracked, these thoughts on Pope Benedict's speech from our old friend Johanna Kaschke are rather unique.

Anyway, have a good Christmas, and I'll be back in a couple of days with some tedious best and worst of 2008 lists that we all love so much.

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12/24/2008 08:32:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, December 05, 2008 

Solidarity, brothers!

One of the great untruths about the internet when it comes to libel is that more or less anything goes, and that it's fairly easy to get away with saying the most outrageous things about absolutely anyone. This is only the case when you get a great lumbering bulk of an individual or company weigh in, disgusting enough people that a Spartacus-like uprising manages to take place. It happened with Usmanov, when this blog amongst others was threatened by Schillings, resulting in the material which Usmanov had wanted to be squashed being spread like wildfire.

It'd be nice if something similar now occurred in defence of Dave Osler, Alex Hilton and John Gray, all of whom are being targeted by Johanna Kaschke, who is, to put it mildly, a fascinating character. The trouble began when allegations arose of Kaschke's links to the Baader-Meinhof group, links which she vehemently denies. Far more interesting though is Kaschke's political nymphomania. Prior to April 2007, Kaschke was a member of the Labour party, and on the shortlist to be the party's candidate at the next election for the seat of Bethnal Green and Bow, currently held by George Galloway. Whether it was, as the East London Advertiser reports, their highlighting of Labour attempting to change the law to defeat a campaigner in the High Court over public housing, or that she only received one vote, as Dave Osler suggests is unclear. What is known is that Kaschke didn't stay long in Gorgeous George's organisation: she quickly shifted to one of the various Communist Party sects. Unsatisfied by her shift to the far left, she then forgave Labour and got back together with the party, before finally seeing the light and shifting to the right, settling on becoming a Conservative activist, seen earlier in the year with none other than Boris Johnson. Kaschke appears to have undergone a changing of political colours which sometimes takes place over a lifetime within the space of under a year.

Kaschke also seems to be rather precious about her own blogging output being so much as quoted by others, so instead we'll have to make do with just linking to it and quoting what she has said on other people's blogs. On her MySpace blog, for instance, she criticises George Galloway for being litigious, without any apparent trace of irony. Over on John Gray's original post on Ms Kaschke, she manages to contradict herself within a sentence:

I do not want you write anything about me anymore, I shall not comment about the ridiculous content of your shit blog, so just take it off. Its really ridiculous that you slate a fellow union member. you are an arshole.

She goes on:

He cheapskate, it may have escaped your non existing attention that Dave Osler has removed his blog connecting me with Baader-Meinhof, because he pays attention to his legal obligations, which is something I cannot say about you. I am asking you to remove the Baader-Meihof logo and name in connection with my name for the last time now before legal action may commence against you.

Her own internal contradictions don't however seem to bother her too much. Back in April last year she moaned to the ELA about how Labour had been "hijacked by a bunch of ultra-conservatives". She now happily links to amongst others, such ultra-conservative organisations as the Taxpayers' Alliance and the Libertarian Alliance. Indeed, Kaschke's rather strange political shiftings and what they might mean led to one of her complaints, after she was described in Dave Osler's comments as "one cherry short of a Schwarzwalderkirschtorte", which is the German, I believe, for bat-shit crazy.

One can only hope for a happy outcome. In the meantime, I think we can all agree that Kaschke ought to examine the precedent set by Arkell vs Pressdram.

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12/05/2008 11:19:00 PM | | | links to this post

Saturday, May 24, 2008 

Required reading.

Just some links for today:

Flying Rodent - Cameron: By-Election Victory a "Triumph for Managed Democracy"

As the Simpsons so sagely pointed out, it's funny because it's true.

Rhetorically Speaking - Nadine Dorries and her followers are *still* lying.

Grauniad - The scandal of the masters student who downloaded an al-Qaida manual from a US governmnet website who was arrested and held in custody for six days.

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5/24/2008 11:42:00 PM | | | links to this post

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