Journal of the Plague Years

• Is my brain better than the best available to the government?
• The law made, a world away from the lawmakers.
• Blair Babe to the rescue. Yeah.
• Another litter lout.
• This England...
• You don't know what to believe any more...
• The Binman Cometh (or not, as the case may be...)
• Kirche, Kuche, Kinder. (Trans: Mosque, Mask and Men-children.)
• Quarterly Review.
• Scientists, like athletes, sometimes failing to understand that they're not above politics.
• Walking With Beasts.
• Blair DID break the law. (Again.)
• The Inner Party in Poole, Dorset. (Just for the record.)

Is my brain better than the best available to the government?

29 April 2008 .

As Brown finally begins to admit that scrapping the initial 10p ban on the tax system was a snafu, Jack Straw is quoted as saying, yesterday, 'Sometimes, even with the best brains available to government, there are inadvertent consequences of changes. We put our hands up... we should have known more about the impact.' (I'm not quite clear why this sort of admission is coming from the Justice Secretary, but that's the way things are these day.)

I'll be quite happy to offer Mr. Straw the use of my brain, for a suitable remuneration, since I was ranting about precisely those 'inadvertent consequences' last year, including on this site. Of course, I'll probably be in a queue of several million...

As the old joke has it, the government's brains probably are better than ours, since ours would count as second-hand, whereas it seems that theirs are still brand-new and unused.

A quote from Brown: 'But I do stress, as a result of the budget, far more people are better off, people who are on low incomes are better off, people who in poverty as families or pensioners; many have been taken out of tax altogether as a result of the decisions that we have made.' The way that Brown speaks, when quoted in print, has an unusual quality of conjuring up his character... He's faced with 5.5 million on low incomes who will be losers, a couple of million even if he takes the measures of relief which he implies (but doesn't say) he will (even if these 'promises' buy off a few of the more gullible ahead of Thursday's election). Read his words carefully: he just does not get it, even now.

Actually, what Brown says in that sentence is a lie. It's dressed up as the truth; an analysis can demonstrate that each word and each phrase is true; yet string it together, and it's a lie.

'10p tax band' 'Gordon Brown' 'Jack Straw' 'best brains' 'inadvertent consequences'

The law made, a world away from the lawmakers.

27 April 2008 .

I won't ever know for sure, because I'm certainly not going to go around asking... but it's looking increasingly likely that most of the teenagers and young adults I know in London (a fair number, since I taught here for twenty years) have been the victims of beating and/or mugging*. Those that haven't have often been threatened.

*It's largely anecdotal, of course; but colleagues in education suggest that a figure of 85% would be conservative. Every youngster bar just one whom I know well enough that they would choose to confide in me has a story to tell.

I haven't believed, on the whole, that the picture was quite so gloomy; but the evidence (which I regret can't be for discussion here) is consistent and cogent.

What I am certain of is that where I live - which is in a far-from-worst part of our capital city - Brown's government and our beloved mayor are in cloud-cuckooland when they claim falling crime figures.

Quite a lot more on this, including personal witness, when I've had a few days to marshall my thoughts. [Because the other thing I'm certain of is that when I was young, just a generation ago, I regarded the streets of London - every part and every community - as my playground. (Totally safe, even allowing for the occasional pervert - whom we took in our stride.)]

mugging 'street violence' crime

Blair Babe to the rescue. Yeah.

26 April 2008 .

The relative importance of London to England is unusual, I think, certainly in Europe, by virtue of its financial dominance as well as its great size compared to any other city in the land. With the preparations for the Olympics due to take place under the incoming London administration, the elections for Mayor on 1st. May are therefore particularly crucial to the country as well as to the city. The leaders of the Tories and Lib Dems have naturally canvassed for their parties' candidates.

The Father Of The Nation hasn't canvassed for Livingstone (who's now trailing) and isn't going to. Why not? Does Brown think he's too important? Too busy? Can he really not find 15 minutes? Thanks again, Mr. Brown.

[Instead we're to be stirred to vote by the Churchillian oratory of... Tessa Jowell!*]

*Another Blair-babe clone-suit, notable only (a) for making a fairly decent mess so far of her responsibilities in the 2012 Olympics, underestimating the costs thereof by two thirds - and counting, (b) for being married to a man who interests the Italian police to the tune of 3 million in the Berlusconi corruption case but 'knowing nothing about it' and (c) for frankly pathetic efforts in the Commons. Hooray.

'local elections' London Mayor Livingstone Jowell

Another litter lout.

25 April 2008 .

From my point of view, the world is coming to a pretty pass when I find myself agreeing with more and more of the Daily Mail's rants... perhaps I'm just getting old... but again today I found myself agreeing with that paper almost whole-heartedly, although I'm asking myself why these things should be happening at all, let alone being reported so often.

This time it's a young woman in Hull, who apparently looks after herself and her child for less than 100 per week, who dropped a piece of sausage role which she was feeding to her four-year-old child. She was spotted by eagle-eyed guardians of the by-laws, who told her she was to be fined 75 for littering. (The fine for a repeat offence of shoplifting, theft, incidentally, is only 80). Unfortunately, she was unable to photograph the evidence (to have a record of how small it was - a child's mouthful) due to the fact that it had been swooped upon and eaten by a passing pigeon. The two (!) control officers involved were officious and aggressive, and the four-year-old involved was 'frightened'.

I agree almost wholeheartedly... I assume that the Mail's got its facts right and hasn't added a bias of its own (which I don't take to be a foregone conclusion); and there have been fines for littering since forever... Having said which, I think the Mail was right to print this article, thrice over: firstly, because there is a sense in our daily lives now that petty officialdom has gone way beyond reasonable bounds - that there will be instant retribution for the smallest of mistakes (which this seems to have been) and that it often goes overboard (these officials told the young woman that she would be arrested if she didn't immediately give her name and address and 'other details'); secondly, because the increasing aggressiveness in quotidian life of 'officers' of all sorts (from the police down, but especially local council officials) is proving counterproductive, with law-abiding members of the public becoming noticeably stroppier and less amenable in response; and thirdly with particular regard to litter...

It surely cannot be beyond the wit of reason to recognise that there are different sorts of litter: crumbs of food (or indeed any small quantities of self-recycling matter that get eaten or washed away) are quite different from say, bones or chewing gum, let alone plastic bags and wrapping materials. Even if this woman had consciously left this bit of sausage roll, it is not proportionate to punish her as a habitual thief is punished.

Litter fines 'plastic bags' 'sausage roll'

This England...

25 April 2008 .

This is pure gut reaction.

G. Brown, esq., wants us celebrate our Englishness (or Welshness, Scottishness or Northern Irishness [sic!]) as well as our Britishness. I want no part of Brown's Britishness, and I take exception to that particular sassenach son of Fife telling me to celebrate my Englishness.

I'm too young to remember the war, for which I'm grateful, but I was young (and do remember) when there was rationing. This, I admit, is beginning to be an old geezer talking, but I will say this: that I'm not sure that either brand of 'Englishness' bandied about now has anything to do with the country I was born into - neither the vomiting on the street Ingerlund of the potbellied skinheads who seem to smack of the SA as they invade the rest of the world nor the Hovis-and-Summer-County-margarine 'heritage' construct that's all about cash and tourists.

I'm not sure I feel that I have a home any more.

Britishness Englishness 'Summer County' Hovis Ingerland 'Gordon Brown'

You don't know what to believe any more...

23 April 2008 .

I must have seen fifty or a hundred copies of the Daily Express in the past ten years: I've had to look quite hard once or twice, but I'm pretty certain that the People's Princess has appeared by name every single time. Since the proprietor is, or was, a major porn king (running a chain of extraordinarily seedy top-shelf mags), it's not a paper I regard with any respect anyway: on the whole it seems to live in a fantasy world (mostly Mr. Fayed's).

Today I saw an item which I don't for one minute believe, but which I repeat here just for the fun of it (and the outside possibility that, in this increasingly surreal society, it may actually be true).

It seems that a woman dumped some recyclables at the appropriate local council collection point. Unfortunately, the rubbish hadn't been cleared and was overflowing, so she left a cardboard box by the container (in a sensible place, she says; I'm not sure if it matters much, in view of what followed). Even more unfortunately, the box had the name and address of her 12-year-old daughter written on it. The daughter was contacted by the council with the threat of a 50,000 fine and/or up to six months in prison.

It can't be true...

'Daily Express' 'Dirty Des' 'Princess Diana' Rubbish 'recycling centre'

The Binman Cometh (or not, as the case may be...)

23 April 2008 .

Three addresses; my home, a place where I've been staying and the house where my elderly and vulnerable aunt lives.

Since Christmas, the binmen at one or other of these addresses have:

• collected rubbish on wrong days (a day early once, so that nobody had their food rubbish removed and it all rotted for a further two weeks - fortnightly collections - along with whatever had to be added.) [Fine for putting rubbish out on the wrong day: 100.]
• after collecting it, mixed sorted rubbish and dumped it all in landfills (or at sea, one version says). That this appears to be at government behest makes it worse: that the councils still fine us for not sorting is just post-modern Britain. [Fine for not sorting rubbish correctly at my aunt's place, to her total terror: 1,000 (one thousand pounds.]
• (this week) left bins with rubbish still in them so that the lids were propped open. [I wouldn't even have thought about this, except that the media have been going mad today about a chap fined 110, plus a further 100 for baulking at the fine, plus a 15 surcharge to be paid to the victims of violence... plus a criminal record, affecting all future job applications and - which nobody's mentioned yet - presumably quashing any hope he might ever have had of visiting the US... for leaving his hinged bin-lid not quite firmly closed.]

All this on top of the usual practices (rubbish that missed the cart scattered on the road, bins left on their side, bins blocking lanes, and so on.)

The point is not that the rubbish collection sometimes goes wrong, or is done a bit less efficiently than it might be; it's that our elected local councils have completely forgotten who they're meant to be serving.

Unfortunate that so many examples of council bullying (including the children being spied on and refused education because of councils' [wrongful] suspicions about the parents) have come to light at the same time as people are beginning to ask whether it's really right that councils' leaders should be in some cases earning more than the prime minister, members are sometimes claiming more in expenses than MPs, some local parties are forming cabinets as large as the nation's at ratepayers' expense, and local taxes have been rising steadily at up to six times the rate of inflation.

'Bullying Councils' 'Rubbish collection' 'Fifteen Pound surcharge' landfill rotting Binmen

Kirche, Kuche, Kinder. (Trans: Mosque, Mask and Men-children.)

21 April 2008 .

Saudi Arabia, that bastion of the privileges of Man... an article in the Independent today about just how oppressive Saudi society is for women, to which I have no doubt I'll return. (Of course, the Indy must be out of its depth because, by interviewing a few women inside that country who appeared to be highlighting just how ludicrously neolithic their society is, it suggested that women may not be totally happy with their lot there - whereas we know from all those nice fellows with beards and shaven scrotal sacs [why???] that the women love to be protected and guided by men.)

[Do I appear to be prejudiced against Saudi society? Damned right... with special reference to the Wahabis.]

In one of the papers, there was also a report of some new scientific research into driving, and why men are so much more likely to be involved in crashes, road rage, drunk driving, etc. It seems that we're still 'cavemen' at brain. (I always thought it was testosterone, myself, but same difference.)

The Saudis and the drivers were in different articles (possibly different papers), but the obvious connection has left me feeling rather depressed... (as do Saudi-funded mosques and taxpayer-funded roads sharing a disproportionate cut of the cash...)

[Interesting, too, how so many of the more aggressive drivers think that a woman's place is in the home, just like the Saudis...]

Saudi women 'women's rights' 'road rage' mosque

Quarterly Review.

21 April 2008 .

This site is mostly for my own entertainment... (but then, we all say that...) However, since it's been up and running for nearly three months, I've started a self-imposed review, which I don't intend to rush.

I have already decided that there are a couple of things I've been banging on about which I can really drop, on the grounds that I'm probably preaching to the converted.

For a start, I'll try to leave the Great Leader And Father Of Our Nation alone (except when he gets really egregious): it's clear that he's a busted flush.

The problem is what might follow Brown... Cameron for the Tories, a Blair clone whom I trust not one millimetre, or Brown's apparent heir apparent, Balls...

If we think Brown is dire, I suggest that we consider that the alternatives on offer at the moment may be more so; and we start wondering how to tackle that reality.

[Balls...can you imagine that testicular administration? He has already shown himself to be as incompetent as Brown, and possibly a great deal more poisonous. (See Hammering Education, 19 April)]

Blair Brown Cameron Balls

Scientists, like athletes, sometimes failing to understand that they're not above politics.

15 April 2008 .

Indy headline today: 'Leading scientists tell politicians to stop interfering over ethics of embryo research.'

'Politicians have been warned not to block scientific enquiry... just because there is a difference of opinion in the ethics or morality of the work.'

It is precisely because of such differences of opinion that the scientific research has to be a political matter - political discussion is how a mature society tackles and resolves these sorts of scruple. And it's because (some) scientists don't grasp this point that they will never be trusted as they feel they should be.

'embryo research' ethics 'scientific enquiry'

Walking With Beasts.

14 April 2008 .

The whole 'Walking With' series, starting with Dinosaurs, is technically excellent and quite fascinating (even if we have since discovered that most of the dinosaurs were covered in scruffy feathers). This evening, though, I've just decided not to watch an episode of Beasts.

One of my irritations with the series is that it deals too much with tragedy. Judging by the first few moments, this evening's programme (set well into the age of mammals) was going to follow a pregnant primeval whale as she starved to death in a changing world. I presume that the excitement of volcanos, meteors, climate change and extinction is that they attract the audience, but so far as I'm concerned there's quite enough extinction and tragedy in the world we live in now. Of course the natural history of the planet is full of these things (and it may be true that for most creatures life was always brief and there's never been a pleasant way for them to die) but that history's as full of the natural cycle of life as of death, and it would be pleasant to be able to watch these programmes without being reminded about the horrors all the time.

If this seems a strange thing to say, from the writer of this website (which is trying to get folks to read the writing on the wall - and do something about it), it may be so... but I'd say that life is hard for too many people, and likely to become a lot harder for the rest of us. Since surviving from day to day is task enough for most of us as it is, I suspect that we're happy to confine any further realities to the television screen... but I don't think we can afford to distance ourselves in that way any more.

It's late, and I know I haven't argued this very well. For now, I'll just say that I believe we're being distracted by the illusion of separation which the screen allows us. And come back to this if I can marshal something more cogent.

'Walking with beasts' exinction 'life is hard' television

Blair DID break the law. (Again.)

11 April 2008 .

Another topic on which I can't add anything, but on which I want my reaction on record...

When the Serious Fraud Office abandoned its investigation of BAE bribes to assorted rather nasty individuals in Saudi Arabia*, it was on the declared grounds of national security: British lives could be lost if the investigation continued, because the Fraudis would withdraw cooperation on information sharing. (The Serious Farce Office insisted that they were not put under any pressure by The Dear Leader, leading to the interesting suggestion that while the SFO didn't back down under threats from a Brit government, they were quick to do so under threats from a foreign one.) The People's Guide And Mentor did also tell us that it was right not to pursue the matter since the Saudi government were such good friends of ours. The truth presumably had more to do with the lucrative and continuing Al-Yamamah arms contract, which was the root of the whole affair in the first place.

Never mind the reason: The People's Blair had been standing on his hind legs announcing to the world how Britain was leading the battle against corruption (a joke in itself, coming from that moral vacuum) and it was distressing that we were seen to fall at the first hurdle. It shook us in this country and it profoundly shocked many fighters against corruption in other countries who had thought that Britain had meant what it said. (Mistake!)

Now the judges have pinned the blame fair and square on Blair in an excoriating judgment. The SFO failed to uphold the law, and Blair was complicit. To put it another way:

He Had Broken The Law. (Again.)

So why don't I feel any great joy that this country still has a judiciary that is willing to stand up to an increasingly post-modern and dictatorial executive?

The courts have confirmed what was blindingly obvious, of course - and in spades. But, nothing will come of it. Blair won't be arraigned; he'll go on with his God-given-self-appointed mission of awakening the conscience of the world.

More to the point: isn't it sickeningly cynical, and totally in the style of our leaders, that they announced a couple of weeks ago (in a white paper... ahead of the almost foregone conclusions of the court today), legislation that will make the actions taken by Blair and his attorney Goldsmith perfectly legal?

E&OE, here: Maybe I should have waited 'til after reading tomorrows rags, getting a clearer picture, before I posted this; blame it on strength of feeling and sense of shame - which some of us still have.

* It's so much a part of daily life in that country that they have a word for a receiver of bribes: 'prince'.

Blair lawbreaker Goldsmith arraignment 'God-given mission' SFO judiciary Al-yamamah Saudi

The Inner Party in Poole, Dorset. (Just for the record.)

11 April 2008 .

Regulation of investigative powers legislation (RIPA) was introduced by New Labour: this Byzantine law allows some 600 agencies and groups of agencies quite extraordinary powers of surveillance on individuals in the UK without any judicial warrant. It was intended for the investigation of terrorism and serious organised crime: those of us who were alarmed by the implications of the reach of the legislation were promised that this was how it would be used.

Most people in the UK will have heard about this news today, and it'll be in the papers tomorrow; I think it's worth recording here, however, both to note this citizen's revulsion and because readers from overseas may not realise quite how Orwellian life in Britain is becoming.

The subject of the story is a family in Poole, Dorset, who applied to the local primary school for a place for their three-year-old daughter.

The local council received an anonymous tip-off that the family did not live where they claimed (in the catchment area of the good school they wanted), and were therefore pulling a fast one. This led the council to investigate: they did so, using RIPA powers.

So, a three-year-old girl was the named subject of secret surveillance under anti-terrorism legislation. The Anglo-Saxon word which springs to mind does not bear repeating on a family website.

Poole council apparently believes their action is justified, because they've used the same (anti-terror) legislation before, and caught parents out. A smarmy spokesman for the association of local authorities on Newsnight seemed to think that the council in Poole will be restrained by the ballot box... I doubt it; circumstantial evidence suggests that in a Britain invaded by the Nazis in 1940, a vast number of our citizens might have co-operated with the Gestapo with positive gusto.

Starting with our anonymous informant, perhaps...

Poole Council terrorism legislation 'primary school' RIPA

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