Though cowards run and traitors sneer...

... we'll keep the pink flag flying here:

Where does this vexillological curiosity come from? I didn't realise, until reading this, that some of the international volunteers fighting for the Kurdish People's Protection Units, against Daesh and everybody's favourite fascistic frenemy, Erdoğan, have started organising themselves under the banner of the International Freedom Battalion (IFB). The IFB is a loose collection of national and factional groups, some of which are called brigades, with a nod to the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War.

There is, for example, the Anglo-Irish Bob Crow Brigade and the French Henri Krasucki Brigade (also named for a promenant trade union leader).

And the pink flag? It's the flag of another IFB unit, The Queer Insurrection and Liberation Army (TQILA), formed in response to the persecution of LGBT people by Daesh.

What Comrade Kalashnikov would have made of his deadly brainchild adorning the flag of a group of radical gay anarchist guerrillas I don't know, although it wouldn't be the first time its image has been appropriated for a flag:

The image of AK-47 appears on the flag of Mozambique as well as coats of arms of Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso (1984-97) and East Timor. The Kalashnikov rifle is also present on the flag of Lebanese militant organization, Hezbollah. 

It's probably one of those things that reactionary numbskulls everywhere will seize upon as futher evidence of the collapse of civilization, even though the combination of same-sex action and military action has a venerable history going back at least to the Sacred Band of Thebes.

The respect he deserves

Here's the United Kindom's excuse for a foreign secretary, showing how to suck up to a racist, authoritarian anti-Semitic bully:

Congratulations to Fidesz and Viktor Orban on winning the elections in Hungary. We look forward to working with our Hungarian friends to further develop our close partnership. #UKandHungary

— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) 9 April 2018

And here's Jean-Claude Juncker demostrating the correct diplomatic protocol:


Well played, Jean-Claude. If you need a list of other people overdue for a bit of disrespect and a good slap, I've got a few names here. The list, of course, starts with Boris:

The foreign secretary joins Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders, Nigel Farage, Matteo Salvini, Beatrix von Storch, Giorgia Meloni and Matteo Salvini in sending his congratulations to Viktor Orban. https://t.co/vw0Jgxh6FQ

— Peter Foster (@pmdfoster) 9 April 2018

He kept his powder dry

"...there were pieces of people flying past my nose and it was perfectly awful, but not so bad as being at school"

Unconventional war hero Neil "Bunny" Roger recalling the fighting at Anzio where, among other things, he saved the life of a wounded comrade who'd been abandoned in No Man’s Land.

It wasn't the flippant reference to his schooldays which marked Bunny out as unconventional - it seems to have been perfectly standard procedure for wealthy parents to scar their kids for life by educating them at some creepy mansion combining the worst elements of a Victorian theme park and a Spartan barracks* (Prince Charles's miserable time at Gordonstoun is perhaps the best known example).

It was more Bunny's reputation to for going into combat with a rouged face, wearing a chiffon scarf, while brandishing a copy of Vogue magazine which marked him out as a different sort of hero. Apparently, when his sergeant asked for advice about about advancing enemy troops, Bunny replied, "When in doubt, powder heavily."

More on the flamboyant career of Bunny Roger, war hero, dashing style icon, couturier, party animal and interior designer to King Zog of Albania at The Rake.

via

*When people without money subject their kids to such cruel and unusual treatment, they're generally required to explain themselves to social services or, in extreme cases, Jeremy Kyle.

What took him so long?

Crypto-fascist strongman stiffs his allies, cuts deal with fellow crypto-fascist strongman.

With a sort of tragic inevitabilty,  the only good thing to come out of the Syrian tragedy is being strangled at birth.

Remember this flag. It's what hope used to look like.

The quality of mercy

The claim is ... that the ability to give mercy was both a good thing in itself and it actually secured power ...

... Mercy is one of those virtues, the more you think about it, the more people like us don't have, because we can't have, you know? You can only show the virtue of mercy if you have the capacity to chop someone's head off. So mercy is always an autocratic virtue.

Mary Beard, on the essay De Clementia (On Mercy), which Seneca the Younger wrote for the moral and philosophical instruction of the emperor Nero (I think it's pretty safe to say that he needn't have bothered, for all the good it did). You can listen to this bit about 27-28 minutes into this discussion, if you have the good fortune to have access to BBC Radio 4's archives (but, seriously, do yourself a favour and listen to the whole thing, if you can). More proof, if you need it, that Mary Beard and In Our Time are national treasures.

Ashes to ashes, stardust to stardust

Yesterday, I pretended, for rhetorical purposes, that the New Horizons probe had a passenger on its voyage to Pluto and beyond. I was making a point about a delusional lack of any sense of proportion or empathy centred around a petty, vindictive power struggle that's causing pointless misery on our planet to no purpose that I can see, other than to save face for people who have the power to change course away from an ever-deepening human-engineered catastrophe, but seemingly lack the will or wit to do so.

Looking up from the gutter and back at the stars, New Horizons really does have a passenger - although he's no longer among the living. The probe carries an aluminium capsule, no longer than a typical USB memory stick, bearing the following inscription:

Interned herein are remains of American Clyde W. Tombaugh, discoverer of Pluto and the solar system’s ‘third zone.’ Adelle and Muron’s boy, Patricia’s husband, Annette and Alden’s father, astronomer, teacher, punster, and friend: Clyde Tombaugh (1906-1997).

Not only ('only??') a fantastic scientific and technical achievement, then, but the most awesome resting place in all of human history. Ever.

Humans have devised some impressive - and sometimes appalling - ways to honour their dead, at least those deemed by their society to merit special recognition. Ancient rulers buried among piles of glittering possessions and the bodies of servants and spouses sacrificed to signal the deceased's power and authority, sky burial on the towers of silence, being set adrift on a burning longboat, the tombs of generals, thronged with winged victories, angels intended to watch over a tomb stolen by a monarch, monuments to tyrants, built by slaves, the inscription on Sir Christopher Wren's tomb, which asks the reader who seeks his memorial to 'look around you' at the awe-inspiring cathedral he designed, the Taj Mahal, the pyramids...

But nobody, until now, could say of a real, once-living human being, 'we placed him among the stars.' Quite literally.

It's what the ancients did with mythic heroes, legendary queens and - bizarrely - with the hair of a real queen. It's only according to an extravagantly poetic legend that the golden locks of Queen Berenice II, (daughter of Magas of Cyrene and Queen Apama II, wife of King Ptolemy III Euergetes, third ruler of the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt), were placed among the stars by the goddess Aphrodite. But the remains of Clyde Tombaugh, from Streator, Illinois, are really on their way to the stars, where they'll still be drifting more than five billion or so years hence, when nothing's left of the pyramids but dust, being blown around the charred remains of Earth, if any winds still blow there.

You'd have to be already dead inside for that thought not to send a little shiver down your spine.

We are stardust. Now, for the first time in human history a human is returning , not only to dust, but also to the stars.

Emily Dickinson, minus carriage

Because I could not stop for Death
He kindly stopped for me;
The Carriage held but just Ourselves
And Immortality.

wrote Emily Dickinson.

Nearly a hundred years after Emily took her last carriage ride, another writer much possessed by Death began his own bid for immortality, at least of a literary kind.

Terry Pratchett had a horribly premature end, but I can't help feeling that, thanks to the immensely rich imaginative world he created in his head and the way it spoke to million of his fellow mortals, he lived as full and satisfying a life as any of us can hope to. I haven't read all of his books and probably wouldn't want to read every one, but his fabulously engaging Discworld universe was a fantastic place to hang out and lose yourself in for while, even for those of us who didn't follow the whole series.

For people who haven't read any of the Dicsworld novels, it's probably a good idea to start with the very first one, The Colour of Magic, not because it's one of the best (some of his later ones are much better IMHO), but because it does a great job of introducing how his comic fantasy of a flat earth, where magic is real, works. Once you've read that, well, everyone has different favourites, and there may be some really good ones I haven't read, but I can recommend Equal Rites, Mort, Pyramids, Wyrd Sisters, Reaper Man or Small Gods if you want to spend some time in an entertaining and thoroughly absorbing alternate universe (or look back at a weird, yet recognisable, reflection of the one we actually live in, caught in a comical funhouse mirror).

I hope the implacable, premature Death who stopped for Terry also had a little of the irreverence, mercy and wisdom of the grim reaper who collects souls on the Discworld and that no carriages were involved this time, just a black-robed figure, riding a pale horse called Binky.

Rest in peace, or as Death should say 'REST IN PEACE.'

Swiss comedy gold

One inevitable stage in the endlessly repeating cycle of banking scandals is the ritual assertion that, although past "mistakes" were made, the miscreant bank or toothless/complicit regulator has now changed and the same thing could never happen again (almost always because the bankers have since moved on to some new and equally outrageous swindle, although they don't generally say that last bit). Rinse, repeat.

So kudos to an anonymous commentator at The Register for this masterly take-down of the boilerplate assurance that HSBC's private Swiss bank has now moved on and put its dodgy past behind it:

HSBC: 'In the past, the Swiss private banking industry operated very differently to the way it does today.'

Anon: 'They no longer have a box on the deposit slip for "Gold Teeth"?'

It's also worth reading the whole article, just to hammer home the obvious point that this problem will never go away, so long as the relevant authorities not only fail to prosecute crooked bankers, but also add insult to injury by using the full weight of the law to persecute whistleblowers like Hervé Falciani who reveal the banksters' crimes.

And what goes for the bankers goes for the tax cheats who use their services. Back at home, the former head of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, Dave Hartnett, (who subsequently moved on to a £1.25 million-a-year consultancy job for HSBC, before becoming trade minister), defended HMRC's decision not to prosecute the people who'd been hiding their loot from the tax authorities in HSBC's Swiss vaults:

 ...Yet at HMRC it was decided that prominent British individuals found to be cheating on their taxes would not be prosecuted, a process which would have led to them being named and the facts coming out.
Hartnett has defended the secret tax repayment deals. "There was never an intention to deliberately use taxpayer confidentiality to hide the identity of HSBC clients." Lin Homer, the overall head of HMRC, also defended this non-prosecution approach before the UK's public accounts committee in 2012, as a cheaper source of revenue. "The important thing is to get the money in," she said. 

Nobody at HMRC seems to have considered the obvious consideration that if you think you're likely to get away with it or, at worst, might have to come to a discreet arrangement with the Revenue, there's little disincentive to cheat. If you see the authorities going after your peers, who end up in jail, you might be a lot less inclined to dodge your taxes in the first place.

A quick glance at the divergent career paths of Hervé Falciani (on the run after exposing the crimes of the rich and powerful) and Dave Hartnett (passing effortlessly through the revolving door from his high-profile job as head of the Revenue, to a six-figure salaried post in banking, to the heart of government, after helping to cover up the crimes of the rich and powerful)* shows you why some people might get the unfortunate impression that we're the global subjects of a corrupt trans-national plutocracy, where the powerful do as they please and the little people get screwed, as opposed to citizens of mature democracies where everybody is equally subject to the rule of law.



* Update - not only did the HMRC fail to prosecute the tax cheats, but it apparently failed to pass on information about HSBC's malpractice to the financial services regulator.

USA 1, UK 0

In the US, an elected politician comes right out and blasts the crooks on Wall Street for cronyism, buying influence and trying to block measures intended to stop them syphoning off yet more trillions of public money when their next reckless gamble goes wrong, telling them they should have been broken into pieces.

In the UK, some whiny banker, attached to a failed and bailed bank, posts a windy, rambling screed* about how a comedian, (whose radical schtick amounts to telling people not to bother voting because the revolution will arrive through some unspecified process involving fairy dust and magical thinking),** spoiled his lunch by trying to gatecrash a City boardroom and becomes a viral media sensation to our fawning press.

I'd exchange Russell Brand for Elizabeth Warren any day, although I suppose if we have to keep Brand, in lieu of our elected representatives telling it like it is, he might eventually make enough bankers miss their lunches to starve the buggers out.

As for rising populist stars who somebody actually voted for, they've got Elizabeth Warren speaking truth to power and we've got Nigel Farage, that City alumnus and gurning pillock in clown trousers, tripping over himself in his desperate rush to scapegoat anyone but the real culprits for the mess we're in.

Score one for the Land of the Free.



*Another Angry Voice, does a pretty good job of fisking this rambling, self-pitying rant although, IMHO, he lets the banker off way too lightly when it comes to the most outrageous piece of bullshit, the claim that 'Of all the profligate pissing away of public money that goes on in this country, the only instance where the public are actually going to get their money back [i.e. by selling off the failed and bailed Royal Bank of Scotland] seems an odd target for your ire.'

If the best use of public money you can think of is wasting billions bailing out failed financial institutions, thus tanking the rest of  the economy and screwing up millions of peoples' lives for years to come, with the vague promise of making some of the money back at some point in the future, if market conditions are favourable, you're an idiot, although not as big an idiot as the uncritical churnalists who reprinted this rubbish as a 'hilarious' vindication of Britain's crappiest bank.

** Although Chris would no doubt point out that I'm falling into the trap of managerialist ideology in holding out for a hero...

Trollbert

I've already been a bit disillusioned by the blog of Scott Adams, the guy behind the classic Dilbert 'toons, but his latest entries make me think Scott's lost the plot. The 'unique and controversial point of view' in question concerns his reaction to a hidden camera video of a woman walking around New York City and being hassled by various 'obnoxious cat-calling men', as featured in the New York Post.

I assume the makers of the video intend me to watch it and conclude "Sexism is out of control! Women can't even walk the streets unmolested! Something must be done!"

Here's my actual reaction: "MOVE SOMEWHERE BETTER, YOU IDIOT!"

Do you want to know why my life is good today? It's because I once lived in a place with no opportunity and many disadvantages but I cleverly fixed that problem by moving somewhere else. And so I reiterate.

MOVE!!! JUST [expletive deleted] MOVE!!!

Okay, I know, your family lives in New York City and your job is there and....JUST [expletive deleted] MOVE!!! MOVE!!! STOP MAKING IT MY PROBLEM!!!

The Dilbert blog 'Feedback for Feminists'

Whoa! Step away from the caps lock, Scott. Now let's all take some deep breaths and try to think about this rationally:

'I once lived in a place with no opportunity and many disadvantages but I cleverly fixed that problem by moving somewhere else.' That is clever Scott, well done you. But your problem, and how you solved it, is not what the film is about.

If somebody grows up in a place with zero opportunities, it makes sense to move somewhere else. But this woman is living in New York and, as Scott admits, 'Okay, I know, your family lives in New York City and your job is there', so the problem isn't lack of opportunities. It's people showing a basic lack of basic respect and civility to another person who is simply going about her business in a public place.

Moving to another place could be a rational way to solve this, different, problem, but it might not be the best solution. If everybody who lived in an area being dragged down by anti-social behaviour just ran away, then you'd be surrendering the place to the minority of noisy jerks and allowing them to dominate the public space, to the detriment of everybody else. Sometimes it pays to take a stand, shame the offenders, engage in activism, rally support and try to reclaim the place for the majority of people who are just minding their own business and trying to get through the day. A public-spirited attempt to make things better for everybody is not necessarily the mark of an idiot.

You could even say that the idiot is the person who just moves, as opposed to getting involved and trying to change things in the city, at least in the original sense of the word, ('idiot is derived from the Greek idiotes, which originally referred to a person who did not participate in the political or public life of the polis, or Greek city-state--in other words, someone who lived an individual life, unconcerned with larger affairs').

But in Scott's world, if you don't just move away when somebody harasses you, you must be some kind of idiot, or loser (he uses this playground bully's jibe to hammer home his point in a follow-up post, titled 'Loser choices').

There's also a bit of over-reaction going on when it comes to how the video's edited:

My first reaction is that editing ten hours down to two minutes is so overtly manipulative of the viewer that I had a bad reaction to it. I understand why they had to edit; no one watches ten hour videos. But while the video clearly states it is edited, the human brain still processes it as if it is in real time. My emotional reaction to the video is a reaction to a woman being harassed every five seconds, and that is not what happened.

Well, the finished video consists of the edited highlights and there's certainly a point of view, but it any more manipulative than, say, a TV news report? A murder, or a horrific multiple car crash on a major route will be reported with long shots of police tape round the incident scene, or the twisted wreckage,or  emergency vehicles with lights flashing, the whole shebang. Is this 'overtly manipulative?' Surely, for the sake of balance, there should be equal, or more time devoted to stock footage of people going safely about their business near the murder scene, not being found murdered, or of traffic flowing safely down the road, with no accidents, deaths or injuries, which is what happens for the vast majority of the time.

Of course that never happens, because the news is about newsworthy events - the vast majority of people who have an uneventful day not being murdered or killed on the road aren't news, and the unfortunate few who meet such a dramatic end, are. Likewise, a woman having an uneventful walk doesn't add up to a film (well maybe, an ambient art house one). The fact that she's being harassed, on average, about once every five minutes over a ten hour period is the dramatic, surprising thing and it would be perverse to expect the film maker to pad out a two minute video about women being harassed on the streets with footage of nothing much happening.

This isn't to say that focusing on violence, conflict and dramatic, upsetting events isn't a problem with the media we consume in general terms - a constant diet of 'newsworthy' disaster and conflict probably does lead to fear, anxiety and cognitive bias among consumers who must feel that the world is a far scarier place than it really is. But that's a problem with every edited highlight of a dramatic, newsworthy event, not necessarily a particular problem with this particular video.

Then, after telling women to stop being idiots, stand on their own two feet and stop making it his problem, Scott suddenly turns all concerned liberal:

1. The video is unintentionally racist as hell, and that doesn't help feminism...
 ... 5. The harassment was mostly in the form of powerless men hurling compliments at a woman that probably has a better job and more education than nearly all of the men in the video. Remind me again who the victims are?

A couple of things.

First, if you're going to get shouty, self-righteous and condescending with one disadvantaged group, at least get consistently shouty, self-righteous and condescending with everyone ('GET AN EDUCATION YOU IDIOT! OR A BETTER JOB! OR JUST MOVE!!! STOP MAKING IT MY PROBLEM!!!'). Otherwise it looks as if you're exclusively concerned about the rights of victims with one particular set of gonads.

Second - OK, many of the harassers were black. Maybe this just reflects what happened, rather than being the result of bias. There might be reasons for this which have nothing to do with racism on the part of the film maker. Scott, probably rightly, assumes that many of the harassers were poor, undereducated and generally socially disadvantaged, compared with the recipient of their unwanted attentions.Given that racial discrimination exists, it might well be that a greater proportion of black men fit that profile, due to lack of opportunity.

That is a problem, and a serious one, but it's a separate problem. And - and this is important- there's no reason to believe that solving one problem (harassment of women) precludes solving the others (racial discrimination, or more general inequality of access to resources and opportunity). This is not a zero sum game, except in the minds of people who want to play one disadvantaged group off against another.

Then there's this:

But in 2014, sexism is not so much the "can't vote" type of problem it once was. It's more of the "Someone is making me uncomfortable" or "I think my gender played a role in a decision" or "I can't tell if this is a business meeting or a date" sort of thing.

Not a smart remark from a man who doesn't want to be seen as sexist, but already has something like this to explain away:

The reality is that women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently. It’s just easier this way for everyone. You don’t argue with a four-year old about why he shouldn’t eat candy for dinner. You don't punch a mentally handicapped guy even if he punches you first. And you don’t argue when a women tells you she’s only making 80 cents to your dollar. It’s the path of least resistance. You save your energy for more important battles. 

But don't take it personally, because 'ol Scott's probably just joshin' (but if he is, he ain't sayin'):

Warning: This blog is written for a rational audience that likes to have fun wrestling with unique or controversial points of view. It is written in a style that can easily be confused as advocacy for one sort of unpleasantness or another. It is not intended to change anyone's beliefs or actions. If you quote from this post or link to it, which you are welcome to do, please take responsibility for whatever happens if you mismatch the audience and the content. 

Can we just cut to the chase and say 'cop out?' Because Scott knows how to do ironic and funny - he's done it enough times in his cartoons. And this isn't funny (at least not funny ha ha - it is funny peculiar, as in 'please stop, you're starting to creep me out'). This isn't comedy or irony. You don't need a fancy pants disclaimer to say what it is. It's trolling.

• posting outrageous messages to bait people to answer - check
• purposely provoking people and pulling them into flaming arguments -check
• assuming the persona of a genuine sceptic with no hidden agenda -check
• divisive and argumentative with need-to-be-right attitude - check

...if it looks like a duck troll and quacks like a duck troll... (I've read several versions of The Three Billy Goats Gruff and nowhere does it actually say that trolls don't quack).

And it's trolling of a particularly insidious kind, given the subject matter. Scott's main point, remember, is that if women don't like being in a place where they're being harassed and belittled, they should just go somewhere else. Which is possible, if unreasonable, if that place is New York. But when guys start trolling uppity women on the Internet, what are they supposed to do? Get off the Internet?

What happened to you Scott? You're a talented guy with a successful career - why behave like a real loser, a frustrated Internet troll who can only validate his sad existence by sneers, insults and put downs? I think you could do better than this.

Pussy riot, Iranian style

This thing here is the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It's your standard green-white-red horizontal tricolour, with the words 'God is Great' added, in Kufic script, to the edges of the colour bands (just in case the aggressive piety implicit in the words "Islamic Republic" was too subtle for you). But what's going on with that weird  symbol in the middle? Glad you asked:

Designed by Hamid Nadimi, and officially approved by Parliament and the Leader Grand-Ayatollah Khomeini on 9 May 1980, this Emblem is a highly stylized composite of various Islamic elements: a geometrically symmetric form of the word Allah ("God") and overlapping parts of the phrase lā ʾilāha ʾillà l-Lāh, ("There is no deity but God"), forming a monogram in the form of a tulip it consists of four crescents and a line. The four crescents read from right to left the first crescent is the letter aleph, the second crescent is the first laam; the vertical line is the second laam, and the third and fourth crescents together form the heh. Above the central stroke is a tashdid (a diacritical mark indicating gemination) resembling "W". The tulip shape of the emblem as a whole memorializes those who have died for Iran and symbolizes the values of patriotism and self-sacrifice, building on a legend that red tulips grow from the shed blood of martyrs.

Not only is all that symbolism about blood and self-sacrifice bang on the money, given the brutal human rights abuses for which this crackpot theocracy is famous, but the suggestive design of nested crescents around a vertical central stroke has also prompted some irreverently creative re-imagining. Here's Iranian-born secularist and human rights campaigner Maryam Namazie, explaining how she incorporated the flag of the Islamic Republic into her recent nude protest for International Womens' Day (some images may be considered NSFW, although to my mind a woman's standard reproductive equipment is infinitely less offensive than the banner of an oppressive, fanatical, blood-spattered tyranny):

I didn’t want to just hold the Islamic regime of Iran’s flag so I cut out the Allah in the centre of the flag and let it show my vagina instead. Much better, don’t you think?

Congratulations, Hamid Nadimi. You are personally responsible for the most gynaecologically memorable piece of design since the front end of the Ford Edsel. Everyone can now remember the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran as 'that one with the lady bits on it.' You must be so proud.

Cakes that ought to sell like hot cakes

A brief pause to stop and celebrate one of the good things in life. Newport Pagnell's high street hasn't been in the most robust health over the last few years; familiar names closing down, an excess of charity shops (there's nothing wrong with charity shops in themselves, but they're an indicator species of a degraded retail ecosystem) and all that's before the Tesco supermarket that's colonising the old Aston Martin site has opened and sucked its portion of trade out of the high street.

There is at least one superb shop that thoroughly deserves to buck the trend, though. PicNic's, at 63 High Street is an establishment of which I'm not entirely sure we're worthy. A fine selection of delicious home-made cakes, superb sausage rolls (with mustard seeds in the sausage meat) an extensive range of sandwiches and soups and the occasional, generally successful, culinary experiment (rye bread pizza with sun-dried tomatoes was a bit out there, but it worked) and all very reasonably priced.

For the record, no money, food or other consideration has changed hands in connection with this blog post - this is not an infomercial. I just think it's a cracking local business and, speaking as a man who likes his food, I wish it well.

Hoggart's Law

Almost every line reflects the law of the ridiculous reverse, which states that if the opposite of a statement is plainly absurd, it was not worth making in the first place.

"An economy where people who work hard are properly rewarded", or in the least gracious alternative, "an economy crafted to benefit lazy skivers who would rather watch Jeremy Kyle than turn an honest hand".

"Reduce the burden of excessive regulation" or "tie up business with yet more red tape".

"A fairer society that rewards people who work hard" or alternatively "an unjust society that rewards bent bankers and speculators". Oh, hold on, that's what we've got. So perhaps there really is a policy change there.

The late Simon Hoggart on the state opening of parliament, 2013. Lots of people posted their "best of" quotes when he died, just over a week ago. I'm late, because so much of his best stuff was so intensely topical that it's bound to date and I've only just come up with* something that also speaks to posterity. Others have mocked specific examples of the law of the ridiculous reverse, but Simon Hoggart deserves kudos for identifying it as a general principle.

The 'law of the ridiculous reverse' is a great mental filter for sifting out distracting, content-free mom-and-apple-pie platitudes. Ruthlessly redact this rubbish and any remaining residue of actual fact and information** might be worth thinking about. It deserves a snappier title, though. Call it "Hoggart's Law" and it merits memehood as surely as Poe's law, Godwin's law, or Hanlon's razor.

The sort of inanities covered by Hoggart's law deserve to die in fire. If they don't, all those hard working families will be condemned to spend the rest of eternity pushing the politicians' rhetorical boulder uphill. Isn't it about time they had a rest?


*h/t Radio 4's Word of Mouth

**How about a memorial prize for the first person who can find a speech, press release or mission statement so completely devoid of substance that no meaningful information remains, once every statement that falls foul of Hoggart's Law has been deleted? If somebody could stump up some decent prize money, that should concentrate a few minds.

'I expect to get paid for working' shock statement by pauper

I don't think I am above working in shops like Poundland. I now work part-time in a supermarket. It is just that I expect to get paid for working.

Cait Reilly, who thinks that being ordered ro work for nothing in a Poundland store breaches laws against forced labour, a point of view apparently shared by Apppeal Court judges.

She expects to be paid for working? Did you ever hear of such a thing? The undeserving poor have become shockingly impudent of late.

'Olivia Twist has asked for more!'

There was a general start. Horror was depicted on every countenance.

A Department of Work and Pensions spokesweasel was on hand to reassure respectable members of society that, whatever the judges may think, workhouse regulations will be amended to ensure that no urchin will receive an extra serving of thin gruel.

'It is ridiculous to say this is forced labour. This ruling ensures we can continue with these important schemes,' added Mr. Bumble Employment Minister Mark Hoban.

To be serious for a moment, Cait's clear and simple statement nails the lie about so-called 'job snobs' being too picky to do any work within reason. She walks the talk and stacks the shelves.

Unlike, say, highly the privileged pontificators on the front benches who have, more often than not, benefited from expensive private educations designed to ensure they never had to decide between an entry-level job and penury. People who would never wish such a choice on their own expensively-educated progeny. People with the means to parachute their little Tarquins and Jocastas into unpaid internships in professions that are now effectively beyond the reach of the bright kid from the local comp who isn't being subsidised by the bank of mum and dad. If you want to see job snobs, that's where you should start looking.

Happily, I find myself in complete disagreement with contrary Mary, Brendan O'Neill, who is reliably wrong about almost everything.
 

Who says hairdressers aren't tough?

 We had to take a hill. How do we take a hill which is full of Egyptian infantry, backed by artillery? 04.30 one morning, a surprise attack. We were half way up the hill before they knew what was coming and we took it. I think it was a bloody miracle. We took it.

The next day they sent up four guys with two Besas, they were the big machine guns with bullets this big, you know, that could pierce armour. And the Besas got to work on the road and stopped the tanks and stopped the armour from coming through. They were just stuck there.

And, of course, they sent up troops every day and they dive bombed us with Spitfires, which I got crazed about. Spitfires were defending us in London.

That feeling of a homeland at last, where nobody could kick you out! It was yours! And it was a marvellous feeling.

Vidal Sassoon, anti-fascist, freedom fighter and king of the sharp, low-maintenance bob cut (17 January 1928 – 9 May 2012)

via

Final thought on the passage of the NHS (Monetisation and Dismantling) Bill

Tell David Cameron that if he screws up my beloved NHS I'll come back and bloody haunt him.

Claire Rayner (died 11 October 2010)

The Health and Social Care Bill (passed 20 March 2012)

A good day to bury bad ideas

Just when you thought the gilded representatives of the overclass running the coalition could humiliate the powerless more or less at will, here's a cheering example of what can happen when people actually stand up to bullies:

Britain's biggest private sector employer has agreed to pay people taking part in a flagship Goverment work-experience programme, amid a growing backlash over the scheme.

Supermarket chain Tesco was forced to act ahead of expected protests outside its shops on Wednesday by campaigners who have described it as “slave labour". Argos said it wanted assurances that young people who do not take part will keep their benefits. Other leading high street names including Burger King and Pizza Hut are also reported to be reviewing their involvement in the scheme.

Ministers are now battling to save the work experience scheme, which has seen more than 34,000 young people aged 18 to 24 year olds sign up.

Christopher Hope, writing in the The Telegraph.

Fantastic. And all down to activists like Louise Whittle, who refused to give in to the cynicism and learnt helplessness that convinces so many of us that what we say or believe can't possibly stop the powerful from doing exactly what they want. She wrote to tell Tesco what she thought of their involvement with this exploitative scheme (most people would have given up, assuming that they wouldn't listen, or wouldn't care what we thought, before even putting finger to keyboard), got your standard boilerplate corporate brush-off non-answer, but still got off her backside and protested.

She, and everyone else who actually did something to stand up for the people at the bottom of the heap, and against those who'd like to trample all over them, should be very proud today. And those of us who tend to grumble about the injustice of it all without actually doing very much about it, need to take a long look at ourselves.

Can't stop the music

A world-class symphony orchestra needs eighty-odd highly talented people and years of dedication, sacrifice and training to make itself heard. Sadly, a tiny group of cloth-eared, muddle-headed noddies needs only a few incoherent yelps to force an orchestra off the air. Personally, I'd rather listen to the Israel Philharmonic, so here's one they made earlier - the climax of the piece that got barracked this week, Bruch's violin concerto: As far as I'm concerned, the only thing I feel like boycotting at the moment is the Judean Popular Peoples Front, or whatever the pipsqueaks responsible for trying to keep the airwaves judenfrei call themselves these days.

In a topsy-turvey society where you are the product you consume, I don't normally advocate consumer-led activism, but I'll make an exception in this case. If you've got a pound or two to spare, why not go out and buy something made in Israel to boycott the boycott? I can recommend Dead Sea Natural Mineral Body Lotion by J. Malki - Yarden, which is very good if you occasionally suffer from dry skin on your elbows.*

* This is an unsolicited opinion - I have no commercial relationship with the manufacturer of the product mentioned above.

It's the luvvies wot won it!

I thought I had a handle on the basic facts about the phone hacking malarkey that’s done for the News of the Screws. It’s complex and murky, but the main points seemed clear enough.

Proximate cause: public disgust at what the Guardian journalists exposed.

Ultimate cause: Newscorp executives bringing the crisis on their own heads in one or other of two ways. Either, one, by being completely unaware that some NotW employees were not only behaving like unfeeling bastards (which, shouldn’t have surprised anybody who’s actually glanced at a Murdoch tabloid at any time in the past few decades), but were also routinely breaking the law. Or, two, by knowing perfectly well that the law was being broken, but turning a blind eye, going along with it, or even initiating it.

Carl Bernstein, (yes, that Carl Bernstein, as in Woodward and Bernstein) who presumably knows a thing or two about the newspaper business in general and investigative journalism in particular, favours explanation two:

As anyone in the business will tell you, the standards and culture of a journalistic institution are set from the top down, by its owner, publisher, and top editors. Reporters and editors do not routinely break the law, bribe policemen, wiretap, and generally conduct themselves like thugs unless it is a matter of recognized and understood policy. Private detectives and phone hackers do not become the primary sources of a newspaper’s information without the tacit knowledge and approval of the people at the top, all the more so in the case of newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch, according to those who know him best.

And, you know what, he nearly had me believing that it was all Newscorp’s own fault. Until I came across this brilliant piece of investigative reporting from one Nigel Green, crime reporter for the Sunderland Echo and erstwhile freelance contributor to the News of the Screws, fearlessly exposing the real puppet masters:

Murdoch has been forced to take this action by a hysterical bandwagon made up of sanctimonious luvvies who sneer at tabloid newspapers and their readers.

Thanks for setting the record straight, Nige; with insightful pieces like that, you'll go far, mate.

Ha! Take that, Bernstein! You thought it was Newscorp executives up to no good who brought down the Screws, but that was just a set-up, you has-been. In fact, it was a tiny band of hysterical luvvies who got together and bitchslapped the world’s mightiest media conglomerate until it whimpered like tiny puppy left out in the rain.

Well, who’d have thought it, eh? I, for one, will be raising a glass of some suitably louche gin-based cocktail to our gallant thespians. Endlessly mocked for their shallow, narcissistic ways, their cravats and their Brylcreem, this tiny band of entertainers went up against the brutal might of Murdoch’s pan-continental empire of evil and came back glorious. Never in the field of British journalism has so much been owed by so many to so few. Never again will I make fun of a BAFTA acceptance speech, now that I know what these plucky luvvies have done for us all. By Jove, they make you proud to be British.

Luvvies of Britain, I salute you all! Darlings, you were wonderful! Mwah! Mwah!


Hat tip to The Null Device for the Bernstein piece.

Goodbye. See you soon, dear friends.

Ground control to Major Yuri...