jottings

Ok - I'm not really a blogger, am I?

Gap is postings is just far too regular and huge. So I'm probably giving up.

But some thoughts that are bouncing round my head...

#1 It's not so easy anymore to be anti-war.

Stop the war are still going you know. God knows why. I mean what are they protesting about, & why? There's this thing about troops out, but surely anyone can see it's got to be more complex than that. Not that I don't think those who point to the resentment and anger that occupying forces cause have a point (they do). But... look this is my point. Iraq is here. It's real. It's messy.

Frankly the time for simplistic rallying cries are long gone. If the stop the war people came up with a tidy, and politically and practically feasible, way of resolving the situation Bush would steal it like a shot. The time for campaigning is over. It's got to be sustained, deep thinking, hard work that will get everyone out of it now.

#2 Things have changed

Not so much to this one - just noticing though that it's practically a done deal that Russia and VietNam are joining the WTO. Take a second to roll that round your head. Latter day communist bete noires (apologies to those offended by the lack of accents - can't be bothered to work out how to do & would get it wrong anyway) are now the newest members of a club reviled for being the apogee of the western capitalist way. (Whether it is or not is another question, it's reviled.)

Actually this exemplifies something I thought about #1 above. These are both stupidly obvious observations. But they didn't used to be. We need to mark this, we need to be aware of it. People are both good and bad at adapting. We're so good we barely remember that things did, not so long ago, used to be different. We're so bad that unless we get poked with a sharp stick, or lured with sweeties, we don't change our behaviour. We're incredibly bad at doing what we think seperates us from the animals - i.e. not just thinking but acting on that thinking.

Ok. Enough for now.

unnecessarily disturbing

You come in to work after a nice long bank holiday weekend, and you find some one in the gents toilets at work brushing his teeth. Some how wrong, wrong, wrong.

oh, by the way

...looking back at my earlier posts at the fall of the house of Blair (which I stand by, even if it's months & counting) and the re-rising of the tory party I feel the need to slightly retract. The excitement linked to Cameron's relaunching has pretty much faded or at least transformed into a dull fear.

I know a number of conservative MPs, new & old, who's thoughtfulness, understanding and work ethic deeply impresses me, no matter what I think of their opinions. The more I see of the shadow cabinet the more I start to think of them as a bunch of arrogant, snide & shallow powergrabbers who care more about point scoring than policies. The hypocrisy is rather sickening but the lack of understanding is worse.

I like this

Care of nosemonkey:

Why is it that in modern Britain the consensus seems to be that to prove
your opponents wrong about you, you have to go and do precisely what your opponents accuse you of? Say the government are cutting down on civil liberties, they deny it before cutting down on civil liberties; depict
muslims as violent in some cartoons, they deny they are violent before
issuing death threats; accuse the Tories of having no real policy alternatives, they deny it before issuing a pamphlet with no real policy alternatives; say the Home Office is useless, they deny it before sacking the Home Secretary and announcing the Home Office is
useless.

Never come back from holiday

It's just not worth it.

What do you get greeted with? Penny-ante nonsense. Emails clogged up with 'decolonising the revolutionary imagination' and a 'rich synthesis of complementary studies'. And a Conservative commitment to:

• encouraging greater corporate accountability by offering a lighter regulatory regime to companies who make a commitment to responsible business practice [from the latest version of "built to last"]

AAArgh!

Brunette republican sex kitten?

Kendra Okonski...

the real life Ainsley Hayes?

I met her briefly a year or so ago & just saw her name mentioned when it hit me.

1 + 1 = ?

"As was set out in the 2003 water act, which was introduced a couple of years ago..."

David Miliband, 1 June 2006.

I hope his management is better than his maths.

(what's so funny bout) peace, love & understanding?

NY Times has another good(ish)* darfur article. Strange to say about something that even makes up regular episodes of ER but we do need constant reminding of the bonfire that is Sudan.

Someone sometime recently somewhere (ok it was that 'Empire' bloke Niall Ferguson wrote in the Daily Mail - I know I know, it was someone else's, I promise) wrote about how economic instability, the ending of empire & ethnic inequality where the fuel for genocide. I'd agree with that. He then went on to talk about the Middle East. Neocon numbskull. Sub-Saharan Africa has unfortunately got it all going on already. I suspect the middle east is going to be a whole NEW kind of fuck up.



* I say good, & I mean thought provoking. Article correctly points out that the rebels in Darfur are not saintly victims & actually are combatants in their own right. It rather neglects or misrepresents some of the reasons they fight - i.e. marginalisation and exploitation by central government, as well as local power. Yes, this is a politically driven war. Duh. Which ones aren't?

meltdown

The government are in real trouble & its hard to give a shit as, too be honest, they bought it all on themselves...

... it is interesting though to read the real sense of panic from lefty commentators. Speaking as a lefty wannabe commentator I can empathise. Cameron is making ground at a rate of knots. He has no detailed policies but he is pegging the party colours to a number of more progessive masts & this is having an effect - on the political landscape, on the party & maybe ultimately on the country.

Interesting though: if there was one thing we really *needed* Thatcher for it was to face down the unions, which were abusing their power in the 70s. Now I think we really *need* a party capable of facing down big business. We would take several leaps forward if we did a handful of key things to control & limit business power and influence & channel the undoubted energiesof the private sector more into social goods.

And frankly neither mainstream party convinces. Labour are terrified of looking anti-business. Conservatives just don't have the instincts. Even now as Cameron talks a good talk on CSR they just don't have the track record or the will power seemingly to follow it through. It would be interesting if they got into government on this platfom because I'm fairly convinced they would fail to deliver on a lot of these issues & they would be in the situation where they would have to weigh up whether looking useless or annoying boardroom chums was the devil they preferred to the unpalatable briny blue.